Trump praises his rally audience for not acting like ‘credible people’ after ‘CNN sucks’ chant

President Donald Trump praised an unruly crowd at a 2020 re-election campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire on Tuesday.

Trump was falsely claiming that China is paying for the tariffs in his trade war when he went off on the press.

“But when you listen to the fake news — look how many there are,” he said as he gazed out to the press area.

He then stepped back from the microphone as his supporters booed the concept of a free press.

The crowd started chanting, “CNN sucks.”

“Are we sure that we are in New Hampshire?” Trump asked. “You know, you have a reputation
— I know it is not true because I know you too well. You have a reputation of being staid, very elegant, staid, and credible people. You are not acting it tonight and that’s good.

[Raw Story]

Trump Calls Chris Cuomo an ‘Out-of-Control Animal’ Who Uses ‘Horrible’ Language and ‘Spews Lies’

President Donald Trump weighed in on the viral outrage of the day by calling CNN anchor Chris Cuomo an “out-of-control animal” who also “spews lies every night,” while also seeming to criticize Cuomo for not assaulting the man who taunted him.

During an impromptu press gaggle in New Jersey Tuesday afternoon, Trump was asked about his tweets attacking Cuomo over the aborted bar fight that was caught on video.

“I think that what Chris Cuomo did was horrible,” Trump told reporters. “His language was horrible, he looked like a total out-of-control animal. He lost it.”

“And frankly, I don’t think anybody should defend him, because he spews lies every night,” Trump continued. According to The Washington Post, Trump recently made the 12,000th false or misleading statement of his presidency.

The president then paraphrased his earlier assertions, saying “I don’t know why anybody would defend him, but, Chris Cuomo was out of control, I watched it I thought it was terrible. So I don’t know who is defending him, maybe they didn’t see it, maybe they haven’t gotten the whole picture, but I think anybody that would have seen Chris, would have said that was a disgrace. You’ve never seen me do that.”

Trump has, in the past, offered to pay the legal fees of rallygoers if they carried out violence on his behalf.

Trump was then asked if his tweets undermine the validity of so-called “red flag” laws.

“Well I think Chris Cuomo was so out of control that I would not have wanted to see a weapon in his hand,” Trump said, then appeared to criticize Cuomo for not punching the man who accosted him, saying “I guess his fist is not a weapon, or he would have done something, you know he talked about it but he didn’t do anything.”

Seconds after observing that Cuomo did not commit violence during the altercation, Trump again insisted “But I think Chris Cuomo was very much out of control actually.”

[Mediaite]

Trump Mocks ‘Nuts’ Chris Cuomo as ‘Fredo’ After CNN Host’s Bar Altercation: He’s ‘Totally Lost It!’

President Donald Trump weighed in on “Fredo-gate” Tuesday morning, calling out Chris Cuomo after a video of the CNN anchor getting after it with some heckling jerk at a Shelter Island bar.

A surreptitiously recorded video of Cuomo getting into with an unidentified individual went viral late Monday night, which spawned a lustful debate over Cuomo’s behavior. Was he justified in going after the alleged heckler, particularly because he was with his daughter in a public place? Or did he cross a line in his hyperbolic threats of violence?

Oddly, the bigger online debate has focused Cuomo’s claim that “Fredo” (a term that the heckler referred to Cuomo as) is an ethnic slur akin to calling a person of color the N-word.

Well if it is a slur, President Trump just jumped on the offensive train, as he called Cuomo “Fredo also,” adding “The truth hurts.” Trump tweeted:

The first-born son of President Donald Trump — and Executive Vice President of the Trump Org — also weighed in on “Fredo-gate” when he quote-tweeted Trump campaign advisor Katrina Pierson, to offer his unsolicited opinion on where Fredo stands on the offensive spectrum. Don Jr tweeted:

The ephemeral meaning of words — and this case, fictional characters names — has never been on clearer display here, as Don Jr. is far from the only opinion that matters. Sure, he may have some expertise on what it’s like to either be (or have) a “dumb brother,” but someone with German and Czechoslovakian descent, he may not find the same meaning in “Fredo” as does someone who self-identifies as Italian-American. To wit, the supportive insights provided by fellow Italian-American, Anthony Scaramucci:

[Mediaite]

Trump Rages at Former Biographer For Pointing Out He Is a Racist

President Trump lashed out at MSNBC and CNN, saying the networks invite guests to appear “as experts on ‘Trump’ ” that “have no idea what I am all about,” The Hill reports.

