Tom Steyer wants President Trump to be impeached. Fox News decided to impeach his new ad instead.
On the same day that Fox News first ran an advertisement funded by Steyer, a Democratic mega-donor, President Donald Trump tweeted about Steyer, calling him “wacky” and “totally unhinged.”
Wacky & totally unhinged Tom Steyer, who has been fighting me and my Make America Great Again agenda from beginning, never wins elections!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2017
Just four days later, the outlet stopped playing the advertisement. “Due to the strong negative reaction to their ad by our viewers, we could not in good conscience take their money,” Jack Abernethy, Fox News co-president, said in a statement obtained by TPM on Monday.
Steyer, through his attorneys, said he was not given an explanation for the cancellation of the advertisement.
Trump likely saw the ad for the first time when it aired on “Fox and Friends.” The early morning program is known as Trump’s favorite source of news, and Trump tweeted a thank you to “Fox and Friends” for its “really great job and show!” just minutes after the Steyer tweet.
While Fox claims the audience reaction is what sparked the removal of the advertisement, Steyer’s lawyer sent a letter to Abernethy, claiming Fox News is censoring a private citizen in order to appease the President.
“It is no coincidence that the cancellation of the advertisement, in the second week of its run, came on the heels of a tweet from President Trump, criticizing the spot and Mr. Steyer personally. The only plausible explanation seems to be that Fox News capitulated to political pressure from the Trump administration itself,” Steyer’s lawyer Brad Deutsch said in a letter to Abernethy on Nov. 3, which was obtained by The Washington Post. “President Trump has threatened retaliation against broadcasters who provide him with negative coverage and Fox News appears to have answered these threats with servility.”
In the video, Steyer outlines all of Trump’s “dangerous” moves as President thus far, and said that a Republican Congress “once impeached a President for far less.”
“Yet today people in Congress and his own administration know that this President is a clear and present danger who’s mentally unstable and armed with nuclear weapons, and they do nothing,” he said.
Read the letter Steyer’s lawyer sent Fox News below:
