While the Fox News Channel was once widely seen as the right-leaning alternative to overtly leftist mainstream news outlets, it has lost significant support among conservatives — particularly supporters of former President Donald Trump — in recent months.
Steve Bannon, who served as a top White house adviser under the Trump administration, sounded off on the network and the family of its long-time owner, Australian-born Rupert Murdoch.
His remarks on a recent podcast came in response to Fox News host Brian Kilmeade’s claim that “if Donald Trump listens to [U.S. Rep.] Matt Gaetz [R-FL] and Steve Bannon, he loses.”
Although Bannon brushed off the remark, calling Kilmeade “a pretty nice guy” and nothing more than “an apparatchik” within the Fox News ecosystem, he said that the Murdoch family is a different story.
Kilmeade: "…. And I think if Donald Trump listens to Matt Gaetz and Steve Bannon, he loses. They have to understand that most of the people are not on the extremes. And if you could understand that, you’re going to win. The first one to understand that and does what they think… pic.twitter.com/2KQ19A6uLX
— Wayne DuPree (@WayneDupreeShow) February 27, 2024
“I believe we could show that in the next Trump administration, [Murdoch] gundecked his citizenship in the middle of trying to buy Fox Broadcasting,” Bannon added. “Because guess what? You’re supposed to be an American citizen. Well, they took care of that so he could buy it. It was completely illegal, completely bought foreign.”
Those foreign ties, he argued, are behind the anti-Trump views expressed by Fox News and other Murdoch-owned media properties.
“You don’t see Fox attacking [GOP presidential primary candidate] Nikki [Haley] at all,” Bannon concluded. “You certainly don’t see them attacking her positions as positions that are stone-cold losers. Why? Because it’s their positions. They are neo-liberal neocons. They fully support the concentration of wealth in this nation.”
He wrapped up the segment with a derisive refutation of Kilmeade’s remarks.
“Oh, you got these radicals,” Bannon said, mocking the Fox News host’s advice to Trump. “You have these radicals. Don’t, please don’t, you can’t listen to these radicals. Can’t listen to these radicals who want to talk about not getting into war. Everything Fox stands for, we stand for the opposite.”
In response to reports in 2022 that Fox News essentially blackballed Trump and amid evidence that network bosses were opposing his fledgling campaign for a second term, high-profile ex-employees began speaking out against the obvious changes.
Former Fox News analyst Dick Morris said that Mudoch’s son, Lachlan, “and the network’s leadership wants Fox to be more like CNN.”
He called the Trump ban “a politically motivated decision, not based on news value, because Trump completely dominates the Republican Party and is still the biggest newsmaker in politics.”
