Yesterday, Dan Pfeiffer ruminated about 3 ways the election changed his views about politics. One had to do with Democrats and Fox News and he concluded that Dems should start using them again. He wrote that when he started working for Obama as a comms director, he “loved booking him on Fox News. It fit with his brand as someone who would actively reach out to those with whom he disagreed. Every appearance was an event that the rest of the media would intensely cover. We even put Obama on Bill O’Reilly’s show right after John McCain’s speech at the 2008 convention. We put Obama on Fox to pitch the Affordable Care Act to the constituents of the Democratic members of Congress representing Red and Purple districts.
Throughout my time in the White House, my perspective on the value of engaging with Fox News began to shift. Obama’s election had radicalized the network, fueled by the ratings surge that came from the right-wing outrage over the election of the first Black president. Fox had always been a part of the conservative movement, tailoring its ‘coverage’ to advance the political goals of the Republican Party. However, fifteen to twenty years ago, there were still some honest brokers like Carl Cameron and Major Garrett with whom you could work. That changed in the 2010s, as the network transitioned from conservative news to outright right-wing propaganda.”
By 2016, I actively encouraged Democrats to avoid appearing on Fox News. I believed the network had devolved into a dangerous, hate-for-profit operation. Efforts from organizations like Media Matters and Sleeping Giants were pushing advertisers to abandon Fox, and I supported the idea that Democrats shouldn’t grant the network legitimacy by participating in its town halls or election specials.
This wasn’t a hard and fast rule. There was an exception for folks like Pete Buttigieg, who had the communications chops to make Fox look appropriately ridiculous. Still, I generally thought Democrats on that network were far from the best use of their time.
My opinion has changed— and not because Fox has improved. They have become even more slavishly pro-Trump since 2020. But after this election, it’s clear to me that Democrats need an “everything, everywhere, all at once” media strategy, and that includes going on Fox News and visiting other MAGA-adjacent spaces like the podcasts that Trump went on during the campaign. As evidenced by the struggles of the Harris campaign to gain attention and/or shape a narrative, Democrats are struggling to reach the large swath of voters who don’t regularly engage with traditional media. Even if the Fox audience is relatively small (although much larger than any other cable news channel), there is value in being seen as people willing to go into “enemy territory” to make our arguments. These encounters tend to break out on social media and be seen by the very voters we are missing.
Appearing on Fox and other right-wing media shouldn’t be the centerpiece of our strategy, but it needs to be a larger part of our approach than I initially anticipated.
A month before the election, AP published a piece on the same topic, noting that “Since the party’s convention in August, roughly twice as many Democrats have been on Fox than during the same period in Biden’s 2020 campaign, which itself was more often than when Hillary Clinton was the nominee in 2016… Whether to ignore Fox or seize opportunities to change the viewpoints of some audience members has long been a subject of internal debate among Democrats. Biden didn’t make a Fox-specific appearance during his campaign. Clinton made one appearance during her primary campaign and another in mid-summer 2016.” This angered Trump, who has thought of Fox as his own network.
Aside from Harris and Walz other Dems who have go on Fox— at least during the way— include Governors Gavin Newsom (CA) and Josh Shapiro (PA) and congressmen Jared Moskowitz (FL) Florida and Ro Khanna (CA).
The reason for Democrats to go on Fox is to reaching a different audience which includes independents and swing voters. Obviously, engaging with this audience allows Democrats to present their policies directly to individuals who might not encounter them otherwise or to challenge and correct misinformation and negative stereotypes about policies, party and candidates. As Pfeiffer wrote these appearances often attract attention from other media outlets, amplifying the reach of their message beyond Fox’s immediate audience.
On the other hand, even during the day, Fox is hostile environment with hosts waiting for opportunities to turn the appearances contentious, putting the interviewees on the defense. Not all— not many— Democratic politicians are talented enough to navigate these treacherous waters.
Also, appearing on Fox could legitimize highly partisan opposing narratives, undermining Democratic positions. It’s been Media Matter’s position that for Democrats, the benefits of going on Fox are illusory at best. “Fox,” wrote Matt Gertz in 2022, “is a GOP propaganda outlet, a cornerstone of the modern conservative movement, and a megaphone for the right’s most malevolent and extreme messages. The network’s biggest stars regularly promote unhinged conspiracy theories about the Democratic Party and vilify its key constituencies, including but not limited to Black, Asian and LGBTQ people, women, college students, unions and immigrants.”
Lis Smith, a Democratic communications consultant best known for her role on Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign, said during a recent podcast interview that Democrats could “break through the caricature that some of the audience has” of the party by appearing on Fox.
“There still is a persuadable audience on there,” she told The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes. She added that Democrats could use Fox appearances to show voters that they want to “bring down the temperature” and to demonstrate that they respect the network’s viewers. Smith acknowledged that it would be a bad idea to go on the prime-time shows of Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, but she put in a plug for the network’s daytime shows, including Fox & Friends.
