President Donald Trump tweets about Fox News with frequency, and while it’s always a gamble whether the tweets will be praise or an attack, Tuesday morning brought praise.
“Wow! @foxandfriends blew away the competition of Morning Joke (which did very poorly) on MSDNC (Another Comcast sleaze production), and @CNN’s New Day, in the Morning Television Ratings. A total blowout, but that’s what you get when you treat ‘Trump’ fairly!” the president wrote.
“Fox and Friends” has historically, like other Fox News programming, beaten its competitors on CNN and MSNBC in total viewers. It is regularly tweeted about in real-time by the president, a known avid viewer.
“Morning Joke” is, of course, Trump’s wordplay on MSNBC’s morning show “Morning Joe,” which is critical of the Trump administration.
Trump’s heralding of the program comes the day after primetime Fox News host Tucker Carlson chided unnamed politicians for being dismissive of the coronavirus threat. Also in recent days, Trump has called into Fox News to, well, be dismissive of the coronavirus threat. He’s also attacked some hosts for the network by name and praised others by name, too.
Most recently, he’s been much more likely to tweet praise than attacks, overall. Trump took a noteworthy stance Friday morning, defending two Fox News anchors from a fan who lobbed an insult at them by name.
“Brett and Martha are batting outside of their league, trying to play gotcha with President Trump!” tweeted a presidential fan account with over 400,000 followers, referencing Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum’s hosting of his town hall on the network Thursday night. (Note Baier spells his first name with only one “T.”) “Our President is in great form!”
“Thanks Linda, but they were really good last night!” replied Trump.