“[CNN] turned over their airways to Donald Trump,” said left-wing MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough in an interview with left-wing Politico’s Glenn Thrush, published on Thursday. “[CNN] basically turned their entire broadcast center over to him.”
CNN President Jeff Zucker, added Scarborough, personally calls Trump to schedule him for appearances on his network.
“[Trump] and Zucker are very close,” said Scarborough. “Zucker personally calls Trump, and books Trump. Trumps laughs and calls Zucker ‘my personal booker.’”
Listen to the segment below.
Despite CNN’s hostile left-wing coverage of him and his campaign, Scarborough’s statement suggests a congenial relationship between Trump and Zucker.
“If you’re looking for Trump’s weakness, it’s his insecurity,” said Scarborough, adding that being excluded from “the club” or “polite society” in New York City fueled his “rage” to enter politics. Connecting what he described as Trump’s drive to that of Rush Limbaugh’s and Bill O’Reilly’s, Scarborough stated that their professional successes still did not allow any of them to fulfill their shared desire to enter “the club” of political and media influencers.
On the evolving media landscape, both Scarborough and Thrush lamented the fragmentation of power previously held by legacy outlets.
The public is “overwhelmed by so many sources of news,” said Scarborough, adding that the media’s fragmentation allows Trump to “get away with what he gets away with.”
Pre-1990, “ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal” made it easier to “fact-check” the claims of presidential candidates, said Scarborough.
Thrush agreed, noting that greater consolidation of media in terms of ownership and ideological alignment provided a “coherence to the narrative” of the news.
Both Scarborough and Thrush agreed that the internet’s facilitation of media fragmentation was “a huge frustration.”
Listen to the full interview below.
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