“Fox and Friends” Hosts Flip Over New York Times Article On Trump’s Decline

Source: Joe Raedle / Getty

A recent New York Times article critical of Donald Trump’s mental acuity got the hosts of Fox and Friends irate.

The hosts of Fox And Friends weren’t pleased with the New York Times on their Monday episode (October 7), particularly due to a published article about former president Donald Trump and his diminished mental faculties being more apparent in his public appearances. Host Brian Kilmeade was angered, and attacked Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ interviews with Howard Stern, the Call Her Daddy podcast, and other non-traditional media outlets. He then attacked the vice president over a recent campaign rally speech: “Her prompter stopped on Friday and she kept repeating the same 32 days four or five times.”

Kilmeade then attacked the Times article: “Yet the front page of the “New York Times” last night — and maybe it’s today’s that just broke last night — is Donald Trump mentally okay? He just spoke for an hour and 45 minutes in front of sixty to a hundred thousand people. He does three interviews a day, he is going to do a whole bunch, he’s doing WABC this morning, he’s going to do a whole bunch of interviews all week. And they’re like, is Donald Trump okay, why doesn’t he do a cognitive exam?’ The hosts would ultimately concede that Harris was in a better position because of her 60 Minutes interview, as Trump & his team declined to do a similar one.

The article, written by Peter Baker and Dylan Freedman, goes into great detail about Trump’s gaffes in the last few months with one damning paragraph providing distinct data showing how his speeches have changed: “Similarly, he uses 32 percent more negative words than positive words now, compared with 21 percent in 2016, which can be another indicator of cognitive change. And he uses swearwords 69 percent more often than he did when he first ran, a trend that could reflect what experts call disinhibition.” Social media users who got wind of the comments from Kilmeade mocked him and his fellow hosts.