President Donald Trump held a White House event honoring Black History Month Wednesday and pointed out that African-American CNN commentator and GOP strategist Paris Dennard has done “an amazing job at a very hostile CNN community.”
“He’s all by himself, seven people and Paris. I’ll take Paris over the seven,” Trump said. “But I don’t watch CNN so I don’t get to see you as much.”
The room full of press and supporters seemed to laugh at every comment made by Trump until he said, “I don’t like watching fake news,” which didn’t draw much of a reaction.
Trump went on to say, “Fox has treated me very nice,” and once again called the media the “opposition party.”
“Some of the media is fantastic and fair but so much of the media is opposition party,” he said. “It’s a very sad situation.”
Trump has had an issue with CNN for quite some time, but everything erupted when he blasted reporter Jim Acosta during his first press conference after winning the election. Trump wouldn’t allow Acosta to ask a question and famously called him “fake news.”
Politico recently reported that the White House is attempting to “ice out” CNN by not sending Trump surrogates on the network. Administration officials have stayed off Jake Tapper’s “State of the Union” Sunday show the past two weeks, but that hasn’t stopped CNN from beating Fox and MSNBC among the key news demo of adults age 25-54 at noon ET during episodes that didn’t feature the likes of Kellyanne Conway or Sean Spicer.
Trump also took a moment to praise former reality TV star Omarosa Manigault, who Trump hired as the White House’s director of African American outreach, saying she’s “actually a really nice person. Nobody knows that.”
Check out the video above.