Fox News Controls Over Half of Cable News Viewership — Democrats Can't Afford to Ignore That

Why would I deceive you? I've never been this real.

And I'm Jessica Tarlov.

It's a sharp turn for a candidate who called the same tariffs necessary just a few weeks ago. And it comes as Rogers trails Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in a race that could decide control of the Senate. Here's his new clip.

Drinking a Labatt's and watching the Red Wings, man, it just doesn't get any more Michigan than that. And here in Michigan, we know that Canada is not our enemy. We need to end this tariff war. Now, as Michigan senator, I'll bring both parties together to lower your prices. That's job number one. And Abdul, he wants to hit Michigan families with a $3,000 tax increase, the biggest in history. I'm Mike Rogers, and I approve this message because I'll actually put dollars back in your pocket.

He's lying. Feels desperate. No.

Oh, definitely desperate. But I get offended by lying. I guess I should probably find a new world to function in outside of politics if it's something that really gets to me. And I'm not sure if this would actually work better. But the fact that politicians never apologize for anything, they just decide to pivot and ignore their track records, like statements they've made on the record, votes that they've taken. You know, they're out there now like Mike Rogers and Ashley Hinson in Iowa, you know, the war in Iran and it's got to end right now. It's like you're voting for all of this crap, right? And why should someone take you seriously under 30 days out from an election when we have a bevy of votes and statements to back up the idea that you don't really believe anything that's coming out of your mouth right now? And this $3,000 tax hike, which I see no indication obviously that is what's going to happen from Abdul's plans. He doesn't mention the fact that the big beautiful bill was only a tax cut for very rich people and that if you are going to end up paying more with a progressive in office, it's likely because they're doing things like trying to deliver health care for you. It's just I don't like it. I will say though that this race is closer than I think maybe even Abdul's camp feels about it. There was this big CNN piece about how confident he is and that he needs to continue to work to put together the coalition to get Black voters, Jewish voters, traditional Democratic voters into his tent. And Elissa Slotkin only won the race against Mike Rogers by 22,000 votes in 2024. And that was a very red year. And this should by all expectations be a very blue year. But Mike Rogers is not a Ken Paxton. He is a much, much, much better candidate and we take it really seriously. But he's also lying.

He's inoffensive.

No, I'm That's it. I was just, you know, I have that rhetorical flourish that happens after I say the thing that I meant to say. He's inoffensive, you know, like

No, no. There are a bunch of very high quality polls that have it at one to one and a half points, which is a jump ball, right? These are margin of error races and five points would be great. The New York Times Siena poll had him up five, but Fox had him up one. Quantus had him one and a half. YouGov about the same margin. It's going to be close. This is how these states work, right? It's a purple state. And Jocelyn Benson is going to be a big help. She's at the top of the ticket running for governor. And John James, who's running on the Republican side, isn't a particularly fantastic candidate. I actually think Mike Rogers is much better than him. But this is going to be really tight and I don't feel great about Maine at this point either. So I know that Maine has a flip and Michigan as a hold, but those were when we were going into the midterms originally. You know, Maine was all roads run through Maine and now we're like all roads run through North Carolina and Texas. You know, it's a different field.

Yeah, agreed.

And she's actually up in a few polls versus 2020 when Sara Gideon was leading her in all of the polls. And then Susan Collins won by eight points. And you know, it's six years later, there's the Brett Kavanaugh vote. She votes with Donald Trump 95% of the time. She definitely reads as older and more frail. But I'm not sure that Troy Jackson is particularly compelling to people. You know, Graham Platner had an enormous amount of problems. But connecting with people was not one of them with voters, you know, and people he was that big booming voice and felt like the genuine article to people and and Troy Jackson, you know, he's a bit dorky by comparison.

I feel like that's me at Orangetheory or whenever I tell my girlfriends that I'll go with them to these classes. The online chatter about how he should come to like a hardcore reformer Pilates class with a bunch of moms has been my favorite discourse since that's the demo that I'm in. But if you are up on stage last week going after the beardos and the weirdos and the fatties and then you're behind everyone in the run and what is that what is it crab walk? What is that called when you're

He looks ridiculous doing it.

