Trump's Cable Cabinet: New texts reveal influence of Fox hosts

Stephanie Grisham, former press secretary to President Donald Trump, remembers the challenges that came from so many Fox News hosts having the direct number to reach Trump in the White House residence.

"There were times the president would come down the next morning and say, 'Well, Sean thinks we should do this,' or, 'Judge Jeanine thinks we should do this,' " said Grisham, referring to Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro, both of whom host prime-time Fox News shows.

Grisham — who resigned from the White House amid the Jan. 6 attacks and has since written a book critical of Trump — said West Wing staffers would simply roll their eyes in frustration as they scrambled to respond to the influence of the network's hosts, who weighed in on everything from personnel to messaging strategy.

Trump's staff, allies and even adversaries were long accustomed to playing to an "Audience of One" — a commander in chief with a twitchy TiVo finger and obsessed with cable news.

But text messages — newly released by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection — between Fox News hosts and former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, crystallize with new specificity just how tightly Fox News and the White House were entwined during the Trump years, with many of the network's top hosts serving as a Cable Cabinet of unofficial advisers.

As the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol unfolded, Meadows received texts from Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade, as well as Hannity, according to the newly released communications.

"Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home," Ingraham wrote. "This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy." Ingraham's private missives, however, differed starkly from what she said on her show later that evening, when she began whitewashing the violence of the day and claiming the attacks were "antithetical" to the Trump movement.

And Hannity asked Meadows, "Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol."

Other texts released by the committee reveal that Hannity also offered the White House advice in the run-up and aftermath to the attacks that resulted in five deaths. On Dec. 31, 2020, Hannity texted Meadows to warn, "I do NOT see January 6 happening the way he is being told." And on Jan. 10, 2021 — referring to a conversation he had with Trump himself - Hannity texted Meadows and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a close Trump ally, to try to discuss strategies to rein in Trump.

"Guys, we have a clear path to land the plane in 9 days," Hannity wrote. "He can't mention the election again. Ever. I did not have a good call with him today. And worse, I'm not sure what is left to do or say, and I don't like not knowing if it's truly understood. Ideas?"

A former senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share candid details of private discussions, said Trump would also sometimes dial Hannity and Lou Dobbs — whose Fox Business show was canceled in February — into Oval Office staff meetings.

"A lot of it was PR — what he should be saying and how he should be saying it; he should be going harder against wearing masks or whatever," Grisham said. "And they all have different opinions, too."

Michael Pillsbury, an informal Trump adviser, said he realized how powerful Fox News was in Trump's orbit when the former president began embracing Sidney Powell — an attorney promoting Trump's false claims of widespread voter fraud — and other election fabulists after seeing them on Dobbs' show. Pillsbury added that while it seemed obvious that many of the claims were patently false, Trump was inclined to believe them, in part because he was watching them on TV and had affection for Dobbs in particular.

"It taught me the power of the young producers at Fox, and Fox Business especially," Pillsbury said. "These young producers who are in their mid-20s. They come out of the conservative movement, they've never been in the government. They are presented with these reckless, fantastical accounts. And they believe them and put them on for ratings."

Alyssa Farah, a former White House communications director, said the four most influential Fox hosts were Dobbs, Hannity, Igraham and Pirro - and in the final year of the Trump administration, Hannity was the most influential. Other former top administration officials also mentioned Mark Levin, another Fox News host, and Maria Bartiromo, a Fox Business host, as two other network stars in regular touch with the White House.

From the point of view of the staff, Farah said, the goal was simply to "try to get ahead of what advice you thought he was going to be given by these people" because their unofficial counsel "could completely change his mind on something."

But the relationship was also symbiotic, with White House aides actively trying to influence the network, especially on issues such as spending deals and averting government shutdowns. They knew if they could get Fox hosts to echo their goals on air, that would help sway the president.

"If you watch Fox News as much as I do, and I watch a few hours a night, they're always signaling their close contact with the White House," Cohen said referring to the Trump era. "But these texts are just the hard evidence. This is just how deeply intertwined the Fox News leadership is with Trump and the Trump White House."

The problem, he explained, is that even though many of these hosts are opinion journalists, they are still violating public trust by not disclosing the full extent of their relationships with the Trump administration.

"Journalists and media are supposed to be public checks on power, not private advisers to power," Cohen said. "A commentator is still a journalist, and even if the commentator doesn't consider him or herself to be a journalist, they still have to tell the public when they played a role in something they're commenting on."

One former top White House official said that the hosts often had more influence with Trump based on what they said on air rather than in their various backchannels to him and his team, in part because the former president was obsessed with the following - and ratings — of their shows.

Former Trump chief of staff John Kelly told others in the White House that Dobbs' show was critical to understanding the president and that Trump's ideas and feelings about people often originated from that program. Kelly also told colleagues that if Dobbs went after a White House senior staffer, they risked their status falling quickly in the eyes of the former president.

Pirro, several Trump aides said, often grew irate if the former president did not appear on her show frequently enough in her view, especially if he had been on Hannity's show several times prior.

Fox shows were so important to the president that White House staffers were determined to get guests booked on them, even forcing staffers to take weekend shifts appearing on Pirro's show after Pirro complained she couldn't get a guest — and the former president also called in himself.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Hannity called Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and other Trump allies on a number of occasions to voice his months-long concern that the campaign was heading in the wrong direction and Trump would lose unless he turned around his operation, according to a Republican with direct knowledge of the campaign's operations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of private discussions. They added that Hannity was much more bullish on his show than in private about Trump's electoral prospects.

As the coronavirus pandemic ramped up in early 2020, a range of Fox News hosts again mobilized to offer backchannel advice to the Trump White House. In March, Tucker Carlson flew to Trump's private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., to warn of the seriousness of the virus. Carlson told Trump he might lose the election because of COVID-19, while Trump told the prime-time host that the virus wasn't as deadly as people were claiming.

In April, Ingraham arrived at the White House with two on-air regulars whom are part of what she describes as her "medicine cabinet" for a private meeting with Trump. There, she talked up hydroxychloroquine, a controversial anti-malarial drug which public health experts have concluded is not effective as a COVID-19 treatment.

At the time, a Fox News spokeswoman said neither host had been aware that their tips were receiving preferential treatment.

Since leaving office, Trump has vociferously complained about Fox, particularly its coverage of the election and what he views as increasingly negative coverage about him. But he has kept in close touch with many of the hosts and even sees some of them at his Florida resort.

The Jan. 6 committee has asked Hannity to cooperate with its investigation, and he has hired Jay Sekulow, a longtime Trump attorney, to represent him. "We are evaluating the letter from the committee. We remain very concerned about the constitutional implications especially as it relates to the First Amendment. We will respond as appropriate," Sekulow said in a statement last week.

But some former senior White House officials said the texts make the role of Hannity and others seem more outsize than it was. The former president appreciated that the Fox crew was fighting on his behalf on a daily basis, this person said, "but he would not be like, 'Let me call Larry Kudlow and change our economic plan because Laura Ingraham said that.'"