BRIAN STELTER (HOST): But first, to this. President Trump's Fox fixation. Now check this out. Five of his seven sit-down TV interviews since taking office have been with Fox News. Trump watches Fox. He tweets about Fox. He uses Fox graphics to advance his agenda. He hires Fox talking heads. He promotes Fox as fair while denigrating its rivals as fake. All of this amounts to a Fox News presidency.
What I mean by that is a presidency shaped by Fox News in all sorts of ways, big and small. And we saw it in action this week. Let me show you how a comment on Fox created an international incident. Now Andrew Napolitano, a former superior court judge in New Jersey, now a Fox legal analyst, said this on Fox’s lunchtime talk show.
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ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Fox News has spoken to intelligence community members who believe the surveillance did occur and that it was done by British intelligence.
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STELTER: Two days later White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer bought Napolitano's information to a press briefing and quoted it from the podium. Why? To defend the president's baseless charge of wiretapping. British officials were furious. They said this new charge was also bogus and then there were urgent calls between Washington and London and maybe some regret from Washington, maybe not. It was all disputed.
But at Friday's press conference, when a German reporter asked about this, President Trump said, “Hey, we were just quoting Napolitano. Go call Fox.” Well the reporter didn't need to go call Fox because Fox did respond on its newscasts. Shepard Smith, Bret Baier both disavowing Napalitano’s claims, essentially saying, “He said it. We love him. But we don't have any confirmation of what he said on our network.” Ultimately, this all comes back to that two-week old series of tweets from the president claiming that the former president wiretapped him.
