President Donald Trump apparently doesn't want CNN playing on any of the television sets used on Air Force One.
He reportedly arrived at this conclusion after discovering that the First lady, Melania Trump, had her television set turned to CNN during their recent trip overseas, according to The New York Times. An email obtained by the media outlet revealed that Trump had a rule for staffers requiring them to begin each trip with the TVs turned to Fox News and fell into a "rage" when he saw that it had not been followed. The Times deduced this based on an email obtained by their organization.
As the Times writes:
The email, an internal exchange between officials in the White House Military Office and the White House Communications Agency last Thursday, also called for the ordering of two additional televisions to support Beam, a TiVo-like streaming device, to make sure the president and first lady could both watch TV in their separate hotel rooms when they travel.
At the end of the email chain, officials confirmed that tuning the TVs to Fox would be standard operating procedure going forward.
The Times' article's authors, Katie Rogers and Maggie Haberman, also made it clear that there are ominous implications to the president's habit of surrounding himself with news sources that reaffirm his existing worldview:
Analysts, including Stephen I. Vladeck, a professor who specializes in national security law at the University of Texas School of Law, said the president was “cherry picking” bits of the warrant that would be most useful to him.
In the White House, little of the outside criticism breaks through. People who have worked for Mr. Trump say he tends to view everything through the lens of a battle. His goal is bring everyone over to his view.
When a CNN reporter asked Melania Trump about the story, the question was dodged in order to focus on the First Lady's own policy agenda:
First lady Melania Trump will watch "any channel she wants," according to her spokeswoman in an apparent rebuke to the report President Donald Trump was upset to find her Air Force One television tuned into CNN.
East Wing communications director Stephanie Grisham told CNN Wednesday everyone should be focusing on the issues the first lady is seeking to highlight, such as neonatal abstinence syndrome, rather than what television channel she's watching or a tape of her husband discussing a payout to a woman who claims to have had an extramarital affair with him."Did you know that every 15 minutes a baby is born with NAS? Maybe you'd like to talk about the 160,000 kids who skip school every day for fear of being bullied, or that 280,000 students are physically attacked in schools every month," Grisham said. "Seems kind of silly to worry about what channel she watches on TV (any channel she wants btw) or if she heard some recording on the news."
Trump has long targeted CNN as being a source for so-called "fake news," a mantra that he has repeated since the start of his presidency. Indeed, when Trump gave out his own personal "fake news" awards in January 2018, CNN was mentioned four times among the 11 so-called "winners."
The examples he cited included:
3. CNN FALSELY reported that candidate Donald Trump and his son Donald J. Trump, Jr. had access to hacked documents from WikiLeaks.
6. CNN FALSELY edited a video to make it appear President Trump defiantly overfed fish during a visit with the Japanese prime minister. Japanese prime minister actually led the way with the feeding.
7. CNN FALSELY reported about Anthony Scaramucci’s meeting with a Russian, but retracted it due to a “significant breakdown in process.”
9. CNN FALSELY reported that former FBI Director James Comey would dispute President Trump’s claim that he was told he is not under investigation.
In a July 2017 piece that chronicled the occasions when Trump used the term "fake news" to refer specifically to CNN, Axios included the following examples:
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Jan: Trump says CNN is "in a total meltdown with their FAKE NEWS."
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Feb: Trump claims Bernie Sanders was cut off on CNN "for using the term fake news to describe the network."
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June: After three reporters at CNN resign, Trump tweets that "Fake News CNN is looking at big management changes," and asks when other outlets will be "caught cold" — "they are all Fake News!"
Trump has repeated his accusation of "fake news" against a number of other media outlets as well. For instance, even though the British publication The Sun had audio recordings of him insulting United Kingdom Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump insisted earlier this month that it was "called fake news. I didn't criticize the prime minister. I have a lot of respect for the prime minister. It didn't put in what I said about the prime minister and I said tremendous things," according to CNN.
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