U.S. President Donald Trump petulantly informed U.K. Prime Minister Teresa May that he won’t be making any official state visits to her country unless she can guarantee that people will be nice to him, according to reports.
“I haven’t had great coverage out there lately, Theresa,” Trump told May in a private conversation that was transcribed by aides and reported by senior diplomats to British newspaper The Sun.
May replied stiffly, “Well, you know what the British press are like.”
“I still want to come, but I’m in no rush,” Trump reportedly said to May. “So, if you can fix it for me, it would make things a lot easier.”
“When I know I’m going to get a better reception,” the president said, “I’ll come and not before.”
One of the Sun’s sources said that May “tried to explain she has no power to dictate how newspapers and media might decide to cover his visit.”
“After all,” the individual said. “We are not North Korea.”
Trump, the source said, simply would not agree on a date for a state visit until “people support him coming.”
Trump has been an object of scorn and derision to the majority of the British public. His ham-handed attempts to bend local laws to accommodate a Trump golf course in Scotland have alienated and angered locals. The U.K. Parliament featured a lively debate earlier this year over whether Trump should not only be disinvited from state visits, but whether he should be banned from the country altogether.
On Thursday morning, while MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” was on the air, Trump posted a pair of hateful tweets about co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.
MSNBC responded with this statement: “It’s a sad day for America when the president spends his time bullying, lying and spewing petty personal attacks instead of doing his job.”
The president’s deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, defended the tweets by saying Trump was responding to the “outrageous attacks that take place” on “Morning Joe” and other shows.
Trump refuses to be “bullied,” Sanders said on Fox News. “This is a president who fights fire with fire.”
Trump’s tweets in the 8 a.m. hour on Thursday said that “Morning Joe” is “poorly rated” (it’s not) and that the hosts “speak badly of me” (that’s true). He called both hosts disparaging names.
I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came..
Trump claimed that Scarborough and Brzezinski courted him for an interview at Mar-a-Lago around the New Year’s Eve holiday.
“She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!” the president wrote.
He actually said yes, according to accounts of their meeting. Trump, Scarborough and Brzezinski mingled with guests and had a private chat.
For the record, photos from Mar-a-Lago do not show any blood or bandages on Brzezinski’s face.
Stunned commenters on social media noted that Trump targeted both hosts with his barbed tweets, but only opined on the physical appearance of the woman involved.
Democratic commentator Maria Cardona, speaking on CNN, said it was part of a pattern of misogynistic behavior by Trump.
“We should not normalize this,” she said, calling it “unacceptable and unpresidential.”
Lawmakers immediately condemned the president’s tweets, as well.
“Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, tweeted.
“As the First Lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder,” her communications director Stephanie Grisham said in response to reporters’ questions.
Melania Trump has previously said that as First Lady she wants to focus on the problem of cyberbullying.
Critics say Trump uses his Twitter account as a powerful megaphone to bully people.
Observers also expressed a lot of skepticism about Trump’s Thursday morning claim that he doesn’t watch “Morning Joe” anymore.
The president is known to watch all the major morning shows, including the programs on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC’. He sometimes calls up pro-Trump guests to thank them for their remarks on the shows.
Trump had a friendly, jovial relationship with “Morning Joe” during the presidential campaign, but it turned sour over time.
At one point he called Brzezinski “very insecure” and threatened to expose her off-screen relationship with Scarborough.
Brzezinski and Scarborough were dating at the time, and they are now engaged.
Thursday’s anti-media tweets were astonishing — and part of a pattern.
On Tuesday his main target was CNN. Trump reveled in the fact that three CNN journalists resigned on Monday after their Russia-related story was retracted.
On Wednesday Trump went after two of the nation’s biggest newspapers, The New York Times and the Washington Post.
He mangled the facts several times, but his overall message came through loud and clear: Do not trust the people who are trying to hold my administration accountable.
Brzezinski responded to Trump Thursday morning with a tweet of her own, mocking him with a reference to “little hands,” a reference to a disparaging idea about him that has circulated for years.
Mark Kornblau, the head of PR for NBC News and MSNBC, also weighed in on Twitter, saying, “Never imagined a day when I would think to myself, ‘it is beneath my dignity to respond to the President of the United States.'”
