Following last night’s presidential debate, Donald Trump ran to sycophant Sean Hannity instead of Fox News’ on-air hosts, Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly. Kelly took a sort-of swipe at Trump and Hannity over it. But later, she decided to make up for it with ridiculous praise and a gratuitous, dishonest swipe at Hillary Clinton.
After the debate, Hannity seemed to steal air time from Kelly and Baier with his chat with Trump. Kelly sniped, “We’ve got Trump speaking to our own Sean Hannity. We’ll see whether he speaks to the journalists in this room after that interview.”
Then, after Hannity spent three minutes massaging Trump’s ego (when most agreed he lost the debate), Kelly took back the segment. She began with a little Trump massaging of her own
KELLY: Sean Hannity speaking to Donald Trump moments after the debate, which is something we’ve seen from Trump in the past, Bret, coming out to the spin room after his own debates, but something I don’t think we’ve ever seen at a general election presidential debate, with one of the candidates coming out and making himself available.
Of course, Hillary Clinton went something like 258 days in this campaign without speaking to a single reporter, so some might argue it’s refreshing to have that kind of access.
And some might argue that was a bunch of baloney from Kelly. The fact is that Trump has been dodging the media with the exception of his pals on Fox News for months.
On September 19, CNN’s Brian Stelter noted that Trump has been avoiding the press except for friendly interviews on Fox News. Stelter quoted CNN politics reporter Jeremy Diamond as saying, Trump is “less accessible I think, in many regards, than Hillary Clinton at this point.”
Four days later, Media Matters crunched some numbers:
Trump was last interviewed by CNN on August 25, in a discussion with Anderson Cooper that ran under 15 minutes. Following that interview, Trump has given 13 interviews to Fox News totaling over 4 hours and 16 minutes of airtime. (Trump’s Fox News interview airtime totals include his multiple townhalls with Trump cheerleader Sean Hannity.) Other than his appearance at the NBC [Commander-in-Chief] forum—which was moderated by Matt Lauer, who has since been harshly criticized for going easy on Trump—and a 6 and a half minute interview with ABC’s David Muir on September 6, Trump has not given any interviews to the broadcast networks or Fox News’ cable rivals CNN and MSNBC following his appearance with Cooper.
Clinton, on the other hand, has given a press conference as recently as September 15, 2016.
Watch Kelly show her Fox stripes below, from the post-debate coverage of September 26, 2016, via Media Matters.
– Donald Trump, presidential debate #1
Next to Der Furor claiming his temperament was one of his greatest assets following a paranoid rant the media was out to get him over his serial lying, this was the most amazing quote to come out of Hair Hitler’s pie hole.
Need I go any further into Trump’s symbiotic relationship with Fox News and his BFF Hannity?
Kelly did seem to understand intrinsically how truly awful Trump’s performance was. Even she had to note that Clinton pretty much had control throughout and that Trump found himself on defense all the way. Even right wingers are being forced to note that Trump’s answers tended to be long-winded and aimless.
I’m really curious to see how this affected the polling, but we won’t know for a couple of days.
The Republican presidential nominee claimed to “Fox & Friends” that he did not have a cold during Monday night’s debate, despite numerous observations on social media that he appeared to be breathing abnormally.
“No, no sniffles, no,” Trump said. “You know, the mic was very bad, but maybe it was good enough to hear breathing. But there was no sniffles. I have no allergy.”
When pressed by host Steve Doocy about other things that might have caused him to sniffle, Trump doubled down.
“No cold. Every once in a while, but no cold,” Trump said.
The real-estate magnate speculated repeatedly after the debate that his microphone may have been tampered with, saying it cut off at points in the debate hall, which may have been the cause of the sniffling sound.
“I had a problem with the microphone that didn’t work,” Trump said. “I don’t know if you saw that in the room. My microphone was terrible.”
He added: “It was much lower than hers. I don’t want to believe in conspiracy theories, of course. But it was much lower than hers. And it was crackling.”
