Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner and star pundit Tammy Bruce were absolutely apoplectic on Monday when a Democratic on-air guest reminded them how Donald Trump once dined with an avowed neo-Nazi.
During a standard Fox News panel segment on President Joe Biden falling behind Trump in 2024 presidential polling, Faulkner brought up Saturday Night Live’s latest cold open, which mocked Biden and his Democratic allies for claiming he is extremely sharp amid rising concerns about his advanced age.
Faulkner, who laughed throughout the clip, and Bruce giddily suggested the clip proves Biden is losing support. “Comedy is a remarkably important political statement, and when you have lost Saturday Night Live, when they are ridiculing you, the audience in New York is laughing hysterically, that is another sign that things perhaps might be lost,” the conservative pundit noted.
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Democratic strategist Jonathan Kott, meanwhile, asserted that the Biden associates he’s spoken with insist that the president “takes meetings long into the night” and is “very detail-oriented.” The former comms chief for Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) then made a bold comparison to Biden’s predecessor.
“I would say this, I would rather have a president who maybe has a stutter once in a while than one who spews conspiracy theories, racist nonsense, and has dinner with Nazis,” Kott declared. “If given the choice between one or the other, I’m happy Joe Biden might misspeak once in a while when he’s trying to name a president of a foreign country.”
After Faulkner shot back that “nobody had picked on” Biden for his well-known speech impediment, Bruce jumped in and took issue with Kott’s reference to Trump’s meal shared with neo-Nazi activist Nick Fuentes.
“Well, we just heard him call a number of Republicans Nazis and racists. So I think we can put him in the category of willing to go there,” she groused.
Kott responded that he hadn’t called Republicans Nazis but rather correctly stated that Trump “had dinner with a Nazi.” While Kott explained how the ex-president did, indeed, dine with the infamous white supremacist at his private residence, Bruce continued to shout over him.
“That is a tactic that is not going to work,” she fumed. “The American people don’t like it and they are taking it personally. Look at his numbers, it’s not going to work.”
And even though Kott continued to explain how he was literally stating a fact, Faulkner jumped in to end the segment—but not before throwing in her own parting shot at the liberal commentator.
“We have to go, and I had even said I never heard you talk like that. And, look, five seconds later, I was wrong. Sadly,” the Fox News anchor sneered. “It’s desperation,” Bruce added.
Despite being shouted down by a pair of Fox News personalities, Kott’s claim about Trump dining with a neo-Nazi was absolutely factual. Trump hosted Fuentes and antisemitic rapper Kanye West for a dinner at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022. While Trump’s sitdown with the Holocaust denier and white nationalist sparked bipartisan backlash—though some prominent Republicans stopped short of criticizing Trump himself—the former president largely ignored pleas to condemn Fuentes afterwards.