ABC’s Good Morning America started off Wednesday’s broadcast in a frantic mood, complaining over and over again about President Trump’s verbal attacks on the media at last night’s rally in Phoenix, Arizona. Instead of taking these typical knocks from Trump in stride, ABC went in full on Chicken Little mode, worrying that his words would “incite” one of his supporters to commit violence against one of their own. “It really feels like a matter of time frankly before someone gets hurt,” Senior White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega fretted.
Vega started off the show with her report on Trump’s rally in Phoenix, of course centering it on his attacks on the media. “He is blaming the media, a full assault for the backlash that he faced over Charlottesville,” she stated. “He rallied his base by riling them up. Taking dead aim at the media for the fallout over one of his worst weeks as president so far,” she added.
After that whiny report, ABC wasn’t done licking their wounds. Anchor George Stephanopoulos sympathetically asked Vega, “what it feels like” when Trump attacks you in a room full of his supporters.
Cecilia, you were in the room. 15,000 people there as well. The press is in full view as the president spends about 20 minutes or so at least attacking the media. Just give us a sense of what happens, what that feels like when those attacks come.
Vega’s response was just as hyperbolic, even claiming that Trump was encouraging his supporters to violently attack the reporters in the room:
Well, George, this was incitement plain and simple. I turned my cell phone camera on the crowd just so you could see the reaction there as we were on the stage. That's what it looks like when the president turned the crowd -- turns the crowd on you. The president said that journalists hate this country. That's what he told this crowd. This was an assault that went on & on and George, I've got to tell you this one felt different. It really feels like a matter of time frankly before someone gets hurt.
Stephanopoulos was apparently so angry about Trump’s words that he then refused to call Trump the president, deriding him simply as “an occupant in the White House.”
“It is just shocking that this is happening with an occupant in the White House,” he gushed, before moving to a Tom Llamas report on the protests in Phoenix.
In a follow-up report later in the show, Vega again complained about the gravity of Trump’s attacks on the media: “This wasn't just defiance from President Trump, this was an all-out assault.”
This ABC segment was brought to you by Ford, Kohl's and Whole Foods.
