‘Fox & Friends’ Steve Doocy Talks Trump and Reflects on 30 Years of Fox News

It was October 7, 1996 when Fox News Channel hit the airwaves. Over the past 30 years the network has built a big loyal cable news following. And nobody knows how the once fledgling network became a juggernaut more than Steve Doocy. The once local reporter and weatherman really broke out as part of a new morning program known as Fox & Friends in 1998. Some of the biggest names inside and outside the political arena have spent time on the iconic curvy couch, creating buzzworthy moments in the process.  

According to Nielsen Media Research, the conservative talk show has been the highest-rated cable news morning show for the past 25 years since 2001. Doocy remains a popular fixture on the program. Last May, he made the decision to trade the studio in for the road, scaling back his role. Doocy now broadcasts three days a week from varying spots across the country to bring unique stories in cities across America.  

We caught up with the veteran newsman as he looks back at the transformation of Fox News. 

Host Steve Doocy as Jean Dolores Schmidt, also known as Sister Jean, visits “Fox & Friends” at Fox News Studios on March 07, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images)

What does 30 years of Fox News mean to you and for you to be a part of it from those early beginnings? 

Steve Doocy: Well, it sounds like such a big number, doesn’t it? How long does the average person stay in a job now? A couple of years? And for me to be in this job for 30 years, it’s a big milestone. You know we were just down at Ground Zero to mark 25 years since 9/11. In a lot of ways, that seems like it was 25 years ago, and in a lot of ways, it seems like it was about two years ago because the news business has just gotten so fast-paced now. I remember in the very beginning when I was first hired, I was actually the last guy hired. And I was originally the weather guy. It was one of those things in the beginning, because they were starting from scratch. They said, “Okay, I should be the weather guy.” 

You know, weather is kind of complicated when you watch TV. There are all those squiggly lines and things like that. I think it’s written by ancients and elves with all these things like high pressure and low pressure. They said, “Just tell us how hot it’s going to get today, and whether or not it’s going to rain.” And so that’s really the approach that I did for the weather in the beginning. It was really simple. Fox definitely didn’t have a lot of assets with extra video and stuff like that because we were just getting off the ground. So it was a lot of flying by the seat in your pants. It was a lot of fun because we were just making things work as we went. I was watching a video of the early days of Fox News Channel compared to now, and we’ve got state-of-the-art graphics and every imaginable thing. But that’s great for the viewer, but ultimately it comes down to telling the story, and now we’ve got more stuff to tell the story. The story isn’t the same, essentially. It’s just that we have a better way of telling the story, and it’s more interesting, and it brings me part of the adventure getting to this point.

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What do you remember about when you were told about the concept of Fox & Friends? How do you feel it has evolved? 

In the beginning Fox & Friends was not supposed to be a show. I was hired to do the morning show. Actually, I was the weather guy throughout the day. I get to work at, like, 5 o’clock in the morning and leave at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, because I was the only weather guy. And in the beginning, it was just the news of the day for a couple hours. Originally, it was just from 7 o’clock in the morning until 9 o’clock in the morning, and it was called, I believe, Fox X-Press. And then about a year-and-a-half, two years in, they said they wanted to do Fox & Friends, and it would essentially be a talk show about the news. I should back up a bit. Even before that every half hour or so, every hour, at the top of the hour, we would do news for 10 minutes. It then would be Fox on consumer news, Fox on sports, Fox on pets, Fox on religion, Fox on technology, Fox on foreign affairs, all the stuff. Essentially, it was just the news of the day, which was just the anchorman reading the news. For the most part it was then just one of us sitting in a studio talking about that topic with somebody, and I I did one for a year or so with Hannity & Colmes, where I was actually like a referee. I sat between Hannity and Colmes where I’d ask him a question and then I’d essentially moderate between the two of them, and it was kind of funny back then.

What would you say those early days were like? 

Fox & Friends, when they started it was just a talk show about the news. It was simple. We would go in in the morning, and the producer and I would just chat. After 9/11, we started at 6. We just talk about the top three stories of the day. Whatever they were, I would write them down on a little 3×5 index card, and that would be the show. Then if the producers can get some graphics and stuff like that together, that would be the program, but it was just us talking. It was us sitting in chairs talking. Over time, it was like a podcast. I never thought about that. We helped invent what would be the podcast. And that’s what it was. It was just us talking. As technology advanced, it was easier to get more video and graphics and everything else. We added so many things and now when you watch Fox & Friends, it is just as slick a show with so many elements and moments of interest. Pretty much the only thing that remains from the original show is the title because it has become so beautifully produced. There’s so much to it. And it’s just a lot of fun. 

