Was this the segment that provoked Donald Trump's Twitter tantrum last night? Presidential candidate Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) told Fox News viewers all the ways Donald Trump is unfit for office and, in the process, Bennet landed a blow on the network's sycophantic double standard.
On Fox News Sunday yesterday, guest host Dana Perino asked Bennet how he would sell his economy to the public over Trump’s. Before Bennet got to it, he laid into Trump – on his favorite network.
BENNET: What we don't need is, in my view, I think it is a president that is so at war with American tradition. We don't need a president who doesn't believe in the rule of law. We don't need a president who doesn't believe in freedom of the press. We don't need a president who doesn't believe in the independence of the judiciary. We don't need a president who believes he is above the law, that he can do by executive order what Congress doesn't do.
I mean, the list of things is so long. What amazes me is the stuff that he does, whether it's coddling a dictator in North Korea or laughing with Putin about Russia's attacks on our democracy, that stuff that if Barack Obama did one of it, he would have been indicted 24 hours a day on Fox News and President Trump is applauded.
I happen to think he is way outside of the mainstream of conventional American political thought, whether it's Democratic or Republican, and that if we are going to have any hope of not being the first generation of Americans to leave less opportunity, not more, to our kids and our grandkids, if we're going to have any hope of restoring America's role in the world, he needs to be a one term president.
Perino did not make much of a defense of Dear Leader, certainly not what he would have felt entitled to.
PERINO: If I could just press -- if I could just press you on two things.
Well, I won't press you on -- on -- on the -- on the freedom of the press. Like, he gets frustrated with the press but he hasn't tried to prevent them from being able to do their jobs.
But on the rule of law, where do you think that he is not for the rule of law?
Unfortunately, Bennet did not say, “Are you freakin’ kidding me?” But he did respond with concrete examples:
BENNET: I think -- first of all, on the freedom of the press, the fact that he hasn't dealt with the fact that Saudi Arabia killed a journalist, and -- and he said what a serious thing it would be if it turned out it was true that MBS was behind it. And our intelligence agencies said it's behind it, and he does nothing except go there and coddle MBS, that is an illustration of what American values are. I think he's tried to intimidate the press here in the United States. I think he's been above the rule of law on the wall, you know. He declared an emergency to build his wall, his $6 billion wall.
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Which, by the way, Dana, Mexico was supposed to pay for it. And while we spent seven months consuming the American people's time over his $6 billion wall, China was building fiber-optic cable 3,500 miles from -- connecting Africa to Latin America to China…
Bennet spent much of the rest of the segment attacking Trump in ways that were sure to make his Tiny Twitter fingers a-twitching.
BENNET: The president is acting like we are some weak, pathetic country. We have the ability to treat human beings humanly. We have the ability to lead our hemisphere in a discussion about how to deal with this refugee crisis…
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The symbol of this country is the Statue of Liberty, not Donald Trump's pathetic attempt to build a wall, which he's been unable to do because he can't even get Republicans to support it.
Somebody at Fox News didn’t appreciate a Democratic daring to criticize Trump so powerfully on Fox. Instead of noting any of the actual criticism, Fox called the video of this interview, “Michael Bennet bashes Trump in bid for 2020.”
Watch it below, from the July 7, 2019 Fox News Sunday.