Team to take on media for ‘undermining’ presidency

Washington, January 23 

The Trump administration will “rethink” its ties with the media if the “obsessed” press tries to “delegetimise” Donald Trump’s presidency by false reporting, his top aides warned, saying they will fight such coverage “tooth and nail every day”.

“There’s an obsession by the media to delegitimise this President, and we are not going to sit around and let it happen. We’re going to fight back tooth and nail every day,” the White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said, triggering a fresh round of war of words with the media mainly sparked by the number of people attending Trump’s inauguration.

“The point is not the crowd size, the point is that the attacks and the attempts to delegitimise this President in one day — and we’re not going to sit around and take it,” Priebus told Fox News today.

Earlier, unhappy over media reports on the crowd size at presidential inauguration on Friday, Trump has described journalists as the most “dishonest human beings on Earth”.

Priebus said President Trump was trying to unify the country from Day 1 in office, but the media was resorting to false reporting to “delegitimise” him.

“The media, from Day 1, has been talking about delegitimising the election, talking about the Russians, talking about everything you can imagine, except the fact that we need to move this country forward,” Priebus said. He said Trump’s presidency would fight such coverage “tooth and nail every day”.

Meanwhile, another top aide, Kellylanne Conway, Counsellor to the President, told ABC News that the Trump administration could “rethink” its relationship with the media, if false reporting continues.

Conway said it is completely irresponsible for the media to be calling the White House press secretary a “liar” on Twitter and Facebook and elsewhere in articles. “That is not the way to start relationships,” she said.

“We have not been treated very well. This man (Trump) is the President of the US. If people would just go back, and listen to and watch his inaugural address again, that goes for everybody, calling for unification, being aspirational, talking about giving power back to the people.”

“We can’t invite a press pool on the first day of the Oval Office with the President of the US signing executive orders and then a big lie told about the bust of Martin Luther King Jr, days after our President Trump met with Martin Luther King III in New York and had an incredibly powerful and constructive conversation with Martin Luther King Jr.’s son saying that he wants to support this President, that he believes he must unify and heal the nation,” Conway said.  — PTI