Post from Truth Social

Election night, and a ratings story he has to keep away from himself

The post went up at 7:00 PM Eastern on Election Day (00:00 UTC November 4; daylight time ended November 1). The historian notes place his closing tele-rallies at Mar-a-Lago, so Eastern time applies whether he was in Palm Beach or Washington. The hour is a high-traffic news hour: he had just written that he was "Watching the Pre-Election Results on FoxNews" and could not stand "Jessica Tarlov's voice". An hour or two before that he called "The FoxNews Poll" "a hit job" whose every answer is "BULLSHIT!" This post comes third in a run aimed at a network he was watching live, and it lands as polls begin closing on a night forecasters expected to favor Democrats.

What provokes it is specific. In the week before the election, outlets reported that Fox's October total-day audience fell 27% year over year. At least one framed it as falling "along with Trump's approval numbers" (GV Wire, October 30). The post exists to cut that link. Its central sentence answers the framing directly: "It's them, not me — My numbers are better than they have ever been." He says it twice more: "not because of me, but because they are AGAINST me!" The repetition is defensive. A story connecting the network's slide to his own popularity is turned around, so that the network fell because it drifted from him.

Defenses

• Denial and distortion. "My numbers are better than they have ever been" runs against the latest CNN/SSRS figures (80% among Republicans in March, down from 87%) and an October Reuters/Ipsos reading of 73%. The invented "99% among Republicans" fills the space where the real number should go.
• Rationalization, with two causes that don't fit together. Fox is down "because they're spending too much time covering the Trump Deranged Dumocrats," and also "because they are AGAINST me." The first blames editorial choices and the second blames disloyalty. The post holds both without noticing they differ. Either one keeps him from being the cause.
• Splitting. A network that carried his message for a decade is now one that is "AGAINST me." The viewers who left are recast as allies: "All of those people who used to watch Fox, and no longer do, get it."
• Devaluation. The Democratic recipients are "the Worst of the Worst," and the party is "Dumocrats" four times. That is a pejorative coinage he uses habitually. It is not a clinical neologism.

Grandiosity used as a shield

The CNN result, Trump 53%, Reagan 18%, Lincoln 8% as most-admired Republican president, is real. It comes from a May 2026 poll that he has posted about before. Bringing it out on election night does a job. Facing a possible referendum loss, he places himself above the party's two most revered figures. The narcissistic state is mixed. The grandiose comparison sits on a vulnerable core, a fear that falling audiences and falling approval are one story. Putting "TRUMP" in quotation marks, as if he were a brand the poll measured, is a familiar self-referential habit.

Poll selection shows epistemic closure. Earlier the same evening a Fox poll was "BULLSHIT"; now a CNN poll, from a network he usually calls fake, is authority. The test is whether a poll flatters him, not who ran it.

Pressure on a media owner

The donor list is the least typical passage. It names ten recipients down to "the CHC Bold PAC" and "the New Dumocrat Coalition Action Fund". That reads as copied from a filing or press account (Fox Corporation's political activities reports and FEC records show gifts to Jeffries, Lieu and the CBC PAC). The amounts in those records are $1,000 to $5,000, typical bipartisan corporate-PAC giving. Calling it "so much money" and linking it to falling ratings turns routine donations into proof of betrayal. The sitting president is telling a news company that its ratings will "go down a lot further" while it funds his opponents. That is a loyalty demand on a press institution. The closing line, "This happened once before, and Fox almost collapsed. It's happening again!", refers to the post-2020 Arizona-call period. Fox lost viewers to Newsmax for a few weeks then and recovered first place by February 2021. The "almost collapsed" version recasts that episode as a punishment he can bring back.

There is no call to action against people, and the named legislators are insulted, not threatened. The coercion is economic and reputational, aimed at a corporation.

Who wrote it

The voice is his. The em-dash pivot, "It's them, not me," the self-quoting "TRUMP," the escalating exclamations, the "Dumocrats" coinage and the signature all match the hand-typed Fox posts from earlier that evening. The donor roster is another matter. Ten exact committee names is research-grade precision he rarely produces unaided. The likeliest reading is that he dictated or wrote the post around material a staffer gave him. Posting exactly on the hour (7:00:40 PM) is also consistent with a queued draft.

Language

The argument is coherent and the syntax is ordinary for him. The opening claim comes back at the close ("No wonder FoxNews Ratings are collapsing… They're way down"). That is a rhetorical bookend, not perseveration. There are no paraphasias and no confusion of names or dates. The 2020 reference is an exaggeration, not a mix-up of time periods.

Archetype and order

He casts himself as a King measured against Lincoln and Reagan. He fights like a Warrior against a former vassal, and the Victim strand runs underneath ("AGAINST me"). Hierarchy is the theme: he raises himself above the party's pantheon and pushes Fox down from ally to apostate. The grievance is abandonment by a once-loyal institution. On election night, before any result exists, it gives him a ready explanation for disappointing numbers that does not point at him.

