Journalists: Donald Trump hates you, but he promises not to murder you.
At a rally in Michigan on Monday, the GOP frontrunner slammed journalists before cautioning he wouldn’t go as far as Vladimir Putin and wipe them off the face of the earth.
“Then they [the media] said, ‘You know, he’s killed reporters,’” Trump said. “And I don’t like that. I’m totally against that.”
“But I do hate them,” Trump continued. “I hate some of these people, but I’ll be honest, I would never kill them.”
Trump, who’s made combatting reporters and television news networks a hallmark of his campaign, went on to call journalists “disgusting people.”
“Some of them are such lying, disgusting people, it’s true,” he continued before reiterating that he won’t kill them.
The real estate mogul-turned-presidental candidate has leveraged the Republican base’s distrust for the media to his advantage.
He’s used his Twitter account as a quasi-media criticism micro blog, routinely bashing “dummy” contributors on Fox News and CNN while going to battle with the New York Times, the Associated Press, Politico and more.