Tag: bully

Trump Again Calls Media ‘Enemy of the People’

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President Trump turned his speech before a conservative convention into a full-throated attack on journalism Friday, saying some reporters make up unnamed sources for “fake news” and again describing them as “the enemy” of the American people.

“A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people, and they are — they are the enemy of the people,” Trump told the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.

While praising some reporters as honest, and pledging fealty to the First Amendment, Trump claimed that “the fake news media doesn’t tell the truth.” He said reporters should not be allowed to use anonymous sources, and “we’re going to do something about it.”

The president did not elaborate on what that “something” might be, beyond general criticism.

It was the latest in a series of attacks that, critics said, are designed to undermine coverage of Trump’s troubles in office, including investigations into possible links between his campaign associates and Russians during last year’s presidential election.

The sustained attacks show “how worried he is about the repeated reports of chaos, incompetence, and potential wrongdoing inside his administration,” said Matthew Miller, a spokesman for President Barack Obama’s Justice Department. “His problem, though, is with the facts, not the media, and he’s only making his problem worse the more he runs away from it.”

In his speech to the annual gathering of conservative activists known as CPAC, Trump also thanked them for their support and touted an agenda that includes tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks, a military build-up, a still-to-be-defined replacement for Obama’s health care law, and “border security” that includes travel restrictions from Muslim countries and a proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Our victory was a win for everyone who believes it’s time to stand up for America, to stand up for the American worker and to stand up for the American flag,” Trump said.

The crowd also lapped up his attacks on the media, which came on the same day that he and aides disputed a CNN story that White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus spoke to the FBI about media reports on the investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election.

In assailing anonymous sources and so-called “fake news,” Trump discussed specific stories and news organizations in general terms, at one point describing CNN as the “Clinton News Network.”

The White House also deploys anonymity from time to time. Less than two hours before Trump criticized the use of anonymous sources and said all sources should be named, an administration official provided a briefing on condition he not be identified.

Some analysts said Trump’s constant attacks on the press are designed to undermine the public’s faith in institutions in general and the media in particular, as well as to generate doubt about negative stories regarding the administration.

Liz Mair, a Republican consultant involved in a “Never Trump” campaign last year, said attacking the media at a forum like the Conservative Political Action Conference is the easiest way for Trump to unite conservatives who might otherwise oppose him over issues like entitlement spending, free trade, and limited government.

“CPAC has been trying to normalize Trump as a ‘conservative’ for years now, but the fact is, Trump continues to have precious little in common, philosophically, with Burke, Kirk, Reagan, Goldwater or Thatcher,” Mair said.

William McRaven, the retired admiral who planned the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, said this week that Trump’s attacks on the media may also be undermining democracy itself.

“The president said the news media is the enemy of the American people,” McRaven, now chancellor of the University of Texas system, said in a speech. “This sentiment may be the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.”

Trump first made the “enemy” claim in a tweet a week ago, and he criticized coverage of that incident during his remarks Friday at CPAC.

“In covering my comments, the dishonest media did not explain that I called the ‘fake news’ the enemy of the people,” he said. “The ‘fake news.’ They dropped off the word ‘fake.’ And all of a sudden the story became the media is the enemy.”

In that Feb. 17 tweet, Trump said: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”

Trump said he is not “against the media,” and “there are some great reporters around,” but there are also “terrible, dishonest people” in the business.

“I love the First Amendment — nobody loves it better than me,” Trump said at one point. “Nobody — I mean, who use its more than I do?”

(h/t USA Today)

Media

Trump Falsely Accused Senator of Misrepresenting Gorsuch Criticism

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President Donald Trump falsely accused a Democratic senator Thursday of misrepresenting his Supreme Court nominee’s words, according to several familiar with the incident.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal said Wednesday that Judge Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s nominee, told him he found Trump’s attack on a federal judge on Twitter “disheartening” and “demoralizing.”

Within a half-hour, Gorsuch spokesman Ron Bonjean, who was tapped by the White House to head communications for Gorsuch, confirmed that the nominee, Gorsuch, used those words in his meeting with Blumenthal. Several other senators, including Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, later relayed similar accounts of Gorsuch forcefully criticizing Trump’s public attacks on the judiciary branch.

And on Thursday, Blumenthal said on MSNBC Gorsuch specifically told him he “should feel free to mention what I said about these attacks being disheartening and demoralizing.”

But none of that stopped Trump from firing off a shot against Blumenthal — and at the same time raising questions about the coherence of the White House’s messaging.

“Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who never fought in Vietnam when he said for years he had (major lie), now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?” Trump tweeted Thursday morning.

Gorsuch’s criticism came in response to Trump’s recent criticism of federal judges who have ruled against his immigration ban or appear poised to do so, in particular in reference to one of the President’s tweets slamming one of those judges as a “so-called judge.”

“The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!” Trump tweeted last Saturday.

But White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Thursday Trump “absolutely” stands by his selection of Gorsuch, as well his own past comments about the federal judges who are hearing arguments over the legality of his immigration executive order.

“No, the President doesn’t have any regrets,” Spicer said during his daily press briefing.

“He has no regrets,” Spicer repeated, saying that Gorsuch’s remarks weren’t referring to any specific federal judge or court.

Bonjean had confirmed Gorsuch called Trump’s tweet about the “so-called judge” “disheartening” and “demoralizing” in his conversation with Blumenthal.

Blumenthal, meanwhile, stood by his accounting of Gorsuch’s comments, telling CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “New Day” Thursday morning he “absolutely and accurately” stated what Gorsuch told him.

“I think that the President needs to hear from Judge Gorsuch about exactly what he is saying to myself and Senate colleagues,” Blumenthal said. “Maybe he simply hasn’t been informed and that’s the reason for his tweet.”

Former GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who is helping shepherd Gorsuch’s nomination on the Hill said in a statement Thursday Gorsuch has told senators “he finds any criticism of a judge’s integrity and independence disheartening and demoralizing.”

Ayotte added the judge has made clear he “could not comment on any specific cases and that judicial ethics prevent him from commenting on political matters.”

Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska also confirmed Thursday that Gorsuch criticized Trump’s attacks on the federal judge in a meeting with him as well.

Sasse said Gorsuch “got pretty passionate” about the topic, particularly when he asked Gorsuch about Trump’s “so-called judge” tweet.

“This is a guy who welled up with some energy. He said any attack on any brothers or sisters of the robe is an attack on all judges. He believes in an an independent judiciary,” Sasse said Thursday morning on MSNBC.

(h/t CNN)

‘We’ll Destroy His Career,’ Trump Quips About a Texas State Senator at Odds With a County Sheriff

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President Trump on Tuesday quipped that he’d be willing to “destroy” the career of a Texas state senator who has been feuding with a local sheriff.

Sheriff Harold Eavenson of Rockwall County was among a group of law enforcement officials from across the country who met with Trump, Vice President Pence and several senior staff members at the White House.

During a portion of the meeting that a press pool was permitted to observe, Eavenson complained that a senator from his state was offering asset forfeiture legislation that Eavenson thinks would aid Mexican drug cartels.

“Who is the state senator? Want to give his name? We’ll destroy his career,” Trump said, prompting laughs from the room.

Eavenson, who is in line to become president of the National Sheriffs’ Association, declined.

“The sheriffs are good people,” Trump said earlier as he welcomed the group to the White House. Trump, who has been heavily critical of the media in recent weeks, told the sheriffs they don’t get the news coverage they deserve.

(h/t Washington Post)

Trump Claims Media is Covering Up Terror Attacks, Citing No Evidence

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President Trump on Monday said that news outlets are covering up terrorist attacks without citing any evidence that supports that claim.

He made the comment in a speech to U.S. servicemembers at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida after receiving a briefing and eating lunch with troops.

The president began talking about how “radical Islamic terrorists are determined to strike our homeland” as they did on 9/11, in the Boston bombings and in San Bernardino. He said it’s also happening “all over Europe” like in Paris and Nice.

“It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported. In many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons and you understand that,” Mr. Trump said.

There is no evidence that any media outlet is covering up terrorist attacks.

This comes after his adviser, Kellyanne Conway, referred to the “Bowling Green Massacre,” which never happened, in an effort to defend the administration’s travel ban. She later claimed that she misspoke and meant “Bowling Green terrorists.” Cosmopolitan said Monday that Conway had also referred to the fake massacre in an interview with one of its reporters.

During the speech Monday, Mr. Trump vowed to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and also repeated his call for members of NATO to contribute more to the alliance.

“To these forces of death and destruction, America and its allies will defeat you,” Mr. Trump said, adding that the U.S. needs “strong programs” to keep out “people who want to destroy us and destroy our country.”

He seemed to be referring to his travel ban, which has been temporarily halted by a federal judge, and his call for “extreme vetting.”