Never imagined a day when I would think to myself, "it is beneath my dignity to respond to the President of the United States."
President Donald Trump on Tuesday appeared to blame former President Barack Obama for not bringing Otto Warmbier home from North Korea sooner.
“It’s a disgrace what happened to Otto,” Trump said to reporters. “It’s a total disgrace what happened to Otto.”
“It should never, ever be allowed to happen. And frankly, if he were brought home sooner, I think the results would have been a lot different. He should have been brought home that day.”
Trump added that he had spoken with Warmbier’s family.
When asked if Obama had done enough to secure Warmbier’s release during a June 16 press conference, Otto’s father, Fred, echoed Trump’s sentiments saying the results “speak for themselves.”
Warmbier, a student at the University of Virginia, was detained in March 2016 after North Korean officials accused him of attempting to steal a propaganda poster from his hotel. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.
US officials negotiated his release earlier this month, though Warmbier was in a coma by the time he arrived in the US. While North Korean officials said he had fallen into a coma after contracting botulism, US doctors who examined Warmbier said he suffered severe neurological trauma while in detention and showed no traces of the toxin.
The White House released a statement on Monday offering Trump and first lady Melania’s “deepest condolences” to Warmbier’s family.
“The United States once again condemns the brutality of the North Korean regime as we mourn its latest victim,” the statement reads.
Warmbier’s family also released a statement on Monday announcing his death.
“It would be easy at a moment like this to focus on all that we lost — future time that won’t be spent with a warm, engaging, brilliant young man whose curiosity and enthusiasm for life knew no bounds,” the statement reads. “But we choose to focus on the time we were given to be with this remarkable person.”
Former President Barack Obama has issued a statement about Otto Warmbier, the American college student who died this week, days after being released from North Korea in a coma after more than a year in captivity.
“During the course of the Obama Administration, we had no higher priority than securing the release of Americans detained overseas,” Obama spokesman Ned Price said in the statement. “Their tireless efforts resulted in the release of at least 10 Americans from North Korean custody during the course of the Obama administration.”
Added Price, who was National Security Counsel spokesperson during Obama’s administration: “It is painful that Mr. Warmbier was not among them, but our efforts on his behalf never ceased, even in the waning days of the administration. Our thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Warmbier’s family and all who had the blessing of knowing him.”
On Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump started out the day as he has in the past: by tweeting criticisms of the news media and courts that have blocked his travel ban.
Trump first tweeted that the “Fake News Media has never been so wrong or so dirty” and accused journalists of using “phony sources to meet their agenda of hate.”
VoteVets.org responded to Trump in a tweet that said, “You’re describing your road to the White House to a T” and accusing the president of “colluding with an adversary of the United States,” in reference to concerns about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Will Fischer, director of government affairs for VoteVets, told NBC News that he had written the tweets criticizing Trump when the account was suddenly blocked.
“He has no interest in hearing any type of dissent,” said Fischer.
VoteVets.org has been critical of Trump before, most recently in a television ad featuring a veteran of the war in Afghanistan speaking directly to the president about stripping healthcare from vets.
“There’s not an issue being debated that doesn’t affect military families and vets,” said Fischer. “There are nearly 2 million veterans and their spouses on Medicaid. 500,000 veterans are served by Meals on Wheels each year.”
“This is part of a long narrative of Trump’s disregard for veterans and military families,” Fischer said of the blocking.
“Trump only wants to surround himself with Yes-men,” said Fischer, citing a video of Monday’s cabinet meeting in which the attendees praised Trump in an effusive way that was mocked by some.
It’s not the first time the president has blocked his critics on social media. Also on Tuesday, he blocked noted science fiction and horror novelist Stephen King, Center for American Progress fellow Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, and March for Truth organizer Jordan Uhl.
The president appeared to go on a blocking spree throughout the day, also blocking former Guantanamo Bay guard Brandon Neely. In a tweet about being blocked by Trump Tuesday, Neely suggested the president could be “blocking all veterans.”
So many people have been blocked from reading or responding to the president’s tweets that the hashtag #BlockedByTrump began to take off on Tuesday. Because Trump has blocked so many users, there are several other accounts — like @subtrump and @unfollowtrump — that retweet all of his posts on the platform.
