CNN hosts Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo have been marvelling at President Donald Trump's apparent about-turn on Fox News, after the president attacked the network at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Monday.
Fox has been the most pro-Trump major network throughout his time in office, with the vast majority of its hosts and guests engaging in deeply partisan coverage and regularly defending the president. But Trump turned on his allies on Monday, accusing the organization of giving preferential treatment and too much air time to Democratic lawmakers.
"What's going on with Fox?" he asked supporters in Montoursville, Pennsylvania on Monday evening. "Putting on more Democrats than you have Republicans. It's something strange going on there, something very strange. Somebody's going to have to explain the whole Fox deal to me," Trump added, as his supporters booed and jeered.
Trump has already hit out at the network for hosting town halls with Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg. After Buttigieg's appearance on Sunday, the president claimed Fox was "moving more and more to the losing (wrong) side in covering the Dems." The president also tweeted that Fox had forgotten "the people who got them there," an apparent reference to Republicans.
But for Lemon and Cuomo, Trump's criticism of Fox marked a surreal yet amusing recalibration of the president's relationship with the GOP-aligned media machine. Calling the development "very strange," Cuomo said he would never have imagined Trump "would wind up asking his rally crowd the same questions that we ask all the time here, let alone hearing Fox get booed at a Trump rally."
"What did Fox do that's so terrible?" Cuomo asked. "They're giving his 2020 opponents airtime. They're doing their job." Bringing Lemon into the conversation, Cuomo remarked that Trump's attack on Fox had to be "high on the list of crazy talk."
Though Cuomo suggested Fox's coverage was often "irresponsible," especially its evening line-up, he noted that giving Democratic candidates airtime was simply "doing their job…that's what they're supposed to do."
"He's got to know that," Cuomo mused, asking Lemon, "How do you go bad on people who've carried you like a newborn for months?"
Cuomo previously worked at Fox and stressed there are still good people working at the network. But, he added, those working in the evening line-up "are learning the lesson that everybody else has learned…If you are on the president's side it's only as warm as he wants it to be in the moment, and when he goes bad on you the Sun goes away."
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
David Brennan is Newsweek's Diplomatic Correspondent covering world politics and conflicts from London with a focus on NATO, the European ... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.
