Trump on 'New York Times': 'The intent is so evil and so bad'
President Trump got specific in his latest discussion about the "fake news media," singling out The New York Times for scorn, while heaping praise on Breitbart News and an individual Reuters reporter.
As in his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, the president explained that he is not calling all media the "enemy of the American people" during an Oval Office interview with Breitbart Monday. Rather, it is only the "fake media" that he considers the "opposition party."
“There’s a difference," Trump said. "The fake media is the enemy of the American people. There’s tremendous fake media out there. Tremendous fake stories. The problem is the people that aren’t involved in the story don’t know that.”
The fact that many news organizations reported that he had condemned the media in general only proved his point, Trump said.
"I didn’t say the media is the enemy — I said the ‘fake media,'" the president explained. "They take the word fake out and all of a sudden it’s like I’m against — there are some great reporters like you. I know some great honorable reporters who do a great job like Steve [Holland] from Reuters, others, many others. I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about the 'fake media,' where they make up everything there is to make up."
Trump has included some of the country's most widely-consumed and well-respected news organizations in his definition of "fake media." All three major television networks (NBC, ABC and CBS), CNN, MSNBC and The Washington Post are among the outlets Trump has slapped the label on.
But no news media organization has drawn the president's ire like the Times.
"If you read The New York Times, it’s — the intent is so evil and so bad," Trump told Breitbart. "The stories are wrong in many cases, but it’s the overall intent."
Trump cited a May 2016 story titled "Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved Badly With Women in Private," as an example of what he considers bad reporting by the newspaper. One of the women interviewed in the story, Rowanne Brewer Lane, went on cable news after the piece ran to criticize the Times' story, saying her words were taken out of context.
"They did a front page article on women talking about me, and the women went absolutely wild because they said that was not what they said," Trump said. "It was a big front-page article, and the Times wouldn’t even apologize and yet they were wrong. You probably saw the women. They went on television shows and everything."
The Times stood by the story.
Annonymous sources have been a particular source of consternation for Trump. FactCheck.org points out that the use of unnamed sources has been the subject of ongoing debate within the media. But despite Trump's tirades against the practice, he has often used anonymous sources himself, according to FactCheck.org.
Citing "oligopolies in the media," the Breitbart interviewer suggested that Trump might consider blocking the pending merger of AT&T with Time Warner because Time Warner is the parent company of CNN.
“I don’t want to comment on any specific deal, but I do believe there has to be competition in the marketplace and maybe even more so with the media because it would be awfully bad after years if we ended up having one voice out there," Trump replied.
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