Donald Trump, American president, is not known as a book reader, and those charged with briefing him on intelligence and world affairs long ago learned to include plenty of pictures. He can frequently be found parroting Fox News talking heads in White House meetings, and even conferencing in Lou Dobbs while sitting with his actual advisers. When you're reportedly watching four or more hours a day, things tend to seep in.

Put simply, the President of the United States is a Fox News Grandpa—except he's allowed to call into Fox & Friends and bellow about this and that until the hosts can find a way to essentially hang up on him. It's an interactive experience for him, and a feedback loop. And on the other side of all this, those looking to get his attention frequently do so through the holy grail of the TV. Exhibit Z: an appearance from South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham on Fox & Friends this fair Tuesday:

This is, as some have already pointed out, an absolutely quintessential Fox & Friends segment, starting with the great president, or greatest president? question from Brian Kilmeade. But then watch as Graham, recently found going intergalactic in defense of Brett Kavanaugh at a Senate Judiciary hearing, abandons all pretense and address the camera directly. "Keep it up! Keep it up, Donald!"

Maybe Graham is looking for a nice Presidential Tweet to boost his support among South Carolina Republicans. Maybe he's still angling for a Cabinet position. Maybe he just wants to send Trump some other message: to his credit, Graham also did not mince words about the Saudi regime as the evidence solidifies that it was responsible for the disappearance of American-resident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

But it remains legitimately amazing that people close to the president—Graham is now one of Trump's closest congressional allies, having called him a "kook" and a "complete idiot" who's unfit for office during the campaign—treat it as a no-brainer that the best way to get through to him is to float down the lazy river of questionable teevee information into his skull cavity. Unfortunately, this also involves taking on some water:

This is, as journalist Aaron Rupar put it, some "gross, casual bigotry." Graham treats it as canon—which, in some precincts of the Fox News Channel, it surely is—that no one in their right mind would want to be Iranian. In the era of Donald Trump, that's apparently something people no longer feel ashamed to say out loud.

Once again, for all his own lying, Trump takes the varnish off another American institution—in this case, the warmongering neocon establishment with a hard-on for bombing the Middle East, who normally dress up their rhetoric in the language of human rights and democracy and anti-terrorism. Those might be factors for people like Graham, but this episode—which he will surely say was a slip of the tongue—indicates there are more tribal impulses working, too. If Brian Kilmeade thinks your bigotry was too direct, and tries to redirect your vitriol towards "bad leaders," you done fucked up. This is the guy who defended Trump's family-separation policy on the basis that "a lot" of migrant children "sadly, in my neighborhood, turn into MS-13."



As usual, it's tough to do business with Donald Trump, even through the television, without sustaining some crushing reputational blow. At least this segment didn't feature the leader of a proto-brownshirt group—that's for Fox News primetime! And at least Graham slammed Saudi Arabia's likely assassination of a journalist who lives in the United States before he casually degraded their greatest regional adversary. Equal opportunity!

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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