President Donald Trump escalated his war against the New York Times and The Washington Post by proposing Thursday that all federal agencies end their subscriptions to the two newspapers.
“Not renewing subscriptions across all federal agencies will be a significant cost saving—hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars will be saved,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in an email to the Wall Street Journal‘s Andrew Restuccia.
The federal government has hundreds of different agencies that subscribe to the two establishment media papers, many with multiple subscriptions.
Grisham announced Tuesday plans for the White House to allow their subscriptions to the papersto expire, but Trump’s proposal would be far more damaging to the subscription revenue for the two papers. The New York Times gets roughly two-thirds of its revenue from subscriptions.
Trump criticized both papers in an interview with Sean Hannity on Monday.
“We don’t even want it in the White House anymore; we’re going to probably terminate that and The Washington Post,” Trump said while speaking about the Times to Hannity. “They’re fake.”