Trump’s blocking has caused concern in legal circles, where some have raised questions about whether it could be illegal for a sitting U.S. President to intentionally hide his statements from members of the public.
On June 6, attorneys from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University sent a letter to Trump asking him to unblock users. The letter says that an elected president’s Twitter account is a “designated public forum” — similar to a school board or city council meeting — and blocking Americans from seeing and responding to it based on their viewpoints is a violation of the First Amendment.
That same day, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that Trump’s tweets are “considered official statements by the president of the United States.”
The Knight First Amendment Institute is currently soliciting submissions from other people who have been blocked by the president.
Fischer said that he wasn’t very surprised about VoteVets.org getting the president’s block treatment.
“If the campaign taught us anything,” said Fischer, “It’s that the days of disbelief and shock are over.”
President Trump on Friday attacked Democratic calls for a probe into his contacts with Russia, tweeting a past photo of Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We should start an immediate investigation into @SenSchumer and his ties to Russia and Putin. A total hypocrite!” Trump tweeted.
The 2003 photo shows Schumer and Putin eating doughnuts during Putin’s trip to New York to attend the opening of a Russian gas company’s station.
Pro-Trump blog Gateway Pundit resurfaced the photo late Thursday, questioning “Where’s the outrage?” And the conservative website Drudge Report made the photo its lead image earlier Friday.
The Senate Democratic leader responded to Trump’s tweet, saying he would “happily talk” about his contact with Putin while pressing Trump on whether he would do the same.
Happily talk re: my contact w Mr. Putin & his associates, took place in '03 in full view of press & public under oath. Would you &your team? https://t.co/yXgw3U8tmQ
Schumer and other Democrats have repeatedly called for an independent investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday said he would recuse himself from Russia probes after it was revealed that he spoke with Russia’s U.S. ambassador twice during last year’s campaign, then denied speaking with Russians during his Senate confirmation hearings.
Democrats have said his recusal isn’t enough and have called for a special prosecutor to handle any Russia investigations.
Schumer has called on Sessions to resign and wants a probe conducted by the Department of Justice’s inspector general to determine if the former Alabama senator compromised an investigation into Russia’s intervention in the election.
Sessions isn’t the only Trump ally to receive backlash for meeting with the Russian envoy, Sergey Kislyak. Trump’s first national security adviser Michael Flynn was ousted last month for misleading White House officials about his conversations with the Russian diplomat.
But Trump clarified that he didn’t ask for Flynn’s resignation over the fact that he discussed U.S. sanctions with the Russian ambassador before Trump took office, but because Flynn misled Vice President Pence about the interaction.
No one is saying representatives of the United States government can’t meet with Russian diplomats or Vladimir Putin, that is a total misdirection. Trump’s aides keep saying they haven’t met with the Russians, and later it turns out they have lied, sometimes under oath, which is a crime.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday dodged responsibility for a botched mission he ordered in Yemen last month, placing the onus on the military and Barack Obama’s administration instead.
Bill Owens, the father of Chief Petty Officer William “Ryan” Owens, the Navy SEAL who died in the operation, demanded an investigation into his son’s death over the weekend. Owens further revealed he couldn’t bear to meet Trump at the airport as Ryan’s casket was carried off the military plane last month.
Asked about the matter during an interview with Fox News’ “Fox ‘n’ Friends,” Trump repeatedly said “they” were responsible for the outcome of the mission, in reference to the military.
“This was a mission that was started before I got here. This was something they wanted to do,” he said. “They came to me, they explained what they wanted to do ― the generals ― who are very respected, my generals are the most respected that we’ve had in many decades, I believe. And they lost Ryan.
“I can understand people saying that. I’d feel ― ‘What’s worse?’ There’s nothing worse,” he added. “This was something that they were looking at for a long time doing, and according to [Defense Secretary Jim] Mattis it was a very successful mission. They got tremendous amounts of information.”
The raid yielded no significant intelligence, U.S. officials told NBC News on Monday. Earlier this month, however, Pentagon officials said it produced “actionable intelligence.” So, too, did White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who initially called the raid “highly successful.”
“I think anyone who undermines the success of that raid owes an apology and [does] a disservice to the life of Chief Owens,” he said earlier this month. “The raid, the action that was taken in Yemen was a huge success.”
