President Donald Trump’s administration requested that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should order its employees to switch television monitors to the Fox News channel. However, the FDA denies actually ordering employees to do so. Still, an internal e-mail suggests the Trump administration requested the change. Of course, followers of Trump on social media know that he is a viewer of all Fox News programming.
An internal e-mail allegedly sent to FDA employees on May 3, 2017, at its White Oak facility in Maryland was made public through social media. The memo stated that all television monitors at the facility were set to exclusively display the Fox News channel at the request of unnamed “administration administrative officials.”
.@CharlesPPierce, Here’s a screen shot of the FDA email announcing all Fox, all the time.
Screen shot protects the sender. pic.twitter.com/cnRQ2ahJQ9
— Paul Thacker (@thackerpd) May 5, 2017
An FDA spokesperson confirmed the authenticity of the e-mail to Snopes but said that, “There was no directive or memorandum from the Administration that went out to employees about broadcast news channels displaying on monitors in common areas throughout the FDA’s White Oak campus.”
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a spokesperson for the White House, added to CNN that “it is certainly not White House policy” to mandate television sets in the FDA be tuned into Fox News. Sanders said she was unaware of any such directive being issued from the White House.
According to an agency official, the e-mail was written by “a customer service representative from the FDA’s Office of Facilities responding to a group of employees.” The official also said that campus television monitors currently display a “variety of news shows”, but did not say whether that has consistently been the case.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, the switch to the Fox News Channel occurred temporarily:
The FDA’s TV monitors typically have split screens, with half announcing FDA news such as upcoming scientific or regulatory lectures. The other half showed CNN, at least until a week ago, when the hallway monitors were switched to Fox.
Friday morning, after an image of the email explaining the shift to Fox News was tweeted, monitors were switched back so that some displayed CNN and some Fox News, FDA doctors said.
Here are some reactions on social media when people heard the news about the request from Trump.
@CNNSitRoom @CNN The FDA is required to have all Tv"s tuned to Fox news-mandated by Trump. Donnie must have had a 10-minute conversation with North Korea!
— Phil Maweini (@trumplethinskyn) May 5, 2017
The TVs at an FDA office were switched from CNN to Fox News by order of the Trump administration. I got the email. https://t.co/NuvTLgh06w
— Julia Reinstein (@juliareinstein) May 5, 2017
@AriMelber Why isn"t the FCC investigating Trump"s ordering all TVs at the FDA to be set at Fox News? Do we have state-run media now?
— Carrie Sweet (@CarrieSweet2017) May 6, 2017
What did you think about the Trump administration’s request to change televisions to Fox News channel at the FDA. Do you think it is a fair request from the sitting president? Let us know in the comments section.
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Source: B2C
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