(h/t CBS News)

Media

Kellyanne Conway: Reporters Who ‘Talked Smack’ About Trump Should Be Fired

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Kellyanne Conway, senior adviser to President Donald Trump, on Sunday continued the administration’s attack against the media by claiming that network television reporters and commentators who “talked smack” about Trump before the election should be fired.

“Not one network person has been let go. Not one silly political analyst and pundit who talked smack all day long about Donald Trump has been let go,” Conway said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I’m too polite to mention their names, but they know who they are, and they are all wondering who will be the first to go. The election was three months ago. None of them have been let go.”

She added that the networks should be “cleaning house,” firing “these people who said things that just weren’t true.”

Conway accused the media of focusing too much attention on her attempt last week to defend press secretary Sean Spicer flagrantly lying to reporters — by claiming he was stating “alternative facts.”Trump and his administration spent much of his first week in office antagonizing the media. In his first White House press briefing on Monday, Spicer spent several minutes on what he deemed “demoralizing” coverage, and continued to defend his lying by claiming that “we can disagree with the facts.”

In an interview with the New York Times on Wednesday, chief strategist Steve Bannon, who previously ran Breitbart, a site that traffics in white nationalism, called the media “the opposition party” and said it should be silenced.

“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” Bannon said.

(h/t Huffington Post)

Media

Trump Attacks NY Times, Washington Post in Tweets

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President Trump took to Twitter early Saturday morning to attack two of the nation’s most prominent newspapers, the New York Times and Washington Post.

“The failing @nytimes has been wrong about me from the very beginning. Said I would lose the primaries, then the general election. FAKE NEWS!” Trump tweeted just after 8 a.m. Eastern on Saturday.

“Thr coverage about me in the @nytimes and the @washingtonpost gas been so false and angry that the times actually apologized to its … dwindling subscribers and readers.They got me wrong right from the beginning and still have not changed course, and never will. DISHONEST,” he added.

It was not immediately apparent what prompted Trump to launch his attacks. He frequently attacks the media in general and has specifically singled out both the Times and Post before, as well as CNN, NBC News, Fox News, BuzzFeed and others.

Both newspapers closely covered Trump’s Friday signing of an executive order suspending refugee entry into the U.S. and barring immigration from seven Muslim nations.

Despite his regular attacks, he granted an interview to the Times days ago.

(h/t The Hill)

 

 

Trump Boasts, Lies, and Attacks the Media in Solemn CIA Setting

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President Trump traveled to CIA headquarters Saturday to make peace. But as he spoke in front of a wall with 117 stars marking spies who died while serving, Trump quickly shifted back to campaign mode — boasting about his achievements, lodging grievances against the media and making off-the-cuff observations.

The new president bragged that “probably everybody in this room voted for me,” told agents, “Trust me, I’m, like, a smart person,” and said his many appearances on the cover of Time magazine surpassed those of quarterback Tom Brady. He warned that the television networks would pay a “big price” for coverage that showed empty fields on Inauguration Day.

He blamed the media for ginning up his fight with the intelligence community, though Trump had, a week earlier, compared agents’ tactics to those of the Nazis while accusing them of leaking an unsubstantiated report about him.

“There is nobody that feels stronger about the intelligence community and the CIA than Donald Trump,” he assured a crowd of about 400 employees at the CIA’s Langley, Va., headquarters in suburban Washington.

The free-form speech at such a  location and occasion underscored that though Trump has taken the oath of office, he will not restrain his style to meet traditional expectations for presidential behavior.

His habit of bragging and lashing out at enemies helped Trump build loyal support in his election run, but may also have contributed to his record-low approval ratings for an incoming president.

But Trump was consistently applauded by rank-and-file CIA employees. Senior staffers sitting near the front became more subdued as the president began to veer from topic to topic and charge that the media underestimated the crowd size at his swearing-in.

“Maybe sometimes you haven’t gotten the backing that you’ve wanted,” he said at another point. “You’re going to get so much backing. Maybe you are going to say, ‘Please, don’t give us so much backing.’”

The CIA speech came on a day that started with Trump and his family attending a traditional ecumenical prayer service at the National Cathedral. He refrained from taking on millions of people attending women’s marches around the world during their protests Saturday, suppressing his tendency to retaliate against those he perceives as challenging his authority.

But Trump’s team has been obsessing over its own crowd sizes. Pictures of large crowds were placed in the White House briefing room as Press Secretary Sean Spicer chastised the media for what he labeled irresponsible, reckless and false reporting about the inauguration that he said sowed division. He pointed out that no official crowd estimates were given, yet insisted, improbably, that it was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration.

