Trump's Fox & Friends Appearance Was So Insane That Even the Hosts Were Freaked Out

By Katherine Krueger  |  April 26, 2018 | 1:46pm
Latest

Donald Trump had a long-awaited reunion with his buddies over at Fox & Friends on Thursday morning. It was a mile-a-minute ride, where Trump chattered relentlessly about Kanye West, Shania Twain, North Korea, James Comey, and, of course, his enemies in the “fake news” media.

In fact, Trump was so off-the-rails that even the Fox hosts seemed slightly alarmed. They tried to end the interview multiple times, but Trump just kept talking, until Brian Kilmeade finally had to remind the president of the United States that, “We’d talk to you all day, but I’m sure you have a million things to do.” You know, running a country? When Fox & Friends is telling you to get back to work, it’s a bad sign.

Trump did make one bit of news, acknowledging for the first time that his attorney Michael Cohen had represented him in the Stormy Daniels case. But the rest of it was unending gibberish.

Trump started by defending his doctor, Ronny Jackson, who had just withdrawn his nomination as Secretary of Veterans Affairs amidst a widening misconduct investigation. Trump threatened that Senator Jon Tester, the senior Democrat on the Veterans Affairs Committee, would “have a big price to pay in Montana,” his home state, for publicizing some of the allegations against Jackson.

Then it got really crazy. Asked about former FBI Director James Comey’s media blitz, Trump was off to the races, accusing Comey of “leaking” secrets for years, calling his memos of meetings with the president “phony,” praising the FBI, and then harshly criticizing his Justice Department, in which he’s “very disappointed.”

Not long after came an incredible segue from co-host Ashley Earhardt: “Mr. President, we want to get to Kanye West.”

Boy, did we ever.

After touching on the artist himself slightly, saying “I have known Kanye a little bit” and they “get along,” Trump proceeded to project all manner of motivations onto a man not exactly known for his stability: saying that of course West supports him after seeing historically low rates of black unemployment—one of the president’s favorite defensive, though by now inaccurate, facts to trot out.

“[Kanye]’s smart, he knows I’m doing a much better job than the Democrats did,” Trump continued. “Had I not gotten elected, Hillary would’ve come in and added more rules and regulations, we would’ve been put out of business.”

He went on to say that Shania Twain, who came under fire for saying she would have voted for Trump, shouldn’t have walked that back, dubiously claiming that when famous people come out in support of the president, their businesses boom (this imagined trend apparently doesn’t extend to anyone named Trump).

Another host cut in—because if he didn’t, we all would’ve died there listening to the old man blabber on—to ask a surprisingly astute question about whether Republicans haven’t communicated their message well to people of color.

Trump unleashed another instant classic in response: “People don’t realize, if you go back to the Civil War, it was the Republicans who really did the thing.”

Did the thing! Slavery?? Lynchings?? It was unclear what “thing” Republicans did, but they sure did that.

Trump then drew attention to “this crazy Stormy Daniels thing,” and attacked CNN for so long that Kilmeade told him, “I’m not your doctor, Mr. President, but I would recommend you watch less of them.”

“I don’t watch them at all!” Trump insisted, before immediately discussing James Comey’s appearance on CNN the night before.

Finally, the hosts mercifully got him off the line, but not without a fight.

What a world, what a morning. Watch the full interview below.

 
Join the discussion...