Fux & Friends

The Strange Psychological Power of ‘Fox & Friends’

Unrelenting positivity has a powerful warping effect on your thinking. So how is that affecting Viewer No. 1?

By JOANNA WEISS

(It is easy to tell why Fux gets high ratings, There is only one ultra-right network, all the nuts watch it. The Liberal minded have so many choices of true information that no one network gets them all..)

It was a typical Tuesday in March, and President Donald Trump was getting hammered by the press. One of his signature campaign promises, repealing Obamacare, had just collapsed. The Republican co-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, investigating ties between Trump associates and Russia during the 2016 campaign, was under fire for a secret meeting on the White House grounds. And Gallup’s recent poll numbers showed Trump at 36 percent approval, a historic low for a new president.

But Trump was starting his day, as usual, with “Fox & Friends,” where the world looked decidedly sunnier.

Here was an ultrasound image of his ninth grandchild, in utero. His meeting with women business owners, described in glowing terms. And his enemies defanged: According to the hosts, it was Hillary Clinton’s cronies—not Trump’s—who had the problematic Russia contacts, prompting Trump to tweet: “Watch @foxandfriends now on Podesta and Russia!”

Trump’s cozy relationship with “Fox & Friends” has become one of the great curiosities of his unusual presidency. A well-known cable TV devotee, Trump has found inspiration for his Twitter timeline in various programs—but none so much as Fox News Channel’s 6-9 a.m. talk show. A man with access to the highest levels of the national security apparatus regularly uses this gabfest as an unimpeachable source of information, most notably when he spawned a mini diplomatic crisis by repeating an unfounded theory—delivered by a Fox News analyst from a “Fox & Friends” armchair—that the British spied on Trump on behalf of the Obama administration.

It’s not hard to understand the show’s appeal. While the rest of the media frets and wails over Trump’s policies and sounds the alarm over his tweets, “Fox & Friends” remains unrelentingly positive. It’s pitched to the frequency of the Trump base, but it also feels intentionally designed for Trump himself—a three-hour, high-definition ego fix. For a president who no longer regularly receives adulation from screaming crowds at mega rallies, “Fox & Friends” offers daily affirmation that he is successful and adored, that his America is winning after all.

Psychology suggests that the program’s particular trappings have effects on viewers that go beyond ego stroking. The fast pace, the cheerfulness and the breezy confidence are a combination tailor-made for maximum persuasion, experts say. “If I tuned in to watch that show, I would feel simultaneously happy, reassured and smart,” says Dannagal Young, a professor at the University of Delaware who studies the way people process political information. “When we are feeling happy and people are smiling around us, it ignites a primal response that is, ‘Things are good! Things are great! I don’t have to be careful. I don’t have to think carefully.’” The show is a ticket to a kind of self-perpetuating state of complacency, where its 1.7 million viewers become less likely to question their own beliefs and more likely to come back for more.

For an everyday voter blinking awake at 6 a.m. in uncertain, hyperpartisan times, that state of mind has obvious allure, and maybe minimal consequences. But for the leader of the free world—someone who should, in theory, crave truth more than affirmation—a “Fox & Friends” obsession is a different matter altogether.

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It’s hard to imagine Trump, an aficionado of flash, sitting compliantly in front of “The PBS NewsHour.” And indeed, “Fox & Friends”—expeditious and entertaining, scored with pumped-up pop music and fueled by amiable banter—is the polar opposite of a sober public television program. Co-hosts Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade and Ainsley Earhardt, who assumed the designated blonde female slot last year, report from the signature cream-colored “curvy couch” in front of a virtual view of New York City. They list political headlines, marvel at viral internet sensations and perform cutesy product-placement stunts like dunking Oreos with a magnet. In between, the three rib each other gently about on-set foibles and nonthreatening squabbles at home. Their small talk, as when Kilmeade couldn’t resist pointing out Earhardt’s skin-tight dress, is sometimes cringeworthy—a hint of the fraught gender dynamics that have given the show trouble in the past—but on the air, no one seems to mind. It’s all good cheer among friends.

The infotainment format doesn’t feel markedly different from other morning shows. What sets “Fox & Friends” apart is its deliberate boosterism. The hosts find ways to weave praise of Trump into almost every segment, however unrelated. (Kilmeade once managed to pivot a lesson on work-life balance into a testament to the president’s charisma.) The hosts refer to campaign promises fulfilled. They air testimonials from the Trump children and “Celebrity Apprentice” winners. Time and again, they highlight places where their coverage diverges from the mainstream media narrative. They even appropriate Trump’s language: On the day after the Syrian airstrikes in April, as the hosts showed off newspaper headlines, guest host Pete Hegseth declared, “Even the failing New York Times got it right this morning.”

To occupy a world this rose-colored, you have to willfully ignore certain news events, and even entire subjects, such as climate change. You also have to be ready with a rationale for everything the president does. Doocy, in particular, always seems on the verge of leaping from the couch to translate one of Trump’s cryptic statements—or, as he did throughout the March health care debate, to reassure viewers that Trump is a brilliant negotiator, that he’s in command and that everything will work out.

When the show does acknowledge critiques of the president, the moment passes quickly. Take this discussion of street demonstrations on International Women’s Day:

Kilmeade: A lot of women protests early on. Why is Donald Trump always to blame for something? People are always whining about something.

Doocy: They just don’t like Donald Trump.

Kilmeade: I guess so. So two major protests in 40 days?

Doocy: But people like Ivanka Trump.

