President Donald Trump continued his “war” on the media Saturday by attacking The New York Times and The Washington Post in a series of typo-ridden tweets.
Trump, who has repeatedly lashed out at the Times in the past, accused the newspaper of being “fake news” and “dishonest.”
Trump insisted that both outlets produce “false and angry” stories about him, claiming that the Times had issued an apology to its readers for its coverage of the president. This did not happen. The Times did publish a note to readers in November written by publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and executive editor Dean Baquet, who speculated that Trump’s “sheer unconventionality” had led the paper to “underestimate his support among American voters.” But this was not an apology or a retraction of any of the Times’ Trump-related coverage.
The Times’ public relations team on Saturday fired back at the president’s claim that the outlet’s readers are “dwindling,” tweeting that its audience numbers are actually at an “all-time” high.
The Times, which has won more Pulitzer Prizes than any other news organization in history, told CNBC in November that it added nearly 132,000 paid subscriptions in the three days following the election.
Saturday’s tweets are just the latest salvo in what Trump called his “running war with the media” on Monday while speaking at the CIA headquarters.
Stephen Bannon, chief White House strategist and former executive chairman of the controversial right-wing news site Breitbart, mirrored Trump’s aggressive stance against the media in an interview with the Times this week.
“The media here is the opposition party,” Mr. Bannon told the Times on Wednesday. “The media should... keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.”
Trump took aim at The Times again Sunday in his first tweet since federal judges momentarily halted parts of his executive order that sought to temporarily block all refugees, as well as citizens from seven Muslim-majority nations, from entering the U.S.
This article has been updated with a tweet from Trump.
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