Tag: Brian Stelter

Trump lashes out at ‘unfair’ and ‘vicious’ Melania coverage

President Trump on Wednesday lashed out at recent media coverage of first lady Melania Trump, calling speculation surrounding her whereabouts in the weeks following a kidney surgery “unfair” and “vicious.”

“The Fake News Media has been so unfair, and vicious, to my wife and our great First Lady, Melania,” Trump tweeted.

“During her recovery from surgery they reported everything from near death, to facelift, to left the W.H. (and me) for N.Y. or Virginia, to abuse. All Fake, she is doing really well!”

Trump claimed in another tweet that “four reporters spotted Melania in the White House last week walking merrily along to a meeting” but “they never reported the sighting because it would hurt the sick narrative that she was living in a different part of the world, was really ill, or whatever.”

“Fake News is really bad!” he added.

CNBC reporter Eamon Javers had tweeted on May 30 that he had seen the first lady “walking with her aides in the West Wing” the day prior.

“Not that this will deter the conspiracy theorists, but I saw the First Lady walking with her aides in the West Wing yesterday afternoon,” Javers wrote.

Melania Trump attended a ceremony for Gold Star families on Monday that was closed to the press. It was slated to be her first public appearance since she underwent surgery at Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., on May 14.

The first lady is slated to appear at a Federal Emergency Management Agency event Wednesday afternoon with the president.

Speculation surrounding the Trump’s whereabouts in the weeks after her surgery has been the subject of several tweets and discussions on cable news.

One Rolling Stone writer speculated that she was “concealing abuse,” and The Atlantic’s David Frum posed a hypothetical about President Trump having “punched the First Lady in the White House.”

CNN also discussed Melania Trump’s whereabouts on its weekly media affairs program “Reliable Sources,” which included a graphic with a calendar of the number of days the first lady was absent.

[The Hill]

Trump Defends Sinclair Amid Controversy: ‘Far Superior to CNN and Even More Fake NBC’

In response to the controversy surrounding Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which went viral over the weekend, President Donald Trump came to the company’s defense, claiming on Twitter that “Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC.”

Scrutiny of the company began after a Deadspin video showed local anchors working at stations owned by Sinclair repeating the exact same anti-media talking points that echoed Trump’s attacks on the mainstream press. The segment was part of a new intuitive on “fake stories” that Sinclair is forcing their stations to air.

Trump predictably sided with Sinclair in the controversy, tweeting this morning, “So funny to watch Fake News Networks, among the most dishonest groups of people I have ever dealt with, criticize Sinclair Broadcasting for being biased. Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke.”

CNN’s media reporter Brian Stelter, who first broke the Sinclair story, responded to the president on Twitter by thanking him for watching CNN.

[Mediaite]

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