Apparently, nearly non-stop shilling for Donald Trump is not enough stroking for his fragile ego. When some comments on Fox News were not to his liking yesterday, Twitler lashed out at two correspondents on his favorite network.
It’s not totally clear what prompted this tweet yesterday in which Trump painted Roberts and Turner, each of whom have long, distinguished careers, as worse than “FAKE NEWS CNN & NBC!”
Never thought I’d say this but I think @johnrobertsFox and @GillianHTurner @FoxNews have even less understanding of the Wall negotiations than the folks at FAKE NEWS CNN & NBC! Look to final results! Don’t know how my poll numbers are so good, especially up 19% with Hispanics?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 28, 2019
But I can take a guess. Roberts guest hosted Fox News Sunday yesterday. Turner was one of the panelists. Some of what may have hurt Trump’s fee fees were these comments and exchanges:
ROBERTS: But [Pelosi] certainly did seem to win [the shutdown] in terms of keeping the money away from the president.
Or
ROBERTS: He certainly doesn't seem to have a strategy for dealing with Nancy Pelosi.
TURNER: Well, so one of the losers I wanted to mention that people are not spending enough time on this week is U.S. cybersecurity defenses. I've had sources -- federal government sources ringing alarm bells all week every day for the last two weeks. One source even went so far as to say this particular week, the U.S. federal government, before the shutdown ended, was more venerable to foreign cyberattacks, phishing, spearing attacks and terrorism online than in any point in history. And it's also going to take the government -- the federal government now months to recoup the losses to get back to where they were 35 days ago.
ROBERTS: I think a mutual friend of ours was saying, if you were going to attack the United States if you were a terrorist, during the shutdown would be the time --
TURNER: Now is a great time.
ROBERTS: Yes.
Or
ROBERTS: Gillian, really quick answer, if I could. Does this loss, as many people have put it, to Nancy Pelosi, have coattails with his negotiations with Xi and with Kim and his approach to Putin? Are they going to look at him and say, wow, we've just got to wait him out and we'll beat him?
TURNER: I think that that is a calculation foreign leaders across the globe, from the Middle East and Latin America, are making this week. They're looking at this and they're saying, you know what, it turns out that the Democrats winning the House in the midterms actually did matter for the president's foreign policy agenda. Everybody was saying, regardless what happens, the prerogative remains with him. He fell -- the president fell on his sword on the wall issue. He sort of had to. But it's had some real-world consequences in terms of the U.S. foreign policy around the world.
Fox’s Julie Banderas came to her colleagues’ defense:
@realDonaldTrump This is NOT right. I stand by my colleagues @johnrobertsFox and @GillianHTurner They don’t deserve this. No reporter does. They are doing their jobs and reporting the facts. They are not opinion journalists and deserve the respect from the @WhiteHouse they cover. https://t.co/ftRPauopjC
— Julie Banderas (@JulieBanderas) January 28, 2019
By going on Twitter and insulting two of our journalists @realDonaldTrump is putting a target on their backs. In turn his followers will then attack @johnrobertsFox and @GillianHTurner in support on Twitter. Bullying journalists is not Presidential. Period. https://t.co/xayShIojYj
— Julie Banderas (@JulieBanderas) January 28, 2019
This comes on top of Fox host Jeanine Pirro attacking Ann Coulter for lambasting Trump over his shutdown cave.
(Trump caricature by DonkeyHotey, via Creative Commons License)
