Donald Trump is losing his grip on the most reliable lap dogs that State TV has to serve up. The “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends have long been Trump’s goto toadies. Even before he was a candidate for president, he had his own weekly segment on the program called “Mondays with Trump.” And ever since it has been the Fox News show that he has appeared on most frequently when he needed some ego stroking or damage control.
The hosts of Fox and Friends rarely have any disagreement with Trump. But on Tuesday’s program there was a surprising rift on a matter that Trump holds dear. His frequent references to the media in language he stole from Joseph Stalin as “the enemy of the people” has become almost as ubiquitous in his public pronouncements as “Make America Great Again, “Lock Her Up,” or “Build the Wall.” So this exchange between co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade is bound to rattle his dentures (video below):
Doocy: So there he is talking about his term, “enemy of the people.”
Kilmeade: I really wish he would lose that term. It doesn’t help anybody. It doesn’t push back on the media that he wants to push on…The press isn’t the enemy of the people.
Kilmeade added that “that broad statement does a lot of damage.” And Doocy joined in saying that Trump “probably feels like they are not doing him any favors, and so he doesn’t like them,” but “are they the enemy of the people? I don’t think so, either.” So even though Doocy tried to soften the blow, they both firmly rejected Trump’s favorite hateful characterization of the press that he despises so much. In fact, Doocy’s soft-serve actually makes the criticism even more harsh because it implies that Trump has only been saying that about the media to punish them for not being more adoring. Which, of course, is true.
UPDATE: Fox’s Martha MacCallum has also condemned Trump’s reckless rhetoric:
“When he points at the press in the back of the room and calls them the enemy of the people, that is wrong,” MacCallum said in a Women Rule podcast interview earlier this fall. “And it exacerbates the situation.” When asked her perspective on the president’s calling the media “fake news,” the host added: “I find it disturbing. I think it’s a mistake.”
Lately Trump himself has tried to walk back his neo-fascist approach to the free press. He now says that he never meant the phrase to apply to all of the media, just the “fake” media. That, however, is typical Trumpian bullshit. Because he also says that the fake media is the largest percentage of the media. How large? According to Trump, “A big chunk, okay? … ‘80%.’”
Consequently, Trump can’t pretend that he’s just singling out a few bad apples. He still wants to malign the whole field of journalism, especially when it doesn’t sufficiently suck up to him. But now he is losing the support of the most glassy-eyed disciples in the Church of Trump. That’s gotta hurt the big Narcissist-in-Chief. Where does he go if he can’t go to Fox News?
How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.
“When I say ‘the enemy of the people’ I’m talking about the fake news” -President Trump pic.twitter.com/rRsEqFSNKs
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) October 30, 2018