Brian Kilmeade gets mad at the idea that Fox News is on Trump's side

Kilmeade: “He doesn't have the whole network. Every show here is different."

Written by Bobby Lewis

Published

David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, told the hosts of Fox News’ Fox & Friends today that “Trump’s got this network” on his side, agitating Brian Kilmeade, who interjected that “he doesn’t have the whole network. Every show here is different. And if you talked to him last night on Sean Hannity, he’s not happy with this network.”

When Plouffe described Fox News as Trump’s “happy place,” Kilmeade interrupted him again to suggest that Trump loves Fox News because of its high ratings, not because of the network’s extremely friendly coverage.

From the March 5, 2020, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

DAVID PLOUFFE (OBAMA 2008 CAMPAIGN MANAGER): I look at it as this way. We've never had a president this obsessed with getting reelected. I worked for Barack Obama, had more than a passing interest. Trump's got this network, he's got his unofficial campaign chairman Vladimir Putin, he's got billions of dollars, he's a brilliant marker --

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): But that is not right. Don't say he's an unofficial campaign chairman, Vladimir Putin. That's --

PLOUFFE: Listen, he got help last time --

KILMEADE: And he doesn't have the whole network. Every show here is different.

PLOUFFE: Well --

KILMEADE: And if you talked to him last night on Sean Hannity, he's not happy with this network.

PLOUFFE: Listen, this is his happy place. It's like his own political Westworld, where he can be the man he wants to be, not the man he is.

KILMEADE: He knows it's the number one channel in America. We beat every channel, no matter the format. That's what he knows.

PLOUFFE: This is not a debate, OK? This is -- the news media, media outlets should hold the powerful to account, not the account to the powerful.

...

STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): You made a good point. We are the number one cable morning news show, we're the number one news channel, so this is where the eyeballs are.

Kilmeade’s annoyance about Plouffe’s comments continued after the show and off the air. On Twitter, he criticized a headline from Mediate about the exchange as “totally misleading”; the article was titled “Ex-Obama Adviser Rejects Brian Kilmeade Claim Fox Isn’t on Trump’s Side: ‘This is Not a Debate.’” He did not explain what was misleading about the headline.

The complaint Trump made to Hannity that Kilmeade mentioned -- that some people appearing on Fox “hurt themselves” by being too “fair and balanced” -- seems like another instance of the president lashing out at Fox’s “news”-side personalities for not being as sycophantic to him as Sean Hannity, the cast of Fox & Friends, and “the great Lou Dobbs” are -- a well-established dynamic that Fox News refuses to honestly acknowledge.