Why Fox News Can’t Afford to Quit Donald Trump

Photo caption: Fox News election night coverage is displayed on a monitor during a party in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 4, 2020. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images. Article by Peter Maass.

At Fox News, a funny thing happened on the road to redemption.

As Donald Trump fell behind in the presidential vote count, Fox began pivoting away from the reality TV star it had backed for so many years. There was an early announcement by Fox that Arizona had been won by Joe Biden. There was a reporter calling Trump’s fraud claims “just not true.” And there was an abrupt silencing of Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany by anchor Neil Cavuto. This seemed to be evidence that Fox and the Murdoch family, which owns the network, were finally turning on Trump with a weapon they had rarely aimed at him: truthfulness.

But then, like the scorpion that stings the frog in the middle of a stream, Fox did what it had always done by nature. […]

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