Donald Trump had a growing problem—and he appeared to know exactly who might help him resolve it.
Katie Zacharia, his newly appointed press secretary, was struggling after only four days in the role. Her rushed appointment increasingly looked like a serious miscalculation. Then, somehow—though the precise chain of events remains unknown—Sean Hannity was apparently given the green light to challenge her during his Fox News program.
Instead of offering the friendly, image-repairing interview Zacharia may have anticipated, Hannity confronted her directly. Why, he asked, had she repeatedly described herself as an attorney? And why had she allowed so few questions?
‘Somebody at the White House set her up for a trap in that interview,’ a senior administration official told the Daily Mail last week, suggesting that the decision most likely came from Trump or his chief of staff, Susie Wiles.
‘It only could have been Susie or the president himself. Nobody else is going to be able to make that call to Hannity.’
Following the chaotic Hannity appearance on Thursday night—and another poor performance the next morning—Trump had the opening he needed to remove Zacharia from the job.
‘You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,’ Trump told Zacharia. ‘Honestly if I were you, I’d reconsider.’
The president made the final decision, while Fox News delivered the damaging blow. But whether Trump was pleased with the network was another matter—at least judging by his public comments.
Donald Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, was already struggling after just four days in office, making the hurried appointment appear increasingly ill-judged
‘Somebody at the White House set her up for a trap in that [Fox] interview,’ a senior administration official told the Daily Mail last week, saying the order likely came from Trump or his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, pictured above in red
After Zacharia’s chaotic Hannity appearance on Thursday and another poor interview Friday morning, Trump had the justification he needed to dismiss her
By Monday morning, the president was openly attacking Fox News.
‘Fox spends more time defending Dumocrats, and putting on their views versus their Republican opponent, than at any time in the History of FoxNews,’ he wrote on Truth Social. ‘It’s ridiculous! FoxNews is trying too hard to be Politically Correct!’
The outburst highlighted just how complicated Trump’s long-running relationship with the network has become.
On October 4, Trump had expressed regret over the departure of Maria Bartiromo, a 12-year Fox News veteran and prominent ally. According to the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, she left after network executives became concerned that she had allegedly shared programming plans with the White House. Bartiromo’s attorney rejected the suggestion that she had been fired, saying at the time that she was ‘still employed by Fox.’
Trump said he missed Bartiromo and used a lengthy Truth Social post to criticize Fox executives who, he claimed, had decided against covering his midterm rallies.
‘Who makes these decisions at Fox News?’ he wrote on Truth Social. ‘Probably the same loser that fired the great Maria Bartiromo because she complained about not being allowed to cover “TRUMP.” She’ll end up bigger and better than ever – watch!’
The question now is which Fox News personalities Trump can count on—and whose loyalty may be more conditional. Here is the Daily Mail’s guide to the network’s best-known stars.
LOYALISTS
AINSLEY EARHARDT
The 50-year-old Fox and Friends co-host, engaged to Sean Hannity, is as loyal to the president as her fiancé, and can be relied on to tamp down any criticism from guests or fellow hosts.
The closest she has come to taking Trump to task was perhaps in June this year, when she asked foreign correspondent Trey Yingst: ‘Trey, what do you say to our viewers who love Donald Trump and support him and trust him… but they’re tired of this, and they see that the midterms are around the corner, they want our economy to get back on track and our gas prices to drop. What do we need to do to get out?’
The president has also made no secret of his admiration for Earhardt, frequently promoting her children’s books and gently teasing her about her relationship with Hannity.
The Fox and Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt is as loyal to the president as her fiancé Sean Hannity and can be relied on to tamp down any criticism from guests or fellow hosts
When the pair announced their engagement, in December 2024, he wrote on social media: ‘Great news about Sean and Ainsley. They are officially engaged to be married! There are no finer people than these, and there will be no finer couple. A deal made in HEAVEN!!!’
