Within Fox, President Donald Trump has generally shown a preference for appearing on opinion shows like "Fox & Friends." | Evan Vucci/AP Trump gives 18th interview to Fox Unlike his predecessors, the president gives the overwhelming majority of his interviews to one network.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to sit down for an interview with Fox Business Network’s Lou Dobbs at 7 p.m. Wednesday night, marking the 18th time that the president has been interviewed on a Fox television network, a preference unprecedented in the history of presidential TV interviews.

By contrast, he has appeared two times as president on NBC or MSNBC, once each on CBS News and ABC News, and zero times on CNN, according to the count of Mark Knoller, a CBS News White House correspondent who has been tracking presidential news media appearances since the Clinton administration. Trump has given two interviews to the Christian Broadcasting Network and one to Mike Huckabee — whose daughter serves as his press secretary — on the Trinity Broadcasting Network.


There is no recent example of a president favoring a particular network so much, according to Knoller. Within Fox, Trump has generally shown a preference for appearing on opinion shows like “Fox & Friends” and with supporters like Sean Hannity and Dobbs, with whom he also sat down in June. Even the more news-oriented anchors on Fox have had trouble booking Trump. Neither Chris Wallace nor Bret Baier has interviewed him as president and Baier has publicly appealed for Trump to come on his show.

“The Obama White House and the Bush White House would try and make it fair and the networks would go to them, look, you’ve given this network a couple more than we have, it’s our turn. They would try to keep it pretty even, as a matter of fairness,” Knoller said.

“As president, he can give interviews to anybody he likes. Fairness doesn’t have to enter into it. If he feels he’s getting the best deal on Fox — and it’s clearly evident he does feel that way — that’s who he’s sitting in with. It’s evident that he’s watching Fox News a lot, and it’s obvious he feels he gets the best deal with them.”

Trump has appeared on a Fox network multiple times in recent weeks, sitting with Hannity two weeks ago and with Maria Bartiromo in the past week. Critics contend that Trump gets a soft landing on Fox properties, particularly from the pundits who openly support him, like Hannity and Dobbs.

Hannity was criticized, for instance, when he did not ask any follow up questions after Trump erroneously claimed that gains in the stock market helped erase the national debt. The obvious falsehood was allowed to air unchallenged.

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“He’s going to get easier questions, but he also knows the people. He watches them. It’s a reflection, too, of what he’s watching,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a retired political science professor from Towson University who tracks presidential appearances as the director of the White House Transition Project. “It’s a reflection of the fact he has focused on his base from the campaign and into the presidency.”

Kumar pointed out that Trump has lately done an increased number of brief Q&As with reporters, which alleviates some of the imbalance of his appearing so often on Fox. “I think that is an important tempering aspect of his focus on Fox,” she said. “When he’s dealing with Fox, he’s dealing with his base. When he’s dealing with the pool of reporters, he’s dealing with the public beyond his base.”

A White House official did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

A recent Vanity Fair story reported that White House advisers were keeping Trump away from more adversarial interviews and breathed a sigh of relief when Trump turned down a request from CBS’ “60 Minutes.” The story cited a White House official saying that the “60 Minutes” interview would be rescheduled.

Asked whether the show was in discussions with the White House, CBS News spokesman Kevin Tedesco replied, “When we get an interview with the president, we’ll announce it.”

