By Aaron Miller-
Donald Trump raised his attack on the his attack on the media on Thursday night in a stern criticism of the press as “fake, fake, disgusting news” .
The U.S president referred to journalists in attendance as “horrible, horrendous people”, ignoring earlier warnings from U.N experts that his actions were putting journalists at risk.
Trump was speaking in Pennsylvania, where he appearance was scheduled to support a Republican Lou Barletta candidate for the U.S Senate. Lou Barletta is a congressman running for the Senate. Barletta was one of the first members of Congress to endorse Trump for president, and is a loyal supporter of the controversial president until this day. Barletta is trailing his Democrat opponent, Bob Casey, by an average of 16 points in the polls. He is also trailing the democrat in pecuniary acquisitions, with just $1.6m cash to his favour at the end of June compared with Casey’s $9.9m- almost 9 times Barletta’s money.
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Trump spent a sizeable amount of times launching a scathing attack on the press, drawing chants from a hostile crowds against journalists present who had to endure the long expression of grievances from a world leader who has never really been in the good books of the press.The president venemously took aim against the media’s coverage of a wide range of issues including his 2016 election victory, his meeting with Kim Jong-un of North Korea, his meeting with Vladimir Putin, his meeting with Nato, and finally his meeting with the Queen in July.
Highlighting as an example of his many grievances, Trump made reference to his latest visit to England in which he met with the Queen. Trump said he and the Queen “got along fantastically well” and enjoyed “good chemistry”, but told his audience crowd that the “fake news” had instead reported that he turned up late.
“They can make anything bad. Because they are the fake, fake, disgusting news,” Trump said. Trump was widely applauded by the crowd, many of whom are his avid supporters and themselves hold cynical views of the press. Pointing directly to the press area in the middle of the arena, he labelled them horrible, horrendous people”.
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“Even these people back there, these horrible, horrendous people,” Trump said, would agree “there has never been anything like what happened in November”, Trump said.
DISAPPOINTMENT
Trump is particularly angry with American broadcasters, CNN, whom he believes are picking on him. He highlighted some of the experiences with the press that have left him very disappointed. He cited his meeting with Kim Jong-un , in which he said he had expected to receive positive coverage by the press. He claimed he had returned to DC from the Singapore summit and told his wife, Melania, that he was excited to see the media coverage.
“I just stopped missiles from being launched every two seconds,” Trump quoted himself as saying to his wife.’Enemy of the people’: Sanders refuses to disavow Trump’s claim about media. “‘And baby, I got the hostages back’,” Trump said. “‘And you know what, honey, they’re not testing any more nuclear.’”“Oh the media is gonna finally treat me so good,” “I’m looking forward to waking up tomorrow and reading those dying papers.” criticized meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Trump again said the coverage had been unfair. “They wanted me to go up and have a boxing match,” he said of the media’s reporting of his meeting with Putin.
Earlier in the day UN experts had warned that Trump’s rhetoric could “increase the risk of journalists being targeted with violence”. His daughter, Ivanka Trump, said that, unlike her father, she does “not consider the media the enemy of the people”.
In a joint statement, two experts on freedom of expression – David Kaye- appointed by the UN human rights council- and Edison Lanza, who holds the corresponding position at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said: “These attacks run counter to the country’s obligations to respect press freedom and international human rights law.”
Trump’s attacks “are strategic, designed to undermine confidence in reporting and raise doubts about verifiable facts”, they added, while noting the president “has failed to show even once that specific reporting has been driven by any untoward motivations”.
“We are especially concerned that these attacks increase the risk of journalists being targeted with violence.”
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