Fox News slam dunks Donald Trump

| 11:21 pm EDT August 1, 2019
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Donald Trump loves nothing more than to quote the most dishonest propagandists on Fox News while they blow smoke up his backside. The trouble for Trump: even though dumpster fires like Sean Hannity keep trying to prop him up, the comparatively serious hosts at Fox News increasingly feel compelled to call him out when he does something idiotic.

Trump posted an absurdly stupid tweet this afternoon about increasing tariffs against Chinese goods, as he continues to escalate his failed trade war. Wall Street investors were so repulsed by the news, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended up plunging by more than five hundred points over the next three hours.

Unfortunately for Trump, his timing meant that fairly serious Fox News host Shepard Smith was the on-air host at the time, and it was up to him to break the news. Smith’s opening line probably tells you all you need to know: “Breaking news, any notion that we’re in a manageable trade dispute with China is now dispelled … and you are about to pay.”

When a Fox News host flat out tells the network’s viewers that Donald Trump has screwed up and it’s going to cost them money, it has an impact. Fox’s audience is essentially Trump’s wheelhouse. If he loses even a fraction of them, his already-small chances of reelection in 2020 will go completely out the window. Yet Trump continues with his failed trade war anyway, no matter how much it hurts him.