Fox News host Steve Doocy criticized the ex-president for his attacks on the judge overseeing his criminal case.
Throughout much of Trump’s presidency, Doocy’s show was Trump’s favorite platform for spur-of-the-moment softball interviews. But on Wednesday morning, he pushed back a bit on the former president.
“It is a very bad look to attack the family of the judge,” Doocy said on a “Fox & Friends” panel.
He brought up the warning that Judge Juan Merchan, who’s overseeing Trump’s criminal case in Manhattan, issued to the former president’s legal team after the defendant posted multiple slanderous rants about those involved in the case on his Truth Social profile.
Doocy referenced one of Trump’s Truth Social screeds posted before the arraignment that mused that “potential death and destruction” could ensue if Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg moved forward with his indictment.
“The judge warned him and his attorneys to make that sure that doesn’t happen,” Doocy said. “Six hours later, at Mar-a-Lago, the judge was attacked, the judge’s wife, and the judge’s daughter.”
He’s referring to social media posts from this week: As his father was being brought in, Donald Trump Jr. shared a Breitbart story about Judge Merchan’s daughter, a communications professional who briefly worked for Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, in an attempt to paint the judge as biased.
And in the hours before his arraignment, Trump posted one of his signature all-caps rants slamming Judge Merchan as a “HIGHLY PARTISAN JUDGE” with a family of “WELL KNOWN TRUMP HATERS.”
“HIS DAUGHTER WORKED FOR ‘KAMALA’ & NOW THE BIDEN-HARRIS CAMPAIGN,” Trump wrote on Tuesday morning. “KANGAROO COURT!!!”
Doocy called the attacks a “very bad look” before his co-hosts rushed to change the subject.
Doocy has long been considered one of the Trumpier Fox News hosts. When Trump ranked his favorites on a scale of zero to 10 back in 2019, Doocy topped the list with a 12 out of 10 for showering the then-president in regular praise.
But he has flexed a bit of autonomy in recent years, at one point during the COVID-19 pandemic urging the president to wear a mask.
