Even among Fox News’ cast of would-be state TV hosts, contributors auditioning to be White House officials, and part-time presidential advisers, Jeanine Pirro stands out as a particularly devoted sycophant to President Donald Trump. Since his presidential campaign, the former New York district attorney and failed candidate for U.S. Senate has emerged as one of the loudest and most fervent propagandists, shilling aggressively -- almost pathologically -- for her longtime personal friend on her weekly Fox show.
Trump, in turn, is a major booster of Pirro’s, providing her with exclusive interviews, inviting her to the White House for counsel and meals, promoting her book, and lashing out at Fox when the network suspended her following a bigoted anti-Muslim comment.
Trump denounces media outlets and personalities who provide him with even the slightest criticism; Pirro’s show is the type of coverage the president expects from the press.
In her new book, Radicals, Resistance, and Revenge: The Left’s Plot to Remake America, Pirro offers the same familiar mix of fanatical Trump praise and vehement denunciations of his critics, in a different form. Here’s a sampling of the book’s most absurdly positive descriptions of the president.
Trump is “a nonstop, never-give-up, no-holds-barred human version of the speed of light”
The first paragraph of Pirro’s book reads:
I wouldn’t have thought Pirro could top the opening of her previous book -- in which she describes herself as an idiot -- but here we are.
Trump is the Saquon Barkley of negotiators
In an extended paean to Trump’s skills as a negotiator, Pirro disputes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s critique that the president is “reckless.” Pirro argues that if she or Pelosi were to try to play running back for the New York Giants, “that would be reckless” because they lack skill at football. By contrast, according to Pirro, when Giants star running back Saquon Barkley “tucks the ball and runs, it’s not reckless” because he’s “a skilled professional doing what he’s supposed to do.”
Pirro adds that in the future, Pelosi should “stop and think about it before you open your mouth” because Trump “has been making deals since before you started running unopposed for the safest Democrat seat in the country.”
From the book:
President Trump built a multibillion-dollar business largely because of his negotiating skills. He literally wrote the book on negotiation. It was a number-one New York Times best-seller called The Art of the Deal. When he brings pressure in a negotiation, it’s not reckless. Unlike Congress with its 20 percent approval rating, he knows what he is doing.
Think of it in terms of sports, Nancy. If you or I were to suit up during a playoff game and go running across Giants Stadium with a football under our arms, that would be reckless. We aren’t professional football players. We don’t know how to protect the ball or outrun defenders. Like almost anything your party is doing now, it would end badly.
But when Saquon Barkley tucks the ball and runs, it’s not reckless. It’s just the opposite. It’s a skilled professional doing what he’s supposed to do. Is there some risk? Sure. But his team usually wins when he takes risks, just as America does when Donald Trump takes them.
So, the next time you’re sitting with your feet up in Hawaii watching your president make “reckless” moves on television, maybe stop and think about it before you open your mouth. President Trump has been making deals since before you started running unopposed for the safest Democrat seat in the country. He knows what to offer, what to threaten, what to give up, and when.
During government shutdown, Trump played Dems “like a symphony,” had “four aces”
In December 2018, Trump refused to sign a budget deal that did not include funding for his long-sought wall on the southern border, triggering a partial shutdown of the federal government. The action was very popular on Fox but very unpopular with the public and had serious consequences.
For Pirro, however, the shutdown was a big win for the president. Among a series of tortured metaphors, Pirro says of the Democrats, “You could say the president played them like a fiddle, but that’s far too understated. It was more like a symphony.” She adds, “The Democrats had a full house, but the president had four aces.” From the book:
The government shutdown and the whole, far-Left Resistance is based on a Donald Trump that doesn’t exist, one they made up in their minds during a postelection bout of derangement that still hasn’t worn off. The president took a strong position on border security, but he’s offered more than an olive branch in trying to reach a compromise. He’s thrown the Democrats a rope with which they could have pulled themselves back up from the cliff they’ve jumped off. Instead, they used it to hang themselves.
You could say the president played them like a fiddle, but that’s far too understated. It was more like a symphony. The Democrats were high-fiving each other over an apparent political victory with the shutdown, for which polls showed the president taking more blame from the public than the Democrats. The Democrats had a full house, but the president had four aces. He knew that on the core issue of border security, the American public was with him. A Rasmussen poll in January showed two-thirds of Americans considered border security a serious issue and almost half thought the government wasn’t doing enough about it, up from 43 percent just five months earlier.
If you can’t see that Trump “knows how to win,” you should “keep your mouth shut”
Addressing critics who “can’t accept or admit Donald Trump’s policies are working” and don’t “see this president knows how to win,” Pirro comments, “If you don’t understand what he’s doing, keep your mouth shut and your eyes and ears open. You just might learn something.” From the book (emphasis original):
Some people can’t accept or admit Donald Trump’s policies are working. When will they see this president knows how to win? You don’t need a PhD in economics to know one thing for sure: when a president’s policies result in the lowest unemployment rate in the history of the United States, create over two million new jobs in three years, and send the stock market straight up while the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates, the guy deserves some room to maneuver. If you don’t understand what he’s doing, keep your mouth shut and your eyes and ears open. You just might learn something.
No matter how many times the president’s successes prove that good advice, nobody takes it, often not even members of his own party.
Trump uses Twitter like FDR used radio
Discussing the president’s use of his Twitter feed, Pirro writes:
