Trump: New York Times has ‘evil’ intentions

President Trump lashed out at The New York Times in an interview with Breitbart News on Monday, saying that he can handle rough treatment from the media but that the nation’s largest newspaper is out to sink him at any cost.  

“It’s intent. It’s also intent. If you read The New York Times, if you read The New York Times, it’s — the intent is so evil and so bad,” Trump told Breitbart’s Washington political editor, Matthew Boyle, in a sit-down interview in the Oval Office. “The stories are wrong in many cases, but it’s the overall intent.”

Trump pointed to a New York Times story from last May in which the paper — after interviewing some 50 women — reported that Trump had made unwelcome sexual advances or sought to shame them by critiquing their appearances.

{mosads}The story, which broke long before Trump’s off-camera remarks about grabbing women without their permission, was the subject of intense backlash after several of the women came out and said their comments had been distorted or made up to smear Trump.

“They did a front page article on women talking about me, and the women went absolutely wild because they said that was not what they said,” Trump said. “It was a big front-page article, and the Times wouldn’t even apologize and yet they were wrong. You probably saw the women. They went on television shows and everything.”

“It was false. Did they apologize? No,” Trump continued. “I call them the failing New York Times and they write lies. They write lies.”

The president singled out one of the authors of the piece, Michael Barbaro, in particular, saying he “has a website full of hatred of Donald Trump.”

“He shouldn’t be allowed to be a reporter because he’s not objective,” Trump said. “It’s not all, but it has many negative things about Donald Trump. But he shouldn’t be allowed to write on Donald Trump. And, he writes that story. But that’s one of many. So, when you read the Sunday New York Times, it’s just hit after hit after hit. And honestly, I think people are wise to it because if you look at the approval rating, you see it’s down. You know, it’s gone. There’s very little approval.”

The administration has repeatedly clashed with the Times and some of their individual reporters, like White House correspondent Glenn Thrush, whose tangles with White House press secretary Sean Spicer have been satirized on Saturday Night Live.

Trump on Monday also said he doesn’t despise all of the media, saying that he appreciates the work of Boyle, who was interviewing him, Reuters reporter Steve Holland and “many others.”

The president said the media had distorted his words by claiming he had called all of the media “the opposition party.”

Rather, Trump said he was only referring to “the fake media.”

“There’s a difference,” Trump said. “The fake media is the opposition party. The fake media is the enemy of the American people. There’s tremendous fake media out there. Tremendous fake stories. The problem is the people that aren’t involved in the story don’t know that.”

“I didn’t say the media is the enemy—I said the ‘fake media’,” he continued. “They take the word fake out and all of a sudden it’s like I’m against—there are some great reporters like you. I know some great honorable reporters who do a great job like Steve [Holland] from Reuters, others, many others. I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about the fake media, where they make up everything there is to make up.”