Former President Donald Trump appears to be angry at reports that Fox News abruptly hung up on him as he rambled about Vice President Kamala Harris’ convention speech and his “success” in the election campaign. The interview, during which Trump talked over attempted interjections by hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, was cut short at the 10-minute mark in order to kick over to a live edition of “Gutfeld!”
“That wasn’t my fault, Donald Trump!” host Greg Gutfeld joked. “He’s still talking, by the way.”
Trump did not see anything funny about the incident. In a post on Truth Social on Sunday morning, he insisted that Fox reached out to him first and reiterated his negative review of Harris’ speech. “Bret Baier of FoxNews called me, I didn’t call him, just prior to the Kamala Convention speech, and asked me if I would like to critique her after she is finished. I agreed to do so!” he wrote. “I thought it was nonspecific and weak, with no fracking, crime, inflation or anything else of interest even mentioned. Delivery was a C+, with far too many and speedy ‘thank you’s’ at the beginning. It was ‘WEIRD!'”
The former president then attacked “gilted” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd for writing that he called Fox first, a claim that he said was “WRONG!!!”
“I don’t have to make calls to go on TV, or anything else — They call me! It’s called Ratings, I guess, and I’m the ‘Ratings Machine!'” he boasted.
Several journalists expressed bemusement at Trump’s apparent fixation on who called who first.
“What’s on Trump’s mind this AM 10 weeks before the election?” wondered Washington Post reporter Josh Dawsey.
“I was soooooo not making the calls, or seeming desperate and pathetic or anything! Don’t report that I was desperate! (Also who gilted Maureen? They sprayed her w gold paint?)” mocked Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall, referring to the James Bond book and movie “Goldfinger” and Trump’s use of a word that describes the act of covering a surface with a thin layer of gold or silver (he probably meant to say “jilted”).