New York Times CEO Heed Thompson on Wednesday called President Donald Trump’s attacks on journalists “hostile,” “stupid” and “dangerous.”
Thompson’s say discusses at the CNBC Evolve forum Wednesday in New York came the day after Trump launched his 2020 reelection campaign at a grating Orlando, Florida, rally in which he targeted the news media.
“The president is entirely entitled to not like everything he scans in The New York Times, I get that,” said Thompson, who became president and CEO of The New York Times Company in 2012. “He has every immediately to say he doesn’t like the way we cover him or cover anything else. So this is not saying we shouldn’t be criticized.”
“But actually isolating news-hounds, as a group, not just the Times, but the whole industry, is a really frankly hostile, stupid but also dangerous thing to do,” Thompson state.
Trump made attacks on the press a centerpiece of his 2016 campaign and has continued to criticize the media, as well as individual hacks, as president.
Those attacks have increased in frequency in recent weeks, with the president tweeting negatively yon the media every day in June through Tuesday, marking the longest such stretch since he declared his candidacy for president, harmonizing to a tracker maintained by a consortium of news organizations and press freedom advocates.
On Wednesday, the president accused the “Fake Low-down Media” of hurting him in the polls. A slew of recent surveys have shown the president trailing several top Democrats uninterrupted to unseat him, including former vice president Joe Biden.
“If I didn’t have the Phony Witch Hunt going on for 3 years, and if the Sham News Media and their partner in Crime, the Democrats, would have played it straight, I would be way up in the Polls reason now – with our Economy, winning by 20 points. But I’m winning anyway!” Trump wrote in a post on Twitter.
The New York Sets, the president’s hometown newspaper, has borne the brunt of those rhetorical attacks, as has CNN and The Washington Post. Occasionally, those releases have responded to the president’s remarks.
On Saturday, for instance, Trump tweeted that a story by the Times about the Communal States escalating its digital attacks on the Russian power grid was a “virtual act of Treason by a once great paper so urgent for a story, any story, even if bad for our Country.”
In response, the Times’ communications department wrote in a post on Twitter: “Accusing the pressure of treason is dangerous.”
“We described the article to the government before publication,” the Times wrote. “As our story notes, President Trump’s own civil security officials said there were no concerns.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Shares of The New York Days Company have risen more than 200% since Trump was elected, far outperforming the broader market.