It’s perhaps a bad day for President Donald Trump when even Fox News is suggesting things may not be going so well.
The president took aim at Rupert Murdoch and two of his media holdings on Thursday after Fox News published a poll highlighting Americans’ concerns about inflation and economic uncertainty resulting from Trump’s chaotic tariff rollout.
In a late morning Truth Social post, the president burned Murdoch, Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal, saying that the nonagenarian media mogul “has told me for years that he is going to get rid of his FoxNews, Trump Hating, Fake Pollster, but he has never done so.”
“This ‘pollster’ has gotten me, and MAGA, wrong for years,” the president wrote. “Also, and while he’s at it, he should start making changes at the China Loving Wall Street Journal. It sucks!!!”
The president’s tirade appeared to be in response to Fox’s on-air coverage of its Wednesday poll, which looked at American attitudes towards Trump as he approaches 100 days in office. Fox News did not respond to a request for comment.
Shortly before the president posted to his social media platform, Fox News senior national correspondent Rich Edson appeared on the network’s 9 am broadcast, “America’s Newsroom,” telling co-hosts Dana Perino and Bill Hemmer that the poll shows American voters are “skeptical” of Trump’s tariff policy.
During the same hour, Perino and Hemmer sat down with Harold Ford Jr., a co-host of “The Five,” who said that while Trump may believe the tariffs are empowering, the reality has been “angst and anxiety amongst a lot of small business, and we still don’t have trade deals yet.”
It’s not the only major poll finding that Trump’s economic approval rating has cratered. A Reuters/Ipsos poll this week found that only 37% of Americans approve of his handling of the economy, a record low for either of his terms. A new Gallup poll this week found that a record-high 53% of Americans believe their economic situation is getting worse — making it the first time since 2001 that a majority have felt that way, per Gallup.
The president’s Thursday morning post marks only the second time he’s criticized Fox News on Truth Social during his second term — this time elevating his concerns to the network’s owner.
Since taking office, Trump has posted about the network more than 50 times, mostly to tout favorable coverage or his allies appearing on-air. Early last month, however, Trump personally attacked Fox’s senior White House correspondent, Jacqui Heinrich. “I thought she was absolutely terrible,” he wrote to his nearly 10 million Truth Social followers after watching her co-host a weekend show. “Not surprisingly, I later found out that she’s a fan of the White House Correspondents Association!”
The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, has been a frequent target of Trump’s second-term ire. The president has repeatedly bashed the newspaper and its conservative-leaning editorial board for its critical coverage of his tariff policies.
Over the years, Murdoch has fallen in and out of favor with the president. While Fox News has long been one of the president’s preferred news sources, Trump once called Murdoch a “piece of sh*t” after the mogul’s New York Post derided his 2024 campaign launch.
Murdoch, for his part, has also waffled on his views of the president. Records obtained during the Dominion defamation lawsuit showed the media mogul’s contempt for the second-term president, succinctly summarized by Murdoch’s assertion that Trump is a “f**king idiot.”
Still, that hasn’t stopped Murdoch from cozying up to Trump. In early February, the media mogul visited Trump in the Oval Office.
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