He's definitely he's hitting that age where he's forgetting that he's aging and he's not as strong as he he thinks he is. And you know, somewhere there's a there's a sailor just back from this deployment who didn't have food for three weeks and then sees him doing box jumps and thinks, 'Okay, problem solved.' I, you know, glad that's been cleared up. Definitely feels like that's kind of the wrong the wrong focus here.

Well, I think also I mean the timing is funny that Trump is out there talking about how Iran should nuke San Diego and then the Secretary of Defense is out there huffing and puffing with some folks that are training there. But I do think this reporting from The Atlantic so far and I'm sure it will become more widespread that the Trump administration is considering military action in Iran, you know, very soon as their October surprise to try to get us on war footing mode is a very big deal and I certainly wouldn't put it past them. You know, the price tag of gas is not fitting with the amount of oil that's actually getting out through the Strait of Hormuz. Now, it's still hovering about 30 to 40% above where you would expect it to be. And that is because of how much it costs to actually get the oil out. And I would imagine that Iran is about to get very desperate in terms of maintaining an upper hand and that the Trump administration likewise is about to get very desperate as they see writing on the wall for at the very least, you know, a good night for Democrats in the House, but potentially, you know, even in the Senate.

Well, I would just say two things vis-à-vis what could go right. I mean, we have made it clear that we're not going in full scale and that, you know, it's quote unquote time for the Iranian people to rise up like, well, they already tried that and we said help is on the way and then 50,000 of their people were slaughtered. So, this isn't just what we're doing. It also depends on action from everyday Iranians who I think are rightly so concerned that they will have absolutely no backup from us because we don't have an appetite for it even if Marco Rubio and Hegseth and Trump do for instance. Americans are clearly not in the business of tolerating this and are going to vote accordingly and Iran wants to run out the clock on it as much as they can. The second thing to your point about the oil levels and yes we are around pre-war levels but the cost of this is absolutely crippling you know what it takes to get one of these tankers insured and Iran had been playing coy and Iran had basically been holding their fire letting ships go through and now the amount of attacks on tankers getting through is going up and up and up. Not the ones going to Iraq, not the ones going to allies, but the ones that are going to actually help the Western world get their energy prices under control, maybe bring down the price of oil at the pump. And I I don't see that getting better. And the lunatics, which is what we have on the other side, are still holding a tremendous amount of cards for making this as difficult as possible. And in the back of their mind, you know, they're still releasing those Lego videos and they've got their eye on November 3rd the same way all of us do here.

Yeah. Yeah. It's good. All good points. All fair points.

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You literally voted in Kansas in 2018 and in 20 and in 22. You registered to vote in Iowa less than two years ago. It'll be coming up next month. And on the objection, this is not about why you're in Kansas. This is about the fact that you're not in Iowa. There are 3.1 million people who live here and they need to have a full-time Iowa governor. It's just not true. You have no evidence of that. And you cite things you said I'll be in Iowa as much as human.

Again, this is a great thing to be able to address. That was directly about my children. That was directly about my children. Any family that has a blended family knows what I'm talking about. That that quote was directly about my children.

Imagine my surprise when I learned that one of my constituents is running for governor. Not here in his home state of Kansas, but two states over in Iowa. Now, generally I support Kansas, but in the Iowa's governor's race, I'm supporting the Iowa. Zach, there are no hard feelings, but it is time to come back to Kansas.

Rob Sand is Iowa as it comes, and he has run this brilliant campaign where people can't even really figure out what party he belongs to, which is exactly how you take on a red state. I mean, putting aside the Celina and, you know, betting market ads, this guy is up in some polls 10 plus points in Iowa and it is helping Josh Turk as well immensely, the Senate candidate who's phenomenal, but is not running the kind of race that Rob Sand is at the top of the ticket.

