President Donald Trump’s priorities, even amidst a deadly global pandemic, seem to largely begin and end with himself. This Saturday morning, he took to Twitter to flip out against the media, zeroing in on their frequent usage of anonymous sources. He claimed that mainstream journalists make these sources up — but there is no apparent evidence for this claim whatsoever. None. Amidst a pandemic that has claimed the lives of over 1,700 Americans and counting as of early Saturday, Trump is drumming up hate against the media based on nonsense tales.
After shouting on Twitter earlier in the morning that journalists are supposedly “very dangerous & corrupt people, who will do anything to win,” Trump tweeted:
‘One of the reasons that Fake News has become so prevalent & far reaching is the fact that corrupt “journalists” base their stories on SOURCES that they make up in order to totally distort a narrative or story…. Lamestream Media should be forced to reveal sources, very much as they did in the long ago past. If they did that, the media would be trusted again, and Fake News would largely be a thing of the past!’
….very often FAKE NEWS. Lamestream Media should be forced to reveal sources, very much as they did in the long ago past. If they did that, the media would be trusted again, and Fake News would largely be a thing of the past!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2020
Again — there is absolutely no evidence for Trump’s claim that mainstream media outlets make up the sources that they write. It’s worth noting that Trump himself has frequently engaged in even deceptive backchannel sourcing — the stories have circulated far and wide of his attempt to float his public image via posing as “John Barron” and calling the media to praise himself. A president who seems so petrified of basic reality that doesn’t conform to his every wish is not the person who probably just about any observer would want handling the U.S. response to a deadly pandemic — but here we are.
The cracks in his Coronavirus pandemic response have long shown through. Currently, the U.S. has more confirmed cases than any other single country on earth, and the total is rising sharply. Lately, daily announcements of new U.S. cases have topped ten and even fifteen thousand.
Check out Twitter’s response below…
