Fox News’ Shep Smith on Thursday reacted to the president’s wide-ranging “interview for the ages,” noting Donald Trump appeared to tell the New York Times he now views Attorney General Jeff Sessions as a “traitor.”
“President Trump told the New York Times in an interview for the ages that Bob Mueller would cross a ‘red line’ if he looked into his or his family's finances,” Smith said. “Well, he's looking into his family's finances—red line crossed, now what?”
Smith was referring to reports that despite the president’s clear warning to Mueller, the special counsel is now scrutinizing the Trump family’s business dealings, Bloomberg reports.
Turning to other highlights in that Trump/Times interview, Smith noted the president “slammed top officials at his own Justice department and at the FBI, including one of his biggest campaign supporters, the first senator to come out and support him, the man he called the smartest man in all of the United States Senate, the man he appointed his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, apparently is now a traitor.”
Mocking Trump’s assertion that is was “unfair” for Sessions to recuse himself from the Department of Justice’s Russia investigation, Smith quipped, “you take the job, then you get the information which makes it clear that ethically you have to recuse yourself, and you recuse yourself.”
Pointing to Sessions’ insistence that he will stay at the department—despite Trump’s insults—as long as it’s “appropriate,” Smith pointed out critics would say it stopped being appropriate “the millisecond President Trump gave that interview to the New York Times and said he never would have put him in there.”
“I'm baffled, frankly, by everything that's happened in the past 24 hours,” Fox News’ White House correspondent John Roberts told Smith.
Roberts later admitted he’s “not sure what direction this is going and what the president hopes to achieve saying the things he's said.”
“He has thrown into doubt the confidence that this White House must have in the Department of Justice, at the same time the attorney general is saying we're going to do everything we can to uphold the laws of the United States and enforce them appropriately," Roberts added.
“A crazy day at the White House,” Smith said.
Watch the video below, via Fox News:
