President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters before heading to Canada for the G-7 Friday morning, delivered many wide-ranging remarks to reporters.
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Answering questions on the news of the day, President Trump weighed in on the stunning reports Thursday night including the Dept. of Justice secretly seizing years worth of email and telephone records of a New York Times reporter, Ali Watkins. The seizure also including the period of time when she worked for Politico and Buzzfeed.
The DOJ’s actions, which appear to have violated its own policies, raises strong questions of First Amendment violations. It led to the arrest of a former top Senate staffer for allegedly lying to federal investigators.
In response, President Trump insisted he supports freedom of the press.
“I believe strongly in freedom of the press. I’m a big, big believer in freedom of the press,” Trump claimed, despite evidence to the contrary. “But I’m also a believer in classified information. It has to remain classified.”
“That includes Comey and his band of thieves who leaked classified information all over the place,” Trump falsely claimed. “So I’m a very big believer in freedom of the press, but I’m also a believer that you cannot leak classified information.”
President Trump infamously shared highly classified information with top Russian officials inside the Oval Office, which led to the outing of the source of that information as Israel. He has also chosen to declassify classified information for political purposes.
President Trump also has waged war on the media for years. He has called reporters out at rallies, necessitating the Secret Service to provide at least one reporter with protection so she could leave the rally unharmed. He has also attacked reporters by name on Twitter. And nearly daily he attacks the press as the “fake news media.”
Those attacks on the press frequently include lies and misinformation.
Watch President Trump’s remarks from the White House grounds Friday morning: