WASHINGTON: President Trump has made clear his animus toward mainstream media organisations. Now he’s getting more personal, New York Times reported on Saturday.
Trump and his key lieutenant, Elon Musk, who has been empowered to run what they call the Department of Government Efficiency as a “special government employee,” have attacked journalists by name in recent days on the social media platforms they own: ‘Truth Social’ and ‘X’.
On his Truth Social account on Friday, Trump called for The Washington Post to fire Eugene Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, and labeled him “incompetent.” Trump frequently posts on the account to his millions of followers and regularly condemns perceived enemies.
Robinson had written in an opinion column on Thursday that top Republican senators “should be ashamed of themselves” for not standing up to Trump during the confirmation process for some of his cabinet picks and for not protesting Musk’s taking an axe to government departments like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which administers foreign aid programmes. Robinson also appeared on a TV show on Friday to discuss his column.
“So sad to see him trying to justify the waste, fraud, and corruption at USAID with his pathetic Radical Left SPIN,” Trump wrote. “He should be fired immediately!!!”
In an email, a spokeswoman for The Post said: “Eugene Robinson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist with a 45-year record of integrity, professionalism and scrupulous reporting and commentary. The Washington Post stands behind Gene — just as it stands behind all journalists and news organisations dedicated to independent coverage and a free press.”
Musk took aim at a Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, Katherine Long.
Long was the first to reveal, in a report in The Journal on Thursday, that Marko Elez, one of Musk’s lieutenants in the DOGE, was linked to a since-deleted racist social media account that had posted statements like, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.”
Elez resigned after The Journal approached the White House for comment, according to the article. It was Long’s first article in her new job at The Journal. Musk said in separate replies on X on Friday that Ms Long was “a disgusting and cruel person” and should be “fired immediately.”
Vice President JD Vance also weighed in on X on Friday, saying that he disagreed with some of Elez’s posts but that they shouldn’t “ruin a kid’s life.” (Elez is 25 years old.) “We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever,” Vance wrote. The Wall Street Journal did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The behaviour is not new for Trump. In his first term, he frequently criticised high-profile journalists, including Jim Acosta of CNN, Katy Tur of NBC News and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times. Since his inauguration in January, Trump has been quick to demonise what he calls “the fake news media.” He promoted a false claim on his Truth Social account this week that government agencies had given “billions of dollars” to news organisations “as a ‘payoff’ for creating good stories about the Democrats.” In fact, the cited figures showed millions of dollars being paid in subscriptions to media outlets and professional subscription services.
Trump’s administration has said it will cancel some government subscriptions to news organisations as it tries to slash government spending. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters that the Trump administration would cancel all government Politico subscriptions. The Times reported on Thursday that the Agriculture Department had canceled its subscriptions to Politico Pro, Politico’s professional subscription service, which reports on policy and legislation. Politico’s leaders said in a note to readers on Thursday that Politico was a privately owned company that had never received any government funding. “Government agencies that subscribe do so through standard public procurement processes — just like any other tool they buy to work smarter and be more efficient,” the statement said.
President Trump mocked Time magazine on Friday, saying he didn’t even know it was still in business, after the publication used an image of Elon Musk sitting at the Resolute Desk (US president’s chair) on its cover. A reporter asked Trump for his reaction to the Time cover, which features Musk sitting in the president’s chair. The cover story headlined, “Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington,” comes as critics of President Trump have suggested Musk has too much power as he’s tasked with leading Trump’s DOGE. “Is Time magazine still in business? I didn’t even know that,” Trump said as laughter could be heard in the room.
“Elon is doing a great job. He’s finding tremendous fraud and corruption and waste. You see it with the USAID, but you’re going to see it even more so with other agencies and other parts of government. He’s got a staff that’s fantastic,” Trump added. “He’s wanted to be able to do this for a long time.”
Meanwhile, Donald Trump said he had no plans to deport Prince Harry from the US amid a legal battle over his immigration status -- taking a swipe at his wife Meghan Markle in the process.
‘I don’t want to do that,’ Trump said on Friday.
‘I’ll leave him alone. He’s got enough problems with his wife. She’s terrible.’ Harry’s immigration status is the subject of a lawsuit in Washington DC. Conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation has alleged that he may have concealed illegal drug use that should have denied him a US visa. In his memoir, Spare, he detailed how he took cocaine several times as a teenager and experimented with cannabis and mushrooms. Heritage cited his own admissions in its filing against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as it sought to have Harry’s visa records released.