At about the time Sanders sent that tweet, CNN’s workers in New York were scrambling to evacuate their offices while also reporting on the situation. Yet Sanders couldn’t be bothered to include the network in her well wishes. She later issued another tweet adding in CNN.

Looking back at the incident, Zucker told Axelrod, “The safety of our people for several years now has been a real issue. And then all of a sudden we found ourselves in the position where some lunatic was sending bombs to the people who work for us. At the same time on that same day, the press secretary of the White House put out a statement in which she condemned those attacks on everybody but CNN. And, you know, at some point, frankly, I thought enough was enough.” (Worth noting: Axelrod’s podcast is a joint venture between CNN itself and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, and Axelrod himself is a CNN commentator.)

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Here is the enough-is-enough statement from Zucker on that day:

As the podcast discussed, Zucker once had a friendly relationship with Donald Trump himself, via their collaboration on “The Apprentice” when the now-CNN chief was helming NBC’s entertainment business. So Axelrod asked Zucker why he doesn’t just call President Trump and tell him to knock it off. “If I felt that that would change the way he has behaved, I would do it in a second. Obviously,” responded Zucker. “I have no issue with picking up the phone. But I think he has proven — because we’ve said it time and again, that these words are dangerous and are going to result in something like somebody sending bombs. And he knows that and his people know that and yet they’ve continued to do it.”

Correct. Were Zucker to call Trump to appeal for an end to attacks on CNN, a presidential tweet would surely surface just minutes later — something about weak Jeff Zucker asking for special treatment or something along those lines. Trump has proven that he’ll observe no ethical standards or notions of decency in attacking CNN. Why would he start doing so upon getting a call from the network’s top official?

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And just how did Trump come to single out CNN? Zucker suggested a number of factors. First, Trump “understands that CNN matters” not only in the United States but abroad as well; it attracts a “disproportionate amount of swing and independent voters that, frankly, MSNBC doesn’t have.” Second, CNN is among the media outlets — New York Times and “Saturday Night Live” are others — that Trump grew up with and whose respect he craves. “The third aspect has to do with me,” said Zucker, noting that they had a “quite strong” relationship that, apparently, Trump thought he could rely upon for positive coverage. “Donald Trump didn’t understand in the end that just because we were friends didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to be subjected to the proper scrutiny. He thought CNN should be like Fox News and just give him glowing coverage all the time.”

Helpful, though incomplete. The president is nowhere without enemies, and CNN looked like a very suitable one, considering that the network was already the subject of conservative media critiques before Trump became a presidential front-runner. And finally, randomness: It’s possible that Trump merely stumbled into crowning CNN as his favorite media target — that he unleashed that “fake news” tirade against CNN correspondent Jim Acosta in January 2017 and figured he’d just go with it. Always be careful about attributing forethought to anything coming out of this White House.

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