Donald Trump has always viewed conservative media as a tool to help him and his party achieve political victory and stay in power. But with polls flashing red for his party ahead of next week’s midterm elections, the president and his allies have trained their fire on the most prominent player in the space: Fox News.

For years, the president has criticized Fox’s non-partisan polling operation, and in recent weeks he has called out the network for not sufficiently airing his midterm rallies – even when they are not particularly newsworthy.

The president has also repeatedly taken aim at the network for interviewing Democratic candidates, viewing the presence of the candidates on the channel – even for contentious sit-downs – as disloyal. “FoxNews is spending far too much time putting on the OPPONENTS of Republican Party Candidates, people that love our Country, and have Great Policies and Ideas,” he wrote in a Truth Social post on Sunday. “These American Patriots are being absolutely ‘blurred out’ by the Media, and Fox is doing little to help. That’s the only reason this Race is close, if it is indeed close.”

Trump’s admission that he expects Fox News to “help” is striking, even as his expectations have been thinly veiled over the years.

In another Truth Social post last week, Trump rationalized that Fox News is featuring Democratic candidates “to be Politically Correct”, encouraging his fans to watch an upcoming rally on all Trump, all-the-time conservative media company Right Side Broadcasting Network.

Trump has been particularly angry at Fox News for interviewing Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan. “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 wrote in a third Truth Social post. “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. They don’t show my record breaking Rallies the morning after, but others do, and that’s what MAGA is watching. Fox is promoting the Dumocrats, not the Republicans and MAGA. They have totally lost their way!” (El-Sayed has played up some of the light praise he’s received on Fox, including some compliments from host Jesse Watters, in a recent advertisement.)

Laura Loomer, one of Trump’s most reliable boosters, wrote in a post on X earlier this month that “@FoxNews should be exposing jihadists…not platforming them and whitewashing their terrorist agenda.”

Peter Navarro, the president’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, has encouraged Trump supporters to turn off Fox News. He has been particularly livid at the network’s decision to part ways with longtime Trump backer Maria Bartiromo early last month, after she reportedly shared Fox’s internal guidance about how to cover a Trump speech.

During an appearance last week on the extremely pro-Trump Real America’s Voice network, Navarro said that Fox News “is supposed to be our side”. Instead, he said, the network “is trying to destroy the signature piece of the Trump agenda”, referring to on-air criticism of the president’s tariff plan. He ended his attack on the network by encouraging viewers to “turn Fox off … You don’t need Fox”.

In July, Steve Bannon, a former Trump White House chief strategist and a longtime critic of the Murdoch family, criticized the network for not playing up claims of election fraud made in a primetime speech by Trump. “The [Murdochs] hate Trump, they hate Maga” he said. “If you watch Fox and support that crap, you are part of the problem.”

But, as has been true throughout Trump’s political career, his occasional criticisms of Fox News are offset by the personal relationships he has with many of the network’s hosts – and the positive coverage they offer him.

Chris Stirewalt, an anchor and political editor for the center-leaning cable network NewsNation, spent more than a decade at Fox News before being pushed out as part of the fall-out from the network’s early-but-correct call of the state of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night in 2020. The call drew a massive wave of backlash from the Trump faithful and the president himself, but Stirewalt noted that the network is still at the center of the conservative media world.

In the event that the Republican party faces a wipe-out next Tuesday, Stirewalt says: “I think the president will definitely be chippy about it and say stuff, but I think one of the lessons is that [Fox News] survived and the symbiotic relationship goes both ways.”

In perhaps the clearest example yet of the closeness between Trump and Fox, predicated on decades of friendship, Fox News anchors Sean Hannity and Ainsley Earhardt chose to host the rehearsal dinner for their wedding at the president’s Mar-a-Lago Club – with him in attendance – on 23 October. Their wedding a day later was also reportedly attended by both Fox and Trumpworld royalty, including Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, Dan Scavino, White House deputy chief of staff, and Karoline Leavitt, who recently left the Trump administration after a successful stint as press secretary to serve as an on-air contributor for Fox.

Despite his complaints about the network not covering his rallies, Fox News sends a reporter to each of them, and has aired many of his recent rallies, including one in Texas on Tuesday and more than an hour of the president’s rally in Michigan on Sunday. Trump’s rallies are also aired live on the streaming service Fox Nation.

Trump also still receives favorable interviews on Fox. On Sunday morning, Trump was interviewed on Fox News by Larry Kudlow, his former director of the national economic council, who has temporarily picked up Bartiromo’s weekly time slot.

Through the nearly 25-minute interview, Kudlow mostly let Trump rant about his accomplishments, talk up Republican candidates and denigrate Democratic ones. In an unconventional move for a news interviewer, he also suggested campaign messages for Trump: “Sir, will you end this campaign on a optimistic note? On a pro-growth note. Freedom. Free enterprise. We don’t want socialism. We want to keep the borders closed. We want the culture to be consistent with western traditional values.”

But before he even began his questioning, Kudlow said he wanted to lead off with a “thought” about his presidency that was akin to an endorsement.

“I think you’re on a roll,” he said. “I mean, you’ve been relentless. You’re campaigning. It’s herculean. You’re turning the tide, you’re getting voters out, you’re raising enthusiasm. The economy is booming. We’re the hottest in the world. Stocks are doing great. Drug prices are coming down. Oil is flowing through the Persian Gulf. I mean, I think in the last month, you may have turned this whole thing around.”