NYT’s Friedman: ‘Trump is going to suck the brains out of so many reporters’

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman on Wednesday said President “Donald Trump is a brain-eating disease.” 

“I find from a journalism point of view Donald Trump is a brain-eating disease. He does so many outrageous things on a daily basis,” Friedman told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell.

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“It’s a real danger that Trump is going to suck the brains out of so many reporters and columnists because you spend four years outraged at him and you don’t learn anything, and he’s done so many outrageous things you can’t even keep track of them anymore,” Friedman said. 

He offered as an example Trump’s recent nominee to be the chief scientist at the Department of Agriculture. Sam Clovis, 68, withdrew himself from consideration on Thursday, amid controversy over his lack of experience and previous controversial statements. 

Clovis “shows such contempt for science and the department,” Friedman said. “And as a journalist or columnist you just sit there and say, ‘How can I not write about that, it’s so outrageous?’ And yet, if I write about it every week I end up not going out and learning or writing about all these other things.”

ABC News also reported that Clovis, a former Air Force officer and radio talk show host, met with Robert Mueller’s grand jury as part of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

He reportedly testified regarding his role in Trump’s 2016 campaign as a supervisor to George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his conversations with a professor with ties to the Kremlin in July.