Aboard Air Force One on Thursday, April 16, President Donald Trump flipped the channel on Fox News after one of the hosts left him unimpressed.
In a lengthy Truth Social post, April 16, the president ripped into Jessica Tarlov, the Democratic co-host on The Five, calling her one of the “least attractive and talented people on all of television.”
Trump griped about her voice, her talking points, and what he slammed as bogus poll numbers. Then came the zinger that nailed his disgust: her voice was “so grating and terrible, I had to ‘turn her off!’”
The outburst came after Tarlov appeared on the episode of The Five and walked through a string of recent polls showing Trump’s approval rating sitting in the low to mid-30s.
Trump responds.
Trump fired back that he actually has “among the best poll numbers I have ever had” and insisted the country is winning on every front.
He pointed to a CNN segment that supposedly showed him at 100 percent among MAGA voters, something he said the network had never seen before. He demanded that Fox get Tarlov off the air, claiming she is “bad for our country.”
The president was on his way to promote one of his signature campaign promises, now turned into law: no taxes on tips.
He planned speeches and events in Las Vegas on Thursday and in Arizona the following day, describing the policy as a direct benefit for service workers, especially in hospitality-heavy cities like Las Vegas.
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The measure, part of the wider Working Families Tax Cut Act signed last summer, means tipped employees keep more of their earnings without federal tax withholding on those tips.
Trump also had problems with three well-known conservative media figures, with whom he worked closely to get back to the White House.
He claimed Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens are “dying fast,” with terrible audience numbers, and labeled them “fake MAGA” who have now been exposed.
Recent podcast rankings show all three still draw significant listenership, though their exact weekly numbers fluctuate depending on the platform.
Trump fell out with Carlson, Kelly, and other top-ranking conservative commentators after they refused to support his policy on the Iran-U.S. war. They started calling him over, accusing him of starting a war with Iran, yet during the campaigns, he promised to end wars and restore peace in the Middle East.
Carlson specifically said U.S. Forces were fighting Israel.
Back on Fox News, Tarlov has become a regular lightning rod for conservative viewers precisely because she pushes back hard on the panel.
She is one of the few consistent liberal voices on the Fox daytime show, and her segments frequently spark strong reactions.
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Trump has criticized her before, once telling Jesse Watters he is “not a fan” and accusing her of using fake numbers. This time, he went further, tying the personal attack to the wider poll debate.
The president’s approval rating has indeed slipped since the start of 2026. Early-year Fox News polling had him at 44 percent, but more recent surveys from CNN, UMass, and others placed overall approval in the mid- to upper-30s by late March and early April.
The drop comes amid higher gas prices linked to the conflict in Iran, which began in late February, as well as broader economic concerns. Trump’s economic approval specifically hit a new low of 31 percent in the CNN poll Tarlov referenced.