Presidents have traditionally accepted responsibility for their decisions, no matter the circumstances. President Harry Truman popularized the words, “The Buck Stops Here” and kept a sign of the phrase on his desk in the Oval Office. His successors took those words to heart, accepting ultimate responsibility in the wake of some of the nation’s biggest mishaps.
“I’m the president. And I’m always responsible,” President Barack Obama said in 2012 following an attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans died.
“In case you were wondering, in any of your reporting, who’s responsible? I take responsibility,” he said again in 2010 after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf.
President Ronald Reagan in 1987 owned up to his administration’s dealings amid what is known as the Iran-Contra scandal, telling the nation in a prime-time address from the Oval Office that he took “full responsibility” for his administration.
“As angry as I may be about activities undertaken without my knowledge, I am still accountable for those activities,” he said. “As disappointed as I may be in some who served me, I’m still the one who must answer to the American people for this behavior. And as personally distasteful as I find secret bank accounts and diverted funds – well, as the Navy would say, this happened on my watch.”
"I can understand… I'd feel 'what's worse?' There's nothing worse." –@POTUS on fallen Navy SEAL's father not wanting to talk to him pic.twitter.com/cPeJhB94ox
President Donald Trump intervened at the last moment to deny Rex Tillerson his pick to be deputy secretary of state — former deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams.
The president overruled his secretary of state — following meeting with Tillerson, Abrams and son-in-law Jared Kushner — after reading news reports about their meeting, which included references to Abrams’ criticisms of Trump during last year’s presidential campaign, according to people familiar with the decision. Though his staff was aware of Abrams’ statements, the president was not — until he read news reports about their meeting earlier this week.
“The core point here is that this comes from Trump’s thin-skinnedness,” said a top Republican strategist who supported the Abrams appointment. “He is the problem, this is all he cares about.”
While Abrams didn’t sign any of the so-called “Never Trump” letters that emerged from the Republican foreign policy establishment during the campaign, he said publicly that neither Trump nor his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton was fit to be president.
Tillerson, the former Exxon Mobil CEO, wanted the deep government experience Abrams would have brought to the position.
“It really speaks so poorly of Trump,” said Eric Edelman, a former United States ambassador to Turkey and undersecretary of defense in the George W. Bush administration. “It robs him of somebody who could have helped him enormously because they know the State Department extremely well and would have been respected enormously by the foreign service officers who work with him.”
On the right, Abrams’ supporters had put elbow grease into advancing his cause. Since December, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton had been making the case for Abrams not only with Tillerson, but also with Priebus, Kushner and Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon. In particular, Cotton assuaged their concerns that Abrams, who played a peripheral role in the Iran-Contra scandal, would face a tough Senate confirmation.
Cotton assured them repeatedly that Abrams’ confirmation was a “100 percent certainty,” according to a source familiar with the conversations.
Abrams, known as a right-wing hawk, was also winning bipartisan support both inside and outside of the administration. Key Democrats — including Chris Coons and Tim Kaine of Virginia — said they were inclined to support his nomination.
In foreign policy circles and on Capitol Hill, the president’s decision is sparking concerns that by overruling his secretary of state on a key personnel decision in a semi-public manner, he is weakening the country’s top diplomat out of the gate.
One Republican senator worried that foreign leaders look to a secretary of state to have a strong personal relationship with the president — and this is not the way to show the strength of that relationship.
“Now everybody knows he doesn’t have any juice with Trump,” said the GOP strategist. “He can’t even get his own people in.”
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Abrams’ name appeared last week as an attendee at Trump’s meeting with Tillerson in standard off-the-record guidance sent to reporters from the White House press office, sparking speculation that Abrams had emerged as a top choice for Tillerson — and, subsequently, as evidence that Trump had overruled his secretary of state.
“It speaks well of Secretary Tillerson that he was looking at Elliott,” Edelman said. “Does this really mean Trump can’t take any criticism? Well, we know the answer to that.”
The White House has refused to send its spokespeople or surrogates onto CNN shows, effectively freezing out the network from on-air administration voices.
“We’re sending surrogates to places where we think it makes sense to promote our agenda,” said a White House official, acknowledging that CNN is not such a place, but adding that the ban is not permanent.
A CNN reporter, speaking on background, was more blunt: The White House is trying to punish the network and force down its ratings.
