A Fox & Friends graphic showing Trump's face next to the words "Trump's economy"

Research/Study Research/Study

One year in, Fox News can’t decide if it’s a “booming” Trump economy or Biden’s economic “mess”

The first year of Trump’s second term saw the worst job creation in over 20 years and reaccelerating inflation following Trump’s tariffs

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published

As President Donald Trump closed out the first year of his second term with a stumbling economy, Fox pivoted to promising that “next year looks like it’s going to be amazing.” 

Yet Fox is torn between crediting Trump with an economy that is supposedly “booming” and continuing to blame former President Joe Biden for Americans’ ongoing concerns about affordability and the economy — much as Trump just did during a January 13 interview with CBS News. 

Fox also cheered on Trump’s destructive tariffs, which drove prices higher and contributed to the worst year of job creation outside of a recession year since 2003. According to economists, Trump’s tariffs were also responsible for the economic contraction in the first quarter of 2025, as individuals and businesses shifted their consumption activity and boosted imports in an effort to “front run” price increases — but Fox dutifully blamed the contraction on Biden instead, hinting at the economic coverage to come.

Select a section

  • Fox blames Biden for the affordability crisis weighing down Trump

    • Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones: “Right now the president has been dealing with a Joe Biden economy. And I think it's totally unfair — although people can feel how they feel — to say that you are going to be able to turn this economy around within, what, 11 months? That's just not practical.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 1/13/26]
    • Fox Business anchor Dagen McDowell: Republicans say Trump’s tax cuts “will help Americans in their bid to overturn, or end, officially, the Biden affordability crisis.” [Fox Business, The Bottom Line, 12/26/25]
    • Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo: Affordability is “really a messaging problem. … You see the Democrats rallying around this whole idea of affordability as if they thought about it, and they're the only ones who are trying to rein in Joe Biden's 40-year high inflation.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 12/12/25]
    • Fox Business host Charles Payne deflected from affordability concerns, saying: “President Trump inherited a rocketship” of inflation. Payne added: “The origins of all of this, you got to go back to COVID. You got to go back to all of the money that cascaded into this society and where it came from.” He continued: “All of a sudden Biden just flooded the country with so much money, those stimmy checks, everything else. We’re talking trillions of dollars, right? You put out trillions of dollars, what’s the basic definition of inflation? Typically it’s too much money chasing too few goods and services. And that’s exactly what happened.” [Fox News, America Reports, 12/5/25]
    • Jones on affordability concerns: “We don’t talk about where we started. We just don't talk about it enough. You can't expect all of this to go away — the damage that was done — in nine months. It’s just not realistic.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 12/4/25]
    • Fox Business host Jackie DeAngelis seemed to blame the affordability crisis on “the green push under Joe Biden. That really hurt Americans.” DeAngelis added that Trump “is trying to roll back these regulations, change the standards so that cars become more affordable.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 12/4/25]
    • Fox host Sean Hannity: “With less than a year into his second term, President Trump is only getting started cleaning up the mess that Biden left behind. And a big part of that effort is a new directive to undo Joe Biden's ridiculous, costly, insane, burdensome regulation.” Hannity cited the average cost of gasoline dipping below $3 recently. [Fox News, Hannity, 12/3/25]
    • Fox Business anchor David Asman: The housing affordability crisis is “definitely on Biden and the trillions of extra dollars that he was spending” because “interest rates had to go up sky high in order to keep up with the Biden inflation.” [Fox News, America Reports, 12/3/25]
    • On Fox, Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow said: “We need to start messaging better that Democrats are the reason why this country is unaffordable for so many.” Fox host Laura Ingraham added that she warned Republicans about the affordability issue “last March,” because “they were going to try to pretend that Joe Biden didn’t cause this.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 11/10/25]

  • Yet Fox has also given Trump clear ownership of the economy

    • Fox host Laura Ingraham: “Now, you know the Trump economy’s strong when even the notoriously negative Axios is admitting it.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 9/26/25]
    • Fox anchor Gillian Turner: “What we’re getting is ‘it’s all Biden’s fault’ … but we're coming up on a year. How long is that going to have currency for? You've got to own it at a certain point.” [Fox News, The Five, 11/14/25]
    • Ingraham hyped the September jobs report as marking a transition from “Biden’s bust” to “Trump’s boom.” Ingraham added: “The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman writing, ‘The Trump economy appears to be cooking.’” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 11/20/25]
    • Hannity called the September jobs report, which showed a job loss for August, a “major win for the Trump economy.” [Fox News, Hannity, 11/20/25; Media Matters, 11/20/25]
    • Fox contributor Kellyanne Conway: “Despite what the liberal media is telling you, the economy continues to get better under President Trump’s leadership.” Her guest, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, added: “President Trump is creating a golden age for the American economy and it’s happening already.” Hassett also blamed Biden for ongoing inflation problems under Trump. [Fox News, Hannity, 11/25/25]
    • Fox host Jesse Watters: “It's Trump's economy now. That's politics. He owns it now.” [Fox News, The Five, 12/4/25]
    • A Fox & Friends graphic declared it “Trump’s Economy” during a segment on an upcoming economic news release. Co-host Lawrence Jones said, “We’re getting new data later today on the state of Trump’s economy.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 12/11/25]
    • Panelists on Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria called the November CPI report “amazing,” “incredible,” and “great for America.” “Well done to Donald Trump,” said the Washington Examiner’s Tiana Lowe Doescher. [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 12/18/25]
    • Fox anchor Harris Faulkner: “The president’s economy holding strong. Inflation is, in fact, coming down.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 12/18/25]
    • Fox anchor John Roberts: “This was a surprise, 2.7% in November was the inflation rate. That's really got to be … a finger in the eye to all of the president's critics who have said, oh, he hasn't done anything to curb inflation.” [Fox News, America Reports, 12/18/25]
    • Asman: “The Trump economy is booming.” [Fox Business, Kudlow, 12/26/25]
    • On Fox, conservative economist Stephen Moore argued that “pessimistic pundits keep getting Trump’s economy so wrong.” Moore said “we’ve had a very good first year” in Trump’s second term and that “there is a Trump derangement syndrome” in the media. [Fox News, Fox & Friends Weekend, 12/27/25]
    • Fox Business host Larry Kudlow urged Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to resign so “we can get on with the business of appointing a good, new Fed chair who will pilot Mr. Trump's booming economy.” [Fox Business, Kudlow, 1/14/26]