American President Donald Trump, who has been engaged in a bitter fight with the media, escalated the battle when he tweeted that he would not allow “our great country to be sold out by anti-Trump haters in the dying newspaper industry.”
His reaction came after A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, described Trump’s portrayal of the media as an enemy of the people, as “dangerous and harmful to our country.”
Sulzberger met Trump recently and said he told him that his language was not just divisive, but also increasingly dangerous. “I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence,” said the NYT publisher.
But Trump shot back at Sulzberger and the media in general in his tweet. “When the media - driven insane by their Trump Derangement Syndrome - reveals internal deliberations of our government, it truly puts the lives of many, not just journalists, at risk!” he tweeted. “Very unpatriotic! Freedom of the press also comes with a responsibility to report the news accurately.”
The President has more than 50 million followers on Twitter and the numbers continue to grow rapidly. His tweets have averaged at about six a day.
His officials have also started discouraging many journalists from attending events in the White House. CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, for instance, was told that she was not welcome to an event in the White House. She had earlier asked the President penetrating questions relating to Russian President Vladimir Putin and others.