From President Trump’s February 16 press conference:
Video file
DONALD TRUMP: I'm making this presentation directly to the American people with the media present, which is an honor to have you this morning, because many of our nation's reporters and folks will not tell you the truth and will not treat the wonderful people of our country with the respect that they deserve. And I hope going forward we can be a little bit -- a little bit different and maybe get along a little bit better if that's possible. Maybe it's not, and that's OK, too. Unfortunately, much of the media in Washington, D.C. -- along with New York, Los Angeles in particular -- speaks not for the people but for the special interests and for those profiting off a very, very obviously broken system. The press has become so dishonest that if we don't talk about it, we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people. Tremendous disservice. We have to talk about it to find out what's going on because the press honestly is out of control. The level of dishonesty is out of control.
I ran for president to represent the citizens of our country. I am here to change the broken system so it serves their families and their communities well. I am talking and really talking on this very entrenched power structure. And what we’re doing is we’re talking about the power structure. We’re talking about its entrenchment. As a result, the media is going through what they have to go through to oftentimes distort -- not all the time, and some of the media is fantastic, I have to say, they’re honest and fantastic -- but much of it is not. They -- the distortion – and we'll talk about it, you’ll be able to ask me questions about it. But we’re not going to let it happen because I'm here again to take my message straight to the people.
