For more than a decade, Donald Trump and Fox News have existed in one of the strangest relationships in American politics.
Trump supplied the outrage, controversy and ratings.
Fox supplied an enormous conservative audience.
Night after night, some of the network's biggest personalities defended Trump, attacked his opponents and reinforced many of the political narratives coming out of the MAGA movement.
There have been occasional breakups, angry Truth Social posts and moments when Trump accused Fox of betraying him. But the relationship repeatedly recovered.
Now something different is happening.
Fox News isn't necessarily abandoning Donald Trump.
The numbers are.
And even Fox News is reporting them.
Fox's Own Polling Is Brutal
The problem for Trump is that some of the ugliest numbers currently confronting his presidency aren't coming from CNN, MSNBC or a Democratic polling organization.
They're coming from Fox News.
A September Fox News poll put Trump's job approval at just 39 percent.
The same polling found voters deeply unhappy about the economy and cost of living, with Democrats holding significant advantages over Republicans on issues including inflation.
Then came the congressional numbers.
Fox News Power Rankings reported Democrats leading Republicans by 11 points among likely voters on the generic congressional ballot as the country moves toward the 2026 midterm elections.
And Fox has been broadcasting troubling numbers in individual races as well.
On September 30, Fox's Bret Baier presented polling from Michigan showing Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed leading Republican Mike Rogers.
For a network whose audience includes millions of Trump supporters, these aren't comfortable numbers.
But numbers don't care about the television network displaying them.
The Network That Helped Build MAGA
The irony is difficult to miss.
Fox News didn't create Donald Trump, but its opinion programming provided him with an extraordinarily powerful platform throughout his political rise.
Trump appeared repeatedly on Fox programs. Hosts and commentators frequently defended his administration and attacked his political opponents.
The relationship became so close at times that the line between political coverage and political advocacy appeared remarkably thin.
That continued into Trump's second presidency.
During the 2025 confrontation with Iran, for example, prominent Fox personalities including Sean Hannity and Mark Levin publicly advocated aggressive policies while maintaining direct communication with Trump.
Fox wasn't simply covering the Trump presidency.
Some of its most influential personalities were talking directly to the president while simultaneously explaining and defending his decisions to millions of viewers.
Then Came the $787.5 Million Reality Check
Perhaps nothing better demonstrates the danger of Fox's relationship with the MAGA movement than what happened after the 2020 presidential election.
Trump falsely claimed that the election had been stolen from him.
Those allegations were repeatedly rejected by courts, election officials and members of Trump's own administration.
Yet Fox News aired numerous false allegations involving voting machines and election fraud.
Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox for defamation.
During the litigation, internal communications revealed an extraordinary disconnect between what some Fox personalities were telling viewers and what they privately believed.
According to records produced in the case, major Fox personalities including Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson privately rejected election claims that nevertheless appeared on the network.
Fox ultimately agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million to settle the lawsuit.
Fox acknowledged the court's rulings that certain claims about Dominion aired on the network were false.
For a network regularly associated with Trump's attacks on supposedly "fake news," the episode became one of the most expensive media defamation settlements in American history.
Trump Has Attacked Fox Whenever the Numbers Turn Against Him
Trump's relationship with Fox has always contained an important condition:
He likes Fox considerably more when Fox tells him what he wants to hear.
Whenever the network publishes unfavorable polling or provides coverage Trump considers insufficiently supportive, he has repeatedly attacked it.
That creates an increasingly awkward situation.
Fox's opinion hosts can defend Trump.
Its commentators can criticize Democrats.
Its evening programs can invite MAGA politicians onto the air.
But Fox also operates a professional polling operation.
And lately that polling operation has been producing results that look nothing like the political world presented during some of the network's opinion programming.
Fox's own polling has shown Trump's approval near historic lows.
Fox's own polling has shown widespread economic dissatisfaction.
Fox's own polling has shown Democrats with advantages on issues that helped return Trump to the White House.
And Fox's own election analysis now shows Democrats holding a substantial national advantage heading toward November.
Fox Hasn't Necessarily Turned on Trump
It would be premature to declare that Fox News has suddenly become an anti-Trump network.
It hasn't.
The network contains straight-news journalists, polling operations, political analysts and conservative opinion personalities who don't necessarily approach Trump the same way.
Sean Hannity hasn't suddenly become Rachel Maddow.
But something important has changed.
The political environment surrounding Trump has deteriorated enough that even one of the most important media institutions in conservative America cannot simply make the numbers disappear.
That may ultimately be more significant than Fox "turning" on Trump.
Fox doesn't have to turn on him.
American voters might be doing it for them.
And every time Bret Baier puts another ugly poll on the screen, Donald Trump's own favorite television network is being forced to show its audience something MAGA has spent years insisting was merely liberal propaganda:
Donald Trump has a serious political problem.