Trump ramps up attacks on media
Former President Trump lashed out at news media outlets on Sunday, mocking several cable news channels for rating performances and saying the demise of the national press would be “great news” for the country.
“I am proud to inform you that the Lamestream Media has hit the lowest approval ratings ever recorded,” Trump said in a statement Sunday. “I think it would be fair to assume that I had something to do with that.”
Mainstream media outlets are “not only dishonest and corrupt,” the former president said, but “they are truly, according to a recent poll, the enemy of the people.”
It is unclear what poll Trump was referring to. A host of recent surveys have shown that there is growing distrust of media among Americans, who also placed blame on the news for increasing the political divide in the country.
Trump also took aim at cable news channels often critical of the former president.
“In a similar category, CNN’s ratings are down a whopping, and record-setting, 79% and likewise, horrible numbers at MSDNC (Joe Scarborough and his lovely wife, Mika, are at record lows),” Trump said. “These developments are great news for the American People!”
During his two presidential campaigns and four years in the White House, Trump regularly sparred with journalists covering his administration, oftentimes calling reporters out by name and cheering as his supporters booed media members covering his rallies and campaign events.
He has said the media was complicit in a conspiracy to “rig” the election against him last year. He has also said that investigative reporting on his company’s financial dealings and business practices was “fake news” and a continuation of a political “witch hunt” against him.
The former president on Sunday also made an apparent reference to a New York Times story published over the weekend about how suburban voters in the U.S. soured on Trump, which helped President Biden win the White House in 2020.
“The Fake News Media continuously likes stating that I lost the ‘suburbs.’ How would this be possible when I was the one that stopped the low-income housing agenda of Obama/Biden, already enacted, from happening there,” Trump said. “The suburbs would have been destroyed—but they continuously fail to mention that I got 12 million more votes than I did in 2016, a record for a sitting President along with the 75 million votes, also a record. So how did that happen and how come I ‘lost’? This is just more Fake News. And remember, they can say all of this, including the suburbs nonsense, because we had a Rigged Election!”
Trump has repeatedly made false or misleading statements about electoral fraud and has reportedly been pressuring allies in conservative media to write and say that he could be reinstated as president by the end of the summer.
Despite polling showing a solid majority of Republicans saying they still support Trump and would like to see him run for the White House again, the 45th president has not formally announced plans for seeking public office.
“It’s not that I want to,” he said during a town hall-style interview with Sean Hannity earlier this month. “The country needs it. We have to take care of this country. I don’t want to. Is this fun? Fighting constantly? Fighting always? I mean, the country, what we have done is so important.”
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