MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace declared President Donald Trump had "given up" on the news media after the posting of a pro-White House "real news" video Sunday on his official Facebook page.
Kayleigh McEnany, a former CNN commentator who often filled the role of the "pro-Trump voice" in panel segments, made her debut as a host of the "real news" Sunday in a video also posted on "Team Trump's" verified Twitter page. It was a play on the administration's consistent criticism of the mainstream press for peddling what it calls "fake news."
https://twitter.com/TeamTrump/status/894199731320127488
In the segment from Trump Tower in New York, McEnany read positive headlines for the administration and praised Trump's agenda. At one point, she said, "President Trump has clearly steered the economy back in the right direction" and also credited him personally with creating more than 1 million new jobs since taking office.
McEnany's video was criticized as state propaganda by some voices, although others called it typical political spin, "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough noted, before asking Wallace for her take.
"My take is that he's given up," she said. "He spent the entire duration of the campaign engaging you and Mika [Brzezinski], engaging all the media ... He's given up. He understands that the free media is going to ask difficult questions. They're going to press until they get to the truth, and he's thrown up his hands, and I think he sees that his comportment in office doesn't withstand the sorts of media that he relied on during the campaign."
"To me, this is just another string in all these ... defeats for him. He's given up on the free media, and now he's making his own media," she added.
Although Trump has not done an interview with a non-friendly media outlet since May, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway appeared on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday for a lengthy interview with host George Stephanopoulos.