Too many of this site want to drum everyone out who has ever bucked Donald Trump. Fox News screwed up badly on election night. Yes, Chris Wallace and a few others are annoying as all get out. But clearly Fox is the best by a long ways among traditional news centers. I am watching. I will watch.
I am good with DJT bashing Mitch McConnell, Karl Rove and others, each of whom has earned his rebukes and generally/ objectively screwed up. But the Trump wing of the GOP cannot put all of its eggs in the Trump basket (partly out of interest in Donald Trump’s own well being), nor is there any need to do so. There is also DeSantis, Pompeo, Noem and several other nearly ideal candidates for President and another half-dozen lesser but perfectly adequate options. Donald Trump will stun over the next 18 months and then 3 years in terms of building an effective and winning farm system below these folks to add to the Jim Jordans and Devin Nunes ranks.
Still though ... he will want to co-opt as much of the GOPe as he can, including Fox News, while going after moderate Dems and minorities who cannot abide the lawlessness of their communities or the derision that the left shows to working-class households. I imagine that President Trump aspires to landslide victories in 2022 and 2024, won in substantial part by stealing the GOPe base out from under the GOPe. He’ll pummel the likes of Mitch McConnell in 2021 Q1 but soon pivot toward making Mitch his b*tch.
Politics at this level is rough and Donald Trump is a master. He’s going to want to punish those who have been disloyal and errant and thereafter bring them back into the fold. He knows this. McConnell knows this. Others playing at these high stakes levels all know this.
Fox News will be an important media channel in this effort. Donald Trump is too smart to throw that piece away, especially as he’s being cut off everywhere else. He’ll bash the network but go on Hannity and Bartiromo a lot, just for example, and once in a while on Ingraham. Murdoch is right in asserting that Fox ratings will go through the roof even if Trump engages the talking heads at the same time he’s bashing the network itself.
Dittoes.