“They’re trying to cull CNN from the herd,” the reporter said.
Administration officials are still answering questions from CNN reporters. But administration officials including White House press secretary Sean Spicer and senior counselor Kellyanne Conway haven’t appeared on the network’s programming in recent weeks.
Spicer, speaking at an event at The George Washington University on Monday, denied that CNN is being frozen out, pointing out that he’s answered CNN’s questions in the regular daily briefings.
But, he added “I’m not going to sit around and engage with people who have no desire to actually get something right.”
The last time an administration official appeared on CNN’s Sunday public affairs show “State of the Union” was Jan. 8 when Conway was interviewed. She also appeared on CNN the following Wednesday with Anderson Cooper, the day of then President-elect Trump’s news conference at which he derided CNN for airing a report that intelligence officials had briefed both Trump and then-President Barack Obama that the Russians might have negative information about Trump. At the news conference, the president-elect refused to take a question from CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, who shouted out to Trump to answer his question since Trump was attacking his news organization.
After his inauguration, Trump has continued blasting CNN as “fake news.”
Since then, Conway, Spicer, chief of staff Reince Priebus and even Vice President Mike Pence have made the rounds on the major Sunday shows with the notable exception of CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“State of the Union” anchor Jake Tapper said on his show and via Twitter that the White House has declined his invitations to appear.
“We invited the Trump White House to offer us a guest to provide clarity and an explanation of what the president just did, especially given so much confusion, even within its own government by those who are supposed to carry out this order,” Tapper said on Sunday as he introduced a segment about the Executive Order banning visitors from some countries and putting a hold on the United States’ refugee policy. “The Trump White House declined our invitation.”
Tapper had made a similar announcement the previous Sunday.
Last week, New York magazine reported that Trump’s feud with CNN has roots in his relationship with CNN President Jeff Zucker, a former NBC president who brought Trump’s television show “The Apprentice” to the network. Trump, the magazine reported, has told White House staffers that he feels personally betrayed by Zucker and that Zucker should tilt CNN programming more favorably toward him because of their long relationship.
In an interview with New York magazine, Zucker said he’s not worried about getting access to Trump.
“I think the era of access journalism as we’ve known it is over,” Zucker said. “I think our credibility is higher than ever, and our viewership is higher than ever, and our reporting is as strong as ever.”
“One of the things I think this administration hasn’t figured out yet is that there’s only one television network that is seen in Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, Tokyo, Pyongyang, Baghdad, Tehran, and Damascus — and that’s CNN,” he noted.
Part of the effort to ice out CNN may be related to ratings.
CNN “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter wrote in one of his recent newsletters that an aide in “Trumpworld” told him that his ratings would likely be hurt “because no Trump administration officials had agreed to be interviewed.” Stelter said in that newsletter that his ratings were in fact his highest since last November’s election coverage at 1.3 million viewers.
It’s hard to tell whether “State of the Union” ratings have been affected by the lack of Trump officials, considering it’s less than two weeks since theinauguration. While far behind the broadcast shows and “Fox & Friends” on cable news, the past two weeks of “State of the Union” have seen higher ratings than on Jan. 8, the most recent time a Trump official appeared. They’ve also won the demo (the key age group advertisers use) over the past two weeks, and last Sunday the show had 1.25 million viewers during the 9 a.m. broadcast, and 1.42 million viewers in the noon rebroadcast.
It’s not unusual for an administration to tangle with certain outlets. The Obama administration, at times, had a rocky relationship with Fox News and limited its officials from appearing on its programs. Former Obama White House Communications Director Anita Dunn told The New York Times in 2009 that they were going to treat Fox “the way we would treat an opponent.”
“As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave,” she said at the time.
A former official in the Obama administration acknowledged that they had their “battles with Fox,” and that there may have been some times where “we sent people on other networks and not on Fox.” But as a general rule, the official said, officials would go on the network.
“I think, in my hazy recollection is it would be unusual to do all [the networks] except one. What drives that is sometimes amount of time available to the person doing them,” the official said. “If they are stiffing CNN intentionally, that is different than what normally happens.”
A spokesperson for Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Wednesday, the day after this article was published, the White House made Dr. Sebastian Gorka, a Deputy Assistant to the President for national security available for an interview.
