Category: Attack the Press

Trump blasts ‘bonkers’ media spewing ‘Radical Left Democrat views’

President Trump on Monday lashed out at the media, targeting The Washington Post in particular, as he remained fixated on coverage of his ongoing attacks on four progressive congresswomen.

In a series of tweets, the president claimed the “Mainstream Media” has “gone bonkers” and accused the media of pushing “Radical Left Democrat views.” 

“It has never been this bad,” Trump tweeted. “They have gone bonkers, & no longer care what is right or wrong. This large scale false reporting is sick!”

“Fake News Equals the Enemy of the People!” he added.

For a second straight day, Trump pushed back on a Washington Post story recounting the fallout of his incendiary tweets targeting Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley. He went on to decry “fake news” as “the Enemy of the People.”

[The Hill]

DONALD TRUMP FALSELY CLAIMS HE DIDN’T HAVE ‘TALKING POINTS’ ON MINORITY CONGRESSWOMEN, DESPITE PHOTOS

In the aftermath of fierce condemnation for issuing racist tweets at minority congresswomen earlier this month, President Donald Trump lashed out on Twitter Monday, labeling reports that his decision to double down on his remarks involved pre-determined talking points and opposition research as “fake news.”

Trump falsely claimed “there were no talking points” just days after issuing a speech at the White House on July 15, where he used a “Made in America” event intended toshowcase U.S. manufacturing to again tell four Democratic lawmakers—Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota—they “can leave right now” if they were dissatisfied with the U.S.

Photos captured by a Washington Post photographer showed that Trump’s notes did, in fact, have talking points about the progressive lawmakers who’ve been dubbed “The Squad”—all of whom are U.S. citizens and of whichthree were born in the U.S. The president’s notes specifically referenced Omar, a Somali refugee who came to the U.S. in 1995 after fleeing her country years earlier because of a civil war.

“She came here at 10 years old and is now a congresswoman. That could ONLY happen in America,” Trump’s notes read. “It is SAD that these women have a record of saying anti-Semitic and anti-American things all the time.”

Trump’s prepared remarks continued: “It’s actually DANGEROUS — because it seems like they hate America. My point was if you are not happy here, you can leave.”

At a campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina, Wednesday evening, attendees chanted “send her back” after Trump again accused Omar in his prepared remarks of not being a proud American, being sympathetic to al-Qaeda and saying she “looks down with contempt on hardworking Americans.”

Trump’s Monday morning tweet also included denials about information in a Washington Poststory, which said that “advisers wrote new talking points and handed him reams of opposition research on the four congresswomen.” According to the article, allies, aides and confidants reportedly struggled to relay to the president why his remarks that “The Squad” should “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came” were racist and that he should pivot to new messages.

“The Amazon Washington Post front page story yesterday was total Fake News. They said ‘Advisors wrote new talking points and handed him reams of opposition research on the four Congresswomen.’ Now really, does that sound like me?” Trump wrote in a series of tweets. “What advisors, there were no talking points,……..except for those stated by me, & ‘reams of paper’ were never given to me. It is a made up story meant to demean & belittle. The Post had no sources. The facts remain the same, that we have 4 Radical Left Congresswomen who have said very bad things about Israel & our Country!”

However, Trump did not respond to the images of his talking points that were taken by photographers last week.

In another tweet, Trump continued to berate “The Squad,” calling them “a very Racist group of troublemakers who are young, inexperienced, and not very smart.”

Following Trump’s racist tweets, the Democratic-led House moved swiftly last week to pass a resolution of condemnation. But the formal rebuke to the president only mustered support from four Republican members. Some of the few GOP representatives who publicly condemned Trump failed to vote for the resolution.

The four freshmen congresswomen that make up”The Squad” have hit back repeatedly at Trump on Twitter and in comments to reporters. The women have quickly becomepolitical firebrands, often making headlines with their strong ridicule of Trump and even sometimes acting as a thorn in the side of Democratic leadership.

“This is the agenda of white nationalists, whether it is happening in chat rooms or it’s happening on national TV. And now, it’s reached the White House garden,” Omar said last week at a press conference with her colleagues of “The Squad.”

“He would love nothing more than to divide our country based on race, religion, gender orientation, or immigration status,” the freshman lawmaker continued, “because this is the only way he knows he can prevent the solidarity of us working together across all of our differences.”

[Newsweek]

Trump lashes out at Washington Post over reporting: ‘Presidential Harassment!’

President Trump on Sunday lashed out The Washington Post over its reporting on his attacks against a group of minority congresswomen, calling it an example of “Presidential Harassment.”

