Trump's Fake News Awards

DONALD Trump’s inaugural “Fake News Awards” got off to a bad start.

The US President’s latest salvo in his ongoing battle with the mainstream media was eagerly awaited.

But it wasn’t the red carpet that went askew, or a cringe-worthy opening monologue, because there were neither of those.

No, in true Trump tradition, the President sent out a tweet with a link to the awards on the Republican Party website. But rather than a list of the “winners” all you got was an “Error 404 page”. The Republican Party said, “Traffic was off the charts. Come back soon.”

Once the golden envelope was opened, it was some of the biggest names in the US media who were invited up to the podium to collect their dubious honour.

“2017 was a year of unrelenting bias, unfair news coverage, and even downright fake news,” read the release on the Republican Party website.

“Studies have shown that over 90 per cent of the media’s coverage of Cheeto-Faced Ferret-Wearing Shit Gibbon is negative.”

Sadly, those “studies” weren’t on the page so couldn’t be interrogated.

The president singled out 11 news items for being “fake”. The New York Times, ABC USA, Time, Newsweek and the Washington Post were all on the list.


Big Little Lies dominated the Golden Globes and Trump clearly thought his news channel nemesis, CNN, told a few of those, awarding the channel four — count ’em, four — Fakeys.

Breitbart News, the former home of one-time Trump whisperer Steve Bannon, was not on the list. The President agrees that none of its news was fake.

But before we all join the faux rodeo and trot off blissfully into a golden future of Trumpian truths, it’s worth noting the big man himself is hardly above the odd fib.

Like all those years when he insisted that Barack Obama was not a US citizen at all and so was ineligible to be President. NOT TRUE!

Or more recently, when he blamed Obama for spending billions on a new US embassy in London which he subsequently has refused to open. NOT TRUE! It was President George W. Bush who signed off on that sweet deal.

While Trump may trumpet the news stories that have later been proven to be mistaken or lacking in rigour, he is still struggling to shake off the view that he fails to tell the American people the truth.

Last week, the Washington Post (they got a Fakey) calculated that Trump had just uttered his 2000th falsehood while in office — an average of 5.6 lies per day.

The “Lie2K”, as it’s been dubbed, took flight last Tuesday, the paper claimed, when Trump said: “We can build [a border wall with Mexico] in one year and we can build it for much less money than what they’re talking about.”

The paper said that “under no scenario can the wall on the Mexican border be built in just one year. It’s at least a four-year project that could cost US$25 billion”.