For a long time, it seemed that Donald Trump could do no wrong in Fox News’ books. However, even though the network has typically given the president overwhelmingly positive coverage, there have also been some signs that not everyone is team Trump — and no, we’re not just talking about those whose personal politics don’t align with the MAGA movement.
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Rather, we’re looking into the Fox stars who seem not to love Trump behind the scenes, but first things first, a note on the aforementioned anchor who is openly critical of him. Of course, we’re talking about Jessica Tarlov. Far from being an untold truth, Tarlov is a vocal Democrat, and she’s called out the president on-air on a number of occasions (who could forget the time she compared him to her toddler?). However, she’s also responded to his more personal attacks on her, which had less to do with her behavior and more to do with things she had no control over, like her voice, which he called “grating and unendurable” on Truth Social. Tarlov responded to his nastiness by telling Bustle that she’d struggled at first to channel her inner Michelle Obama and “go high.” “I definitely went right into the mode of, ‘What can I come up with to get him back?’ It pulls you down into the mud,” she said.
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It bears mentioning that Tarlov also revealed another Fox News personality who may not hate Trump, but who acknowledged how ridiculous the attack on her had been. That’d be Dana Perino, who told her she should look at it this way: “Someone with so much power was paying attention to what I was doing, and I was doing a good enough job that he couldn’t focus on the facts.” Okay, Perino, we see you!
Tucker Carlson says Jennifer Griffin is staunchly anti-Trump
On to another Donald Trump detractor from within Fox News’ camp, next up is Jennifer Griffin. The Fox News Chief National Security correspondent is no stranger to claims that she’s anti-Trump, with Pete Hegseth slamming her as a “Trump hater” on X in February 2025. This, after she reported on a letter asking Hegseth to explain why he required more than $137,000 in upgrades to his home. Hegseth went on to slate Griffin as being overly critical of Trump again in late June 2025, calling her out in a press conference after the U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. “Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst. The one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the president says,” he vented (via Fox News). Granted, he switched gears almost immediately when Griffin pointed out that she’d been the first reporter to break the story and had done so with great attention to all the facts, telling her he appreciated her coverage before swiftly moving on to address the room more generally.
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Unfortunately, Hegseth isn’t the only figure to have complained about Griffin disliking Trump. Another of her former colleagues, Tucker Carlson, has also accused her of being biased against the president, and in an episode of “The Tucker Carlson Show” just days ahead of Hegseth’s embarrassing press conference moment, he didn’t hide how he felt. “Jen Griffin is a liar, but also very liberal. A true Trump hater,” he groused. Carlson added that he’d also tried to have her fired because of it, but the Fox News higher-ups weren’t having it.
Sadly for Carlson, execs didn’t budge. “Boy, you could not touch Jennifer Griffin. I don’t know what that’s about,” he complained. Probably her decades-long track record, but who are we to speculate?
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Tucker Carlson once texted that he hated Donald Trump
It’s fairly ironic that Tucker Carlson is so critical of Jennifer Griffin’s stance on Donald Trump. After all, Carlson’s own relationship with Trump has been called into question on occasion … and if we’re talking about “Trump haters,” well, he used the “H” word himself.
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In 2023, all hell broke loose when Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News and Fox Corp, and a bunch of not-so-warm and fuzzy texts were leaked. Among them were ranty messages from Carlson about Trump, one of which read, “I hate him passionately” (via The Washington Post). Another saw him describe Trump as “a demonic force, a destroyer” (via The Guardian). Carlson ultimately tried to explain that he’d written the texts while angry over misinformation he’d been given by someone from Trump’s team, which he’d then repeated on air. “I was just — I felt humiliated,” he told WABC Radio (via NBC News). BRB, having flashbacks to Lisa Barlow’s infamous hot mic moment raging at Meredith Marks.
Despite seemingly making nice, Carlson went on to criticize Trump’s second administration in June 2025 for the airstrikes on Iran, going as far as saying Trump was “complicit in the act of war” (via USA Today). That said, in addition to Trump himself revealing that Carlson had apologized to him in a phone call, when he sat down for “The Tucker Carlson Show” later that month (yup, the same episode he called out Griffin in), he also framed it as a simple tiff between besties. “I’ve always liked Trump. Despite getting frustrated, as I do with everyone I love, we get frustrated, but I always liked the guy. A lot, and I still do,” he said. TBH, something tells us Trump was thrilled by the public admission.
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Tucker Carlson says most Fox staff dislike Trump
Sticking with the same episode of “The Tucker Carlson Show,” one particularly juicy detail is that the host claimed the vast majority of his former Fox colleagues actually weren’t fans of Donald Trump. In fact, when it came to anchors and management figures who were in the president’s corner, he named just one.
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“It just bothers me that this channel, run and staffed by Trump haters — they’re not all Trump haters … Sean Hannity likes Trump, good for him. For real, he does — and there are a few other people there who like Trump, but most people hate Trump,” Carlson claimed. In a move that hinted at where he stood with Fox News after his firing (hint: not a great place), Carlson went as far as saying management was entirely opposed to Trump’s politics and had even complained when he had tried to have him on his shows. Without going into much detail, he name-dropped Mark Levin, who Carlson believed had no right to publicly endorse Trump when, behind closed doors, he was singing a different tune. “For him to be like, ‘Oh, I just love Trump, and Trump’s the man if you’re a true patriot’ — No, you’re a Trump hater, and so are your bosses, and so are your colleagues,” he said. Yikes. As for the bosses in question, yep, Carlson name-checked the Murdoch family.
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If Carlson is right and many of the who’s who at Fox News don’t like Trump, they certainly do a good job of keeping that out of the public eye. As for Hannity, the fact that he’s genuinely a fan of the president isn’t exactly surprising. After all, he bought a home near Trump’s back in 2021, and no amount of fakery makes someone do that.
