President Trump sat down for an exclusive interview Monday with Breitbart's Matthew Boyle, and used the platform primarily to fire volley after volley at one of his favorite media targets, The New York Times, including declaring that the paper's intent is "so evil, so bad."
The interview began with President Trump repeating his distinction, clarified at CPAC last Friday, between “fake news” and the “fake media” on the one hand, and journalists who are trying to get it right on the other. Then Trump zeroed in on the Times, particularly for printing on the front page a piece by Michael Barbaro and Megan Twohey containing allegations against him from several women. The piece was actually challenged by women quoted therein, prompting even the vehemently anti-Trump CNN to question the authenticity of the Times’ reporting.
Below is a partial transcript of this portion of Trump’s interview with Breitbart (D.C. Hope Hicks, director of Strategic Communications at the White House, joined in part of the conversation):
BREITBART: “The big thing I kind of wanted to zone in on right off the bat is ‘the opposition party,’ the media—"
TRUMP: “Well, it’s not the media. It’s the fake media.”
BREITBART: “That’s what I was going to—“
TRUMP: “There’s a difference. The fake media is the opposition party. The fake media is the enemy of the American people. There’s tremendous fake media out there. Tremendous fake stories. The problem is the people that aren’t involved in the story don’t know that.”
HICKS: “Just the fact that they didn’t report that accurately proves your point.”
TRUMP: “Which accurately?”
HICKS: “They said ‘Oh Donald Trump said the press is the enemy of the American people.’”
TRUMP: “Right. They take ‘fake’ media off. They say ‘the media is the enemy of—well, they didn’t say the ‘fake media.’ I didn’t say the media is the enemy—I said the ‘fake media.’ They take the word fake out and all of a sudden it’s like I’m against—there are some great reporters like you. I know some great honorable reporters who do a great job like Steve [Holland] from Reuters, others, many others. I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about the fake media, where they make up everything there is to make up.”
BREITBART: “Right and that’s what I wanted to zone in on with you because I know you made that very clear in your CPAC speech. Can you kind of more clearly define what standards and quality we should expect from those who are doing reporting?”
TRUMP: “It’s intent. It’s also intent. If you read the New York Times, if you read the New York Times, it’s—the intent is so evil and so bad. The stories are wrong in many cases, but it’s the overall intent. Look at that paper over the last two years. In fact, they had to write a letter of essentially apology to their subscribers because they got the election so wrong. They did a front page article on women talking about me, and the women went absolutely wild because they said that was not what they said. It was a big front-page article, and the Times wouldn’t even apologize and yet they were wrong. You probably saw the women. They went on television shows and everything.”
