April 23, 2019

Trump Spends Morning Attacking Twitter, New York Times, CNN, Democrats, “Morning Psycho” Joe

The president appears to be angry.

Brian Lawless/ZUMA

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President Donald Trump on Tuesday fired off a string of furious tweets aimed at his perceived enemies in the media, including MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, the New York Times, CNN, and Twitter itself.

In attacking the Times, the president once again repeated his false claim that the paper had previously apologized for its past reporting of him and this time demanded that the paper’s editors “get down on their knees and beg for forgiveness.”

Trump also asserted that Democrats have “gone totally insane.”

Trump briefly interrupted the attacks to lavish praise on Fox & Friends, declaring it “by far the best” of the morning political shows.

Trump then alleged, without evidence, that Twitter was biased against him because he was a Republican.

Together, the morning tweets demonstrated a president enraged by what he believes has been unfair coverage that regularly fails to sufficiently credit him for his achievements. They came just days after the highly damaging release of a redacted version of the Mueller report.

The attacks on Tuesday, which appeared somewhat chaotic and disjointed, were largely met with derision on social media, with many noting how Trump’s newest tweets undermine his own claims that he is not an avid television viewer.

The Times responded directly to the president’s attack with the same statement it issued in February when Trump referred to the paper as the “enemy of the people.”

As for Scarborough, the MSNBC host responded to the new nickname given to him by the president—”Morning Psycho”—with the following banner:

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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