(AhlulBayt News Agency) - The media is an "enemy of the American people", US President Donald Trump has said, stepping up his attack on newspapers and channels that have been critical of his presidency.
His scathing attack on the media came a day after he asserted that his administration is "running like a fine-tuned machine" and there is "no chaos" inside the White House as being reported by the "dishonest" media.
The 70-year-old Trump had said he resented picking up newspapers and turning on the television to hear reports that his White House was in chaos.
Trump, who has prolifically used the medium of Twitter and Facebook to convey his views and react to news stories, had said that a lot of people are happy about his administration and its performance since his inauguration on 20 January.
However, his political opponents and the media is not that happy, he said at his fourth news conference in a week during which he displayed a sense of anger and grievance rarely vented by a President in public.
Trump's latest tweet criticising the media went viral as within a few hours it was retweeted more than 28,000 times, forwarded 53,000 times and liked by 85,000 people.
In reference to the news conference, Trump in another tweet said, "Thank you for all of the nice statements on the Press Conference yesterday (Friday). Rush Limbaugh said one of greatest ever. Fake media not happy!" .
"'One of the most effective press conferences I've ever seen!' says Rush Limbaugh. Many agree. Yet FAKE MEDIA calls it differently! Dishonest," he said.
Meanwhile, Fox News in an opinion poll said voters, albeit by a slim margin of 45 to 42 per cent, find the White House more truthful than the media.
The Society of Professional Journalists condemned Trump's tweet. "An attack on a free press by a sitting US president is a slap in the face to democracy, our country's founders and the American people,” it wrote.
Veteran journalists say the language that Trump used on Friday is more typically used by leaders to refer to hostile foreign governments. It also echoed the language of autocrats who seek to curtail political opposition.
Historians pointed out similarities between Trump and former US President Richard Nixon, who in 1972 told his national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, “The press is the enemy.”
“Donald Trump is demonstrating an authoritarian attitude and inclination that shows no understanding of the role of the free press,” said Carl Bernstein, the journalist who helped uncover the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration.
Trump’s language “may be more insidious and dangerous than Richard Nixon’s attacks on the press,” Bernstein said.
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source : first post, PressTV
Saturday
18 February 2017
1:19:55 PM
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The media is an "enemy of the American people", US President Donald Trump has said, stepping up his attack on newspapers and channels that have been critical of his presidency.