“A great step forward for the liberation of our Americas from one of the largest and most unpunished powers: the corrupt media.”
—Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, a close associate of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, after being awarded $40 million in a libel suit against the newspaper El Universo, which had the temerity to publish an editor calling him a dictator.
“The FAKE NEWS media…is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people! SICK!
—Donald Trump 4:32 p.m. tweet, Feb. 17, 2017.
“There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news. The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly. That will do much to put out the flame of Anger and Outrage and we will then be able to bring all sides together in Peace and Harmony. Fake News Must End!”
—Donald Trump 6:03 a.m. tweet, Oct. 29, 2018.
“The press is doing everything within their power to fight the magnificence of the phrase, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! They can’t stand the fact that this Administration has done more than virtually any other Administration in its first 2yrs. They are truly the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”
—Donald Trump 11:41 a.m. tweet, April 5, 2019.
“We’re going to open up those libel laws so when The New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or when the Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.”
—Donald Trump, in a campaign speech in Fort Worth, Texas, on Feb. 26, 2016.
“Why Isn’t the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!”
—Donald Trump tweet, Oct. 5, 2017, calling for an investigation of the news media, apparently unaware of the First Amendment which says, in part, Congress “shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
“We made them sign papers and everything…all of them, all lined up. Every day, I have a meeting at 12:30…and we plan the evening news.”
—Vladimiro Montesinos, former head of Peru’s intelligence service under President Alberto Fujimori, in late 1999, after paying $21 million to two television stations, giving him control over news programming, and bribing a stockholder of another in exchange for the firing of two investigative reporters.
“We ought to start our own network and put some real news out there, because they are so bad for our country. We’re looking at that. We should do something about it, too. Put some really talented people and get a real voice out there, not a voice that’s fake.”
—Donald Trump, on starting his own news network to counter CNN, in Oct. 3, 2019, speech to seniors at The Villages, Florida (an idea also floated in tweets on Nov. 26, 2018, and June 15, 2016).
