In the flurry of news on his tax returns, his troubled health care plan and his suspicion that his phones were bugged, it was easy to miss one of President Donald Trump’s most startling comments Wednesday night on Fox News.
Trump was griping about the coverage he gets on every major television network except right-leaning Fox News, and he singled out NBC as a prime offender. After all the money that NBC made on his reality-TV franchise, Trump suggested, it owed him more favorable coverage of his presidency.
“I made a fortune for NBC with ‘The Apprentice,’” he told Fox anchor Tucker Carlson. “I had a top show where they were doing horribly, and I had one of the most successful reality shows of all time. I was very good to NBC, and they are despicable — they’re despicable in their coverage.”
An NBC spokesman declined to comment.
Trump’s hostility toward the mainstream media exceeds that of any modern president. Even President Richard Nixon, who loathed much of the press, stopped short of calling ABC, CBS, NBC and The New York Times “the enemy of the American people,” as Trump has.
No president but Trump has routinely accused reporters of making things up to harm him, a firing offense under boilerplate ethics codes of American newsrooms.