“The Washington Post Story, about my speech in North Carolina and tweet, with its phony sources who do not exist, is Fake News,” Trump tweeted, referring to a rally in North Carolina his campaign held last week. “The only thing people were talking about is the record setting crowd and the tremendous enthusiasm, far greater than the Democrats. You’ll see in 2020!”

“Presidential Harassment!” Trump added in a separate tweet, before tweeting “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” in a subsequent one. 

The tweet itself didn’t specify which story Trump was referring to, but Twitter users pointed to one that described the turmoil inside the White House after the president told a group of minority congresswomen to “go back” to the “crime infested places” they came from. 

The Post, in a report published Saturday, described an effort from friends, advisers and political allies to resolve the problems that came from Trump’s attacks. 

The Post did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill on Trump’s latest tweets. 

Trump last week sparked an uproar by telling four freshman House Democrats — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) — to “go back” to the “crime infested places” they came from before speaking out about U.S. policies.  

Several Democrats, as well as multiple GOP lawmakers, condemned the comments as racist and xenophobic. The House last Tuesday voted on a resolution to condemn Trump’s tweets as racist. 

The vote was followed on Wednesday by a Trump rally crowd chanting “send her back” as the president attacked Omar, a Somali refugee who came to the U.S. with her family as a child. 

Trump distanced himself from the chant, saying he disagreed with it. But he has continued to rail against the congresswomen, saying on Sundaythat they should “apologize” to the U.S. for their hateful rhetoric. 

Trump has repeatedly attacked the media during his presidency, often describing it as “fake news” and the “enemy of the people.”

[The Hill]

Trump Attacks Tom ‘The Chin’ Friedman For Calling Him Racist: We Just Spoke and He ‘Kissed My A**’

President Donald Trump unleashed a tirade against Thomas Friedman on Twitter Friday morning, claiming the New York Times columnist had been friendly in a private call before deeming him a racist in print.

Trump kicked off his Twitter meltdown with an unflattering nickname for Friedman:

Thomas “the Chin” Friedman, a weak and pathetic sort of guy, writes columns for The New York Times in between rounds of his favorite game, golf. Two weeks ago, while speaking to a friend on his cell phone, I unfortunately ended up speaking to Friedman … he could not have been nicer or more respectful to your favorite President, me. Then I saw the column he wrote, “Trump Will Be Re-elected, Won’t He?” He called me a Racist, which I am not, and said Rhode Island went from economically bad to great in 5 years because the … Governor of the State did a good job. That may be true but she could not have done it without the tremendous economic success of our Country & the turnaround that my Administration has caused. Really Nasty to me in his average I.Q. Columns, kissed my a.. on the call. Phony!

While it’s difficult to know what transpired on their call — Trump tends to be an unreliable narrator and has claimed many a time that his critics kiss his ass in private — the president is correct about Friedman’s brutal column, which warned Democrats that Trump could win in 2020.

The searing line that likely piqued Trump’s ire: “I wasn’t surprised to hear so many people expressing fear that the racist, divisive, climate-change-denying, woman-abusing jerk who is our president was going to get re-elected, and was even seeing his poll numbers rise.”

[Mediaite]

Trump Twitter-rages over media’s coverage of the racist ‘send her back’ chant he incited

President Donald Trump on Thursday said he did not like the racist “send her back” chant directed at Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) that erupted during his campaign rally this week.

On Friday, however, the president attacked the media for criticizing the chant even as he boasted about the large number of people at the rally who were conducting the racist chant.

“It is amazing how the Fake News Media became ‘crazed’ over the chant ‘send her back’ by a packed Arena (a record) crowd in the Great State of North Carolina, but is totally calm & accepting of the most vile and disgusting statements made by the three Radical Left Congresswomen,” the president wrote. “Mainstream Media, which has lost all credibility, has either officially or unofficially become a part of the Radical Left Democrat Party. It is a sick partnership, so pathetic to watch!”

Trump then bashed the media for covering the adoring crowd that welcomed Omar home when she arrived back in her home state of Minnesota.

“They even covered a tiny staged crowd as they greeted Foul Mouthed Omar in Minnesota, a State which I will win in 2020 because they can’t stand her and her hatred of our Country,” he wrote.

[Raw Story]

Kellyanne Conway Snaps Back at Reporter: ‘What’s Your Ethnicity?’

When White House reporter Andrew Feinberg posed a question to Kellyanne Conway on Tuesday about the president’s racist tweets against the four congresswomen known as the “Squad,” he found himself taken aback by her response. 

Feinberg, a reporter for the website BeltwayBreakfast.com, asked the White House counselor which countries President Donald Trump was referring to when he suggested Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar—all U.S. citizens—should “go back” to where they came from. 

Instead of answering that question, Conway asked him, “What’s your ethnicity?” 

