On Thursday, Donald Trump went on a Fox News promotional spree, peppering his Twitter feed with praise for the network, its anchors, and its polling prowess. Yet, less than 24 hours later, the president’s attitude has undergone one of its famously instantaneous shifts. On Friday, after Fox released a poll showing Trump trailing current 2020 Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden by ten points, he lamented in a pair of tweets that Fox is no longer home to “Proud Warriors” who always have his back, but part of the “Lamestream Media” that has him losing to “the Sleepy One.” “[Fox News] is at it again,” he wrote. “So different from what they used to be during the 2016 Primaries, & before.”

The poll in question, published Thursday, shows the former vice president with a commanding lead over the rest of the Democratic field, despite his flat first debate performance. But what set off Trump was the poll’s suggestion that voters preferred Biden to him, 49% to 39%. The hosts of Fox & Friends mostly downplayed the unfavorable results, which also have the president losing to Bernie Sanders: “Early, barely buy it, doesn’t matter,” Pete Hegseth corrected after Brian Kilmeade called the survey “noteworthy” in a Friday morning segment. But that wasn’t enough to comfort Trump, who rage-tweeted at the network about an hour later. “There can be NO WAY, with the greatest Economy in U.S. history, that I can be losing to the Sleepy One,” Trump wrote, referring to the former veep.

Fox News, of course, remains Trump’s home turf. It hosts some of his most ardent defenders, and is something of a launching pad for White House hopefuls. After Robert Mueller testified on Capitol Hill this week that Trump had not been exonerated by the Russia probe, as the president has repeatedly claimed, and suggested that he could be indicted after leaving office, the president flooded his Twitter timeline with quotes from Fox talking heads trashing Democrats and the former special counsel. But there has also been some trouble in paradise of late, with Trump seeming increasingly agitated by the network’s non-opinion programming. “[Fox] is changing fast, but they forgot the people that got them there,” he tweeted earlier this month.

For now, that lineup of over-the-top pro-Trump pundits is holding the marriage together. “Oh well,” the president wrote Tuesday after expressing frustration at the network for interviewing Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell ahead of the Mueller hearings. “We still have the great [Sean Hannity] who I hear has a really strong show tonight.” But Fox’s more straightforward news operation—which has recently included instances of Chris Wallace grilling Trump goons on air—could add to the strain. It’s unlikely Trump will consign the network to the same “fake news” bin as CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and any outlet with the gall to suggest that he isn’t universally beloved. But his saber-rattling could put pressure on Fox to bend even further to his will.

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