Fox News’ Trish Regan and Howard Kurtz helped validate Donald Trump’s dangerous, anti-American attacks on the media as the “enemy of the people.”
Two days after she suggested that the infamous Trump Tower meeting was a set up by Russian president Vladimir Putin and Hillary Clinton, Fox News host Trish Regan deceptively suggested that Trump’s attacks on the media are popular. As part of her introduction to the discussion with Kurtz, Regan commented on a clip of Trump attacking the press as “the fake, fake, disgusting news.”
REGAN: President Trump getting a lot of cheers for that line in Pennsylvania, taking on the media, pointing to them in the back there. But how is this daily battle really going to play out?
[…]
His audience, his base there, they love it when he goes after the media but is it destructive in any way in your view?
FACT CHECK: The vast majority of Americans disapprove of the way Trump talks about the media.
Instead of any real stance on behalf of press freedom and independence, Kurtz labeled Trump's attacks as "distracting" and said Trump "shouldn't be using that phrase" (calling the media "enemy of the people"). But Kurtz went on to defend the gist of Trump's behavior, as if the only problem were his style and semantics:
KURTZ: He has every right to hit back against the relentlessly unfair coverage that surrounds him even when the news is good.
… But I think he’s doing it so often now and with such vehemence, that he lets the press, which we love to talk about ourselves, make that the story instead of the issues that he’s pursuing.
As an example, the two whined that coverage of Trump administration officials who spoke at Thursday’s press briefing about efforts to thwart Russian sabotage of the 2018 elections was eclipsed because of CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s “grandstanding” with Sarah Huckabee Sanders over her refusal to repudiate Trump’s characterization of the media as an “enemy of the people.”
Neither Regan nor Kurtz mentioned that Trump undercut his own officials just a few hours later at that same Pennsylvania rally. Trump not only failed to indicate any concern about Russian interference, he “bashed the ‘Russia hoax’ and blamed the press for putting a negative spin on his ‘great meeting’ with Putin, as Vox noted.
Without any apparent irony, Kurtz lectured the media to “look to themselves and see, is there any balance left in the coverage here?” Kurtz “increasingly” fears, he said, that the other media’s “business model is to play to an anti-Trump audience.”
“Isn’t that sad?” Regan replied. “Putin wants to basically divide us and you get the mainstream media doing Putin’s job.”
Instead of calling out that outrageous suggestion, Kurtz validated it. He said, “Interesting way to put it.”
Watch these two legitimize Trump’s fascistic attacks on the media and, coincidentally, distract from his suspicious coziness with Putin below, from the August 3, 2018 Your World.
Howard, if you are having a sneaky look at easily the most accurate Fox-watching specialist blog, your cowardly attempts at looking ‘reasonable’ are a joke. You might as well admit you are a Trump whore and go all-out like Hannity, Carlson, this Regan thing and the Ingraham creature. Why not? In the final wash-up, you will be seen in exactly the same hideous light as they are.