After over three years of Donald Trump's reign, it is entirely unsurprising when the President of the United States uses his Twitter account to publicly bully others.
But an insult-via-tweet does turn some heads when it's directed at anybody from Fox News, the one news network the President consistently showers praise upon.
Until they go off script and tell the truth, report on an unfavorable poll, or do anything that might be considered criticism of Trump.
Donald Trump recently took to Twitter and attacked Chris Wallace, the host of Fox News Sunday, a program Wallace has anchored since he took the post in 2003.
The tweet illustrates the President's apparent frustrations as he watches his favorite news source slip away.
Trump has spent his entire presidency denouncing any and all news sources that criticize his leadership decisions and policies. Fox News, for the most part, has avoided a place on that list.
But as criticisms mount regarding the President's handling of the global pandemic's spread in the United States, even Trump's most reliably supportive network has begun to stop holding its tongue.
And if that new distance wasn't certain enough, a defensive return blast from another Fox News host would hammer the fact home.
Just hours after Trump's tweet, Jedediah Bila, weekend co-host of Fox & Friends, stepped in to deliver a returning blow on Wallace's behalf.
It's worth mentioning that Trump regularly calls in to Bila's program.
A few Twitter users enjoyed the back and forth.
They either applauded Bila's solidarity or generally took pleasure in witnessing the infighting.
One or two responses simply did not accept this as a meaningful challenge to the president.
Most Twitter users, however, simply disagreed with Bila.
These comments either reaffirmed the criticisms of Fox News or heaped even more criticism onto Wallace himself.
Trump's insulting tweet came when Wallace, on his show, spoke with a panel about Trump's dismissal of pandemic warnings dating back to January 2020.
Judge for yourself: is this biased anti-Trump editorializing or simply reporting facts?
The book The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine is available here.
@thekalenallen/Threads
U.S. Mint
