‘Morning Joe’ and ‘Fox & Friends’ Take Opposing Sides on Trump’s ‘60 Minutes’ Interview

On Sunday night, President Trump sat down with 60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl for a wide-ranging interview that covered everything from Kavanaugh’s confirmation to North Korea. Trump’s interview was more or less par for the course, but that hasn’t stopped cable news networks from picking it apart piece by piece. While practically every network discussed Trump’s 60 Minutes interview this morning, few shows were as passionate as Morning Joe and Fox & Friends, which (unsurprisingly) took very different stances on the issue. While Fox News’ Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, and Brian Kilmeade insisted that the president has “never looked stronger,” MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski felt that Trump came off as a “big baby” who was “unfit to lead the country.”

One of the most talked-about soundbites of Trump’s 60 Minutes interview came during a heated moment with Stahl. Trump brought up a previous interview Stahl conducted with him, and as Stahl tried to contradict his claims, the president interrupted, saying, “Hey, it’s okay. In the meantime, I’m president, you’re not.” After playing the clip on Fox & Friends, Earhardt said that this was Trump’s “best line, reminding her who’s boss.” She went on to explain that Trump’s approval ratings are going up because Americans are realizing that “maybe he’s right, maybe the media is dishonest,” and his interview on Sunday night proved that. “He was able to work his talking points into every answer,” said Doocy, suggesting that doing so made Trump look stronger. Kilmeade then added that the Sunday evening shows were praising Trump’s performance, saying, “I’ve never heard such positive panels for the president in his two years in office.”

Morning Joe‘s hosts felt differently. At the top of the broadcast, the MSNBC hosts discussed their initial reaction to Trump’s interview, and it was anything but positive. Said Brzezinski, “He seems like a baby.” Scarborough echoed that sentiment, saying that Trump looked like “a big baby,” and after a weird back and forth where they said the word “baby” like six times, Brzezinski added that the president looked “really, really ill-equipped and unfit to lead this country.” The panel agreed that Trump seemed unprepared for the interview, and “on the question of how well he seemed to understand the world,” MSNBC contributor John Heilemann gave the president a rating in the D-range. The Morning Joe team didn’t mince words, but it was panelist John Podhoretz who had the strongest feelings about Trump’s performance on Sunday night. “It was Trump coming fully out and saying I am running — I wouldn’t say amoral, but ‘beyond moral’ presidency,” said Podhoretz.

Will Trump react to Morning Joe and Fox & Friends? Will the cable news networks respond to Trump’s reaction? Will the news cycle kill us all? Yeah, probably.