Fox News hosts appeared taken aback after President Donald Trump launched a vicious verbal assault on a reporter by describing him as "out of shape" and "disgusting."
The Fox show America’s Newsroom, hosted by Bill Hemmer with Martha MacCallum, showed footage from the previous day in which Reuters White House correspondent Jacob Bogage asked the president whether he was calling off a rally in Kansas over the weekend because he was "sick of traveling." The president had previously acknowledged the strain of his heavy campaign schedule.
When the reporter asked whether he was tired of traveling, the president was not amused, and he referred to the reporter as "sick" and criticized his appearance.
Trump told Bogage that he felt perfectly well before turning to personal insults.
"You are disgusting. Put yourself in shape. You look like hell," Trump said.
“Whoa,” Hemmer said, reacting to the clip with surprise, according to Mediaite.
“Mmmmmm,” MacCallum replied, appearing alarmed yet amused, followed by an awkward silence.
“I guess that settles that,” Hemmer said, laughing.
Both anchors argued that the clip, together with the intensive campaign effort, demonstrated that Trump was "leaving it all on the field" during the final days before the midterm elections.
Hemmer said Trump was clearly putting everything into the campaign and that Tuesday night, when the results start coming in for the Senate and House races, would show whether his efforts had made a difference.
If the polls are correct and the margins are just two or three points, he suggested, adding that the get-out-the-vote campaign could have a significant impact.
MacCallum agreed, saying that most of those races were still anybody's game. She pointed out that polling had been unreliable in recent years and argued that those inaccuracies had to be taken into account to get a clearer picture. Whatever the outcome, she said, no one could claim the president had failed to put in his full effort.
The rallies in Kansas and Iowa were initially canceled but have now been brought back. Trump said he was skipping Kansas because Sen. Roger Marshall was performing so well, a point Marshall also made even though recent polls showed him trailing his Democratic opponent, Adam Hamilton.
A White House official confirmed on Friday that President Trump had reinstated the campaign rallies previously canceled in Iowa and Kansas.
The official said the president was planning back-to-back rallies in Kansas and Iowa on Sunday, alongside nearly 20 tele-rallies. The official explained that the events had been rearranged to accommodate the tele-rallies recently added to Trump's schedule.
On Friday, Trump was also scheduled to campaign in Florida in the hope of energizing his supporters in a state he won comfortably in 2024. Democrats have shown relatively strong participation in early voting, although registered Republicans were slightly ahead in ballots cast as of Thursday.
It will be his latest visit to a state Republicans generally expect to win, following campaign events earlier this week in Mississippi and South Carolina.