Fact Verification

Two of his premises are partly accurate. CNN's Brian Stelter and Andrew Kirell reported on October 29 that Fox aired live portions of only 9 of Trump's 24 midterm speeches. Earlier in the year it had aired 12 of 14 rallies live. Fox also booked Democrats, including Abdul El-Sayed, Charles Booker and David Jolly. Trump had already complained about the El-Sayed interview and about airtime for independent Dan Osborn, and Fox president Jay Wallace replied, "that's what we do." So the network did change its coverage.

No evidence shows that change caused the decline, and several facts point the other way.

• Fox's own explanation is different. On the November 2 earnings call, Lachlan Murdoch blamed "viewer fatigue" and a strong comparison month ("a tremendous news cycle this time last year"). He compared the cycle to the 2006 midterms, when George W. Bush was unpopular. He also said the lost viewers "are not going to any other news channel." That undercuts the idea of an audience leaving Fox in protest.
• The cause may run the other way. CNN, relayed by the Daily Beast and AlterNet, quoted an anonymous Fox host saying the internal view is "Trump doesn't rate anymore" and that the cutback came "from the top down." On that account, Fox aired less of Trump because he stopped drawing viewers. AlterNet's summary says his speeches now "barely move the needle."
• Rivals that are more critical of Trump grew in the same month. MS NOW's total-day audience rose about 16 to 17% and CNN's about 3%, with CNN's weekday primetime up about 16%. A month that hurt only Fox fits weaker conservative enthusiasm better than a revolt over Fox being too friendly to Democrats.
• There is no sign of viewers moving to a pro-Trump alternative. Newsmax averaged about 195,000 primetime viewers in October 2026, against 185,000 in Q3 2026 and about 241,000 for all of 2025. A protest exodus from Fox would have lifted Newsmax noticeably.
• Commentators tied the drop to Trump's standing. Fox's own poll had his approval at 36%, the lowest it has measured, and the RealClearPolitics average was about 38%. GV Wire's headline paired the ratings drop with his approval numbers. Sonny Bunch of The Bulwark said the ratings were "more revealing of GOP enthusiasm than every poll released thus far." These are interpretations, not proof of cause.
• Other factors are documented. October 2025 included the Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release story, which the Daily Beast noted, and CNN pointed to recent Nielsen methodology changes as a possible factor.
• "They are AGAINST me" overstates things. Coverage notes that Fox's opinion hosts still back Trump, and Fox aired almost all of his Ohio speech late in the month. Fox Corp.'s Democratic contributions, about $268,500 by FEC records per a Newsmax Wires report, are routine corporate PAC giving to both parties, not evidence of an editorial campaign against him.

On balance, Trump is right that Fox shifted its coverage away from him and gave Democrats some airtime. His causal claim, that the decline comes from Fox being anti-Trump and has nothing to do with him, is unsupported. Fox management, network insiders and the rival-network data all point elsewhere. A causal claim like this can't be disproven outright, so the verdict is mostly false rather than false. | | "My numbers are better than they have ever been" | False | CNN/SSRS had his approval among Republicans at 80% in late March 2026, down from 87% in January. Reuters/Ipsos measured 73% among Republicans in October, and national approval was reported at second-term lows ahead of the midterms. | | "The new CNN poll stated Trump is at 99% among Republicans" | False | No CNN poll reports such a figure; CNN/SSRS's latest Republican approval reading was 80%. An earlier claim of 100% that he attributed to CNN was traced by CNN's Daniel Dale to an NBC crosstab of self-identified MAGA voters. | | "CNN poll: among Republican presidents, Trump at 53%, Reagan 18%, Lincoln 8%" | Mostly True | A CNN/SSRS poll fielded May 7-31, 2026 found 53% of Republicans named Trump their most admired Republican president, against 18% for Reagan and 8% for Lincoln. The figures are accurate, but the poll is about six months old, not new. | | "Fox Corp spends so much money donating to Jeffries, Raskin, Lieu, the Congressional Black Caucus PAC and other Democratic committees" | Mostly True | Fox Corporation PAC filings and the company's own political activities reports list contributions to Jeffries ($1,000, 2021), Lieu ($2,500, 2023) and the Congressional Black Caucus PAC ($5,000, 2023), among Democratic recipients. The giving is real; the framing inflates it. Individual gifts run in the low thousands, typical of a corporate PAC that gives to both parties. | | "This happened once before, and Fox almost collapsed" | Mostly False | After Fox called Arizona for Biden in November 2020, it lost viewers to Newsmax and briefly trailed CNN during the January 2021 Capitol events, then returned to first place in cable news by February 2021. It was a dip, not a near-collapse. |

Overall Veracity: 43%