Trump: Social media the only way for me to ‘get the truth out’

President Trump in an early morning tweet on Wednesday said that his use of social of media is “the only way to get the truth out,” adding that the mainstream media is a “joke.”
“Wow, more than 90% of Fake News Media coverage of me is negative, with numerous forced retractions of untrue stories. Hence my use of Social Media, the only way to get the truth out. Much of Mainstream Media has become a joke!” the president tweeted, tagging “Fox and Friends.”
Wow, more than 90% of Fake News Media coverage of me is negative, with numerous forced retractions of untrue stories. Hence my use of Social Media, the only way to get the truth out. Much of Mainstream Meadia has become a joke! @foxandfriends
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2017
The president was referring a media research study that was cited on “Fox and Friends” on Wednesday morning.
Relations between the administration and the media have worsened in recent days after the White House hit journalists for a series of corrections made by media outlets such as CNN and ABC News.
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The president slammed the two outlets during a campaign rally in Florida on Friday after CNN was forced to correct a report saying Donald Trump Jr. had received access to hacked Democratic emails from WikiLeaks more than a week before they were leaked to the public.
ABC News had previously reported that former national security adviser Michael Flynn would testify that Trump had directed him to make contact with the Russians during the campaign, which they later corrected, saying it had happened after the election.
“Did you see all of the correction the media has been making?” Trump said. “They’ve been doing that all year. They never apologize. Maybe that comes with being the president, I don’t know.”
The president also targeted Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel on Saturday, calling for the publication to fire him after he tweeted a photo of an empty arena before a Trump rally in Florida that had been taken hours before the event started.
Weigel apologized for the tweet, which he had deleted after Daily Mail political editor David Martosko told him he had gotten it wrong.
Tensions boiled over in the White House press briefing on Monday, in which press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said media outlets were “purposely putting out information that you know to be false.”
“It’s not an honest mistake when you are purposely putting out information that you know to be false or when you’re taking information that hasn’t been validated, that hasn’t been offered any credibility and that has been continually denied by a number of people, including people with direct knowledge of an incident,” she said during a heated exchange with reporters.
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