Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Thursday that the news media has “earned” President Donald Trump’s “enemy of the people” label, one day after CNN was mailed a pipe bomb.
Gingrich, speaking at an Axios event in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, said that Trump’s attacks on news media aren’t helping matters, but added that “they’ve earned it.” He also said that the current political climate is “everyone’s fault,” but particularly social media and the “tribalization” of cable news.
When asked why the bombs mailed to CNN and prominent Democrats that were discovered on Wednesday have been labeled a conspiracy so quickly, Gingrich said, “Because it’s October.”
Trump said in July that he “had a very good and interesting meeting at the White House with A.G. Sulzberger, Publisher of the New York Times. He spent much time talking about the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media & how that Fake News has morphed into phrase, ‘Enemy of the People.’ Sad!”
New York City police removed a “live explosive device” from CNN’s offices in Manhattan on Wednesday morning, according to New York Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill.
Trump wrote in a tweet Thursday morning: “A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!”