Narrator: On January 6, 2021, as a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, found himself in a desperate situation. Hiding in a secure location, he made a frantic phone call to President Donald Trump, pleading with him to call off his supporters. But the president, reportedly more interested in watching the chaos unfold on television, was unresponsive. In that moment of crisis, McCarthy didn't try the president again. Instead, he called a television network. He went live on Fox News, hoping that an appeal made through the president's favorite channel could succeed where a direct plea had failed. This single, extraordinary event—a political leader using a news network as a backchannel to the commander-in-chief during an insurrection—encapsulates the unprecedented and dangerous fusion of media and power at the heart of American politics. In his book, Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth, author and media critic Brian Stelter dissects how this reality came to be, charting the symbiotic relationship that radicalized a political party and shook the foundations of American democracy.

Narrator: The partnership between Donald Trump and Fox News was not an accident of history but the culmination of two forces built on the same principles. The network's architect, Roger Ailes, was a political operative first and a newsman second. Hired by Rupert Murdoch in 1996, Ailes built Fox News not just as a business, but as a political weapon designed to champion a conservative worldview and wage war against a perceived liberal media establishment. His leadership style, much like Trump's, was rooted in fear, loyalty, and an obsession with control.

Both men shared a profound distrust of the media and a masterful understanding of how to manipulate it. Decades before his presidency, Trump was already honing his skills, famously creating a fictional publicist persona named "John Barron" to plant flattering stories about himself in the New York press. He would call reporters, disguise his voice, and feed them self-serving information. Ailes operated with a similar paranoia and ruthlessness. As Stelter recounts, Ailes once dispatched a public relations intern on "faux-dates" with him to spy on his conversations and scour his social media for any sign of anti-Fox bias. This shared DNA—a belief that power is about controlling the narrative, even through deception—made the alliance between Trump and Fox News almost inevitable. The network wasn't just friendly to Trump; it was built from a blueprint he instinctively understood and could exploit.

Narrator: Before Donald Trump was a viable political candidate, he was a television personality, and his primary stage was Fox News's morning show, Fox & Friends. Starting in 2011, the show gave him a weekly segment called "Monday Mornings with Trump," providing an unparalleled platform to mainline his views directly to the conservative base. This wasn't just an interview; it was a training ground. The hosts, Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade, and Gretchen Carlson, rarely challenged him. Instead, they teed up his talking points, from his racist birther conspiracy theories about President Obama to his critiques of the Republican establishment.

The relationship was transactional. Trump delivered ratings, and Fox delivered an audience. Through these weekly calls, Trump learned exactly what the Fox News viewer wanted to hear. He tested messages, refined his populist rhetoric, and built a political identity. A former Fox & Friends producer bluntly explained the show's ethos: "People don’t care if it’s right, they just want their side to win. That’s who this show is for." The show's senior producers operated on a simple principle: "We need outrage." Trump was more than happy to provide it. As he later admitted in the White House Rose Garden, he wasn't sure he would have ever become president if it wasn't for Roger Ailes and the platform he provided.

Narrator: Once Trump took office, the already blurry line between Fox News and the White House all but vanished. The network began to function less like a news organization and more like a state-run media outlet, a dynamic that created a deep and bitter rift within its own walls. On one side were the opinion hosts, led by Sean Hannity, who became one of Trump's most influential, if informal, advisors. Hannity spoke with the president almost every night, offering political strategy and on-air praise. His influence was so profound that he could call in personal favors, such as arranging a White House visit for his son's college tennis team.

On the other side were the journalists in the news division, like Shepard "Shep" Smith, who fought to maintain a semblance of journalistic integrity. Smith famously declared, "I think we have to make the wall between news and opinion as high and as thick and as impenetrable as possible." But in the Trump era, that wall was systematically dismantled. When Smith would fact-check the president's lies on his afternoon show, he would be attacked not only by Trump's base but by his own colleagues. Hannity publicly called Smith "clueless," and Tucker Carlson mocked him on-air. Eventually, the pressure became too much, and Smith, one of the network's founding anchors, resigned in 2019, a stark symbol of opinion's final victory over news at Fox.

Narrator: The deadly consequences of the Trump-Fox feedback loop became terrifyingly clear with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the virus spread across the globe in early 2020, the network's most prominent voices launched a campaign to downplay its severity, directly echoing the president's denialism. On air, hosts and guests dismissed the virus as a political "hoax" designed to hurt Trump. Dr. Marc Siegel, a medical analyst for the network, told viewers, "At worst, at worst, worst case scenario, it could be the flu." Host Greg Gutfeld joked, "Thank God for global warming," suggesting the virus would disappear with the weather.

But as Stelter reveals, a shocking hypocrisy was at play. While Fox's on-air talent was telling its audience the virus was nothing to fear, the network's executives were taking the threat very seriously behind the scenes. They were canceling events, preparing for remote work, and implementing the very safety protocols their hosts were mocking. This paradox was a betrayal of their audience, a group that, according to demographic data, was disproportionately over the age of 55 and therefore at the highest risk from the virus. The network was protecting its own employees while feeding its loyal viewers a stream of misinformation that left them dangerously exposed.

Narrator: The alliance reached its destructive climax in the aftermath of the 2020 election. On election night, the Fox News decision desk—the data-driven, non-partisan part of the news operation—made a call that infuriated its most important viewer. It correctly projected that Joe Biden would win Arizona. The backlash from the White House was immediate and furious. Trump himself reportedly called Rupert Murdoch to demand a retraction. The network's own viewers turned on it, with protesters gathering in Arizona chanting, "Fox News sucks!"

Faced with a ratings crisis as its enraged audience flocked to even more extreme right-wing outlets, Fox's opinion hosts went into overdrive. They began to aggressively promote the very election lies the news division was debunking. This created a schizophrenic on-air product where, in one hour, a reporter would explain why there was no evidence of widespread fraud, and in the next, a host would give a platform to conspiracy theorists claiming the election was stolen. This flood of misinformation directly fueled the "Stop the Steal" movement, which culminated in the January 6th attack. A guilt-stricken Fox News veteran captured the sense of horror in a text to Stelter after the riot: "What have we done?" The propaganda machine they had built and profited from had helped incite an attack on the government itself.

Narrator: Ultimately, Hoax argues that the most damaging deception perpetrated by the Trump-Fox alliance was not any single lie, but the erosion of truth itself. The network and the president worked in concert to create a "hoax age," an environment where objective reality was dismissed as "fake news" and viewers were told to distrust their own eyes and ears. As Trump famously told his followers, "What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening." The only source to be trusted was him and his chosen media outlet. This, Stelter concludes, was the biggest hoax of all.

The book serves as a damning indictment and a stark warning. It chronicles how a media empire, in its pursuit of profit and political influence, abdicated its responsibility to the public, with devastating consequences. It leaves the audience with a chilling question: How can a democracy function when one of its most powerful media voices is dedicated not to informing its citizens, but to convincing them that the truth no longer matters?