There’s a lot you can say about Dana Perino, the Bush White House press secretary who wears multiple hats at Fox News. She co-anchors a “news side” show weekday mornings, co-hosts an “opinion side” broadcast in the afternoons and has a podcast on Fox News Radio.
Fox News Media noted all these jobs and more in a news release Wednesday announcing that Perino will co-moderate the “second GOP primary debate hosted by FOX Business” on Sept. 27, alongside Fox Business host Stuart Varney and Univision anchor Ilia Calderón. But the release said nothing about her role on Fox Business, because, outside of occasional appearances as a commentator, it doesn’t exist.
The network’s ratings were disastrous until it began mimicking Fox News.
Fox executives had a rare opportunity to promote the talent Fox Business offers to a wider audience. So why did they end up concluding the channel, which airs 13 hours of live programming every weekday, employed only one person they were comfortable with moderating a Republican presidential debate? The answer becomes clearer as you consider the network’s history and review the ranks of what functions as Fox News’ B team.
When Rupert Murdoch launched Fox Business in 2007, he pitched it as a more “business-friendly” rival to CNBC. But the network’s ratings were disastrous until it began mimicking Fox News by embracing Donald Trump and his style of right-wing political and cultural war bomb-throwing. (CNBC, MSNBC and NBC News are part of the NBC Universal News Group.)
Lou Dobbs became Fox Business’ biggest star by producing a nightly broadcast my colleague Simon Maloy described as “insane, counterfactual propaganda delivered with maximum outrage and designed to portray Donald Trump as a near-infallible demigod.” At one point, Dobbs’ pro-Trump sycophancy led him to close his show by telling his viewers: “Have a great weekend. The president makes such a thing possible for us all.”
“Lou Dobbs Tonight” became the network’s highest-rated show. But Fox Business canceled it in early 2021 after Dobbs pushed a wide array of deranged conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election — conspiracy theories that led to major defamation suits against Fox. Yet Fox Business continues to function as a sort of adjunct to Fox News, producing similar right-wing content with less talented hosts for a smaller audience with occasional spasms of business programming.
Varney epitomizes Fox Business’ approach, which makes him perhaps the perfect moderator for a GOP debate focused on economic issues. He’s a callous class warrior for the rich who loves Trump’s tax cuts and hates policies that benefit the working class and the poor, who he says “have things — what they lack is the richness of spirit.”
Varney’s three-hour weekday show pairs such right-wing takes on economic policies with right-wing takes on everything else: He has speculated that Democrats may be letting immigrants in to change “the ethnic balance of the country,” asserted that climate change is fake and claimed in 2019 that Trump had never “told the American people a lie.”
And crucially, his show actually airs on Fox Business. But finding another host besides Varney who meets that low bar proved too difficult. That’s not so surprising when you realize that aside from Varney, the Fox Business talent pool has bigger problems.
Aside from Varney, the Fox Business talent pool has bigger problems.
Neil Cavuto and Maria Bartiromo, both FBN veterans who host shows on the network, co-moderated the channel’s Republican primary debates during the 2016 cycle. But filings in Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox point to potential issues for both.
Cavuto, the network’s senior vice president and the managing editor of business news across Fox News and Fox Business, drew criticism from Fox’s executives and its right-wing stars for being overtly critical of the Trump team’s lies about a stolen election. Fox Corp.’s brand team identified Cavuto to Fox leadership as a “Brand Threat.” Jesse Watters, now ensconced in Fox News’ flagship 8 p.m. hour, said Cavuto should be replaced with pro-Trump “fresh blood.” Fox Business may no longer consider Cavuto politically reliable enough to host a GOP debate.
Bartiromo has the opposite problem — once celebrated for her financial journalism at CNBC, she reinvented herself after Trump’s election, turning her Fox Business show into a vehicle for abject Trump boosterism and baroque conspiracy theories. Notably, she launched Fox’s campaign against Dominion with an interview with Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who falsely alleged that the company had “used an algorithm to calculate the votes they would need to flip” from Trump to Joe Biden to secure a Biden victory and then had done so. Dominion’s legal filings show that Bartiromo booked Powell after Powell forwarded her an email from the source of her information, who claimed in the missive: “I was internally decapitated, and yet, I live. ... The Wind tells me I’m a ghost, but I don’t believe it.” Fox executives and hosts alike were appalled by the interview, communications revealed in the Dominion filings also show.
Trish Regan and Sandra Smith, who co-moderated a GOP undercard debate during the 2016 cycle, are no longer on Fox Business. Fox cut ties with Regan in March 2020 after an on-air rant, in which she called the coronavirus a “scam” Trump’s enemies had cooked up in “yet another attempt to impeach the president,” went viral. And Smith, who was initially hired away from Bloomberg Television as a Fox Business reporter, had already garnered a slot on the Fox News panel show “Outnumbered” at the time of the 2015 debate. She now co-anchors a two-hour “news side” broadcast on the bigger network, just like Perino.
Larry Kudlow is probably the Fox Business host with the highest profile, but Republican presidential candidates might balk at having their debate moderated by a longtime Trump economic adviser. Charles Payne would be a rare Fox moderator of color — but he would draw negative attention for his reported complaints to Fox executives that the network’s coverage of Black people is racist and that he personally had “been the victim of racial discrimination, repeatedly passed over for opportunities given instead to white colleagues.” Others at Fox Business are either totally unknown outside its hallways or known for the wrong reason, as in the case of reality television star-turned-GOP congressman-turned-network host Sean Duffy.
And so Perino, who doesn’t work for Fox Business, will end up moderating its debate.
Meanwhile, the network’s story presents a dismal lesson for the Republican candidates who will appear on its stage in hope of dethroning Trump as the party’s nominee. Fox Business was supposed to attract an audience that appreciated the GOP’s standard pro-corporate messaging — but the viewers materialized only after it pivoted to producing Trump hagiography and the hard-edged political and cultural warfare he reveled in. If that’s the audience that tunes in for the debate, the best way to win converts will be to fire off conspiracy theories and reckless hagiography — and even that probably won’t pry them from the former president’s grasp.