Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., blasted liberal networks that chose not to air former President Trump's full remarks following his historic victory from Monday's Iowa caucuses, linking them to "state-run media" from authoritarian regimes.
Rubio, who offered his endorsement to the former president ahead of the first GOP primary contest, appeared Wednesday on "Hannity" and sounded off on news organizations like MSNBC and CNN over their ideological snub.
"It's not about bias anymore. There's always been liberal bias in the media. Human beings are biased. They're partisan," Rubio told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "They are now extending that to not just attack Trump as a candidate, as a former president, future president, but also to attack the people who follow [him]."
RACHEL MADDOW DEFENDS MSNBC'S REFUSAL TO AIR TRUMP'S IOWA VICTORY SPEECH: ‘NOT OUT OF SPITE’
"What's really changed is not just a partisan tone of the coverage, but now this effort to say 'We're not gonna carry a speech, we're not gonna let you hear what he has to say. We will interpret it, and we'll put up the snippets we want you to hear, but we've made the decision to no longer carry it," Rubio later continued. "This is exactly how state-run media is used by authoritarian governments to delegitimize, to discredit to basically make people believe that there is no alternative but to the regime and to their rule."
"It's destroying the media in this country. It's why at this point, you know, no one believes anything they see or hear anymore," he added.
Trump shattered records in the Hawkeye State with the widest margin of victory in a contested GOP primary, earning more than 50% of the vote.
While Fox News Channel aired his victory speech in full, neither MSNBC nor CNN did the same.
CNN's Jake Tapper interrupted Trump's speech as the GOP frontrunner began railing against illegal immigration, telling viewers, "You can hear him repeating his anti-immigrant rhetoric," before carrying on with election coverage.
Meanwhile, MSNBC avoided the former president's speech altogether.
"There is a reason that we and other news organizations have generally stopped giving an unfiltered, live platform to remarks by former President Trump," MSNBC's Rachel Maddow told viewers. "It is not out of spite, it is not a decision that we relish, it is a decision that we regularly revisit. And honestly, earnestly, it is not an easy decision… But there is a cost to us, as a news organization, of knowingly broadcasting untrue things. That is a fundamental truth of our business and who we are."
Throughout much of last year, liberal networks faced accusations of "platforming" Trump whenever they had him on air.
CNN's liberal audience fumed over the Trump town hall the network held in May, leading to a revolt among staffers inside the network. NBC News faced similar backlash in September after Trump sat down with "Meet the Press" moderator Kristen Welker. Spanish-language network Univision was also the target of such uproar after airing Trump's interview with Mexican-American journalist Enrique Acevedo in November.
