Donald Trump’s Twitter rants have become a staple of his presidential campaign and in his latest tirade, the bombastic Republican candidate went after the network that put him center-stage during Thursday’s GOP primary debate.
On Friday afternoon, Trump shared an op-ed by a Bloomberg Politics contributor who said the tense exchanges between Trump and the three Fox News debate hosts would bolster the leading GOP candidate’s campaign.
“As the Republican front-runner, everyone assumed that the big battle shaping up in Republican politics was going to be between Trump and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush,” the author, Joshua Green, wrote. “But judging by Thursday’s raucous, electric debate, Trump may have sensed his true opponent before anyone else had a clue: It’s Fox News.”
Minutes later the New York business mogul tweeted directly at Fox News, saying “you should be ashamed of yourself.”
“I got you the highest debate rating in your history [and] you say nothing but bad…” he wrote.
Trump then railed against one of the network’s most popular pundits, Charles Krauthammer, calling him “dopey” and urging the network to fire him.
Minutes after the debate wrapped up, the syndicated conservative columnist and Fox News contributor said Trump ‘collapsed‘ in the debate — an opinion he said was reinforced during a focus group led by Republican strategist Frank Luntz after the prime-time political event.
“[W]hen he was controlled and in a tight setting, he was lost for most of the debate,” Krauthammer said on Fox News’ “The Kelly Factor.” “I think it showed that he was in a group of professional politicians whom he mocks, and yet they as a group, individually, were able to handle it and to be sharp and persuasive most of the time, but they left him out in the cold.”
Trump’s response?
The hatred that clown @krauthammer has for me is unbelievable – causes him to lie when many others say Trump easily won debate.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 7, 2015
The real estate magnate’s criticism of Fox marked his second series of disparaging tweets in the 24 hours following the debate. As previously reported by the Washington Examiner, in the early Friday morning hours, Trump decried Megyn Kelly’s behavior and slammed Luntz on his Twitter account. Kelly was the first to ask Trump about controversial remarks he’d made towards women during Thursday’s debate.
Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes later defended Kelly and her two co-hosts, Brett Baier and Chris Wallace, as the “best political debate team ever put on television.”
“I’m extremely proud of all of the moderators — they asked tough, important questions and did their job as journalists,” Ailes reportedly said.