Tweeted Trump: “Just watched a world class loser, Tim O’Brien, who I haven’t seen or spoken to in many years, & knows NOTHING about me except that he wrote a failed hit piece book about me 15 years ago. Fired like a dog from other jobs? Saw him on Lyin’ Brian Williams Trump Slam Show. Bad TV.”

He added: “I am so amazed that MSNBC & CNN can keep putting on, over and over again, people that have no idea what I am all about, and yet they speak as experts on “Trump.’”

[Political Wire]

Reality

O’Brien was on MSNBC the next evening and explained it was his discussion on Trump and his racism that set him off.

“Tim O’Brien wrote a very successful book that included a dismantling of Donald Trump’s claim he was a billionaire and Donald Trump lost his liable suit against Tim O’Brien about that book,” O’Donnell noted.

“Tim, congratulations. It’s been years since he attacked you,” said O’Donnell, who has also been attacked by Trump.

“Four years,” O’Brien replied.

“That means he really, really hates you when he doesn’t attack you for years because he hates giving you and attention but you tripped him last night.

“We talked about racism — and that set him off,” O’Brien suggested.

“That will do it,” O’Donnell replied. “Let’s see if you can get him going tonight.”

Trump lashes out at Fox News’s Shep Smith, says ‘fake news CNN is better’

President Trump on Wednesday renewed his criticism of Fox News anchor Shepard Smith, arguing that “Fake News CNN is better” and saying that he now tunes in to the conservative news outlet One America News Network whenever he gets the chance.

“Watching Fake News CNN is better than watching Shepard Smith, the lowest rated show on @FoxNews,” Trump tweeted on a day when he visited first responders and survivors of mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. “Actually, whenever possible, I turn to [One America News Network]!”

It was not immediately clear what Trump’s tweet — which came during Smith’s daily program and while Trump was aboard Air Force One to El Paso — was referencing. 

Trump earlier Wednesday visited Dayton to meet with those impacted by a mass shooting over the weekend that left nine people dead. 

Smith acknowledged Trump’s tweet during his show Wednesday, saying, “Good afternoon, Mr. President. It’s nice to have you with us.”

The Hill has reached out to Fox News for comment.

Trump has repeatedly denounced the media during his presidency, often referring to it as “fake news” and the “enemy of the people.” But he has consistently praised Fox News and network hosts such as Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson. He has taken a different view of Smith, though. 

In March, the president derided Smith as the “lowest rated anchor,” saying that he should be working at CNN. 

Smith has consistently taken a critical view of Trump during his two-plus years in the White House. Among other things, he fact-checked Trump’s prime-time address on border security in January during his daily news program. 

Last month, he described Trump’s attacks on a group of minority congresswomen as a “misleading and xenophobic eruption of distraction and division.”

Trump has recently shown a greater willingness to condemn Fox News over what he views as unfair coverage. After the network aired a “F— Trump” chant from a bar in France in July, Trump claimed that Fox News was “changing fast” and forgetting “the people who got them there.”

He lashed out at the network again just weeks later after one of its polls showed him losing to former Vice President Joe Biden in a hypothetical 2020 presidential matchup. 

“Fox News is at it again,” he tweeted. “So different from what they used to be.”

[The Hill]

Trump Claims He’s ‘Least Racist Person’ While Calling Don Lemon ‘Dumbest Man’ On TV

President Donald Trump lambasted CNN’s Don Lemon as “dumb” and “stupid” after the Democratic debate moderator asked questions about the president’s “bigotry” on Tuesday.

