'Hambergers' and 'Noble prizes': Trump attacks press in furious Twitter rant riddled with spelling errors
Donald Trump has threatened to strip reporters of “Noble prizes” and sue media outlets over their reporting that confirmed Russian interference in US elections and within the president’s 2016 campaign.
In a furious, misspelled Twitter rant on Sunday, the president lashed out at The New York Times over what he called a “phony story” about his daily routine. The Times story claimed the president often doesn’t arrive in the Oval Office until noon, after spending mornings watching Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.
He said: “I work from early in the morning until late at night, haven’t left the White House in many months (except to launch Hospital Ship Comfort) in order to take care of Trade Deals, Military Rebuilding etc., and then I read a phony story in the failing @nytimes about my work ... schedule and eating habits, written by a third rate reporter who knows nothing about me.
He added: “I will often be in the Oval Office late into the night & see that I am angrily eating a hamberger & Diet Coke in my bedroom. People with me are always stunned. Anything to demean!”
A story about the president’s eating habits appeared in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury — from 2018. The Times reports that he ends his day with French fries and a Diet Coke. (He deleted a tweet that spelled hamburger incorrectly, then reposted it.)
The outburst comes after the president has stepped back from hosting White House coronavirus press briefings following criticism for suggesting that Americans could inject disinfectant to ward off coronavirus.
The president said that reporters who covered the Russian interference scandal — and the subsequent investigation that led to the indictments and imprisonments of several of the president’s allies — were “proven totally wrong” and should return their “Nobles” to “the REAL REPORTERS & JOURNALISTS who got it right.”
He appears to have mixed up Pulitzer prizes with the Nobel prize, which he spelled incorrectly four times.
The president said: “I can give the Committee a very comprehensive list. When will the Noble Committee DEMAND the Prizes back, especially since they were gotten under fraud? The reporters and Lamestream Media knew the truth all along ... Lawsuits should be brought against all, including the Fake News Organizations, to rectify this terrible injustice. For all of the great lawyers out there, do we have any takers? When will the Noble Committee Act? Better be fast!”
His outrage follows a Saturday attack claiming that the “Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions” at his daily White House briefings, which he appears to have paused, saying that they are “not worth the time or effort” after reporters demanded accountability from the president for suggesting Covid-19 patients inject disinfectants or be exposed to ultraviolet light.
He abruptly ended a press conference and refused to answer questions on 24 April, after hosting hours of daily briefings through the pandemic, as he was likely to be bombarded with questions about his lethal advice.
A New York Times story this week reported that the president’s ”primary focus, advisers said, is assessing how his performance on the virus is measured in the news media, and the extent to which history will blame him.”
The Times wrote: “The president sees few allies no matter which channel he clicks. He is angry even with Fox, an old security blanket, for not portraying him as he would like to be seen.”
