President Donald Trump told the media during Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting that “changes are going to be made” regarding the Fourth Estate.
The president took aim at New York Times and CNN for their reporting on the strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, which suggested Iran’s program was set back several months, not years as some officials speculated.
By reporting this, Trump claimed the pilots who bombed Iran became a “little downbeat because they listened to that fake CNN reporting and the fake New York Times.”
“They worked together to try and say that it wasn’t perfect. They couldn’t say what they missed — all they could say is maybe it wasn’t perfect. And you had to fire that reporter immediately,” Trump said. “You should fire her real fake. And so I just want to congratulate those pilots. And, you know, a lot of people don’t like bringing things like that up. I do.”
He added he likes to let the public know not to believe everything in the media.
“I always like confronting because otherwise the public doesn’t know that you’re a bunch of crooked people. But they know—they’ve learned—and the media has to straighten out their act. You know, the media is down to 17 percent approval. You got to do a little better than that. It’s important for the country that you do better,” he continued.
Trump has said he would sue and prosecute New York Times and CNN for their reporting.
“I think they ought to make a lot of changes. I think changes are going to be made to the media. But it’s hard to have a really successful country if you have a corrupt media, and we really have a corrupted media,” Trump said.
“And nobody really knows why. I mean, why would you want to have open borders and criminals pouring into our country? Why would you want to have men playing in women’s sports, transgender for everyone? You know, you’ll have to figure that out. But some of you don’t. I mean, I’m looking at some people—they love the country. But I look at other people and they can’t. But we’re really proud of our military,” he added.
He then directed his attention to foreign affairs.
“It was a—and the people that maybe don’t like us or want to play games with us, because I think that—had you not had the situation in Afghanistan, I don’t think Putin would have gone in. I think when Putin looked at how stupid and incompetent that operation was, he said, ‘Wow, this might be a chance.’ And he’s—we’re dealing with him now too. We are not happy with Putin. I’m not happy with Putin,” Trump said.
