Media

White House Aides Reportedly Pushed Trump To Watch Nothing But Fox

David Krayden Ottawa Bureau Chief
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In a story based almost entirely on unnamed sources, New York Magazine suggests former top staffers Reince Priebus and Sean Spicer actively discouraged President Donald Trump from watching any network news except Fox News.

“It got to the point that they were just like, ‘We need to get him off these channels and onto ‘Fox & Friends’ or else we’re going to be chasing down this crazy-train bullshit from MSNBC and CNN all day,'” according to a former White House official cited in the story.

New York Magazine suggests that the scheme would only work well if the president believed it had originated with him, so Priebus and Spicer regularly told their boss that Fox News was the highest-rated cable news network and was generally watched by the Trump supporters wearing the MAGA baseball caps.

According to the unnamed source, because “Trump’s someone who loves praise more than he likes hate-watching ‘Morning Joe,’ the president’s news intake was ultimately “mainly a complete dosage of Fox.”

A “current official” quoted in the story says this steady diet of Fox News is also fraught with challenges. Because Fox doesn’t “necessarily cover the big news stories of the day,” Trump is said to sometimes focus on minutiae that staffers aren’t well acquainted with.

“Whenever he tweets, all of us do a mad dash or mad scramble to find out as much information about that random topic as possible. We’re used to it in a lot of ways, so it’s part of our morning routine.”

According to a “former official,” Trump also ends each day with a call to top-rated host Sean Hannity, who regularly defends the president and his policies.

“Their chats begin casually, with ‘how are yous’ and ‘what’s going ons,” the magazine alleges. “On some days, they speak multiple times, with one calling the other to inform him of the latest developments. White House staff are aware that the calls happen, thanks to the president entering a room and announcing, ‘just hung up with Hannity,’ or referring to what Hannity said during their conversations, or even ringing Hannity up from his desk in their presence.”

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