Like millions of his fellow Americans, President Trump tuned into Fox News on Tuesday for the latest updates on the midterm elections.
He did not like what he saw.
In the span of 95 minutes, Mr. Trump lashed out three times against Fox News in posts on Truth Social, calling its polling results “the worst” and claiming its ratings were “way down, not because of me, but because they are AGAINST me!” At one point, he texted complaints directly to Greg Gutfeld, a co-host of the Fox show “The Five,” who read his comments on the air.
The president and Fox News have a complicated relationship. The network helped launch his political career when he was a guest pundit on “Fox & Friends,” and prime-time stars like Sean Hannity are among his closest allies. But he has also regularly expressed displeasure with its political coverage, and in recent weeks complained that the channel featured too many Democratic candidates and not enough footage of his rallies.
On Tuesday afternoon, he was particularly displeased with the liberal pundit Jessica Tarlov, another co-host of “The Five.”
“DUMB AS A ROCK,” Mr. Trump vented on Truth Social. “Have to go somewhere else until that LOSER is off the air.”
He also sent a text to Mr. Gutfeld, with instructions on how to rebut her talking points. When Mr. Gutfeld showed his cellphone screen to Ms. Tarlov, she replied, “Just press ‘stop,’” implying that Mr. Trump’s note was a spam message.
Mr. Trump had promised on Truth Social that he would resume watching Fox News later, and during the 6 p.m. hour he apparently did. “The Fox News Poll, always the worst, is so insulting with the questions they ask,” he wrote in another post. “Every question is a hit job.” (He also referred to the poll with an expletive.)
At 7 p.m., he posted a 184-word denunciation of Fox News, saying the network was “spending too much time covering the Trump Deranged Dumocrats.”
Later in the evening, Mr. Trump did hear some encouraging words from Fox News’s newest pundit, the former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. She said that she had spoken with Mr. Trump and that “he remains cautiously optimistic — one thing he says is he left it all on the field.”
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