Former President Donald Trump has finally admitted giving interviews to establishment media outlets is a waste of time after granting 22 interviews for 17 separate books.
“It seems to me that meeting with authors of the ridiculous number of books being written about my very successful Administration, or me, is a total waste of time,” Trump began in a press release.
“They write whatever they want to write anyway without sources, fact-checking, or asking whether or not an event is true or false. Frankly, so many stories are made-up, or pure fiction,” he explained. “These writers are often bad people who write whatever comes to their mind or fits their agenda.”
“It has nothing to do with facts or reality. So when reading the garbage that the Fake News Media puts out, please remember this and take everything with a “grain of salt” Trump concluded.
Trump’s comments come after Michael Bender from the Wall Street Journal apparently wrote in his new book, for which Trump granted a meeting, that Trump said Hitler “did a lot of good things.”
Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow, author of Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption, during an appearance on Newsmax TV on Thursday, wished Trump would stop “giving interviews to the establishment press that has tried to destroy him.”
“They’re trying to destroy him,” Marlow continued. “And that was really the original thesis of the book, and we went much deeper into the corporatized [media in the book].”
Axios reported June 21 that “Trump personally made all these decisions” regarding to whom he granted interviews, sometimes lending 90 minutes of his time to an interview or asking the journalists to stay and eat dinner at Mar-a-Lago with him.
The following journalists have reportedly interviewed Trump after writing uncouth words about him:
- Michael Bender (Wall Street Journal)
Bender wrote a story on June 18 that made Trump look out of step with his son-in-law Jared Kushner in which he quoted a “confidante,” who relayed that Trump was angry with Kushner for leading him down the wrong path.
- Maggie Haberman (New York Times)
Haberman has described Trump after the 2020 election as someone who “can’t handle the concept of the label ‘loser.’”
- Jonathan Karl (ABC News)
Karl has attacked Trump for supposedly waging “an assault on truth” and accused Trump of dining “with Romney and Collins as he courts party loyalty in impeachment battle.”
- Phil Rucker (Washington Post)
Rucker has written of Trump, “After inciting mob attack, Trump retreats in rage. Then, grudgingly, he admits his loss.”
- Carol Leonnig (Washington Post)
Leonnig published an article in December about a petty dispute next-door neighbors of Mar-a-Lago have with Trump.
- Susan Glasser (New Yorker)
Glasser attacked Trump for labeling the establishment media “fake news.” She wrote the label was “an act of shameless linguistic larceny.”
- Peter Baker (New York Times)
Baker published a headline in February, when Trump was exonerated in his second impeachment trial, saying that it was “Not an Exoneration” but an “escape” of justice.
- Jonathan Martin (New York Times)
Martin bashed Trump’s “presence” in the Republican Party on April 10, writing “A gathering of Republican leaders and top donors in Florida this weekend is less a reset of priorities and more a reminder of the tensions that Donald J. Trump instills in his party.”
- Alex Burns (New York Times)
Burns took a shot at Trump in November, claiming the 2020 election had the “absence of a questionable outcome or any evidence of fraud,” while “President Trump managed to freeze the passage of power for most of a month.”
- Ryan Lizza (Politico)
Lizza asked a gotcha question to Trump’s former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany: Did Trump think “it was a good thing that the South lost the Civil War.”
McEnany said the question was “absolutely absurd.”
- Olivia Nuzzi (New York magazine)
Nuzzi was interviewed by Slate and spoke about “learning to report under Donald Trump, her regrets, and all the very dumb things she saw along the way.”
- Jeremy Peters (New York Times)
Peters wrote a headline in October after Trump had coronavirus: “As Trump Recovers, He Retreats to a Conservative Media Safe Space.” Meanwhile, Trump has been one of the most accessible presidents to the establishment media.
- Ari Fleischer (Fox News)
Fleischer reflected after the January 6 incident, that “at this point, I won’t defend him anymore.”
“I won’t defend him for stirring the pot that incited the mob. He’s on his own.”
- Ramin Setoodeh (Variety)
Setoodeh penned that Rosie O’Donnell, Trump’s sworn enemy in Hollywood, warned “us about Donald Trump’s misogyny” and “his false swagger,” and “braggadocio.”
- Michael Wolff (USA Today)
Wolff claimed Trump “does not read, does not listen. He is like a pinball, just shooting off the side.”
Trump has also given a few interviews to establishment media exiles, such as the Federalist’s Ben Weingarten and the New York Post’s Miranda Devine.