Maquoketa, Iowa - September 20: Former president Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a commit ... [+]
Donald Trump says the news media will be “thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage” should he return to the White House for a second term. In a post on his Truth Social platform Sunday night, Trump said the news media “are almost all dishonest and corrupt” and should be investigated for “country threatening treason.”
Trump has long disparaged journalists, at times calling them the “enemy of the people,” but on Sunday he threatened that news organizations are not “entitled to use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA for free.”
“I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events,” he said.
MAQUOKETA, IOWA - SEPTEMBER 20: 2024 Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President ... [+]
It’s unclear what sparked Trump’s outburst, which was initially directed at NBC News and MSNBC, which he said provided “endless coverage of the now fully debunked SCAM known as Russia, Russia, Russia and much else,” saying the reporting was “one big Campaign Contribution to the Radical Left Democrat Party.”
In a later message, Trump attacked ABC News, accusing the network of covering a new presidential poll without noting that the poll found Trump leading President Biden in a head-to-head matchup by 10 points, which ABC did, in fact, report Sunday morning. “This is what Fake News is all about,” Trump said, “and the public has quickly gotten wise to it.”