September 14, 2019

Yet Again, Trump Attacks a Prominent Black Journalist

There’s a pattern here.

Ronen Tivony/ZUMA

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On Saturday morning, President Donald Trump tweeted an attack on MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid.

While the timing of the attack could be explained by the fact Reid recently wrote a book targeting the president—The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story—it was far from the first time Trump has made it a point to insult a prominent journalist of color.

In August 2018, he called CNN anchor Don Lemon “the dumbest man on television.”  In November 2018, the National Association of Black Journalists wrote an open letter protesting Trump’s recent “disrespect” toward three black female journalists in public question and answer sessions; he’d called them or their inquiries  “nasty,” “racist,” and “stupid.”

“The most powerful man in the free world is verbally abusing journalists… The past two years have been filled with assaults on the media and Donald Trump’s comments this week have reached an all-time low,” NABJ President Sarah Glover said at the time, adding that his remarks were “appalling, irresponsible, and should be denounced.”

One of the journalists attacked by Trump and cited in the NABJ letter, American Urban Radio Networks longtime White House correspondent April Ryan, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post with a simple conclusion: “He leaves little doubt about what he really thinks of us.”

 

 

 

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THE BIG PICTURE

You expect the big picture, and it's our job at Mother Jones to give it to you. And right now, so many of the troubles we face are the making not of a virus, but of the quest for profit, political or economic (and not just from the man in the White House who could have offered leadership and comfort but instead gave us bleach).

In "News Is Just Like Waste Management," we unpack what the coronavirus crisis has meant for journalism, including Mother Jones’, and how we can rise to the challenge. If you're able to, this is a critical moment to support our nonprofit journalism with a donation: We've scoured our budget and made the cuts we can without impairing our mission, and we hope to raise $400,000 from our community of online readers to help keep our big reporting projects going because this extraordinary pandemic-plus-election year is no time to pull back.

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