Trump Blasts WaPo's 'Nasty Lightweight Reporters,' Suggests Banning Them from White House
President Donald Trump was up early Saturday morning.
And one of his first orders of business this weekend was a biting admonishment of two Washington Post reporters on Twitter.
Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker were the subjects of Trump‘s no-holds-barred ire, and he did not mince words, alluding to a possible media pass revocation for the “two nasty lightweight reporters.”
“The Washington Post’s @PhilipRucker (Mr. Off the Record) & @AshleyRParker, two nasty lightweight reporters,” Trump wrote, “shouldn’t even be allowed on the grounds of the White House because their reporting is so DISGUSTING & FAKE.”
“Also, add the appointment of MANY Federal Judges this Summer!”
The Washington Post’s @PhilipRucker (Mr. Off the Record) & @AshleyRParker, two nasty lightweight reporters, shouldn’t even be allowed on the grounds of the White House because their reporting is so DISGUSTING & FAKE. Also, add the appointment of MANY Federal Judges this Summer! https://t.co/7d33tzKxXq
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2019
The president and White House staffers have been on the warpath against The Post since Sunday, when Rucker and Parker published an article titled, “Trump’s lost summer: Aides claim victory, but others see incompetence and intolerance.”
The heavily editorialized piece claimed the summer was a political loss for Trump, suggesting the season had been devoid of policy strides.
In the eyes of the two reporters, Trump’s only success was a massive Independence Day celebration on the National Mall — one that the outlet and the rest of the establishment media had hardly covered and often scoffed at throughout June and July.
Rucker and Parker’s piece prompted a whirlwind offensive from the White House.
By Thursday, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham and deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley had published an rebuttal in the Washington Examiner.
In it, they fact-checked the article with a host of Trump’s summer accomplishments that they said been provided to The Post for its story but largely gone unmentioned in the final piece.
“The truth is, Trump racked up many well-documented victories that directly benefited the American people at home and abroad,” Grisham and Gidley wrote.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2019
Trump’s victories included, but were not nearly limited to, total student loan forgiveness for disabled veterans, becoming the first United States president to enter North Korea and the successful diversion of $3.6 billion toward the construction of wall segments on America’s southern border.
Grisham and Gidley didn’t stop there, either.
They went on to tally up The Post’s embarrassing summer losses — the worst being a bombshell racial piece that warranted 15 corrections, according to Fox News.
“Media bias comes in two forms. It plays a role in deciding what news is, and is not, covered, and also in deciding how that news is covered,” the pair wrote.
“In this instance, the Post’s ‘reporters’ are guilty of both.”
The White House’s seemingly total war approach has, however, provided The Post with ammunition in regard to the establishment media’s narrative that Trump is a danger to the American free press.
“The president’s statement fits into a pattern of seeking to denigrate and intimidate the press,” Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron said Saturday in response to Trump’s tweet, according to The Hill. “It’s unwarranted and dangerous, and it represents a threat to a free press in this country.”
“We stand fully behind [our reporters] and their important work,” Baron said.
Trump has in the past attempted to keep antagonistic reporters out of the White House briefing room — namely CNN’s Jim Acosta last November.
The move proved to be problematic, however, and Acosta’s media pass was quickly reinstated, Time reported.
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