On election night, President Trump posted that Fox News ratings are "way down (27%!)" because the network spends "too much time covering the Trump Deranged Dumocrats." The 27% is real, and Nielsen data for October confirms it. What the numbers do not do is say why viewers left, and the donation list in the same post is only half the picture of where Fox's PAC money goes.
What did Trump actually post?
Two posts on Truth Social, both archived on Trump's Truth. The first ran at 7:00 p.m. ET on Nov. 3, before most polls closed. The second ran at 11:52 p.m. and named a guest, former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, before concluding that Fox "bears responsibility for these losses." Here is the core language, copied from the archive.
Primary source
Donald Trump, Truth Social, Nov. 3, 2026, 7:00 p.m. and 11:52 p.m. ET, via the Trump's Truth archive.
"FoxNews Ratings are way down (27%!) because they're spending too much time covering the Trump Deranged Dumocrats! ... They're way down, not because of me, but because they are AGAINST me!" — Trump, 7:00 p.m.
"FoxNews bears responsibility for these losses by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition, and worse." — Trump, 11:52 p.m.
Is the 27% number right?
Yes, with a label. Adweek's Nielsen tally for October has Fox News down 27% in total-day total viewers against October 2025, to about 1.10 million. In prime time it fell 28% to 1.675 million, and among adults 25-54 the prime-time drop was 36%. MS NOW and CNN both grew in prime time, by 13% and 19%.
Fox is still far ahead. Its 1.675 million prime-time viewers beat MS NOW (925,000) and CNN (598,000) combined, which by my arithmetic is 1.52 million. Adweek's report gives no reason for any of the changes.
Did viewers leave Fox for the Democrats' side?
The data points the other way. Using Adweek's rounded percentages, Fox lost roughly 400,000 total-day viewers from October 2025, while MS NOW gained about 85,000 and CNN about 15,000. That is my calculation, not Adweek's, and rounding makes it approximate. It fits what Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch said on a Nov. 2 earnings call, as relayed by CNN's Brian Stelter, the Financial Times via TV Insider and the Daily Caller: "viewer fatigue," and viewers who are "not going to any other news channel." I could not open those outlets' full text, so the Murdoch wording is secondhand.
Neither Trump's explanation nor Murdoch's is something Nielsen can prove. Election night itself was close. Barrett Media, citing Nielsen's preliminary numbers, has Fox at 3.88 million viewers, third among the three cable networks, about 50,000 behind CNN and MS NOW. NBC led all six networks at 6.52 million.
Is Fox Corp. really funding those Democrats?
Partly, and not only them. I pulled the itemized disbursements of Fox's PAC from the Federal Election Commission's record for committee C00693002. The money exists. The PAC gave $2,500 each to Hakeem Jeffries and Ted Lieu in December 2025, $1,000 to Jamie Raskin in September 2025, $5,000 to Pete Aguilar across two gifts, and $30,000 each to the DCCC and DSCC over 2025 and 2026. The Congressional Black Caucus PAC, CHC Bold PAC and New Democrat Coalition Action Fund each got $10,000. I did not find a payment to the California Democratic Party in this PAC's federal filings, so that item is unconfirmed.
The same filings show Republican recipients. The PAC gave the NRSC $30,000 and the NRCC $20,000, and put $40,000 into Speaker Mike Johnson's leadership fund. By my tally of contributions the FEC tags by party, about $214,000 went to Republican-tagged committees and $170,000 to Democratic-tagged ones, with another $139,000 to untagged leadership and trade PACs. The data I could retrieve ends with an Aug. 14, 2026 entry, so later gifts may be missing.
President Trump in the Oval Office on Nov. 17, 2025. Official White House photo via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
What about the CNN poll and Fox's reply?
Trump's post cites a "new CNN Poll" with himself at 53% among Republican presidents, ahead of Reagan at 18% and Lincoln at 8%. Those numbers match a CNN segment from late August on a poll fielded in May, according to Just the News, so "new" is a stretch. Another outlet names a different pollster, and I found no source for his "99% among Republicans" figure.
Fox anchor Bret Baier answered the polling jab on air, saying the results were "pretty close to what the Fox polls showed," per Stelter's account. Fox had not publicly answered the ratings post in anything I found. Trump's 27% is accurate. The cause he attached to it is the one part of the post nobody has shown.
Header photo: Fox News Channel's headquarters on Sixth Avenue, Manhattan, December 2009. Jim.henderson via Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
