{"id":2446,"date":"2024-11-14T14:20:36","date_gmt":"2024-11-14T14:20:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/the-looming-maga-media-melee-over-trumps-attention-span\/"},"modified":"2024-11-14T14:20:36","modified_gmt":"2024-11-14T14:20:36","slug":"the-looming-maga-media-melee-over-trumps-attention-span","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/the-looming-maga-media-melee-over-trumps-attention-span\/","title":{"rendered":"The looming MAGA media melee over Trump\u2019s attention span"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

That didn’t take long. Just a week after his presidential election victory, Donald Trump is already raiding<\/a> Fox News’ stable of talking heads to fill out his administration.<\/p>\n

Tom Homan, the reported “intellectual ‘father’”<\/a> <\/strong>of family separation as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Trump’s first administration, is leaving the network where he has served as a contributor to oversee mass deportations as the incoming president’s “Border Czar.”<\/a> Mike Huckabee, the former Fox host and frequent network commentator, is Trump’s pick as U.S. ambassador to Israel<\/a>. And if Trump has his way, the Defense Department’s nearly 3 million employees will be overseen by “Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host Pete Hegseth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fox’s employees affected wildly important policy decisions on matters of war and peace.<\/p>\n

The Fox-fueled hiring spree represents a return to form for the former president. The network dominated wide swaths of federal decision-making during Trump’s first presidency, as his administration effectively merged with the right-wing propaganda network that had propelled him to power. But as Trump returns to the White House, Fox is not as dominant within the right-wing media ecosystem as it was during the last Trump administration. The battle for the president’s attention within a larger and more fractured MAGA media will shape the contours of governance.<\/p>\n

Trump owed his 2016 political ascent to that right-wing media ecosystem. A longtime Fox regular<\/a>he was obsessed with the network’s programming and channeled its demagoguery on the campaign trail, winning over its audience, as well as upstart alt-right organs<\/a> like Steve Bannon’s Breitbart.com. He d<\/a>ominated Fox’s airtime<\/a> on the way to his primary campaign win, bending the network and the GOP to his will before garnering a narrow Electoral College majority.<\/p>\n

Once Trump was in office, Fox News became a state TV outlet that lavished him with praise and denounced his foes, and in doing so it gained unprecedented influence<\/a> over the U.S. government. The hours Trump spent each day consuming the network’s content and speaking privately with its stars shaped his worldview and dictated his reaction to various events. His hyperaggressive, seemingly stream-of-consciousness tweets often came in response to what he was seeing on his television. I dubbed<\/a> this phenomenon the “Trump-Fox feedback loop” and tracked it for years, ultimately tracing<\/a> nearly 1,300 Trump tweets<\/a> back to Fox News and its sister channel, Fox Business.<\/p>\n

Fox’s employees affected wildly important policy decisions on matters of war and peace, and they turned right-wing tantrums into matters of national importance because the president of the United States happened to be tuning in.<\/p>\n

It’s impossible to overstate how ridiculous — or dangerous — this Fox-Trump pipeline could be. Here are five things that really happened during Trump’s first term:<\/p>\n