MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow Suggests Trump Should’ve Singled Out Her Network for ‘Positive Impact’ He Wanted From Ban

MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow argued President Donald Trump probably would have found a more “positive impact” if he’d kept his White House media ban to just her network instead of including CNN and Politico.

Maddow joined Jon Lovett on the Lovett or Leave It podcast on Wednesday to discuss Trump’s ongoing ban of MS NOW, CNN, and Politico, all of which he’s blasted as “fake news.”

After the White House pulled credentials from those outlets, networks banded together in a suspension of pool coverage in protest.

Maddow chalked up Trump’s media ban to him “playing the hits” to excite his base while he faces low polling amid the Iran war, concerns about costs, and more. The MS NOW host argued, however, that targeting multiple outlets likely led to a larger and more “unified” media response than the president expected.

She said:

I think there’s a few different things going on. First of all, The Wall Street Journal reported that the catalyst for Trump doing this was that his aide, Natalie Harp, reportedly showed him footage, I guess, of people saying things about him on MS NOW that he didn’t like. And so then he responded with a ban on MS NOW and CNN and Politico. Now where does that come from? I have always had this theory that Trump doesn’t come after MS NOW more than he does other news organizations, even though I think of all the mainstream media organizations we are probably the most critical of him, I’ve always thought that he maybe doesn’t comes after us in a more concerted way because he’s talked himself into the idea that that will help us, right? That that will elevate us and so he shouldn’t pay us attention because we’re always going to be, you know, who we are and that it’ll only help us and therefore hurt him to give us too much attention.

Maddow added, “he decides to sort of defuse the attention on us by bringing in these other news organizations, but in so doing, he ends up taking the swipe that just seems sort of weird and inchoate.”

By pulling in CNN and Politico, Trump “blunted” his impact, according to Maddow.

“I think it blunted the impact, the positive impact that he wanted politically on his side. And I think, it stirred the news organizations of this country to realize that this is something that we actually ought to stand together to fight,” she said.

CNN, MS NOW, and Politico have all teamed up for a lawsuit against Trump’s White House ban, alleging the ban is a “direct assault on the First Amendment.”

Watch above via Lovett or Leave It.

Jason Cohen contributed to this report.

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