Trump Tweets Yet Another Attack on NY Times After Its Fact Check Exposes His ‘Misleading Words on Energy and Jobs’

The American People Are So on to Trump

The American people are on to President Donald Trump. Barely hours after CNN ran a report Tuesday night of Trump supporters expressing their desire for their president to “tone down” his tweeting (short clip below), Trump was back on Twitter attacking what has become one of his favorite media targets: The New York Times.

To be clear, for whatever reason, this is personal to Trump. The Times bent over backwards to take Hillary Clinton down, breathlessly reporting nearly every conceivable story surrounding her emails. The Grey Lady then went one step further, appearing to cover for Trump just before the election, reporting there was, in fact, no FBI investigation into his campaign. We now know, thanks to FBI Director James Comey himself, that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia as early as July.

In fact, Trump should be really focused on The Washington Post, which has done a stellar job investigating him, his team, and his campaign. 

Regardless, Wednesday morning Trump was back on Twitter, attacking his nemesis, the Times, after the paper of record published a fact check of the speech he gave Tuesday when he gutted President Barack Obama’s climate change plan.

“Remember when the failing @nytimes apologized to its subscribers, right after the election, because their coverage was so wrong. Now worse!” Trump tweeted.

That, like much of what the President says, is just plain false. In fact, it’s a lie. The Times did not apologize “because their coverage was so wrong.”

It’s a lie because Trump posted a similar tweet back in November, which PolitiFact rated “false“:

All the Times did was publish a letter from its publisher and its executive editor stating, “we aim to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories that we bring to you. It is also to hold power to account, impartially and unflinchingly.”

Hardly an apology.

The Times article Tuesday evening, “Fact Check: Trump’s Misleading Words on Energy and Jobs,” must have hit Trump where it hurts, given his historically low approval ratings and his inability to keep his campaign promises. A few excerpts:

“Mr. Trump said his executive order would pave the way for energy independence.”

The United States has been exporting more coal than it has produced for the past decade, and is expected to become a net exporter of natural gas by 2018, even with the Clean Power Plan in place, according to the United States Energy Information Administration.

Over all, the energy information agency projects that the United States will be a net exporter in most cases this year. The Keystone XL Pipeline, which Mr. Trump reminded that he had approved, will carry foreign oil into the United States.

“Mr. Trump said he has mandated pipelines to be built with U.S. steel.”

“This came up a little bit coincidentally when I was signing the pipeline deals. I’m all signing, I’ve got them done. And I said, folks, when do we get this deal? And they said, I think it’s from foreign lands. I said no good. Who makes it, who makes those beautiful pipes for the pipeline?Sir, they’re made outside of this country, and I said no more, no more. So we added a little clause, didn’t take much, that you want to build pipelines in this country, you’re going to buy your steel and you’re going to have it fabricated here.”

This needs context. Mr. Trump signed a presidential memorandum requiring domestic steel in new pipelines four days after he took office, but the White House has suggested that the Keystone Pipeline is exempt because it is not a “new” pipe. By this logic, the directive would not apply to the Dakota Access Pipeline either.

Neither of Mr. Trump’s memos greenlighting the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines includes language requiring American steel.

His lies exposed, it’s no wonder Trump is lashing out at the Times. 

But by now he should have realized the American people are on to him. 

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Image by Gianfranco Goria via Flickr and a CC license