Tom Brokaw called out Fox News for aiding and abetting President Donald Trump's attack on democratic institutions and the rule of law.
The longtime NBC News anchor appeared Thursday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," where he reacted to the president's tweet praising "Fox & Friends" as a model for other news programs to emulate.
"He watches Fox News because it reinforces what he believes," Brokaw said.
Brokaw told co-host Mika Brzezinski that Fox News also encouraged the president's hostility to constitutional norms, and he described how the conservative network's programming reached a crescendo of conspiracy theories each night after the relatively even-handed Shepard Smith signed off.
"Fox News, after Shepard Smith in the late afternoon," Brokaw said, "is on a jihad right now on the whole question about whether there's a fairness about this or not, the transfer of uranium, for example, to Iran. Shep Smith has gone into some detail to say it didn't happen, (Hillary Clinton) didn't have the authority to do that. That ends at 4:30 or 5:00 (p.m.), whenever he gets off the air. From then on, the whole assault is on the institutions."
He said the network is encouraging Trump to undermine the rule of law by justifying the firing of special counsel Robert Mueller and attacking the credibility of law enforcement agencies for insufficient loyalty to the president.
"Newt Gingrich (is) looking in the camera and saying the FBI is a corrupt organization," Brokaw said. "Three months earlier he said Bob Mueller is one of the great, distinguished public servants we had. So we're at war here, and it's going to be sorted out in the final analysis."