Overhead photos and subway ridership statistics showed smaller crowds than in recent inaugurations, especially compared with former President Obama’s 2009 swearing-in as the nation’s first African American president.

Spicer did not take questions but issued a strong warning to the media that the new administration would be holding it accountable.

While Trump kept a handful of events on his public schedule, aides continued setting up the White House. Among the crucial housekeeping items: The Justice Department published an opinion stating that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, could work as a top White House advisor, notwithstanding a 1967 anti-nepotism law. The 14-page opinion, written by Daniel Koffsky, a career attorney in the Office of Legal Counsel with decades of experience, concluded that the law grants the president broad hiring authority.

Spicer said Trump had spoken with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. He said Trump would meet with British Prime Minister Theresa May in Washington at the end of the week and with Peña Nieto at the end of the month.

Trump’s visit to the CIA building’s white marble lobby followed months of mocking the agency and questioning its conclusions on Russian hacking during the election. In addition to sending a message to agents, Trump wanted to show his support for Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), his pick to run the CIA, who is expected to be confirmed by the Senate early in the week. Trump met with senior CIA leaders who highlighted the agency’s counterterrorism efforts before he spoke to the larger group.

The CIA is expected to play a major role in increasing attacks on Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, a top priority for Trump. During his inaugural address Friday, Trump promised to “eradicate from the face of the earth” Islamic terrorist groups like Islamic State and Al Qaeda. On Saturday, he told agents they would be at the forefront of those efforts and asserted that the intelligence community had not been fully used to help win wars.

“This group is going to be one of the most important groups in this country toward making us safe, toward making us winners again,” Trump said.

The CIA split with Trump last fall when the agency’s analysts concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered intelligence officials to launch an operation to influence the U.S. election to undermine Hillary Clinton and help Trump win.

Trump has acknowledged that Russia hacked Democratic files in an effort to interfere with the election. But he praised Putin, denied the effort was aimed at helping him win, and suggested the hacked information may have helped voters.

Top CIA leaders were eager to put the public spat with the commander in chief behind them Saturday. Meroe Park, who is leading the agency until Pompeo is approved, said Trump’s decision to visit on his first full day as president meant a lot. The hall was only able to accommodate 400 CIA employees, but hundreds more wanted to attend, Park said.
“CIA’s relationship with the president has been essential,” said Park, who has been at the agency for nearly three decades.

But Trump’s first appearance at the agency was panned by Rep. Adam B. Schiff of Burbank, the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

“While standing in front of the stars representing CIA personnel who lost their lives in the service of their country — hallowed ground — Trump gave little more than a perfunctory acknowledgment of their service and sacrifice,” Schiff said in a statement that criticized Trump’s speech as frivolous and meandering.

“He will need to do more than use the agency memorial as a backdrop if he wants to earn the respect of the men and women who provide the best intelligence in the world,” Schiff added.

Trump Accuses NBC of “Fake News” For Questioning His Job-Creation Claims

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President-elect Donald Trump says NBC News was “totally biased” and producing “more fake news” in a report it published Tuesday that pointed out that many companies are pre-emptively, or in many cases retroactively, announcing job-creation plans to avoid being targeted by a man set to become president Friday.

His tweets aren’t well-founded.

The NBC News report spotlighted instances in which companies themselves announced large-scale additions of jobs without mentioning Trump as a reason for their increased investments in the U.S., despite Trump’s having taken credit.

That list includes Amazon.com Inc., with its press release last week promising 100,000 new U.S. jobs, as well as the automobile makers Fiat Chrysler and General Motors . Often the corporate plans had been in the works long before Trump’s election on Nov. 8 or were among annual expansion goals that had been on the companies’ road maps for years.

MarketWatch, similarly, reported last week that Alibaba Group Holding’s claim, after a meeting at Trump Tower between CEO Jack Ma and the president-elect, that it will create a million U.S. jobs, doesn’t include full-time jobs or actual Alibaba jobs at all. MarketWatch also pointed out that Sprint Corp.’s decision to bring 5,000 jobs back to the U.S. from other countries, a move for which Trump took credit, were actually related to a previously announced commitment by Japan’s SoftBank Group to invest $50 billion in the U.S. as part of the global technology fund it announced with a Saudi sovereign-wealth fund in October. IBM Corp., which pre-emptively announced a 25,000-jobs growth plan in mid-December before ever meeting with Trump, falls into this category, as well.

