Trump 'turned off' CNN after being forced to watch it in UK, says he misses Fox News
President Donald Trump slammed CNN for its negative coverage of his state visit to the United Kingdom, saying the network was the only major US outlet available in the country and that it was consistently reporting "negative" and "fake news."
"Just arrived in the United Kingdom. The only problem is that @CNN is the primary source of news available from the U.S. After watching it for a short while, I turned it off. All negative & so much Fake News, very bad for U.S. Big ratings drop. Why doesn't owner @ATT do something?" Trump tweeted.
He complained about the limited reporting shortly after arriving in London for a three-day state visit, Daily Mail reports.
Trump is currently residing at Winfield House, where the US ambassador to the UK resides.
"I believe that if people stopped using or subscribing to @ATT, they would be forced to make big changes at @CNN, which is dying in the ratings anyway. It is so unfair with such bad, Fake News! Why wouldn't they act. When the World watches @CNN, it gets a false picture of USA. Sad!" the president wrote.
According to Nielsen Media Research, CNN's prime-time ratings dropped 26 percent in April — the network's worst month for total viewers since October 2015.
Nonetheless, the president also complained he couldn't watch Fox News, his favorite news outlet, from his resting place in London.
The parent company of Fox News, 21st Century Fox, announced in August 2017 they would no longer broadcast the president's favorite cable news network in the UK after being unable to garner a sizeable audience.
"Fox News is focused on the U.S. market and designed for a U.S. audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the U.K.," 21st Century Fox said in a statement at the time. "We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the U.K."
Furthermore, it was reported that UK officials found the network "breached British rules regarding impartiality" back in 2017.
In January 2017, a segment on Trump's ban restricting travel from seven majority-Muslim countries - hosted by Sean Hannity - was found not to sufficiently reflect alternative viewpoints. In another instance following the Manchester terror attack, talk-show host Tucker Carlson was accused of a similar breach for his episode.
AT&T took over CNN after its merger with Time Warner. While the Department of Justice had sued to try and stop the merger of the two companies, a judge later approved the same.
Following his arrival in London, President Trump has been quite vocal on Twitter. He first targeted London Mayor Sadiq Khan and called him a "stone cold loser", before touting his presidential work on tariffs with China.
Khan's description of Trump as a "21st-century fascist" did not sit well with the POTUS. He fiercely ridiculed the mayor's 5ft 6ins frame in comparison to his 6ft 5ins New York counterpart Bill de Blasio. "Khan reminds me very much of our very dumb and incompetent Mayor of NYC, de Blasio - who has also done a terrible job," he tweeted.
Trump attended a state banquet hosted by the Queen at Buckingham Palace in his honor on Monday night after meeting with her majesty for lunch and Prince Charles and his wife Camilla for tea. While the lunch was also attended by Prince Harry, his wife chose to be at home with their four-week-old son Archie.
That said, the president has been clear about his views on the special relationship between the two countries. Before leaving for the UK, he praised Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage and voiced support for a No Deal Brexit. He even called for the Brexit Party leader to go to Brussels and re-negotiate the deal that cost PM Theresa May her job.