Dean Apologizes for Cocaine 'Innuendo,' Delivers Stern Rebuke of Media

Howard Dean on Friday apologized for "using innuendo" against Donald Trump when he speculated that the GOP nominee was a cocaine user, but he said he wasn't apologizing to Trump himself, and went on to deliver a scathing review of the media's role in elevating the businessman's presidential campaign.

"I would be very willing to apologize, not to Donald Trump, but I don't think using innuendo is a good thing, but the problem is much greater than that," the former Vermont governor and MSNBC contributor told network correspondent Stephanie Ruhle. "I would like the media of this country to apologize."

On Monday night, Dean, a former Democratic National Committee chairman, tweeted a question about if Trump was a drug user, based on his repeated sniffling during the presidential debate. The next day when MSNBC's Kate Snow asked Dean if he'd apologize, he admitted that Trump "probably" doesn't have a cocaine problem at 70 years of age, but it would be "interesting" to ask him about it.

While Dean apologized for using innuendo in his cocaine comments, he was in full attack mode against Trump for being "up in the wee hours...tweeting at 3 and 4 in the morning about sex tapes. This is a guy running for president of the United States."

"These are not normal people," Dean continued. "There is something the matter with him, and I don't know what it is."

Dean also accused the media of pushing Trump's campaign for ratings.

"We have used a double standard on Donald Trump and created Donald Trump," said Dean, adding that the GOP nominee got an estimated $2 billion of free air time.

"Why?" he continued. "Because his ratings are great. The Trump show, the Trump Chinese [neck] ties and the Trump all this stuff keeping Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders off the air on the night of the Florida primary, calling in to talk shows, including the most venerable talk shows in the country, the Sunday talk shows. You think Tim Russert or Bob Schieffer would have let a candidate call in to the talk shows in his pajamas? The media is giving him a free ride because he was great for the ratings. The real job of the media is to defend democracy."

Dean also accused the mainstream media of giving Trump enough of a pass that he was able to win the Republican primary, over "three or four, six people who were capable of being an adequate president of the United States."

"When his surrogates said Hillary Clinton had Parkinson's disease and would be dead in six months, did I hear pompous hand wringing editorials on Bloomberg News?" Dean continued. "For eight months of Donald Trump's campaign, you gave him free air time, let him call in, let him say anything he wanted."

Dean said his criticism wasn't against Ruhle personally or against MSNBC, as he's proud to be a contributor, "even if I may not be tomorrow, but I think this is a serious problem. I'm not unwilling to apologize for using innuendo. I don't think that's a reasonable thing to do."

But Trump, he said "has used innuendo from the day he got into this campaign, and you media have not called him on it. You're calling him on it now. It's a little late after he knocked off very capable Republican people who could have given us a real race and had confidence that either one of these people could have been a good president."

As a result, "we have somebody running who is completely incompetent and you know shouldn't be president of the United States, and so do all the editorial boards in the country, including those of the most conservative papers in the United States."

When Ruhle asked him why he'd want to behave like Trump and use innuendo and a tweet, he told her he "did that on purpose so I could say just exactly what I said, and so I apologize for using innuendo."