Fox News' Andrew Napolitano says President Trump's Twitter attack on him was "brilliant" — and false.
Trump on Saturday had blasted Napolitano after the Fox News analyst said Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report shows he obstructed justice. Citing a rebuttal from Alan Dershowitz, Trump said Napolitano's argument was "dumb." He went on to claim that Napolitano has been "very hostile" to him ever since he turned him down for a Supreme Court seat, also saying Napolitano asked him to pardon a friend.
Napolitano responded in a Fox Business interview on Monday by saying neither of these claims is true. Instead, Napolitano says he simply described what an ideal Supreme Court nominee would look like and Trump incorrectly suggested he was talking about himself. Napolitano says he did then make the case for himself on the Supreme Court, but only at Trump's request.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Napolitano also said that Trump during their private conversation was the one to ask whether he thought a mutual friend's conviction was just, to which he responded he thought it was. According to Napolitano, it was Trump who responded that this friend would be put on a list of potential pardons.
Apparently, Napolitano, who explained he has been friends with Trump for 30 years, doesn't have any hard feelings about these attacks. "I thought the president's comments were brilliant," Napolitano said. "He wanted to divert attention from what Mueller had said about him, and what I had commented about Mueller, to his relationship with me." Napolitano did wonder, though, if "this is how you treat you friends, how do you treat your enemies? Oh boy." Brendan Morrow
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.