Decoding Fox News

The Fox News propaganda machine normally promotes the same triumphant rhetoric for its glorious leader. The network portrays President Donald J. Trump as a master negotiator, a maverick and an unconventional leader who is changing the world through his unique personality and force of will.All of Trump’s flaws are excused as part of his genius. His many deficiencies are completely ignored. The network also pretends that he is incredibly popular with the American people.Last week for a moment in time the network’s enthusiasm for Trump started to wane. Laura Ingraham couldn’t hold her frustration in any more after weeks of avoiding the conflict in Iran.Sean Hannity mostly sat back and let his guests talk about the conflict rather than share his own opinion. The folks on The Five appeared annoyed that they weren’t talking about Jill Biden, Rosie O’Donnell or a transgender athlete. The cast of Fox & Friends continued to express their doubts and slight misgivings about the conflict as they have since the first missile strike in late February.The outlier last week was Jesse Watters a man who will justify anything Trump says or does and then completely forget he did so the next day.Fox News also continued to attack Democratic candidates in multiple races across the country. I’ve included a chart at the end of the newsletter that shows how much airtime the network spent on each race.This week’s newsletter will be solely dedicated to how the network handled the dramatic shifts last week in the Iran War. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit decodingfoxnews.substack.com/subscribe

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Trump’s mountain of broken promises, radical foreign policy decisions and unorthodox economic policies are causing deep damage to his MAGA brand.Last week the Supreme Court, with three Trump appointees, ruled against Trump’s use of IEEPA to issue tariffs.The court’s ruling was only one of many failures for Trump last week as newly revised jobs data showed a major contraction in the labor market last year. The trade deficit in 2025 showed little improvement despite Trump’s widespread use of tariffs and the fourth quarter GDP reading was well below expectations.According to multiple polls Americans have tired of Trump’s harsh immigration policies, and military threats to foreign countries. Most voters have no interest in conquering Greenland, crushing Cuba, managing Venezuela or invading Iran.Grocery prices and utility bills remain elevated while Trump gaslights the American public insisting that costs for everything have dropped dramatically. Health insurance premiums for millions of Americans have dramatically increased while SNAP and Medicaid benefits have been cut.Meanwhile the president remains obsessed with his gigantic White House ballroom and plans for an oversized monumental arch built in his honor.The glorious leader has lost support among nearly every demographic except for his cultish base of supporters. There are even signs that diehard MAGA fans are losing faith.Underneath all of the spin more sinister details surrounding Trump’s possible involvement with Jeffrey Epstein’s many heinous crimes and sex trafficking operation remains.Fox News is desperate to keep the Trump myth alive either by ignoring stories that make the president look bad or spending excessive amounts of coverage on segments that aren’t political.One sign of the network’s panicked approach was the fact that Barack Obama’s name appeared 74 times in the transcripts last week. No kidding. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit decodingfoxnews.substack.com/subscribe

Last week on Fox News Greg Gutfeld, Jesse Watters and other overpaid Fox News personalities proved there is no limit to the depravity and hypocrisy on the Murdoch owned media empire. The network seemed desperate to focus on the Nancy Guthrie abduction rather than talk about anything that might make its glorious leader, an increasingly demented cruel sociopath, look bad.Gutfeld made dismissive jokes about Nancy Guthrie, an ailing 85-year-old grandmother who was abducted from her home outside of Tucson, Arizona. Two horrifying pieces of evidence in the case include a video of a masked man approaching her front door in the middle of the night and a trail of the elderly woman’s blood scattered across her entryway.The diminutive perpetually angry Gutfeld! host appeared annoyed that his employer was spending so much time on the story so he lashed out at his own network like a spoiled child.Jesse Watters joked that Jeffrey Epstein was some type of fixer who helped rich and powerful men ‘get a girl.’ He could have easily substituted the word woman for girl but chose to make light of the sexual abuse of children.His co-host Kennedy joked Epstein’s associates might need some penicillin presumably for sexually transmitted diseases. Never mind the abuse of children who were smuggled to Epstein’s island from overseas or led to his compound under false pretenses.Some of Epstein’s victims have committed suicide. A U.N. panel found Epstein could have been running a global criminal enterprise that included crimes against humanity.The hundreds of child sex trafficking victims were reduced to an inconvenience for their older and much more powerful abusers. This is after months when Watters spent more time than anyone else on Fox News condemning Epstein for his crimes. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit decodingfoxnews.substack.com/subscribe

As Fox News featured footage of jackbooted masked federal agents terrorizing a Northern Midwestern city the network told its viewers to ignore any reports that showed Americans were unhappy with Trump’s mass deportation efforts.The soccer moms and angel faced five-year-olds fleeing clouds of tear gas in quaint tree-lined residential streets were covert socialist sleeper cells financed by the Chinese communist party and radical Islamists determined to overthrow the U.S. government.The true victims of the chaos in Minnesota were the valiant members of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents. They were brave men and women who had to cover their faces to avoid being doxed by crazed capitalist hating agitators.Things got truly surreal as several Fox News hosts showcased the mugshots of various undocumented immigrants convicted of heinous crimes while they downplayed the latest release of documents related to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.The Epstein files revealed close personal relationships with several high-ranking officials in the Trump administration as well as the president himself.When the network wasn’t promoting outlandish conspiracy theories about nonexistent socialist uprisings and downplaying Trump’s once close relationship to a sadistic sexual predator it was heavily promoting the First Lady’s insipid documentary and making light of Trump’s plan to openly rob the U.S. treasury of $10 billion.It was an especially crazy week at Fox.Meanwhile Fox News polling came out with terrible numbers for Trump across several categories which Fox News personalities mostly ignored. The network also failed to tell its viewers about layoffs at Amazon and UPS or of a huge spike in the trade deficit. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit decodingfoxnews.substack.com/subscribe