US PRESIDENT DONALD Trump today fired another shot in his escalating feud with the US media, aiming a Twitter tirade at CNN, NBC and a morning show host he taunted as “dumb as a rock”.
The outburst came at the end of a week during which the US leader railed against major news organisations as “fake news,” before launching a crude personal attack on Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, who headline the Morning Joe programme on the left-leaning MSNBC cable network.
“Crazy Joe Scarborough and dumb as a rock Mika are not bad people, but their low rated show is dominated by their NBC bosses. Too bad!” he wrote.
Apparently stung by critical coverage on the show, Trump had tweeted on Thursday: “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 to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”
The comments sparked a major backlash, as well as condemnation from within Trump’s own Republican party.
The TV hosts responded yesterday with an opinion piece in the Washington Post titled ‘Donald Trump is not well‘, questioning his “unmoored behavior” and fitness to serve.
CNN
Trump also targeted CNN today.
“I am extremely pleased to see that @CNN has finally been exposed as #FakeNews and garbage journalism. It’s about time!” he tweeted, referring to an article that the cable news channel retracted, which claimed Congress was investigating links between Trump’s administration and a Russian investment fund.
Three CNN journalists resigned over the article, which was posted on the network’s website on 22 June before being removed the next day.
In a staff meeting on Monday, CNN’s investigative unit members were told that the retraction did not mean the facts of the story were necessarily wrong. Rather, it meant that “the story wasn’t solid enough to publish as-is,” one of the people briefed on the investigation said.
In another tweet, Trump also suggested veteran ex-Fox journalist Greta Van Susteren, who left MSNBC this week, “was let go by her out of control bosses at @NBC & @Comcast because she refused to go along w/ ‘Trump hate!’”
Trump’s spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said earlier this week that his attacks on Brzezinski, Scarborough and other media was part of his natural instinct to “fight fire with fire”.
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