“That’s what you guys should be writing and covering,” new White House press secretary Sean Spicer angrily lectured reporters on Saturday during his first remarks from the podium of the press briefing room.
He was referring to the delay in Senate confirmation for President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the CIA, Congressman Mike Pompeo, but the comment came after a long digression about how many people had shown up to watch Trump be sworn in as president.
“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period,” Spicer said, contradicting all available data.
Aerial photos have indicated that former president Barack Obama’s first inauguration attracted a much larger crowd. Nielsen ratings show that Obama also had a bigger television audience.
Spicer said, without any evidence, that some photos were “intentionally framed” to downplay Trump’s crowd.
He also expressed objections to specific Twitter posts from journalists. And he said, “we’re going to hold the press accountable,” partly by reaching the public through social networking sites.
His statement included several specific misstatements of fact in addition to the overarching one.
“This is the first time in our nation’s history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall,” Spicer said, claiming that this “had the effect of highlighting areas people were not standing whereas in years past the grass eliminated this visual.”
In fact, coverings were used for Obama’s second inauguration in 2013.
“This was also the first time that fencing and magnetometers went as far back on the Mall, preventing hundreds of thousands of people from being able to access the Mall as quickly as they had in inaugurations past,” Spicer said.
In fact, a United States Secret Service spokesperson told CNN, no magnetometers were used on the Mall.
And Spicer said, “We know that 420,000 people used the D.C, Metro public transit yesterday, which actually compares to 317,000 for president Obama’s last inaugural.”
Spicer’s number for ridership on Friday was actually low — the correct number, according to Metro itself, was 570,557. But there were actually 782,000 trips taken for Obama’s second inaugural in 2013.
Spicer, at times almost yelling while reading a prepared statement, took no questions. CNNMoney called his cell phone a few minutes later; he did not answer.
Some longtime White House correspondents were stunned by the tirade.
Glenn Thrush of The New York Times wrote on Twitter, “Jaw meet floor.”
“I’ve run out of adjectives,” wrote Chuck Todd, the moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post said Spicer’s assertion about “what you guys should be writing” was “chilling.”
Reactions were overwhelmingly negative, and not just from journalists.
Ari Fleischer, who had the same job as Spicer during the George W. Bush administration, tweeted, “This is called a statement you’re told to make by the President. And you know the President is watching.”
And Brian Fallon, who was in line to become press secretary if Hillary Clinton had won, wrote, “Sean Spicer lacks the guts or integrity to refuse orders to go out and lie. He is a failure in this job on his first full day.”
Conservative commentator Bill Kristol said “it is embarrassing, as an American, to watch this briefing by Sean Spicer from the podium at the White House. Not the RNC. The White House.”
The White House alerted the press corps to Spicer’s statement more than an hour ahead of time.
The CNN television network made a choice not to broadcast the Spicer statement live. Instead, the statement was monitored and then reported on after the fact.
Former Democratic congressman Steve Israel, who recently joined CNN as a commentator, said, “This isn’t a petty attack on the press. It’s a calculated attempt to delegitimize any questioning of @realDonaldTrump by a free press.”
Spicer’s statement came two hours after Trump spoke at CIA headquarters and described his “running war with the media.” Trump spent several minutes of that speech complaining about news coverage.
In his remarks, Spicer suggested Trump would bypass traditional media outlets he believes are unfairly reporting on his presidency.
“The American people deserve better, and so long as he serves as the messenger for this incredible movement, he will take his message directly to the American people, where his focus will always be,” Spicer said.
Spicer was joined in the Brady Press Briefing Room by members of his new White House press and communications staff, who are still moving into their offices and learning the way around the West Wing.
He tellingly led off his short statement with his tirade against the media, leaving announcements about phone calls with the leaders of Canada and Mexico, and announcing that Trump would meet with British Prime Minister Theresa May, to the end.
During those announcements, Spicer incorrectly referred to Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto as “prime minister.”
President-elect Donald Trump tweeted New Year wishes on Saturday morning, and didn’t forget about what he called his “many enemies.”
“Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do,” Trump wrote, adding his love at the end.
Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don't know what to do. Love!
/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8111689/obama_trump_inauguration.png?resize=860%2C1239&ssl=1)
