Trump swears he doesn't follow ‘fake news' – then goes on rant about CNN, MSNBC and ‘sleazebag journalists'
Donald Trump attacked the media on Wednesday in a Truth Social post, criticizing recent coverage of a clip of him that seized on an interaction where he thanked Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and shook his hand during the president's joint address to Congress earlier this week.
'Like most people, I don't watch Fake News CNN or MSDNC, but I understand they are going 'crazy' asking what is it that I was thanking Justice Roberts for?' Trump wrote, using his pejorative nickname for MSNBC. 'They never called my office to ask, of course, but if they had I would have told these sleazebag 'journalists' that I thanked him for SWEARING ME IN ON INAUGURATION DAY, AND DOING A REALLY GOOD JOB IN SO DOING! The Fake News never quits!'
The moment at issue was relatively brief.
As Trump mingled with the crowd of dignitaries in the House who gathered Tuesday to watch the address, the president shook Roberts's hand and was recorded saying, 'Thank you again. [I] won't forget it.'
Some argued the exchange was emblematic of how the Supreme Court has enabled Trump in recent years.
'We can't know precisely what the president meant, but Trump does have a lot to thank Roberts for,' Adam Serwer writes in The Atlantic.
The Supreme Court delivered Trump multiple election-year victories, including a March 2024 decision blocking Colorado's move to strike Donald Trump from its presidential election ballot for his role in January 6, and a July ruling finding that former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions, effectively ending a federal case against the Republican.
Given the administration's broad, hyper-speed attempts to cut federal spending and shutter agencies, which critics allege overstep executive authority, the high court may also be a rare roadblock against the Trump agenda, given that Republicans control both houses of Congress.
The day after Trump's much-discussed handshake with Roberts, the Supreme Court ruled that the administration must pay out nearly $2 billion in foreign aid to groups that work with the U.S. Agency for International Development, despite the White House's attempt to freeze funding and shutter the agency.
Trump has a long history of criticizing the media, and his frequent attacks on the 'fake news' beginning in his 2016 campaign helped the term enter the popular lexicon. Over time, the criticism has taken on a more barbed, violent edge, with Trump calling mainstream news channels the 'true enemy of the people.'
Some of this rhetoric has been strategic, Trump reportedly admitted.
''You know why I do it?'' 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl recalled Trump once telling her in 2016. ''I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.''
The Republican's relationship with one news channel in particular, Fox News, has been a defining feature of his political life.
The network helped fuel Trump's political rise, and the Republican has staffed both of his administrations with numerous figures from the network. The current White House includes former Fox anchors and commentators as director of national intelligence and the secretaries of defense and transit.
During his first term, Trump was reported to have watched Fox for hours on end, sometimes live-tweeting his thoughts about various segments on favorite shows like Fox and Friends.
The relationship grew more fraught by 2020, when Fox News angered MAGAworld by accurately calling the Arizona presidential election results as a win for Joe Biden, despite reported attempts from Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner to lobby network leaders to revoke the call.
Fox's alignment with Trump proved problematic for the network in other ways, too, including having to pay $785 million to elections contractor Dominion Voting Systems to settle a defamation suit, stemming from repeated reporting agreeing with the Trump campaign's false claims of a rigged 2020 election.
The relationship got so tense that in 2023, network star Sean Hannity reportedly tried to appeal to Trump directly to stop attacking Fox and its owners, the Murdoch family, after Trump accused the network of 'collusion' to boost the political fortunes of his GOP primary rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
'Mr. President, I'm trying to help you out here with the Fox people here,' Hannity reportedly told Trump, according to Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump's Return to Power, a forthcoming book from Axios journalist Alex Isenstadt. 'But you're not making it easy for me by going after the Murdochs. You're not helping me. You're not helping yourself. If you can just lay off, we can start making some moves and getting back to normal.'
The attacks on the press have continued now that Trump is back in office, including blocking Associated Press reporters from covering official appearances because the wire service's influential style handbook has not adopted the administration's unilateral attempt to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
The administration, frustrated with the pace of deportations, has also cracked down on leakers speaking to the media about impending removal operations against migrants.
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Washington Post
37 minutes ago
- Washington Post
The politics of abortion have changed. Here's how.
