President Donald Trump announced a few days ago that he was going to be foregoing the White House correspondents’ Association Dinner and this was met with some surprise as it would make him the first President in over 35 years to miss the event.
The last President to miss out on this was Ronald Reagan who was unavailable as he was recovering after getting shot but still called in via phone.
It was speculated that Trump’s snub was due to the way he’s been vilified in many facets of mainstream media. Economist and former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein says he doesn’t blame President Trump.
He said this during an interview with CNN’s Brianna Keilar stating that his reasons for this is that he believes that President Trump has been used as a “punching bag” on numerous occasions.
He also accused the media of “looking for a scandal” even where there isn’t one and that he understood the President’s reason for wanting to stay away from that.
When asked about comment Trump made in which he called the media ‘the enemy’ Stein went on a rant, stating that many people view the press as an “unelected aristocracy” of “snobs” determined to negatively cover the president at every turn.
“I wouldn’t say all the media are the enemy, but look, every day you pick up The New York Times. Everyday they’re slamming, slamming, slamming him. I’m a great fan of CNN. I watch it quite faithfully every day. CNN is slamming him, slamming him, slamming him. Every day they are looking for a scandal. They are turning the woods upside down looking for a scandal. They are hoping, I think, to do what they did to Nixon a long time ago…I don’t blame him for being furious at them.”
Keilar referenced moments where CNN covered Trump in a positive light, to which Stein responded saying that such scenarios were like one in a hundred and that the rest pf the time it was almost purely negative.
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