Trump Goes Bonkers, Tweets Directly At News Reporter & The Internet Roasted Him Hard

January 6, 2018

896

The president, when it comes down to it, is relentless in his efforts to prop up his public image. If a news organization makes a mistake, in his world it’s suddenly indicative of the entire news outlet peddling “fake news,” even though whenever a mistake is made, mainstream news organizations generally admit wrongdoing and move on, unlike the president.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD_cskieDSE

Laying bare his hypocrisy yet again for all to see, the president took to Twitter on Saturday to call for a journalist — Brian Ross — to be fired, even though Ross’ employer, ABC, has already taken disciplinary action against him and effectively moved on from the incident prompting the president’s comments.

The issue the president has with Ross is over reporting from him late last year that falsely characterized a key detail of the Michael Flynn case. Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser, was revealed to be pleading guilty to lying to the FBI back on December 1, having falsely represented the contents of his communications with the then-Russian Ambassador to the United States. Flynn discussed the Trump administration possibly lifting U.S. sanctions against Russia with the ambassador, even though he insisted otherwise.

In the wake of that revelation about an impending guilty plea from Flynn, reporting began to come out about why Flynn had ever gone to the Russians in the first place, and during the course of that reporting, ABC’s Brian Ross got one key detail wrong.

He said that Trump had allegedly directed Flynn to make contact with the Russians while still a candidate, but that was incorrect. Trump only, apparently, directed Flynn to make contact with the Russians after the election, a distinction that makes the revelation of the interactions less high stakes.

Ross “clarified” his remarks on air before being put on a four week, unpaid leave.

Now that Ross is back, he is reportedly forbidden from covering Trump-related stories in an effort to keep incidents like this one from recurring, hopefully maintaining confidence in the news organization in the meantime. ABC, in moving against Ross in this manner, follows the lead of other news organizations like CNN in responding harshly to errors on the part of their reporters.

Still, this isn’t enough for the president. Ask him, and it’s as though he feels as though the heads of ABC should beg for his forgiveness or something.

On Twitter this Saturday, he wrote:

‘Brian Ross, the reporter who made a fraudulent live newscast about me that drove the Stock Market down 350 points (billions of dollars), was suspended for a month but is now back at ABC NEWS in a lower capacity. He is no longer allowed to report on Trump. Should have been fired!’

Mind you, if we applied the standard to the president that he’s applying to Ross here, then Trump would long be out of the job, but that doesn’t seem to either occur or matter to the president.

He has gone after ABC already for the incident, asserting on Twitter late last year that those who had lost money in the stock market should sue ABC over the effect Ross’ incendiary reporting had on the stock market.

It’s not, of course, as though it’s a given that any one who might have lost money in the stock market would actually have the freedom under the law to sue ABC.

What’s concurrently only seemingly barely legal is the president making his assertion that Ross should be fired in the first place.

Late last year, after the White House asserted that a reporter should be fired for making disparaging remarks about the president, former Office of Government Ethics head Walter Shaub pointed out that it’s illegal for officials to call for private employers to fire an employee solely for their political affiliation, so the White House better be careful.