President Donald Trump TV habits shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone anymore, but there’s a new report out with some behind-the-scenes details of just how much POTUS pays attention to what happens on cable news.

The Washington Post report this morning details Trump’s “elated” reaction to that December Oval Office meeting when he told then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer he would take credit for a government shutdown. Most people were shocked, but the president loved that it rated well and spoke to then-Speaker Paul Ryan about it:

“This is why I was so great on the Apprentice,” he told a startled Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) during a phone call the next morning, crowing that the ratings of the meeting were “great.”

Ryan said he did not know such government meetings scored ratings — or that they were released within 12 hours, according to aides familiar with the call who requested anonymity to describe the private conversation. Trump told Ryan that everyone watched and that Trump was dominating the TV — and that made the meeting a success.

And if you’re wondering how cognizant lawmakers are of the fact that Trump will notice them if they go on cable news, per the Post, the president told senators at the Senate Republican lunch this week “that he appreciated them defending him on TV,” giving Senator John Kennedy a shoutout in particular.

Another Republican senator, John Barrasso, told the Post that after he appeared on Fox News recently, he had a voice mail from the president thanking him for his vote on the emergency declaration.

As for Ryan, the former speaker apparently got a lot of calls from Trump about what he saw on Fox & Friends, “and Ryan was not usually watching or versed on the particulars of the show.”

[photo via Olivier Douliery-Pool / Getty Images]

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/2uCasUg