The headlines coming out of Thompson’s appearance on Fox News Sunday are going to be bad, painting him as defensive, and appearing to offer the not-terribly-plausible argument that Fox News has an axe to grind against him.

But when you watch the whole exchange, Thompson and his argument don’t come across as all that bad. He doesn’t make the Fox-is-unfair argument in and of itself; he says that some Fox commentators, like many in the media, said he entered the race too late and can’t win, and cites his second-place standing in national polls as a sign they’ve written him off too early.

(Yes, I’ve heard the rumor that Ailes prefers Giuliani. I haven’t seen enough evidence to back the argument that Fox News is in the tank for anybody this cycle. Please, spare me your 9,000 word argument that Fox has been unfair to your guy.)

By the way, as much as the coverage on Thompson has been brutal, he’s not doing all that terribly in the last four Iowa polls. He finished third in ABC/Washington Post (behind Romney by 13 percent and Huckabee by 9 percent); fourth in Research 2000; third in ARG and in Rasmussen, he’s only two percent behind second place finisher Huckabee. He could still end up performing decently in the Hawkeye state. I don’t know how much I would bet on it, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

Transcript excerpt below the fold:

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THOMPSON: This has been a constant mantra of Fox, to tell you the truth. And I saw the promo for this bill, and I think it was kind of — for this show, and it was kind of featuring the New Hampshire poll. Let’s put things in context a little bit, to start with.
WALLACE: Well, I don’t know that —- I mean, I don’t know that Fox has been going after you, and I certainly don’t think Charles Krauthammer and Fred Barnes…
THOMPSON: From day one, they said I got in too late, I couldn’t do it.
WALLACE: But there were a lot of people besides Fox who said that, sir.
THOMPSON: Well, but I’m — these are the two you used.
WALLACE: Right.
THOMPSON: All right. Well, they said I got in too late, couldn’t do it…
WALLACE: Right.
THOMPSON: … wouldn’t raise enough money, and that sort of thing. And that’s their opinion. They’re entitled to their opinion. But that doesn’t seem to be shared by the cross-section of American people. If you look at the national polls, you’ll see that I’m running second and have been running second for a long time.I’m running ahead of a guy who spent probably $50 million more than I have and been running for a year longer. If you look in South Carolina, I’ve either been leading or tied for the lead for a long, long time. I moved from fourth to third in Iowa, ahead of Rudy Giuliani, incidentally.
So you know, they’re entitled to their opinion, but for you to highlight nothing but the negative in terms of these polls, and then put on your own guys, who have been predicting for four months, really, that I couldn’t do it, you know, kind of skews things a little bit.