WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump called CNN and MSNBC “political arms of the Democrat Party” and said, “what they do is illegal,” during a speech at the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday.
Trump blasted the cable news networks and other outlets in his remarks.
“And I believe that CNN and MSDNC, who literally write 97.6 percent bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat Party, and in my opinion, they’re really corrupt, and they’re illegal — what they do is illegal,” he said.
“It makes no difference how big a victory I had. I can have the biggest victory in history. It makes no difference what kind of a failure the other side has; these people are going to go after me,” he added.
Trump specifically expressed concerns about networks and outlets influencing judges:
But these networks and these newspapers are really no different than a highly paid political operative, and it has to stop. It has to be illegal; it’s influencing judges; it’s really changing law, and it just cannot be legal. I don’t believe it’s legal, and they do it in total coordination with each other.
Moments earlier, Trump said that “fake lawyers” employed attacks “public relations-wise” against Judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over the now-dead documents case brought by the Biden-era DOJ
“They were saying, ‘She was slow, she wasn’t smart, she was totally biased, she loved Trump,’” Trump said. “I didn’t know her other than I saw her the couple of days that I was in court, and I thought her decorum was amazing.”
He contended that such tactics are employed to try and get a judge to rule in a particular direction, and in his cases, those directions were convictions:
They wanted to scare the hell out of the judges, and they do it. And how do you stop it, if you’re a judge? Because you want to go home, you have a family of children, and the New York Times will write whatever these people say, and the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and MSDNC, and the fake news CNN, and ABC, CBS, and NBC, and they’ll write whatever they say. And what do you do to get rid of it? You convict Trump. All you have to do is be really tough on him and ultimately convict him, and they leave you alone. It’s totally illegal what they do.
Trump said Cannon was not impacted, despite efforts he perceives as trying to influence her decision.
“But in her case, she was very courageous, and it only made her angry … And it had absolutely no impact on her and the case against me,” Trump stated, calling the case “Bullshit.”
