President Donald Trump thanked Fox host Lou Dobbs for supporting his administration's agenda Sunday, after Dobbs called for the government to shut down the "fake news" media.
"Thank you to @LOUDOBBS for giving the first six months of the Trump Administration an A+. S.C.,reg cutting,Stock M, jobs,border etc. = TRUE!," President Trump tweeted early Monday.
Dobbs has been a loyal Trump supporter. On Sunday, he appeared on New York City radio station 77 WABC to speak with host Rita Cosby about his new book, Putin's Gambit.
In his tweet, Trump said the host of the weekday show Lou Dobbs Tonight gave him high marks for cutting regulation, getting his Supreme Court pick Neil Gorsuch confirmed, creating jobs, stock market trading highs and curbing illegal immigration.
Dobbs did not speak about those issues with Cosby. Their conversation focused on the ongoing Russia investigation.
"This is the biggest mess that we've ever seen," Dobbs said of the Congressional probes and others directed by special counsel Robert Mueller looking at whether the Trump campaign colluded with a Russian plot to interfere in the election.
Echoing the president, Dobbs said that the investigation should focus on the Clintons. Dobbs claimed, "Everywhere there is evidence of collusion between Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, former President Bill Clinton and the Russians." The evidence, he said, is "not anywhere near Donald Trump."
At a security conference in Colorado last week, Trump's Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats reiterated to NBC News anchor Lester Holt his confidence in American Intelligence agency findings that Russia plotted to disrupt the election. Russia, the agencies found, hacked American political party emails and engaged in a misinformation campaign to influence the vote.
There is no doubt the Russians "are trying to undermine Western democracy," Coats said.
On Sunday, the president called the investigations a "phony Russian witch hunt." That same day, Anthony Scaramucci, the White House's new communications director, told CNN's Jake Tapper the president called him from Air Force One to say that maybe the Russians "didn't do it."
Trump made a similar claim during a speech in Poland ahead of his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit early this month.
Two weeks ago, The New York Times revealed that Trump's son Donald Trump Jr., the Trump campaign's chairman Paul Manafort, and the president's senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner met with a Russian lawyer after being told they would get damaging information on Hillary Clinton to help Trump win.
Late last week, the The Washington Post revealed that Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions made misstatements under oath to the Senate about whether he discussed the Trump campaign during several meetings with Russia's former ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.
Echoing the president, Dobbs called stories like this "fake news" during his interview Sunday. "It's time to stop fake news and shut 'em down, and I mean shut 'em down," Dobbs said, calling on the government to close any media outlet that the president deems to be false. In March, Trump called American media the "enemy of the people."
Dobbs said that "more dialogue between Putin and Trump is the healthiest thing that could happen on the planet," criticizing the media for making a story out of a second, undisclosed meeting at the G20 summit where Trump and Putin discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia.
The Fox Business Network host left CNN in 2009 because he said he wanted a freer platform to state his opinion.
During the WABC interview, Dobbs also accused former President Barack Obama of "meeting with world leaders hours before Trump" and said he was "clearly trying to subvert this administration" by criticizing Trump's policies.
Dobbs also lashed out at Republicans whom he didn't see as loyal to the president, like North Carolina Senator Richard Burr.
Burr leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian efforts to interfere in the U.S. election and potential Trump campaign collusion. "Burr is an immense disappointment," Dobbs said, accusing him of transferring control of the committee to its vice chair, Democratic Senator Mark Warner.
"It's very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President," Trump tweeted Sunday.
In May, Warner and Burr issued a joint statement that the appointment of Robert Mueller to lead an independent Russia investigation means it will "proceed fairly and free of political influence." Mueller is a registered Republican and the former director of the FBI under George W. Bush and Obama.
Yet there is "just no evidence" that warrants an investigation of the Trump campaign team, Dobbs said Sunday.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Graham Lanktree covers U.S. politics for Newsweek. He is based in London and frequently appears as a contributor on BBC ... Read more
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