How Marco Rubio Says Media’s Coverage Is Impacting Politics
Presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) took to the Sunday talk shows over the weekend to blast the media for its wall-to-wall attention paid to Donald Trump.
He says that in doing so, which he admits is good for media ratings, the news outlets have played a big role in degrading civility in American political culture. He repeated those charges to both ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“Everybody else gives every one of Trump’s speeches wall-to-wall coverage, because, while they may act outraged by what he says, they cover it, and they want to get it live, so they can talk about it and it drives ratings,” he told Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union program. “So I think we all need to take a step back and say, ‘Have we contributed to this culture that has turned American politics and the American political discourse into the equivalent of the comments sections in these blogs, where presidential comments are now basically Twitter trolls?'”
Tapper asked if he was concerned there may be a loss of life as the level of violence continues to escalate. Rubio said he was concerned and added:
“I know that we have reached the point now where people in American politics have decided that, if they don’t agree with you, that they can get angry at you, that you’re a bad and evil person, that they can say anything they want about you. I think that the—all the gates of civility have been blown apart, and we have now reached a point where, on both sides, everyone is just saying or doing whatever they want. And you know, you can’t just say or do whatever you want. This is not about political correctness. This is about rules of civility and a way a society talks to each other.”
Rubio then appeared on This Week With George Stephanopoulos, where he repeated many of the same issues. The video appears below.
