Trump pounds media as ‘really bad people’, ending post-shooting detente – By Steven Nelson (washingtonexaminer.com) / July 5 2018
President Trump denounced the news media Thursday as full of “really bad people,” less than a week after saying journalists should not fear for their safety following a newsroom shooting Maryland.
“These guys, the crooked press, they’re so dishonest. They’re so dishonest. Fake news. They’re fake news media,” Trump told supporters during a campaign rally in Montana.
Trump struck a conciliatory tone last week after five people were murdered at the Annapolis office of the Capital Gazette, saying last Friday at the White House that “journalists, like all Americans, should be free from the fear of being violently attacked while doing their job.”
Annapolis shooting suspect Jarrod Ramos had a long-running dispute with the local newspaper, but some journalists said Trump’s anti-press rhetoric increases the risk of violence.
At the Montana rally, Trump resumed his harsh critique of the media, estimating that 75 percent of journalists are “downright dishonest” and frequently invent sources.
“I see the way they write. They’re so damned dishonest. And I don’t mean all of them. Because some of the finest people I know are journalists. Really. Hard to believe when I say that,” he said.
Trump expressed particular concern about coverage of his preparation for a summit last month with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and his degree of preparation for an upcoming meeting in Finland with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
“I’ve been preparing for this stuff my whole life. They don’t say that,” Trump said.
At one point, he claimed the New York Times would have gone out of business if he hadn’t been elected in 2016, increasing sales. Trump singled out Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel, though not by name, calling him a “sleaze bag” for a December tweet suggesting a Trump speaking venue was largely empty (Weigel apologized for misreporting the crowd size).
“Seventy-five percent of those people are downright dishonest. Downright dishonest. They’re fake. They’re fake,” Trump said. “They quote sources. ‘A source within the Trump Organization said …’. A source. They don’t have a source. They never use names anymore. In the old days, you have to use names. Jim Smith said that Donald Trump is a bad guy. They don’t do that anymore. They say a source within the administration. They make the sources up. They don’t exist in many cases.”
Trump added: “I saw one of them said 15 anonymous sources. I don’t have 15 people in the White House — I mean, forget it. Fifteen anonymous sources have said all sorts of stuff. These are really bad people.”
