New York Rep. Peter King lambasted the media for their tendency to “hide behind the First Amendment” and praised President-Elect Donald Trump for “not listening” to the elites and “not taking any part in the nonsense from the media” during an interview Tuesday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

The day after Trump reportedly gave top media executives a verbal thrashing during a closed meeting, King said he felt the media “had it coming.” After Trump’s contentious campaign against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — the media’s darling — culminated in a stunning upset on Election Day, the Republican representative praised Trump for fighting back against the Establishment and refusing to put up with “nonsense.”

“And that’s what I love about this the most — the fact that [Trump] is not taking any part in the nonsense from the media. He doesn’t really care about the elites.”

“The anger that’s just been coming since Election Day is even worse than the bias [the media] showed before Election Day,” King told LifeZette Editor-in-Chief Laura Ingraham. “And that’s what I love about this the most — the fact that [Trump] is not taking any part in the nonsense from the media. He’s doesn’t really care about the elites. He’s doing what he has to do, and he and Mike Pence are a great team.”

King pointed to how the media elite accuse Trump of holding the First Amendment and the freedom of the press in disdain whenever Trump refers to the “dishonest media.”

“They hide behind the First Amendment, in that, you know — the First Amendment protects the press. It also protects pornographers and it protects people who burn the American flag. Just because you’re protected by it doesn’t mean you’re sacrosanct,” King said. “And I think that they throw themselves into the arena in that they attack and they criticize and they pontificate. And if you go back at them at all, somehow you’re anti-First Amendment.”

[lz_radio_ad]

The New York congressman commended Trump for initially calling off his meeting with The New York Times on Tuesday before rescheduling it later. In a tweet Tuesday morning, the president-elect said that he had canceled the meeting with the news outlet that “inaccurately” covered him “with a nasty tone” because the terms and conditions of their meeting allegedly had been altered. The meeting has since been rescheduled.

“So I love the fact that he’s not taking any nonsense from them, and the fact that he called off the meeting with The New York Times, I think that’s terrific,” King said. “To me, that’s a liberal rag. I can’t stand them, and why we keep on accommodating them and feeding them as if they’re some sort of royalty is beyond me. So Donald, keep it up with them. Let them have it.”

Ingraham noted that when “reporters are reporters” — not advocates with a political agenda — there should be no issues.

“It’s fine to ask tough questions. It’s fine to be a reportorial check and balance on people in power in both parties,” Ingraham said. “The problem with this press is that they have been relentlessly unfair, and their reproach was rejected by so many Americans who saw it as all biased.”

Who do you think would win the Presidency?

By completing the poll, you agree to receive emails from LifeZette, occasional offers from our partners and that you've read and agree to our privacy policy and legal statement.

King agreed, saying, “I have no problem with tough questions at all. But when all of the tough questions are going at Trump and not at Hillary Clinton, then that’s a bad deal.”

“Whatever impact or shock value the media could have had, they lost it. It’s just assumed that whatever Trump does, they’re going to criticize it. So he’s gotten the best of them,” King said.

[lz_related_box id=”250284″]

Ingraham and King noted how viciously the mainstream media has covered Trump’s nominees for Cabinet and administration positions, with a particular emphasis on former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whom Trump is considering for the secretary of state appointment, among others.

“I think they’re out to destroy anyone who Donald Trump recommends, nominates, talks about, invites over to New Jersey or to Trump Tower,” King said, “And whatever Donald Trump does — he’s either going to slow in the transition, going too fast in the transition, he’s not seeing enough people, he’s seeing too many people.”

“They’re criticizing a potential secretary of state because he was too emphatic. What do we want, some wimpy guy going around apologizing to the rest of the world?” King added. “But [Giuliani] has the intelligence, the insight, and then he’s tough and he’s emphatic. Really, only among the elite would you hear a potential secretary of state being criticized because he’s emphatic. I mean again, if he was hand-holding and saying, you know, ‘America is not really the best and we have to apologize for this and that,’ they’d see that he’s broad-minded, that he’s enlightened, that he has a great view of the world. So no — thank God Donald Trump is not listening to any of those people.”