On election night at 11 p.m., Fox News declared Donald Trump a “phoenix rising from the ashes.”

“(He is) the greatest political phoenix rising from the ashes that we have seen in the history of politics,” said host Bret Baier.

As counts in some swing states showed Trump in the lead and Trump's chances of winning appeared to be increasing, some of Fox's biggest stars wrote the first draft of his comeback victory.

“This is the most incredible political comeback we have seen since 1968,” said commentator Ben Domenech. “It won’t just be the biggest thing politically Comeback of all time,” Laura Ingraham added. “It will be the greatest comeback in history.”

Fox News still stands firmly at the center of the conservative media universe, despite growing competition from companies like NewsMax, the One American News (OAN) network, and countless conservative podcasts. The US broadcaster remains the most-watched cable news channel in the country and is consistently ahead of CNN and MSNBC in ratings.

Although the network had not yet called any of the crucial seven battleground states at 11 p.m. on election night, Fox's roundtable seemed to be preparing for a Trump victory and speculating about what it would say about the future of politics and American media.

Sean Hannity, who did not appear on election night in 2020, said Tuesday night: “After everything they threw at this man, after everything they did to this man, with all the media that didn't even do a check ( Harris ) and their radical positions, what would that say about the old media? It’s dead.”

Jesse Watters told viewers that a Trump victory would be a “mandate” to run the country. A Trump victory would be a “total rejection of everything (the media) has told us about Donald Trump,” he added.

Several Fox commentators noted that Trump appears to be doing well with black and Hispanic voters, pointing to the “diverse coalition” that Trump's campaign has put together in this election. Commentator Dana Perino called it the “most racially diverse political coalition we’ve seen in generations.”

Things looked completely different on election night 2020. Shortly before 11:30 p.m., Fox News called Arizona in favor of Joe Biden. The call was crucial. Arizona voted for Trump in 2016, and a shift to Biden would indicate that Donald Trump's influence has loosened since the 2016 election.

The early call enraged Trump, who had come to view Fox News as a friendly extension of his communications team, frequently calling the network and appearing for exclusive interviews during his presidency.

Since then, the network, owned by media professional Rupert Murdoch, has had to contend with a sometimes strained relationship with Trump. The former president gave the network the highest ratings. On election night in 2020, the network reached 14.1 million viewers between 8 and 11 p.m. – 5 million more than CNN during the same period and more than twice as many viewers as other news networks.

But the cozy relationship has also brought trouble for the network. Fox News paid voting machine maker Dominion $787.5 million as part of a settlement over misinformation in the 2020 election. A $2.7 billion lawsuit from Smartmatic is still before the courts.

Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the network is walking a tightrope. A town hall with Trump was held there in January, the first time the former president appeared on the network in nearly two years. He became more involved with the network and attended another town hall hosted by the network in October. Murdoch, who said in 2020 that “Trump will become irrelevant,” appeared at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July.

But Trump and Fox News have built a certain distance between each other since 2016. In the days before the election, Trump told reporters he was upset that the network continued to play clips of Oprah's speech in support of Harris.

“You know, who else should be ashamed is Fox,” Trump said. “Everyone thinks Fox is so pro-Trump. They are not for Trump at all.”

But on Tuesday night, with most swing states too close to making a call, Fox brought some of the network's most Trump-friendly commentators on air to address the prospect of a Trump resurgence — and discuss its potential implications.

“It’s up to the Democrats and the media,” Watters said. “How do you feel about the greatest comeback win we’ve ever seen?”

Read more of the Guardian's coverage of the 2024 US election