Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, advised Americans to take President Trump’s attacks on the media “seriously,” following the president’s denunciations of the press as the “enemy.”
“There’s been a debate about when to take the president seriously,” CBS’ John Dickerson said in a “Face the Nation” interview with Priebus Saturday. “He recently tweeted that the press was the enemy of the American people. Should we take that seriously from him?”
“Well, I think you should take it seriously,” Priebus replied. “I think that the problem we’ve got is that we’re talking about bogus stories like the one in the New York Times, that we’ve had constant contact with Russian officials. The next day, the Wall Street Journal had a story that the intel community was not giving the president a full intelligence briefing. Both stories grossly inaccurate, overstated, overblown, and it’s total garbage.”
Sources told CBS News there is a “chill” in the flow of intelligence to the White House, both because of comments from the president about the intelligence community and anxiety over the handling of sensitive information about Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The chief of staff continued to hammer the press for its coverage, saying “the American people suffer” because of it.
“I do think it’s a problem,” Priebus added. “And I think that the media needs to, in some cases -- not every case, John -- but in some cases really needs to get its act together.”
When Dickerson asked again whether the press was necessarily “the enemy,” Priebus responded: “I think that the media should stop with this unnamed source stuff. Put names on a piece of paper and print it. If people aren’t willing to put their name next to a quote, then the quote shouldn’t be listed.”
Priebus went on to say that the major story out of the White House is a “story of accomplishment,” pointing to the administration’s work in pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, issuing executive actions, and nominating a Supreme Court justice, among other things.
Dickerson then asked how the chief of staff would respond to anyone that could “act on that declaration by the president” that the press was the “enemy.”
“I don’t know what you mean by act on it,” Priebus said. “I mean, certainly we would never condone violence. But I do think that we condone critical thought.”
More:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-house-chief-of-staff-says-take-trump-seriously-press-is-the-enemy/Preibus actually impressed me with these comments - something I thought about as likely as Fat Boy doing so.
Of course, he agrees with me about "names or don't run it."