Good morning, Early Birds. Here's hoping we see James Wood in the Home Run Derby. Send tips to earlytips@ Thanks for waking up with us. In today's edition … How abortion politics have changed in three years … An exciting race brewing in New York City … A well-funded, bipartisan anti-Trump political group launches … but first … Here's the latest on Iran. President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran last night on Truth Social. Both sides would finish their operations against each other, then halt hostilities by around midnight Eastern time. 'This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn't, and never will! God bless Israel, God bless Iran, God bless the Middle East, God bless the United States of America, and GOD BLESS THE WORLD!' he wrote. Israel and Iran didn't immediately confirm the ceasefire, leading to some skepticism from Democrats that it would hold. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said there was no agreement for a ceasefire but added that his country didn't plan military strikes after last night if Israel held off. Lawmakers may get some clarity when Congress is briefed today on the intelligence that led to the U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend. Christopher Landau, deputy secretary of state; Steve Feinberg, deputy secretary of defense; Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence; and CIA Director John Ratcliffe are expected to brief lawmakers, two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the briefings, told our colleagues Theodoric Meyer and Marianna Sotomayor. Democrats have been eager to see exactly what — if anything — has changed since March, when Gabbard said the U.S. intelligence community 'continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon' and that the country's supreme leader 'has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.' 'Have they changed their position? Did they get it wrong, and was Israel's intelligence community right? But if not, what in the hell is the president of the United States doing supporting a third country's policy and ignoring our own intelligence?' said Sen. Mark R. Warner (Virginia), the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee. 'Remember, messing with intelligence is how we got ourselves in the Iraq War.' Trump said the U.S. intelligence community's assessment was 'wrong' before launching the strikes, and Gabbard has since said the assessment was in line with Trump's policy. 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'Abortion really did matter (in 2024),' said Yasmin Radjy, executive director of Swing Left, a liberal grassroots organization. 'But I think we got feedback from voters that while abortion mattered a lot … we weren't reaching voters on other issues that, honestly, were more front of mind for them.' Radjy argued abortion messaging needs to be tailored to various audiences, differentiating between speaking to voters in a state controlled by Democrats that has protected abortion rights versus voters in a state where Republicans have rolled back the protections at the state level. In the immediate aftermath of Dobbs, some states implemented trigger laws that banned or severely restricted the procedure, while others enacted abortion protections through legislation or voter initiatives. Voters in some Republican-controlled states such as Ohio, Kentucky and Kansas also scored wins for abortion rights proponents in the years after Dobbs. In states where laws protecting abortion have not been passed or restrictions are in place, Radjy predicted, the issue will be even more salient in the coming elections. 'It is no longer, 'trust us when we say this is going to be bad.' It is people feeling and experiencing how it impacts people's lives,' Radjy said, noting that recent research has shown voters are often moved by how abortion bans hurt people in their network of friends. 'That is the difference. It is not storytelling about reproductive freedom as an issue. It is storytelling on how these bans and Republican power are harming people.' Abortion is already a key issue in the top two races on the ballot this year. Democrats in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial contests are focusing on abortion rights, and both have plans to mark the anniversary by hitting their opponents on the issue. 'This is the first governor's race in Virginia and New Jersey since Roe v. 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Newsweek
38 minutes ago
- Newsweek
The Inflation Time Bomb—Trump's Policies Will Hit Your Wallet Soon
Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the interpretation of facts and data. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. With inflation hovering modestly above 2 percent despite President Donald Trump's aggressive tariff increases and immigration enforcement, some might wonder whether warnings about his policies driving up prices were overblown. They weren't. The inflationary pressures are building beneath the surface, masked by timing, supply chain buffers, and massive corporate stockpiling ahead of policy changes. The time bomb is ticking—and consumers should begin bracing for the explosion. Trump's most disruptive policies didn't begin in earnest until months after his January inauguration. While he announced a 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods in late January, the real escalation came in March when rates jumped to 20 percent, then spiked to 145 percent by April before being partially rolled back. The administration's "Liberation Day" universal tariff on April 2 marked the broadest increase since the 1930s. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City on June 18, 2025. