Fox News journalist Chris Wallace told Donald Trump’s chief of staff Reince Priebus that Trump’s characterization of the news media as an “enemy of the people” was beyond even what Barack Obama — no friend of Fox — would say. Wallace made the overt distinction between Trump’s rhetoric and that of his predecessor, saying:
“You don’t get to tell us what to do, Reince. You don’t get to tell us what to do any more than Barack Obama did. Barack Obama whined about Fox News all the time, but I’ve got to say, he never said we were an enemy of the people.”
Wallace said Trump’s broadside, featuring not just complaints about inaccurate stories but wholesale condemnation of the independent media itself, was an attempt to discredit a key element of democracy — the free press. Wallace implied that the devaluing of the media was dangerous, warning Priebus: “We don’t have a state-run media in this country. That’s what they have in dictatorships.”
