During Thursday night's edition of The Kelly File on the Fox News Channel, the host and three panelists mocked cable television coverage of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's meeting with Paul Ryan, GOP speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Megyn Kelly led the charge by accusing the Cable News Network and MSNBC of treating Trump's arrival as if “it was the second coming." One of her favorite things in the coverage was a liberal cable channel's banner that read: “Breaking News: Trump Gives Thumbs Up Heading Into Meeting.”
Chris Stirewalt, the digital politics editor for Fox News, stated: “Today, this was covered like the papal visit -- a remark that drew a groan from the host -- “to Washington, D.C.”
He described the media behavior as “pen-to-post coverage” and “a lot of it very breathless,” referring to the early news practice that occurred when important information would arrive over the news wire, the announcer would rip it off the machine, run to the broadcast booth and read the passage before catching his breath.
In addition, Stirewalt noted, Thursday's events led to the political press corps standing outside the meeting, asking: “Is he here? Is he there? What did he say? On and on and on.”
“The countdown on MSNBC; they had a countdown clock,” Kelly added. “Look, look! CNN with a shot of Trump’s plane!”
She then said that during that network’s coverage, “Wolf Blitzer was walking us through the plane’s progress on the tarmac!”
“I was shocked they didn’t have a hologram,” conservative talk show host and panelist Dana Loesch joked. “That's the next thing that comes, right?”
“If Hillary Clinton thinks that she can break through this news cycle with a snapchat video,” Stirewalt asserted, “it's not gonna happen. She's got to figure out some way because if he can own the media space in the way that he did in the primary, she's hosed.”
Kelly then turned to Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief at The Daily Wire website, and stated: “One of my favorite things tonight was the MSNBC banner that read 'Breaking News: Trump Gives Thumbs Up Heading Into Meeting.'”
“What in the hell is going on here?” Shapiro asked in response. “I mean, they're treating him with the plane on the tarmac; they're treating him like he's some sort of J. D. Salinger-esque recluse, and you can't find him anywhere."
“He's so difficult to find” that “you have to keep the cameras on him at all times” because “you can't
let Donald Trump escape from our eyes.”
Turning to another bizarre incident connected to the Trump-Ryan meeting, Shapiro noted:
You have a guy who's blowing on a ram's horn. It's not even a Jewish holiday or something.
He's blowing on a ram's horn and sending odes to Trump outside the Ryan meeting, and the media are covering this like it's news. I mean, it's unreal.
Kelly then called up a picture of the man playing bagpipes who showed up near the building where the meeting took place.
However, the host admitted: "It wasn't just the other networks. And in MSNBC’s defense, there was a day here at Fox News when was I was a cub reporter in the D.C. bureau when I saw the following: ‘Fox News Alert: The White House Christmas Tree has arrived at the White House.’”
Of course, Kelly was being generous when referring to CNN and MSNBC. Those two networks have apparently learned what Fox News knew all along the unending 2016 presidential contest: Having Trump on your programs means higher ratings, something the liberal channels have desperately needed for a long time.