Smith cited Buttigieg as an example of this strategy’s success. I agree that Buttigieg’s Fox appearances aided his presidential run, but I think it did so in a way that isn’t really replicable for most candidates and has little to do with the network’s audience.
Buttigieg’s primary campaign argued that he would be a strong nominee because he could appeal to Republicans— but there’s little evidence he actually won those partisans over. As part of that campaign strategy, he gave Fox a handful of interviews and participated in two network town halls. But despite this outreach, Buttigieg garnered less support from Republicans in head-to-head polls against Trump than other Democrats did— including Biden, who avoided the network during the primary campaign.
The Fox audience Smith claims is “persuadable” wasn’t actually persuaded by Buttigieg because most of Fox's audience is actually extremely right-wing. Among Americans who say Fox is their main news source, 93% identify as Republicans, according to Pew Research Center polling… [S]elf-identified Fox viewers are more conservative than self-identified Republicans on a variety of issues. They are more supportive of Trump (71%to 53% “very warm”), more critical of Pelosi (85% to 71% “very cold”), more likely to falsely believe Biden called for defunding the police (59% to 45%), more likely to be confident in Trump did a good job responding to the pandemic (90% to 82%), more likely to oppose Black Lives Matter (69% to 57%) and more likely to say voter fraud has been a problem with voting by mail (82% to 74%).
To the extent that the “persuadable” Fox audience exists, it is small and difficult to reach through the network itself. Fox appearances do offer Democrats the opportunity to speak directly to the network’s viewers. But once they’re off the air, Fox’s hosts, who have a much more extensive and durable relationship with that audience, get to rebut everything they’ve said for hours on end. That’s what happened immediately after each of Buttigieg’s Fox town halls— the rest of the network went to work using clips of his appearances to smear him to their viewers. The same thing happened after Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) Fox town hall. It is the height of hubris for a Democrat to think that they can break through years of network brainwashing with a few minutes on Fox.
Buttigieg’s Fox appearances were nonetheless good for his political standing because they appealed to an audience completely different from the network’s regular viewers. When he started his presidential run, Buttigieg was an obscure 38-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, whose main asset was his skill as a communicator. He garnered attention and then legitimacy and donations through a “press-friendly strategy” of being extremely available for interviews. His Fox strategy was very much part of that effort— Buttigieg’s appearances during the primary and his surrogate turns on the network after he dropped out and endorsed Biden drew lots of favorable press attention and regularly went viral on social media due to what CNN called “his ability to cut through the fog of Trump boosters on the network.”
That’s probably the best-case scenario for Democrats going on Fox— if you are a political unknown but a great communicator, you can use Fox appearances to get the attention of Democratic donors, use that cash infusion to keep your campaign running, then parlay endorsing the poll leader at a crucial time into an eventual cabinet seat. That’s a great result for Buttigieg, but it has nothing to do with “break[ing] through the caricature” to win over Fox viewers, and there’s little reason to expect the strategy to work more broadly.
…Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) “likes going on Fox” as “a sport,” according to an April profile in Politico Magazine. He also reportedly feels that he is getting something out of those appearances, and suggests that other Democrats follow his example.
“If you are a Democrat and not going on these shows,” Khanna told the publication, “then you’re not getting intellectually challenged. You’re not hearing the counter-argument. You’re not seeing the blind spots to your point of view.”
Khanna is a somewhat regular presence on Fox, with 60 appearances on its weekday programs since September 2018, mostly on “news side” programs.
Khanna certainly doesn’t need Fox News exposure in his D+23 district where he just beat Republican Anita Chen in a 172,462 (67.7%) to 82,415 (32.3%) landslide. But it’s no secret that Khanna would like to run for president in 2028 and appearances on Fox now could do him so good if he makes it to the national ticket.
When he was in Congress, Fox invited Grayson on around half a dozen times and he went on the air with them that many times, even though they cut off his mic twice, mocked him once and were otherwise disrespectful. But he never thought of going on Fox as a camaign exercise. He told me today that he believed that
a- their viewers needed to hear from Democrats
and
b- that responding to the media (and to constituents) was part of his job as a Member of Congress. He has always felt strongly that important issues need to be discussed and debated
He feels that as long as Democrats don't have any false expectations about what an appearance on Fox is going to do for them, it can be a worthwhile thing to do. “We can’t get any consideration of anything that matters to us, even abortion,” he said. “Apparently, there are forty or fifty illegal immigrants squatting in every American’s backyard. Or so Fox says.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who has more ability to think on his feet than most Members of Congress and who hopes to run for president in 2028, did a decent job on Fox News Sunday:
Every time a Dem goes on Faux News, he/she adds a patina of respectability to a right-wing propaganda arm that deserves nothing but contempt.
Dems asked to appear on FOX should insist on having agreed-upon rules; no censoring, no cutting off mics.