State Department names Fox 'Friend' as spokeswoman
The warming trend between President Trump and Fox News Channel continued to heat up this week when Fox on-air personality Heather Nauert was named State Department spokeswoman.
Nauert served as a correspondent on the popular morning show Fox and Friends and co-anchored other shows on the 24/7 news channel. She replaces acting State Department spokesman and career foreign service officer Mark Toner.
Fox coverage of Trump has generally been positive, and the president has made appearances on Fox shows and tweeted on the channel's content. But the Fox-Trump relationship hasn't always been warm, getting off to a rocky start when Trump and Fox anchor Megyn Kelly exchanged barbs at the first Republican presidential debate in August 2015.
The clash drew scorn from Trump on Twitter: "Wow, @megynkelly really bombed tonight. People are going wild on twitter! Funny to watch."
The back-and-forth continued through the campaign. It made headlines again in October when Kelly questioned whether Trump was a “sexual predator” following discovery of a never-aired snippet of video from Access Hollywood in 2005 during which Trump talked about how his stardom allowed him to grope women.
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Trump dismissed the comment as “locker room banter," and Trump supporter Newt Gingrich lashed out at Kelly, accusing her of being "fascinated by sex" and uninterested in public policy.
The rest is history — Trump won, Kelly left the network for NBC, and the Fox-Trump relationship has warmed. Nauert made a modest pro-Trump ripple in February when she tweeted in support of Ivanka Trump in February, blaming "liberal pressure" for decisions by Nordstrom's and other retailers to drop the presidential daughter's line of apparel.
Nauert last appeared on Fox in February. Her résumé of almost 20 years as a journalist includes coverage of the 9/11 terror attacks, the war in Iraq and four presidential elections. Prior to joining Fox News, Nauert served as a correspondent for ABC News, where she covered breaking news in the U.S. and abroad. She is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York and Mount Vernon College in Washington, D.C.
"Heather’s media experience and long interest in international affairs will be invaluable as she conveys the administration’s foreign policy priorities to the American people and the world," the State Department said in a statement.