On Sunday, he again criticized Fox, objecting publicly to coverage from “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace.

What did Wallace do? Well, his coverage on Sunday included an exploration of the New York Times’s review of how the administration’s oversights and failure exacerbated the coronavirus pandemic.

AD

AD

The subject was introduced with a video package that presented the Times report in about as milquetoast a frame as possible.

“The New York Times is reporting the president ignored early warning signs about the virus in January and February,” correspondent David Spunt said. “The White House released a statement to Fox News touting his accomplishments to help the American people.”

Wallace picked up the Times report, asking the director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University to offer thoughts. That center, you may remember, produced a report Trump highlighted at his first public briefing on the virus in February. The report ranked the United States better than most countries in preparedness for a pandemic, which Trump used to argue that the country was well-prepared.

AD

“What’s your reaction to the report?” Wallace asked center director Tom Inglesby. “And how much did those lost weeks cost us?”

AD

“I can’t say who in the administration knew what and when, but I would say that that article reinforces what we’ve heard along the way, which is that many in the administration were very worried about this as early as January and February,” Inglesby replied. “And that seems pretty clear now. And I’d also say that if we had acted on some of those warnings earlier, we would be in a much better position in terms of diagnostics and possibly masks and personal protective equipment and getting our hospitals ready.”

This is hard to argue with, given the available evidence. Speaking on CNN on Sunday, Anthony S. Fauci, a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, admitted as much.

AD

But Trump expects the media sources, which he sees as allies, to purge such criticism from its coverage. He wants Sean Hannitys not Chris Wallaces. He wants mentions of the Times to be brief and paired with White House denials, not to then be followed up on.

AD

The political question that arises is what his supporters specifically and Republicans broadly want. Do they, like Trump himself, want approving coverage? Or do they want fair and balanced coverage of the president?

Last month, the Pew Research Center released a set of poll data looking at the coronavirus pandemic. Views of handling the pandemic itself are fairly dated, but the contrast between how different groups see the media and see Trump are nonetheless informative.

AD

Consider five groups:

All respondents

Conservative Republicans

Moderate Republicans

Those who identify Fox News as their main source of election news

Republicans who consume media only from right-leaning outlets

Here’s how each group views Trump’s response to the pandemic and the media’s response.

Overall, more people rate the media’s handling of the pandemic as excellent or good than view Trump that way. Among Republicans, unsurprisingly, Trump fares much better.

Notice the divide in views, though, among groups such as those who rely on Fox News. They have a lot of confidence in Trump — but not much in the media. Does that indicate a lack of confidence in Fox itself?

Probably not. Pew helpfully asked people to evaluate the media broadly and, in a separate question, their own sources of news. On the question of how well the media have covered the pandemic, the gap in views of the media broadly and their own sources of news specifically is obvious.

Fox News fans are 26 points more likely to say that their own sources of news are doing a very or somewhat good job of covering the pandemic than the media overall. Among Republicans who consume right-leaning media, the gap is 32 points. Contrast that with moderate Republicans, among whom the gap is only 12 points.

AD

AD

But notice, too, the comparison with confidence in Trump’s handling of the pandemic. Even as 84 percent of Fox News viewers think their news sources are doing at least a somewhat good job covering the pandemic, 90 percent of them at least somewhat have confidence in Trump. More importantly, two-thirds are very confident in Trump — while less than half think their own news sources are doing a very good job.

The symbiosis between Trump-friendly outlets and Trump means some of that confidence in him is a function of the coverage he gets on Fox News and other pro-Trump outlets. But there appears to be more skepticism of the news outlets than there is of Trump himself with that overlapping audience, indicating that more critical coverage of the president might not be received as the objective, fair-minded analysis that it’s meant to represent.

For Trump, this isn’t a tricky question. He knows the most popular programming on the network — the prime-time opinion shows such as Hannity’s — will deviate only rarely from his worldview. His goal is to pressure those such as Wallace who actually do offer criticism at times to keep those deviations brief. At the same time, Trump does the network a service, allowing it to rise to the defense of its objective coverage, putting a focus on those moments and pulling attention away from what Hannity and Laura Ingraham are up to.