President Trump’s chief of staff accused the media of attempting to “delegitimize” President Trump on his first days in office and vowed to “fight back” against slanted coverage.
“I’m saying there is an obsession by the media to delegitimize this president, and we are not going to sit around and let it happen,” Reince Priebus said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We are going to fight back tooth and nail every day and twice on Sunday.”
Mr. Priebus pointed to a media report alleging a bust of Martin Luther King had been removed from the Oval Office on Mr. Trump’s first day as president.
“Turns out, it was completely false,” he said. “I walked back into the Oval Office, saw the MLK bust there, and what did the media say? The media said, ’Oh, our bad. Somebody was standing in front of the bust. We couldn’t see it.’ Can you imagine tweeting that President Trump removed the MLK bust? So that’s the first day — Day One, not even — like, hour three.”
He also said there was biased coverage about the crowd size at the inauguration and the content of Mr. Trump’s address.
“From day one after winning this election, President Trump talking about bringing people together, having a unified American public about unified ideas, not Republican or Democrat,” Mr. Priebus said. “He’s ready to get to work; however, the media from Day One has been talking about delegitimizing the election, talking about the Russians, talking about everything you can imagine except for the fact that we need to move this country forward.”
Fox News host Chris Wallace pushed back against the claim that the media misreported the crowd size at the inauguration, putting pictures on the screen that appeared to show greater attendance at former President Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009.
“This is a ridiculous conversation — but there were huge areas” of blank space at Mr. Trump’s inaugural, Mr. Wallace said.
He also said the Trump team chose to make the crowd size an issue at White House press secretary Sean Spice’s first official news briefing.
• Bradford Richardson can be reached at brichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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