Fox News political analyst Karl Rove has not appeared on his network’s weekday programming for the last three weeks, even as the midterm elections loom. Rove’s absence coincides with his newsmaking public statements warning about extremism within the Republican Party — and his denunciation by President Donald Trump.

While Rove appeared alongside Fox senior political analyst Juan Williams on the October 4 edition of Fox News Sunday (which airs on Fox broadcast stations and reairs later in the day on Fox News), he last appeared on a Fox weekday program on September 14, when anchor Martha MacCallum interviewed him on The Story.

Rove’s absence at a time when his analysis would theoretically be most useful is notable. He averaged seven weekday Fox appearances per month from March through August, and that interview on The Story was his 5th of September, according to a Media Matters review of our database.

Rove makes news — but not for his employer

Rove’s disappearance from Fox's weekday airwaves overlaps with his increasingly strident criticism of extremist elements in the GOP, which has drawn attention from other news outlets.

Two days after Rove’s most recent Fox weekday appearance, The Wall Street Journal published a column in which the veteran Republican strategist and former top aide to President George W. Bush called out the “raw, uncut bigotry” of Texas GOP candidate Bo French, vowed to “vote for only the second Democrat in my life” rather than support French’s campaign, and warned that “the GOP has a growing number of Bo Frenches—and not only in Texas.”

Rove doubled down during a September 26 appearance at the Texas Tribune Festival and drew more headlines for his lament that the Republican Party is “being infiltrated by people like Bo French” and the white nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes, who he described as “a Nazi.”

No one needs to hear that message more than the audience at Fox, whose hosts played an essential role in mainstreaming and sanitizing the GOP’s far-right elements. But Rove’s denunciations of the extremists he says are taking over the party have been mentioned just once on Fox, according to a Media Matters review.

Fox contributor Josh Kraushaar crowned “our very own Karl Rove” the “winner” of the week during a panel discussion on the September 18 edition of Fox’s Special Report, arguing that Rove “spoke out with principle against the Texas railroad commissioner candidate, a Republican, Bo French, who made some racist tweets about Indian Americans attending the Texas football game.”

“You don't hear people going against party very often, and to hear those principles standing out, I think, was a real example that Karl Rove set,” Kraushaar said.

No one at Fox is apparently interested in following that example. Even Rove himself, in his Fox News Sunday appearance, did not address his critique of the GOP, instead focusing on downplaying the prospect of a Democratic midterm wave. The GOP’s extremism falls into what I’ve termed Fox’s negative space, the stories that the network’s stars seem loath to defend or even acknowledge to their viewers.

Fox benched Rove after Trump asked why the network helps “keep his RINO Voice alive”

Rove’s absence from Fox’s weekday airwaves also lines up with his denunciation by the president.

During his September 14 interview on The Story, the Fox analyst criticized Trump’s promise to give every American citizen $5,000 if Republicans hold the House and Senate, calling the proposal neither “well thought out” nor a political boon for the GOP.

Trump regularly watches Fox and responds to the programming he sees there, mixing praise of Fox coverage he appreciates with criticism of the network for failing to produce sufficiently consistent propaganda on his behalf. Just a few hours after Rove’s appearance, the Fox analyst received a harangue from the president.

“Karl Rove is so bad for the Republican Party, and completely wrong so often,” Trump posted to Truth Social. “He suffers from a major case of Trump Derangement Syndrome primarily because, for almost 10 years, I beat back and won against so many of the people and things that he wanted and espoused.”

“Why does FoxNews and the WSJ keep his RINO Voice alive,” the president added. “The guy is a stone cold loser!”

The network’s executives are keenly interested in maintaining good relations with Trump. Just last week, network founder Rupert Murdoch and several senior figures in his media empire reportedly dined with the president at the White House in an effort to “reset the relationship.”

And on Monday, The New York Times reported that Fox had hired as a contributor Karoline Leavitt, who served as White House press secretary in his second administration. Leavitt’s new colleagues will include Kayleigh McEnany, one of Trump’s first-term White House press secretaries; Mike Pompeo, who served as Trump’s secretary of state; Kellyanne Conway, who managed his 2016 presidential campaign; and Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters