The age of Obama has provided a ratings boost for Fox News as its loudest personalities have relished the opportunity to play offense. Critics, of course, view Fox as an unabashed cheerleader for the Republican Party, an evil media empire spewing propaganda and misinformation at a gullible audience.
But Roger Ailes says his network is just reflecting reality when it comes to the White House.
“The president has not been very successful,” the Fox News chairman says in a lengthy interview. “He just got kicked from Mumbai to South Korea, and he came home and attacked
Republicans for it. He had to be told by the French and the Germans that his socialism was too far left for them to deal with.”
The 70-year-old Ailes, dressed in a lavender shirt and tie, goes on in this vein, saying the network isn’t singling out Obama for criticism but that its style “tends to be more direct” in challenging presidents. Then he offers this observation about Obama:
“He just has a different belief system than most Americans.”
That seems a rather loaded phrase—different belief system—even if you strongly disagree with most of Obama’s policies. It fits the view of those who are trying to paint the president as being outside the mainstream. But from the big second-floor office at Fox’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters, it’s the rest of the media that are using a distorted lens.
“He’s had 3,000 press secretaries since he got into office,” Ailes says of Obama, but these days, “he’s making it harder for the press to make him look good… When the press falls in love, they fall in love hard. They’re like teenagers in love. It’s like the old Frankie Lymon song, ‘Why Do Fools Fall in Love?’”
Roger Ailes insists that his channel lives up to the logo in its treatment of the administration. (Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images)
Ailes brushes aside suggestions that journalists have been much harder on the president as his sliding popularity has led to a Republican takeover of the House. He is far more sympathetic to Obama’s predecessor:
“This poor guy, sitting down on his ranch clearing brush, gained a lot of respect for keeping his mouth shut. I literally never heard an Obama speech that didn’t blame Bush.”
Obama “had to be told by the French and the Germans that his socialism was too far left for them to deal with.”
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• Vicious Infighting at NBC News None of this is personal, you understand. Ailes says he likes Obama, who was gracious to him during last year’s Christmas party, and David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett. He recently had breakfast with Axelrod to discuss Fox’s coverage. But Ailes took an unprovoked swipe at Robert Gibbs, saying the press secretary “is a little big for his britches” and “will end up like that little shithead who worked for Bush”—meaning Scott McClellan, the onetime loyalist who wrote a book criticizing his former boss. Gibbs and the White House declined to respond.
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