Trump just declared me and my work friends "the enemy of the American people"

It's no secret Donald Trump isn't a fan of the media.

He once again made that clear during an aggressive press conference in which he defended his administration as a "fine-tuned machine" and denied his team had made inappropriate contact with Russian officials during the election campaign.

But this morning, the US President dramatically stepped up his attack on news outlets on his preferred medium Twitter:

The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!

It's not the first time that Mr Trump has referred to unfavourable coverage as "fake news", but for many journalists, the claim that they were "the enemy of the American people" crossed a line.

David Frum, a former speechwriter for George W Bush and a senior editor at The Atlantic, told MSNBC that the comment looked "a lot like an incitement to vigilante violence".

Angry Andy wrote:Begs the question of how long will the dark and covert branches of the US security services tolerate him . He is a deranged, out of control loose cannon. The IRS should publish/leak his tax returns, and impeachable charges should be brought against him from all directions.
He will have nowhere to run to or hide, will have the press and media hounding him to the point he has no alternative but to step aside.

The head of US Special Operations Command just gave a frank assessment of the state of the American government, and it wasn't pretty.

Speaking at a military conference in Maryland, Gen. Raymond Thomas told attendees: "Our government continues to be in unbelievable turmoil. I hope they sort it out soon because we're a nation at war."

Lord Independent Thoughts wrote:Are we really going to pretend that the mainstream media isn't in the DNC's pocket?  Really?
Didn't CNN leak debate questions to Donna Brazile?  Who then leaked the questions to Hillary to gain the advantage over Bernie Sanders?  And now you're wondering why Americans don't trust the media???
Donna Brazile out at CNN after WikiLeaks reveals she leaked more debate questions to Clinton

All throughout the election, the mainstream media has openly and unabashedly been rooting for and promoting Hillary.

Maybe if the lame-stream media would objectively report stories without the Liberal spin and bias, they would be more trusted.  As is, more Americans trust Trump than they do the media.  Just look at the polling over the past 2 weeks:

Trump administration seen as more truthful than news media: poll (Feb 8 )
Poll: Trump administration edges media in voter trust (Feb 17)

As unpopular as the left tries to make Trump, he's still trusted more than the media.

The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!

Lord Independent Thoughts wrote:
Are we really going to pretend that the mainstream media isn't in the DNC's pocket?  Really?
Didn't CNN leak debate questions to Donna Brazile?  Who then leaked the questions to Hillary to gain the advantage over Bernie Sanders?  And now you're wondering why Americans don't trust the media???
Donna Brazile out at CNN after WikiLeaks reveals she leaked more debate questions to Clinton

All throughout the election, the mainstream media has openly and unabashedly been rooting for and promoting Hillary.

Maybe if the lame-stream media would objectively report stories without the Liberal spin and bias, they would be more trusted.  As is, more Americans trust Trump than they do the media.  Just look at the polling over the past 2 weeks:

Trump administration seen as more truthful than news media: poll (Feb 8 )
Poll: Trump administration edges media in voter trust (Feb 17)

As unpopular as the left tries to make Trump, he's still trusted more than the media.

Lord Independent Thoughts wrote:
All those declarations of what America is and isn't... from someone that doesn't live in America.

Classic.

DONALD Trump’s war on the media is exposing a deep rift in the Republican Party.

The President’s loyalists are eagerly joining his crusade against so-called “fake news”, but others on the conservative side of American politics have recoiled at what they see as authoritarian-style rhetoric from the White House.

Senator John McCain, who was the Republican presidential nominee in 2008, is one of those worried Republicans. He issued a stark warning during an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd overnight.

“I hate the press. I hate you especially,” Mr McCain joked. “But the fact is we need you. We need a free press. We must have it. It’s vital.

“If you want to preserve — I’m very serious now — if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time.

“That’s how dictators get started. They get started by suppressing the free press. In other words, a consolidation of power. When you look at history, the first thing that dictators do is shut down the press. And I’m not saying that President Trump is trying to be a dictator. I’m just saying we need to learn the lessons of history.”

Those claims have indeed been the main focus of news coverage over the last several days. Most notably, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace got into a heated confrontation with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.

“You don’t get to tell us what to do, Reince. You don’t get to tell us what to do any more than Barack Obama did,” Mr Wallace said. “Barack Obama whined about Fox News all the time, but I’ve got to say, he never said we were an enemy of the people.”

“Let me tell you something, he said a lot of things about Fox News Chris,” Mr Priebus shot back. “I think you ought to go check the tape, he blamed you for a lot of things and I’m surprised, as someone from Fox, you’d forget all the shots he took at Fox News.”

“We didn’t like them, and frankly we don’t like this either,” Mr Wallace said. “But he never went as far as President Trump has, and that’s what’s concerning, because it seems like he crosses a line when he talks about ... that we’re an enemy of the people.

In the aftermath of Mr Trump’s press conference last week, several other prominent journalists also vented their frustration.

“It was a wild press conference,” CNN anchor Jake Tapper said. “It was an airing of grievances. It was Festivus. It was complaints about the media. And one point he said the leaks are real but the news is fake, which doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. He said things that were not true.

“It was unhinged, it was wild, and I can’t believe that there are Republicans who don’t understand that that might play well with the 44 per cent of the population who voted for the President, but a lot of Americans are going to watch that press conference and think, ‘that guy is not focused on me, I don’t even know what he’s focused on’.

“President Trump, if you’re watching, you legitimately won the presidency. Now get to work, and stop whining about it.”

Over at Fox News, anchor Shepard Smith joined the rant-fest.

“It’s crazy what we’re watching every day. It’s absolutely crazy. He keeps repeating ridiculous throwaway lines that are not true at all, and sort of avoiding the issue of Russia as if we’re fools for asking the question. Really? Your opposition was hacked, and the Russians were responsible for it, and your people were on the phone with Russia on the same day it was happening, and we’re fools for asking the questions? No sir,” Mr Smith said.

“We demand to know the answer to this question. You owe this to the American people. Your supporters will support you either way. If your people were on the phone, what were they saying? We have a right to know, we absolutely do. That you call us fake news and put us down like children for asking these questions on behalf of the American people is inconsequential. The people deserve that answer.”

Defense Secretary James N. Mattis said Sunday that the media is not the "enemy of the American people," refusing to align with President Trump's startling declaration last week.

“I’ve had some rather contentious times with the press,” he said in response to a question about whether he saw the media as an enemy. "But no, the press is a constituency -- as far as I’m concerned -- that we deal with and I don’t have any issues with the press, myself."