Donald Trump Snaps At NBC Reporter, Swerves Question With Tactic He’s Using More And More
President Donald Trump on Monday once again deployed what’s fast becoming one of his go-to responses when faced with uncomfortable questions from the media: “Who are you with?”
As Trump talked to reporters about what he claimed will be the imminent release of 80,000 unredacted files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, he was asked about his recent criticism of predecessor President Joe Biden’s reported use of an autopen during his presidency, despite having used one himself.
“You have criticized President Biden for using autopen in the last few days. Have you yourself ever used autopen, sir?” the reporter asked.
“Yeah, only for very unimportant papers,” Trump responded, before immediately contradicting himself. “And I don’t call them unimportant. When you do letters and people write in, they’d love to have a response. I’ll sign them whenever I can but when I can’t, I use an autopen. But to use them for what they’ve used them for is terrible.”
As the journalist attempted to follow up, Trump cut in and asked: “Who are you with?”
“NBC News,” the reporter replied.
“I don’t want to talk to NBC anymore. I think you’re so discredited,” Trump shot back before waving off the question and moving on.
Watch here:
Trump has claimed without evidence that a mechanical autopen device was used to sign papers on Biden’s behalf but without his knowledge, playing into the right-wing narrative of Biden’s inexorable cognitive decline.
In a middle-of-the-night social media meltdown Sunday, Trump used the autopen report to justify nulling pardons issued by Biden, although the legality of such a declaration has been called into question.
Trump has in recent weeks repeatedly sidesteppedtough questionsby asking ― “Who are you with?” ― and then discrediting the reporters or their outlets instead of answering their queries, as part of his ongoing war on media who cover him critically.
Trump used the tactic to dodge a question from HuffPost’s S.V. Dáte in February. When told HuffPost, he fired back: “Oh, no wonder. I thought they, I thought they died. Are they still around? I haven’t read them in years. I thought they died.” (HuffPost is not dead.)
Only last week, Trump slammed NBC as “one of the worst networks on television” ― but he was fast reminded by the reporter of his work with the organization via his long-running reality TV show “The Apprentice.”
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