The president lashed out after more than 200 newspapers, including The New York Times, published editorials about the dangers of the Trump administration’s repeated attacks on the news media.
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Thursday assailed the media for editorials in newspapers across the country that championed the freedom of the press, a unified response in the face of the president’s relentless attacks.
[ Read the Times editorial here.]
In a series of morning Twitter posts, Mr. Trump said The Boston Globe was “in collusion” with other newspapers for leading the editorial effort . Mr. Trump added in a tweet, “PROVE IT!” though it was unclear what he meant.
In a subsequent tweet, he wrote that he was in favor of “true FREEDOM OF THE PRESS,” but repeated accusations that most of the news it produced was fake or pushing a particular political agenda. Earlier in the morning, Mr. Trump also called the “fake news media” the “opposition party.”
Mr. Trump took a swipe at The Globe by noting that The New York Times Company had sold the paper at a steep loss, though he incorrectly wrote that the price had been $1. The Times Company sold The Globe and other properties for $70 million in 2013, after having paid $1.1 billion two decades before.
The president has called the press the enemy of the people and rallied his supporters to speak out against the news media, a directive critics have said could lead to violence against journalists. Earlier this month, a senior editor at The Globe proposed that newspapers publish editorials about “the dangers of the administration’s assault on the press.”
