In a direct response to John Dean’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, which helped Democrats draw parallels between Watergate and the Russia investigation, the hosts "Fox & Friends" came to President Donald Trump's defense Tuesday by slamming the former White House counsel's habit of tweeting about the commander-in-chief.
"He has horrible things to say about Ronald Reagan," co-host Brian Kilmeade said of Dean. "He said that what President Bush did with Iraq is worse than Watergate, and he wrote a book about that. He has no idea how much money he made."
“Listen to how he describes Donald Trump,” Kilmeade continued. “'Demeaning Don.' 'Deadbeat Don.' 'Demagogue Don.' He calls him 'Deranged Don.' Those are just some of the things included in his 970 tweets.”
Kilmeade’s co-host Ainsley Earnhardt also touched on the sheer volume of tweets Dean has penned about the president. “Almost 1,000 . . . Who has time for that?” she asked.
Dean's congressional testimony in 1973 is widely believed to have led to the resignation of his disgraced former boss, President Richard Nixon. During the course of Dean's Monday testimony, several Republicans on the congressional panel shined a light on his social media and cable news commentaries in an apparent attempt to diminish his credibility. (Dean has been an outspoken critic of Trump and his administration on Twitter).
"Throughout history, you accuse presidents of acting like Richard Nixon and you make money off of it, right?" Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., asked Dean during the hearing.
"Those who do act like him, I point it out," Dean responded. (A 2004 book titled "Worse than Watergate" about former President George W. Bush's administration was also penned by Dean.)
In an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper immediately after his testimony, Dean said he was “honored” to be on Trump’s enemy list.
“I was able to make Nixon's at the end, and so I'm pleased that I'm on Trump's, given my feelings about the threat he is to this country," Dean told Cooper on Monday.
On Tuesday, Kilmeade pushed back against his lower-rated cable rival, which the president has falsely accused on numerous occasions of being a peddler of "fake news."
"This is this guy's point of view, and he was last relevant in 1973," Kilmeade said. "So unless, of course, you're CNN, where he goes on CNN but so few people watch him, they want to bring him center stage."
People the world over are familiar with Trump's own Internet habits. The president has published over 42,000 tweets in the more than ten years since he first opened his Twitter account. In one memorable frenzy, the Washington Post reported that the president tweeted 52 times in only 34 hours — and that was just "his second-most prolific two-day stretch since becoming president."
As my colleague Shira Tarlo earlier reported, "Dean said the last time he appeared before the House Judiciary Committee was July 11, 1974. Seven of the committee's 41 members were not born at the time."
He told the House Judiciary panel Monday that special counsel Robert Mueller's report, which detailed at least ten instances of possible obstruction by the president, is to Trump as the Watergate grand jury report was to Nixon.
"In many ways, the Mueller report is to President Trump what the so-called Watergate 'road map' . . . was to President Richard Nixon," Dean said. "Special counsel Mueller has provided this committee with a road map."
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