Trump in all his glory! "He's turned to bite the hand that fed him,"
Donald Trump's war on the press has gone nuclear.
"If the disgusting and corrupt media covered me honestly and didn't put false meaning into the words I say, I would be beating Hillary by 20%," Trump said Sunday in one of seven anti-media tweets.
The GOP nominee tweeted about no other topics on Sunday. His focus is exclusively on the news media that he says is "protecting" Hillary Clinton.
He also tweeted, "It is not 'freedom of the press' when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want even if it is completely false!"
The comment was widely derided by journalists, since the First Amendment provides broad protections against government interference with the press.
With Trump losing to Clinton in polls of key swing states, many Republican and Democratic analysts say they doubt that media-bashing is an effective strategy for persuading voters.
But Trump's most vocal supporters are literally cheering for him to fight the media. His crowds at rallies regularly boo and jeer the journalists who cover the events.
On Saturday night, when Trump said The New York Times is "going to hell" and threatened to revoke the newspaper's press credentials, the crowd applauded approvingly.
Politicians, particularly from the Republican party, frequently complain about media scrutiny and accuse journalists of being biased. But the ferocity of Trump's attacks is unprecedented in modern American politics.
He is explicitly running against the news media, even while running a campaign that relies mostly on news coverage instead of paid ads to communicate with Americans.
"He's turned to bite the hand that fed him," former Time Inc. editor John Huey said on Sunday's "Reliable Sources."
MORE:
http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/14/media/donald-trump-media-bias-first-amendment/