SEAN HANNITY
Chief among the high-profile coterie of die-hard Trump loyalists is Sean Hannity, the highest paid news anchor on television, who takes home an estimated $25 million a year.
Hannity, 64, the longest running cable news host in television history, is open about being a friend of the president’s: Earlier this month he told USA Today that he and Trump’s relationship ‘goes back way before he ever thought about politics.’
But he added, his approach as an interviewer is to simply ‘let him talk.’
The pair, both New Yorkers, have known each other for 30 years.
Sean Hannity, the longest running cable news host in television history, is open about being a friend of the president’s
Both New Yorkers, the men have known each other for 30 years
During his first term, Trump was so frequently on the phone to Hannity that his aides referred to the television star as ‘the unofficial chief of staff,’ according to the Washington Post.
One advisor told the paper in 2018: ‘He basically has a desk in the place.’
That close connection is evidently as strong as ever.
JESSE WATTERS
Jesse Watters, 48, is another fierce defender of Trump’s, brushing off the president’s controversial comments as jokes and defending him as a man with a sense of humor.
When Trump, earlier this month, commented approvingly on the physique of Ohio’s incumbent senator, Jon Hustead, Watters leapt to his defense.
‘We’re talking about guys’ a***s,’ said Watters. ‘Trump says a lot of stuff we all think and we don’t say. Sometimes it sounds a little gay. He can get away with it because he’s straight.’
When Trump said he would be ‘a dictator on day one,’ Watters dismissed it as a joke.
And when Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, Watters soothingly said that Trump was ‘a legend no matter what happens.’
The admiration appears mutual.
Jesse Watters is another fierce defender of Trump’s, brushing off the president’s controversial comments as jokes and defending him as a man with a sense of humor
When Trump raged this week against the Washington DC judge who concluded that the Reflecting Pool was left murky by shoddy installation rather than vandalism, Trump said the judge should have watched Watters.
The president wrote on Truth Social that ‘some Radical Left person in the DC US Attorney’s Office’ had ‘got it wrong and obviously didn’t investigate, witness or see the attached tape, or the very inspiring Jesse Watters show which explained it all.’
Yet there is a growing sense, perhaps, that Hannity, Watters and their allies are increasingly outnumbered by those actually willing to challenge Trump.
ON THE FENCE
BRET BAIER
Bret Baier, the widely respected chief political anchor, won plaudits for his June 2023 interview with Trump in which he pressed the then former president about his handling of classified documents.
‘I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out,’ said Trump, effectively admitting he had documents he knew did not belong to him. ‘I don’t want to hand that over to [the National Archives] yet.’
Baier, in a July 2025 discussion with The New Yorker editor David Remnick, laughingly noted that Trump ‘called it a nasty interview afterwards.’
‘I’ve always, every time I’ve interviewed him, taken it as a tough but fair effort,’ said Baier. ‘He has called me – “You know what Bret, you’re a five, four, nowhere near a seven.”‘
Baier, 56, sprang to national prominence following the 9/11 attacks.
At the time he was working as a correspondent in Fox’s Atlanta bureau and was dispatched to the Pentagon. Fox executives were impressed and made him the Pentagon correspondent.
In 2009, he took over the nightly show Special Report from his mentor Brit Hume and has been hosting the hour-long program ever since.
Baier’s close relationship with Trump has seen him come in for criticism, but he insists his rounds of golf with the president give him enviable insight.
Bret Baier’s close relationship with Trump has seen him come in for criticism, but he insists his rounds of golf with the president give him enviable insight
Baier won plaudits for his June 2023 interview with Trump in which he pressed the then former president about his handling of classified documents
‘Tell me the journalist that won’t take the three-hour off-the-record ability to pick the brain of the commander-in-chief, the president, who’s making these big decisions, in an environment that is more relaxed – that perhaps he’s more open to talking about different things, to get you a sense of where his head is in the middle of all these big things,’ said Baier.
‘Tell me that journalist who doesn’t take that, and I’ll say, I don’t know who turns it down.’
