Trump: Media to blame for nation’s anger

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Monday called the news media “the true Enemy of the People,” and he again blamed what he called “fraudulent” reporting for anger that has led to a spate of recent violence in the country.

The president’s tweets came as he made plans for a somber visit to Pennsylvania to mourn a synagogue massacre that left 11 people dead.

“There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news,” Trump wrote. “The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly. That will do much to put out the flame … of Anger and Outrage and we will then be able to bring all sides together in Peace and Harmony. Fake News Must End!”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders continued in the same vein at a press briefing Monday, saying: “The very first action that the president did was condemn these heinous acts. The very first thing that the media did was condemn the president, go after him, try to place blame.”

Sanders said Trump was no more to blame for the pipe bombs sent last week to prominent Democrats than Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was to blame when a supporter of his shot at members of Congress practicing for a baseball game last year.

She later declined a request from CNN’s Jim Acosta to name media organizations that Trump considers “enemies of the people.”

“I’m not going to walk through a list, but I think those individuals know who they are,” Huckabee Sanders said, later asserting that the vast majority of news coverage about Trump is negative and that the media needs to do a better job of covering Trump’s accomplishments.

While Trump has condemned the Pennsylvania shootings as an anti-Semitic act and has decried political violence, he also has continued his political schedule over the past week and largely kept up his criticism against Democrats and the media.

And Sanders made clear Trump was unlikely to change course, saying the president will “continue to fight back” against critics.

Trump’s Monday morning tweets prompted some fresh rebukes, including from Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.

“This is, for all practical purposes, a call for more violence against the press,” Murphy wrote on Twitter. “My god … what is happening???”

Others criticizing the remarks included David Lapan, a retired Marine colonel who was press secretary at the Department of Homeland Security while it was led by John F. Kelly, now Trump’s chief of staff.

“Over 30+ years as a U.S. Marine, I defended our country against its true enemies,” Lapan wrote on Twitter. “In 20+ years as a USMC, Pentagon and DHS spokesman, I dealt w/ the news media nearly every day. I know quite a bit about the press and know this — they are NOT the enemy of the American people.”

During an appearance on CNN on Monday morning before Trump’s latest tweets, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway argued that Trump was calling for unity.

“The president is trying to heal the country,” she said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., meanwhile, said Monday that both sides of the aisle are to be blamed for the heightened political rhetoric in the country, which he called “terrible.”

“We witnessed, all of us, two horrendous shootings this weekend. One in a synagogue in Pittsburgh and one in a Kroger store in Louisville,” McConnell said, referring to the shooting of two blacks by a white gunman in Kentucky.

“If these aren’t definitions of hate crimes, I don’t know what a hate crime is,” McConnell said while speaking to the Federalist Society in Frankfort, Ky.

The White House on Monday did not immediately provide further details on Trump’s trip to Pennsylvania, which drew mixed reactions in Pittsburgh.

Leaders of a liberal Jewish group in Pittsburgh penned an open letter to Trump before the White House announced the plans, saying he was not welcome in the city until he denounced white nationalism.

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, a Democrat, told reporters ahead of the announcement that the White House should consult with the families of the victims about their preferences.

“If the President is looking to come to Pittsburgh, I would ask that he not do so while we are burying the dead. Our attention and our focus is going to be on them, and we don’t have public safety that we can take away from what is needed in order to do both,” Peduto said.

But Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of the Tree of Life synagogue made clear Trump would be welcome, telling CNN: “The President of the United States is always welcome. I am a citizen. He is my president. He is certainly welcome.”