MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Even if you don't watch Fox News, you can't help but notice that Fox is in the news as the source of some of President-elect Trump's top nominees. His picks for defense secretary, transportation secretary, attorney general, surgeon general, U.S. ambassador to Israel all either host shows or have appeared as frequent guests on the network. According to our next guest, that's a symbiotic relationship that goes way back to 2011, when the then-head of Fox News, Roger Ailes, gave Donald Trump a weekly spot on the network, where he often pushed the lie that former President Obama was not born in the U.S.
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DONALD TRUMP: The fact is, if you're not born in the United States, you cannot be president.
MARTIN: Brian Stelter has written two books about Trump's ties to Fox. He covers the media for CNN, and he is with us now. Good morning, Brian.
BRIAN STELTER: Hi. Good morning.
MARTIN: So how do you describe the relationship between Trump and Fox News?
STELTER: I think it's hard to tell where Trump ends and where Fox begins. During Trump's first term in office, Trump propped up the network, and the network propped up Trump. Once Trump took office the first time around, he stocked his administration with Fox News hires. And now we're seeing the exact same thing happen again.
MARTIN: How did it start? What did Roger Ailes see in Donald Trump? And do you think, in hindsight, that he saw him as the primary figure for a political movement?
STELTER: Ailes never publicly said that he knew or thought early on that Trump was presidential material. But Ailes clearly viewed Trump as an entertainer and a provocateur, and someone with a finger on the pulse of what Republican voters wanted to hear. These call-in shows, where Trump would call into "Fox & Friends," he got to know the people who became his voters. And they got to know him through the television. That relationship is a very strong bond that has influenced American politics for a decade since.
MARTIN: Some have described Fox as serving as basically a government in exile until Trump was elected again, like, in the period between when he was defeated and when he has been reelected. But that implies that they kind of had meetings or operated like a think tank. But how does it work at Fox? Was there, say, a top-level decision made to get behind this particular person?
STELTER: Government in exile does summarize what Fox serves as, but it's not formal. It's not an organized process. You know, there are not meetings where the Fox executives are sitting around saying, who do we want to have appeal to Trump? Who do we want to have Trump poach from our system, you know? Fox exists, first and foremost, to make money and make great television. That's what drives the executives. But they know the audience wants to see Trump loyalists. The audience wants to see people like Tom Homan, who helped run the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency early on in the Trump presidency.
Homan then went to Fox. He became a paid contributor, a regular presence on the air for six years. During the Biden years, he was fighting against Biden, saying Biden is doing it all wrong - here's what I would do to fix the border. And in retrospect, that was the perfect audition tape for Donald Trump. So now that Trump's been reelected, he immediately hired Homan as the border czar. That's a great example of how this relationship works. Fox was just doing what made sense profitably for its network, putting Homan on all the time, putting him in front of Trump. And Trump immediately tapped him for a job when he could.
MARTIN: There was a point at which Trump was criticizing Fox. So what happened there?
STELTER: Trump is never, ever satisfied, even with his most loyal propagandist at Fox. He even thinks Sean Hannity is not over the top enough. You know, he always wants more. Fox is still the beating heart of the GOP, especially among older Americans, and Trump recognizes its power. That's why he sometimes criticizes the network. He wants the network to be 100% loyal, not just 90% or 95% like it is, but 100%.
MARTIN: There are those who would argue that this is sour grapes because you work for a competitor, that your criticism of Fox is that - it's, like, sort of a professional rivalry, jealousy situation. How would you respond to that?
STELTER: I think Fox is fundamentally in a different business than CNN or MSNBC, or NPR, for that matter. I think Fox is largely in the business of entertainment and rage, promoting certain narratives that will keep the audience watching no matter what, at all costs. Yes, there are some journalists who work there, but it doesn't exist mostly to function for journalism. It exists mostly to do something else, and it's very, very good at what it does. Fox has changed American politics in ways that I think we're just starting to understand.
MARTIN: Brian Stelter reports for CNN, and he is the author of two books on Fox and its ties to Donald Trump. They are "Hoax" and "Network Of Lies." Brian Stelter, thanks so much for talking with us.
STELTER: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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