“The president [is] making clear to fact-check him is to be all but dead to him, and his legion of supporters who will let me know in no uncertain terms: I am either with him totally or I am a never-Trumper fully,” Neil Cavuto, host of Your World with Neil Cavuto, said during a nearly 4-minute rebuttal to Trump’s recent attacks against Fox News. “There are no grades, no middle ground—you’re either all in or you’re just out, loyal on everything or not to be trusted on anything.”
Cavuto’s pushback came as the president in recent weeks has publicly chastised Fox News over its coverage of him. Recent polls by the network have shown Trump with a near-record disapproval rating and losing in head-to-head matchups with four of the Democratic presidential candidates, causing him to tell reporters earlier this month: “There’s something going on at Fox, I’ll tell you right now. And I’m not happy with it.”
He’s also taken to Twitter in recent weeks to bash a Fox News analyst, claim the network is “not what it used to be!” and accuse them of “heavily promoting the Democrats.” Most recently, Trump wrote on the social media network Wednesday—much to the displeasure of not only Cavuto, but another Fox host as well—that “The New @FoxNews is letting millions of GREAT people down! We have to start looking for a new News Outlet. Fox isn’t working for us anymore!”
The attack is what spurred Cavuto’s strong negation.
“First of all, Mr. President, we don’t work for you. I don’t work for you. My job is to cover you, not fawn over you or rip you, just report on you—to call balls and strikes on you. My job is to, Mr. President, our job here, is to keep scores, not settle scores,” Cavuto said. “It is called being fair and balanced, Mr. President, yet it is fair to say you’re not a fan when that balance and gloom stuff you don’t like to hear or facts you don’t like to have questioned.”
Cavuto listed several of Trump’s statements and positions as examples of how the president has been hypocritical, flip-flopped on certain issues or factually incorrect.
“I’m not the one who said tariffs are a wonderful thing, you are. Just like I’m not the one who said Mexico would pay for the wall—you did. Just like I’m not the one who claimed that Russia didn’t meddle in the 2016 election—you did,” Cavuto said. “Now, sorry you don’t like these facts being brought up, but they are not fake because I did. What would be fake is if I never did.”
The Fox News host continued to list examples: “If I ignored all the times you said you love your old Secretary of State Rex Tillerson—until you didn’t. Had no plans to dump your Homeland Security secretary—until you did. Called Chinese President Xi Jinping an enemy just last week and a great leader this week.”
“Sometimes you don’t even wait that long. Last week, you expressed an appetite for background checks before arguing, just hours later, our background checks are already strong. These aren’t fake items. They’re real items and you really said them. Just like you never paid to silence a porn star—until it turns out you did. Never ordered your former White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Bob Mueller—until we learn you tried. Fake is when it’s wrong, Mr. President, not when it’s unpleasant, just like it isn’t and wasn’t fake when you said that Access Hollywood tape wasn’t real when it was or that you inherited a depression from Barack Obama when you didn’t, or that you ripped quantitative easing when he was president but are furious the Federal Reserve isn’t doing the same for you now that you’re president.”
Trump has—thus far—steered clear of criticizing any of his favorite Fox News hosts, such as Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson or Jeanine Pirro. And Cavuto highlighted the fact that, for the most part, Trump has generally received “pretty fair coverage at Fox.”
However, Cavuto said, “you’re entitled to your point of view, Mr. President, but you’re not entitled to your own set of facts.”
“You might even think that those who are [in lockstep with you] work for you. They don’t. I don’t. Hard as it is to fathom, Mr. President, just because you’re the leader of the free world doesn’t entitle you to a free pass,” he said. “Unfortunately, just a free press.”
