I searched our archives after watching the clip below and couldn’t believe what I found — or rather, what I didn’t find. Is this really the first anti-Trump Cavuto rant in a full year? The last one I blogged was August 24, 2018. (His recent tense exchange with Lou Dobbs over Trump’s record doesn’t count since that wasn’t a prepared monologue.) Last year he’d uncork a speech like this every few months. Wha’ happened?

Also, was Cavuto the only Fox News host to call Trump out on the air this week for implying that Fox should be working for “us”? Shep probably did, although if so then I missed that too. Did any other anchor cowboy up or was it left to the genial midday guy to politely make the case that this news organization’s first duty is to the truth?

Here’s what Cavuto’s up against:

[T]he biggest thing Trump has going for him is that he is extremely popular among Republicans — and that’s true in virtually every poll. For example, 88 percent of the GOP approves of his job performance in the latest Gallup poll. (True, Trump approval isn’t quite that high among voters who merely lean Republican, but even polls that incorporate leaners still give him overwhelming intraparty support — 82 percent in one recent poll.)

According to a CNN analysis from December, the only president in the last 70 years who was more beloved among members of his own party (as measured before the New Hampshire primary) was Dwight Eisenhower in 1956.

Previously, in order to achieve the level of support within one’s party that Trump now enjoys within the GOP, one had to have been Supreme Allied Commander of the victorious European campaign to flatten the Nazis. No other Republican — or Democratic — president since Ike has reached the degree of unanimity of opinion in his favor on his own side that Trump is currently experiencing.

Granted, some of that is due to former Republicans having left the party because they object to him, leaving behind a hardcore pro-Trump rump. But still, that’s the audience Cavuto is pitching this at. How do you suppose it’ll be received?

The most fun part of a Cavuto rant is the day after, when he reads all the hate mail he got overnight from angry Trumpers calling him fat, off his meds, and so on. There’s bound to be a segment like that this afternoon. I’ll post it later after it airs. As for this, everything he says is true, especially the part about Trump insisting that all bad news is necessarily fake news, one of his most persistent and obnoxious gaslighting flourishes. Exit question: When does Cavuto announce his primary challenge?