Hi, I'm Dan Pramak and welcome to Axios Recap, presented by Facebook.

We wanted to end the year by replaying not just some of our favorite interviews from 2020,

but ones that still have residents here in December.

So today we're sharing our August 28th conversation with CNN media reporter Brian Stelter,

who had just published a new book about

Fox News, its evolution, and its links to the Trump White House. Since then, of course,

the Fox Trump relationship has frayed, with the outgoing president publicly endorsing its

smaller rivals. Today's Friday, August 28th.

Both political conventions are now over, and the ratings are in, at least mostly.

What we've learned is that the first three nights of the Democratic National Convention got

better ratings than did the first three nights of the Republican National Convention.

Final numbers for the final RNC night, when Trump gave gave his acceptance speech won't come out until after we tape, but preliminary

ratings called overnights suggest that the trend line will hold. But not all was lost for Trump

fans. Fox News Channel dominated. Its Tuesday R&C audience was the largest any network has ever recorded for night two of an R&C.

On Wednesday night, it averaged 7.1 million views at 10 p.m.

While no other network even hit 2 million, not even the broadcast channels available in many more homes than is Fox.

Now, this probably shouldn't be surprising because finding the dividing line between

Fox News and Donald Trump has become almost impossible. Just look at the number of Fox News

who've been hired to work in the White House. Or Trump's Twitter feed, which sometimes looks like a

Fox News clips gallery, or how often the two are the key cogs in a misinformation cycle,

with Trump saying something

false that gets amplified by Fox or vice versa. Why it matters is that Fox News hosts,

...