A Fox News conservative political pundit who recently was the target of a rapid-fire Twitter tirade from President Trump is coming to The Villages to promote his book on a Major League Baseball legend.
Ed Henry, who serves as the national correspondent for Fox News Channel based in the Washington, D.C., will be at Barnes & Noble in Lake Sumter Landing on Thursday, Oct. 17 at 11 a.m. to sign copies of “42 Faith: The Rest of the Jackie Robinson Story.” The book, a New York Times Bestseller, reveals the backstory of faith that guided the Dodger great as he advanced civil rights by breaking the color barrier in baseball and then soared into the sport’s record books.
Henry cites recently discovered sermons, interviews with Robinson’s family and friends, and even an unpublished book by the player himself, as he shares a side of Robinson that few have taken the time to learn about.
The book also shows that Branch Rickey, the team owner who took great risks by signing Robinson to his first contract, was a complex man who wanted nothing more than to make his God-fearing mother proud of him. Henry says that few know how hard Rickey struggled with his decision, only moving forward after a private meeting with a minister he’d just met. In other words, Henry says, Rickey apparently wasn’t as certain about signing Robinson as historians have always assumed.
Henry’s book also digs into the real story of Robinson – what drove him and challenged him after his retirement. It details his early years before baseball to his time with the Dodgers and Rickey to his failing health in his final years. And it shows a man of faith many not fully understand and how God truly played a huge role in his amazing story.
Henry, who also wrote “Berkeley Bohemia: Artist and Visionaries of the Early 20th Century,” was in the news on Sept. 29 when Trump, who visited The Villages last week, leveled a series of 23 tweets and re-retweets in 23 minutes expressing his disdain with him over his interview with conservative radio host Mark Levin on the Ukraine scandal.
During the interview, Henry asked Levin if he thought the president had broken the law. When Levin said Trump hadn’t done anything illegal, Henry circled back to the question again. That prompted Levin to say, “Your question is not honest.” And it was followed by the barrage of tweets from Trump that started with this re-tweet: “Ed Henry just got his ASS handed to him by Mark Levin. Yes Ed, go ask Joe Biden.”
In contrast, a mid-September interview that Henry did with Trump at a section of the border wall in California drew praise from the president. The two talked about a variety of subjects in the piece that aired on “Fox & Friends” on Sept. 19, ranging from Trump’s criticism of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to sanctions on Iran to gun control to fake news to a section of the wall being built between California and Tijuana to making the job safer for Border Patrol agents.