What’s striking about “Fox & Friends” is that even when the show gets political, it never loses its morning-show buoyancy. The programming is partisan, yes, but cheerfully, cheekily so, without the combative stance of Breitbart or even Fox’s brass-knuckled evening shows. It’s an us-against-them mentality, delivered with a smile, the hosts so relentlessly cheerful that they sometimes seem giddy, as if they’ve just stepped out of a party at Mar-a-Lago.

Even the show’s name—“Fox & Friends”—is an invitation into the information bubble of the virtuous and right-minded.

The hosts treat their political enemies not as formidable foes, but as curiosities to be mocked and diminished—the kind of attitude Trump had toward “Little Marco” and “Lyin’ Ted” on the campaign trail. Stories about liberal angst are introduced with playful chyrons like DEMS IN DISTRESS or MAD LIBS. The tone is often gentle condescension—the way you might talk about a child who has said something absurd.

On CNN, you’ll see panels of partisans teed up at long tables, with the expectation that sparks will fly. But “Fox & Friends” isn’t set up for confrontation, and it rarely bothers to put opposing points of view on screen at the same time. When talking heads do collide, there’s often a surrounding schtick: two Southern brothers, one Democrat and one Republican, debating the American Health Care Act. In one odd but adorable moment, Geraldo Rivera made a pitch for single-payer health care by singing a few bars of a Peter, Paul and Mary song. (Despite the policy difference, Rivera still made clear that he was on Team Trump.)

Some Fox personalities passing through the set have trouble adjusting to the jovial atmosphere. Jeanine Pirro, who hosts a judicial-themed show on Saturday nights, once seemed overcome with bile as she criticized a misstep on a left-leaning late-night show. “We are good people!” Pirro shouted. “The people on the left who are demonizing us, they are not! I’m sorry! I’m done with them!” A few moments later, Pirro seemed to realize that her tone was a little off; this is “Fox & Friends,” where everything’s more chill. She cracked a smile. The hosts moved on.

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Positivity, it turns out, is a key source of power for “Fox & Friends.” According to Young, the University of Delaware professor, the show is a perfect illustration of the “elaboration likelihood model” of persuasion. Developed in the 1980s by a psychologist and neuroscientist, the model describes two ways listeners are persuaded by an argument. The first involves thoughtful processing, in which a motivated listener engages with and challenges a message before reaching a conclusion. In the second path, persuasion stems from cues that have little to do with the logic of the argument itself—for example, the quality of the production or the presenter’s tone and attractiveness. Distracted by these secondary factors, the listener becomes more passive and less skeptical.

“Fox & Friends,” she says, seems tailor-made to lull viewers down that second path, where they swallow information without scrutiny. There’s the quick morning-show pacing: You’re less likely to think carefully if you’re distracted or under a time constraint. There are the emotional cues: When people around you are cheerful and calm, you’re prompted to avoid wasting energy on deep thought. And there’s the mockery of “others,” a reassuring signal that the listener is superior and safe.

The clubbiness of “Fox & Friends” is hardly a Fox or right-wing innovation; it’s also at work in, say, Rachel Maddow’s wonky progressive lectures. Neither is the show’s consistent partisanship, says University of Texas professor Talia Stroud, who studies media and political behavior. Research shows that viewers across the political spectrum who consume partisan shows develop increasingly polarized views, as like-minded commentators offer ready-made rebuttals and call into question the trustworthiness of the other side. It creates a built-in reason to tune in day after day. “If you’re listening to a news media source that’s telling you, ‘The other side is going to make this argument, and the mainstream media never covered topic X,’” Stroud says, “it keeps you going back. Because you now see a value proposition.”

But “Fox & Friends” weaves those strands together to maximum effect, using the upbeat, reassuring approach to Trumpism as deftly as Oprah used empathy, or Glenn Beck used righteous outrage, to pull in an audience. The show praises its viewers for their generosity and wisdom, and invites them to engage: Send us a tweet! Contribute to a guest’s GoFundMe page! The day after Earhardt interviewed the author of a book called Reasons to Vote for Democrats (all of the pages were blank), the hosts crowed that their viewers had brought the book to the top of Amazon’s best-seller list. Even the show’s name—“Fox & Friends”—is an invitation into the information bubble of the virtuous and right-minded.

And now the U.S. president is in the bubble, too. “Trump is the ideal viewer for ‘Fox & Friends,’” says Young. “He is someone who loves to feel right. He loves to feel reassured in his worldview. But most importantly, he loves to be told that he’s smart.” It’s extraordinary, and also dangerous. As Boston College political science professor Emily Thorson notes, Trump “literally has a staff whose job it is” to give him verified information about national security and the inner workings of Washington. But “instead of relying on his staff, he is relying on television.” And not just television—programming whose first priority is not measured commentary, or even fact. Much of the time, the show’s first priority seems to be keeping the president watching.

In the annals of press-president relationships, this is a new paradigm. “I wouldn’t even say this is a symbiotic relationship,” Young says. “I would say this is a codependent relationship. This is beyond the beyond.”

It’s also a perfect foundation for impenetrable feedback loops like the one involving a British spy agency supposedly surveiling Trump. It would be hard to understate the strangeness of that episode, which culminated when White House press secretary Sean Spicer, channeling his boss, read a “Fox & Friends” transcript from his podium, prompting the Washington intelligence establishment, the British government, and even Fox anchors Shepard Smith and Bret Baier to publicly debunk the claim. Here was the mind merge at its zenith: official Washington spin and chummy morning show material, twisted into one.

The mainstream media and the Washington establishment eventually began chasing other stories. But the White House never officially backed down; Trump just referred all questioners to Fox. The morning show didn’t back down either. Within the bubble of “Fox & Friends,” the world continued to be precisely as the president imagined.