Put the puffy questions first — that’s the key to keeping Donald Trump happy, suggested “Fox & Friends” co-host Steve Doocy in an interview with TVNewser. “Ultimately, I think that he trusts us because he knows that we’ll ask him something that he wants to talk about first, but then we will ask him about the other news that’s out there,” Doocy said.
In fairness to Doocy, withholding the edgy questions for the end of an interview is an approach practiced elsewhere as well. Hosts, after all, don’t want their interviewee to bolt after one or two questions. And Doocy did say that the crew at “Fox & Friends” asks Trump about the bad stuff. “There is stuff in the news that may be unflattering to him, but we still have to ask him questions about it because otherwise it just wouldn’t be appropriate,” Doocy told TVNewser.
As for the truth, it’s different: Whatever questions the “Fox & Friends” crew poses to Trump, it regularly fails to press him on his evasions and filibustering. A prime example occurred in early May, when Trump was still engaged in a primary battle with Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.). In an exchange with “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade, Trump circulated an absurd story from the National Enquirer alleging a link between Cruz’s father and the JFK assassination:
TRUMP: And, you know, his father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being, you know, shot. I mean the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. I mean they don’t even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it. But I think it’s horrible. I think it’s absolutely horrible that a man can go and do that, what he’s saying there.BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): Right. There was a picture out there that reportedly shows Rafael Cruz standing with Lee Harvey Oswald —TRUMP: I mean what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death, before the shooting? It’s horrible.KILMEADE: Crazy.
Kilmeade later announced his regret over his failure to push Trump on the story. Not only did Kilmeade fail to pursue, he transitioned from the National Enquirer/Cruz’s pop to Trump’s fabulous performance in a Rasmussen poll. Such incidents pile up like Lincoln Logs on “Fox & Friends.” Who, after all, can remember the weak response to Trump’s 2013 advocacy for the death penalty? Or, for a more contemporary example, the crew’s passive response to Trump’s Monday morning meanderings on Muslims and on President Obama’s conspiratorial relation to the Orlando massacre? It fell to the “Today” show to ask Trump what he meant with this statement to “Fox & Friends” about the president: “He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands.”
“Fox & Friends” is part of Fox News’s opinion offerings and isn’t classified internally as a news program. It doesn’t make the cut externally, either. The show’s history of deference to Trump dates back several years, to when Trump regularly called in to the program on Monday mornings. That arrangement ended a year ago when Trump announced his presidential candidacy, but its cushy spirit puffs along.
In its write-up of the interview with the “Fox & Friends” hosts, TVNewser omitted any mention of the program’s failure to properly question Trump, though it did cite the ratings success of the show.
