‘CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND BLIND HATRED’
Trump lashes out at media, intelligence community over Flynn resignation
WASHINGTON— U.S. President Donald Trump is renewing his attack on the “fake news media” amid the widening controversy surrounding the ouster of his national security adviser and talk of Congress investigations of purported Russian meddling in last year’s presidential election.
Trump posted a pre-dawn message on his verified Twitter account Wednesday complaining, “The fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred.” He said, “This Russian connection non-sense (sic) is merely an attempt to cover-up the many mistakes made in Hillary Clinton’s losing campaign.” He added in the post that “@MSNBC & @CNN are unwatchable. @foxandfriends is great!”
The latest tweet follows a pattern of social media messages that Trump has sent, chastising news organizations both during his campaign for the White House and in the weeks since his inauguration.
Trump is now faulting the Obama administration for being “too soft” on Russia, pointing to Russia’s an- nexation of Crimea from Ukraine on President Barack Obama’s watch. He tweeted, “Crimea was TAKEN by Russia during the Obama Administration. Was Obama too soft on Russia?”
Trump appeared to be trying to distance himself from any appearance of close ties with Russia following published reports that U.S. agencies had intercepted phone calls last year between Russian intelligence officials and his 2016 campaign team.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell defended Trump on Wednesday, likening him to 19thcentury populist president Andrew Jackson.
The Kentucky Republican told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that voters “wanted a different kind of president.” He added, “I like what he’s doing,” mentioning Trump’s emphasis on lessening government regulation of business.
McConnell also said he considers Neil Gorsuch, the man Trump picked to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, to be “the single best circuit court judge in the nation.”
He did disagree with Trump, who has asserted that millions of illegal votes in the election caused him to lose the popular vote to Democrat Clinton.
“There is voter fraud in the country,” McConnell said. “But there is no evidence that there was significant enough vote fraud to affect the outcome of the election.”
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called a meeting of Democratic senators to discuss the resignation of Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and published reports about contacts between Trump’s campaign and Moscow.
Another leading Democrat, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, is pressing the Democrats’ case for an independent investigation into the Trump administration’s ties to Russia.