Trump fumes over embarrassing claims he was cut off by Fox News while ranting about Harris speech
A seemingly rattled Donald Trump fumed on Truth Social after he was cut off by Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum when calling into the network to blast Vice President Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday.
The hosts ended the live interview after about 10 minutes and beeps could be heard as the former president appeared to be accidentally pressing buttons on his phone as he spoke.
Trump commented live on Harris’s acceptance speech on his social media platform, repeatedly calling her “radical” and referring to her as “Comrade Kamala.”
The vice president slammed the Republican nominee as being soft on dictators and for being a threat to democracy and to American values, dubbing him “an unserious man.”
During the call-in with Fox News, the hosts tried on several occasions to interrupt Trump to ask a question but the former president simply plowed on, apparently stunned by the rise of his new opponent after the end of President Joe Biden’s campaign and his endorsement of Harris last month.
“Bret Baier of FoxNews called me, I didn’t call him, just prior to the Kamala Convention speech, and asked me if I would like to critique her after she is finished. I agreed to do so!” Trump wrote on Truth Social early on Sunday morning. “I thought it was nonspecific and weak, with no fracking, crime, inflation or anything else of interest even mentioned.”
“Delivery was a C+, with far too many and speedy ‘thank you’s’ at the beginning. It was ‘WEIRD!’” he added.
Harris’s running mate Tim Walz launched the branding of Republicans as “weird” before he was picked to be the vice presidential nominee, and the moniker caught on with Democrats across the board and appears to have gotten under Trump’s skin.
“Likewise, I didn’t call other media outlets that asked me to go on, they called me,” Trump added. “The Fake News, like often ‘gilted’ Maureen Dowd of the failing New York Times, wrote incorrectly that I was making the calls. WRONG!!! I don’t have to make calls to go on TV, or anything else — They call me! It’s called Ratings, I guess, and I’m the ‘Ratings Machine!’”
When MacCallum noted that Harris has had “some success” with women, Hispanic voters, and Black voters, Trump couldn’t stop himself.
“She’s not having success – I’m having success,” he blurted out. “I’m doing great with the Hispanic voters, doing great with Black men, I’m doing great with women.”
Longtime Trump observer Maggie Haberman of The New York Times said that Trump didn’t appear to be “in command” of himself during the post-Harris speech interviews he did with Fox News and its smaller rightwing challenger Newsmax.
“He is clearly jarred by her,” she said on CNN on Friday.