MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow criticized President Donald Trump’s barring of CNN, Politico and her network, arguing that it would not have blown up in his face if he had blocked only her outlet instead.
“He decides to sort of diffuse the attention on us by bringing in these other news organizations,” Maddow said on Wednesday’s episode of the “Lovett or Leave It” podcast. “But in so doing, he ends up taking the swipe that just seems sort of weird and inchoate, and also very clarifying to the news business that this is the kind of thing that we ought to all stand up against together.”
Trump banned the three credible news networks over baseless claims of being “FAKE NEWS!” and said they are a “threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!”
The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the president’s gripe with the news outlets “reached a fever pitch” after his controversial aide Natalie Harp showed him videos of MS NOW hosts criticizing his administration.
However, Maddow theorized that Trump does not come after her network more than he does other news organizations, despite how critical it is of the administration, because “he’s talked himself into the idea that that will help us.”
“That will elevate us, and so he shouldn’t pay us attention because we’re always going to be, you know, who we are, and that it’ll only, it’ll only help us and therefore hurt him to give us too much attention,” she said.
The MS Now host said that Trump including the other two networks in the ban carried major consequences.
Among the consequences Trump and his administration are facing is a lawsuit by the three news outlets, which claimed the ban was a “direct assault on the First Amendment.”
The president will also no longer have the coverage he used to after CNN was removed from the White House TV press pool, and ABC News, CBS News, Fox News and NBC News said they wouldn’t participate as an act of solidarity.
One incident resulting from the press pool’s decision to stop filming daily events at the White House came Monday during a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the South Lawn.
Footage taken from the ceremony came without audio, and right-wing outlet Newsmax even admitted Trump’s ban was “backfiring just a little bit.”
“So I think it blunted the impact, the positive impact that he wanted politically on his side, and I think it stirred the news organizations of this country to realize that this is something that we actually ought to stand together to fight,” Maddow said.