Fox News host Howard Kurtz said Thursday that President Donald Trump should not use his “bully pulpit” to scold a private company like CNN, adding that if President Barack Obama had told Fox News what to do, there would have been an “explosion on the right.”
“President Trump has every right to push back on what he views as unfair media coverage and especially on this flawed CNN story. But a President of the United States should not be calling for the firing of two heads of private companies simply because he disagrees and doesn’t like their media coverage of him,” Kurtz said.
“It is using the bully pulpit in a way that feels like a personal grudge, especially in the case of Jeff Zucker, who had been on leave for surgery for serious heart problems and who had been friendly with Trump when he ran NBC and Trump had The Apprentice there.”
“If President Obama had said, ‘Hey, Fox News, you should get rid of Roger Ailes, because I think your coverage of me is unfair, there would have been an explosion on the right,'” Kurtz added.
CNN has been a favorite Trump target for a long time, and he often labels the network “fake news CNN” and encourages “CNN sucks” chants at his rallies.
The hatred and extreme bias of me by @CNN has clouded their thinking and made them unable to function. But actually, as I have always said, this has been going on for a long time. Little Jeff Z has done a terrible job, his ratings suck, & AT&T should fire him to save credibility!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2018
