Fox News has imposed a “soft ban” on former president Donald Trump appearing on the channel, The Independent reported.
Trump’s inner circle is reportedly complaining about the soft ban.
It comes even as the broadcaster extends a warm invitation to other Republican hopefuls in next year’s presidential election.
The cooling of relations between Trump and his once-beloved cable news channel has gone so far that a “soft ban” or “silent ban” is now holding him at arm’s length.
The former president has not made a weekday showing on Fox News since he chatted with his closest friend among the network’s star hosts, Sean Hannity, in September.
“Everyone knows that there’s this ‘soft ban’ or ‘silent ban’. It’s certainly – however you want to say, quiet ban, soft ban, whatever it is – indicative of how the Murdochs feel about Trump in this particular moment,” said an individual close to Trump.
Meanwhile, Trump’s rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination are currently frequent guests on the conservative news channel.
During Trump’s rise to the White House in 2015-2016 and his ensuing years in office, he was pretty much glued to the Fox News network. He regularly made impromptu calls to his favorite shows, and in the single year 2019 posted 657 tweets responding to content aired by the channel or its sister outlet Fox Business.
In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s defeat in the November 2020 election, Fox hosts were permitted to continue broadcasting lies about massive voter fraud.
But since the stolen election campaign came,e to a head on Jan 6, 2021, with an insurrection in the Capitol, followed later that year by the lodging of lawsuits by Dominion and another voting machine company, Fox has gradually backed away.
In turn, Trump has increasingly vented his anger toward his former media friend.
This week Trump posted one of his rants on his social media platform Truth Social. He accused Murdoch himself of peddling “fake news” after the Fox chief was revealed to have said in a deposition that he did not believe the stolen election lie from the beginning.
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