“Uh… why is that relevant?” Feinberg asked before Conway interrupted him to say, “Because I’m asking you a question.”

After Conway shares that her ancestors are from Ireland and Italy, the reporter said, “My ethnicity is not relevant to the question I’m asking you.” 

Conway still would not answer Feinberg’s question, instead insisting that he question was relevant because Trump said “originally” from—he didn’t—and going on a rant about how “a lot of us are sick and tired in this country of America coming last,” echoing comments she made on Fox News earlier in the day about the “Squad” representing a “dark underbelly in this country.” 

In that same Fox interview, Conway distanced herself from her husband George Conway, whose latest Washington Post column is headlined: “Trump is a racist president.” 

Reached for comment, Feinberg told The Daily Beast, “It’s not the first time she’s responded to one of my questions with an irrelevant question, but this time was particularly bizarre.”

“I just wanted to get back to what I was asking her about,” he added, “so I was glad she was able to confirm the president’s thinking on the matter.”

[The Daily Beast]

Media

Trump says he’s ‘so great looking and smart, a true Stable Genius’ in tweet bashing 2020 Dems

President Donald Trump again referred to himself as a “stable genius” while also touting himself as “great looking” in a tweet Thursday mocking some of the leading Democratic candidates hoping to unseat him. 

In the middle of a morning tweet storm that touched on everything from the census to the Pledge of Allegiance, Trump said that all news media outlets would all be endorsing him “at some point, one way or the other.” He made that prediction based on his belief that they will “quickly go out of business for lack of credibility, or approval, from the public” when “I ultimately leave office in six years or maybe 10 or 14 (just kidding).” 

He then used his favorite insults for former Vice President Joe Biden, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wondering how anyone could imagine one of them being president instead of “what you have now, so great looking and smart, a true Stable Genius!” 

Trump has referred to himself as a “stable genius” on several occasions. He first used the term in January 2018 in response to concerns that he was not mentally fit for office, which were magnified after the publication of Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.” The book featured quotes from administration officials who questioned Trump’s cognitive ability, including former White House strategist Steve Bannon who said Trump “has lost it.” 

“Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” Trump tweeted. He added that being elected president “on my first try” should “qualify as not smart, but genius … and a very stable genius at that!” 

The president used the phrase again in May after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she hoped “for an intervention” for Trump and expressed concern about his well-being after he abruptly left a meeting with Democrats. Pelosi said Trump had “flipped” but Trump said he had been “extremely calm” and called himself an “extremely stable genius.” 


[USA Today]

Trump Again Lashes Out at Fox News for Not Sufficiently Adoring Him

Donald Trump’s growing annoyance at his favorite news network was on display once again Sunday night, when he ripped Fox News for failing to lavish him with sufficient praise.

The tirade began early Sunday evening with tweets targetting the network’s “weekend anchors.” Watching them, Trump wrote, is worse than watching the “Trump haters” on CNN and MSNBC. He also took a swipe at the New York Times before concluding that “@FoxNews is changing fast, but they forgot the people who got them there!” That’s his way of saying he’s responsible for the network’s success and they should thank him with fawning coverage.

The reason for Trump’s outburst isn’t clear. Maybe he saw soccer fans chanting “fuck Trump” during a Fox News live shot earlier Sunday. Maybe he didn’t like seeing Democratic candidate Michael Bennet on Fox News Sunday. Maybe, as Media Matters’s Matthew Gertz suggested, Trump was inspired by the network twice citing a New York Times report about abhorrent conditions in an immigration detention center.

More difficult to explain are the tweets that came later in the evening. Trump went after Shepard Smith, his most vocal critic on Fox News, and Donna Brazile, the former chair of the Democratic National Committee, who recently joined the network. As Gertz pointed out though, Brazile hasn’t been on Fox for a week.

All of this comes as Trump is being courted by a right-wing TV network that promises to be more sycophantic than Fox News ever was. One America News has been called the “Ultimate ‘Pro-Trump’ Network” and Trump has reportedly been tuning into the network more than ever. But apparently not this weekend.

[New York Magazine]

Trump accuses media of ‘phony’ reporting on migrant detention centers

President Trump on Sunday accused the media of reporting “phony and exaggerated accounts” of conditions at migrant detention centers along the border in the wake of two bombshell reports from the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) watchdog.

“The Fake News Media, in particular the Failing @nytimes, is writing phony and exaggerated accounts of the Border Detention Centers,” Trump tweeted.

“First of all, people should not be entering our Country illegally, only for us to then have to care for them. We should be allowed to focus on United States Citizens first. Border Patrol, and others in Law Enforcement, have been doing a great job. We said there was a Crisis – the Fake News & the Dems said it was ‘manufactured.'”

