At a wild, combative Press conference that the White House has seldom seen in the past, President Donald Trump on Thursday went hammer and tongs at America’s top media outlets in retaliation for their “anger”, “hatred” and negativity” towards his administration in its first four weeks in office.
Rejecting the media projection of a White House in chaos, Trump claimed that his administration is “running like a fine-tuned machine”, boasting: “We have made incredible progress. I don’t think there’s ever been a President elected who, in this short period of time, has done what we’ve done.”
He reeled out a slew of decisions taken over the past four weeks, despite having “inherited a mess”. “To be honest, I inherited a mess at home and abroad,” he claimed as he spoke of jobs fleeing the country, instability in West Asia and the nuclear threat posed by North Korea.
Assailed by a continuous stream of reports of unholy ties between his campaign and the Vladimir Putin regime in Russia, Trump thundered it was nothing but a fabrication. As he put it, it was a case of “real leaks and fake news” – with holdovers from the predecessor Obama administration behind the leaks and the liberal mainstream media dishing out the fake news.
Trump went on to say that while he had offered nothing to Russia, Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, attempted a reset of ties, offering Moscow w0 per cent of American uranium. “Nobody talks about that. I didn’t do anything for Russia. I’ve done nothing for Russia,” he said, yet renewing his assertion that it would be a good thing if US and Russia, as the two big nuclear powers, could get along.
Denying the New York Times story that his campaign aides were in constant communication with Russian intelligence officials in the run-up to the US presidential election, Trump said how the people mentioned in the story have all come out saying they have never ever spoken to anyone in Russia.
“Speaking for myself, I own nothing in Russia. I have no loans in Russia. I don’t have any deals in Russia,” Trump said, adding: “President Putin called me up very nicely to congratulate me on the win of the election. He then called me up extremely nicely to congratulate me on the inauguration, which was terrific. But so did many other leaders — almost all other leaders from almost all other countries.”
Saying that much of the media in Washington, New York and los Angeles spoke not for the people but for special interests, Trump charged: “The Press has become so dishonest that if we don’t talk about it, we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people…We have to talk about it to find out what’s going on, because the press honestly is out of control. The level of dishonesty is out of control.”
He went on to say that he was forced to present his four-week report directly to the American people since “many of our nation’s reporters and folks will not tell you the truth and will not treat the wonderful people of our country with the respect they deserve”.
On immigration, Trump said he will come up with a new executive order next week that will be tailored to avoid issues raised by the courts. Announcing his resolve to push ahead on this score, Trump said: “I will not back down from defending our country. I got elected on defence of our country and I keep my campaign promises.”
On the jobs front, he said a surge is already under way. “Since my election, Ford announced it will abandon its plans to build a new factory in Mexico and will instead invest $700 million in Michigan, creating many, many jobs. Fiat-Chrysler announced it will invest $1 billion in Ohio and Michigan, creating 2,000 new American jobs,” he said, adding General Motors, Intel and Walmart have also announced their big plans to invest and create jobs within the US.
Apparently not content with his fusillades against the liberal media outlets at his 77-minute news conference, Trump followed it with a tweet on Friday morning: “Thank you for all of the nice statements on the Press Conference yesterday. Rush limbaugh (conservative radio talk show host) said one of greatest ever. Fake media not happy!”