On Fox News, progressives score points and stumble

The night after verbally sparring with Abdul El-Sayed on primetime television, Fox News host Jesse Watters had kind words for the progressive Michigan Senate nominee.

“I like him,” Watters remarked Tuesday to his co-hosts on “The Five,” albeit right after saying he doesn’t trust him. “I don’t want to like him, but I like him.”

Less than 24 hours prior, the two had engaged in an adversarial, wide-ranging interview in which Watters pressed El-Sayed to explain his stance on transgender women in sports and his support for the Green New Deal. For his part, El-Sayed tried to spin Watters’ pointed questions into opportunities to recite his core campaign slogan and call his Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, a “beta” male.

Who exactly won the interaction is less relevant than the fact that El-Sayed, a progressive, went on one of the nation’s top conservative-leaning cable news shows to spar with one of Fox News’ stars.

His performance, in which El-Sayed gave little ground to Watters — regularly talking over him to finish a point and negging him for the pointed nature of his questions — presents a new model for how some progressives, hot off a string of primary victories, are looking to market themselves to a wider range of voters while also showing they can withstand scrutiny, or even fight back, on America’s marquee conservative network.

“Even if you only get 30 seconds, that’s the length of a political campaign ad, and they’re basically handing you air time to speak to a couple million people, potentially,” said Nathan J. Robinson, editor-in-chief of progressive magazine Current Affairs and occasional guest on the network.

Those appearances, however, are fraught with risk. Every second-too-long pause, jumbled response or nodding agreement on live television can be instantaneously clipped and become fodder to delegitimize their platform. It’s already happened a handful of times this cycle.

“When you don’t do well is when you go on and hand them exactly what they want, by appearing to not know what you’re talking about,” Robinson said.

Democrats have long appeared on Fox News as a way to reach conservative audiences who otherwise might prove unreachable.

But those trudging to Fox News’ green rooms had, in the past, broadly been more centrist Democrats trying to make a general election case than progressives gearing up for a brawl, particularly with the network’s primetime lineup of conservative opinion hosts.

Potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, considered one of the party’s strongest communicators and a self-described moderate, has been a regular on the network dating back to his 2020 run — a strategy he cast in 2024, at least, as an effort to argue on behalf of Democrats for viewers who don’t usually hear their side of an issue.

Progressives now say they see a similar value proposition. Conservative media has spent much of the ongoing election cycle scrutinizing progressives and, specifically, the Democratic Socialists of America — who have endorsed multiple candidates running in November. Going on Fox News, some argue, simultaneously gives the left an opportunity to vouch for itself while also giving the movement more visibility.

“It’s very exciting for us as leftists to finally have to think about these things,” Robinson said. “They didn’t used to invite us on cable news shows.”

When reached for comment, Fox News spokesperson Jessica Ketner pointed to viewership data from Nielsen indicating its spot as the most viewed cable network in the U.S., with an average of 2.5 million viewers during primetime.

A host of progressive candidates and figureheads accepted interviews with the network’s hosts this summer. Democratic socialists like Pennsylvania House nominee Chris Rabb and Wisconsin state Rep. Francesca Hong, then in the closing days of a tightly contested gubernatorial primary, both appeared on the network, as did Gustavo Gordillo, a co-chair of the New York City chapter of the DSA— which endorsed several primary winners in the city’s cobalt blue districts.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), another occasional guest on Fox, said in a text message to POLITICO that, rather than going on to try to show up the host, he wants the network’s audience “thinking that I deeply love our country, have ideas about how to build the future economy for every American and am a decent guy worth having a meal with.”

The purpose of those interviews, he continued, “is to try to find some common ground in our toxic political culture.”

Monday’s interview with Watters marked El-Sayed’s third interview on the network, and first since winning his primary in early August.

In a statement, El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Cole Wozniak said that “while Mike Rogers refuses to debate and ducks requests from media outlets, Abdul isn’t afraid of a fight.” He added that El-Sayed has been “showing up, taking tough questions and making his case directly to voters” throughout the campaign.

But progressives have also had their fair share of stumbles on the network.

DSA co-chair Megan Romer was widely criticized for an August interview in which she provided one-word affirmations to Fox host Shannon Bream’s inquiry into the group’s platform — which soon provided ammunition to conservatives looking to paint the organization as dangerously extreme.

“Replace the presidency and Supreme Court as we now know them?” Bream asked.

“Yep,” Romer responded.

Such misfires, Democratic consultant Mark Longabaugh said, can partially be attributed to the relative inexperience of some progressives who haven’t taken interviews with similarly adversarial outlets.

“You just may not be aware of the way that interview’s gonna unfold and how tough it's gonna be,” said Longabaugh, who advised Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign.

The DSA didn’t make Romer available for an interview, but the group’s spokesperson, Priscilla Yeverino, said in an interview that “we see the feedback, and we see the blowback.”

“The co-chairs absolutely take that responsibility, and they take it in stride,” Yeverino added. “That’s what they use to continue to improve and fine tune our messaging and to try to broaden our audience.”

Still, progressives say the reward outweighs the risk — as long as the candidates come prepared. Corbin Trent, a Democratic consultant who cofounded Justice Democrats and a former communications director for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), said that a candidate greatly benefits from having time to develop a cohesive worldview that makes answering off-speed questions easier.

Trent, who has appeared on the network multiple times, added that the short nature of the TV hit gives little time to debate the nuances of political ideology — making every second count.

“You can’t go into there and have a conversation about what they want to have a conversation about,” he said. “You have to talk about the things that you think are important in your platform.”