In today’s dictator-wannabe news, President Donald Trump has called for The New York Times and The Washington Post to be stripped of their Pulitzers for their coverage of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. As if the U.S. president had such authority.
The fourth estate exists for important reasons, speaking truth to power among them, and perhaps no contemporary American political figure warrants a free and critical press more than Donald Trump.
On Friday, still riding high from having an attorney general in his pocket, Trump claimed on Twitter that the newspapers “were either duped or corrupt” in their coverage of the Mueller probe. “In any event, their prizes should be taken away by the Committee!” he tweeted.
Among the topics covered in stories that won the Post and the Times Pulitzers were discussions by Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn of easing sanctions on Russia, Trump’s revelations to Russian officials of classified intelligence, his son’s meeting with operatives linked to Russian intelligence, and the president’s involvement in a failed cover-up of that meeting at Trump Tower. All true stories.
The Pulitzers were awarded last year.
Donald Trump Jr., always seeking Daddy’s admiration, piled on with his own tweet, revealing his ignorance about how the Pulitzers are awarded. “He’s right... unless they give Pulitzer’s for fiction. #fakenews” dipshit DonJ tweeted.
Newsflash: The Pulitzer Prizes do have an award category for published fiction.
In response, The New York Times Communications unit tweeted that it is “proud of our Pulitzer-prize winning reporting on Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.”
Meanwhile, a few hours later, the Post reported this:
The “citizen reporters” at TruNews typically pump out racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy-laden articles about reptile people plotting a government takeover and secret death squads that perpetrate mass shootings, all while counting down to “the second coming of Jesus Christ.”
But on Thursday night, the right-wing fringe website scored one of its biggest stories yet: an interview with Donald Trump Jr.
I smell a Pulitzer.