Reporter’s widow rips Trump: ‘My husband was not an enemy of the people’

The widow of a former reporter in an editorial blasted President Trump for the continued attacks he’s made against the media, writing that it’s physically painful to hear Trump call journalists “the enemy of the people.”

“My husband, Mike Brick — the father of our children — was a journalist, a lifelong newspaper man,” Stacy Brick wrote in the Houston Chronicle on Friday.

{mosads}”He was the most honest person I have ever known.”

Brick went on to detail her husband’s journey as a reporter, from starting his own newspaper in elementary school to winning a Pulitzer Prize for his work in covering the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

“He always wanted to tell these stories, and he did — up until a few months before he died,” Brick wrote. “I often think of the stories he didn’t get to tell.”

She went on to criticize the president for the repeated attacks he’s made against the press and pointed to how her husband’s colleagues treated him after he was diagnosed with cancer as an example of how genuine journalists can be. 

She also laid out how difficult the job of a reporter can be, and detailed the experiences her husband had along the way. 

“The truth is that journalism is a brutal profession with constant layoffs, stagnant wages and long hours, yet somehow, in Trump’s mind, this is elitism,” she wrote, adding that she must tell her children to dismiss Trump’s rhetoric. 

“Trump’s words aren’t those of a person who knows how to lead and who has nothing to hide; they are the words of authoritarian leaders and tyrants — the words of a small man hiding behind a big desk who has no idea how to do his job.”

The essay from Brick comes as Trump continues to rail against the press for the coverage of his administration. Trump has consistently called the press “the enemy of the people” and has also gone so far as to say the media could cause a war.

The rhetoric has extended to many of Trump’s supporters, who have consistently heckled the media during the president’s rallies.

Last week, the FBI arrested a man who sent threatening messages to the Boston Globe after the newspaper led a campaign to publish coordinated editorials condemning Trump’s attacks against the press.

“You’re the enemy of the people, and we’re going to kill every f–king one of you,” Robert Chain, 68, of Encino, Calif., said in one of his phone calls to the news organization.