Now you can watch Fox’s conservative hosts on the air – the ones who make the network so profitable – maintain their loyalty to Trump while the news side gently pulls the network into the orbit of political gravity. How deftly the network negotiates that shift more completely – and how soon it does so – will help determine how readily its viewers, the president’s fans and the president himself come to terms with the emerging political reality.

Murdoch’s Fox will always emerge to greet another day. It flourished during the Clinton and Obama administrations. “The news cycle will moderate,” Fox Corp Executive Chairman and CEO Lachlan Murdoch (Rupert’s older son) told investors this week. “We fully expect to be number one and maintain share through that.”

And it’s pretty clear what Fox News would look like under a Biden administration: giving air time to potential Republican presidential hopefuls and attacking Joe and Hunter Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and young progressive House stars, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

As much as Murdoch covets access to power, his media outlets are always most at home in muscular opposition.