{"id":13051,"date":"2026-05-21T20:14:49","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T20:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/05\/21\/opinion-trump-and-fox-news-are-trapped-in-a-doom-loop-on-iran-ms-now\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T20:14:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T20:14:49","slug":"opinion-trump-and-fox-news-are-trapped-in-a-doom-loop-on-iran-ms-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/05\/21\/opinion-trump-and-fox-news-are-trapped-in-a-doom-loop-on-iran-ms-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Trump and Fox News are trapped in a doom loop on Iran – MS NOW"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By\u00a0<\/span> \t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\tMatt Gertz\t\t\t<\/span> \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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President Donald Trump\u2019s Iran war is a global strategic debacle and a domestic economic disaster<\/a> that has taken his public support to new depths. With the president\u2019s job approval hitting second-term lows, some Republicans are warning<\/a> that he may hurt the party\u2019s chances of retaining control of Congress in November\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n

But even as some MAGA pundits are sounding the alarm<\/a> about the war and its political implications, Fox News\u2019 coverage of the Iran war remains consistently glowing. Trump is depicted on the network<\/a> as a steely-eyed negotiator who had \u201cthe courage, the wisdom, the fortitude to confront this Nazi-like regime,\u201d<\/a> in the words of one host. He now \u201cholds the cards\u201d against Iranian officials who are \u201cgrasping at straws,\u201d a Fox correspondent said. On rare occasions when Fox hosts buck that narrative<\/a> and express concern about the war\u2019s impact on the country and the GOP, they quickly pivot back<\/a> to the pro-war propaganda Trump craves<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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In 2020, Fox\u2019s executives and stars faced a network near-death experience due to a rare moment of honesty.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

Fox\u2019s lockstep promotion of Trump\u2019s war reflects two crucial factors: The influence of current and former Fox hosts on the Trump administration, and the network\u2019s desperate desire to hold on to its MAGA viewership at all costs. And because Trump\u2019s own worldview is shaped by the network telling him that he\u2019s engaged in a globally historic victory that just needs more time \u2014 and perhaps further escalation<\/a> \u2014 the result is a doom loop without a clear exit.<\/p>\n

In Trump\u2019s first term, his obsessive consumption<\/a> of Fox\u2019s programming turned the network\u2019s hosts and correspondents into prominent participants in national politics. That pattern has intensified in his second term: Trump has selected<\/a> more than two dozen former Fox personalities to fill top roles in his administration, leaned on current Fox stars<\/a> for counsel and seemingly ordered policy changes like the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to U.S. airports based on<\/a> segments that caught his eye.<\/p>\n

Network hosts like Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and Brian Kilmeade have long supported military strikes against Iran, and over the first few months of the year, they repeatedly used their programs to urge Trump to take action<\/a>. But since their predictions<\/a> of a quick and easy resolution gave way to a quagmire, they have been unable to respond coherently. Instead, when not praising Trump for his bravery in starting the war, they suggest risky escalations<\/a> they say will end it \u2014 from a special ops mission to seize Iran\u2019s uranium to the targeted assassinations of more Iranian leaders.<\/p>\n

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Not all of Fox\u2019s personalities, however, have track records of hardcore neoconservatism or an ideological interest in annihilating the Iranian regime. But the network is more deeply invested than ever in appealing to their MAGA audience.<\/p>\n

In 2020, Fox\u2019s executives and stars faced a network near-death experience due to a rare moment of honesty. When Fox\u2019s decision desk called the state of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night in 2020, the result was a debacle: Trump lashed out<\/a> at Fox, furious that the network had damaged<\/a> his attempts to falsely declare victory. As viewers switched to alternative right-wing channels<\/a>, Fox hosts course-corrected<\/a> by platforming bizarre lies and conspiracy theories about purported election fraud. Subsequent defamation lawsuits<\/a> against Fox led to the publication<\/a> of internal communications, which showed network executives and hosts panicking<\/a> at declining ratings, making their peace with promoting voter fraud claims they knew were untrue<\/a> and seeking to punish<\/a> Fox personalities who refused to get with the program.<\/p>\n

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When Trump turns on his TV, he sees Fox\u2019s hosts and correspondents telling him he\u2019s doing a great job in Iran.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

Those misdeeds have already cost Fox a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, and a $2.7 billion lawsuit from Smartmatic is ongoing. But for the network\u2019s leaders, the big takeaway was apparently that telling the truth to the viewers poses a bigger risk than telling them what they already want to hear.<\/p>\n

Applying that lesson to the Iran war makes it easy to understand Fox\u2019s ongoing support for the increasingly unpopular conflict. Trump retains an iron grip on his party\u2019s base, allowing him not only to oust dissident GOP officials but to retain Republican support for positions the rest of the country abhors. A New York Times\/Siena poll<\/a> found last week that while just 30% of respondents overall believe Trump was right to go to war with Iran, 70% of Republicans support his decision. Other polls<\/a> show similar schisms<\/a> between GOP sentiment and that of the public at large. Right-wing pundits who have struck out on their own, like former Fox hosts Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, can build out a sufficient audience by appealing to the 20%-30% of Republicans who oppose the Iran war, but Fox, a large company with much higher overhead costs, refuses to risk alienating the party\u2019s majority.<\/p>\n

This is the dichotomy of Fox\u2019s influence in the age of Trump: Its hosts are more powerful than ever because they have a direct line to the president. But once he makes a decision, they can do little more than cheer the president lest they lose their audience.<\/p>\n

The result is that when Trump turns on his TV, he sees Fox\u2019s hosts and correspondents telling him he\u2019s doing a great job in Iran, rather than expressing concern for the war\u2019s impact on the country or party. As the network\u2019s flattery deepens Trump\u2019s unwillingness to back down, it becomes ever more difficult to see how this cycle ends.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\tMatt Gertz\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\tMatt Gertz is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a\u00a0progressive research center that monitors the U.S. media. His work focuses on the relationship between Fox News and the Republican Party,\u00a0media ethics and\u00a0news coverage of politics and elections.\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May. 21, 2026, 2:48 PM EDT By\u00a0 Matt Gertz President Donald Trump\u2019s Iran war is a global strategic debacle and a domestic economic disaster that has taken his public support to new depths. With the president\u2019s job approval hitting second-term lows, some Republicans are warning that he may hurt the party\u2019s chances of retaining control […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13052,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}