A top Trump staffer reportedly threatened to ban White House officials from going on Fox News

(Image credit: Kevin Hagen/Getty Images)

published 8 March 2017

White House official Boris Epshteyn reportedly recently lost his cool with President Trump's favored network, Fox News. Politico reported Tuesday that after an unexpected question last month on Fox anchor Bill Hemmer's show about Trump's immigration executive order, Epshteyn — who is in charge of "plugging Trump's message on television" — got into "a yelling match" with a Fox News booker and threatened to "pull all West Wing officials from appearing on Fox News":

"Am I someone you want to make angry?" Epshteyn told the booker, the sources said. When he threatened to pull White House officials from the network, the fed-up booker had had enough."Go right ahead," the booker fired back, the sources said, aware that Epshteyn had no power to follow through on a threat that would have upended the administration's relationship with a sympathetic news network. [Politico]

However, the incident was far from the first time Epshteyn has ruffled feathers. Though he's widely respected in the Trump sphere for his loyalty, his reputation among TV networks isn't so solid, with many network contributors recalling encounters that have left a bad taste in their mouths. "He calls women 'girls,' and he has no decorum about how he speaks to people. He's somebody that just makes the room uncomfortable," national MSNBC correspondent Joy-Ann Reid told Politico. "When he leaves the room, the conversation is, 'I hope he never comes back.'"