He has got all the moves in his arsenal, be it attracting voters towards him or blatantly shunning off the fake news journalists. Evidently the menace of ‘fake news’ hasn’t spared President Trump.
The whole incident comes in the wake of a bomb plot and the mass killing at a synagogue in Pittsburgh wherein Trump blamed media for the anger outburst.
He tweeted, “There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news.” Referring to the “Fake News Media” as the “true Enemy of the People,” Trump said journalists “must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly, that will do much to put out the flame.”
CNN and others in the Fake News Business keep purposely and inaccurately reporting that I said the “Media is the Enemy of the People.” Wrong! I said that the “Fake News (Media) is the Enemy of the People,” a very big difference. When you give out false information – not good!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2018
Later in the day, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders argued that “the very first thing the media did” after the shooting was to “blame the president.”
Post this, Trump was again on Twitter, as he singled out CNN being in the “Fake News Business” and added that there was a “very big difference” between legitimate and false news outlets.
“CNN and others in the Fake News Business keep purposely and inaccurately reporting that I said the “Media is the Enemy of the People.” Wrong!,” Trump tweeted. “I said that the “Fake News (Media) is the Enemy of the People,” a very big difference. When you give out false information – not good!”
In a second tweet, Trump wrote, “Check out tweets from last two days. I refer to Fake News Media when mentioning Enemy of the People – but dishonest reporters use only the word “Media.” The people of our Great Country are angry and disillusioned at receiving so much Fake News. They get it, and fully understand!”
Condemning the Pittsburgh shooting, in which a gunman killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue, Trump lashing out on media again tweeted about “fake news,” saying it was “doing everything in their power to blame Republicans, Conservatives and me for the division and hatred that has been going on for so long in our Country. Actually, it is their Fake & Dishonest reporting which is causing problems far greater than they understand!”
Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, called Trump’s reactions “utterly predictable.” “Nothing distracts President Trump from his political message,” Zelizer said. “He has a series of opponents, with the media right up top, and crises, scandals, and turmoil does not distract him from returning to these themes. He is refusing to let the events of the past week control the agenda, and he is finding a way to fit the pipe bombs, the shooting and more into his familiar narrative of his being unfairly attacked by the media”.
In another set of events, there have been migrant caravans making their way north to the U.S. border. Jim Acosta from CNN in a press-talk at White House with Trump tried to challenge him, but that in turn, hit him hard like a boomerang. He asked Trump that why is he having issues with migrants coming in the country and why is he terming it to be ‘invasion’ and why is his government trying to ‘demonize’ them?
To which President Trump befittingly replied, “they have to come through a process, they’ve to come legally, I want there to be a process.” Further he added, “I think that you should let me run the country and you run CNN and if you did it well your ratings will be much better.”
This action of Trump is indicative of the fact that Trump believes in paying back in the same coin. It looks like media in America has forgotten its basic journalistic ethics, as it is becoming politically motivated. They have forgotten the fact that news should be impartial in nature and giving out news that is ‘fake’ in nature, as it misleads the masses and as Trump rightly says it becoming ‘enemy of the people’!