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President Trump slammed struggling mainstream news outlets overnight, characterizing them again as the “enemy of the people” and proclaiming their falling audience numbers as a “good thing.”
“Wow! Rachel Maddow has horrible ratings. She’ll be off the air very soon. MSNBC IS CLOSE TO DEATH. CNN HAS REACHED THE BOTTOM. This is a good thing. They are the Enemy of the people,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post an hour past midnight on Friday.
Maddow, MSNBC’s star anchor, has returned to hosting her prime-time show for the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency, a shift viewed by some as a way to offset the numbers the network lost after the 2024 presidential election.
Trump has been critical of the nation’s leading media outlets for years now. During his first term, some outlets, including CNN and The Washington Post experienced the so-called “Trump Bump” in audience engagement with their aggressive coverage of the commander-in-chief.
This time around, a few of those leading outlets have looked to reset as they embark on covering Trump’s second foray into the White House, with some media observers arguing the audience boost might be harder to come by.
“It’s pretty clear the biggest loser of the 2024 election was the mainstream media,” one national political reporter remarked to The Hill last week. “A lot of these outlets are completely lost, and the vibe is basically one of fear and insecurity as Trump takes over again.”
CNN is planning to lay off around six percent of its workforce, impacting around 200 employees on its linear television side. The network also plans to make changes to its daytime and evening news programs.
Aside from Trump’s social media criticism, news outlets have also found themselves in legal battles with the president.
ABC News in December settled for $15 million with Trump after being sued for defamation over star anchor George Stephanopoulos’ segment where he said a New York jury found the president “liable for rape” in the columnist E. Jean Carroll case. Trump was found liable for sexual abuse under the state’s law, but not rape.
The president’s legal team has also sued CBS News over “60 Minutes” early October 2024 interview with former Vice President Harris, then-Democratic Party nominee. They are seeking $10 billion in damages, alleging the news program engaged in “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference through malicious, deceptive and substantial news distortion,” over editing an answer Harris gave on the war in Gaza.
The network’s spokesperson said Trump’s claims against “60 Minutes” are “false.”
