“Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade said Tuesday that he wishes President Trump would stop referring to the media as the “enemy of the people,” saying that the statement does broad damage that serves no good.
“I really wish he would lose that term,” Kilmeade said. “It doesn’t help anybody. It doesn’t push back on the media that he wants to push back on. The press isn’t the enemy of the people.”
Kilmeade added that Trump may rightly believe that certain media outlets unfairly target him. But he noted that the “broad statement” against the press “does a lot of damage.”
Trump has repeatedly slammed the media throughout his time as president, and on Monday tweeted that his “enemy of the people” line is directed at the “Fake News (Media),” not the press as a whole.
“When I say the enemy of the people, I’m talking about the fake news,” Trump clarified in a Fox News interview. “You have news out there that are so fake.”
Trump’s attacks against the media have received increased scrutiny after an explosive device was mailed to CNN’s New York office along with a series of other suspicious packages sent to many prominent Democratic figures last week.
CNN announced that a second suspicious package was intercepted at its Atlanta office on Monday.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to say which specific news outlets and reporters Trump believes are the “enemy of the people” during a press briefing, saying that “those individuals probably know who they are.”
“The president is not referencing all media, he’s talking about the growing amount of fake news in the country, and he’s calling that out,” Sanders said.
CNN President Jeff Zucker said last Wednesday after an explosive device was intercepted at the Manhattan office that Trump and Sanders “should understand their words matter.”
But Sanders pushed back against that comment, accusing CNN of being “irresponsible” for blaming the president and members of his administration for “heinous acts.”
Cesar Sayoc Jr. was arrested and charged with five federal crimes in connection to the mail bombs and suspicious packages sent last week.
The suspect’s Twitter and Facebook pages were filled with pro-Trump and anti-Democratic content.