It’s disturbing

‘It’s disturbing’: Fox News host slams Trump’s anti-media rhetoric

Martha MacCallum says it’s wrong for the president to label journalists ‘the enemy of the people’

By REENA FLORES

As President Donald Trump amplifies his attacks on journalists, one Fox News host is calling out the chief executive for his hostile rhetoric.

Martha MacCallum, host of the network’s prime-time show “The Story with Martha MacCallum,” said she took it “personally” when the president applied blanket labels to the news media.

“When he points at the press in the back of the room and calls them the enemy of the people, that is wrong,” MacCallum said in a Women Rule podcast interview earlier this fall. “And it exacerbates the situation.”

When asked her perspective on the president’s calling the media “fake news,” the host added: “I find it disturbing. I think it’s a mistake.”

MacCallum, who’s leading the network’s midterm elections coverage, also noted, however, that “there have been mistakes on all sides of this equation.”

“Often the media doesn’t cut him a break,” she said. “I think they, many times, don’t give him credit for anything. … I think it makes some members of the media unfair to him, and I think it makes him unfair in his broad strokes about fake news.”

In recent days, Trump has come under increasing scrutiny for his anti-press sentiments. Last week, explosive devices were mailed to the Atlanta and New York offices of CNN, a frequent target of the president’s ire. Other would-be victims of the mail bomber included several prominent Democratic figures, including former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and megadonor George Soros.

In the interview with MacCallum, conducted before last week’s bomb threats, the Fox host said Trump had “never come after me individually.”

“He has said to me, ‘Sometimes you’re nice to me; sometimes you’re not,’ which I take as a compliment,” she added. “Because that’s exactly the role that I see myself in. I do like to make sure that I’m being as objective as possible in covering him.”