Trump whisperer leads MAGA revolt against Fox News after White House 'betrayal'

Far-right activist Laura Loomer is leading a wing of the MAGA base in turning on Fox News, accusing the network of betraying President Donald Trump by joining a rare five-network boycott of White House television coverage.

"Fox News betrayed the President by joining the boycott," Loomer wrote on X, before predicting the network's hosts "will come groveling back to President Trump begging him to promote their crappy books on Truth Social."

She was reacting to an extraordinary show of media solidarity with Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN all pulling their cameras from White House pool duty Monday after Trump banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the press corps. In a joint statement, the networks said no administration should punish an outlet over its reporting.

Loomer wasn't alone, with conservative radio host Todd Starnes fuming that there was "absolutely no difference between the newsrooms at Fox and CNN," and posts branding Fox a "Traitor Network" spread across the MAGA right.

The backlash exposed a deep fracture on the right, as some prominent conservatives aimed their fire at Trump rather thanFox.

The network's own Brit Hume warned that if Trump "thinks this will lead to more favorable coverage, I think he's dreaming." Conservative legal scholar Jonathan Turley, a frequent Trump defender, called the ban an "assault on long-honored principles of a free press." Former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer chimed in: "Don't ban them. Or one day they'll ban us."

Loomer, for her part, argued the episode proved a pattern of impunity. "There's never any consequences for any of these people," she wrote. "The worst people are always rewarded."

She traced the grudge to election night 2020, when Fox's early call of Arizona for Joe Biden enraged Trump and briefly ruptured his bond with his favorite channel. "We should have all learned our lesson with Fox News on election night, 2020," she wrote.

New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker underscored the political sting of the blackout, posting on X that the boycott "will leave the most TV-addicted president in our history without major network cameras recording his every utterance and movement."

And New York Times media reporter Ben Mullin called the joint action almost unheard of in the modern era of press coverage.

"This kind of joint response from the major networks, combined with the suspension of the TV pool, is very unusual," he wrote online. "An extraordinary show of solidarity from the press."