President Donald Trump has once again attacked Fox News host Jessica Tarlov — but this time, he publicly called for her removal from the air.
In a Truth Social post published on Monday night, Trump accused “Fox News Sunday” host Shannon Bream of not pushing back on Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), a guest on her show, for “spreading Democrat propaganda and lies.” He then turned his sights on Tarlov, the resident Democrat on the Fox News show “The Five,” by calling her a “real loser” and telling Fox executives to remove her.
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“For Fox executives only, take Jessica Tarlov off the air,” Trump wrote. “She is, from her voice, to her lies, and everything else about her, one of the worst ‘personalities’ on television, a real loser!”
Trump, who has a history of attacking the press and berating female journalists, has targeted Tarlov before.
When Trump phoned in to “The Five” for an interview last month, he told her co-hosts that he wasn’t a “fan” of Tarlov, who was absent that day. He said he was “glad” she wasn’t there and accused her of using “fake” polling numbers that reflect that a majority of Americans don’t approve of Trump’s job performance.
“I think your show would be better without her, but who am I to say that?” he said as Tarlov’s co-hosts smiled and laughed. “I think it would be a lot better.”
Jessica Tarlov, photographed at Fox News Channel Studios on March 5, 2024, in New York City. Roy Rochlin via Getty Images
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Trump had also complained about Tarlov after she reported on his unfavorable polling last June, calling her a “disgrace to television broadcasting” in a Truth Social post. He called her a “real loser” days later.
While Trump’s latest attack on Tarlov isn’t surprising, it is worrisome nonetheless, Jacob Neiheisel, associate professor of political science at the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences, told HuffPost.
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“It is concerning that Trump repeatedly calls for journalists to be fired, as it shows little respect for a free press,” he said.
Trump’s call for Tarlov’s removal says a lot, experts said.
Neiheisel said that Trump calling on Fox executives to take Tarlov off the air “demonstrates that he thinks very little, at least outwardly, about the protections that are afforded to the press.”
“Just as distressing is the fact that the media ecosystem, as it is currently configured, has perhaps encouraged him to think that he has sway at a place like FOX,” he said.
“We’ve seen some evidence to this effect before (such as the text messages between media personalities at FOX and the administration that came out during the Dominion case), but the more partisan or ideological media outlets that exist now are all too well connected to the political parties at the present juncture,” he continued.
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While “every president is frustrated with the press at some point,” the press “isn’t doing its job if the president thinks they’re always on his side,” said Peter Loge, associate professor of media and public affairs and director of the Project on Ethics in Political Communication at The George Washington University School of Media & Public Affairs.
“This is something President Trump has done repeatedly throughout his time in office, both in the first and second term: He mocks the press, he’s belittled the press, he’s called them the enemy of the people [and] he’s been especially demeaning to women in the press corps,” he said. “This is part of his MO, and a lot of voters support that.”
“What matters is if the press responds, if the press then caves to his whims, then it becomes a problem because then the free press isn’t doing its job in holding power to account,” he continued.
Loge emphasized that being challenged by the press is part of the job of being a public official. “If you don’t want to be criticized by the press, don’t run for office,” he said.
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“President Trump’s post about Jessica Tarlov is yet another example of Trump’s belief that he has a role in shaping news coverage, particularly in punishing those who present views critical of him or his administration,” said Andrew Geronimo, director of the First Amendment Clinic within the Milton and Charlotte Kramer Law Clinic Center at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
Geronimo told HuffPost that Trump choosing to address “Fox executives only” in his post might suggest that the president, who has a history of seeking to pick and choose which reporters cover him, is “slowly learning” that it’s a “textbook First Amendment violation for a government actor use government power to target speakers for their viewpoints” — and he may have tried to frame his post as an opinion versus a threat to use government power.
Nonetheless, Geronimo said that Trump’s criticism of Tarlov is “typical of Trump’s obsession with being portrayed only in a positive light.”
Experts stress it’s important to call attention to Trump’s attacks on journalists.
With so many alarming issues both domestic and abroad to be concerned about, it’s important to continue to call out Trump’s attacks on the press — or else we risk normalizing this behavior, experts emphasized.
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Neiheisel said that it’s important not to “normalize” comments like Trump’s recent attack on Tarlov, since it might “be altogether too easy to accept such rhetoric as the new normal on the American political scene.”
But he cautioned that it’s “also important to not treat all violations of democratic norms as being of the same kind.”
“Some things that are happening now are certainly more distressing than are others, and we risk making it all background noise to the average American if every norm violation is treated as being equal in nature,” he said.
“With a lot going on, it can seem like it’s hard to know what to respond to or how to respond,” Loge said. “I think it’s important to hold power to account, no matter what power is doing and whether or not you tend to like the people in power.”
“If the president is calling for the removal of a reporter [whom] he doesn’t like, the press should call that out,” he later continued.
Loge noted that a lot of Trump’s supporters like that the fact that he’s not “polished” or that he’s not “overly scripted.”
“That said, a lot of his actions and behaviors — especially in the last two weeks — have been really unpresidential, unprofessional, demeaning of the office and not the kind of behavior we expect out of the commander in chief of the oldest democracy in the world,” he said.
Geronimo said that we shouldn’t “normalize government attacks on the First Amendment’s fundamental protections for free speech and a free press.”
He said that whether the president is directly or indirectly threatening to punish media entities for “expressing disfavored opinions,” it’s important to remember that “our constitutional system is designed so that the government lacks the broad censorship powers to control content and editorial decisions that Trump so often asserts.”
The original version of this story was published on HuffPost at an earlier date.
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