President Donald Trump rips Fox News anchor Shepard Smith
Either Donald Trump is trying to make his friends at Fox News jealous or he really doesn’t like anchor Shepard Smith.
The president, who visited the sites of two mass shootings Wednesday, let his nearly 63 million Twitter followers know he wasn’t pleased with the way Fox News covered his afternoon press events.
“Watching Fake News CNN is better than watching Shepard Smith, the lowest rated show on Fox News,” Trump tweeted during a busy day of travel between Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas. “Actually, whenever possible, I turn to OANN!”
The reference is to the conspiracy-peddling right-wing cable news network One America News Network, based in San Diego, which is unabashedly pro-Trump.
One of the station’s more controversial reports, which was retweeted by Trump, alleged black South Africans were killing white farmers and taking their land. OANN also floated the theory that the DNC was involved in the killing of Democratic staffer Seth Rich after suspecting that he — according to OANN — passed damaging information to Wikileaks.
The network also employs a correspondent who advanced the false rumor that Hillary Clinton was involved in a child pornography ring being run out of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor.
Smith frequently frustrates Fox watchers for his unwillingness to toe the line for Trump and the GOP like his colleagues, including Sean Hannity — a ratings giant who infamously joined the president on stage at a political rally before November’s midterm election and labeled legitimate reporters in the room “fake news.”
Hannity also texted former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in 2017 offering to do "anything I can do to help” and “We r all on the same team.”
Smith told the Huffington Post in 2016 that he and Hannity are in different lines of work.
“Hannity is trying to get conservatives elected. And he wants you to listen to him and believe what he believes,” Shepard said. “I’m disseminating facts. It’s really apples and teaspoons. What we do is so different.”
In 2019, Hannity, who’s said he’s a talk show host and not a journalist, has accused Smith of being “anti-Trump.”
Smith was on air when the president tweeted Wednesday.
“Good afternoon, Mr. President,” he said. "It’s nice to have you with us.”
Fox News signed Smith to a “multi-year” contract in 2018, according to Deadline.com. He averaged a solid 1.6 million viewers in his 3 p.m. time slot. He’s been with the network since it launched in 1996.
