OPINION:
On Friday, President Trump banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, saying they report “fake news” and “shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES.”
Two days later, a Fox News executive shut off the president’s cameras.
Not CNN. Not a committee in New York. Bryan Boughton, Fox News Washington bureau chief, chairs the White House television pool.
On Sunday, he told subscribers that “effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President.”
Then the line that gives the game away: “All other TV pool coverage will continue as normal, including Congress, VIPs, and selected events in Washington and around the country.”
Read it twice. The cameras still roll for Congress. They still roll for VIPs. One man in America gets blacked out, and he — not Mr. Boughton — is the one the voters elected.
That is not standing on principle. That is shooting at a target.
Nor was Fox a bystander. When the White House pulled CNN from the rotation, the slot passed to the next network in line: Fox, with the crew, the truck and the bureau three blocks away. Mr. Boughton slammed the door: “There will be no replacement pool put in place.”
Then, in solidarity with the fake news, Fox News Media signed a joint statement with ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN declaring that “no administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”
Mr. Boughton did not make that stab-in-the-back call. It came from the top: CEO Suzanne Scott or higher.
News flash: A network that sells itself to conservatives has blacked out a Republican president and put out a press release about it, arm in arm with CNN. Fox is the more dangerous of the two, because it pretends to wear our colors.
Was the president right that CNN, MS NOW and Politico are fake news? Of course. They pimped the Russia hoax, ran the Hunter Biden laptop as “Russian disinformation” and facilitated Anthony Fauci’s COVID-19 lab origins cover-up.
These networks did not cover the impeachments; they staffed them.
The Media Research Center coded 1,841 evaluative statements about the second Trump administration on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts across the first 100 days. Some 92% were negative. The identical method found 89% in 2017.
The legacy media have not drifted. They have only gotten worse.
Fox’s own Trump derangement syndrome is new. Its CEO Suzanne Scott keeps removing the people most willing to honestly cover the MAGA agenda. Lou Dobbs was canceled in February 2021. Tucker Carlson was out in April 2023.
Maria Bartiromo was gone this month, after she passed her producers’ July 15 text from Fox Business programming up the chain: “We don’t want to promote it or push to the speech at all. We don’t want to do 2020 election segments at all Thurs or Friday.”
The speech was the president’s prime-time address on election security. Fox ordered its own fake newsroom not to discuss it.
Two possible responses provide food for thought.
First, the pool. The White House owns cameras and employs people who know how to work them. Man the pool position and give the feed away free to every outlet in America. Or let Real America’s Voice, Newsmax and One America News Network do it. An easy lift.
Second, why not cut Fox off from administration guests? Not one Cabinet secretary. Not one deputy secretary, administrator or agency head. Not one White House official, National Security Council staffer or press aide. No surrogates, no exclusives, no embargoed drops, no sit-downs, no phoners, no Sunday bookings. Not on Fox News or on Fox Business.
Fox already shadow-bans some Trump officials (including myself) for honest assessments of the positive effects of populist nationalist policies such as tariffs and a sealed border. Why let Fox go on censoring Trump officials who do not clear its Karl Rove RINO filter?
At the end of the ratings day, Fox’s show lineup is built on Trump people and Trump administration news. Fox gathers none of it. It books it. Take away the bookings, and the hours fill with bloviating, blow-dried, boring panels and ranting hosts.
This may be the right instrument, not merely the satisfying one. A talent freeze cannot be sued. No network holds a constitutional right to a Cabinet secretary’s time. No judge orders the secretary of commerce into a green room.
This response to Fox’s perfidy goes through the president’s scheduling office and takes effect the morning he says so.
So let the putatively conservative Fox show its solidarity with closet communist CNN. Let it run 30 or 60 days without Trump & Co. and see how that reads in the demo.
This message is not for Karl Rove or Suzanne Scott. It is for every Republican and independent who still thinks Fox gives them a fair read on a president who won in a landslide.
Fox is not real news. It is CNN with better lighting, a fake slogan and a flag graphic. Stop watching its dangerous drivel. Try RAV, Newsmax or OAN — you will get it straight, no fake news chaser.
• Peter Navarro is the White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing and the author of “Why Fauci Must Rot in Prison.”
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