Donald Trump just aimed a rally broadside at Fox News, the network his own voters have trusted for decades.
Fox’s defenders still call it fair and balanced television.
And Rupert Murdoch has played this exact game before, back when a different Democrat needed a friend.
The Crowd Booed Before Trump Could Finish His Sentence
Trump rallied supporters in Daytona Beach in the closing stretch of the midterm campaign. He came to boost Senator Ashley Moody (R-FL), who faces Democrat Angie Nixon, and Republican gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds, who faces Democrat David Jolly.
But then he turned on the cable channel half that crowd probably had on at breakfast.
Trump called Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) a “total dope” and griped that “Fox puts him on all the time.” He went further: “You know, Fox is giving Democrats more time than they give Republicans.”
And boos rolled through the room before he could wrap up the thought.
“I’m working my *** off,” Trump continued. “I’m doing rallies, and I come back, and I watch the opponent of the person I did the rally for. I’m not happy.”
Anybody who has knocked doors for a candidate, then flipped on the TV and watched the other side collect a free segment, knows that feeling in their gut.
Khanna had turned up on Fox & Friends that same morning with co-host Ainsley Earhardt. The two covered the Iran conflict, talk of impeaching Trump, progressive priorities, and the allegations swirling around Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN). Khanna opened by congratulating Earhardt on her marriage to Sean Hannity, and the chat never lost its friendly tone.
The congressman answered Trump online by thanking him for four mentions in a single day. He promised to come back on Fox within days to talk about “your failure in Iran and how it’s raised gas and food prices,” then tacked on a jab: “If you get a break from bragging about oil company profits and playing golf, tune in!”
Trump Sent Fox This Exact Warning Back in May
But none of this started in Florida.
In May 2026, Khanna sat down on Fox’s The Sunday Briefing to talk manufacturing and complain about Chinese steel turning up at the Port of Cleveland. Trump went to Truth Social and said Khanna “should not be allowed on FoxNews unless you have an ‘anchor’ who is capable of disputing his lies.” He also went after co-anchor Jacqui Heinrich for letting the claims slide.
Khanna wore the scolding like a merit badge. “This is why I go on Fox,” he posted on X, later adding, “This is how Democrats will win & unite the country.”
Five months later, the same Democrat keeps landing the same bookings, right up to the eve of a national election. Somebody in that building read the President’s complaint and decided it didn’t count for much.
And Khanna is no Blue Dog from a farm district. He served as a national co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign and backs Medicare for All, the government takeover of health care that would let Washington bureaucrats decide who waits in line for treatment.
He has floated a third impeachment, too. On Meet the Press, Khanna said a Democrat Congress would consider it. “Impeachment says that you can’t get into an illegal war in Iran without constitutional approval,” he said.
NewsNation reported that Khanna, on a private call with Epstein survivors, allegedly predicted Trump would “drop the bomb on Iran” if Democrats swept the midterms, according to sources with direct knowledge of the conversation. White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told the outlet that “President Trump has done more for Epstein’s victims than anyone before him.”
That’s the guest getting wedding small talk and a warm couch.
Khanna recently told Mediaite that Fox lets him “share my ideas and not be demonized.” Plenty of America First voices would love that arrangement. Brit Hume mused on Fox not long ago that JD Vance’s closeness to Trump could turn into a liability.
Rupert Murdoch Never Met a Winner He Wouldn’t Court
Maybe that’s reading too much into one booking sheet. Morning shows need guests who will actually show up and spar, and Hannity’s new bride hardly fits anybody’s picture of a Never-Trumper.
But the man at the top of the company has a long record of switching teams once he smells a change in power.
In 1992, his British tabloid, The Sun, crowed “It’s The Sun Wot Won It” after helping the Conservatives hang on. Labour’s Tony Blair flew to Australia in 1995 to court Murdoch personally. By the 1997 election, The Sun backed Blair, who won in a landslide.
Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock saw the bill coming. When Blair’s spin doctor Alastair Campbell insisted Labour had given Murdoch nothing, Kinnock shot back: “You will. And he will take it.”
The pattern crossed the Atlantic just fine. Murdoch’s New York Post endorsed Barack Obama in the 2008 Democrat primary. In 2014, Murdoch told Fortune magazine, “I could live with Hillary as president,” and said it “would depend on the Republican candidate totally.”
Read that last part twice. Murdoch doesn’t pick a side and stick with it. He picks whoever he figures will hold the keys next, then settles the bill later.
Fox Is Already Shopping for Friends in a Post-Trump Washington
Which brings things back to the midterms. If Democrats grab the House, Khanna and his colleagues will hold the gavels, the subpoena pens, and the impeachment talk he keeps floating. A network with friendly Democrat contacts keeps its access no matter how the count goes.
And Murdoch’s preferred Republican Party looks nothing like the crowd that booed in Daytona Beach. His outlets spent years cheering amnesty, open-ended wars, and trade deals that shipped factory jobs overseas. Murdoch also lobbied Trump to pick somebody other than Vance in 2024, according to reporting at the time.
The voters who sent Trump back to Washington want border enforcement, an end to foreign entanglements, and plants reopening in their hometowns. Fox needs those viewers a whole lot more than it needs Ro Khanna.
But whether the people running the network remember that once the votes are counted is anybody’s guess.
On July 17, 2006, less than four months before a midterm that handed Democrats control of both chambers of Congress, Rupert Murdoch hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton inside the Fox News building in New York.
Sources: Mediaite, “Trump Complains Fox Is ‘Giving Democrats More Time’ Than Republicans: ‘I’m Not Happy’”; Mediaite, “House Democrat Explains Trump’s Furious Attack Is ‘Why’ He’ll Keep Going on Fox News”; NewsNation, “Khanna says Trump will bomb Iran if Democrats win midterms: Sources”; Press Gazette, coverage of The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty and The Sun’s 1997 switch; New Statesman, on Alastair Campbell’s diaries; NBC News, “Rupert Murdoch to host Clinton fund-raiser”; The Rutherford Institute, “Rupert Murdoch and Hillary Clinton: Animal Farm Politics”; Salon, “New York Post endorses Obama”; Fox News, “Rupert Murdoch, Hillary Clinton and the politics of 2016”