On Monday, Fox News aired a segment that was unusually unflattering to President Donald Trump. Longtime host Stuart Varney was joined by Wall Street Journal editorial board member Allysia Finley, who had come to discuss her Sunday op-ed “Something Is Rotten in the State of MAGA,” and offered a few Shakespeare-inspired critiques that the president and his officials are unlikely to appreciate.
“Why are you comparing the blue tsunami to Shakespearean tragedy?” asked Varney, referring to the historic midterm loss dealt to Republicans last week. According to Finley, “It has a lot of the same elements. For instance, you have a leader who’s very…Shall I say prideful? Whose pride blinds him to what is going on around him. He’s very receptive or amenable to flattery and surrounds himself with sycophants who are scheming to pursue their own interests. I would say that’s true of his new Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and his Vice President JD Vance, who’s really positioning himself to be the presidential candidate in 2028 and is not really looking or trying to advance the priorities that would help the president.”
There has been a breakup brewing between Fox and Trump in recent months, and it leapt into plain view last week when the president asserted that the conservative network “bears responsibility” for the GOP’s historic midterm losses. Typically, Fox has been careful to align its messaging with Trump, and its platforming of Finley’s op-ed – in which she directly references Trump’s ire toward the outlet – is an unusual jab at the president.
“Like King Lear,” wrote Finley, “President Trump is a fool for flattery. He demands ostentatious displays of loyalty that are often insincere.” As Finley mentioned on Fox, she singles out Vance and Miller as such “brown-nosers.” And what’s more, she notes another similarity between the president and Shakespeare’s mad king, writing, “‘I am a man more sinned against than sinning,’ the aggrieved Lear rages on the heath after being cast out by his sycophantic daughters. After the election, Mr. Trump delivered a Truth Social soliloquy: ‘FoxNews bears responsibility for these losses by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition, and worse.’” Like Lear, he blamed everyone like himself, and like Hamlet, he became so fixated on settling grievances that he allowed the destruction of everyone in his orbit.
And then, there’s the corruption. According to Finley, “‘Hamlet’ also offers a lesson in the insidious nature of political corruption. ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,’ the palace guard Marcellus observes. Voters took the same view of the Trump administration and the Republican Party.” There is good reason to emphasize this issue. As Finley notes, “Corruption ranked at the top of voters’ concerns in polls. Yes, Americans are unhappy about high gasoline prices from the war in Iran and persistent inflation. But the killer was that while they struggled to pay bills, Mr. Trump and his hangers-on looked to be enriching themselves. In exit polls 62 percent of voters said that the president put his personal interests over the interests of the country.” Fox aired a similar opinion on Monday, when host Trey Gowdy lambasted the administration for ignoring the polls on corruption.
And then, as she noted on Fox, Finley points to the Shakespearean schemers in Trump’s midst, like Vance and Miller. “In following him, I follow but myself,” said Iago of Othello, and Finley sees similar motivations in Trump’s officials. Vance supported Trump all along, then threw him under the bus for Iran the day after the midterms in an obvious attempt to elevate his own profile for a presidential run, and Miller “has egged on the president’s worst policy instincts and stoked his resentments.” According to Finley, “His cruel and chaotic mass-deportation agenda was a key contributor to the GOP’s rout. Nonetheless, the president on Friday elevated Mr. Miller to White House chief of staff, hailing him as ‘one of my most trusted advisers.’ The president will get the bad advice he invites.”