The president-elect went as far, in a separate tweet, as to quote a Wall Street Journal story about Bayer AG’s pledge to invest and add jobs in the U.S. However, as CNN Money pointed out, those jobs aren’t directly tied back to Trump either, but to Bayer’s move to buy Monsanto, announced in September. When Bayer announced the Monsanto deal, it said St. Louis would remain the North American headquarters of Monsanto while San Francisco would serve as the base for their combined farming assets.

A look at a few of the press releases and CEO interviews cited by Trump and NBC News as well reveals varying levels of Trump involvement, from no linkage at all to a direct and causal connection.

On Tuesday, General Motors announced that it would invest an additional $1 billion in U.S. manufacturing and create 7,000 jobs, while moving some axle-producing jobs to the U.S. from Mexico. GM made no mention of the incoming administration or its policy priorities and instead said these latest steps follow similar investments it has made annually since 2009 — a period beginning shortly after the U.S. auto industry bailout. “GM’s announcement is part of the company’s increased focus on overall efficiency over the last four years,” the company said in a statement.

The GM investment commitment, in fact, is nearly $2 billion smaller than the investment in U.S. manufacturing that GM said it announced last year.

And the vast majority of GM’s investment will go to fund new vehicles and advanced technologies, as the company continues to invest in the resources to respond to increased competition from Silicon Valley amid the advent of autonomous-vehicle technology.

Fiat Chrysler, meanwhile, said its plan for a new $1 billion investment in the U.S. and the creation of 2,000 jobs is “a continuation of the efforts already underway to increase production capacity in the U.S. on trucks and SUVs to match demand.” As gasoline prices have tumbled, demand for gas-guzzling trucks and sport-utility vehicles has rebounded, a theme that predates Trump’s election.

Walmart’s press release Tuesday announcing 10,000 new U.S. jobs also excluded any Trump mention and was more tied to the company’s longer-term strategy to expand its retail locations globally and improve its e-commerce services to better compete with the likes of Amazon.

Amazon, for its part, has said it is adding tens of thousands of jobs to staff new but previously announced fulfillment centers in Texas, California, Florida and New Jersey.

Other job announcements, though, were more directly linked to Trump, at least in the sense that they were reacting to him, which was part of the point NBC News was trying to make.

Ford Motor Co. F, -0.40% told reporters in so many words that its decision to cancel plans for a new plant in Mexico and create 700 jobs in Michigan were related to Trump’s pro-business policies.

Lockheed Martin Corp.’s LMT, -0.08% decision to add 1,800 positions and lower the cost of its F-35 program arose following a meeting at Trump Tower. It also followed Trump public statements blasting the company over its prices.

(h/t Market Watch)

Trump Packed News Conference With Paid Staffers to Cheer and Jeer as He Bashed Reporters

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When Donald Trump gathered the press at Trump Tower 20 months ago to announce his unlikely candidacy for president, he reportedly paid actors to fill the marble lobby and cheer.

Not much — and everything — has changed since.

On Wednesday morning, when the president-elect once again faced hundreds of reporters from around the globe gathered in his lobby — this time for his first press conference in seven months — Trump filled the room with paid staffers who clapped and cheered as he blasted members of the media as purveyors of “fake news.”

It was Trump’s method of battling back an extraordinary report that U.S. intelligence officials have presented both Trump and President Barack Obama with unverified allegations that Russia has compromising information about the incoming 45th president, including about a reported salacious encounter in a Moscow hotel room.

With three of his grown-up children, Vice President-elect Mike Pence, and members of his senior staff looking on from the sides, Trump framed the anticipated barrage of questions about his connections to the Russians as a referendum, instead, on the untrustworthy media, seated in seven rows of plastic folding chairs in front of him.

The Greek chorus of loyal, paid staffers in the back of the room boosting Trump with their hoots and cheers also served as a reminder, of sorts, of the movement of Trump backers happy to take him at his word and jeer the media as the out-of-touch liars.

“It’s very familiar territory, news conferences,” said Trump, who has been more visible on Twitter than in person since Election Day, as he took the podium. His long absence was the media’s fault, he said, not his. “We stopped giving them because we’re getting quite a bit of inaccurate news,” he said, before calling Buzzfeed, the website that published the full 35-page unverified dossier of allegations against Trump, a “failing pile of garbage.”

“Fake news” became the running theme of the hour-long press conference, which peaked with Trump refusing to take a question from CNN reporter Jim Acosta and yelling at him, “I’m not going to give you a question. You’re fake news.” CNN broke the story on Tuesday about the intelligence briefings, which implied Russia could potentially be in a position to blackmail Trump.

Twitter gasped, but his Greek chorus cheered.

