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Watch: Trump Publicly Humiliates Reporters in Front of Visiting Dignitary

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For the American media, this hit close to home.

During a White House news conference Tuesday with the presidents of the Baltic republics, President Donald Trump shot a very public jab at the assembled American media by asking Latvian President Raimonds Vējonis to choose a reporter to ask a question.

And made a point of using one of his favorite phrases to do it.

“Pick a reporter, please,” Trump told Vējonis. “A Baltic reporter ideally. Real news, not fake news.”

The room erupted in laughter, but there had to be an element of embarrassment to it for the American reporters.

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Even by the standards of Republican presidents — who are traditionally disliked by the American mainstream media — Trump has had a rocky relationship with a White House press corps that despises him. (A Politico Magazine survey from last spring found a total of three registered Republicans in the group.)

But unlike earlier Republican administrations, which aimed for civility in the frenzy of Washington media coverage, Trump hits back as hard as he’s hit.

And at Tuesday’s news conference it showed.

It might not have been entirely mannerly for the president to put his guests — Vējonis, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite and Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid — in the position of getting in the middle of an American argument, but there is no question that the mainstream American media considers itself at war with the White House and is skewing its coverage accordingly.

Did President Trump make his point with this line?

Whether it’s hyping Trump’s handling of special counsel Robert Mueller on the national scene, or straining painfully for signs of domestic discord in the president’s relationship with first lady Melania Trump, the American mainstream media has humiliated a once-proud profession by turning it into nothing more than a for-profit arm of the Democrat Party.

It took decades, and the presidency of Barack Obama for the American media to go fully lapdog for the Democrats, but the Trump presidency has forced the issue into the forefront.

And when that same president openly mocks the press corps as “fake news” in front of an international audience, it hits close to home.

The social media response was instructive. Liberals, naturally, raced to their Twitter accounts to attack Trump for daring to attack the media (responses to ABC’s coverage and CNN’s Jim Acosta’s comment were predictably defensive).

But outside the liberal bubble, the reaction was much more amused — even from Democrats.

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https://twitter.com/BittyGamerX/status/981425092889579520

Reporters and editors in the national media can kvetch all they want, but they’re the ones who took the a legacy of media independence and turned it into a liberal brothel.

They’re the ones who sold out their profession, and tried to sell out their country, to the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.

And when Trump calls them out on it as “fake news” in front of foreign guests, it has to hit close to home.

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Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn't need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American




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