Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has reignited his feud with Fox News, saying he will no longer be a guest on any of its shows.
“@FoxNews has been treating me very unfairly & I have therefore decided that I won’t be doing any more Fox shows for the foreseeable future,” Mr. Trump wrote on his Twitter account Wednesday.
Fox soon issued its own statement, saying Mr. Trump’s boycott of the network was triggered by its decision to cancel his appearance on the “O’Reilly Factor.”
“At 11:45 a.m. today, we canceled Donald Trump’s scheduled appearance on The O’Reilly Factor on Thursday, which resulted in Mr. Trump’s subsequent tweet about his boycott of Fox News,” a Fox spokesperson said in a statement. “The press predictably jumped to cover his tweet, creating yet another distraction from any real issues that Mr. Trump might be questioned about.”
The billionaire businessman first took issue with the cable news network after the first Republican debate, accusing moderator Megyn Kelly of treating him unfairly by asking him about derogatory comments he’s said to have made about women.
The network and Mr. Trump appeared to have reconciled, however, last week, after Mr. Trump failed to dismiss a man on the campaign trail who questioned President Obama’s faith, some Fox News shows were critical.
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Fox’s Bill O’Reilly has taken the brunt of Mr. Trump’s complaints after the Muslim incident for booking what Mr. Trump has called “Trump haters.”
Mr. Trump’s tweets singling out Fox and other critics are “just an extension” of his reality show, Mr. O’Reilly said Tuesday.
“He wants people to like him. When people criticize him, he takes it personally. And then, you know, this machine, this tweeting thing, that’s like the worst thing you could give Donald Trump is this tweeting thing,” Mr. O’Reilly told NBC’s Matt Lauer on “Today.” “So I just think this is just a extension of his reality show, ’The Apprentice.’ This is just theater right now. … The personal stuff is a piffle.”
The Fox spokesperson agreed: “When coverage doesn’t go his way, he engages in personal attacks on our anchors and hosts, which has grown stale and tiresome. He doesn’t seem to grasp that candidates telling journalists what to ask is not how the media works in this country.”
This week, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace told The Huffington Post he won’t let Mr. Trump dial into his show as many others have, because he wants a more in-depth interview.
Later in North Charleston, South Carolina, Mr. Trump lashed out at rivals and complained about mistreatment by the media.
Mr. Trump told a convention of black business leaders Tuesday that Marco Rubio has gotten too much attention for eclipsing Jeb Bush in some polls of Republican primary voters. Mr. Trump still leads most polls in the GOP nomination fight.
Mr. Trump’s appearance was billed as an opportunity for him to address minority business owners. White Trump supporters who bought tickets to the event comprised most of the audience.
⦁ The Associated Press contributed to this report.
• Kelly Riddell can be reached at kriddell@washingtontimes.com.
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