Newt Gingrich: NBC News Should Be Blacklisted For “Hostile” Interview With Kellyanne Conway

Gingrich: “There's No Reason To Call On NBC For Three Weeks”

Written by Media Matters Staff

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Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich suggested that NBC reporters be banned from asking questions during the White House press briefing because NBC's Chuck Todd grilled Kellyanne Conway after she claimed that there are “alternative facts.” Gingrich has steadfastly campaigned against the mainstream media since President Donald Trump's election victory, recently suggesting that “adversarial” journalists be banned from the White House press briefing room and that the Trump White House should “close down the elite press.” From the January 23 edition of Fox News' The First 100 Days: 

NEWT GINGRICH:  If a newspaper or a TV channel -- I mean, I watched an interaction on Sunday between NBC and somebody from the White House that was so hostile and so negative that it was just unbelievable. And you don't have an obligation to go back and pretend these are nice people. You don't have an obligation to say, you get to beat me up, you get lie about me -- this whole thing about the Martin Luther King Jr. bust is a really big deal. At a time when we have racial tension in this country, at a time when there are very real concerns, anything -- which turned out to be totally false -- sent out by the pool reporter and repeated by some 3000 different people by the time they realize there was a lie. It simply wasn't true. So I think there are good reasons and I thought Sean [Spicer] did a great job today. He had exactly the right tone. He is a very professional person. He did a great job with the Republican National Committee. And I think he is going to do a tremendous job in this role. But you go back and look at Kellyanne Conway on Meet the Press, and you realize, what she was doing was totally unacceptable for NBC to act as hostile and as arrogant as they did. And there's no reason to call on NBC for three weeks. I mean, just say to them, fine, you have earned us not calling on you. We are going to call on 16 other people because at least they are not nasty.