Trump at CPAC: Right’s Unlikely Hero Renews Attack on Press
reiterating his charge that “fake news” outlets are “the enemy of the people.”
The opening portion of the president’s free-range, campaign-style speech centered on a declaration of war on the news media — a new foil to replace vanquished political opponents like Hillary Clinton.
.. Mr. Trump, who once posed as his own public relations man to plant news stories in New York tabloids — and spoke frequently with reporters off the record during the campaign — called for an end to the use of “sources,” meaning anonymous sources.
.. “A few days ago, I called the fake news the enemy of the people because they have no sources — they just make it up,” he said. He added that his “enemy of the people” label applied only to “dishonest” reporters and editors.
.. After spending 10 minutes listing the shortcomings of the news media, Mr. Trump said criticism “doesn’t bother me.”
.. Mr. Trump’s speech this year — which included a promise to throw illegal immigrants “the hell out of the country” and a recitation of his law-and-order campaign promises — represented a not-entirely friendly takeover of CPAC, an establishment Republican group whose leadership once viewed the party’s surprise standard-bearer as a noisy interloper.
.. He followed his attack on the news media with a far-ranging preview of Tuesday’s address before Congress, offering an unspecified plan to improve the Affordable Care Act, ratcheted-up enforcement of immigration laws and a request for increases in spending that will result in “one of the greatest military buildups in all of history.”
.. Mr. Trump told the audience this year that the real reason he skipped the meeting was because his policy positions were “too controversial.”