A CNN host called President Trump a “man baby” and a piece of excrement. (He used a more profane term, and later apologized.) A guest on “Fox & Friends” proposed that Muslims in the United Kingdom be placed in internment camps, prompting an on-air disavowal from the hosts.
A Breitbart News writer argued on Twitter that “there would be no deadly attacks in the U.K. if Muslims didn’t live there,” generating angry replies. And Mr. Trump himself, in his first public comment about the attack in London on Saturday night, disseminated unconfirmed information from an unofficial source: The Drudge Report.
In the 24 hours after the deadly van and knife attack, the cycle of partisan broadsides and ideological combat that seems to dominate the media universe these days kicked into high gear.
News organizations turned against each other, with anchors on Fox News calling on CNN to punish its host Reza Aslan for his profane remarks about Mr. Trump in a Twitter post.
The president’s retweet of a Drudge headline — “fears of new terror attack,” it read, even as the nature of the assault remained unclear — prompted a rebuke of sorts from NBC Nightly News, whose Twitter account pointedly noted that its journalists would not relay the president’s retweet, “as the info is unconfirmed.”
That led to accusations of liberal bias, with the “Fox & Friends” co-host Abby Huntsman asking, “Can we not just come together?”
