Shortly after polls closed on Election Day, putting an end to another exhausting, mudslinging, and wildly polarizing political contest, it became evident that a slight but clear majority of voters had placed their faith in the safe-bet Democratic candidate. Or at least, he was a safe bet compared to his GOP opponent, a far-right figurehead who flirted with white nationalist groups, helped spearhead the racist birther movement, and stood accused of sexual assault many times over (accusations he denied). But while nearly every notable media outlet projected a win for the Democrat, one network, One America News, decided it had seen enough to crown the GOP candidate the winner.
Three years have passed since Roy Moore’s defeat to Doug Jones in deep-red Alabama, a special-election race in which OANN incorrectly declared Moore the winner, and Donald Trump’s go-to propaganda outlet—at least, when Fox News resists his marching orders—is still spouting revisionism. Five days after the Associated Press projected that Joe Biden will be the next president, OANN remains one of the only semi-relevant networks that, as of Thursday morning, had not called the race.
In recent days, OANN—along with similarly C-list conservative network Newsmax, which has also resisted declaring Biden the winner—has suddenly found itself receiving a tremendous amount of attention, promotion, and praise from the president, often in the same breath he uses to rant against Fox. Trump’s grievances with Fox have been piling up over the past few months, namely with its polling operation, reporting from the network’s actual journalists, and, of course, Chris Wallace. But the levee now appears to have broken, an explosion that began with Fox’s Decision Desk calling Arizona for Biden with just 73% of the state’s vote counted. That move led the president to personally call up Rupert Murdoch “to scream about the [Arizona] call and demand a retraction,” according to my colleague Gabriel Sherman, whose report noted that the verbal abuse had no effect. By the weekend after Election Day, Fox News had joined the establishment-media pack in adopting the title President-elect Biden.
This week, Trump is certainly not resorting to only privately screeching at the Murdochs. And his rage reached a very public boiling point on Thursday. “@FoxNews daytime ratings have completely collapsed. Weekend daytime even WORSE. Very sad to watch this happen, but they forgot what made them successful, what got them there,” the president tweeted, essentially whining about the network not dancing with the one who brought ‘em. According to the president, Fox is about to pay the consequences for forgetting who its “Golden Goose” is. “The biggest difference between the 2016 Election, and 2020, was @FoxNews!”
Hours before that tweet, Axios published a report citing a source that said Trump “plans to wreck Fox”—a plan that will likely involve the president following through with the launch of Trump TV, a media operation that reporters have speculated about for years after some assumed it was his plan A in running for president, the White House win being something of an accident. In Trump’s Pretty Woman–style revenge plot, his “Big mistake. Huge!” moment reportedly comes when he launches the network on an online streaming service with a monthly fee, skipping an expensive cable channel and dragging eyeballs away from the network that has served as his presidential feedback loop for so long. (As petty as the plan may sound, it should be noted that the last time Trump sought revenge, reportedly for being roasted by Barack Obama, he became the most powerful man in the world).
In the meantime, as the president files a series of laughable voter-fraud lawsuits, he has fallen back in love with his two favorite side pieces. “Newsmax and Oann are great alternatives,” read one post that earned a presidential retweet, while another read, “old Fox News lovers… go to Newsmax,” and a third tweet advised Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham to “leave while they can. FOX is pandering to left now.” Arguably the most memorable of Trump’s retweets simply declared “#foxnews is dead.”
Shortly after signaling his switch to a strict OANN and Newsmax diet, Trump discovered a new conspiracy theory that posits he didn’t lose the election, but is instead the most victimized president in history. Sharing an entirely baseless claim from an OANN correspondent, Trump tweeted that “2.7 MILLION TRUMP VOTES” were deleted thanks to very nasty and very unfair voting machines.
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