Fox spanks Trump.

It might be an early warning. It might be a false alarm.  It might be signaling Trump to get back in line with some tough discipline on him.

But something is going on at Fox.

Trump under fire--at Fox.

Fox News has been state TV. 

It is a universal constant. Fox News supported Donald Trump, without reservation. They have been as reliable as Kellyanne Conway or Sarah Huckabee. Given that the speed of light is a constant, all understanding of motion, matter and time need to adjust so that light speed stays constant. Similarly, over the past two years, whatever Trump did simply must be correct, courageous, fully excusable, wise, honorable, and in furtherance of making America great again. 

Bad news? Just fake news.

Collusion?  Just a witch hunt.

Misbehavior? Nothing compared to the Clintons.

Pussy grabbing? Just locker room talk.

Erratic morning tweets? Transparent and honest.

Budget deficit growth? It will pay for itself.

Self dealing? Smart businessman.

Porn star payoffs? Cohen did it, and besides, Jon Edwards.

On and on. TV viewers and website readers had no worry that they would encounter a serious strongly presented contrary view. The one occasional good humored dissenter is disqualified at first sight, a weak, shrimpy black guy.

Trump was teflon, until now.

Fox is doing something they had not done before: referencing past words or behavior. Trump could not be hypocritical or contradictory if there were no memory of earlier positions to measure against current behavior. Now they are citing the past, and measuring Trump harshly against it. He said this, now he says that.

Syria pullout. Fox is putting on the air Republican officeholders who openly say Trump is chaotic and undisciplined and dead wrong in announcing an immediate withdrawal from Syria. Republicans are saying it is bad policy, badly executed. 

Just like what Obama did, which the GOP condemned.

Lindsey Graham: "When Obama pulled out of Iraq I told him exactly what was going to happen. . . . This came out of left field for me."

Click: Graham, on Fox

Fox News website: "Numerous congressional Republicans blasted the president and compared the move to former President Barack Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011. 'Recent history is wrought with the kind of outcomes that happen when you just precipitously wake up one day and decide you’re going to do something,' Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told reporters. 'I’ve never seen a decision like this since I’ve been here –12 years—where nothing is communicated in advance and all of a sudden this type of massive decision takes place.'”

Border Wall. Fox is putting on Republican officeholders who openly say that Trump is weak, that he "caved in," that he was "a loser" in the battle with Democrats. Fox commentators are saying it as well.

"Caved."

Ducey: "Remember last week 
the President made it very clear 
in the meeting with Chuck and Nancy hat he was going to proudly shut down the government if I don't get the five billion dollars for the wall, so now, he didn't really want the wall anyway. . . it looks like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer won."

Malkin: "I'm not going to sugarcoat it and Im not going to spin it. This was a cave. . . . This was a blink. . . . You quoted it, Steve, the exact precise words that the President used, but now look at what the President is forced to do."

Trump legal jeopardy. Judge Napolitano, heretofore an unwavering defender of everything Trump, is now, for several days running, saying on camera that Trump is guilty of real crimes. He isn't blaming Comey or Mueller or calling it a witch hunt.

"What were the crimes? They consisted in hiding illegal campaign receipts and expenses from federal regulators and 
deceiving them. The receipts were corporate
 donations--prohibited under federal law. 
The expenses were payments made to two 
women who claim to have been paramours of Trumps--claims he has repeatedly denied--in return for their silence in the fall of 2016, all done to benefit Trump's presidential campaign. [Receipts] became criminal because the donations were part of an elaborate scheme of cooked books and phony invoices to deceive federal regulators, and they resulted in the Trump's campaign filing false reports to the feds. . . knowingly and intentionally pursuant to a conspiracy among Trump, Cohen, and Peck."

What is going on at Fox? 

It is a guess.

Fox now plays a special role in the Trump presidency, serving as the shadow policy advisors. They have replaced Steve Bannon as the point of the spear in recommending confrontational, high drama populist politics. Trump watches Fox and Friends. He welcomes calls from Sean Hannity. I suspect Fox is acting in that advisory role, not in the role of anything like an independent journalist. Fox is sending warning shots to Trump, signaling him that his base--their audience--wants confrontation, not accommodation. The audience won't mind a shutdown.

Fox is giving him some tough love discipline. The change at Fox is too dramatic simply to be situational. It cuts across too many programs and too many issues to be a matter of circumstance. There are plenty of Republicans who would go on camera to gush about 
Trump, but Fox is putting on critics instead. This looks intentional and considered. 

Napolitano presumably believes what he is saying, but just how visible he is is up to Fox. Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are happy to say that Trump is 100% the victim, that the FBI is utterly corrupt, and Trump did nothing whatsoever remotely questionable, that Mueller and his gang of flaming liberals are out to persecute Trump.

Fox decides who gets air time.

Perhaps Fox is getting the jitters regarding Trump, and giving themselves some distance from him, but I think it more likely that they are sending a message. They are shaking a stick and holding out a carrot.