We changed because people are interested in so many things now. You try to cover as much ground as possible. But in the beginning, we would do a lot when it was just mainly a talk show. We would have a lot of celebrities come on. It was cool for me as a kid who grew up in the 60s and 70s. We had Mary Tyler Moore come on, Dick Van Dyke. I did the weather with Captain Kangaroo. Buffalo Bill stopped by. I went camping out on Fox Square. We set up a tent, and we went camping with Joe Montana one day, which was kind of crazy. So we took the news seriously, but we didn’t take ourselves very seriously. It was just a lot of fun. That is the one element that you always try to impart on the show. That’s what we do now. Now that I have graduated to coast-to-coast, there are limitations just when you’re in the studio, but when you go out and about and pretty much you can go any place in America, we go to fun places and meet fun people and introduce them to things people are doing and it’s really taken hold. I’ve become this ambassador for the channel. Essentially, I’m conducting a nationwide focus group every time I go out.

NEW YORK, NY – DECEMBER 06: (L-R) Donald Trump talks with ‘FOX & Friends’ host Steve Doocy at FOX Studios on December 6, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images)

Fox & Friends has become a place over time where you regularly have presidents and other prominent elected officials as guests. When did you start to really see that trend?

Going back to the beginning, we didn’t have the nationwide reach that we have now. That took a while to get to that point. When I was at Ground Zero, and I talked to a lot of the first responders from 25 years ago, and they said, “You know, Steve, I started watching you 25 years ago. I’ve heard that probably half a dozen times, so many people started watching with 9/11. And when you look at the scope of the different stories that got people interested in what we were talking about, there was, a little before that.

There was the Bill Clinton impeachment thing with Monica Lewinsky. A lot of people started watching then, and 9/11, then the war on terror. The number of people who were watching just got bigger and bigger. Next thing you know we’ve got the president of the United States on. I actually hosted a program at the White House for George W. Bush that was a Wounded Warrior ride. Various members of the administration would come on,  the various cabinet secretaries would come on.

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If I remember probably 20 years ago or so, an astute political analyst said, “If somebody’s going to run for president, what they need to do is they need to increase their visibility. One of the things they need to do is to stop by and become a regular on Fox & Friends. That kind of opened the floodgates suddenly where we had lots of people who were running for president. I would say 2013, 2014, Donald Trump, who at that point was just a cultural icon and businessman and entrepreneur started coming every Monday. He’d come on for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and we’d just talk about the news of the day Usually, you know there were politics occasionally, but mainly it was just things that were in popular culture at that point. I remember one time we did a story. Trump wasn’t in that segment, but we did a story about how some bad guy sold a kid’s bike. And Trump called me on the phone and he said, “Hey, do you have a kid’s number?” I said, “Why?” He goes, “I want to buy him a bike. Don’t tell anybody, but I want to buy him a bike.” I’d recall a couple of times where he asked, “Hey, do you have somebody’s number? I’d like to get in contact with them.” He came on regularly every Monday. And next thing you know, he’s running for president, and next thing you know, he wins the presidency.

In 2017, Fox did the very first interview from the White House with President Trump, and that was pretty cool. During the election cycle, that’s when we started going out to various diners. Up until that point, the show would just be in the studio or you’d see the Capitol or the White House. We wanted to hear what people were thinking back then. It would have been the day before the New Hampshire primary, actually the day of the New Hampshire primary. I went to the airport diner in Manchester, New Hampshire, and every Republican who is running for president came that morning.

They all came out, and it turned out to be so impactful where everybody essentially were making their final arguments. We decided to do that again and again, and we’ve done it ever since. That night, when Trump won New Hampshire, which was the first time he had ever won an election, Fox & Friends was the very first interview. I interviewed him. He was with his family. He was about to go to his victory speech in the bar room. And I want to say it was the Best Western in Manchester. Everybody wanted to interview him. I was getting in a stairwell. The rep put their foot on the door so that a reporter from a rival network couldn’t come in and get the interview. And during the interview you could actually hear the other reporter pounding on the door. So, it was nice that Trump did that. Then, when he became president, it’s great that he gave us the first interview. Fox & Friends has been something that’s part of the recipe for politicians now for over 10 years. 

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