White House Called Fox News to Complain About El-Sayed Interview

Eric Lee/REUTERS Donald Trump’s team has been panic-dialing Fox News over coverage they believe is boosting a rising Democratic star loathed by the president.

White House aides put in calls to the network on Tuesday complaining about an interview with Abdul El-Sayed the day before.

They said it had allowed the progressive Michigan Senate candidate to portray himself as less left-wing than he really is, Axios reports .

The president then took those gripes public in a late-night Truth Social tirade .

He trashed anchor Martha MacCallum’s questions as “softball” and the network for “promoting the Dumocrats, not the Republicans and MAGA.

They have totally lost their way!” It’s not the first time Fox’s treatment of El-Sayed, 41, has freaked out the president’s closest supporters.

Several Republican operatives also contacted the network in August after host Jesse Watters said that “you gotta respect Abdul because he beat the machine,” according to Axios.

El-Sayed, who would be the first Muslim elected to the Senate, beat the odds to win the Michigan Senate primary over Rep.

Haley Stevens, a moderate backed by the Democratic establishment.

He later released a campaign ad that included Watters’ remarks as backing from an “unlikely validator.” The GOP was relieved when the physician and public health expert faced a round of tough questions from Watters on immigration and healthcare in a subsequent interview.

But it proved short-lived when the host told viewers only the next day, “I actually like Abdul.

I probably shouldn’t like him, but I do.” El-Sayed, who said in his Monday interview with MacCallum that “I am going to have conversations with all kinds of folks,” has leant hard on the network ahead of the Nov.

3 midterms.

Axios found that in the first six days of this month, Fox aired his campaign ads 129 times, roughly twice as often as they appeared on ESPN.