News-and-sports ranter Keith Olbermann charged Wednesday that Donald Trump got a pass from the news media and that's why he's now the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting.
As a guest columnist in
The Hollywood Reporter, the former MSNBC and ESPN host suggested that the media catered to Trump for ratings while failing to ask him hard questions for fear that he would shun them out.
"Polarization of news is not new, but its failure to ask the candidate tough questions — the ones that might cause him to refuse to call in to your morning show or provide hours of free TV content — will be the legacy of Campaign 2016," Olbermann said.
Olbermann ran through a litany of well-worn issues he believed Trump should be questioned about more, such as a ban on Muslims entering the United States, suggestions about killing relatives of terror suspects, his views on abortion, and an incident in 1991 where he was accused of pretending to be his own spokesman.
"Because now you can ask any question about Trump, Trumpism or anti-Trumpism except the existential ones, because the existential ones could lead him to stop calling in to your morning show and providing you with your highest-rated hour for free," Olbermann said, obviously addressing the media."
He went on to charge the media with "self-censorship" in order to appeal to Trump, asking, "who will stand up and point at the emperor standing in only a comb-over and ask where in the hell his clothes are?"
The column was not the first time the commentator targeted Trump. Olbermann complained about the news media coverage of Trump in March in a
Politico column.
"I truly worry about the future of mankind every time (Trump) opens his Clutch Cargo mouth, but he has been right once in this campaign: The news organizations should be paying him for filling all this time and space," Olbermann wrote then. "Of course, only Trump would fail to recognize that just as assuredly, those news organizations should also be billing him for all the free advertising."
In a March opinion article in the
Washington Post, Olbermann wrote that he was moving out of a New York building named after Trump because he "has degraded the public discourse and the nation itself."
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