The president completely bashed one Fox News figure and urged another to retire.
President Donald Trump urged Fox News host Howard Kurtz to retire and called Fox News contributor Karl Rove a “loser” despite support from the two on Sunday.
Trump’s tolerance for even mild media dissent, especially from mostly friendly Fox News, appears to be wafer-thin at this point.
Rove, appearing on host Trey Gowdy’s Fox News show, praised Trump’s border security push as a “great success.” However, he urged the president to visit border towns to publicize it. He also advised Trump to cooperate with the courts in the deportation case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and to forge “positive” trade agreements with countries instead of provoking them with large tariffs.
“I don’t need to have Karl Rove of Fox News to tell me what to do,” Trump wrote about the former deputy chief of staff under President George W. Bush. “The guy’s a total Loser who’s been wrong about almost everything!”
Kurtz’s crime appeared to be not praising Trump enough in defending the president against comments from mainstream journalists. That Kurtz merely played clips from MSNBC contributor Charlie Sykes and CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Abby Phillip as a counterpoint to conservative compliments for Trump appeared to rile the president.
The “MediaBuzz” host even said the remarks against Trump were “quite personal.” He predicted that, if the economy bounces back in six months, “Who will care” about Trump’s currently low approval rating?
Yet Trump bashed him.
“It is time for Howie Kurtz to retire!” he wrote. “Every Woke Anchor in the Business, people that no one watched from CNN, MSDNC, and others, are plastered all over his show, with all really negative and fake statements, and then I am weakly ‘defended’ by Howie and his group (although Ben Domenech has been strong!). The case Howie makes for me is so pathetic that it would be a lot better if he didn’t say anything. Anyway, that’s the way it is!”
We Won’t Back Down
Trump’s escalating feud with the Fourth Estate also took to the skies on Air Force One Sunday. After a Wall Street Journal reporter asked about peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine, the president attempted to discredit the outlet instead of answering the question.
