On many mornings, Trump’s first tweets are directly related to whatever is airing or has recently aired on “Fox and Friends,” a pattern so firmly cemented at this point that the default assumption on any given morning is that if Trump is suddenly tweeting about an unexpected topic, it was covered on Fox News within the prior hour. But often Trump leaves no question about that link, directly mentioning Fox News or “Fox and Friends” in his tweets.
We looked at 135 examples of his doing so over the course of 2018, including only tweets with such direct mentions (and excluding tweets where he mentions specific Fox News hosts that he happens to be watching). Thirty-four of those tweets were plugs for upcoming Fox New coverage, usually interviews with himself or his allies. Thirty-nine, though, were tweets amplifying Fox’s coverage of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe into Russian interference or the FBI investigation on which that probe was built. Ten dealt with immigration; 12 with the economy. Another 13 were expressions of thanks for people who appeared on the network to offer praise for Trump.