By John Solomon and Buck Sexton
President Trump rattled off many of his favorite Fox News commentators during a 45-minute Oval Office interview.
“The great Lou Dobbs, the great Sean Hannity, the wonderful, great Jeanine Pirro,” the president said Tuesday as he named for Hill.TV just a few of his favorite TV news personalities whom he said wanted him to declassify documents in the Russia probe.
He even marveled at how Pirro, a former prosecutor and state judge, reacts to criticism of his presidency. “She takes it so personally,” he remarked.
Trump said he values all of their insights but doesn’t relish one of their favorite terms for the federal bureaucracy: the “deep state.”
While he agrees with the hosts that some career workers at the FBI and other agencies have secretly worked to try to thwart his presidency, he’s just not fond of the nickname.
“I don’t like to use it because it sounds so conspiratorial, and believe it or not I’m really not a conspiratorial person,” he said during the exclusive interview.
Trump may not like the term, but he has used it more than once.
At a rally earlier this month, Trump used it to refer to the anonymous author of an op-ed published in The New York Times, denouncing “un-elected deep state operatives who defy the voters to push their own secret agendas are truly a threat to democracy itself.”
He described the “deep state” as a threat to democracy in the Sept. 7 speech.
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