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This Is What State TV Looks Like: Fox News’ Talking Heads Praise Trump’s Drowsy U.N. Speech

K.T. McFarland Praises Trump for Reading UN Address "Slowly"

Although the “journalists” at Fox News often publicly bemoan being lumped in with the opinion hosts who openly cozy up to President Trump, that firewall felt especially flimsy on the morning of September 24. That purported line between hard news and racist grandpa infotainment was conspicuously absent amid the network’s analysis of the president’s bizarre address to the United Nations earlier in the day.

The speech was a strange affair consisting of Trump delivering menacing if incoherent condemnations of socialism, imaginary human traffickers at the Southern border, and Iran, done with the cadence of an old man whose breakfast Diet Coke was dosed with Xanax. However, you’d never know it if you had tuned in to Fox News’s coverage.

Once the spectacle involving the president squinting his way through a precarious teleprompter reading wrapped, America’s Newsroom—a broadcast described by the Observer as “the network’s first slice of straightforward unbiased news”—immediately threw to former Trump deputy national security adviser and hard-right hawk K.T McFarland. She emphatically praised the president’s address, and in doing so, tipped her hand a bit because she sounded like she’s applauding a fourth grader’s class presentation and not the leader of the free world addressing his peers.

McFarland generously dubbed the address Trump’s “best speech ever,” which is admittedly a low bar. She then went on to praise the president for “reading slowly” and not “repeating himself.”

“And the other thing is, how many times did he talk about himself?” McFarland wondered. “I never counted one! He was talking about the country. He was talking about the things he wanted the Americans to accomplish. Even when he was talking about the economy improving, he didn’t say ‘I created the jobs,’ he said ‘we.’ So I think it was a very different Donald Trump.”

“I also think it was the best description he has ever given of what Make America Great Again means and what America First means,” she added. “He’s usually tweeted the stuff out, but he’s never really articulated it.”

Anyone expecting any pushback was shit out of luck after fellow panel members, including fellow Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum and The Five co-host Dana Perino, joined McFarland in praising Trump.

“I agree with K.T.,” MacCallum said. “I thought it was a very strong speech and I think people say that they don’t understand what the Trump doctrine is, or it has never been articulated. I think in this speech, he went a long way towards doing that.”

Sure.

For her part, Perino praised Trump’s supposed lack of ego. “It’s very interesting—your observation, K.T.—that he didn’t use the word ‘I,'” Perino said. She then made an oblique reference to Trump predecessor Barack Obama by adding, “I remember being here a few years ago when we counted up the ‘I’s,’ and that was very different.”

We should all be so lucky to be graded on such a generous curve in our professions, where feigning even the slightest interest in our jobs is practically cause for a parade. That being said, McFarland might have been watching a different speech than the one that actually happened. Or she might have just been a really big fan of the Steve Bannon-style talking points peppered throughout the address, like when Trump dropped the anti-Semitic dog whistle when denouncing “globalism.” Or when he paid lip service to replacement theory by hinting that Americans must preserve their own unique customs and culture.

“The free world must embrace its national foundations,” Trump said. “It must not attempt to erase them or replace them. Looking around, and all over, this large, magnificent planet. The truth is plain to see. If you want freedom, take pride in your country. If you want democracy, hold on to your sovereignty. And if you want peace, love your nation.”

Otherwise, there wasn’t a whole lot of coherent messaging. Take for example, when he espouses the baseless and paranoid hysteria about social media firms shadow banning conservative voices:

Note how he trudges through the prepared remarks, as if he has a mouth full of oatmeal. Also, it must be hard to read when your eyes are practically closed.

The longer Trump spent reading the prompter, the more he sounded like he was slogging through a NyQuil haze. If Trump sounded like he was barely awake, well, that’s more than anyone can say about the president’s own commerce secretary Wilbur Ross, who apparently used this time for a little snooze.

But hey, like Fox contributor K.T. McFarland said, this was easily the best speech of Trump’s presidency. Just terrific.