CNN’s Jeff Zucker Slams President Trump For Attacking The Media After Network’s Bomb Scare
CNN Chief Jeff Zucker called the president out for his frequent attacks on news media organizations and journalists just hours after CNN’s New York offices were forced to evacuate due to a bomb scare according to Business Insider.
The news organization received a pipe bomb primed to explode in the mail, addressed to frequent CNN contributor and former CIA Director John Brennan.
Other recipients of explosive devices included former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Eric Holder, California Democrat Maxine Waters, and Democratic donor George Soros, all frequently attacked figures among the alt-right, conservative media, and the Trump administration.
“There is a total and complete lack of understanding at the White House about the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media,” Zucker said in a statement he released Wednesday afternoon slamming President Trump and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s often aggressive and dismissive attitude towards journalist and news organizations, who they often accuse of promoting “fake news.”
“The president, and especially the White House press secretary, should understand their words matter. Thus far, they have shown no comprehension of that,” Zucker said.
Zucker has not been shy about criticizing the president’s treatment of the Fourth Estate before, saying that Trump “created an atmosphere in this country that has resonated around the world in a very unhealthy way” and adding in March he feels the president “doesn’t even understand the danger he’s causing to journalists and the danger he’s doing to media organizations.”
Statement from CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker: pic.twitter.com/OXyIT6oSLT
— CNN Communications (@CNNPR) October 24, 2018
CNN has long been one of President Trump’s favorite media organizations to attack, calling them “fake news” at every opportunity and even labeling them “the enemy” of the American people, an opinion many of his supporters have taken as gospel.
Matt Dornic, a CNN spokesperson, pointed out that less than two hours after CNN was forced to evacuate its headquarters, the Trump campaign sent an email attacking CNN and calling on people “to give the media another wake-up call” according to NBC News.
During a White House event, the president condemned the pipe bombs as “despicable” and claimed that “acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the United States of America.”
“In these times we have to unify, we have to come together,” the president said before a bill-signing event, calling the bombs “abhorrent to everything we hold dear and sacred as Americans.”
President Trump did not mention any of the politicians or media organizations that were targeted by name.
