‘Whoa, hold on!’: Fox News host slams the brakes when Trump spokesman spews 'deranged' rant about Biden

Fox News pundits are never shy about embarrassing themselves when it comes to being a cheerleader for President Donald Trump. But when Trump campaign aide Hogan Gidley appeared on the right-wing cable news channel on Thursday, his attack on former Vice President Joe Biden became so creepy that even Fox anchor Sandra Smith had to rein him in.

During the segment, Smith played a clip of veteran Democratic strategist James Carville asserting, on MSNBC, that Biden couldn’t wait to debate Trump and that the former vice president was seriously tested during the Democratic presidential primary when he went up against Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and other aggressive and seasoned debaters. “Joe Biden will trounce Donald Trump in any debate,” Carville declared.

Smith asked Gidley to “weigh in” on Carville’s comments, and that’s when the segment went off the rails.

Insisting that Trump is the one with superior debating skills, Gidley told Smith, “You’re going to hear interesting comments from Joe Biden about how children love his leg hair, and how he used to coax children onto the porch with ice cream during quarantines.”

Smith interrupted Gidley, saying, “Whoa, hold on! Hold on, Hogan. We’re talking about whether the president wants to debate Joe Biden.”

Media Matters’ Lis Power, in response to the segment, slammed Gidley for taking some comments that Biden made on CNN badly out of context. On CNN, back in March, Biden described to Jake Tapper how he gets his grandchildren to follow coronavirus restrictions and explained, “They sit out in the back yard, and we sit on the porch — and I bribe them with ice cream.... But I’m not able to go down and hug them and kiss them, which I usually do.”

In a Twitter thread, Power said of Gidley, “What’s really despicable about this is that the ‘coaxing children onto his porch’ bullshit was Biden talking about how he is trying to safely spend time with his grandchildren during quarantine. Just absolutely deranged stuff from the Trump campaign.”

Power went on to explain: “Trump-world figures using Biden’s grandchildren as props to paint him as creepy isn’t new. Don Jr. exploited a pic of Biden comforting his family at his son’s funeral.”

Gidley was also slammed on Mediaite, where reporter Ken Meyer called him out for an “odious, out-of-context attack on former Vice President Joe Biden” that Smith had to “put the brakes on.”

Meyer asserted: “Whatever kind of insinuation Gidley was trying to make about Biden, the fact remains that he made it by taking the ex-veep WAY out of context from past statements. Back in March, Biden spoke to CNN’s Jake Tapper about how he holds himself together in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Biden used part of the interview to say he maintains contact with his grandchildren by offering them ice cream whenever they come to visit him at the front porch of his house.”