“Do you honestly believe that Hillary Clinton would be tougher on Putin than me?” Trump asked at another point. Some staffers in the room responded to the rhetorical question, yelling out, “No!”

And they cheered again when Trump jeered sarcastically at a reporter who asked if he planned to release his tax returns. “Oh gee,” the president-elect said, employing a verbal eye roll, “I’ve never heard that before. The only ones who care about my tax returns are the reporters. I became president.”

The press conference, his first as president-elect, was a dry run of sorts for how Trump can be expected to interact with the press corps in the White House briefing room.

And while it foreshadowed major clashes with news outlets that publish critical stories about Trump — Trump continuing to be Trump — it was also a more formal, less gawdy affair than the press-savvy incoming president has put on in the past.

There was no walk-on music, for instance, as there was during Trump’s presidential announcement. That day, he entered the lower lobby of his Tower via the now-famous escalator with wife Melania at his side and played standards from the musical “Cats” over the sound system.

This time, Trump, without Melania in tow, was delivered to the press via elevator, a little after the scheduled 11 a.m. start time. He called on reporters himself and wrapped up the news conference after 58 minutes when he decided he had had enough — instead of relying on an aide to shut things down, as many politicians do.

Even though he entered the press conference under fire on Wednesday, Trump still appeared more comfortable when he was running the room than when he was standing to the side as a bystander. Trump ceded the podium in the middle of taking questions, so his attorney Sheri Dillon could outline at length the steps Trump is planning to remove himself from the day-to-day operation of his real estate business. But without the spotlight on him, Trump appeared to grow distracted, whispering to his stone-faced daughter, Ivanka, and sipping water from a plastic bottle.

If the cheering staffers created a sense of support for Trump as he denied any collusion with the Russians during the campaign and promised to get Mexico to pay for his wall, the scene outside was a reminder of the other side of the coin. Protesters holding up signs likening the Trump-Pence team to a “fascist regime” lined up across Fifth Avenue from Trump Tower in protest.

With nine days to go until Inauguration Day, the spectacle may be one of the last ones that unfolds on Trump’s home turf in midtown Manhattan, between the Gucci and Bulgari stores. Next up, he will be occupying the people’s home, and confront the press in less familiar, more intimidating surroundings. Despite the fireworks, Trump promised things would settle down before Inauguration Day, which he previewed as “an elegant day.”

“We have a movement,” he said. “It’s a movement like the world has never seen before.”

(h/t Politico)

Trump Shouted Down CNN’s Jim Acosta As ‘Fake News’ Then Took a Question From Breitbart

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One of the stranger moments in Wednesday’s deeply strange Donald Trump press conference came when the president-elect got into a shouting match with CNN’s Jim Acosta, who was trying to ask him a question.

Earlier in the presser — his first one since July — Trump had attacked CNN for disseminating “fake news” because it broke the story that both the sitting president and the president-elect had been briefed on allegations that Russia has “compromising personal and financial information” regarding Trump.

“Since you’re attacking us, can you give us a question?” Acosta asked during a Q&A portion of the presser. Trump replied, “Not you, not you, your organization is terrible.”

“I am not going to give you a question,” the president-elect said. “You are fake news.”

You can watch their full exchange here:

Acosta later said that incoming White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer had threatened to boot him from the press conference if he attempted to ask another question.

During an on-air segment following the press conference, CNN’s Jake Tapper — one of the journalists who wrote the initial report on the allegations — pointed out that his network had not disseminated uncorroborated rumors, as Trump had suggested. Instead, the CNN report acknowledges the existence of the rumors and reports that both Trump and Obama had received briefings on them from the U.S. intelligence community. The specific details of the rumors came from a document Buzzfeed posted in full later Tuesday evening, a move that Tapper described as irresponsible.

“What I suspect we are seeing here is an attempt to discredit legitimate, responsible attempts to report on this incoming administration with irresponsible journalism that hurts us all, and the media going forward should keep that in mind,” said Tapper of Trump’s attempt to conflate the decisions made by Buzzfeed and CNN.

Shortly after he successfully shouted down Acosta, Trump took a question from Breitbart News — a website closely associated with the white nationalist “alt-right,” and an avid promulgator of misleading or inaccurate information that supports hard-right beliefs. Trump’s top adviser, Steve Bannon, is the former chairman of Breitbart.

Here’s the question Trump took from Breitbart: “[With] all the problems that we’ve seen throughout the media over the course of the election, what reforms do you recommend for this industry here?”

(h/t Think Progress)

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