Fox News Is Talking About Trump a Lot Less Lately

Screenshot via Fox News

Many metrics help the public and politicos gauge the health of a presidency, from pollsters’ approval ratings to the consumer confidence index, but in today’s siloed political environment, perhaps none are more important than conservative media’s treatment of Donald Trump.

The biggest trendsetter on the right undoubtedly remains Fox News, the largest cable news operation in the country with reach across the political spectrum. In recent months, Fox News has noticeably mentioned “Trump” less and less.

According to a search of TVeyes transcripts of all Fox News programming from April 16 to May 16th, the term “Trump” was mentioned a total of 4,564 times. During the same period, MS NOW mentioned “Trump” 5,378 times, and CNN did 4,620 times. Mediaite was unable to pull data past April.

As spring turned to summer, Trump mentions began to drop. May 16th to June 16th saw 4,082 “Trump” mentions on Fox, with the following month clocking in 3,936 mentions. Mid-July to mid-August saw 3,611 “Trump” mentions, while mid-August to mid-September notched 3,246 “Trump” mentions.

August 16th to September 16th saw a 10 percent drop in Fox’s “Trump” mentions from the period between July 16th and August 16th. Even more glaring is the fact that “Trump” mentions between August 16th and September 16th were a whopping 28.9% drop from the same April-May period.

MS NOW’s “Trump” mentions, meanwhile, stayed very steady as the April-May figure clocked in at 5,378, and the August-September mentions were 5,350 – almost no change. CNN, however, also saw a drop in “Trump” mentions down to 3,781 times in August-September from 4,620 during the April-May period – an 18.2% drop.

Of course, as the midterms approach, cable news has a lot of non-Trump, election-related news to cover, which is reflected in both the CNN and Fox data.

Fox News in recent weeks has also been heavily covering MAGA culture war topics like the WNBA’s transgender rule and Sydney Sweeney’s latest provocative ad campaign. None of which is to say that the network is no longer focusing on Trump and its MAGA viewers; Fox was the only of the big three to air both of his GOP convention speeches, and Trump recently sat down with Laura Ingraham.

Fox’s near 30% drop in “Trump” mentions does highlight a growing political reality in the country, as after the midterms Trump will be a “lame duck” president. After the elections wrap up in November, attention will also undeniably shift on the right to who will be Trump’s successor, and while Trump himself will undeniably play a large role in that battle, names like JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, and whoever else may come out of the woodwork are certain to start getting a lot more mentions across the conservative media – starting on Fox News.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!