“60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl says President Trump once told her that he attacks the press so no one will believe the negative stories written about him.
Stahl said at the Deadline Club awards dinner on Tuesday that she met with the then-president-elect at Trump Tower ahead of his first post-election interview on “60 Minutes.”
“And at one point he started to attack the press, and it’s just me and my boss and him … he’s attacking the press and there were no cameras, there was nothing going on,” Stahl said.
“And I said, ‘You know that is getting tired, why are you doing this? You are doing it over and over, it’s boring, it’s time to end that. You won the nomination, why do you keep hammering at this?’ ”
“And he said, ‘You know why I do it? I do it to demean you all and discredit you all, so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you,’ ” Stahl said.
Trump has repeatedly attacked the media as “fake news” since his campaign, often slamming negative reports about his administration.
Several of the reports that Trump has disputed have proven to be accurate, including a New York Times report that the president would hire former President Clinton’s impeachment lawyer Emmet Flood. Trump hired Flood a few weeks after the report, which he had initially called “false” and “wrong.”
The Failing New York Times purposely wrote a false story stating that I am unhappy with my legal team on the Russia case and am going to add another lawyer to help out. Wrong. I am VERY happy with my lawyers, John Dowd, Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow. They are doing a great job and…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 11 March 2018
The media has at times issued corrections to reports on Trump and his administration, as well, including some high-profile reports regarding the Russia investigation. Most recently, Trump seized on a correction issued by NBC News regarding the network’s story claiming Trump’s lawyer had been wiretapped by the FBI. Officials disputed that the attorney, Michael Cohen, was surveilled for telecommunications content.
Trump most recently attacked a bombshell New York Times story saying that his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., had met with a Gulf emissary during the 2016 campaign who offered to help Trump win the election.
