The White House doubled down Wednesday on President Trump’s criticism of the media and ABC in particular, blasting the network for unapologetically airing vile commentary about the president and his supporters, including mocking Christianity and accusing the White House of supporting white supremacists.
Mr. Trump personally ripped Bob Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC and ESPN, after the network boss apologized to former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett for a racial insult tweeted by network star and Trump supporter Roseanne Barr. ABC also immediately canceled the rebooted “Roseanne” sitcom.
“Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC,” Mr. Trump tweeted about Mr. Iger. “Maybe I just didn’t get the call?”
Hours after the president’s tweet, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders escalated the criticism of ABC and the media in general, accusing them of a partisan double-standard.
“Where was Bob Iger’s apology to the White House staff for [ESPN reporter] Jemele Hill calling the president and anyone associated with him a white supremacist?” Mrs. Sanders asked. “To Christians around the world for [’The View’ co-host] Joy Behar calling Christianity a ’mental illness?’
“Where was the apology for Kathy Griffin, who went on a profane rant against the president on ’The View’ after a photo showed her holding President Trump’s decapitated head?” Mrs. Sanders said. “And where was the apology from Bob Iger for ESPN hiring Keith Olbermann after his numerous expletive-laced tweets attacking the president as a Nazi, and even expanding Olbermann’s role after that attack against the president’s family?
“This is a double standard the president is speaking about,” Mrs. Sanders said.
The criticism was especially vehement and pointed, even for a White House that regularly feuds with journalists and disparages certain media organizations as “fake news.”
The White House counterattacked on the same day that the president demanded — and got — a correction from The New York Times for underreporting the crowd size at his rally Tuesday night in Nashville, Tennessee.
As further evidence of media bias, White House aides pointed to the lack of coverage of Mr. Trump’s bill-signing ceremony Wednesday afternoon on legislation that gives terminally ill patients the right to try medicines that haven’t received final approval by the Food and Drug Administration. Two left-leaning cable networks, MSNBC and CNN, didn’t broadcast the event. Conservative Fox News covered the ceremony in its entirety.
“Two networks chose not to cover it, and instead covered something totally different in palace intrigue,” Mrs. Sanders said. “A massive piece of legislation that had bipartisan support, that was literally life-changing for millions of Americans — two networks chose not to cover the president’s remarks on that.”
Examples of insults hurled at the Trump White House from the ABC media family are plentiful.
ESPN announced this week that it was expanding the role of Mr. Olbermann, a sports announcer and commentator who has referred to Mr. Trump on Twitter as a “Nazi” and has tweeted “F— you” at the president.
“Nazi Nazi RACIST Nazi bigot,” he tweeted at Mr. Trump in August.
Ms. Hill, another ESPN personality, tweeted last year that the president is “a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself [with] other white supremacists.”
Ms. Behar said of Vice President Mike Pence in February, “It’s one thing to talk to Jesus. It’s another thing when Jesus talks to you. That’s called mental illness, if I’m not correct, hearing voices.” She apologized to Mr. Pence, a move that Mr. Iger called “absolutely appropriate.”
The New York Times issued its correction Wednesday about the crowd size at Mr. Trump’s rally after the president challenged the paper’s mistake, acknowledging that the audience in Nashville was more than five times larger than The Times initially reported.
In its article online, The Times said an earlier version of the story “cited an incorrect figure for the number of people attending President Trump’s rally.”
“While no exact figure is available, the fire marshal’s office estimated that approximately 5,500 people attended the rally, not about 1,000 people,” the correction stated.
Mr. Trump accused The Times Wednesday morning of lying about the crowd size at the arena where he was campaigning Tuesday night for Republican senatorial candidate Marsha Blackburn.
“The Failing and Corrupt @nytimes estimated the crowd last night at ’1000 people,’ when in fact it was many times that number - and the arena was rockin’. This is the way they demean and disparage. They are very dishonest people who don’t ’get’ me, and never did!” Mr. Trump tweeted.
Times reporter Julie Hirschfeld Davis, who wrote the article, said on Twitter that she made a mistake.
“President @realDonaldTrump is correct about his crowd last night,” she tweeted. “My estimate was way off, and we have corrected our story to reflect the fire marshal’s estimate of 5,500 people. When we get it wrong, we say so.”
The Tennessean newspaper quoted Bob Skoney, general manager of the Municipal Auditorium, as saying capacity for Tuesday’s event was 7,500 to 8,000. The arena normally holds more than 9,500 people, but some seats were blocked off because of staging for the president’s event.
The Trump gave its own estimate of 8,000 people at the rally.
“President Trump hosted over 8,000 patriotic Americans at our rally in Nashville last night, but The New York Times wants to mislead and deceive its declining readership by claiming that we had an ’audience of about 1,000,’” said campaign chief operating officer Michael Glassner. “This is yet another blatant attempt by the fake news media to deny the truth about President Trump’s success and diminish the reality of the Trump movement.”
At a fundraiser before the rally, Mr. Trump predicted that about 12,000 people were waiting to hear him speak.
“We can’t get them in … unless the fire marshal really treats us good,” the president said. “I will say that we do, we have over 12,000 people standing trying to get in, and most of them are in now.”
• Sally Persons contributed to this report.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.