Watch the Worst of Donald Trump's Wild Media Tour
If there’s one thing Donald Trump knows, it’s how to get on TV—and after his xenophobic policy pivot last night, get on TV he did. In fact, the Donald spent the last 18 hours on a whirlwind tour of the cable networks parroting the same canned provocations over and over: Did you see that thousands of people lined up to get into his speech? Have you even heard of the World Trade Center attack? How about the other World Trade Center attack? Did you see this poll saying the Muslims are going to murder us all in our sleep?
Here are the lowlights of the media circus that very predictably followed Trump’s calculatedly awful campaign announcement:
1. Fox News: “I have Muslim friends, Greta, and they’re wonderful people.”
Donald’s first stop was a friendly one, so to speak: He called in to speak with an incredulous Greta Van Susteren Monday night not long after making the announcement.
High point: Donald accuses Chris Christie of getting Obama elected.
“He should be focused on the hug he gave President Obama, which might have given Obama the victory,” Donald says.
Low point: Donald admits it—he has Muslim friends.
“Does this apply to your Muslim friends” Susteren asks.
“No of course not,” Donald laughs.
2. Good Morning America: “This proposal has been met by intelligent people with great popularity”
[There was a video here]
Next up was Good Morning America, his first call-in of the morning.
High point: Donald Trump recounts a history of terrorism in America.
“We had the World Trade Center, we had the pre-World Trade Center. Remember, a lot of people forget now, they tried to blow it up twice. We had so many other incidents. And we had now the last incident in California.”
Second high point: Obama ignored Donald Trump’s tweet.
“Our president, I watched him make a fool of himself the other night with a speech that nobody still knows. I tweeted out, ‘Is that all there is?’ He didn’t say anything.”
Low point: Donald clarifies he’s not like Hitler, he’s like FDR, if FDR were more like Hitler.
3. CNN: “Why aren’t we letting the Syrian Christians in? Obama must have set a policy or something”
[There was a video here]
Next, an increasingly hoarse Donald called into CNN, where he and Chris Cuomo argued about things like what percentage of Muslims living in the US want to kill us (“Donald, we wouldn’t even put that poll on the air. it’s a hack organization with a guy who was dismissed from the conservative circles for conspiracy theories. you know that,” said an exasperated Cuomo. “Take a look a the Pew poll,” says Trump.)
High point: Donald expands his history of terrorism in America into the future.
“We had the World Trade Center number one. We had World Trade Center number two. We had many other things happen. Then the other day we had the California attack... You’re going to have many more World Trade Centers if you don’t solve it. Many, many more. And probably beyond the World Trade Center.”
Low point: Donald starts complaining that Obama policies make it easy for Syrian Muslims to enter the country while keeping the Syrian Christians out.
“Chris, let me ask you this. You have a large portion of people from Syria that are Christian,” Trump says. “Why aren’t we allowing the Christians in? We only allow the Muslims in. Why aren’t we allowing the Christians in?
“That’s not true. That’s just not true. Does it matter to you that it’s not true?” Chris Cuomo asks.
“It is largely true,” Trump replies.
4. Morning Joe: [Cut to commercial]
[There was a video here]
High point: The end.
