American CNN pundit refuses to say Trump is her president

Rye has been a fierce critic of the President, who has avoided CNN appearances since August

Rye has frequently criticised Mr Trump (Getty Images for BET)

A CNN political commentator is refusing to call Donald Trump her president, and instead has been calling the President “your president” during panel discussions on the cable news network.

Angela Rye, who served as the executive director and general counsel for the Congressional Black Caucus before joining CNN, initially attacked the President for encouraging the Russian government in 2016 to “find” Hillary Clinton’s emails that were deleted from her private server she used while serving as secretary of State.

“He went into a press conference during the summer [of 2016] asking Russia to find the other 30,000 emails,” Ms Rye said. “There are a lot of things that your president has done to defy logic. Let’s at least acknowledge that.”

Fellow panellist Jack Kingston, a former Republican congressman who has been contributing at CNN since joining the network earlier this year, didn’t like Ms Rye’s disavowal of Mr Trump.

“Your president, too, Angela. Your president, too,” he insisted.

Ms Rye wasn’t having it.

“Well he’s your president,” Ms Rye said.

Ms Rye has emerged as a fierce critic of the President, who has avoided CNN appearances since August 2016 when he partook in his most recent interview with an employee there. At that time, he gave a phone interview to anchor Anderson Cooper.

Since then, Mr Trump and CNN have had a rocky relationship to say the least. Mr Trump has focused much of his anti-media ire on CNN, and called the network “fake news” during his first press conference after being elected to become president earlier this year.

CNN’s White House correspondent has been a vocal critic of the president as well, and has repeatedly called out the commander in chief for allowing his administration to break from well established norms for dealing with the media. That includes criticism for holding White House press briefings off camera, even though each of the past three presidents have aired video of the briefings.