Fox News cut away from former President Donald Trump‘s 2024 campaign announcement on Tuesday, while promising to return to the rambling former president when “news warrants.”
Trump said that his candidacy marked the beginning of “America’s comeback” and promised to “stand tall in the storm” during a speech that lasted longer than an hour. Fox News broke away from the announcement at multiple points. After the former president referred to Old West figures Billy the Kid and Jesse James, host Laura Ingraham suggested that the speech was no longer newsworthy.
“We’re going to go back to former President Trump when news warrants,” she said. “Just one week after the 2022 midterms, and look at this, we’re already gearing up for 2024.”
Ingraham later returned to the speech, telling viewers “we’re gonna dip back in and see what he’s still saying.”
Fox News was not the only network to interrupt the former president. CNN also cut away from the live speech, while MSNBC did not cover the speech live.
The interruption on Fox News was notable due to the network’s history of offering flattering coverage of Trump, particularly from on-air personalities like Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson.
However, Trump has increasingly lashed out at Fox since leaving office in January 2021, often airing grievances that the network did not pay enough attention to promoting his false claims of a “stolen” 2020 election.
Meanwhile, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s potential 2024 GOP rival, has recently been the recipient of increasing praise on Fox News and other conservative media outlets.
The former president has been heavily criticized over his influence on the party in the aftermath of a worse-than-expected Republican performance in this year’s midterm elections.
“Let us hope that the millions of Americans who have supported Trump in 2016 and again in 2020 begin to see that his time has passed,” Fox News contributor Liz Peek wrote in an opinion article last week.
“If they like his policies, they need to move their allegiance to Ron DeSantis, who has never lost a campaign, and who emerged the big winner in these midterms,” she added.
Trump took aim at both DeSantis and Fox in a series of Truth Social posts last week, accusing DeSantis of lacking “loyalty and class” and predicting that Fox would eventually be forced to become “supportive” again.
“This is just like 2015 and 2016, a Media Assault (Collusion!), when Fox News fought me to the end until I won, and then they couldn’t have been nicer or more supportive,” Trump wrote. “We’re in exactly the same position now. They will keep coming after us, MAGA, but ultimately, we will win.”
Newsweek has reached out to Fox News for comment.
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