Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on the media as “the enemy of the people” did not go down well with the Fox News Sunday panel today. The comments were slammed as Stalinesque, "chilling" and “enormously serious.”
The panel’s reaction was about as much Trump bashing as you’re likely to see on Fox News.
Susan Page, Washington Bureau chief for USA Today unloaded on Trump. “This is a phrase from Stalin, is chilling, and unprecedented in modern times,” she said. “It does not recognize the role that the founders saw for a free and vigorous press: to hold officials accountable and to be the friend of the American people. I think it’s enormously serious.”
Host Chris Wallace agreed. He said Trump’s rhetoric “undermines the role of a free press around the world to hold governments accountable.”
Panelist Jason Riley, of the Wall Street Journal, agreed, but put the onus on the media. He claimed that press behavior has also “reached a new low.” He accused the media of “behaving much more like political activists than they are like objective journalists.”
“The president makes them the story,” Wallace said.
Page added that Trump’s goal “is undermining faith in the institutions that stand to challenge him.”
Former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove responded in political terms. He said, “This does not help him.”
Philippe Reines, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton, called Trump's behavior a “war on the truth.” Reporters “have to realize that they are in combat and they have to start acting differently,” Reines said. He recommended that the media should “stop broadcasting the daiiy press briefing live “ and “use the word ‘lie’ when he lies.”
Watch it below, from the August 5, 2018 Fox News Sunday.
Of course, most of the attention still goes on the on-air poisonalities like Carlson, Regan, Kennedy Whatever, Dobbs and the Ingraham creature, and they are simply awful people on or off screen, but it’s interesting that there is clearly no discipline whatsoever being applied to Antoinette’s longtime crush Hannity. The Management seems not to be managing.