Trump to ‘Fox and Friends’: I Don’t Like Tweeting or Tom Ford
“I don’t like tweeting, I have other things I could be doing. But I get very dishonest media, very dishonest press, and it’s my only way that I can counteract [sic]. … If the press were honest, which it’s not, I would absolutely not use Twitter. I wouldn’t have to.” So said President-elect Donald Trump to Ainsley Earhardt on Fox & Friends in an interview broadcast Wednesday morning. The interview was chopped into bits and sprinkled across the three hours of Fox & Friends, so the sound bites were itty-bitty. I sat through the excruciating morning banter between Earhardt, Steve Doocy, and Brian Kilmeade so you didn’t have to.
Related: Bob Beckel Returned to The Five to Bash Trump on Fox News
Trump continued to pile on Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., for the latter’s comment that he doesn’t consider Trump a “legitimate president.” Trump and the news media, hand in hand, have a new angle to keep this dead horse of a story alive: Lewis said it would be the first inauguration he will have skipped, but he also didn’t go to George W. Bush’s swearing-in. Lewis says he forgot that, but Trump called this a “lie” to Earhardt: “I think he grandstanded, and then he got caught in a very bad lie. … What he did was a very, very bad thing … a very bad thing for the country. … The country has been divided; it’s not divided by me. What he did is very, very divisive.” More Trump bites:
“Many of the celebrities who say they’re not going [to perform at the inauguration], they were never invited.”
Building a wall? “Oh, we are having a wall, we’re building a wall. … Mexico’s gonna reimburse us. … We’re gonna build the wall sooner than we can do the deal.”
In answer to a viewer’s question about what will replace the Affordable Care Act: “Nobody’s going to be dying in the streets with a President Trump; we wanna take care of everybody.”
About designers who’d declined to dress Melania Trump for the big day: ”[Melania] never asked Tom Ford, doesn’t like Tom Ford, doesn’t like his design. s… I’m not a fan of Tom Ford, never have been.”
On speculation that he wants to move the press corps out of the White House: “The press room is too small. [But] the press went crazy, so we’re not gonna move it. … It’s too small; we’ll just have to pick the people who’ll get into the room. … You watch, they’ll be begging for a much larger room very soon.”
Trump also said that the first line of his inaugural speech on Friday will be “a thank-you to all the presidents.” He went on to praise President Obama and wife Michelle “because they have been very gracious.”
About the Friday event: “My biggest problem is there aren’t enough tickets. … You will have crowds like they have rarely seen before.”
Boy, sitting through Fox & Friends, I realized I had forgotten something: All morning shows are repetitive, superficial, and tedious. I find Good Morning America particularly excruciating, with its strobe-light colors and smiles stretched to the breaking point. When you add politics to the banter, as Fox & Friends does, it just gets more tiresome. The hosts had harsh words for those members of the House of Representatives who have decided not to attend the inauguration — or, as Earhardt so winsomely put it, “Congressman Lewis and the 60 other Congress-individuals.” Added Brian Kilmeade, “It hurts the country to stand down.”
Doocy joyously read a tweet issued this morning from Trump regarding “totally biased NBC News.” (I guess it was Steve’s way of saying, “Good morning, Today show!”) And Doocy and Kilmeade nearly fell over themselves to bad-mouth President Obama’s pardon of Chelsea Manning. Kilmeade compared Obama to “a high school senior on his last day, he says it doesn’t matter, I’m goin’ to college.” Earhardt frowned and said disapprovingly to Obama, “Why don’t you just go to college? Why do you have to stick around and pardon everyone?” Food for thought, my friends. My morning toast stuck in my throat as I contemplated it.
Fox & Friends airs weekdays at 6 a.m. on Fox.