Earlier this month, Baier told Vanity Fair that he did not give Trump ‘a pass’ when it came to contentious issues but rather gave him time to explain his opinion.
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‘We definitely have to cover it and have on the critics of how he operates, but also listen to the administration’s side, because what Donald Trump says is one thing, and things that he does are another thing,’ said Baier.
Asked what he makes of Trump’s battle over the Kennedy Center, Baier told the magazine: ‘It’s a fascinating story.’
LAURA INGRAHAM
A former speechwriter for the Reagan administration, Laura Ingraham clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the early 1990s before entering conservative media.
In 1999, ‘just starting out in the media,’ Ingraham met Donald Trump for lunch in New York, she told the Katie Miller podcast.
Ingraham, 63, said she had this idea of Trump as a celebrity with a giant ego, and was ‘just kind of rolling my eyes’ before their meeting at Le Cirque.
‘But I was so shocked that during this lunch he talked nothing about himself,’ said Ingraham. ‘All he wanted to do was find out: how do you make your money in radio? How do you get commercials? He was mapping my whole business out.’
At the end of the lunch, he lent her his car for the afternoon to explore New York – adding: ‘Make sure you take these hand wipes with you, because New York is filthy.’
She told Miller: ‘We still joke about that.’
The two have remained firm friends, with Ingraham being widely discussed as a possible press secretary for his first term.
In December 2016, she said on air: ‘I have known Donald Trump for a long time, and we have been friends for a long time, and I am looking forward to that conversation. It is a great privilege to even be considered.
‘If your country calls you, if God opens that door, you have to seriously consider it. If I can really help, it is hard to say no to that. If I think I can help, which I think I could.’
Trump and Ingraham have remained firm friends – Ingraham was even widely discussed as a possible press secretary for the president’s first term
The job ultimately went to Sean Spicer.
Ingraham, however, remained an influential advisor, regularly consulted by the president – and close to his children.
In October last year it was announced that Ingraham had gone into business with Donald Trump Jr, sitting on the board of investment firm Colombier Acquisition Corp III.
The Connecticut-born host has, however, been critical of the Iran war, asking Trump in an interview at the Republican National Convention how Iran was still able to get missiles.
‘I thought we decimated them?’ she asked him, adding: ‘If we hadn’t done Iran, you’d be cruising to midterm victory.’
HARRIS FAULKNER
Atlanta-born Harris Faulkner, 61, joined Fox News in 2005 and is known as a reliable proponent of the president’s views.
The closest she came to criticism was in 2020, when Trump was angered by the George Floyd protests and unrest, and tweeted: ‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts’.
Harris, in an interview with Trump in June 2020, told him: ‘I’m Harris on TV, but I’m a black woman. I’m a mom. And you’ve talked about it, but we haven’t seen you come out and be that consoler in this instance. And the tweets, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Why those words?’
Harris Faulkner once came close to criticizing Trump in 2020 after he tweeted: ‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts’ in reference to the George Flloyd protests
He said he had heard it from ‘a very tough mayor.’
Faulkner then corrected him.
‘No. It comes from 1967. I was about 18 months old at the time. But it was from the chief of police in Miami. He was cracking down, and he meant what he said. And he said, “I don’t even care if it makes it look like brutality I’m going to crack down, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”‘
‘That frightened a lot of people when you tweeted that.’
CRITICS
BRIAN KILMEADE
One Fox stalwart who has become noticeably more critical of Trump is Brian Kilmeade, who was extremely supportive of the Iran war this spring, and yet is now taking the president to task for his Russia policy.
Kilmeade, 62, who has been at Fox News since its October 1996 birth, strongly condemned last week Trump’s decision to ease sanctions on Russian diesel, accusing the president of appeasing ‘the modern Hitler.’
Kilmeade, fired up, told his rather surprised-looking co-hosts on October 11 that Trump was enabling Vladimir Putin, describing the Russian leader as ‘the cause of all the problems in the region,’ who ‘now is helping Iran, will kill our guys and blow up our bases.’
