Fox News, the cable channel Donald Trump has relied on throughout his two presidencies for political backing, is showing signs of unease over his handling of the war in Iran. Several of its traditionally supportive commentators have expressed concern, bewilderment and frustration about whether the US objectives in Iran are being achieved.
While the president is not close to losing the backing of hosts such as Sean Hannity or Jesse Watters, he has faced scrutiny from Laura Ingraham, one of the network’s top personalities, who has regularly questioned whether the US has achieved the tactical wins it has claimed. Johnny “Joey” Jones, a contributor and retired Marine Corps staff sergeant who lost both legs in combat in Afghanistan, has also offered reliable skepticism about the armed forces.
Ingraham questions military claims
On her 24 July show, Ingraham acknowledged a New York Times report that Trump faced threats that forced him to use an alternative plane to Air Force One and suggested claims that the US has demolished Iran’s military seem inaccurate. “If Iran can credibly threaten Air Force One overseas, we didn’t decimate their military capabilities, obviously,” she said. “They’re still capable of a lot of harm.”
She made a similar point in June, telling viewers: “We keep hearing their military is destroyed. But if they’re destroyed, how are they continuing to hit us?”
Back in March, Ingraham called for the US to investigate and “address head-on” what she called a “horrible unintended tragedy of this war”, the killing of 175 civilians – mostly children – in an errant attack on a school in Iran. That month she also questioned whether the president understood the “complexity” of the conflict. “Was the president fully briefed about the risks of all of this from the beginning?” she asked on 30 March. “And was he then able to take it all in and understand the complexity of this, how complex it could actually get, and further possibilities of casualties or other damage, the difficulty of dealing with these people? Or was he told this would be relatively quick in and out?”
Jones and Kellogg weigh in
Jones’s commentary carries particular weight because he is close to Pete Hegseth, his former Fox colleague who is now the defense secretary and who oversaw Jones’s recent re-enlistment in the Marine Corps reserve. From the beginning of the war, Jones sought to emphasize the stakes of the conflict after multiple American service-members were killed in a counter-attack in Kuwait. “It’s important and it’s okay for any Americans who are saying: ‘Wait just a minute. Tell me more. Tell me why we are at war. Explain to me why this was imminent,’” he said. “I don’t think that questions your patronage to the American government or even if you’re Maga or what have you. It doesn’t question president Trump’s wisdom in this.”
On 18 July, after reports that two American service members had been killed in Jordan, he questioned whether the US strategy was working. “I often say that president Trump [should] speak loudly and carry a big stick,” he said on air. “Right now might be the time that the big stick part of it matters most, because simply dropping bombs from the air isn’t stopping them from doing what they want to do.” He mentioned some potential options the US could take, but noted that they would take time, “and time is not on our side”.
Retired Lt Gen Keith Kellogg, who left Fox for a short-lived stint in Trump’s second administration as an envoy focused on Ukraine, said on Fox on Wednesday that Trump needs to “change” his strategy. “I don’t think we’re close, in that regard of finishing the job, if we are just depending on bombing,” Kellogg said. “Bombing is not going to get the job done.”
Political vulnerability
A few days after Jones’s July comments, Brit Hume, a Fox News analyst, connected the situation to Trump’s political promises to voters. “He promised to keep us out of endless wars or unsatisfactory wars, and now he’s in one, and it’s not at all clear how it’s gonna end. So, he’s vulnerable on this point, and in political terms, he does need to get this over with.”
In June, John Roberts, a Fox News anchor, said he was “a little puzzled” about Trump’s Iran negotiation strategy. Even Jesse Watters, a reliable Trump booster, seemed skeptical about the president’s shifting timelines for a deal with Iran. “He keeps saying: ‘We’re very close. We’re days away.’ And I don’t know what that means. We’ve heard that for a very long time,” he said in June.
Hosts on the network’s business channel have also regularly questioned the rising price of oil and the impact on American consumers, particularly ahead of the upcoming midterm elections. As Stuart Varney, a Fox Business Network anchor, put it in March: “Houston, we have a problem.”
