Donald Trump added to his frightening, un-American and childish behavior over Russian hacking today with a childish, un-American attack on Vanity Fair after it published a harsh review of Trump Grill. But a totally fair and balanced five-person panel on Outnumbered unanimously glowed over his presidential behavior.
The discussion started with cohost Harris Faulkner crowing about Trump’s 47% favorability rating in a Fox poll and “a huge number of people” who feel hopeful. While it’s true that’s a jump in favorability, it’s still less than half the population. Furthermore, FoxNews.com notes (my emphases added):
Voters are about three times as likely to say he’ll be “one of the worst” presidents (31 percent) as one of the greatest, while 12 percent say “below average.” Sixteen percent peg Trump for “average.”
The bar is lower for Trump than it was for the man he will replace. A month after Barack Obama won the 2008 election, 19 percent said he would be one of the country’s greatest presidents, 43 percent a “good” president, and just 6 percent expected him to be one of the worst.
[…]
By a 10-point margin, more voters view the president-elect as a “divider” than a “uniter” (52-42 percent). In January 2009, 80 percent considered Obama a “uniter” according to a USA Today/Gallup poll.
Not surprisingly, none of that was mentioned. Instead, Faulkner invited guest Mike Huckabee (who made it clear in this discussion that he is interested in working for Trump) to start gushing when she asked, “What do you think is driving the favorability?”
Huckabee replied, “I think it’s the fact that he has proven to be a very serious guy.” Yeah, a very serious guy who thinks he doesn’t need to bother with daily intelligence briefings because he’s “like, a smart person.”
Of course, nobody challenged Huckabee. Nor when he misleadingly said Trump is “doing a lot of the things that the public loves him for," when it's pretty darned clear most of the public doesn't love him.
Instead, guest Megyn Kelly went the extra Trump-boosting mile by suggesting he has a "magnanimous" temperament:
KELLY: I think, in addition … it’s his outreach to rivals. You know, to people who just battered him for months. People like Mitt Romney. I mean, I don’t think you could find somebody who said worse things about Donald Trump than Mitt Romney. And it looks like he gave him a serious look for secretary of state. And others.
You know, he’s had just a parade of people who you know he doesn’t agree with. Leonardo di Caprio? I mean, those two do not see eye-to-eye on climate change [Huckabee interjected Al Gore’s name as another example] … but he had ‘em in there. You know, the tech meeting yesterday? All those people, they didn’t vote for Donald Trump … but he met with them and it really speaks well of him and I think it speaks to one piece of Donald Trump that people worried about which was can he be this magnanimous person that we’ve heard about?
You know, but he was all rough and tumble on the campaign which, as he put it, was a nasty business and now you’re seeing this other side of Donald Trump where he really can be kind and he can be welcoming and he can be open-minded. It’s just if he feels like he’s in a fight, that’s not the mode he’s in.
That would be fine if we were talking about someone heading a book club or coffee klatch. But we’re talking about the future president of the United States. Hacking by foreign countries, terrorism threats? He doesn’t have time for them, except to try to bully the CIA for its conclusion that Russia may have helped get him elected. Criticism from the cast of Hamilton and now a bad restaurant review (see below)? Those are the things that make Trump feel like fighting.
For more Fox fairness and balance, #NeverTrump cohost Meghan McCain also ignored Trump’s refusal to take his daily intel briefings and gushed that his pick for secretary of defense. “makes me feel safer as an American.”
Cohost Sandra Smith said approvingly that it’s been “amazing to watch your opinion evolve” to McCain. “I think that’s happening with a lot of people in this country right now,” she added. As if there isn’t a big cloud of treason hanging over Trump’s head at the moment.
But Kelly jumped in for a bit more praise:
KELLY: He’s behaving very well. He’s not picking fights with Hispanic judges. You know, he’s not going after Miss Universe for being too heavy. You know, those things were real controversies because people felt offended by them. He hasn’t done any of that nonsense since he won the election, very minimal.
Well, except for Trump’s anti-American attack on freedom of the press today. Yesterday, Vanity Fair published a hilariously scathing review of Trump Grill:
The allure of Trump’s restaurant, like the candidate, is that it seems like a cheap version of rich. The inconsistent menus—literally, my menu was missing dishes that I found on my dining partners’—were chock-full of steakhouse classics doused with unnecessarily high-end ingredients. The dumplings, for instance, come with soy sauce topped with truffle oil, and the crostini is served with both hummus and ricotta, two exotic ingredients that should still never be combined. The menu itself would like to impress diners with how important it is, randomly capitalizing fancy words like “Prosciutto” and “Julienned” (and, strangely, ”House Salad”)
And today, the president-elect who can’t be bothered with intelligence briefings thought it worth his time to try to exact revenge:
Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of @VanityFair Magazine. Way down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2016
Coincidentally, Carter is the original person to point out Trump's small hands. That's another subject Trump thinks more worthy of his attention than intelligence briefings.
It’s hard to know who’s worse here. The hideous, dangerous behavior of the president-elect or the dangerous cover up job of his TV-propaganda arm.
Watch it below and decide for yourself, from the December 15, 2016 Outnumbered show.