“They let this guy talk, talk, talk. They hardly fight him at all. Why are they putting these people on our television networks?”
That was President Donald Trump in Nebraska on Monday night, angry about an interview. Martha MacCallum had given Abdul El-Sayed close to half an hour on The Story that afternoon. El-Sayed is the Democrat in a Michigan Senate race that’s a coin flip, and until Monday Fox News had talked about him for a year without ever talking to him.
Trump was back at it Tuesday morning, this time over Dan Osborn, the independent running against Pete Ricketts. Fox News was “long form interviewing the sleazebag,” he posted, while the “other side” doesn’t give “our people any positive exposure or airtime.”
My old pal Aidan McLaughlin summed it up perfectly on X shortly after Trump posted on Truth Social, writing:
Trump, who banned outlets from the White House on the basis of his claim that one-sided news poses a national security threat, is demanding that Fox make its news more one-sided
Trump clearly thinks Fox News belongs to him. He says “our” networks and “our” people, and he thinks the network’s sole job is positive exposure for his side. A fair interview with the other guy breaks that arrangement and said as much twice in about twelve hours. It's a point he's made repeatedly against Fox News in the last week, and honestly, for the better part of the last decade as well.
It all feels a little like a tacit threat. “It would be a real shame if my supporters stopped watching that cable news network of yours.”
Credit where due. MacCallum did a terrific job of threading an impossibly narrow needle: challenging the candidate’s past takes while also letting her guest speak openly.
She pressed him on the issues that matter most to Fox News viewers, like Muslim Brotherhood campaign money, his relationship with Hasan Piker, and the Soros fundraiser in Los Angeles. And when he filibustered, she respectfully cut in and told him that’s what she was doing. When El-Sayed said Michiganders are paying for the Iran war at the gas pump, she allowed that point. “You are right, there is a lot of opposition to the war,” MacCallum told him, then moved on to her next question without adding a rebuttal. It’s increasingly rare to see a cable news anchor on any network hand the other side a point and leave it there.
El-Sayed answered the Piker question by insisting the election isn't about some “streamer in California” but about the cost of groceries and whether you can see a doctor when you’re sick. Almost everything else he said landed on the high price of gas, including her questions on terrorism, Iran, and socialism. Fox News viewers heard a LOT of anti-Trump messaging about inflation and Iran. No wonder Trump was unhappy.
MacCallum asked which American he’d put in a book about people of valor. He said Martin Luther King, Jr., quoting the civil rights leader’s point that a coalition has to be uncomfortable if it’s going to be big enough. He then explained it in terms of the very interview in which he was engaged. “People wonder why I’m having this conversation with you,” he told her, presumably explaining why he is on Fox News, a network that’s spent a ton of airtime painting him in the least charitable light.
He dodged, too. MacCallum asked whether he’d back terror designations for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Egyptian and Jordanian branches, and he said he’d designate any group engaged in political violence. That answers some other question, and he gave it twice. He also told her, “You are a fan of it,” meaning the war, which is a dumb thing to say to MacCallum on her own set.
Former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel joined the panel discussion later and labeled El-Sayed “a con man and a liar.” Sean Hannity presented the Brotherhood exchange during his primetime show as a grilling of “Michigan’s radical senate candidate. MacCallum joined him to say, “I wasn’t buying a lot of what he was feeding today.” She’s certainly entitled to say whatever she thinks, but respectfully, that came across a little like a network reassuring itself. (Or maybe the president?_ By the time Hannity signed off, anyone who’d watched the interview had been told what to make of it.
Trump was furious anyway. He fumed that Fox News “hardly fight[s] him at all,” and a Hannity segment at night doesn’t undo El-Sayed getting close to 30 minutes of airtime earlier that afternoon. Brit Hume, who has been in that building about as long as anyone, said on Special Report that El-Sayed “was pounding away on fuel prices,” and that “the Democrats know they have a good issue.” Smart dude gonna smart dude.
For half an hour Monday, MacCallum questioned a Democrat on Fox News as though his answers mattered, and El-Sayed showed up believing some of her viewers could be talked into voting for him. There’s very little demand for that right now. Plenty of Democrats think their candidates should stay out of that building. The president, it turns out, agrees with them. A divided nation is partially united by the idea that Democrats should stay off Fox News?
I’ve gone on record that these are the sorts of interviews that benefit everyone. Fox News gets a viral clip that competitors talk about and shows off its journalistic bona fides. The candidates get to repeat their talking points to the largest cable-news audience and demystify the very bogeyman status they receive from the same network. And the nation gets a meaningful dialog that's respectful, informative, and remarkably entertaining.
I don’t know how many more afternoons like Monday’s Fox News has in it. Trump wants to know why they’re putting these people on “our” television networks. Karoline Leavitt starts at Fox News next month, and he can ask her.