‘You are fake news’: War breaks out between supporters of Trump & media on Twitter
A full-on war broke out between President-elect Donald Trump and the media at the end of his first press conference in 167 days after he called CNN and Buzzfeed “fake news.” The battle quickly spread to Twitter, where everyday Americans joined the fight.
Trump slammed CNN as “disgraceful” and Buzzfeed as “a failing pile of garbage” for their reporting on unverified accusations that the Russian government is blackmailing Trump with compromising personal and financial information about him, and that a two-page synopsis of the allegations was included as an annex to the classified version of the report prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election. The ODNI report was presented to President Barack Obama and Trump.
We had a great News Conference at Trump Tower today. A couple of FAKE NEWS organizations were there but the people truly get what's going on
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2017
The president-elect then refused to call on CNN’s Jim Acosta during his first press conference since July. “Be quiet. I’m not going to give you a question. You are fake news,” Trump said.
On social media, battle lines were quickly drawn between those who supported Acosta and the First Amendment’s right to freedom of the press…
... and those who back Trump.
Of course, there were memes on both sides of the war.
