Michael M. Grynbaum and Sydney Ember

President Donald Trump’s favorite network is increasingly playing host to hopefuls from the Democratic presidential field, eager for exposure to the vast Fox News audience — even as they risk a backlash from others in the party who view the network as an ideological menace.

The expedition into what many liberals consider enemy territory picked up this week after Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont appeared at a town hall on the network, drawing the biggest television audience of any 2020 Democratic candidate — more than 2.5 million people — while pitching himself to Trump-leaning viewers who may be willing to cross party lines next year.

On Wednesday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said she had agreed to a Fox News town hall next month. Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, is in advanced talks with the network. Julián Castro, the former housing secretary, is close to signing on, and Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Cory Booker of New Jersey say they are open to the idea.

In some ways, the Democratic debate about whether to appear on Fox News town halls reflects a larger divide in the party as it ponders how to retake the White House: Should Democrats focus on expanding and mobilizing the various coalitions that make up their base, or seek inroads with the millions of Americans who supported Trump in 2016?

For Buttigieg’s ascendant campaign, the answer, in a saturated media age, was easy.

“We are going to talk to voters everywhere, and we are going to meet them where they are,” said Lis Smith, who oversees media strategy for Buttigieg, who in March became the first 2020 Democratic candidate to sit for an interview with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” “The outdated approach of taking a calculated and risk-averse approach to the media needs to be put in the past.

“Voters are going to reward fearlessness,” Smith added, “even if that comes with a mistake here or there.”

Fox News town halls are moderated by news anchors like Bret Baier, not the network’s hard-right commentators. But the fealty that pundits like Sean Hannity show to Trump have many establishment Democrats apprehensive. Last month, the Democratic National Committee took the unusual step of barring Fox News from sponsoring any of its presidential primary debates, saying its “inappropriate relationship” with the administration made it unfit to stage a fair event.

Critics say that Democrats who go on the network lend credibility to a platform that many liberal voters view as xenophobic, toxic and an incorrigible mouthpiece for the president.

“I understand the short-term incentives for Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg to appear on Fox News, but putting an imprimatur of legitimacy on one of the most destructive forces in American politics has long-term consequences,” Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama and a host of liberal podcast “Pod Save America,” wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.

(Smith fired back, noting on Twitter that Obama had sat for interviews with former Fox News star Bill O’Reilly.)

Even Trump seemed mystified to see Sanders, one of his sharpest critics, granted Fox News airtime to call the president a “pathological liar,” among other epithets.

“So weird to watch Crazy Bernie on @FoxNews,” Trump tweeted Tuesday, as a loyal viewer displeased by an unexpected story arc.

“What’s with @FoxNews?” the president wrote.

Trump has been complaining about Fox News for many months. But the campaign’s strategy is to depict Democrats as too extreme for the country, and it fears that candidates will seem more presentable if Fox News introduces them in a friendly way. Trump and some of his advisers are also irked that Fox News is showcasing not just Sanders, but a moderate like Klobuchar of Minnesota, a Midwest state where the Trump campaign is looking to make headway, according to people familiar with their thinking.

Sen. Kamala Harris of California, in an interview on “Pod Save America” on Wednesday, said she would “think about” participating in a Fox News town hall, although she declined to commit. “I’m not excluding anyone in terms of trying to earn their vote and compete for their vote,” she said. “There’s a whole other conversation to be had about how Fox News does their work and the bias with which they do it.”

Castro’s campaign, in its talks with the network, had questions about who the audience would be and whether the town hall would be conducted in a nonpartisan manner, according to Jennifer Fiore, a senior adviser. But it was satisfied with the responses it received, including that the audience would be made up of independents and Democrats. The town hall has not been scheduled, but the two sides appear close to setting a date.

Castro “has always campaigned for every vote, Democrat and Republican,” Fiore said, pointing out that he had served as a mayor in a red state.

Some Democratic strategists pointed out that an appearance on Fox News grants access to the top-rated cable news channel — the network routinely beats its rivals CNN and MSNBC in overall ratings — along with the favorable optics of wading into the lion’s den, essentially signaling to voters that a candidate is unafraid to engage with a challenging moderator and a potentially skeptical audience.

Others note that in last year’s midterm elections, Democrats were able to wrest four Midwestern governorships from Republicans, including three in states Trump captured in 2016 — showing the value of trying to win back voters in that region who might be disenchanted with the president.

“It’s just a smart place to be,” said Tad Devine, Sanders’ longtime strategist, who is not working for his campaign this year. “In politics, the downsides are inevitable. You have to weigh them against the upsides. And the upside is you get to talk to millions of people.”

And maybe rally the faithful, too. After Sanders’ appearance Monday, he blasted out a fundraising appeal about it to his supporters, embedding a Fox News clip in which audience members cheered on his “Medicare for All” plans. “Last night Bernie showed why he is the best candidate to beat Trump,” the email declared.

Other Democrats argue that the Fox News audience is unnecessary, pointing to the excitement surrounding candidates like former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, whose unapologetically liberal run for the Senate in Texas last year galvanized voters and donors, pushing him to within 3 percentage points of victory.

Then there is a broader concern that the symbiosis between Fox News stars and the Trump administration means the network will not treat Democrats fairly. On Monday, hours before Sanders went on the network, the chairman of the DNC told a Fox News interviewer that he had no plans to reconsider his decision to bar the network from sponsoring a party debate.

“I don’t have faith in your leadership at Fox News at the senior levels,” the chairman, Tom Perez, told anchor Bill Hemmer.

Hemmer, who works on the reporting side of the network, pushed back, comparing Fox News’ opinion programming to that of a newspaper’s editorial page. “We’ll give you a fair shake,” he said.

That argument is echoed by other Fox News personnel, who say that the Democrats’ debate decision was shortsighted and that the network’s reporters serve as neutral journalists. Wallace won praise in 2016 for his moderating of the third presidential debate.

Fox News declined to comment for this article.

Lesser-known candidates like Andrew Yang, a former tech executive, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii have made appearances in shorter segments on the network. But Sanders is currently a front-runner in the Democratic race, and his full-blown town hall represented a bigger leap.

Sanders’ audience Monday was significantly bigger than the 1.95 million who watched Harris on CNN in January, the previous benchmark for televised town halls. He attracted more viewers between the ages of 25 and 54, the key demographic in cable news, than the same night’s broadcast of Rachel Maddow, who is MSNBC’s top-rated star.

Still, some candidates remain on the fence.

Asked Tuesday if she would participate in a Fox News town hall, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told a reporter to speak to her communications director. “She’s the one figuring out where we’re going to go and who we’re talking to,” Warren said.

Contacted Wednesday, the communications director, Kristen Orthman, declined to comment.

This article originally appeared in <a id="e627ddd9-6717-3ff3-ad42-d0e7e678a7b7" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/us/politics/fox-news-democrats-2020.html">The New York Times</a>.

2020 Democrats seek voters in an unusual spot: Fox News

There is an unlikely new hot spot for Democratic candidates: Fox News.

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Michael M. Grynbaum and Sydney Ember

Articles written by the author

2020 Democrats seek voters in an unusual spot: Fox News