President Donald Trump talks to reporters before departing for a campaign rally in Cincinnati, on the South Lawn of the White House, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2019, in Washington. | AP Photo/Evan Vucci Fourth Estate The Fake Feud Between Trump and Fox The pro-wrestling origins of the president’s latest Twitter spat.

Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer.

Not for nothing was Donald Trump inducted into the WWE wrestling hall of fame in 2013. The man knows how to stage a fake fight—like his current brawl with the Fox News Channel. On Wednesday, he mounted a three-tweet attack on Rupert Murdoch’s channel. He savaged it for covering the Democrats, for hiring Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, for keeping Juan Williams and Shep Smith on the payroll, and he invited its viewers to stop watching his once-favorite channel.

“The New @FoxNews is letting millions of GREAT people down!” the president barked. “We have to start looking for a new News Outlet. Fox isn’t working for us anymore!”


This tantrum followed a similar surge of fury from Trump in March, when he denounced Fox’s weekend anchors, asking whether they had been trained by CNN.

Happy to play the fall guy in the match, Fox anchors pushed back on this latest iteration of Trump’s bogus “Fox is being mean to me” storyline. Three minutes after Trump’s first Wednesday tweet, anchor emeritus Brit Hume charged onto Twitter to throw the president in a headlock. “Fox News isn’t supposed to work for you,” Hume wrote.

Then Trump escalated the feud on Thursday in a half-hour interview with Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade on his Fox News Radio show. “I’m not happy with Fox,” Trump griped, criticizing Fox’s polls as “phony.”

Trump’s protest prompted Fox host Neil Cavuto to retaliate by throwing a televised flying forearm at the president’s face. Cavuto reiterated Hume’s point that Fox doesn’t work for Trump. “My job, Mr. President, our job here is to keep the score, not settle scores,” Cavuto insisted, uttering the channel’s “fair and balanced” slogan like a mantra.

How angry at Fox can Trump genuinely be? Trump told Kilmeade that he appreciates the broadcasts of his longtime champions, the opinion triumvirate of Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, who host popular night-time shows on Fox. They’re so close to Trump they’re practically unpaid advisers to his presidency. Trump also gets unalloyed tenderness and obsequious respect from the Fox & Friends crew when he phones in. Lou Dobbs of Fox’s sister network, Fox Business Network, does the same. Dobbs has formed a “mind meld” with Trump on immigration, China and more, according to a Washington Post profile. Trump returns Dobbs’ love, calling the anchor “The Great Lou Dobbs.”

Trump appears to think everybody who appears on Fox should belong to his tag team, so when hard news anchors Shep Smith and Chris Wallace or weekend anchors Arthel Neville and Leland Vittert speak a disparaging word about his policies or ask tough questions, they’re somehow betraying him. Being second-guessed by Fox’s in-house liberal pundits, Brazile and Williams, also rankles him.

But given his background in wrestling, you would think he would appreciate that Fox conservatives need an opposition to easily pummel. It wouldn’t be Fox if somebody isn’t playing the role of Alan Colmes. Trump’s flimsiest objection to Fox’s coverage is his critique of the channel’s decision to report on the Democrats running for president. “Hard to believe @FoxNews is wasting airtime on Mayor Pete, as Chris Wallace likes to call him,” Trump tweeted in May. “Fox is moving more and more to the losing (wrong) side in covering Dems.” He can’t possibly believe that Fox should cover him to the exclusion of covering the Democrats, can he?

It’s possible that Trump is once again laying the groundwork to start his own, Foxier than Fox TV channel or conservative news website—annoyed to have his 2016 campaign plan interrupted by a presidency. But it’s far likelier that this is all make-believe.

In the world of pro wrestling, “kayfabe” is the code of secrecy that demands all players stay in “character before, during, and after shows” to maintain the illusion that a real fight is happening. Trump’s trash talk and the raspberries that Fox functionaries like Hume and Cavuto blow back at him are pure kayfabe. As Media Matters for America’s Matt Gertz has noted, Trump so adores Fox that he’s peppered his administration with former Fox News staffers, and five of his former employees have moved on to jobs at Fox or its parent company. Just recently, former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, among the most loyal of all Trumpies, took a job as a Fox News contributor.

Trump’s faux-fight with Fox is designed 1) to add drama and excitement to where there is none; 2) make him the primary focus of events; and 3) temporarily complicate the storyline so viewers keep watching. Fox benefits from Trump’s periodic attacks (remember when he boycotted one of Fox’s 2016 presidential debates because it wouldn’t dump Megyn Kelly from the broadcast). They make the channel look like it’s standing up to the president, and Fox ends up looking more independent and credible.

It doesn’t get more kayfabe than that.

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More kayfabe? WWE executive Linda McMahon served in the Trump administration as the head of the Small Business Administration. More kayfabe: In 2009, Trump “bought” WWE’s Monday Night Raw program from Vince McMahon. Send wrestling notes to [email protected]. My email alerts are a bunch of “jabroneys.” My Twitter feed likes to go “gaga.” My RSS feed always “fights from underneath.”