It’s not hard to understand the show’s appeal. While the rest of the media frets and wails over Trump’s policies and sounds the alarm over his tweets, “Fox & Friends” remains unrelentingly positive. It’s pitched to the frequency of the Trump base, but it also feels intentionally designed for Trump himself—a three-hour, high-definition ego fix. For a president who no longer regularly receives adulation from screaming crowds at mega rallies, “Fox & Friends” offers daily affirmation that he is successful and adored, that his America is winning after all.
Psychology suggests that the program’s particular trappings have effects on viewers that go beyond ego stroking. The fast pace, the cheerfulness and the breezy confidence are a combination tailor-made for maximum persuasion, experts say. “If I tuned in to watch that show, I would feel simultaneously happy, reassured and smart,” says Dannagal Young, a professor at the University of Delaware who studies the way people process political information. “When we are feeling happy and people are smiling around us, it ignites a primal response that is, ‘Things are good! Things are great! I don’t have to be careful. I don’t have to think carefully.’” The show is a ticket to a kind of self-perpetuating state of complacency, where its 1.7 million viewers become less likely to question their own beliefs and more likely to come back for more.
For an everyday voter blinking awake at 6 a.m. in uncertain, hyperpartisan times, that state of mind has obvious allure, and maybe minimal consequences. But for the leader of the free world—someone who should, in theory, crave truth more than affirmation—a “Fox & Friends” obsession is a different matter altogether.
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