As Iran war drags on, Trump and Fox News are trapped in a doom loop

President Donald Trump’s Iran war is a global strategic debacle and a domestic economic disaster that has taken his public support to new depths. With the president’s job approval hitting second-term lows, some Republicans are warning that he may hurt the party’s chances of retaining control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

But even as some MAGA pundits are sounding the alarm about the war and its political implications, Fox News’ coverage of the Iran war remains consistently glowing. Trump is depicted on the network as a steely-eyed negotiator who had “the courage, the wisdom, the fortitude to confront this Nazi-like regime,” in the words of one host. He now “holds the cards” against Iranian officials who are “grasping at straws,” a Fox correspondent said. On rare occasions when Fox hosts buck that narrative and express concern about the war’s impact on the country and the GOP, they quickly pivot back to the pro-war propaganda Trump craves.

Fox’s lockstep promotion of Trump’s war reflects two crucial factors: The influence of current and former Fox hosts on the Trump administration, and the network’s desperate desire to hold on to its MAGA viewership at all costs. And because Trump’s own worldview is shaped by the network telling him that he’s engaged in a globally historic victory that just needs more time — and perhaps further escalation — the result is a doom loop without a clear exit.

In Trump’s first term, his obsessive consumption of Fox’s programming turned the network’s hosts and correspondents into prominent participants in national politics. That pattern has intensified in his second term: Trump has selected more than two dozen former Fox personalities to fill top roles in his administration, leaned on current Fox stars for counsel and seemingly ordered policy changes like the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to U.S. airports based on segments that caught his eye.

Network hosts like Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and Brian Kilmeade have long supported military strikes against Iran, and over the first few months of the year, they repeatedly used their programs to urge Trump to take action. But since their predictions of a quick and easy resolution gave way to a quagmire, they have been unable to respond coherently. Instead, when not praising Trump for his bravery in starting the war, they suggest risky escalations they say will end it — from a special ops mission to seize Iran’s uranium to the targeted assassinations of more Iranian leaders.

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Not all of Fox’s personalities, however, have track records of hardcore neoconservatism or an ideological interest in annihilating the Iranian regime. But the network is more deeply invested than ever in appealing to their MAGA audience.

Matt Gertz

Matt Gertz is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive research center that monitors the U.S. media. His work focuses on the relationship between Fox News and the Republican Party, media ethics and news coverage of politics and elections.