YOU HAVE MET THE ENEMY (AND IT IS US!)
Trump says ‘FAKE NEWS’ media is foe of the American people
Don: Media, not me, is the problem
MOVE OVER, ISIS — President Trump announced Friday that the media is “the enemy of the American people.”
“The FAKE NEWS media (failing @Nytimes, @CNN, @NBCNews and many more) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people. SICK!,” the President posted on Twitter Friday afternoon.
The post was quickly unavailable after it was posted, though it reappeared about 15 minutes later with the addition of CBS and ABC and without the “SICK!”
Lashing out at news outlets he doesn’t like has long been one of Trump’s favorite moves, but the term “enemy of the American people” is an escalation over his normal assertions that they are “fake” or “failing.”
Chief White House strategist Steve Bannon — the former head of Breitbart News — has called the media the “opposition party.”
Trump’s broadside came after he crowed about his 77-minute press conference on Twitter and trashed reactions to it that he did not like.
“Thank you for all of the nice statements on the Press Conference yesterday. Rush Limbaugh said one of greatest ever. Fake media not happy!” he tweeted.
Many observers were more critical of the epic presser, where Trump praised ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, trashed journalists, made a casual statement about “nuclear holocaust” and made many other eyepopping statements.
“The press has become so dishonest, that if we don’t talk about it we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people, a tremendous disservice, we have to talk about it . . . The press is out of control…The level of dishonesty is out of control,” he complained Thursday.
He acknowledged that stories about his campaign’s ties to Russian operatives and Flynn’s having lied to vice president were based on leaked information, but insisted the stories were unfair to him and therefore bogus.
“The leaks are absolutely real . . . the news is fake,” he said.
The President previously said any polls that were negative about his administration are also fake — and appears to be trying to take matters into his own hands.
Trump emailed supporters a “Mainstream Media Accountability Survey” on Friday rife with leading questions (“On which issues does the mainstream media do the worst job of representing Republicans?” “Do you believe that the media uses slurs rather than facts to attack conservative stances on issues like border control, religious liberties, and Obama Care?”) along with a fund-raising plug.
Twitter users circulated the link far and wide — with several sharing screenshots of their answers bolstering mainstream outlets like CNN.
By Friday afternoon, the Trump team emailed supporters asking for their “IMMEDIATE help” in rectifying the results.