Kilmeade’s hawkish views on Russia and support for Ukraine are not, in themselves, new.
But his strident condemnation of the president’s actions, with less than a month to go until the midterms, certainly raised eyebrows.
Brian Kilmeade’s strident condemnation of the president’s actions, with less than a month to go until the midterms, has raised eyebrows
Further unwelcome criticism came the following day, when Mark Levin, usually a Trump stalwart, on Monday disavowed Trump’s call for Volodymyr Zelensky to hold elections.
‘When will Putin have real elections?’ wrote Levin on X, retweeting a post from a Hudson Institute academic arguing against demanding elections in Ukraine.
‘He’s been running Russia a lot longer than Zelensky has been president of Ukraine,’ Levin continued. ‘The same can be said about the Arab countries and more.’
JACQUI HEINRICH
Even more strident are reporters Jennifer Griffin who covers the Pentagon, and Jacqui Heinrich who reports from the White House.
Both women are undaunted about taking Trump to task, with Heinrich, 37, infuriating Trump by immediately rebutting his November 2020 claim that the voting machines were rigged against him.
She has continued with her no-holds-barred reporting in the president’s second term, pointedly remarking that the Alaska summit between Trump and Putin of August 2025 did not go well for the US leader.
Jacqui Heinrich infuriated Trump by immediately rebutting his November 2020 claim that the voting machines were rigged against him
‘The way that it felt in the room was not good,’ she said while live on air. ‘It did not seem like things went well, and it seemed like Putin came in and steamrolled, got right into what he wanted to say, and got his photo next to the president and then left.’
Her comments quickly went viral, with John Oliver mockingly noting that Trump ‘held a press conference that went so badly even this Fox News reporter couldn’t put a positive spin on it.’
JENNIFER GRIFFIN
Griffin, 57, has been equally searing, taking Trump to task in recent months over the Iran war.
When a Tomahawk missile hit a girls’ school in Iran on the first day of air strikes, and Trump tried to say perhaps another country used the weapons (the UK, Australia, Netherlands and Japan are the only nations beside the US with Tomahawks), Griffin said that Trump was attempting to ‘muddy the waters.’
Jennifer Griffin has taken Trump to task in recent months over the Iran war
When the administration attempted to subpoena reporters over their stories about the Qatari gift plane and the drama surrounding Air Force One, Griffin said the threats to the journalists ‘should alarm every American.’
Pete Hegseth, the secretary of war, called her a ‘Trump hater.’
MARTHA MACCALLUM
New Jersey-born Martha MacCallum, 62, worked as a financial reporter for Wall Street Journal Television and CNBC before joining Fox in 2004.
Seen as a safe pair of hands, she has throughout both Trump’s terms carved out a niche hosting town halls and debates.
Her questioning has at times angered the president.
In September 2024, asked on Fox and Friends whether he would want to accept Fox’s offer to host a second debate with Kamala Harris, he replied: ‘Well, I wouldn’t want to have Martha and Bret. I’d love to have somebody else other than Martha and Bret. I’d love to have, frankly, Sean or Jesse or Laura. You know, somebody else. Let’s give other people a shot.’
Martha MacCallum’s questioning has at times angered the president
He added: ‘But I didn’t think Martha and Bret were so good last night. Jesse was fantastic last night. What he said, Jesse. Really got it. Jesse said to Trump once: that debate that was, we won that debate by a lot. And I wouldn’t want Martha involved.’
And earlier this month, he was infuriated by MacCallum interviewing Michigan senate contender Abdul el-Sayed, a Democrat.
‘FoxNews spends more time covering the Jihadist and Dumocrat candidates than they do the good old fashioned Republicans, the people that have saved America, and are making it great again,’ he complained on October 6. ‘All they talk about is Dumocrat Jihadists like El-Sayed, with his softball interview by Martha MacCallum, and the like. She never interviews me like that.’
Fox did not respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment.