Trump Accuses Media of 'Blind Hatred'
President Donald Trump is doubling down on his attacks on the media (except for Fox News) and the intelligence community as the media report on the resignation/firing of Trump's National Security Advisor Michael Flynn over contacts with Russia before the election, with some help with leaks from the latter.
It also comes amid some bipartisan support for a continuing Hill investigation into Russian influence on the election.
The President fired off a series of tweets early Wednesday beginning with: "The fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred. @MSNBC & @CNN are unwatchable. @foxandfriends is great!"
That was followed by "This Russian connection non-sense is merely an attempt to cover-up the many mistakes made in Hillary Clinton's losing campaign," and "Information is being illegally given to the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost by the intelligence community (NSA and FBI?). Just like Russia." Trump then tweeted "The real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by 'intelligence' like candy. Very un-American!"
On Tuesday, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) made it clear that Flynn's exit did not settle the issue.
“Reports that the White House may have been briefed weeks ago on the nature of Gen. Flynn's calls raise deeply troubling questions," he said in a statement emailed to B&C. "The American people deserve to know at whose direction Gen. Flynn was acting when he made these calls, and why the White House waited until these reports were public to take action.
“These developments underscore how many questions still remain unanswered to the American people more than three months after Election Day, including who was aware of what, and when."
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Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.