I I mean, the governor's race, it's uh there was there's been a lot of reporting and swirl about how donors aren't paying as much attention to governor's races. Like, everyone's just obsessed with the Senate because Yeah, because Ted Cruz is this shiny toy, of course, and and we have likewise been obsessed. And that governor's races that they have the potential to actually in some ways affect policy even more. And it was very exciting. I saw that on the ActBlue, you know, the top five donations or campaigns that money is going to that Jon Ossoff came out of that and part of that is he has a ton of money and the GOP is even pulling out of Georgia and North Carolina because it needs to triage Kansas. There's also a crazy story. Did you know that Mike Collins, who's running against Jon Ossoff in Georgia, he has like a white nationalist influencer son-in-law and now they're talking about like KKK ties. So that's all that's all well and good. So I think Jon Ossoff's going to be fine. But now Gina Ortiz Jones who's running for governor in Texas has moved into the top five in terms of ActBlue donations and Rob Sand is also very popular with people giving so individually. So I think that's a good thing. And then the big donors should also be paying attention for this because they just don't have the kind of money that the Senate candidates have. I think Gina had something like $4 million on hand. You know, I think it's a big line in the sand and a big shot across the Republicans' bow if you have a Rob Sand win and by that commanding a level that the way that they have been governing is just unacceptable. And Ted Cruz said it or the first time I heard him say it was when we were in Austin with him. Many has since said it many times and I think it's a very potent talking point which is not trying to turn Texas or Iowa blue trying to turn it purple and just give people divided government which is what the Constitution wanted for us and the ability to see people actually working together across party lines to be able to do what's best for insert state Iowa Texas North Carolina etc. So I I'm very excited about it. I think he's a a made-in-a-lab quality candidate.

Well, we have been celebrating. We had a nice party yesterday. We're doing all these old packages on The Five. We ran some of it and co-hosts were making a lot of fun of me. 2014 was not my best look. I had not mastered the right the right effects. I guess

I look just fine, but they were saying like no was single. I did have a boyfriend, which that whatever. Jesse looked the worst out of everyone and he admitted that it was some blend of a a 9/11 hijacker and just like a greasy frat boy. But, you know, I think that one of the more important takeaways from the size of the audience is how important it is for Democrats to be showing up here and to be doing these interviews. And Abdul obviously is, you know, the big name that's been doing it with Jesse Watters and then Martha MacCallum earlier this week. And you even see the difference like Mike Rogers was on with Martha the day after. I think his interview was like about 10 minutes. Abdul went 25 minutes and he went 25 with Jesse as well.

Well, they talk about in business school discovering a white space and that is just an enormous opportunity in terms of positioning a brand or a value proposition where the space just isn't occupied. And I think Rupert Murdoch arguably discovered one of the biggest white spaces in the history of media. And that is he said he looked at media and said these are all a bunch of liberal overeducated people from the same universities all center-left or very left and there's nothing for the right other than AM radio. And he put together, you know, Fox launched and said we're going to go hard right. We're going to be more entertainment than news. And it has I mean there's just no doubt about it. It's it's probably been the most successful media company or media offering of the last 30 or 40 years in terms of discovering an underrepresented audience. I mean, they now have over 50% of the entire cable news audience. And that's it's it's not even a ratings race anymore. It's a monopoly with competitors still showing up to the race out of habit. It's like when Facebook highlights Pinterest and Snap as competitors. I think they do that to such that the FTC, they're never accused of antitrust. So, it's not the question isn't should Democrats go on Fox. It's like saying should Democrats go on Joe Rogan? They kind of have to now.

And also, I think one of the big boxes you need to check to be taken seriously as a candidate is can you go behind enemy lines? Can you go on these shows and do well? And I personally think no one's better at this than Mayor Pete and Governor Newsom. I think they are very good at going on Fox. And then there's other people refuse to go on because they they you know, has AOC gone on Fox? No, she I don't I don't think that she's going to

Yeah. Well, I mean, some of it is just a a sheer numbers game, right? Like if you have an audience that size. But yeah, I mean, for The Five, we're 20% Democrats, 30% independents, and then 50% Republican. But that's everything from MAGA to Romney Republicans.

I don't know. I mean, the average cable news viewer is 67 to 69. That good-looking young fella. Um, I don't know what that makes me happy. Uh, anyways, happy birthday, Jess. Happy birthday.

I like happy anniversary more than happy birthday.