It’s Election Day, and President Trump has a bone to pick… with Fox News. The conservative news network has not given off the kind of authoritarian state media energy that Trump had been hoping during the 2020 election cycle, and he made his displeasure known during a call to Fox News program Fox and Friends.
Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade relayed former President Obama’s scathing rebuke of Trump on Monday, in which Obama accused Trump of caring more about hosting massive rallies than “keeping people safe” from the covid-19 pandemic.
“Fortunately…[Obama is] not getting anybody to go listen to him too much,” Trump said. “Actually, Fox puts him on more than anybody else, which is sort of shocking to me, because Fox has changed a lot.”
In other words, Fox is not the propaganda agent it once was, according to Trump. This is an absurd assertion, as Fox News is still a blindly pro-Trump news network. Only Chris Wallace, one of the more even-keeled Fox News hosts, bothers grilling the president, and even then it’s not a very striking sear.
A haggard sounding Trump continued: “Somebody said, ‘what’s the biggest difference between this and four years ago?’ and I say, Fox, it’s much different now… Fox is a much different place in terms of politics.”
Kilmeade insisted that the Fox News isn’t endorsing the Democrats by airing live footage of, say, a Joe Biden speech.
Co-host Ainsley Earhardt scrambled to defend the network as well before being drowned out by Steve Doocy, who parroted one of Fox News’s slogans: “We report, they decide!”
Trump was unimpressed.
“Well, in the old days, they wouldn’t put—you know—they wouldn’t put Sleepy Joe Biden on every time they open his mouth,” he said. They had other networks for that, frankly. It was run—much different operation, I’m just telling you, it was much different.”
Trump went on to insist that the network still has “incredible” personalities and namedropped the Fox News hosts he approves of: Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, and—conveniently—the three hosts of Fox and Friends.
“You had a period of time…where you had Democrats on more than Republicans,” Trump continued. “Look, it’s different, and I’m not complaining, I’m just telling people…”
There you have it: After accusations of voter fraud fail, Trump will fall back on blaming a lack of positive press from Fox News if he loses his re-election bid.
Fortunately for Trump, there’s always OANN, which is somehow even further up his ass than Fox News is.