President Trump on Friday rejected claims that his policies are being dictated or at least influenced by members of the conservative media such as Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter.
“They don’t decide policy,” Trump said when asked if major media figures are giving him direction. “In fact, if I went opposite – I mean they have somebody, Ann Coulter, I don’t know her. I hardly know her. I haven’t spoken to her in way over a year. But the press loves saying ‘Ann Coulter.’”
Before the government went into partial shut down in December, Coulter said she would not vote for Trump in 2020 if he agreed to anything short of the full funding for the border wall, and lately she has said Trump’s emergency declaration won’t get the wall built.
“Sean Hannity has been a terrific, terrific supporter of what I do, not of me,” he added as another example. “If I change my views, he wouldn’t be with me.”
Trump lauded other media voices like Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson of Fox News, but also said some CNN and MSNBC reports had been fair to him.
“I actually have a couple of people on CNN that have been very good. I have some on MSNBC,” Trump said. “The other day they did a great report on me. I said, ‘where the hell did that come from?’ I think it was the only one in over a year.”
