President Donald Trump has asserted that much of the media is "distorted and fake" and said the US needs "truthful" reporting of stories which is not being done.
Much of it is fake news.I mean much of the media makes up stories. It's amazing, I speak to people, great people, people that voted for me. And they get it better than most people get it. But much of the media is distorted and fake," Trump told CBN.
"And you can see it, I won't mention specific networks as an example or newspapers, but I read stories that they write that are knowingly false. They are knowingly false," he said.
"They know it's a lie and they write them anyway and the headlines, and in the end, the media has now a 17 per cent approval rating which is shocking, I think I have done a lot of that, I think I have brought it down because at my rallies, I will speak and they will turn around and the people will start, I mean, going pretty wild against them," he said.
Trump said the US wants "truthful media". He said the country does not have truthful media.
"We have people that are, in many cases, I actually think they are sick people. Because some of the stories are so bad. For instance, in the oval office, we have a beautiful bust of Dr Martin Luther King. And they took that bust and they said that I removed it. I never removed it," he asserted.
Trump said he admired the bust of Martin Luther King Jr when he first entered the Oval Office.
"All of a sudden, there are major headlines all over the world that I removed the bust of Dr. Martin Luther King, which I would never do, because again, a man that I have great respect for and have admired over the years greatly," he said.
"And I call my people, why did you take that bust out? I wasn't here. Who took it out? I mean because me, I wasn't so nice. Who took it out? And they said, 'Sir, it was never touched'," Trump said.
"In fact, they were all nervous, I said they ran to the office just to make sure. It turned out it was there," he said.
"Well the person that wrote this, this was Time Magazine, the person that wrote this said I removed the bust. It turned out that somebody was standing in front of the bust so that you couldn't see. The bust is this big, right? It's like that. Somebody was standing in front of it. That is fake news. That is fake news. Now the apology, you know what it was? I don't even know if anybody gave an apology," he said.
Trump said the allegations against him was very serious.
"I had headlines all over the world, and I will tell you, it's a very serious thing because what they are doing is they are saying I'm a racist. See, they are not saying I removed the bust, they are saying I'm a racist. That is fake news. These people are bad people," he said.
Trump said the media is the opposition party in many
ways.
"I'm not talking about all media. I know people in the media that I have tremendous respect for. I respect them as much as anybody, so I'm not talking about everybody, but a big portion of the media, the dishonesty, the total deceit and deception makes them certainly partially the opposition party, absolutely," he said.
"I think they're much more capable than the opposition party. The opposition party is losing badly. Now the media is on the opposition party's side. And I actually said to myself, I say they treat me so unfairly it's hard to believe that I won. But the fortunate thing about me is I have a big voice. I have a voice that people understand," the US President said.
"And you see it now. We're bringing back jobs. The media is a disgrace. They have called me wrong from the beginning. I mean the New York Times has called me wrong from the beginning. They actually apologised to their readers. They lost a lot of subscriptions not because their readers even like me, they said how inaccurate could you be. Because if you read The New York Times, there was no chance that Trump was going to win," he said.
"And yet we go out there, and I felt I was going to win based on the crowds. You saw the crowds better than anybody. So, it's a very interesting fact," Trump said.
He said because of the "dishonest media", he uses twitter to get his word around.
"Generally just in the 140, but I can do messages around the media and get my word out the way I mean my word. I don't have to have the media distort my message because they go out of their way to distort my message," he said.
"When the media takes my message, knows what my message is, and then writes it purposely so that it doesn't sound good, I would rather do Twitter. And that is what I do," Trump said.
