WASHINGTON: Donald Trump unveiled the winners of his much-touted “Fake NewsAwards” late Wednesday, hours after a maverick senator from the president’sown Republican party accused him of employing Stalinist language to “slur”and undermine the free press.
Arizona lawmaker Jeff Flake levelled the broadside in an address from theSenate floor earlier in the day, delivering a one-two punch after veteranRepublican John McCain penned an op-ed assailing Trump’s spoof awards.
The brash Republican president announced his top-ten list — which includedhis regular targets CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post — usinghis preferred medium of Twitter, linking to a list published on theRepublican Party’s website that crashed minutes after his big reveal.
Below are the winners of the 2017 Fake News Awards, according to TRUMP.
1- The New York Times’ Paul Krugman claimed on the day of President Trump’shistoric, landslide victory that the economy would never recover.
[image: Trump Fake News winners]
2- ABC News’ Brian Ross CHOKES and sends markets in a downward spiral withfalse report, says Trump.
[image: Trump Fake News winners]
3- CNN reported that candidate Donald Trump and his son Donald J. Trump,Jr. had access to hacked documents from WikiLeaks.
4- TIME reported that President Trump removed a bust of Martin Luther King,Jr. from the Oval Office. The ‘Fake News Awards’ say this is wrong.
5- Washington Post wrongly, as Trump says, reported the President’s massivesold-out rally in Pensacola, Florida was empty. Dishonest reporter showedpicture of empty arena HOURS before crowd started pouring in.
6- CNN, according to Trump, falsely edited a video to make it appearPresident Trump defiantly overfed fish during a visit with the Japaneseprime minister. Japanese prime minister actually led the way with thefeeding.
7- CNN reported about Anthony Scaramucci’s meeting with a Russian, butretracted it due to a “significant breakdown in process.” Trump says it wasfalse
8- Newsweek reported that Polish First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda did notshake President Trump’s hand. Trump counts this story on the Fake News list
9- CNN reported that former FBI Director James Comey would disputePresident Trump’s claim that he was told he is not under investigation. Andit was wrong, Trump says.
10- The New York Times wrongly claimed on the front page that the Trumpadministration had hidden a climate report.
Flake slammed what he called the president’s dangerous disregard for thetruth, and his designation of the mainstream news media as an “enemy of thepeople.”
“Mr President, it is a testament to the condition of our democracy that ourown president uses words infamously spoken by Joseph Stalin to describe hisenemies,” said the senator, an outspoken Trump critic who is not seekingre-election this year.
“When a figure in power reflexively calls any press that does not suit him‘fake news,’ it is that person who should be the figure of suspicion, notthe press.”
Turning the tables on the president, Flake accused him of leading an“unrelenting daily assault” on the free press, even as his White Housecoined the term “alternative facts” — “as justification for what used to becalled old fashioned falsehoods.”
“2017 was a year which saw the truth — objective, empirical, evidence-basedtruth — more battered and abused than any time in the history of ourcountry, at the hands of the biggest figure in our government,” Flakecharged.
– ‘Dishonest media’ –
At loggerheads with much of the US news media since his election, Trumpfinally doled out his “Fake News Awards” after weeks of speculation,recognizing what he had called “the most corrupt & biased of the MainstreamMedia.”
Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman, who writes a regular opinioncolumn — not news articles — for The New York Times, nabbed the number onespot.
The administration said he merited the award for writing “on the day ofPresident Trump’s historic, landslide victory that the economy would neverrecover.”
Following the former reality star’s stunning rise to power, Krugman hadwritten that Trump’s inexperience on economic policy and unpredictabilityrisked further damaging the weak global economy.
The list also pointed to an error from ABC’s veteran reporter Brian Ross,who was suspended for four weeks without pay after he was forced to correcta bombshell report on ex-Trump aide Michael Flynn.
In follow-up tweets to his “Fake News” announcement, the commander-in-chiefposted that “despite some very corrupt and dishonest media coverage, thereare many great reporters I respect and lots of GOOD NEWS for the Americanpeople to be proud of!”
“Together there is nothing we can’t overcome — even a very biased media. WeARE Making America Great Again!”