Trump Lashes Out at Critical Media: ‘All I See is Hatred of Me at Any Cost’

An embattled President Donald Trump is hitting back at the growing raft of media reports critical of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic currently gripping the nation he ostensibly leads.

Trump has participated in nearly daily White House press conferences and has received bipartisan criticism for his inability to calm frayed national nerves nor present a cogent, unified approach to both the public health and economic effects from COVID-19.

Trump has long played the “best defense is a good offense” approach in dealing with any criticism, and his early Monday a.m. tweet seems designed for his base of supporters.  Trump included most major mainstream outlets and claimed: “All I see is hatred of me at any cost. Don’t they understand that they are destroying themselves?”

I watch and listen to the Fake News, CNN, MSDNC, ABC, NBC, CBS, some of FOX (desperately & foolishly pleading to be politically correct), the @nytimes, & the @washingtonpost, and all I see is hatred of me at any cost. Don’t they understand that they are destroying themselves?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2020

Trump appears to suggest that reports critical of his presidency will lead to the financial ruin of media companies, most of which he has listed are enjoying record readers, viewers, and revenue.

He’s been criticized in the past for an obsession with the media, which he pushed back on roughly 2 and a half years ago. Trump tweeted in December of 2017:

Another false story, this time in the Failing @nytimes, that I watch 4-8 hours of television a day – Wrong! Also, I seldom, if ever, watch CNN or MSNBC, both of which I consider Fake News. I never watch Don Lemon, who I once called the “dumbest man on television!” Bad Reporting.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 11, 2017

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