The Media Has An Insatiable Thirst For Anti-Trump Stories, Kimberly Guilfoyle Says [Video]
The mainstream media can’t get their fill of anti-President Trump stories, according to Fox News anchor Kimberly Guilfoyle. She discussed what she considers the unrelenting negative treatment of the president by news outlets with Howard Kurtz on FNC’s Media Buzz this morning.
Polling data provided part of the context for the exchange between Guilfoyle and Kurtz. A new survey of about 2,000 registered voters by the Morning Consult firm indicates that 46 percent think that the media makes up or fabricates stories about Trump, Politico reported. This includes 76 percent of Republicans, 44 percent of independents, and 20 percent of Democrats.
The popular and charismatic co-host of The Five which airs Monday through Friday at 5 p.m. Eastern, Kimberly Guilfoyle was reportedly under consideration for a job in the Trump White House, possibly as press secretary, but in late June, she signed a new, long-term contract with the network.
The former high-profile California prosecutor, and later first lady of San Francisco when she was married to then-mayor Gavin Newsom (a Democrat who is now his state’s lieutenant governor), Kimberly Guilfoyle worked for ABC News, Court TV, and CNN before joining Fox News in January 2006. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Kimberly Guilfoyle, 48, is the daughter of an Irish cop and a Puerto Rican school teacher and was born in San Francisco. She is a graduate of UC Davis and the University of San Francisco School of Law, and modeling for the Victoria’s Secret catalog is part of her resume.
According to Kimberly Guilfoyle, while some journalists do fantastic work, the “thirsty” mainstream media, in general, is ready to binge drink on stories that portray Trump negatively, even if thinly sourced.
“How many stories have we seen that have to be walked back or retractions or revisions when they said stuff about President Trump. The bottom line is there is a thirst, that doesn’t seem to be able to be quenched, for the mainstream media that wants to put forward stories that are negative about the president. They don’t want to talk about all the positive job numbers and the economy, and what he’s doing with immigration, what he’s doing as it relates to national security or ISIS getting decimated, because that doesn’t fit their narrative.”
It is finally sinking through. 46% OF PEOPLE BELIEVE MAJOR NATIONAL NEWS ORGS FABRICATE STORIES ABOUT ME. FAKE NEWS, even worse! Lost cred.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2017
Despite experiencing media bias “up close and personal,” KG went on to insist that President Trump makes himself available to reporters more than any other president in U.S. history.
“…But that’s not good enough for [the mainstream media]. They’ll find another reason to criticize him. They should be happy that he’s out there tweeting, that he’s telling you exactly what he thinks, that he’s not hiding behind a veil…he’s like his own best press secretary in many ways, but he’s frustrated—wouldn’t you be?…[The media] is far more disrespectful to President Trump; they didn’t ever treat President Obama like this. My point is that there shouldn’t be a double standard.”
Even some Trump supporters have noted, however, that his tweets tend at times to prolong the controversy du jour or a needless feud, particularly given the Twitter-obsessed media and the presence of the anti-Trump social justice cohort.
In an interview with the New York Times, ex-president Jimmy Carter said that “I think the media have been harder on Trump than any other president certainly that I’ve known about.” He also indicated that he’d be willing to go to North Korea to negotiate with Kim Jong-un on behalf of the Trump administration.
Pollsters have separately warned that President Trump’s low approval ratings that may or may not be media driven don’t fully capture the facts on the ground (i.e., voters support the president on the issues but dislike his style) and that pollsters overload their surveys with Democrats. Several content analysis studies have confirmed that negative media portrayal of the Trump administration particularly right out of the starting gate, unlike prior presidencies which benefited from a so-called honeymoon period.
Watch the Kimberly Guilfoyle interview about the mainstream media below (Note: Guilfoyle appears in three segments on the show; the Trump-mainstream media discussion starts at about the 29-minute mark).
[Featured Image by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP Images]
