A new Fox poll shows Biden. Their primetime hosts didn’t say anything about it.

Baier then showed the recent trend in Fox polls, from a five-point lead over Trump in March to a one-point lead last month.

“Again,” he repeated, “all within the margin of error. A very tight race.”

WHERE. Honestly. The trend since March has been in Biden’s favor, but the difference between Trump’s one-point lead in May and a two-point lead in June is not itself significant. It’s a very tight race – maybe a little tighter than a few weeks ago, but otherwise always close.

The result, however, marked the first time since October that Biden led in Fox polls. That’s not news that most Fox News viewers, a group that skews the Republican Party and is strongly pro-Trump, wants to hear. So for the rest of the evening, Fox News didn’t talk about it much.

Baier also had other things to do before digging into the findings. He segued from a report on the poll to a story about a violent attack in New York City allegedly committed by an immigrant in the country illegally — the kind of story that is entirely in line with Trump’s campaign strategy.

At the end of his hour, he welcomed several panelists to discuss the poll numbers. One panelist praised the findings as good news for Biden. Another, Charles Hurt of the Washington Times, shrugged at the finding that Americans were motivated by the perceived threat to democracy.

“Ultimately, these elections are usually not about amorphous issues like the future of democracy,” he said. “Elections are about things that really matter,” like the economy and the border — issues where Trump has more of an advantage.

The show before Baier’s is “The Five,” a high-profile opinion show that generally animates the culture war issue animating the right right now. On Wednesday’s episode, that meant discussing reporting from Axios in which Democratic advisers raised concerns about Biden’s positioning.

Co-host Jesse Watters thought he knew why.

“If you look at the polls, the polls don’t change around June,” he claimed. “It usually starts right now. (They) need to panic.”

That is not true; there are often shifts in the polls in the final months of a race. Less than an hour later, of course, Fox News was about to provide evidence of such a shift. About three hours later, on Watter’s own show, he didn’t mention the new Fox News data. Instead, he published a segment about how Democrats and the left were denying the recent polls.

Laura Ingraham’s show, which aired immediately after Baier’s, also made no mention of the poll — aside from a comment from guest Byron York about one of the other questions included. On “Gutfeld,” the network’s supposed late-night comedy show, host Greg Gutfeld mentioned the polls only to make a joke about recent data from CBS News.

Fox News’ homepage had an interesting twist Wednesday morning. The summary indicated that “Biden breaks a yearlong streak” – adding that this was “because Trump is getting good news from new voters.” When Trump had that big lead in March, the homepage also presented it as good news for Trump: “A key group of voters are leaving Biden for Trump in the big reversal of 2020, polls show.”

Fox’s flagship morning show released the poll Thursday morning. Fox & Friends host Steve Ducey introduced it at 6 a.m. and called it “big.” A reporter outlined the findings, again emphasizing the margin of error and the underlying questions that favored Trump.

Host Brian Kilmeade suggested to viewers that the overall shift was unimportant and that “most would say” the details of individual polls are more important. Co-host Lawrence Jones, meanwhile, praised Trump’s inclusion of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in his debate prep team, as Rubio “goes on all other channels and just goes into the enemy’s camp.” (If the other channels are the enemies of the Republicans, what is Fox?)

At 7 a.m., Fox & Friends opened by talking about the poll again, but with an emphasis on the economic data.

“Only about a third of you think the economy is good or excellent right now,” Ducey said. “Two-thirds say the economy is fair or bad – and that’s not good for the current president.”

Half an hour later, co-host Ainsley Earhardt interviewed one of the pollsters.

“I think we’re seeing a little bit of a shift,” Lee Carter said. “This is nothing seismic.” She pointed to movement among independents and noted an improvement in Biden’s numbers on the economy.

Again, that framing is accurate and fair. It also didn’t get much airtime on the channel that sponsored the poll.