Is this now a regular feature? It should be. The last rendition went so well, he must be tempted to dog Trump at this point just for the entertainment value of the content that lands in his inbox afterward.
It’s basically 10 minutes of “fat” insults but things start to pick up at around 7:25 when the death wishes get cooking. He takes it with the utmost good cheer, which is why these segments are so appealing: The guy palpably DGAF. Or maybe he’s just feeling good knowing that, while most of Fox’s audience doesn’t agree with him that the presser was “disgusting,” the broader population tends to:
Nearly half of the respondents (49 percent) said they agreed with assessments that Trump’s performance at the summit could be described as “treasonous.” That included 21 percent of Republican respondents. By contrast, a mere quarter (27 percent) of respondents disagreed with the assessment of treasonous behavior…
According to the pool, 49 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that Trump is “too deferential” towards Putin, including 69 percent of Democrats and one third of Republicans.
Respondents also said that the summit failed to serve America’s larger geopolitical interests. Only five percent of Americans think the United States benefited from the summit more than Russia, while a third of the public (34%) said the summit was more beneficial to Russia than to the United States. Sixteen percent think that the summit was not beneficial to either country.
On a matter as prominent as Monday’s press conference, with intense criticism fired at Trump for days in the media, you’d expect a clear, bitter 50/50 divide along partisan lines — especially with the “T” word in the mix. The fact that opinion is tilted towards Democrats suggests deep misgivings even among Republicans.
A CNN alum draws a lesson from Cavuto’s not-very-uncomfortable discomfort:
People you've conditioned to hate accurate reporting, hate you when you accurately report on something. https://t.co/0Cs7oy47yJ
— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) July 20, 2018
That’s clever but it’s not a matter of hating accurate reporting, it’s a matter of believing that accurate reporting that doesn’t support one’s political narrative can’t possibly be accurate. And it’s not unique to the right. But yes, having an anchor on Trump TV suddenly inform the audience that Trump’s performance in Helsinki was disgraceful, which it obviously was, when the bulk of network airtime is devoted to extolling him is an unusually stark example of cognitive dissonance. If you shift gears instantly from “Trump is the strongest, greatest president in memory” to “he was pitifully weak in Finland,” you’re going to see some sparks.
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