Trump fires back at his television critics
President Donald Trump is perhaps the world’s mostpowerful television addict. And like any TV fan, he has strong opinions about what he watches.
In a series of caustic criticisms this week, Trump laced into on-air stars like CNN news anchor Don Lemon and Stephen Colbert, host of “The Late Show” on CBS. He insisted he had tuned out networks like CNN and MSNBC, but he proceeded to comment in detail about their coverage of his administration.
Speaking at the White House with Time magazine, Trump derided Lemon as “perhaps the dumbest person in broadcasting” and called Chris Cuomo, the CNN morning anchor, “a chained lunatic.”
“He’s like a boiler ready to explode,” Trump said of Cuomo. “The level of hatred. And the entire, you know, the entire CNN platform is that way.”
The president went on to lament the plight of Jeffrey Lord, his stalwart on-air defender on CNN, saying: “Poor Jeffrey Lord. I love Jeffrey Lord. But sometimes he’s sitting there with eight unknown killers that nobody ever heard of.”
CNN issued a blunt riposte to Trump on Thursday: “His comments are beneath the dignity of the office of the President.”
Trump told Time he had installed a new 60-inch television in his dining room, and he showed off his prowess with the unit’s DVR, on which he compiles cablenews clips. The president often reacts on Twitter in real time to cable-news segments that he deems critical or ungenerous.
Trump now appears most regularly on Fox News, speaking with opinionated hosts like Jeanine Pirro, who will run an interview with him on Saturday, and Sean Hannity. He also has granted interviews to the major broadcast networks.
The president said he enjoys watching Fox News in the mornings, “and their ratings have gone through the roof because everyone knows I’m watching Fox.” He called MSNBC’s coverage of him “ridiculous.”
His toughest remarks were reserved for Colbert, whose recent off-color joke about Trump and President Vladimir Putin of Russia prompted some online protests. “There’s nothing funny about what he says,” Trump said. “And what he says is filthy. And you have kids watching. And it only builds up my base. It only helps me, people like him.”
The president also took credit for Colbert’s recent ratings rise. “They were going to take him off television; then he started attacking me, and he started doing better,” Trump said.
Trump unhappy with ship’s catapult system
In an interview in Time magazine, President Donald Trump called the Navy’s new digital catapult to launch planes off of aircraft carriers “no good” and said the service needs to go back to “goddamned steam,” the method used for decades.
Trump recounted a conversation he had March 2 while visiting the nearly completed carrier Gerald L. Ford in Newport News, Virginia. He said he was told the catapult does not have enough power.
“And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out,” Trump said.
The new catapult takes up significantly less space and works by tapping into a redesigned turbine system. The new system is expected to be able to launch unmanned aircraft and require less maintenance, the Navy said.
Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain and an analyst with the Center for a New American Security, said many of the issues with the digital catapult have been resolved.