As Americans get ready to celebrate Thanksgiving, President Donald Trump took to social media Wednesday morning to dispute an article published by the New York Times that said Trump is showing “signs of fatigue” as the 79-year-old “faces realities of aging in office.”
“The Creeps at the Failing New York Times are at it again,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social account. The president said he has “never worked so hard in my life. Yet despite all of this the Radical Left Lunatics in the soon to fold New York Times did a hit piece on me that I am perhaps losing my Energy, despite facts that show the exact opposite. They know this is wrong, as is almost every thing that they write about me, including election results, ALL PURPOSELY NEGATIVE.”
“This cheap ‘RAG’ is truly an ‘ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE,’” Trump wrote, using a phrase he has previously leveled at news outlets he doesn’t like.
According to Trump, “The writer of the story, Katie Rogers, who is assigned to write only bad things about me, is a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out.” Two weeks ago, Trump on Air Force One lashed out at a female reporter for Bloomberg News who asked a question about why he had not released the Epstein files, pointing at her and saying: “Quiet! Quiet, piggy.”
Trump concluded his post, “There will be a day when I run low on Energy, it happens to everyone, but with a PERFECT PHYSICAL EXAM AND A COMPREHENSIVE COGNITIVE TEST (‘That was aced’) JUST RECENTLY TAKEN, it certainly is not now! GOD BLESS AMERICA & MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
Over the course of 10 years, Trump has written nearly 3,500 social media posts that attack the press, according to an analysis by the not-for-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation. That averages out to about one per day.
The Times article was written by Rogers, a White House correspondent who has covered both of Trump’s terms in office, and Dylan Freedman, the paper’s AI projects editor.
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Asked for comment, Charlie Stadtlander, executive director of media relations and communications for the New York Times, said in statement: “The Times’s reporting is accurate and built on first-hand reporting of the facts. Name-calling and personal insults don’t change that, nor will our journalists hesitate to cover this administration in the face of intimidation tactics like this. Expert and thorough reporters like Katie Rogers exemplify how an independent and free press helps the American people better understand their government and its leaders.”
The New York Times article, published Tuesday, said that Trump “remains almost omnipresent in American life. He appears before the news media and takes questions far more often” than did his predecessor, former President Joe Biden. However, the paper reported, “nearly a year into his second term, Americans see Mr. Trump less than they used to, according to a New York Times analysis of his schedule.” The president “keeps a shorter public schedule than he used to,” per the article. “And when he is in public, occasionally, his battery shows signs of wear.” Trump is the oldest person ever elected U.S. president.
The Times article reported that at an Oval Office press conference on weight-loss drugs that began around noon on Nov. 6, “At one point, Mr. Trump’s eyelids drooped until his eyes were almost closed, and he appeared to doze on and off for several seconds.”
Meanwhile, Trump has sued the New York Times, alleging its reporting about his finances and business career defamed him, in a lawsuit seeking at least $15 billion in damages. (Trump lawyers refiled the suit in October after a judge had dismissed the original complaint for being “tedious and burdensome.”) The New York Times, in a statement last month, reiterated its position that Trump’s lawsuit was without merit and said it was “merely an attempt to stifle independent reporting and generate PR attention.”
From Variety US