President Trump went after Fox News's own polling operation during an appearance on "The Five" Thursday, telling the network's hosts point-blank that he can't stand their surveys and that the people running them need to go.
"I hate Fox polls," Trump said. "Honestly, whoever does your polls is terrible."
The latest Fox News poll put Trump's approval rating at 41 percent, with 59 percent disapproving. Those numbers clearly struck a nerve, and the president didn't hold back about who he thinks is responsible.
"Rupert Murdoch has promised me for years he's going to get rid of your pollster, but he doesn't do it."
"I don't get it, but your Fox polls are terrible," he added.
The exchange highlights a tension that has simmered between Trump and the Murdoch media apparatus for some time. While Fox News remains the dominant force in conservative cable news, and Trump remains its biggest draw, the network's polling unit has long operated as something of a separate animal. Fox's polls frequently produce results that diverge sharply from other surveys, often in ways that frustrate Republicans and occasionally even surprise Democrats, The Hill reported.
The relationship between Trump and Murdoch has been on rocky terms over The Wall Street Journal's publishing of a provocative birthday message the president allegedly sent to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. Trump is suing the Journal for $10 billion for defamation over the letter's publication last summer.
In a Truth Social post at the time, Trump called the Journal a "disgusting and filthy rag" and said Murdoch was "personally" warned that the letter was fake.
A $10 billion defamation suit is not the kind of thing that smooths over a working relationship.
For all the friction, the dynamic between Trump and Murdoch isn't a clean break. The New York Post reported earlier this month that Trump taped a surprise birthday message video for the media mogul and chair emeritus of Fox Corp. and News Corp. In the video, Trump reportedly called Murdoch "legendary" and "one of a kind," saying he "changed the world."
That's a complicated posture: suing a man's newspaper for $10 billion while simultaneously recording a warm birthday tribute. But complexity is the nature of power relationships at this level. Trump has never operated on simple binaries when it comes to media figures. He engages, he pushes back, he maintains leverage, and he keeps the door open.
The broader issue Trump is flagging deserves more attention than it typically gets. Polling in American politics has become a narrative weapon as much as a measurement tool. The numbers that flash across chyrons shape donor behavior, influence media coverage, and set expectations that become self-reinforcing.
When a network's polling consistently produces outlier results, it's fair to ask questions about methodology, sampling, and weighting. That's not an attack on data. It's a demand for accountability from institutions that wield enormous influence over public perception.
Conservative voters have learned, through cycles of being told their candidates were doomed only to watch them win, that polling can be a lagging indicator at best and a distortion engine at worst. The 2016 election shattered confidence in mainstream survey operations. The 2020 cycle didn't rebuild it. And when the network most closely associated with conservative viewers produces numbers that look like they came from a different universe than GOP primary results, the frustration is understandable.
Trump didn't mince words about it. He rarely does. And whatever the methodological merits of any individual survey, his willingness to challenge the numbers in real time, on the network that produced them, is a reminder that he doesn't treat friendly territory as a safe space. He treats it as a platform.
The pollster Fox refuses to fire, just got the most public performance review in cable news history.
