Defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, centre, departs following a meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Nov. 21.Nathan Howard/Reuters
In Donald Trump’s emerging administration, the policy message and the media have converged.
Five of the U.S. president-elect’s choices for top positions in the government have ties to Fox News, his preferred news outlet. A sixth came to prominence as a television doctor.
“Incoming presidents always pick people from organizations they are familiar with, and where they have relationships,” said Tobe Berkovitz, an emeritus professor of media, politics and advertising at Boston University’s College of Communications.
“Who has Trump had relationships with? Second-string TV people. He likes to have people he’s comfortable with, and these are the people he trusts as much as he trusts anyone.
“They’re known quantities to him, and he respects people who have media personas.”
This week, Mr. Trump selected Dr. Mehmet Oz – an unsuccessful GOP nominee for the Senate from Pennsylvania whose prominence comes from his syndicated daytime television show on medical matters – to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service.
Before that, he chose Fox News host Pete Hegseth to be defence secretary, former governor and Fox host Mike Huckabee to be ambassador to Israel, and former House of Representatives member and Fox Business host Sean Duffy to be transportation secretary. Mr. Duffy’s wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, is a Fox and Friends Weekend host.
Two others – Tulsi Gabbard, Mr. Trump’s choice for national intelligence director, and Tom Homan, his selection for border czar – were Fox contributors until earlier this year.
The president-elect is known to be an avid Fox viewer. During his first term in office, Fox and Friends was reportedly a staple of his morning routine, and he would sometimes use his Twitter account to post approvingly about the show. The network, in turn, has boosted him, seldom engaging in the criticism of Mr. Trump common in other news media.
Fox influences his political outlook – as it does for many Americans – even as he forms the content of the network’s shows. And now he is poised to return to the presidency with a cabinet full of Fox personalities, in one of the most remarkable feedback loops in American political history.
That began more than eight years ago with the virtual melding of Fox news shows and the Trump campaign. At the 2016 Republican National Convention, prominent Fox commentator Laura Ingraham supported Mr. Trump with a speech.
But the relationship between the network and Mr. Trump was strained after the Jan. 6, riot at the Capitol in 2021; Ms. Ingraham and Sean Hannity were among the Fox figures who pleaded privately with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to convince Mr. Trump to stop the tumult.
In the intervening years, the relationship has been repaired, and it’s now stronger than ever.
Mr. Trump, a one-time reality television star, is regaining power just in time to play a pivotal role in deciding the fate of Ukraine, another country whose politics have melded with TV. Volodymyr Zelensky became Ukrainian President after starring as the country’s fictional president in the show, Servant of the People.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky are not the only people with media backgrounds to have risen to political power.
Before the start of his acting career, Ronald Reagan first attracted attention as a broadcaster at WHO radio in Des Moines. Representative Ben Jones of Georgia appeared in the television show Dukes of Hazzard before being elected to the House. Saturday Night Live personality Al Franken served in the Senate as a Minnesota Democrat.
Eleanor Roosevelt was perhaps the most influential first lady in American history and, during her time in the White House and then for 17 years afterward, was a well-known newspaper columnist. John F. Kennedy said he wanted to become editor of a newspaper after the end of his presidency, but he was assassinated before completing his first term.
That is the mirror image of one of his predecessors, Warren Harding. A newspaper reporter as a young man, he became owner and editor of the Marion (Ohio) Daily Star and ascended to the presidency in 1921.
The attribute they shared: communication skills.
“Being able to communicate is essential for an effective politician,” said Ira Shapiro, author of three books on Senate history, including the classic The Last Great Senate.
“Candidates on television start with amazing visibility. They’re well known and well-liked in their communities. Once they get into office, they often find that their communication skills are useful.”
But such abilities are only part of the toolbox of an effective political figure: “Problems come when people are skilled in communications but not terribly interested or skilled in policy,” said John Lawrence, a former chief of staff to former House speaker Nancy Pelosi who now teaches at the University of California’s Washington campus.
“There are problems when people are better at communication than in having something to communicate. Unless you’re going to govern in platitudes, you have to have something to sell.”
That’s the peril that some talented communicators have faced, to their great disappointment.
Just this year, Kari Lake, an ally of Mr. Trump who was a KSAZ anchor in Phoenix, lost a Senate race in Arizona. Two years earlier, she was defeated in the state’s gubernatorial election. A number of other television personalities, including American Idol singer Clay Aiken (North Carolina), Little House on the Prairie star Melissa Gilbert (Michigan) and Ralph Waite of The Waltons (California) have lost congressional races.
The migration between politics and the press usually goes the other way: toward the media rather than away from it.
Walter Lippmann, sometimes considered the most influential American commentator of the 20th century, was an aide to president Woodrow Wilson before winning two Pulitzer Prizes. Mark Shields was a top strategist for the presidential campaigns of Robert F. Kennedy, Edmund Muskie and Morris Udall before becoming a columnist and television commentator. Diane Sawyer was a Richard Nixon press aide before becoming a prominent television-news anchor.
Another Nixon aide, William Safire, later became a New York Times columnist. When the notion was ventured that he might be an effective secretary of state, he demurred, saying, “Why take a demotion?”