Even Fox News Couldn't Quite Defend Trump's Twitter Attack On Brzezinski

Fox News anchor Julie Banderas weighed in on President Trump's recent insults against media personality Mika Brzezinski, and it seems neither the president nor his defenders was able to escape criticism from the network. On Thursday, the Fox News host lambasted Trump's tweet about Brzezinski and called out Republican National Committee chairperson Ronna McDaniel for attempting to justify it.

Earlier that day, Trump provoked bipartisan condemnation for his personal vitriol against Brzezinski, the co-host of MSNBC's Morning Joe. The president mocked her as having a "low I.Q" and claimed that she was "bleeding badly from a face-lift" in several tweets.

Banderas asked McDaniel on Thursday, "How does the GOP get their message out and work on their agenda when the president continues to send Tweets like this one?"

McDaniel defended the GOP's focus on the Republican agenda, and regarding Trump's comments, she said: “Today, the president acted like a human, and he pushed back." Banderas disagreed with the pushback, saying that Trump didn't need to "stoop to the level of that" and it's "not how you run a country." She advised that Trump walk away from negative commentary rather than fight back, citing former President Obama's cool composure as an example.

“People used to call him a Muslim. People used to call him under-qualified, a sellout to America, a hater of Israel,” Banderas said. “I mean they called him every name in the book, but you didn't see him lash out.”

McDaniel isn't Trump's only defender. At a press conference Thursday, the White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Trump's caustic remarks against Brzezinski, claiming that the MSNBC show launched "constant attacks" on Trump. In response to this being yet another example of Trump's vocal sexism, Sanders said, "I’m a woman and I’ve been attacked by this show multiple times."

Although the president almost exclusively appears on the network, Trump's relationship with Fox News isn't always rosy. Most notably after his first presidential GOP debate, he slammed former Fox News journalist Megyn Kelly for pressing him on his history of misogynistic name-calling.

But not all Fox News personalities were as critical of Trump's tweets as Banderas. The network's top host, Tucker Carlson, chimed in that Trump is a "brawler" and the media should not be shocked by that. He added, however, that Trump's tweets were "stupid" and "counterproductive" to his agenda and that "they achieved no policy objective."

Trump has not responded to the criticism his tweets provoked from Fox News, other cable news networks, or his own party.

Correction: An earlier version of this article did not state that Carlson also called President Trump's tweets "stupid." It has been edited to include that.