Fox News has quietly adopted a strategy of "tuning out" President Donald Trump in an effort to limit the electoral fallout from the president's unpopularity ahead of the midterm elections, according to Fox and Republican insiders who spoke with CNN.

The network's decision amounts to a less-is-more approach to covering the president, and carries considerable political weight. "Trump keeps holding midterm election rallies, and Fox News keeps choosing not to air the rallies live," CNN reported. "This programming decision has huge political and cultural significance. Fox News, America's most-watched cable channel, has been one of Trump's top ways to reach voters for more than a decade. Trump is perturbed about it. But Fox evidently doesn't think his speeches are worth showing in full right now, which speaks volumes about this political moment. The implication: Fox agrees with the Republican candidates and strategists who are privately fretting about Trump hurting their chances in the midterms. Fox's response is to basically turn him off." The stakes are considerable: the midterms will determine control of Congress, and the party holding the White House has historically lost House seats in these elections, with only rare exceptions.

Veteran Republican strategist Doug Heye cast the moment in television terms. "We talk so much about how Trump is the 'executive producer in chief' but often forget that even the most popular shows tend to run out of steam after one season too many," he said. In his assessment, "That's exactly where we are and why — whether you're in Lake of the Ozarks or Emmetsburg, Iowa, fewer Trump flags are being flown every day."

Fox has not commented publicly on the matter, but network insiders who spoke with CNN said the reduction in Trump coverage is intentional. "This is coming the top down," a current Fox host told CNN on the condition of anonymity. The host said that while the reasoning has not been made explicit, the conventional wisdom at the network is that "Trump doesn't rate anymore."

As CNN noted, Fox executives are keenly attuned to day-to-day ratings, and it was the audience's interest in Trump in 2016 that first aligned candidate and network. Trump remained a major ratings draw as recently as 2024, but his speeches now barely move the needle, according to the report.

The shift has coincided with an increasingly strained relationship between Fox and Trump. Last month, CNN reported, Fox faced controversy for removing longtime anchor and Trump ally Maria Bartiromo, who had shared internal network guidance with Trump aide Peter Navarro, who then passed it along to the White House. The directive told Fox Business shows to avoid covering a prime-time Trump speech full of unverified claims about election vulnerabilities. According to Navarro, the note said: "Hi – we don't want to promote it or push to the speech at all. We don't want to do 2020 election segments at all Thurs or Friday." The flagship Fox News channel did air the prime-time speech in July, but barely followed up on it afterward.

Trump has since noticed Fox's dwindling coverage of his rallies. "Sad to see that Fox & Friends (Sunday) is not covering our packed house and incredibly enthusiastic (beyond!) Rally that took place in Ohio last night, or the ones in Alabama, Texas, or Oklahoma over the past two days," Trump posted over the weekend. Amid news reports of empty seats at some events, Trump insisted "they were all sold out," and blamed an "old undercurrent" at Fox for ignoring him, writing: "Our people want to see our Rallies, and reports on our Rallies, on Fox News, or they will very quickly stop watching (like I am doing right now!)."

Despite those assertions, Tom Durante, Mediaite's co-managing editor, who previously worked at Fox News and its sister property, the New York Post, argued that Trump "needs Fox way more than Fox needs him." With Trump continuing to hold rallies as the midterms approach, Fox's decisions about which speeches merit live airtime — and the president's public reactions when coverage falls short of his expectations — offer a running measure of how the network's less-is-more calculus holds up heading into Election Day.