By Jason Le Miere
Politics and World Editor
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Fox News host Neil Cavuto condemned President Donald Trump during a searing four-minute monologue Thursday, which culminated in him asking: "What good is it to fatten your wallet if you've lost your soul?"
Cavuto directed the barbs at Trump following an interview with the president aired on Fox News' morning show Fox & Friends Thursday. During a wide-ranging sit-down, the president claimed that if those calling for his impeachment got their wish, the booming economy would collapse and "everybody would be very poor."
Financial experts have said that such a dire outcome is highly unlikely to come to pass, but, said Cavuto, even if that were to happen, the president is missing the point.
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"Making money should never get in the way of simply getting answers," Cavuto said. "You don't prevent a constitutional crisis by threatening a financial one. But, Mr. president, you guarantee both when your very actions and words create that crisis or make people think that you're hiding one."
Cavuto referenced payments to two women during his campaign, adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, in order to silence their claims of an affair. On Tuesday, Trump's former personal lawyer and "fixer," Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to campaign finance law violations related to those payments and said he made them at the direction of the now-president.
Trump has altered his story about the payment to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, multiple times since the Wall Street Journal first reported it in January. Initially, he said he knew nothing about it before, and then later, his new lawyer Rudy Giuliani said Trump had in fact reimbursed Cohen.
Speaking in his latest interview with Fox & Friends, Trump said he knew about the hush-money payments "later on." That statement, however, contradicted an audio recording released by Cohen's lawyer last month in which Trump and Cohen can be heard discussing a payment to McDougal.
"What good is it to fatten your wallet if you've lost your soul?" Cavuto said to Trump. "If you forget your friends and you embolden your enemies? You are right to say that some are out to get you, but often times, Mr. president, the problem is you: what you say, and how you keep changing what you say."
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Cavuto criticized not only Trump's shifting statements about the payments to women but a huge list of the president's misleading and false claims, from his narrative about an infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting to his poll numbers and crime figures in Germany.
"None of these make the market any less impressive, maybe just the guy overseeing it all," the Fox News and Fox Business host said. "Mr. president, you're that guy, you're both those guys. And you're right to be frustrated, but you are part of what's frustrating."
Cavuto concluded: "You are so darned focused on promoting a financial boom that you fail to see that you are the one creating this moral bust. And we could all be the poorer for it."
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