Fox News is used to playing the kingmaker in Republican politics. The network’s hosts explain daily that government is full of losers, and tell you which politicians to trust and which are demon-possessed. The metric is simple: Politicians that genuflect to Fox News are good. The rest are bad.
But what happens when a politician doesn't genuflect, but is too powerful for Fox News to shank?
Inside Fox there is confusion about what role the network should play in this altered media ecosystem going forward. According to three insiders I spoke to, the channel's hosts and producers are split over how to cover Trump. Historically, in moments like this, the strategy would be clear: Punish the person who publicly crosses Fox. But network boss Ailes has tried that, and Trump not only survived the PR assaults, including one last month, but he seems to have emerged stronger than ever.
It isn't helping that the Republican establishment seems itself incapable of harming Trump, while continuing to be very capable of harming each other.
'Tis a tragedy, to be sure.
Fox News itself may be in a dangerous position here: Attack Trump too strongly, and its viewers (who have been primed to imagine conspiracies everywhere by a nightly lineup of hosts that tell them conspiracies are everywhere) may perceive Fox itself as part of the Republican plot to take out the only candidate telling the "truth" about Muslims, immigrants, and the universal loser-ness of all the other politicians. Embracing Trump, however, ties the network to Trump's unpredictable, embarrassing, and racist stances. Can the network do that without suffering crippling damage itself, if and when Trump fails?
The best approach for the network may be to simply drop out of politics and become an arts and crafts channel for the remainder of the year.
The irony here, of course, is that Fox News made a Trump "takeover" of the party possible. It was their drumbeat of racism that prepared the base for Trump's cruder, but louder version. It was their obsession with conspiracy-peddling—especially the innumerate different theories about how President Obama was weakening America on purpose, or was not legitimately American, or legitimately Christian, and so on, that gave Trump a platform for his own. And, especially, the base has taken the central Fox News message to heart: Everyone in Washington is against you, even all the Republicans, because no matter what they say they still have not murdered Obamacare—separation of powers be damned—or slashed your taxes while keeping only the government services that personally interest you, and so the only hope is rebellion. Rebellion of the tea party variety, rebellion of the Cliven Bundy variety, rebellion against science, and against objective truth, all of it with an American flag slapped behind it and no further explanation needed. That's Donald Trump, in a nutshell.
My own suspicion is that if Donald Trump continues to win primaries, Fox News will quite quickly declare that they have been Donald Trump fans all along. The Republican Party itself will do likewise, grumbling "moderate" pundits be damned. He may be unpredictable, and crass, and gleefully spiteful, but his opinions are all cruder, baser forms of what the rest of the Republican candidates are just as willing to say, and just as willing to act on. Cut taxes on the rich, kick out immigrants, restrict the rights of non-Christians, gut health insurance and replace it with (unintelligible mumble), and all you bastards are going to say Merry Christmas to each other whether you like it or not.
That's nothing you won't hear on Bill O'Reilly’s show on a nightly basis. The network would have preferred a more refined presentation, but they can work with this one too. If Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for president, the network will embrace him with open arms, and O'Reilly, Hannity, and the other hosts will be gushing over finally having a Republican presidential candidate who tells it like it is.