October saw the departure from Fox News of Shepard Smith, a prominent "hard news" reporter who frequently got under the skin of President Donald Trump and his supporters by fact-checking the president's most outlandish claims.
But Smith was not the only host in the Fox sphere who has become critical of the president. Another is Fox Business' "Your World" host Neil Cavuto, whose Trump-critical stance was profiled by Maxwell Tani in The Daily Beast.
Cavuto, a longtime conservative reporter who has been with Fox News since its founding, was not an obvious candidate to defy his network's narrative and challenge the president. He and Trump have gotten on well on-air — in 2009, they amicably discussed the recession together, and in 2011 Cavuto remarked of Trump, "I admire a guy who never forgets a slight. He's built a career on it, and he's laid waste to anyone who dare forget it, or him." He even praised Trump's widely-mocked picture of himself eating a taco bowl at Trump Tower on Cinco de Mayo in 2016, calling it an "olive branch" to the Mexican people.
Yet even at the time, there were signs all was not well. According to Tani, Trump privately "despised" Cavuto for not getting on board with his presidential campaign more quickly. After he took office, Cavuto also began to criticize him for failing to rein in the national debt and for enacting a trade war. He has also grown frustrated with Trump's juvenile schoolyard bully tactics, blasting his ongoing attacks on the late Sen. John McCain and saying during one segment, "You've been too busy draining the swamp to ever stop and smell the stink you're creating. That's your doing. That's your stink."
Cavuto also drew a great deal of national attention after he stood up for his network's right to be independent from the president, saying, "I don't work for you. My job is to cover you, not fawn over you or rip you, just cover you."
Trump has not yet directed any Twitter rage against Cavuto, as he once did against Smith on a routine basis. But with such little opposition to Trump remaining at the network, he could well become a target before long.
