Fox News host Lawrence Jones slammed The Late Show host Stephen Colbert on Thursday morning, accusing him of “rooting against the country” after an April Fool’s gag aimed at President Donald Trump.
Colbert’s joke was aimed at President Trump’s 19-minute speech on Wednesday night about his month-old war with Iran, which has seen 13 U.S. service members killed, and oil and gas prices soar.
The speech saw Trump make several false claims —including the insistence that the families of all 13 U.S. troops killed in the conflict personally begged him to “finish the job,” a claim an official who overheard the meetings disputed to NBC News.
Trump also boasted that he built “the strongest economy in history” and claimed there is “no inflation,” despite federal data showing inflation was still running at 2.4 percent in February.
He further downplayed the U.S. reliance on oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, even though the country still imports significant crude supplies tied to the region.
During the speech, he also claimed the war is effectively over in a bid to reassure increasingly skeptical voters about his mission.
In a segment on Fox & Friends covering Trump’s national address on the war, Jones criticized what he called the legacy media’s dismissive coverage.
“But many people on the circuit and the late shows last night were expecting something different from the president,” Jones said, introducing clips of CNN and MSNBC commentary.
The montage ended with Colbert quipping, “It was a big night on all the broadcast networks. Donald Trump, at 9 o’clock, gave a national, prime-time address. It was concise, intelligent, and brought the nation together with shared purpose.”
Laughter from the audience and band followed, before Colbert added, “April Fool’s!”
“Rooting against the country,” Jones said afterward. “I think it’s shameful right now.”
He continued, “The president doesn’t deserve some credibility on it. He earned the credibility. We’ve had several military operations where we got in, got out. Seamless. No casualties at the time. Some of our troops got injured, but they were flawless in a sense. And so now we have the big one, the big enchilada, that has been a threat for 47 years, and you mean to tell me you’re not going to give him any credibility on the operation?”
Trump’s former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany also chimed in. “It’s unbelievable. This is the commander-in-chief that killed al-Baghdadi. That killed Soleimani. That ended two dictatorships. Do we not remember Venezuela? He has earned to your exact point the trust of the measure people,” she said.
“These neophytes in the liberal media don’t understand by now that he plays chess with the various pieces and communicating something to someone strategically,” McEnany continued. “You can’t help them at this point it’s been a decade and they don’t get the math.”
Polls have shown that Trump’s war in Iran is vastly unpopular. The latest YouGov poll showed that 59 percent of Americans disapprove of the war.
