Marco Rubio has lost Fox News.
[T]his alliance now seems to be over. According to three Fox sources, Fox chief Roger Ailes has told people he's lost confidence in Rubio's ability to win. "We're finished with Rubio," Ailes recently told a Fox host. "We can't do the Rubio thing anymore."
Which is bad news for Rubio, since his entire base of support is establishment and press Republicans who are willing to inexplicably pump up Marco Rubio. Apparently, though, Ailes has seen the writing on the wall; Rubio can't win, and Fox News is only going to humiliate themselves pretending otherwise.
This leaves America's Worst Network in an even bigger bind than before. The network that is used to playing kingmaker has no potential king to make—and the current front-runner, Donald Trump, is openly dismissive of the network and eager to pit his supporters against them. None of the corporate-friendly Republicans that Fox News would usually be hitching their wagon to, from Scott Walker to Chris Christie to Jeb Bush to, now, Marco Rubio, have gone anywhere. Suddenly rallying to podium barnacle John Kasich would be more humiliating than standing behind Rubio.
That leaves Ted Cruz, and while Ted Cruz is certainly a model of the sort of extremist burn-down-the-government type that Fox News has endlessly promoted, Nobody Likes Ted Cruz. His history of legislative extremism is not what the jolly people in the upper tax brackets want to see; they're just in this thing for the tax breaks.
So Fox News doesn't really have anyone they can credibly sell to their own viewers. Nobody at all. All they're left with is a bunch of pissed-off hosts openly mocking the candidates they used to support.
Hannity said Rubio’s onslaught is “turning into a suicide mission.” He speculated Rubio “is being fed this” and was “probably promised a lot of money” to go after Trump this way and slammed a pro-Rubio super PAC for running an ad on Trump’s refusal to disavow the Ku Klux Klan.
“Maybe it’s my conspiratorial mind,” Hannity began. “I think this is orchestrated, well-funded and well organized.”
Sean Hannity then went on to praise ... Donald Trump, saying he perhaps looked "presidential" in his victory speech. Perhaps that is the end point here after all—Fox News will kick and scream, but if Donald Trump gets the votes, Donald Trump will become presidential in Fox News’s eyes simply because there's nobody else left.