“I’m glad you’re sitting down, because this is going to rock you potentially to your core,” Jimmy Kimmel told his audience Monday night. “It would appear that Fox News may have given Donald Trump preferential treatment.”
Among the many revelations in Jane Mayer’s comprehensive New Yorker piece on Fox News’ relationship with the president is the allegation that the network spiked a story about Trump’s alleged affair with Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.
“The article says that during the campaign a reporter at Fox News got proof of his affair with Stormy Daniels and was ready to run it,” Kimmel explained. “But one of the editors nixed the story and said Rupert [Murdoch] wants him to win, so we can’t run it. So Fox News hit the clear history button on that porn story and then made a non-disclosure agreement with the reporter to keep it quiet.”
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But Kimmel was far more amused with the details about how Trump ranks Fox News hosts based on how loyal they are to him—using the same scale he famously uses to talk about women’s looks.
According to Mayer, “Trump has told confidants that he has ranked the loyalty of many reporters, on a scale of 1 to 10. Bret Baier, Fox News’ chief political anchor, is a 6; Hannity a solid 10. Steve Doocy, the co-host of Fox & Friends, is so adoring that Trump gives him a 12.”
Kimmel joked that Hannity can get up to an 11 “if he’s wearing heels.” And when Doocy heard that, he probably said, “I will never need Viagra again.”
The article also alleges that Fox News provided Trump with advance knowledge of debate questions, something the president has repeatedly complained about CNN’s Donna Brazile doing for Hillary Clinton.
“Basically everything Trump has accused her of doing, he turns out to have done himself,” Kimmel said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we found out that he had sex with Bill Clinton.”
