Donald Trump Has a ‘Fox and Friends’ Fetish That Should Frighten Every American

There is something terribly wrong when an American president is obsessively dialed into propaganda that regularly contradicts reality. It’s bad enough when Donald Trump manufactures his own exaggerations, deflections, and lies. But lately he has taken to acting as the de facto publicist for the spin machine at Fox News. Especially one program that is best known as a haven for Trump-fluffing, sycophantic bullshit: Fox and Friends.

Donald Trump Fox News

On Wednesday morning, Trump’s sunrise Twitter tirade included five retweets from the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends. They spanned a variety of subjects, but shared a common theme of world disorder and imminent catastrophe. The messages that Trump sought to magnify and adopt as his own included:

In those communiques Trump covered, respectively, the crisis he just created with North Korea, his racist preoccupation with Mexico and a border wall, more saber-rattling over Korea, alleged terrorism in France, and Fox News’ presentation of his “fire and fury” speech/threat to his North Korean twin. And while those are all topics of some significance, it’s peculiar that Trump used a single source to address them.

Apparently, all Trump does each day is watch Fox News. It’s where he gets his intelligence data, despite being in charge of the world’s best spy agencies. It’s how he affirms his self-worth with the relentlessly flattering suck-ups disgorged by his Fox friends. In fact, the show might consider changing its name to “Fox and Friend” (singular), because they are really only broadcasting to an audience of one.

As he has repeatedly made clear, Trump hates the media. He called it “the enemy of the American people.” Never mind that polls show that the American people trust the media far more than they trust him. And he can’t seem to go more than a few hours without insulting CNN or the New York Times. His protestations of “fake news” every time his babysitters mistakenly allow a negative story to reach his desk are pathetic. But they exemplify his deranged world view and dependence on ultra-positive reinforcement.

However, Trump’s compulsive regurgitation of Fox and Friends is more than just a tribute to his favorite TV show. There has never been a political leader who so obsessively promoted a single media outlet. It’s almost as if Trump is working for Fox News as the public relations man in charge of advancing the interests of Fox and Friends. In addition to his five tweets Wednesday morning, he has tweeted about the program ten times already this month. And the Trump Twitter Archive shows 118 such tweets since he announced his candidacy in June of 2015.

It is also notable that Fox and Friends is often the trigger for Trump’s tweets. Brian Feldman of New York Magazine collected a bunch of examples of Trump tweeting something that appeared to be random. As it turned out, Trump’s tweets often followed – sometimes by minutes – a segment on the subject on Fox News. Plainly he was watching in his pajamas with his phone in hand and couldn’t help himself. This is a phenomenon that rarely occurs with any other news network.

Prior to running for president, Trump had a regular call-in spot on Fox and Friends called “Mondays with Trump.” He was also a frequent guest on other Fox News programs like The O’Reilly Factor and Your World with Neil Cavuto. His relationship with Fox News had some rocky points during the campaign, but he always supported his “Friends.”

The problem with this is that it makes the doofuses on Fox and Friends the equivalent to his national security team. They seem to have at least as much influence over him as his closest advisers. More, if you consider that he “meets” with them every day and never argues with them. He quotes them far more frequently than he does any of his cabinet or staff. And while he will bash his Attorney General and other high ranking officials, he has never had a bad word to say about his Friends on Fox. He almost holds them in as high esteem as his Russian friend Vladimir.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

What’s troubling about this is the utter lack of qualifications of the aforementioned couch potatoes. Co-hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, and Brian Kilmeade are not experts in government, economics, defense, or anything else. They are happy-talk presenters on a propaganda network. Yet their counsel is getting the highest priority in Trump’s White House. That’s something that should make all Americans – and non-Americans for that matter – afraid for the fate of the world. Trump literally ignores his professional intelligence advisers in favor of a trio of giggling airheads. And, for the record, they are all in for a a war with North Korea. Are you scared yet?

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4 thoughts on “Donald Trump Has a ‘Fox and Friends’ Fetish That Should Frighten Every American

  1. Trump is actually playing along to North Korea’s intentions. The playbook for North Korea is the claim that America is the agressor that is actively seeking to attack THEM, therefore the justification for their development of missiles and nukes. Trump’s tough talking, regardless of his actual intentions behind them, are exactly a fig leaf to such a stance. All North Korea’s propaganda leaders have to do would be to point out Trump’s tweets and take them as evidence of actual American policy/plans to attack North Korea, the best part would be that they would not even have to change a damned thing about those tweets. They speak for themselves as far as North Korea is concerned.

    The thing about Trump and the Trumpians is that in their arrogance they ignore the necessity of a casus belli with regards to war and aggression. They think that that simply by wielding power, it provides justification for such acts.

    The problem with such a stance for everyone else is that these people might just get their wish for a war eventually.

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