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City on June 18, 2025. TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images Immigration enforcement followed a similar pattern. Though raids began in January, the most aggressive workplace operations didn't intensify until late May, when Trump aide Stephen Miller pushed for 3,000 arrests per day—triple the early administration pace. Only recently have we seen dramatic workplace disruptions that at one point caused Trump to pull back on raids of farmers, hotels, and other key industries that rely on immigrants for labor. However, that pause proved to only be a brief reprieve, guaranteeing that the inflationary pressures from this aggressive immigration policy will continue to build. What truly delayed the impact of Trump's most inflationary policy was an unprecedented wave of corporate front-loading in late 2024 and early 2025. Companies rushed to import goods before tariffs took effect, creating exactly the buffer that's now insulating consumers from immediate price shocks. These panic purchases were so intense it caused the U.S. economy to contract 0.3 percent in Q1 despite robust domestic demand. By May, container imports fell 9.7 percent as the stockpiling surge ended and higher tariff rates took hold. By stocking up as they did, companies bought themselves time to ride through a few months of high tariffs without it affecting their bottom line. As Trump's trade war drags on, those Q1 stockpiles dwindle as companies forestall replenishing their inventories in the hope that tariff rates will suddenly come down. Freight bookings for April dropped 41 percent month-over-month as businesses adopted this "wait and see" approach. The gap between inventory levels and inventory costs has expanded to the third highest in the index's history. In essence, it is becoming increasingly expensive to store inventory while simultaneously becoming more expensive to replace it. The Federal Reserve's stance reveals perhaps the clearest evidence that policymakers anticipate the inflationary surge ahead. Despite months of consistently lower inflation readings and unprecedented presidential pressure to cut rates, Fed officials have held interest rates steady—a decision that only makes sense if they're bracing for future price pressures. By keeping rates elevated despite political pressure and recent good inflation data, the Fed is acknowledging their belief that current price stability is temporary. They're positioning for the inflationary impact they know is coming rather than reacting to the deceptively calm present. The ingredients for an inflationary surge are now in place: depleted inventory buffers, supply chain disruptions in essential industries, elevated tariffs on a vast array of goods, and increasingly fragile inflation expectations. When companies exhaust their stockpiles and face the choice between absorbing higher costs or passing them to consumers, the answer isn't just predictable, it is a necessary function of the corporate mandate to maximize shareholder value. Food prices are particularly vulnerable. With agricultural raids creating labor shortages during peak growing season and tariffs raising input costs, the sector faces a perfect storm. The lag between policy implementation and consumer impact is ending. Trump's own acknowledgment of economic "harm" from his policies—and his scramble to dial them back—suggests the administration has already seen internal projections of what's coming. The question isn't whether Trump's policies will drive inflation, but when Americans will feel it at the grocery store. The time bomb is real, and the fuse is shortening. Nicholas Creel is an associate professor of business law at Georgia College & State University. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
USA Today
39 minutes ago
- USA Today
Elton John warns against cutting funding for HIV programs in USA TODAY essay
Elton John, a tireless soldier in the fight against AIDS, is ringing the alarm bell on what he views as a potentially dangerous cut to HIV care in the proposed federal budget. In a new op-ed for USA TODAY published on Tuesday, June 24, John, the founder of the Elton John AIDS Foundation, lauded the Trump administration's support for several HIV care and prevention initiatives, but warned of cuts to state surveillance programs. "The proposal also ends federal funding to states for HIV surveillance, testing and education; for community-based organizations that reach those most at risk, and for substance abuse treatment and mental health programs that are crucial for driving down HIV infections," the singer wrote of a draft budget currently awaiting approval in the Senate. The article was written alongside Jeanne White-Ginder, the mother of Ryan White, a young boy whose infection with HIV in the '80s helped to destigmatize the disease and rally mainstream American political support towards a cure. "Attempts to cut Medicaid are also alarming, as more than 40% of people living with HIV have their care and treatment covered by Medicaid," he continued. "Without this essential insurance, scores of people living with HIV won't get the care and medicines they need to keep them healthy." Elton John documentary on Disney+ goes deep on music, drug use, John Lennon and family His comments address a rift in the Republican party over cuts to one of the most popular sections of the safety net in the United States. Medicaid, which provides medical care to millions of low-income Americans, is a point of contention in President Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" as GOP lawmakers struggle to find funding to pay for an expensive tax cut without ballooning the deficit. "The president has said don't mess with Medicaid. We agree," John wrote, referencing previous comments from Trump. "Programs that provide treatment, fuel prevention and fight stigma should be expanded, not eliminated, as we work toward eradicating the disease that ended Ryan's life," the singer wrote. "The moment of truth is here. As the administration and Congress consider their investment priorities for next year, we urge them to continue joining forces in the fight against AIDS in the U.S. and worldwide," John concluded. "Together, their investments over time have created this once-in-a-generation opportunity to end AIDS in the U.S. by 2030, as called for by President Trump. Together they can seize that opportunity by banking on prevention." Elton John and Bernie Taupin honored by Metallica, Joni Mitchell at Gershwin Prize ceremony John, inspired by the story of Ryan White, launched the Elton John AIDS Foundation in 1992. According to its website, the organization has raised more than $600 million in support of projects to "increase access to health care, tackle LGBTQ+ stigma, and end AIDS." Contributing: Brendan Morrow
