“Check out the fact that you can’t get a job at ratings challenged @CNN unless you state that you are totally anti-Trump?" President Donald Trump tweeted Tuesday. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo Trump launches second day of attacks against the media 'Little Jeff Zuker, whose job is in jeopardy, is not having much fun lately,' Trump tweets.

President Donald Trump spent a second day Tuesday attacking CNN and other mainstream media outlets while defending Sinclair Broadcast Group, the local-news giant whose anchors were required to deliver an on-air monologue denouncing “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country.”

“The Fake News Networks, those that knowingly have a sick and biased AGENDA, are worried about the competition and quality of Sinclair Broadcast,” the president tweeted, defending a broadcaster that employs a former Trump administration official as a commentator and is known at a corporate level for its conservative-leaning reporting. “The ‘Fakers’ at CNN, NBC, ABC & CBS have done so much dishonest reporting that they should only be allowed to get awards for fiction!”


Trump spread around his anger on Monday morning, lobbing criticism at the Mexican government, Democrats and his own Justice Department, in addition to the media, but on Tuesday he seemed predominantly focused on the press, albeit with posts about immigration and his own poll numbers as well.

Trump is scheduled to face reporters Tuesday at a news conference alongside heads of state from the Baltics, although multilateral press conferences with foreign leaders are typically brief affairs limited to two questions each from the American and visiting press. Trump has not held a formal news conference by himself since February 16, 2017.

Trump also lashed out more specifically Tuesday morning at CNN, the network whose coverage has prompted the most presidential complaints through his first 14 months in office. He attacked CNN executive Jeff Zucker, with whom he worked on his NBC reality-TV show “The Apprentice,” and suggested, while offering no evidence, that disliking the president is a requirement for new hires at the network.

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“Check out the fact that you can’t get a job at ratings challenged @CNN unless you state that you are totally anti-Trump? Little Jeff Zuker [sic], whose job is in jeopardy, is not having much fun lately. They should clean up and strengthen CNN and get back to honest reporting!”

"Once again, false," CNN's public relations department replied to the president via Twitter. “The personal political beliefs of CNN's employees are of no interest to us. Their pursuit of the truth is our only concern. Also, Jeff's last name is spelled Z-U-C-K-E-R. Those are the facts. #FactsFirst." In a second post, it added: "As for ‘challenged,' CNN just finished its second highest rated first quarter in the past nine years. Those are the facts. #FactsFirst."

Trump's attacks against the major broadcast news outlets came one day after the White House Correspondents' Association announced the award winners who will be honored at its annual dinner, to be held later this month. The list of winners notably includes two subjects of the president's media-related complaints, Maggie Haberman of The New York Times (with whom the president, despite his complaints, has sat for multiple exclusive interviews) and a group of journalists from CNN who reported on the existence of the now infamous Steele dossier.

Trump has not yet said whether he will attend the dinner, an event traditionally attended by presidents but which Trump skipped last year in favor of a campaign-style rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Based in suburban Baltimore, Sinclair is regarded as a right-leaning media company known for handing down “must run” content to its local affiliates, news packages that often skew conservative. Among the “must run” content produced by Sinclair are commentary segments featuring Boris Epshteyn, a former Trump administration official.

POLITICO reported in the weeks after the 2016 election that Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a top adviser inside the administration, had bragged that the Trump campaign had struck a deal with Sinclair, trading access for better coverage. Sinclair has disputed that there was any improper agreement.

Sinclair has recently come under fire for requiring its anchors to read a promo bemoaning that “the sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media.” The required monologue continues, with anchors lamenting, “more alarming, some media outlets publish these same fake stories.”

The promo was read on-air across the country beginning last week. A video produced by the sports website Deadspin and published over the weekend combined dozens of local anchors in different markets reading the same script. Sinclair, in a memo sent to its stations on Monday amid coverage of the Deadspin anchor mash-up, characterized the required promo as a “well-researched journalistic initiative focused on fair and objective reporting.”

Sinclair’s profile on the national level has grown over the past several months amid reporting on its efforts to purchase Tribune Media, a deal that would give Sinclair, already the largest owner of television stations in the country, 43 more stations in markets including Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.

While the purchase is still pending, the deal is expected to be approved by the Federal Communications Commission, which has taken what experts consider to be Sinclair-friendly steps since Trump's inauguration. Notably, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, appointed to his position by Trump, moved last year to revive a regulatory loophole through which Sinclair could expand without overstepping federal limits on media ownership. Pai's FCC has also done away with regulations prohibiting broadcasters from owning more than one top-rated TV station in a market and requiring them to keep studios in local markets, both steps considered beneficial for Sinclair.

