President Trump reserved special wrath for NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd at a Pennsylvania campaign rally for congressional candidate Rick Saccone on Saturday night, referring to him as a “sleeping son of a b---h.”
And Todd has wasted little time addressing the jab.
The NBC personality tweeted late Saturday night urging viewers to set their DVRs to record his show “before your eyes get too sleepy.” He then appeared on D.C.’s NBC 4 station early Sunday, acknowledging the insult in broader terms.
NBC's "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd (Reuters)
“I bring my kids up to respect the office of the presidency and the president. I don’t allow them to say anything negative, ever, about the president,” Todd said. “It creates a challenge to all parents when he uses vulgarities like that.”
The president’s use of an epithet also drew the ire of veteran broadcaster Tom Brokaw, who expressed concern for parents in having to explain the phrase.
“Really classy,” he tweeted late Saturday. “Explain that to your children.”
Trump’s controversial reference was also raised on the NBC program Sunday morning, with guest Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin ultimately brushing aside the comments, noting that “he’s using vulgarities in the context of a campaign rally and obviously there were a lot of funny moments on that rally.”
“You know he likes to put names on people. He did that through the entire presidential election, including all the Republicans that he beat,” Mnuchin added. “So these are campaign issues.”
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Todd closed "Meet the Press" with a light joke, assuring viewers he would be back the following week “sleepy eyes and all.”
Trump’s remarks came during an hour-long and wide-ranging speech on Saturday, which included much railing against the mainstream press.
“You ever see the story? Where it's 1999. I’m on ‘Meet the Press,’ a show headed by sleepy eyes Chuck Todd. He’s a sleeping son of a b----h, I’ll tell you,” Trump told the crowd. “And they showed it this morning, 1999, and I’m talking about North Korea, ‘You gotta take them out now.’”
Yet this wasn’t the first time Trump referred to the NBC host with the snoozy description.
“’Sleepy’ Chuck Todd of NBC falls far short of the late Tim Russert,” he tweeted on Sept. 28, 2011.
And on April 1 last year he jabbed: “When will Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd and @NBCNews start talking about the Obama SURVEILLANCE SCANDAL and stop with the Fake Trump/Russia story?’
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