“Lou was a fighter till the very end — fighting for what mattered to him the most, God, his family and the country,” the statement read. “Lou’s legacy will forever live on as a patriot and a great American.”
No cause of death was given.
Dobbs worked primarily as a financial journalist for most of his career, including nearly 30 years at CNN, before taking a turn into conservative punditry and political analysis. But his subsequent decade as a host on Fox Business Network ended in his show’s cancellation in 2021, after he was named in a multibillion dollar defamation lawsuit for promoting Trump’s false claims of election fraud.
“We are deeply saddened by the passing of Lou Dobbs,” Fox News said in a statement to The Washington Post. “An incredible business mind with a gift for broadcasting, Lou helped pioneer cable news into a successful and influential industry. We are immensely grateful for his many contributions and send our heartfelt condolences to his family.”
In a statement, CNN called Dobbs “one of the CNN originals, who helped launch and shape the network. We are saddened to hear about his passing and extend our sincerest condolences to his wife Debi, children and his family.”
It was at CNN that Dobbs became an advocate for stricter immigration policies, something that put him at odds with the network’s down-the-middle positioning. When he announced that he was leaving the network, the president at the time, Jonathan Klein, said that “Lou has now decided to carry the banner of advocacy journalism elsewhere.”
Dobbs began hosting a daily television show for Fox Business Network in 2011, becoming — over time — the network’s most-watched personality.
After his show was cancelled, Dobbs echoed social media comments criticizing Fox for the decision, even as he remained under contract.
His show crescendoed in relevance during the Trump administration, where it was part of the former president’s media diet and something he turned to for policy ideas.
In early 2019, Trump patched Dobbs in on a call during a meeting of the Council of Economic Advisers. The two men held similar views about reducing the flow of immigration from Mexico.
“Day by day, the relationship between the bombastic president and the cranky anchorman has become an object of curiosity and amusement. But it is also something much more profound,” The Washington Post wrote in 2019.
“Born just nine months apart, the 70-somethings share a penchant for schoolyard-style name-calling, grumbling about enemies seen and unseen, an apocalyptic view of illegal immigration and a deep embrace of hair-color shades not found in the natural world.”
Trump said in 2020 that he watched Dobbs’s Fox show “all the time,” calling it “a very important show with a tremendous audience.”
“He understood the World, and what was “happening,” better than others,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in a remembrance on Thursday. “Lou was unique in so many ways, and loved our Country.”
After the news of his death, many Republican politicians and cable news personalities paid tribute to him. “Lou Dobbs was a patriot, loved his country, and will be deeply missed by so many,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) wrote on the social media platform X, while Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said that “Lou was a great American and will be deeply missed.”
Since leaving Fox, Dobbs began hosting a podcast called “The Great America Show.” Earlier this year, his show began airing on the digital network founded by MyPillow founder and GOP activist Mike Lindell, called FrankSpeech.
In a text message to the Post, Lindell called Dobbs “a great friend” and “an American treasure.”
Louis Dobbs was born Sept. 24, 1945, in the Texas panhandle town of Childress, where his parents owned a farm-supply and propane-gas businesses. He was 8 when they relocated to Rupert, Idaho, where he recalled a hardscrabble upbringing, working on nearby farms to help support his family.
“I feel very fortunate for growing up in southern Idaho,” he told an interviewer in 2021. “There’s that code of the West. I’ve always prized individualism.”
He was senior class president and an academic standout, and one of his teachers encouraged him to apply to Harvard University. He was admitted on scholarship and, after the initial culture shock, immersed himself in school life. He said he decided to major in economics after being dazzled by guest speaker Milton Friedman, an apostle of free market capitalism.
He graduated in 1967 and held short-lived jobs helping the unemployed and later working in a bank. He found neither work satisfying and decided to try broadcasting on a whim, getting an entry-level position with KBLU in Yuma, Ariz. He found he loved the excitement of rising early and making the rounds of the police and fire departments in search of that day’s news.
Among other jobs, he later became a reporter and weekend news anchor for KING-TV, in Seattle, before moving to CNN in 1980, just as Ted Turner started the cable network. He was named chief economics correspondent and the anchor of the weeknight show “Moneyline,” which gained attention as one of the few competitors to the Friday-night program “Wall Street Week” on public television.
Throughout the rollicking 1980s, “Moneyline” followed Wall Street and economics news with fervid interest and became one of CNN’s most profitable shows. Mr. Dobbs received a coveted Peabody Award for his coverage of the stock-market crash of October 1987.
During his last months at Fox, Dobbs became a major proponent of theories that the 2020 election had been rigged against Trump, and factored prominently in defamation lawsuits filed against Fox News by voting technology companies Dominion and Smartmatic, both for comments he made and for comments made by his guests, including Trump-affiliated lawyers Sidney Powell and Lou Dobbs.
In a September 2022 deposition conducted by a lawyer for Dominion, Dobbs stoutly maintained his belief that the 2020 election was stolen, in the face of all evidence that it wasn’t.
“We still don’t know what happened with the electronic voting companies in that election,” he said.
Adam Bernstein contributed to this report.
