Roger Ailes and Marco Rubio’s alliance has turned sour, and the Fox News chairman is no longer backing the Florida senator. According to reports, the media titan and his network believe that the candidate for president no longer has a viable path to win the nomination of the Republican party.
For months, the media has been buzzing about right-leaning cable news network Fox News secretly rooting for a candidate in the primary season. Fox News and its chief Roger Ailes allegedly settled on Marco Rubio, a young and talented senator from Florida, who was seen by many in the Republican party as the best chance to defeat Hillary Clinton, the odds-on favorite for the Democratic party’s nomination.
Things were going fine until Donald Trump, a real estate mogul from New York, decided to run for the same position. Trump’s style and persona changed the trajectory of the race and Rubio’s potential never became reality. After mostly enjoying positive coverage on the network, the senator has been receiving more criticism in recent days. Moreover, reports are now suggesting that it is over for him at Fox News. According to New York magazine‘s Gabriel Sherman:
In his role as the donor class’s darling, Marco Rubio has enjoyed support from the Republicans’ media arm, Fox News. Throughout the primary, Fox provided Rubio with friendly interviews and key bookings, including the first prime-time response to Barack Obama’s Oval Office address on ISIS. Many of the network’s top pundits, including Stephen Hayes and Charles Krauthammer, have been enthusiastic boosters. Bill Sammon, Fox’s Washington managing editor, is the father of Rubio’s communications director, Brooke Sammon.
Sherman added:
But this alliance now seems to be over. According to three Fox sources, Fox chief Roger Ailes has told people he’s lost confidence in Rubio’s ability to win. “We’re finished with Rubio,” Ailes recently told a Fox host. “We can’t do the Rubio thing anymore.”
Although it is easy to link the change in attitude with Rubio’s electoral failure, things are a little bit more complicated. Apparently, Ailes was not happy after New York Times revealed that in 2013, Rubio asked the network not to go after his immigration reform bill to help its chances of success. The bill never became law, but the Fox News chief does not like to see his name in the media, especially when it is not flattering. The network is supposedly looking for a new “darling” to support in the coming weeks.
Is it over for Marco Rubio and Roger Ailes?
