Skip to main content
  • Online media
  • Tariffs
  • Epstein
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • RSS
  • Take Action
  • Search
  • Donate

Media Matters for America

  • News & Analysis
  • Research & Studies
  • Audio & Video
  • Archives

Media Matters for America

  • Nav
  • Search
  • News & Analysis
  • Research & Studies
  • Audio & Video
  • Archives
  • Online media
  • Tariffs
  • Epstein
  • Take Action
  • Search
  • Donate
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • RSS
Trump Fox

How Trump's Fox News feedback loop powers his Manhattan trial defense

Written by Matt Gertz

Research contributions from Tyler Monroe, Harrison Ray & Chloe Simon

Published 05/20/24 8:57 AM EDT

For MSNBC.com, I wrote about how Donald Trump is channeling legal takes from his friends at Fox News as he responds to his Manhattan hush-money trial:

“Everybody — Alan Dershowitz — everybody says there’s no crime here,” Donald Trump said before his trial in Manhattan resumed on Thursday. “There’s no crime. Jonathan Turley, every single person, Gregg Jarrett, Andy McCarthy, anyone you want to name, Mark Levin, great lawyer, all of them. Great lawyers, great legal scholars, every single one said there’s no crime. The crime is that they’re doing this case.”

What do Dershowitz, Turley, Jarrett, McCarthy and Levin have in common? Each has been a fixture on Fox News during its coverage of Trump’s trial. The five have combined for at least 116 weekday Fox appearances from when jury selection began on April 15 through Wednesday, according to Media Matters’ database (Levin also hosts his own show that airs on Fox on Saturday and Sunday nights).

Trump’s effort to delegitimize this trial leans heavily on favorable commentary from his friends at Fox. The former president is regularly promoting trial takes from the network, which has offered a full-throated defense of Trump and an unrelenting attack on everyone involved in his prosecution. Indeed, as Trump finished speaking and entered the courthouse on Thursday, Fox brought on McCarthy and Turley to preview the day’s trial testimony.

Read the whole thing.

The Latest

  1. Christian nationalism-embracing media figures declare victory after Trump IRS argues that churches can endorse political candidates

    Narrative/Timeline 07/15/25 9:17 AM EDT

  2. Newsmax's Greg Kelly: “I'm going to just have to defer to President Trump on this thing. He actually knows Jeffrey Epstein, or knew him. ... I'm going to take his word for it.”

    Video & Audio 07/15/25 8:59 AM EDT

  3. On MSNBC's The 11th Hour, Angelo Carusone discusses Epstein controversy and Trump: “He doesn't really have a sense of how much this is metastasizing”

    Video & Audio 07/15/25 8:38 AM EDT

  4. Laura Ingraham: “As conservative influencers were eating their own about Epstein, the president was stealing the show”

    Video & Audio 07/14/25 8:18 PM EDT

  5. Fox News panel on Epstein files: “The White House wants to move on from this. ... They also feel like this is very much an online kind of outrage.”

    Video & Audio 07/14/25 8:05 PM EDT

Pagination

  • Previous page ‹‹
  • …
  • Current page 217
  • …
  • Next page ››

In This Article

  • Fox News

    Fox-News-MMFA-Tag.png
  • Trump trials and legal issues

Related

  1. Fox News is the Republican Party. Here are over 400 examples proving it.

    Research/Study 05/16/22 10:59 AM EDT

  2. The end of the Trump-Fox feedback loop

    Article 01/19/21 10:41 AM EST

  3. STUDY: Two years of Trump's Fox live-tweeting obsession, by the numbers

    Research/Study 10/09/20 8:33 AM EDT

Media Matters for America

Sign up for email updates
  • About
  • Contact
  • Corrections
  • Submissions
  • Jobs
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • RSS

© 2026 Media Matters for America

RSS