Former press secretary to the former US President Donald Trump, Stephanie Grisham, reveals that the White House experienced challenges due to Fox News hosts' direct influence on Trump, reported the Washington Post.
 
“There were times the president would come down the next morning and say, ‘Well, Sean thinks we should do this,’ or, ‘Judge Jeanine thinks we should do this,’ ” mentioned Grisham, in reference to prime-time Fox News shows hosts, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro.

Grisham resigned from the White House after the January 6 Capitol riots attacks and has written a book critical of Trump.

Tightly entwined

According to the Washington Post, text messages between Fox News hosts and former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, newly released by the House select committee investigating the Capitol storming show "how tightly Fox News and the White House were entwined during the Trump years, with many of the network’s top hosts serving as a cable cabinet of unofficial advisers." 

The released data mentioned that Meadows received texts from Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade, and Sean Hannity during the Capitol storming.
 
“Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” Ingraham texted Meadows. “This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”

However, on her TV show, Ingraham "whitewashed" the January 6 events, in defense of Trump.

Similarly, Kilmeade requested that Trump go on TV and call off the rioters.

“Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol,” Hannity asked Meadows.
 
Hannity offered the White House advice in the January 6 aftermath that left five dead.

Mutual influence

The Washington Post quoted a former senior administration official as saying that "Trump would also sometimes dial Hannity and Lou Dobbs — whose Fox Business show was canceled in February — into Oval Office staff meetings."

Trump even embraced Sidney Powell, an attorney promoting Trump’s voter fraud claims, after seeing her on Dobbs’s show, underlined Michael Pillsbury, an informal Trump adviser.

Similarly, the White House aides were also trying to influence Fox when it comes to governmental decisions.

"They knew if they could get Fox hosts to echo their goals on air, that would help sway the president," the newspaper mentioned.

"Public checks on power, not private advisers"

Jeff Cohen, author of “Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media,” said Fox News hosts and commentators have always shown their close contact with the White House.

The author stressed that journalists "are supposed to be public checks on power, not private advisers to power."

“A commentator is still a journalist, and even if the commentator doesn’t consider him or herself to be a journalist, they still have to tell the public when they played a role in something they’re commenting on,” he added.

Since leaving office, Trump has complained about Fox's negative election coverage about him, but has kept close contact with the network's hosts, the Washington Post revealed.