CNN's Cuomo: Media 'Made' Trump, 'We Juiced Him to Get in' for Excitement

August 15th, 2016 9:31 PM

On Monday's New Day on CNN, during a discussion of the FBI turning over notes on Hillary Clinton's email server testimony to Congress, and whether GOP candidate Donald Trump will manage to successfully use the email issue against her, CNN co-host Chris Cuomo at one point complained about Trump accusing the media of bias against him as the CNN anchor declared that the GOP candidate was "made in large part by the amount of attention he got from the media."

The New Day co-host went on to recall that "We've juiced him to get into this race because we thought it would be exciting, he was given a pass on a lot of the stuff that came out of his mouth early on," before sarcastically adding, "and now he's a victim of the press."

At about 6:20 a.m. ET, as the group discussed a Monmouth University poll finding most Americans believe Clinton has been dishonest about her email server, but that most are "tired" of hearing about it from the media, CNN political commentator Errol Louis declared:

As far as the Trump campaign, again, those numbers suggest to me that voters are making up their minds. They hear this. When you see these numbers about honest and trustworthy, about Hillary Clinton, it means people are absorbing the report, you know, I mean, a lot of the reporting about Cheryl Mills, about some of these connections between the State Department and whether or not they were supposed to be involved in Clinton Foundation activities. This stuff is being reported.

He then added:

I think we are doing what we, as the media collectively, are supposed to do. We are telling people about this. The polls are now giving us the feedback saying, "We hear you. We don't need to hear much more about this. We've made our decision." And, you know, it's up to the Trump campaign to try and exploit that politically-

After the Daily Beast's Jackie Kucinich injected, " I don't think they'll be able to do that," Louis added:

Well, I think they've got it. I mean, they've got it. They've got the complaints. They've got a populous voting public that sees that she's got some ethical issues. People get it. That doesn't necessarily translate into votes for Trump here again because they've got to explain what they would do different-

Cuomo then jumped in:

Instead of doing that, he's doubling up. He's saying, "I'm not going to get into the 'here's why I'm better part.' I'm getting into the 'you're worse.'" He's coming after the media and saying the reason that Hillary Clinton isn't going down is because of the media. "The reason that I'm in trouble, the polls are slipping is because of the media. It's not me, it's how they cover me."

The CNN host then added:

This is an odd turn for a guy who's been made in large part by the amount of attention he got from the media, most of it not negative in the early days. We've juiced him to get into this race because we thought it would be exciting, he was given a pass on a lot of the stuff that came out of his mouth early on, and now he's a victim of the press.