The Donald Trump campaign’s verbal assault on the media has given “beat reporters” a new meaning.
Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson on Monday accused “left-wing reporters” of “literally” beating Trump supporters.
“The voters want someone that’s gonna fight back because they are tired of seeing left-wing reporters literally beat Trump supporters into submission into supporting policies they don’t agree with,” Pierson told Fox Business Network. “It just shuts them down and that’s not what they’re seeing in this campaign.”
Trump lashed out at the media last weekend — specifically The New York Times, after it reported Republicans close to the campaign describing the candidate as “exhausted, frustrated and still bewildered by fine points of the political process.”
The real estate mogul blasted the “failing” Times, which he said on Twitter was “a newspaper of fiction” that protects Hillary Clinton. He later suggested he would be leading Clinton by 20 percentage points “[i]f the disgusting and corrupt media covered me honestly and didn’t put false meaning into the words I say.”
Trump also claimed his rallies were being covered improperly by media, who never report “the real message” or show his crowd sizes. “I am not only fighting Crooked Hillary, I am fighting the dishonest and corrupt media and her government protection process. People get it!” Trump declared.
Pierson said Trump’s tweets show a candidate who, unlike the past two Republican presidential nominees, is willing to fight back to ensure that his side of the story gets told.
“It is no secret that the media definitely skews left. However, I think this cycle many people will agree that it’s above-and-beyond over-the-top when it comes to Mr. Trump and his campaign, and I think that’s Mr. Trump’s way of fighting back,” she said. “The last two presidential cycles we had Republican candidates that just sat there and took a beating and Mr. Trump isn’t gonna do that.”
Trump has repeatedly clashed with the media throughout his White House run, banning outlets such as POLITICO and The Washington Post from attending his campaign events, mocking a disabled reporter, telling NBC News reporter Katy Tur to “be quiet” and musing about opening up libel laws to make it easier for him to sue news organizations.
Pierson’s comments about the media come after a week in which Trump drew criticism over his own semantics. Trump last week doubled down on his claim that President Barack Obama and Clinton founded the Islamic State, a comment he eventually suggested was sarcasm before admitting it wasn’t “that sarcastic, to be honest with you.”
Pierson’s rhetoric also got her in trouble last week when she blamed Obama for going into Afghanistan — an invasion that occurred under President George W. Bush in 2001. Pierson told the Texas Tribune that an earpiece during her interview with CNN was to blame. (Trump similarly blamed a “lousy earpiece” for at one point refusing to disavow the Ku Klux Klan during a CNN interview.)
“I obviously meant to say Syria and not Afghanistan,” Pierson told the Tribune.
Pierson mockingly tweeted: “The world nearly came to an end when I said Afghanistan & meant to say Syria. It's not like I said 57 states.” Her tweet included a nerd-face emoji and the hashtag “#bias.”
Her 57-state remark was a reference to Obama's faux pas during his 2008 campaign in which he said he had visited 57 U.S. states with one left to go. He later told reporters that he had misstated the number of potential victims involved in a cyclone in Burma, as well as the number of states he visited.
“I hope I said 100,000 people the first time instead of 100 million. I understand I said there were 57 states today. It's a sign that my numeracy is getting a little, uh ... ,” he said, as an aide cut him off.
