How has Fox News, Trump's biggest media ally, handled the Elon Musk feud?
The most powerful alliance in US politics crumbled in real-time on Thursday, with President Donald Trump and Elon Musk lobbing political barbs and personal insults at each other from their respective social media platforms.
The pair's biggest media allies at Fox News — the most-watched cable news network on the planet, often viewed as a clearinghouse for the MAGA agenda — seem to be having a little difficulty with the breakup.
Since Thursday afternoon, the network's MAGA-aligned opinion personalities have largely mourned the feud and appeared torn between their two central heroes, at times openly imploring them through the TV screen to reconcile.
Will Cain lamented that the feud is 'not a story that we wanted today for America.'
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Sign up here to receive Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter in your inbox. Greg Gutfeld demanded the pair 'knock it off' and make up. Don't 'sabotage' a Trump 'Golden Age,' he said, 'with this self-inflicted feud.'
Longtime Trump ally and personal friend Laura Ingraham exhorted Musk, whom she called a modern-day Thomas Edison, to see that 'Trump is not the problem here.' She confessed the situation 'makes me sad,' and solemnly claimed she 'talked to an insider today who said it is irreparable.'
Other Fox News personalities seemed to deny the severity of the two most powerful figures in conservative politics publicly calling each other liars, losers and worse.
'Big deal,' Sean Hannity said. 'They'll work it out eventually, they'll become friends again.'
'There is no split,' declared 'Fox & Friends' co-host Lawrence Jones on Friday morning. 'They're going to bury the hatchet.' He added: 'You've got two strong alpha males that are deep in their convictions and it just exploded online.'
Primetime host Jesse Watters suggested Trump and Musk were 'just blowing off steam' and likened the situation to buddies in a love triangle: 'Guys sometimes will punch you in the face, and the next night you're having beer; sleep with your girlfriend, and you patch things up.'
'Fox & Friends' co-host Ainsley Earhardt made a similar analogy: 'It's just like a relationship,' she said. 'Everyone's been in a relationship where in the very beginning you're crazy about each other, you're talking marriage, you're talking about meeting the family, and then all of a sudden it takes a turn and you don't like each other anymore.'
Surprisingly, the network hasn't shied away from repeating Musk's allegation that Trump is mentioned in the so-called Epstein files, long a subject of right-wing conspiracy theories.
'If Trump was in them, Biden probably would have released them,' Watters asserted. Trump 'was one of the first people to realize just how horrible Epstein really was,' Hannity offered in a defense.
'The Epstein file thing was way over the top, and just crazy to say Trump was in the Epstein files,' Brian Kilmeade said Friday morning. 'What are you doing?' However, Kilmeade was careful to praise Musk's efforts during his time in the Trump administration.
Notably, none of Fox's MAGA-aligned opinion stars explicitly chose a side, instead choosing to believe this is a mere blip in their big, beautiful friendship. It will be interesting to see where they fall should things get even uglier. The safe bet's on Trump, of course.
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