WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump just can't quit TV.
During a half-hour telephone interview on "Fox & Friends" Thursday morning, Trump offered a new spin on his frequent media criticism, assailing "fake news" yet insisting he has found the path to sanity by avoiding that which he has long seemed to adore.
"I don't watch them at all," Trump claimed at one point, referring to networks he dislikes, CNN and NBC. In the next sentence he made an exception for a CNN town hall Wednesday featuring the FBI director he fired, James Comey.
"I watched last night," the president said, and then he kicked off a soliloquy that hewed to the fiction that he ignores TV. (He starred on NBC's "The Apprentice," famously installed a giant set near the Oval Office and often tweets quotes from news shows, particularly those on Fox, while denying he watches much.)
"I'll tell you what. I watched leaking, lying Comey last night and I did _ I did _ I hated to do it."
He digressed for some lifestyle advice: "You know, one of the reasons people say, 'You're still looking good, Mr. President. How do you do it?'" How he did it, Trump said, was to avoid television. Previously, he said, "Whether it's good or bad, I'd always watch."
"I don't watch things now. I can put it out of my mind, and I never, ever thought that that would be possible. And you know what that does? It keeps you on the ball. It keeps you _ you keep your sanity and it works very well."
"But last night I did watch," he confessed, even conceding that he thought CNN anchor Anderson Cooper "was surprisingly tough and he did a good job."
But Comey? "His performance, by the way, was horrible."
