Donald Trump spoke to a handful of national media outlets for the first time in weeks as he publicized the opening of his new Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C on Wednesday.
Trump spoke to ABC’s George Stephanopolous and CNN‘s Dana Bash after the official opening of his new hotel at the Old Post Office Pavilion. Trump also spoke with Reuters‘ Steve Holland on Tuesday.
Trump campaign staffers and surrogates have been ubiquitous on cable television, but appearances on national networks other than Fox News have been few and far between lately for Trump. According to CNN Money, he last appeared on CNN on Aug. 25, in an interview with Anderson Cooper; on CBS on July 17, in an interview with “60 Minutes” correspondent Leslie Stahl; and on ABC on Sept. 6, in an interview with David Muir.
Trump’s last appearance on NBC was the Sept. 7 “Commander in Chief Forum,” hosted by Matt Lauer (although he went on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” on Sept. 15) and he last appeared on CNBC on Sept. 12, according to the Washington Post.
And although Trump has occasionally cropped up on Fox News with Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly in that time period, some Fox News employees have been critical of Trump’s media hiatus. In late September, Brit Hume mentioned that Trump “seems to have stopped holding news conferences.”
A week later, on Oct. 6, Megyn Kelly started a brief scrap with fellow anchor Hannity, when she said “Trump, with all due respect to my friend at 10 o’clock, will go on Hannity and pretty much only Hannity and will not venture out to the unsafe spaces these days, which doesn’t exactly expand the tent.”
On Oct. 11th, Trump told O’Reilly, “Fox has been pretty good. Your guys in the morning have been fantastic,” referring to the “Fox & Friends” morning show, where he was a frequent call-in contributor for years before launching his presidential campaign.
Though Trump used to mock Hillary Clinton for going hundreds of days without a press conference, Trump’s last press conference was on July 27. He did not take questions from reporters who attended Wednesday’s ribbon-cutting at the D.C. hotel.
