Donald Trump Vows To Boycott Fox News, Reigniting Feud With The Network

His angry tweet came shortly after Fox News canceled an upcoming appearance.
ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK -- Donald Trump is done with Fox News ... again.

Trump, who got into a public feud with the network after last month’s Republican presidential debate, tweeted Wednesday that he is boycotting Fox News.

Fox News said that Trump's abrupt decision came shortly after the network canceled an upcoming appearance of his.

"At 11:45am today, we canceled Donald Trump’s scheduled appearance on 'The O’Reilly Factor' on Thursday, which resulted in Mr. Trump’s subsequent tweet about his ‘boycott’ of Fox News," a spokesperson for the network said in a statement.

"The press predictably jumped to cover his tweet, creating yet another distraction from any real issues that Mr. Trump might be questioned about," the statement continued. "When coverage doesn’t go his way, he engages in personal attacks on our anchors and hosts, which has grown stale and tiresome. He doesn’t seem to grasp that candidates telling journalists what to ask is not how the media works in this country.”

Trump has been criticizing the network on Twitter for the past several days. The back-and-forth that culminated in Wednesday's tweet is the latest episode in an on-again, off-again feud between the Republican presidential front-runner and the most powerful media outlet in Republican politics.

The network plays an outsize role in the GOP primary, with candidates more likely to kiss chairman Roger Ailes' ring than publicly antagonize the political operative-turned-powerful media executive.

But Trump, whose presence at the Fox News debate on Aug. 6 surely contributed heavily to the event's record ratings, is not your average Republican politician. He's a bona fide celebrity who seems to be able to appear on any network at any time and monopolize the political conversation on Twitter.

Immediately after the debate, Trump complained to reporters that "the questions to me were not nice." He accused co-moderator Megyn Kelly of asking "unfair" questions to him about his history of misogynistic statements. Kelly, Trump said, "behaved very nasty to me.”

But the candidate went further the next night by suggesting Kelly had been menstruating during the debate. He called in to four Sunday shows on Aug. 9 to claim that his words -- that Kelly had "blood coming out of her wherever" -- had been misinterpreted. The following day, Trump and Ailes reached a truce, and the former reality TV star returned to the airwaves the next morning.

But by the end of the month, the two media titans were at it again. Trump launched another Twitter broadside against Kelly on Aug. 24, prompting Ailes to call on him to apologize.

Trump subsequently went missing from Fox News for a couple weeks.

Still, even given the spats, Trump received more airtime on Fox News than any other candidate in the month of August.

On Monday, Trump fired off some disparaging tweets during "The O'Reilly Factor." The next day, he took aim at Kelly once again.

The attacks come just as Trump's polls numbers have begun to slip.

It's not uncommon for Trump to swipe at the media over any perceived slight. And his stated opinions of journalists and news outlets are known to shift from week to week.

For instance, Trump praised CNN just moments after last Wednesday's Republican debate, saying the network did a "very good job" hosting the event and that he believed he "was treated fairly." On Tuesday, however, he said CNN treated him "unfairly" during the debate.

Earlier this month, Trump lashed out at conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, who co-hosted the CNN debate, calling him a "third-rate radio announcer." But Trump was back on Hewitt's show this week.

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