Donald Trump woke up Thursday morning ready to brag about that reality that, as Scott Lemieux recently wrote, “a less-than-typically-informed old man who watches Fox News all day is now president of the United States.”
OMG, squee, even the New York Times thinks my favorite show is teh best.
What the Times actually said, in a week-old piece written by television critic James Poniewozik, is that “Suddenly, for no other reason than its No. 1 fan, it is the most powerful TV show in America.” And someone clearly fed Trump that quote—did Fox & Friends quote it on the air?—because there’s no way he made it to the eighth paragraph to find those seven words. If Trump had read the article, he’d have first had to read that:
The producers of children’s television know the key to holding a distractible audience’s attention: interactivity. [...]
It turns out you can apply the same formula to morning news. “Fox & Friends,” the three-hour wake-up program on Fox News, is an interactive magic mirror for Donald J. Trump.
President Trump is the show’s subject, its programmer, its publicist and its virtual fourth host. The stars offer him flattery, encouragement and advice. When he tweets, his words and image appear on a giant video wall. It’s the illusion of children’s TV — that your favorite show is as aware of you as you are of it — except that for Mr. Trump, it’s real.
Fox & Friends keeps Trump’s love by encouraging him to be the worst version of himself, and he enthusiastically responds. What a time to live in.