On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Fox News Media Analyst and “Mediabuzz” host Howard Kurtz stated CNN’s Trump Tower story is “fundamentally flawed” and the president shouldn’t be calling for the heads of private companies to be fired because he doesn’t like their coverage.
Kurtz said, “I understand CNN wanting to fire back…it doesn’t solve the problem that this is a fundamentally flawed story. CNN has done very little to explain publicly where it is. And on this business about Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen’s lawyer, who has told me and other journalists that he mishandled the situation and that made a mistake. He never confirmed this story, the Michael Cohen story about Trump Tower to CNN. In fact, he told the CNN reporters he could not be a confirming source. He wishes he had been more aggressive in waving them off what remains an unsubstantiated story.” He added that CNN’s tweet responding to the president makes it sound like CNN “wants to be in the wrestling arena with President Trump.”
Kurtz then turned to President Trump’s tweets about CNN’s Jeff Zucker and NBC’s Andy Lack, “President Trump has every right to push back hard against 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. That is a step too far. 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 after surgery for serious heart problems and who had been friendly with Trump when he ran NBC and Trump had ‘The Apprentice’ there.”
Kurtz continued that if President Obama had called for Fox to fire Roger Ailes, “there would have been an explosion on the right.”
Kurtz also discussed President Trump’s accusation that NBC got caught “fudging my tape on Russia,” stating that the accusation lacks credibility.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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