Fox host issues warning about Trump lies: He’s a 'master media manipulator'

US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One for travel to South Carolina, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, US, October 29, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

On Thursday, a longtime Fox News contributor warned that “Trump Exhaustion Syndrome” has the media ignoring President Donald Trump’s most serious controversies. According to Howard Kurtz, who spent 12 years hosting a popular show on Fox until it was cancelled shortly after he confronted Trump about his lies in an interview during the 2024 campaign, the president is a “master media manipulator” who is grinding down the press’s ability to expose the worst of his transgressions.

“As I look at a decade of coverage of the man who loves all things gold,” writes Kurtz, “I have to conclude that many journalists are suffering from Trump Exhaustion Syndrome.” This condition, he asserts, “involves throwing up your hands and abandoning basic fact-checking,” because “what the hell, everyone knows Trump says lots and lots of things that are untrue.” According to Kurtz, who emphasizes that he is “not anti-Trump,” much of the problem is driven by the impulse to produce stories that will get a lot of attention on social media. “Why do a second-day story analyzing what the president did or said,” he muses, “when the hot story is Trump praising Nicki Minaj and her beautiful butt?”

According to Kurtz, these clickbait stories end up taking coverage from Trump’s more dangerous behavior, and there are clear examples. As Kurtz elaborates, “The other day, the president came out and said he had ordered the Justice Department to intervene in the crazy Alaska election. It was right there. He didn’t hide it. Pronounced it out in the open. I know the widespread belief that the department was doing his bidding — charging James Comey a third time? For younger readers, there used to be a brick wall between the White House and DOJ. If Joe Biden had breached that wall only once, he would have been impeached, convicted and behind bars. As a former Justice Department reporter, I can tell you that divide hasn’t been pulverized since Watergate, when AG John Mitchell went to prison.” By the next day, however, the press had moved on.

”That’s Trump Exhaustion Syndrome in action,” writes Kurtz, explaining, “Trump is a master media manipulator. He has known, since I was in New York writing about his exploits as a combative developer, how to distract the press from an unfavorable story, and he’s acknowledged as much to me.” When Trump says “Norway sucks” and rages about not getting the Nobel Prize, for example, he knows it will make news. The same goes for his comments about the bodies of Nicki Minaj or Republican candidates. “He understands most of the press will take the bait,” says Kurtz, though he does admit that “sometimes Trump just gets carried away at rallies.”

Whatever the case, Trump’s less important actions “tend to squeeze out other stories.” According to Kurtz, “When he ordered the raid on Ilhan Omar’s home — abandoning the longstanding justice practice of doing nothing to influence politics in a campaign’s last 60 days — Trump created a major, important news story, no question about it.” Even so, the press has given less and less attention to the president’s repeated flimsy attempts to prosecute his political opponents. Urging his colleagues in the press not to give in to this impulse, Kurtz concludes, “By convincing themselves there’s no point in challenging him because he constantly lies, many are indeed suffering from Trump Exhaustion Syndrome.”

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