Donald Trump made a new series of tweets Sunday railing against the New York Times as “fake news,” and called the paper’s new editorial board member “disgusting,” in an apparent reference to recent hire Sarah Jeong.
“From the day I announced, the Times has been Fake News, and with their disgusting new Board Member, it will only get worse!” Trump wrote. Jeong, who was hired to the Times’ editorial board earlier this month, has been criticized because of now-deleted Twitter jokes she made at the expense of “white people” years ago.
A rep for New York Times said the newspaper was not commenting on Trump’s tweets beyond a statement it issued on Twitter in support of the story he criticized.
The New York Times stands behind the reporting of our Pulitzer-Prize winning reporters @nytmike and @maggieNYT.
Read the article that President Trump has been tweeting about this morning: https://t.co/flzSzluITY
— NYTimes Communications (@NYTimesPR) August 19, 2018
The president’s Sunday tweet-storm came in response to a New York Times report that said White House counsel Don McGahn had shared voluntarily submitted to interviews three times with special counsel Robert Mueller and his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
In the tweets, Trump said he allowed McGhan “and all others” to cooperate with the Mueller investigation, and that the New York Times was falsely painting McGahn as a “John Dean type ‘RAT,’ ” referring to the Watergate-era White House counsel who turned on Richard Nixon.
Trump railed against both the Mueller investigation and the New York Times for several tweets, claiming the newspaper has been against him since he started his campaign.
In its own tweet, the Times said it “stands behind the reporting of our Pulitzer-Prize winning reporters.”
The New York Times stands behind the reporting of our Pulitzer-Prize winning reporters @nytmike and @maggieNYT.
Read the article that President Trump has been tweeting about this morning: https://t.co/flzSzluITY
— NYTimes Communications (@NYTimesPR) August 19, 2018
You can read Trump’s Twitter storm below.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1031134125602820096
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1031137499995930624
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1031141396776984576
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1031150465759633408
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1031152483949838336
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1031154974942810114
Jeong’s hiring to the New York Times editorial board earlier this month kicked up controversy thanks to Twitter jokes critics have called racist. The tweets include Jeong writing “Cancel white people,” like a TV show — a joke some have said is tantamount to calling for violence against whites — and “Oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men,” a tweet which has now been deleted.
At the time of her hire, Times defended her hiring saying it did not condone her past tweets.
“Her journalism and the fact that she is a young Asian woman have made her a subject of frequent online harassment. For a period of time she responded to that harassment by imitating the rhetoric of her accusers,” the Times wrote. “She now sees that this approach only served to feed the vitriol that we too often see on social media. She regrets it, and the Times does not condone it.”
Since her hiring, Jeong has been a frequent target of right-wing pundits, who claim a double standard when it comes to “political correctness” and jokes and statements perceived as racist.
Trump himself went on a tear on Twitter just Saturday on a related topic, claiming that social media censors conservative voices.
“Social Media is totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices,” Trump wrote in the first of several tweets. “Speaking loudly and clearly for the Trump Administration, we won’t let that happen.”
Trump seemed to be referring to InfoWars host Alex Jones being banned from social media platforms. Jones is well-known for his conspiracy theories, including pushing the idea that the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut, was faked in order to push the U.S. toward stricter gun control laws.
“If you are weeding out Fake News, there is nothing so Fake as CNN & MSNBC, & yet I do not ask that their sick behavior be removed,” he wrote.