President Trump predicted on Thursday he will win the 2020 presidential race due to a media shift in his favor, telling The New York Times that the national news media knows it will “tank” without him in the White House.
In an interview at his Florida golf course, Trump said that ratings for “all forms of media will tank” unless he is in the White House, which will provoke positive media coverage from organizations that have been critical of his policies in the past.
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“Another reason that I’m going to win another four years is because newspapers, television, all forms of media will tank if I’m not there because without me, their ratings are going down the tubes,” Trump told the Times.
“Without me, The New York Times will indeed be not the failing New York Times, but the failed New York Times,” the president added, using his favored derogatory nickname for the newspaper.
“They basically have to let me win,” he predicted. “And eventually, probably six months before the election, they’ll be loving me because they’re saying, ‘Please, please, don’t lose Donald Trump.’ OK.”
Trump has frequently attacked the national news media while in office, and earlier Thursday asked his followers to help him award a “fake news trophy” for 2017.
“Americans are sick and tired of being lied to, insulted, and treated with outright condescension,” Trump’s fundraising committee wrote in an email to supporters Thursday. “That’s why President Trump is crowning the 2017 KING OF FAKE NEWS before the end of the year.”
“There’s no point in pretending that some journalists are anything more than peddlers of falsehoods and liberal propaganda,” the email continues.
In November, the president suggested a contest among the networks, with the exception of Fox News, for the “Fake News Trophy.”
“The FAKE NEWS has utterly abandoned their duty to fairly report the news to the American people,” Thursday’s email reads. “Some journalists and liberal pundits think that Americans are too stupid to see through their amateur efforts to manipulate public opinion, but THEY’RE WRONG.”