Trump called Lemon, who is black, “the dumbest man on television” on Twitter Wednesday, an insult he has used against the CNN anchor in the past.

The president also insisted he is “the least racist person in the world,” appearing to quote himself. In the last month, he has unleashed racist attacks on four Democratic congresswomen of color, as well as Rep. Elijah Cummings and the predominantly black city of Baltimore.

Lemon asked a series of questions regarding the current administration and race during Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate on CNN.

He asked former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, and later former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, about Trump’s race baiting: “President Trump is pursuing a reelection strategy based in part, on racial division. How do you convince primary voters that you’d be the best nominee to take on President Trump and heal the racial divide in America?”

O’Rourke responded that we should “call his racism out for what it is, and also talk about its consequences.”

“It doesn’t just offend our sensibilities to hear him say ‘send her back,’ about a member of Congress, because she’s a woman color, because she’s a Muslim-American, doesn’t just offend our sensibilities when he calls Mexican immigrants ‘rapists and criminals,’ or seeks to ban all Muslims from the shores of a country that’s comprised of people from the world over, from every tradition of faith,” said the Texan.

Lemon also asked Sen. Amy Klobuchar what she’d “say to those Trump voters who prioritize the economy over the president’s bigotry?”

Klobuchar responded that “there are people that voted for Donald Trump before that aren’t racist; they just wanted a better shake in the economy. And so I would appeal to them,” before adding: “I don’t think anyone can justify what this president is doing.”

Trump’s attack on Lemon echoed comments from right-wing commentators, including Fox News’ Howard Kurtz and Laura Ingraham, who questioned why Lemon would say Trump “traffics in racial division.”

O’Rourke tweeted Wednesday that “Donald Trump is a racist,” alongside a video of his response to Lemon’s question.

[Huffington Post]

Trump Again Lashes Out at Fox News for Not Sufficiently Adoring Him

Donald Trump’s growing annoyance at his favorite news network was on display once again Sunday night, when he ripped Fox News for failing to lavish him with sufficient praise.

The tirade began early Sunday evening with tweets targetting the network’s “weekend anchors.” Watching them, Trump wrote, is worse than watching the “Trump haters” on CNN and MSNBC. He also took a swipe at the New York Times before concluding that “@FoxNews is changing fast, but they forgot the people who got them there!” That’s his way of saying he’s responsible for the network’s success and they should thank him with fawning coverage.

The reason for Trump’s outburst isn’t clear. Maybe he saw soccer fans chanting “fuck Trump” during a Fox News live shot earlier Sunday. Maybe he didn’t like seeing Democratic candidate Michael Bennet on Fox News Sunday. Maybe, as Media Matters’s Matthew Gertz suggested, Trump was inspired by the network twice citing a New York Times report about abhorrent conditions in an immigration detention center.

More difficult to explain are the tweets that came later in the evening. Trump went after Shepard Smith, his most vocal critic on Fox News, and Donna Brazile, the former chair of the Democratic National Committee, who recently joined the network. As Gertz pointed out though, Brazile hasn’t been on Fox for a week.

All of this comes as Trump is being courted by a right-wing TV network that promises to be more sycophantic than Fox News ever was. One America News has been called the “Ultimate ‘Pro-Trump’ Network” and Trump has reportedly been tuning into the network more than ever. But apparently not this weekend.

[New York Magazine]

Trump Fumes After Watching MSNBC, Takes Aim at Parent Company: ‘Such Lies’

President Donald Trump continues to not be a fan of MSNBC programming, arguing tonight that “almost everything they were saying was the opposite of the truth” after watching today.

“Fake News!” the president tweeted, saying he was watching MSNBC in the morning “just to see what the opposition was saying about events of the past week.”

“The hatred Comcast has is amazing!” Trump said, criticizing MSNBC and NBC’s parent company.

Before becoming president, Trump hosted The Apprentice which aired on NBC. The company cut ties with Trump shortly after he declared his candidacy for the presidency.

