It was a subtler snub than the Obama administration’s 2009 claim that Fox News was “a wing of the Republican party.” But that didn’t stop Fox anchor Shepard Smith from calling out the White House for slighting the news network at Tuesday’s State of the Union lunch.
Smith spent much of his on-air news hour waxing poetic about the lunch, which President Obama held in order to lay out his policy proposals before a small group of influential news anchors.
But at the end of his broadcast, the Fox anchor pointed out a minor — but almost certainly intentional — difference between his fancy place card and those of the other network anchors.
“I sat next to Brian Williams, and we all had these place cards, and his said ‘Brian Williams, NBC News,’” Smith explained. “And across from me was David Muir – the new guy on ABC — it said ‘David Muir, ABC News.’”
“And I looked at mine, and it doesn’t say anything about news,” he continued, holding up the place card. “It just says ‘Fox.’ And I looked at [Fox anchor] Bret Baier’s, and it said, ‘Bret Baier, Fox.’ And all the rest of them said news.”
“I mean I don’t care, lunch was great,” Smith said. “But I guess, message received? I think Bret and I are good to go with the news part.”
Since the administrations’s disastrous 2009 attempt to shut Fox News out of key interviews, the White House has scaled back its hostility towards the network. But it looks like neither side is quite ready to bury the hatchet just yet.
