Fox News says it won’t be intimidated by Donald Trump’s “personal attacks” on the cable network.
On Wednesday morning, the GOP presidential candidate tweeted that he is boycotting Fox News in response to being treated “unfairly.”
“@FoxNews has been treating me very unfairly & I have therefore decided that I won’t be doing any more Fox shows for the foreseeable future,” the Republican frontrunner tweeted at 9:02 a.m.
The cable news behemoth naturally was not pleased. A few hours later, a Fox News spokesperson issued the following statement to TheWrap.
“At 11:45am today, we canceled Donald Trump’s scheduled appearance on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ on Thursday, which resulted in Mr. Trump’s subsequent tweet about his ‘boycott’ of FOX News. The press predictably jumped to cover his tweet, creating yet another distraction from any real issues that Mr. Trump might be questioned about. When coverage doesn’t go his way, he engages in personal attacks on our anchors and hosts, which has grown stale and tiresome. He doesn’t seem to grasp that candidates telling journalists what to ask is not how the media works in this country.”
The back-and-forth continued with Trump’s camp responding to Fox News, by dragging Stephen Colbert into the debate with the following statement via Mediaite:
Mr. Trump stands by his statement made earlier today. As a candidate for President of the United States and the definitive front runner in every poll, both nationally and state wide, including the just released poll in the state of Florida, Mr. Trump expects to be treated fairly. All you have to do is look at the tremendous ratings last night from the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where Mr. Trump was the guest, or the ratings from both debates, to fully understand the facts.
Trump’s renewed war on Fox News comes after he once again targeted star anchor Megyn Kelly Tuesday on Twitter, calling her a “lightweight.”
“Do you ever notice that lightweight @megynkelly constantly goes after me but when I hit back it is totally sexist. She is highly overrated!” he tweeted.
The former “Celebrity Apprentice” host has had an ongoing battle with the channel since it hosted the first Republican presidential debate on Aug. 6, and Trump later complained about Kelly’s line of questioning.