CNN anchor Jake Tapper expressed astonishment Friday afternoon at President Donald Trump's Oval Office remarks that negative coverage of his administration ought to be "illegal."

Trump made the comment while fielding shouted questions from reporters. One reporter asked him his thoughts on free speech as it relates to the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

"There's been a lot of talk about free speech this week. Do you see a difference between cancel culture and consequence culture?" the reporter asked.

"Your question is a little trick question," he shot back, annoyed by the question.

Trump bemoaned that coverage of him is up to 97% negative despite his win over Vice President Kamala Harris.

"They'll take a great story, and they'll make it bad!" he added. "I think that's really illegal, personally. You can't have free airwaves — you're getting free airwaves from the United States government — and you can't have that and say — someone who just won an election — and I had to go through this during the election. I think it's a miracle that I can win when 97% of the stories on the networks are bad or whatever it may be."

Fellow CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins called Trump's comments "remarkable."

"The president is doubling down on what he told reporters on Air Force One just yesterday about punishment that he believes networks should face over what their late-night hosts say about him, particularly how much negative coverage there is of the president," she said.

Collins said Trump is now "explicitly saying" that employers should face consequences for negative coverage of him.

"He's going further than he did yesterday," Collins noted.

"Yeah, saying that newscasts that are not sufficiently positive are a crime," Tapper said. "Shocking."

Tapper added: "It is stunning to me that people in the conservative media are so shortsighted they don’t see how this is going to impact them when a Democrat wins the White House — and that will happen someday."