‘This Is Poisonous’: Statement From Trump’s US Attorney Attacking AP Sparks Swift Bipartisan Fury
Photo by: Frank Rumpenhorst/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
A tweet posted by Ed Martin, President Donald Trump’s nominee and the current interim acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, raised alarms among observers across the partisan political aisle Monday afternoon for his comments about the president’s ongoing dispute with the Associated Press.
Among Trump’s first-day flurry of executive orders was one that purported to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America and to change the name of North America’s highest peak from Denali back to Mount McKinley, but the AP is only on board for the latter, citing the scope of U.S. presidential authority and its status as an international news organization as the rationale behind how it would identify both places.
The Trump administration has continued to bar AP reporters from the Oval Office, Air Force One, and other official White House events.
On Friday, the AP filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against three Trump administration officials: White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. The complaint specifically objected to the White House ordering the wire service to use specific words in its reporting and stated that it had filed suit “to vindicate its rights to the editorial independence guaranteed by the United States Constitution and to prevent the executive branch from coercing journalists to report the news using only government-approved language.”
Martin’s tweet, posted by the official account for the U.S. Attorney in D.C., included the following statement:
As President Trumps’ lawyers, we are proud to fight to protect his leadership as our President and we are vigilant in standing against entities like the AP that refuse to put America first.
The tweet drew swift and sharp condemnation from a wide swath of commentators, pointing out the grammar error — it should have said “President Trump’s lawyers,” not “President Trumps’ lawyers” — and more importantly, the constitutional conflict with that phrase, regardless of whether or not Martin got the punctuation right.
This article has been updated with additional content.