[Mediaite]

Trump Marks UK Arrival By Calling for Boycott of AT&T to ‘Force Changes’ With CNN’s ‘Fake News’

President Donald Trump has just arrived in the United Kingdom for a multi-day diplomatic visit to America’s longest and strongest ally, and what is his first message upon arrival? What else — the blaming of CNN’s coverage and questioning of their new corporate owner, AT&T.

Trump tweeted:

Shortly after he followed with a strong suggestion of boycotting AT&T because of CNN’s coverage:

What was happening on CNN just before Trump tweeted? A deep dive segment into Trump’s denial of calling Meghan Markle “nasty” despite audio existing in which he clearly says of Prince Harry’s wife “I didn’t know that she was nasty.”

NY Times reporter Maggie Haberman was featured in this segment from London, and mere minutes before Trump fired the anti-CNN salvo, she offered this analysis of the “nasty” dust-up:

This is a classic of the Donald Trump genre. He’ll say something that could be interpreted in two ways. He could say she’s personally nasty or her comments were nasty. He wasn’t clear. Instead of owning it he torches anyone who notes it and says he didn’t do it in the first place. Then people talk past each other as to what he meant. He clearly said it. He was responding to something she had said two and a half years ago that he appeared surprised by. He did use the word nasty. He has a habit of saying that things didn’t happen when there isn’t audio or video. Sometimes he does it when there is.

[Mediaite]

Trump bashes ‘Morning Joe,’ cable networks for ratings dip after Mueller conclusion

President Donald Trump chided the MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday for ratings that he claimed have dropped in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report to the attorney general, crowing that “fake news never wins.”

Mueller, charged with investigating allegations of collusion between the president’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government, delivered to the Justice Department last week a report that said his team was unable to establish that such collusion occurred. Mueller wrote in his report that he was unable to conclude whether Trump obstructed justice, although Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein wrote in their summary it was their conclusion that the president was innocent of those allegations as well.

“Wow, ratings for ‘Morning Joe,’ which were really bad in the first place, just ‘tanked’ with the release of the Mueller Report,” Trump tweeted about the show — hosted by two of his former friends, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski — where he was once a regular guest. “Likewise, other shows on MSNBC and CNN have gone down by as much as 50%. Just shows, Fake News never wins!”

The former reality TV star frequently harps on ratings, often praising friendly networks like Fox News while pouncing on CNN and MSNBC for their less flattering coverage of him when their ratings dip.

The Associated Press reported Wednesday that MSNBC programs saw their ratings plunge after Barr’s announcement. Ratings for host Rachel Maddow’s show, on which the Russia investigation earned breathless coverage nearly every night, dipped 19 percent from their average for the year the night after Barr made his announcement. The next night, her ratings fell slightly once again.

On Fox, meanwhile, Maddow’s time slot competitor Sean Hannity saw his ratings go up by 32 percent over his average. Hannity, a close friend of Trump and one of his greatest media allies, interviewed the president at length on Wednesday’s show.

Maddow had only recently overtaken Hannity in the ratings fight for the first time, likely buoyed at least in part by her relentless focus on the Mueller investigation. Cable news ratings are prone to news-related dips, as viewers are more likely to tune in when there are developments that align with their political views and less likely to tune in for less favorable developments.

Trump and his aides have pummeled the media for its coverage of the Russia investigation in the wake of Barr’s letter to lawmakers about Mueller’s findings. Earlier Thursday, the president tweeted that media outlets “have ZERO credibility or respect” as a result of their Russia probe coverage and have “never been more corrupt” than in this point in time.

On Monday, his reelection campaign sent out a memo to TV producers urging them to think twice before having certain guests on who had asserted there was a strong likelihood that Trump or his campaign conspired with Russian operatives in the 2016 presidential election.

Barr’s summary of the Mueller report, released Sunday, has prompted a wave of hand-wringing across the media universe, though many in the media have been quick to point out that much of the reporting done on Trump’s ties to Russia over the past two years has been borne out by developments in Mueller’s investigation.

[Politico]

1 2 3 4 5 15