President Donald Trump had a complaint for Fox News four days before the midterms. He said he could spend the day campaigning for a Republican, come back from the rally and turn on the television only to find the candidate’s opponent getting airtime. One guest in particular had caught his attention that morning. “Fox puts him on all the time,” Trump said of Rep. Ro Khanna, the California Democrat who had been on the network discussing Iran and impeachment.
Trump was in Daytona Beach on Friday, October 30th, campaigning for two Florida Republicans. Rep. Byron Donalds was running for governor against Democrat David Jolly, while Senator Ashley Moody faced Democratic challenger Angie Nixon. Both Republicans joined Trump onstage that night. Khanna had also made a trip to Florida during the campaign, appearing in Orlando on behalf of the woman trying to take Moody’s Senate seat.
Earlier that Friday, “Fox & Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt had interviewed Khanna. The congressman opened by congratulating Earhardt on her marriage to fellow Fox host Sean Hannity. From there, the conversation turned to what Democrats wanted to accomplish in Washington and the prospect of another impeachment fight. By the time Trump took the stage in Daytona Beach that evening, he’d seen the congressman’s appearance for himself.
In the rally clip TheBlaze shared on X, Trump called Khanna a “total dope” before turning to the people who book him. “You know, Fox is giving Democrats more time than they give Republicans,” he told the crowd. Boos broke out, as Mediaite reported. Trump continued, “I’m working my ass off. I’m doing rallies, and I come back and I watch the opponent of the person I did the rally for.”
Trump then returned to what he had heard from Khanna that morning. “I can’t watch him; he’s such a fake, and he’s a radical left loser,” he said. What drew a particular objection from the president was the suggestion that his decision to use military force against Iran could become grounds for impeachment. “Oh, he wanted to impeach me because of the war that we have with Iran,” Trump said.
Trump defended the operation in terms of what he said it had accomplished against Tehran’s nuclear program. “In other words, he wants to impeach me because I’ve taken the nuclear power away from the lovely Islamic Republic of Iran,” he told the crowd. Later that night, Khanna answered Trump on X and announced that he already had another Fox appearance lined up for Sunday. He said he planned to discuss what he blamed on the president’s handling of Iran, including higher gasoline and food prices.
Watch Trump describe what he saw on Fox after campaigning for Republicans:
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Khanna had explained why he kept accepting those invitations in an interview with Mediaite’s Sarah Rumpf published October 21st. Rumpf spoke with him before a rally for Nixon at the University of Central Florida. He’d been on Fox that morning, too. Asked what made him comfortable going on the network, the congressman recalled the Republicans he’d grown up around in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Khanna told Rumpf he wanted a chance to pitch Fox viewers directly on policies ranging from Medicare for All to higher taxes on billionaires. Free child care was another proposal he thought he could sell to the network’s audience. “And by going on Fox News, I get to share my ideas and not be demonized,” he said.
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.