Donald Trump Ramps Up His Feud With Reporters, Jokes He Might ‘Get Rid’ Of Some On A Rocket
President Donald Trump ramped up his already strained relationship with the press on Thursday when he suggested that he might send some reporters into orbit with the SpaceX rocket.
Trump cracked a joke about the rocket, saying that he could do without them for a while when addressing journalists about the upcoming launch, according to The Hill.
The president’s suggestion was about NASA’s upcoming launch, which will be their first manned mission since 2011 and leave from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
“I’m thinking about going, that’ll be next week, to the rocket launch,” Trump said when asked about the launch. “I hope you’re all going to join me. I’d like to put you in the rocket and get rid of you for a while.”
The president’s comments were only the most recent in a long history of negative interactions with the media.
According to The Hill’s report, just weeks ago the president suggested paring down the White House press corps to only a handful of reporters.
“You’re actually sitting too close. Really, we should probably get rid of about 75, 80 percent of you. I’ll have just two or three of you that I like in this room. I think that’s a great way of doing it.”
Journalists, along with other essential workers, have had to find new ways to keep themselves from being in aggressively close proximity to one another while covering the events of the White House and around the nation.
However, Trump’s frustration with the media has been growing for some time, stemming from what he believes to be unfair coverage of himself and his administration. One of the president’s most contentious relationships is with CNN Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta.
The Trump administration suspended Acosta’s credentials at one point but was later forced to reinstate his press pass.
The president has called almost every major network “fake news” at one time or another and either insinuated or outright accused many major journalists and anchors of either lying or misrepresenting the facts surrounding his administration.
While Trump’s relationship with Fox News has been more civil than most, he has even recently voiced frustration with their reporting.
The Inquisitr reported that Trump has also personally gone after MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and wife Mika Brzezinski. The president most recently asked for an investigation to the death of one of Scarborough’s former aides, insinuating that the former Republican lawmaker could be to blame.