“Now all agree we were right, but they always knew that. They are crowded (which we brought up, not them) because the Dems won’t change the Loopholes and Asylum. Big Media Con Job!” he added.

The reports from the DHS Office of Inspector General covered the conditions at facilities near El Paso, Texas, and in the Rio Grande Valley.s

The government watchdog found severe overcrowding, migrants being held too long and dirty conditions at many of the facilities.

A group of lawyers who visited a Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, made similar claims about the treatment of migrants.

The Trump administration has denied reports and images of the conditions in detainment facilities.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan earlier Sunday called the allegations of mistreatment, specifically of children, “unsubstantiated.”

Congress last month approved a $4.6 billion emergency border funding bill that was signed into law by Trump and provides migrant agencies with more resources to tackle the problem. However, the bill has been panned by some progressive lawmakers, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who argue it doesn’t do enough to address the systemic issues with the border agency. 

Two Facebook groups linked to current and former Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents have been uncovered recently that include derisive images of migrants, vulgar and sexually explicit posts about lawmakers, and racist comments.

CBP condemned the group discovered by ProPublica, calling the posts “completely inappropriate and contrary to the honor and integrity I see – and expect – from our agents day in and day out.”

[The Hill]

Trump praises Saudi crown prince, ignores questions on Khashoggi killing

President Donald Trump enjoyed breakfast here Friday with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, heaping praise on the Saudi ruler while ignoring evidence of his role in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The crown prince had faced some isolation at last year’s G20 summit in Buenos Aires after being implicated in the grisly murder of the Washington Post columnist and legal resident of the U.S., who disappeared after visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last October.

But Trump has largely ignored the evidence, including a conclusion by the Central Intelligence Agency, that Prince Mohammed ordered the killing.

At a news conference on Saturday, Trump said he did raise the killing privately with the crown prince, who told him about 13 people who had been prosecuted for the crime.

“He’s very angry about it,” he said. “He’s very unhappy about it.”

But Trump did not indicate that he confronted the crown prince over his own complicity. And when pressed about the CIA’s conclusion at the news conference, Trump responded, “I can’t comment on the intelligence community. I guess I’m allowed to declassify … but the truth is I don’t want to talk about intelligence.”

It wasn’t the first time Trump has declined to confirm or deny the CIA’s assessment, which has been shared with U.S. lawmakers and administration officials.

“I’m extremely angry and unhappy about a thing like that taking place,” Trump said. “But as of this moment, more than 13 people are being prosecuted, and I hear the numbers are going to be going up.”

Earlier, before their breakfast at the Imperial Hotel in Osaka, Trump and Prince Mohammed ignored at least two questions about Khashoggi’s death.

“Mr. President, will you discuss Jamal Khashoggi?”

Trump instead answered a question about his plans to visit the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-Un.

“Mr. President, will [you] address the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, sir, with the crown prince?”

Trump instead answered a question about his plans to discuss the technology company Huawei with President Xi Jinping of China, saying it would be part of their talks on trade.

Trump also did not raise the issue of Khashoggi’s murder in his opening remarks.

A United Nations report last week found there was “credible evidence” to warrant further investigation into allegations the crown prince masterminded the killing. “No conclusion is made as to guilt,” the report stated, adding, however: “Evidence points to the 15-person mission to execute Mr. Khashoggi requiring significant government coordination, resources and finances.”

In his remarks, Trump proclaimed his admiration for the crown prince, declaring that it was an honor to be in his company.

“It’s an honor to be with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, a friend of mine, a man who has really done things in the last five years in terms of opening up Saudi Arabia,” Trump said. “And I think especially what you’ve done for women. I’m seeing what’s happening; it’s like a revolution in a very positive way.”

Trump continued, “I want to just thank you on behalf of a lot of people, and I want to congratulate you. You’ve done, really, a spectacular job.”

Saudi Arabia will host next year’s G20 summit, which gave Prince Mohammed a prominent place at the front and center of this year’s “family photo” of leaders on Thursday.

Trump posed alongside Prince Mohammed, who greeted him with a warm smile, a robust handshake and a pat on the hand. Trump and the prince spoke together during the photo shoot, gesturing actively, and the two men continued to talk as they walked off the platform together.

At the Imperial Hotel, before breakfast, Trump insisted that it was his good relationships that were keeping the United States safe and free from conflicts.

“We have a very good friendship,” Trump said of China. “We have a very, very good friendship, like I have with Mohammed. I mean, we have a great — a great relationship, and that’s very important, especially when you have a place like — whether it’s Saudi Arabia, in all fairness, or China, or any country. Or any country. Or North Korea. It’s about relationship. Otherwise, you end up in very bad wars and lots of problems. The relationship is very important.”

[Politico]

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