When was the last time Donald Trump appeared on Fox News? It’s been a while, according to Semafor’s Shelby Talcott and Max Tani, or at least according to their sources at Media Matters. Fox covered his presidential announcement in November, but otherwise Trump hasn’t shown up in his usual haunts since September of last year — not even on Hannity, where he regularly appeared for years.

What happened? A “source close to Trump” claims that the Murdochs have imposed a “soft ban” on Trump appearances, hoping to see the GOP nominate someone else in 2024:

Donald Trump, who once dominated the Fox News broadcasts, is now running into a brick wall with what four members of his circle say is a “soft ban” from the top of the conservative news channel, as it rolls out the red carpet to even the low-profile rival candidates.

“Everyone knows that there’s this ‘soft ban’ or ‘silent ban,’” one source close to Trump told Semafor. “It’s certainly — however you want to say, quiet ban, soft ban, whatever it is — indicative of how the Murdochs feel about Trump in this particular moment.” …

The aide said that some prime time hosts — who typically operate largely autonomously from the network’s leadership — have reached out in an effort to book the former president. But those appearances haven’t come to fruition.

“The understanding is that they’re [Fox] not to have Trump on for an interview, because the Murdochs have made it pretty clear they want to move on from Trump … Fox is showing that by not having him on,” a Republican operative familiar with Trump’s campaign added.

Is their source’s name John Barron, by any chance?

It does seem curious, especially since Fox has offered generous air time to other Republican presidential hopefuls. As Tani and Talcott point out, even Vivek Ramaswamy chalked up four appearances last month, while Nikki Haley got seven after her announcement. They don’t mention it, but Mike Pence scored a prime-time interview with Sean Hannity less than two weeks ago, a one-on-one interview that covered Pence’s potential entry into the race as well as featuring Pence’s thoughts on foreign policy. It looked very presidential indeed, the kind of elevated-protocol approach that Trump used to enjoy on Fox.

So what gives? Talcott points to the deposition in the Dominion lawsuit that showed Rupert Murdoch to turn Trump into “a non-person” after the January 6 riot. That didn’t last long, however, if it was ever taken seriously at all; Trump kept making appearances after he left office, right up to last September. One has to wonder whether Fox News has gotten gun-shy about Trump over the Dominion lawsuit, part of which hinges — as we know now — the network’s continuous highlighting of stolen-election claims they knew to be false, including from Trump himself. The lawsuit got filed almost exactly a year ago, but the discovery process may have made this issue more acute in the fall. The Murdochs may have decided to put the kibosh not so much on Trump but on anyone who would promote the “stop the steal” narrative on their air, especially as it relates to Dominion and Smartmatic.

There is another potential parallel explanation, which is that the Murdochs may not yet know how to handle interviews with Trump in a campaign context. Fox News fell all over themselves in 2015-16 in making him a heroic centerpiece of their campaign coverage, running his rallies live (as did CNN!), and treating him like an oracle to the detriment of the rest of the field. (MSNBC’s Morning Joe did the same thing, for that matter.) Now that Trump has a very mixed record and all sorts of legal issues still clinging to him, they may be stalling on interviews until they decide whether to revert to previous form or start making him face tough questions. The Dominion issue would almost certainly require the latter, especially if Trump himself brings up the Kraken nonsense. Fox and the Murdochs may be concerned about losing their audience by treating Trump, well, journalistically rather than as cheerleaders, and they may be right. That was certainly the concern at Fox revealed in the Dominion filings, although we should take care to remember that we don’t yet have the full story on that either.

This can’t last long, however, especially while covering a presidential campaign. Fox News doesn’t need to provide live broadcasts of Trump rallies the way they did in 2015-16 and again in 2019-20, but they do need to cover candidates somewhat fairly. Fox gave Ramaswamy four choice slots in a couple of weeks as campaign coverage, for Pete’s sake, and he’s a stunt candidate. How can they possibly explain ignoring Trump, except as either a reaction to a potential liability — or an example of the kind of media bias that Fox regularly complains about?

Other outlets don’t have this problem. My friend and colleague Hugh Hewitt still does interviews with Trump, and he manages to get a rational dialogue without fear or favor. Even if one doesn’t like Trump and/or thinks the GOP should move on from him, a “soft ban” at Fox doesn’t really help. It just adds to the sense of victimhood that Trump likes to project, especially with the media — and if there is a “soft ban,” that might actually be accurate. Let’s have a full debate in 2023-24 and let the voters decide.