President Trump’s panache for assailing the press has divided the current media landscape into two categories, late night host Jimmy Kimmel joked Wednesday: fake news and Fox News.
The “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” host offered some lighthearted advice for cable news viewers during Wednesday’s broadcast as the president continues to chastise outlets critical of his administration, notably CNN, while praising the right-leaning Fox News network.
“It’s getting increasingly difficult to tell what is true and what isn’t,” Mr. Kimmel said, “so we’ve come up with a handy guide to tell the difference between the two types of news out there right now.”
Mr. Kimmel then compared a recent clip of CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer reporting breaking news about the Trump administration with a Fox News segment from the same span.
“Anything Wolf Blitzer says is fake news, and there are three ways to tell,” Mr. Kimmel reacted. “No. 1, it is mean to President Trump. No. 2, it is negative. And No 3 – Well that’s it. There is no other 3.”
Afterwards, Mr. Kimmel screened a recent “Fox and Friends” segment in which the president is seen chatting in the Oval Office with a group of high school students about a rocket they built, aptly named “Trump.”
“Alright, that is Fox News,” Mr. Kimmel said of the second clip. “There are three ways to telling it is Fox News. No. 1, it is nice to the president. No. 2, it is positive. And, No. 3, it has nothing to do with anything going on with the world,” he joked.
While Fox News has without a doubt leaned to the right during the course of its broadcasting history, reports this week concerning the Trump administration, its ties to Russia and a related FBI probe have prompted Democrats and Republicans alike to raise significant concerns involving the president in addition to calls of impeachment from either side of the aisle.
Indeed, Fox News host Bret Baier acknowledged Tuesday that there weren’t “any Republicans willing to go on camera” in defense of Mr. Trump this week amid an avalanche of damaging news reports indicating the president may have potentially inferred in a federal investigation involving his own White House campaign and its purported ties with Russia.
“We’ve tried tonight to get Republicans to come out and talk to us, and there are not Republicans willing to go on camera tonight as of yet, and we’ll see if that changes” Mr. Baier said during Tuesday’s “Special Report.”
“What I think is really stunning is that nobody, not even from the White House, has come out under their own name in defense of the President here,” agreed conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer. “We don’t see any Republicans on camera.”
According to Mr. Kimmel, however, Fox’s talking heads aren’t abandoning their support for the Trump administration just yet. After playing a separate clip from a recent episode of “Fox and Friends,” the talk show host joked: “Trump could shoot one of them in the heart live on air and the surviving two would still defend Donald Trump.”
The U.S. House, Senate and Justice Department are currently investigating whether members of Mr. Trump’s transition team colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, notwithstanding the president’s own repeated denials.
“Russia talk is FAKE NEWS put out by the Dems, and played up by the media, in order to mask the big election defeat and the illegal leaks!” Mr. Trump tweeted in February.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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