Fox News doesn't want to talk about any election, except for Trump's 2016 one

Fox News offered very little coverage of the Democratic Party's win around the country

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published November 8, 2017 11:14AM (EST)

 (Rainmaker Photo/mediapunch/mediapunch/ipx)
(Rainmaker Photo/mediapunch/mediapunch/ipx)

Tuesday was a big night for the Democratic Party, as its candidates swept major elections from New York City and New Jersey to Virginia.

Fox News, however, didn't seem particularly keen on talking about it.

"Those results in Virginia, New Jersey and New York: By the way, not states Donald Trump won," Sean Hannity told Tucker Carlson on Tuesday night (it's worth noting that New York City is not a state).

Carlson himself adopted a distinctly mournful tone as he uttered the words, "We are now reporting that Ralph Northam has won the Virginia governor's race." Although at the time Fox News only had Northam ahead of Gillespie by three points, the Democratic nominee ultimately bested his Republican opponent by nearly nine points.

The attempts to gloss over the Virginia governor's race defeat didn't end on Tuesday night. On Wednesday morning, "Fox & Friends" began reminiscing about Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential election, offsetting its coverage of the Democratic sweep in the 2017 elections.

Yet despite Fox News' efforts to wax poetic about President Donald Trump, they ignored the role that Trump may have played in dragging down other Republicans to defeat. Thirty-four percent of voters said that a desire to express dissatisfaction with Trump was a reason for their vote, while only 17 percent said that they voted as they did to express support for the president, according to The Washington Post. Almost all of the group that said they wanted to cast a protest vote against Trump voted for Northam in the Virginia governor's race.


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

MORE FROM Matthew Rozsa


Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Donald Trump Ed Gillespie Fox News Media Ralph Northam Sean Hannity Tucker Carlson Virginia Election