Former President Trump said Sunday that he wants to make up with the media, bridging a years-long feud with prominent networks, but only if they cover him fairly.
“I’d love to get along with them, and I’d love that if they were straight down the middle and, you know, covering the stories that should be covered,” Trump said in a Fox News “MediaBuzz” interview with Howard Kurtz on Sunday.
Trump, who has long called journalists “enemies of the people,” claimed that major news outlets are intentionally ignoring him and news events that matter.
“It’s not only what they report, it’s what they don’t report,” he said. “They don’t report certain things that are so big. I expect to look and see the CBS Evening News or NBC or ABC and I turn on it, they have nothing about very important subjects. And that’s fake news also, in its own way.”
The former president noted that he would be “honored” to retire the “enemy of the people” jab, but only if the media “did it right.”
“They’re like the police and frankly, they keep our country honest in a certain way if they do their job properly, and they haven’t been doing it properly. You report on that, you know that, you know exactly what’s going on,” he told Kurtz.
Trump also doubled down on long-standing grievances that some media networks treat him unfairly, specifically calling out CNN and NBC for not carrying his Iowa Caucus victory speech in January.
After the speech, he said the networks should have their “licenses or whatever” taken away over the decision.
“When you’re using public airwaves, and you don’t have — you cover a candidate for months, you cover as negatively as possible — her could be her,” he said. “And all of a sudden that candidate wins in a landslide and it’s very exciting and everybody wants to watch, and you don’t cover his speech? That’s incredible.”
“You’re covering somebody for a year. And this is the culmination. This is the big moment and people want to watch it,” he continued. “And you say I’m not going to put his speech on? How can you do that?”
