President Donald Trump frequently spends his mornings on Twitter refuting stories he believes to be false, including stories based on comments from White House staff—and the president himself.
On Tuesday, New York Times’ chief political correspondent Mark Leibovich posted a long read about how Washington, D.C., is reacting to Trump. In it, he included a snippet where he witnessed Trump watching a DVR’d episode of Fox & Friends:
It was 12:30, but the president was not eating lunch. He was watching a recording of Fox and Friends from about four hours earlier on a large TV mounted on the wall.
It’s clear the president watches Fox & Friends, as he repeatedly retweets segments from Fox & Friends and has parroted talking points from the show with such frequency that there’s little chance it’s a mere coincidence.
But not so fast, says Trump.
The W.H. is functioning perfectly, focused on HealthCare, Tax Cuts/Reform & many other things. I have very little time for watching T.V.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 12, 2017
Six tweets earlier—including a retweet of a Fox & Friends clip—Trump was congratulating his son’s performance on… television.
My son Donald did a good job last night. He was open, transparent and innocent. This is the greatest Witch Hunt in political history. Sad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 12, 2017
On both Monday and Tuesday, he retweeted four consecutive Fox & Friends segments, in addition to the one he tweeted Wednesday morning.
While unnumbered reports have mentioned Trump’s television habits, the president’s latest tweet may also be in response to a Politico report published on Tuesday that claims, “White House aides feel blindsided by the bombshell revelations around Donald Trump Jr.’s campaign meeting with a Russian lawyer, while the president is using his relatively light schedule to watch TV and fume about the latest scandal, according to interviews with half a dozen White House officials and advisers.”
Debate all you want veracity of his claim that the White House is running like a well-oiled machine. Trump does watch television. And it can be problematic, not because of how the president spends his time, but because his favorite programs—despite the president railing against “fake news”—sometimes contain glaring inaccuracies amid their spin.
This Monday, for example, Fox & Friends produced a segment on the revelation that some of former FBI Director James Comey‘s memos contained classified information.
Report accuses material James Comey leaked to a friend contained top secret information pic.twitter.com/Hkg4cAb6o9
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) July 10, 2017
That’s incorrect. The original report from the Hill stated that four of Comey’s seven memos detailing his conversations with Trump contained classified information. Nowhere is it mentioned that the memo he shared contained classified information.
But here was the president eight minutes later.
James Comey leaked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION to the media. That is so illegal!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 10, 2017
Indeed, Fox & Friends later issued a correction about its inaccurate reporting. But, according to Trump, he doesn’t have the time to watch shows like that.
