Fox’s MacCallum: It’s wrong for Trump to call the media the ‘enemy of the people’

Fox News host Martha MacCallum condemned President Trump’s attacks against the press, saying that it’s “wrong” for him to label the media the “enemy of the people.”

“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 on Politico’s Women Rule podcast, which was recorded earlier this fall and released on Wednesday. “It exacerbates the situation.”

{mosads}MacCallum, who hosts the prime-time show “The Story with Martha MacCallum,” added that she finds it “disturbing” that Trump calls the media “fake news.”

“I think it’s a mistake,” she said. 

Trump has repeatedly attacked the press for what he views as negative coverage of his administration. 

The president’s rhetoric received increased scrutiny last week 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. 

Trump initially called for national unity as reports surfaced about the packages. But he said this week that “inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news” was a great source of anger.

“The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly,” he tweeted. “That will do much to put out the flame.”

“Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade said Tuesday that he wishes Trump would stop referring to the press as the “enemy of the people,” saying the term “does a lot of damage.”

MacCallum, whose interview occurred before mail bombs — including two to CNN — were intercepted last week, added that there have been “mistakes on all sides of this equation.”

“I think [the media], 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,” she said. 

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 earlier this week, adding that “those individuals probably know who they are.”