President Donald Trump berated New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, recounting a phone conversation he had with the economist while playing golf.
“Two weeks ago, while speaking to a friend on his cell phone, I, unfortunately, ended up speaking to Friedman,” Trump said. “We spoke for a while and he could not have been nicer or more respectful to your favorite President, me.”
Trump described him as Thomas “the Chin” Friedman and said he was “a weak and pathetic sort of guy.”
He specifically criticized Friedman’s column noting the fear Trump would be re-elected because of his economic policies, even though he was a “racist.”
“I wasn’t surprised to hear so many people expressing fear that the racist, divisive, climate-change-denying, woman-abusing jerk who is our president was going to get re-elected, and was even seeing his poll numbers rise,” Friedman wrote.
Trump ripped Friedman’s two-faced approach.
“Really Nasty to me in his average I.Q. Columns, kissed my a.. on the call,” Trump wrote about Friedman. “Phony!”
The president also challenged Friedman’s praise of Rhode Island’s Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo, for reducing unemployment in her state, without giving Trump any credit.
“[S]he could not have done it without the tremendous economic success of our Country & the turnaround that my Administration has caused,” he wrote.
Trump blamed the Federal Reserve for forcing the United States to pay higher interest rates than other countries in the world, lessening the unprecedented economic boom.
“In other words, our interest costs are much higher than other countries, when they should be lower,” he wrote. “Correct!”