Donald Trump spent election night glued to Fox News, furiously attacking his favourite television channel as his party was dealt a historic defeat. “A hit job”. “DUMB AS A ROCK”. “Have to go somewhere else until that LOSER is off the air”.
The US president complained about the sound of one Fox host’s voice, texted another during a live broadcast to demand he attack her and accused the network of turning against him.
But before the dust had settled on an election that swept Democrats to power in both chambers of Congress, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire appeared to be contemplating life after Trump.
Shortly after midnight, the editorial board of Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal declared Trump was the “main architect” of the Republican defeat and called for the party to debate what it stood for after him.
RM Block
The New York Post, Murdoch’s famously pugilistic tabloid, splashed a giant blue tsunami across its front page on Wednesday, depicting a helpless-looking Trump about to be engulfed by a wave under the headline: “Trump suffers historic rebuke as Dems romp in midterms”.
Even on Fox News, the cable TV channel where Trump has long enjoyed the support of some of the US’s most influential conservative television personalities, the mood had turned muted.
Sean Hannity, one of Trump’s staunchest defenders, was asked whether the election would have turned out differently had the president not gone to war with Iran. “100 per cent. I don’t think there’s any doubt about it,” he said.
Laura Ingraham, another long-time Trump loyalist, said the conflict had been “really tough and not well explained”.
The shift comes as Republicans begin to reckon with the scale of their electoral defeat. It raises questions about the future of an alliance that has helped sustain Trump’s dominance of US conservatism over the past decade.
Advancing the conservative cause is deeply important to Murdoch. He has described his companies, which include the Times and Sun newspapers in the UK, as the “protector of the conservative voice in the English-speaking world”.
A former senior News Corp executive said the billionaire had long sought to identify political winners early, allowing him to shape their agendas. “He has an uncanny sense of which way the wind is blowing, and wants to go early enough to exert influence and have that person be beholden to him.”
“Rupert does not want to be with a loser,” the executive said. “He doesn’t care about Trump any more, he cares about the audience.”
But moving away from the president presents a commercial dilemma. Fox must retain its core audience while appealing to younger viewers, particularly with the rival network Newsmax waiting to capitalise on any shift.
“How do you move away from Trump without antagonising that base?”
The reckoning comes as Fox grapples with a steep drop in its TV audience. Fox News’s prime-time ratings fell 28 per cent in October compared with a year earlier. This week, Lachlan Murdoch, chief executive of Fox, said viewers were “fatigued”.
Fox News noted the network remained the most-watched channel on cable TV in October, despite the decline in its audience. It also highlighted Fox’s growing digital reach, saying its videos had generated 3.9 billion views on YouTube this year, nearly one billion more than its closest cable news rival.
On election night, Trump offered another explanation: Fox’s ratings were “collapsing” because the network was “AGAINST me!”.
Yet Fox was hardly abandoning its conservative instincts. At 6.01am on Wednesday, anchor Ainsley Earhardt greeted viewers starkly: “Your wallet and your way of life, in the crosshairs.” The network spent much of the day sounding the alarm over the growing influence of Democratic socialists.
Still, Fox News remains deeply intertwined with Trump – a feature that was on display as the votes rolled in.
Karoline Leavitt, who joined the network as a contributor this week after serving as the White House press secretary, told viewers on election night that she had “just talked” to Trump. She defended his record, complaining that the mainstream media had failed to cover his many accomplishments.
At another point during the evening, Trump texted Fox host Greg Gutfeld live on air, demanding he tell co-host Jessica Tarlov she was “the WORST” before launching into a lengthy defence of his economic record. Gutfeld read the message aloud. Tarlov’s response: “Just press ‘stop’.”
Even while lashing out online at Fox, Trump called in to the network for a lengthy on-air interview. He spoke with Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum for more than 20 minutes and sounded calm, almost resigned, as they pressed him to explain the stunning losses.
Trump brushed off questions about the Iran war and his cabinet members and even commended the Democrats for their performance.
“It’s just a point in time, Bret. There was a mood in the air, I guess,” he said. “I’ve been doing great things for a long time.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
