President Donald Trump called in to his old stomping ground of Fox News’ Fox & Friends on Thursday morning, using the surprise interview to denounce the “crooked” media’s coverage of the war he started with Iran, praise Fox’s own positive coverage, and listen to the program’s co-hosts urge him to escalate further by deploying U.S. ground troops on Iranian soil.
Trump watches Fox programming religiously, frequently takes action based on what he sees from its coverage through a phenomenon I’ve described as the Fox-Trump feedback loop, and treats its hosts like unpaid members of his cabinet. The network played a key role in convincing the president to launch the Iran war earlier this year.
That war has settled into a stalemate. The U.S. and Israel launched major strikes in late February and early March that decimated the Iranian military and killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But Iran responded by closing the vital trade route of the Strait of Hormuz, and after months of alternating periods of tit-for-tat conflict and diplomacy, the Iranian regime remains intact and in control of its uranium stockpile and the strait, leading experts to describe the conflict as a strategic debacle for the U.S.
The U.S. and Iranian militaries have traded strikes this week, and on Thursday morning Trump posted on social media that the U.S. will hit Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT,” adding, “At some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets.”
Minutes after issuing that threat, Trump called in to Fox & Friends, the program on which he used to have a weekly guest slot as he built his political profile before his 2016 presidential run.
The president told the co-hosts that his “preference has always been take Kharg Island” — a tactic people on Fox have been pushing for months which would require putting boots on the ground — but that he’s unsure whether “America has the stomach for it.” He repeatedly complained over the course of the interview about what he deemed the “crooked” media’s insufficiently supportive coverage of the war, a subject that has consumed him since shortly after he launched it.
Responding to one such salvo, in which the president grouched about “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” co-host Ainsley Earhart urged Trump not to “worry about” the coverage and to go ahead and escalate the war by seizing Kharg Island, promising that Fox’s viewers would support it.
“We know that America is winning this fight, but when they destroy or they shoot down one of our Apache helicopters and we strike Iranian targets and then they fire missiles at our bases in Bahrain and Kuwait and Jordan, we have to fight back,” she said. “So, when you say you don't think America has the appetite to do what we are seeing tonight, I think we do. I think we’re ready to see this.”
Trump responded by praising her network’s “great” coverage. He name-checked evening hosts Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters, and Laura Ingraham, calling them “fantastic” and adding that “every single anchor has been great.” (Notably, Trump did not mention Mark Levin, the arch-hawk whose war commentary the president has previously touted but who has criticized negotiating with the Iranian regime even as he praised Trump himself.)
“You guys have been amazing, and Trey Yingst is a superstar,” the president continued, referring to the Fox correspondent who has been covering the war from Israel and said last month that Trump held “the cards” while the Iranians were “grasping at straws” and desperate to negotiate an agreement with the U.S..
“He just covers so accurately,” Trump added. “I don't know Trey Yingst, but, I mean, he covers it so accurately. It's so beautiful to watch. And he's got a level of excitement that's amazing. But the accuracy is so good, I just saw him on your show a little while ago, and I said that's exactly what’s happening.”
Indeed, Fox has produced near-lockstep promotion of the war, with hosts constantly lavishing the president with praise and touting the “major geopolitical win” he is supposedly achieving there. Its personalities have also regularly urged Trump to order risky escalations like seizing Iran’s refineries, claiming that victory is “two weeks” away if only he would unleash the military and “finish the job.”
Now the president, who is obsessed with Fox’s coverage and often makes decisions based on its programming, appears to be listening — and says he plans to carry out their strategy. In search of more compliments from his television, he’s trapping the U.S. in a doom loop.
