Fox’s Brit Hume: Media Treated George H.W. Bush Harshly Because Of ‘Reverse Snobbism’

It was only a matter of time before Fox News used the death of former President George H.W. Bush to take shots at the media.

During Sunday’s broadcast of Fox News’ media criticism program MediaBuzz, senior political analyst and longtime Fox News anchor Brit Hume contrasted between the “bipartisan praise” — as host Howard Kurtz called it — that Bush has received this weekend in the mainstream press and the somewhat contentious relationship Bush had as president with the media.

“The media were very hard on him when he was president,” Hume commented. “Even when he was running for reelection. There was an issue, it was a reverse snobbism.”

He added, “George Bush was the blue blood aristocrat from a New England family who went into politics. He was looked at with condescension because he had been such a loyal figure under Reagan and he wasn’t a terribly talented public speaker. He paled in comparison to Reagan. Though there were times when he was extremely articulate.”

Kurtz went on to bring up a tense interview Bush had with Dan Rather in 1988 and a headline in Newsweek calling Bush a “wimp” as examples of Bush receiving harsh and sometimes unfair treatment from the press. This led Hume to recount a 1995 article by the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd in which she compared Bush to a fictional British aristocrat, contending that this was an example of the media not giving Bush his due credit.

“It’s that kind of reverse snobbism about class that you see that permeates the media,” Hume asserted. “Now, you see the media exemplifying it, in somewhat different ways, against Donald Trump.”

Yes, right,” Kurtz responded. “As far as the contrast as he’s a useful foil.”

Watch the clip above, via Fox News.