Donald Trump accused the media of “treason” in a furious rant about negative coverage aboard Air Force One on Friday.
“You’re a fake guy, and guys like you write about it incorrectly,” the president, en route back to the U.S. after his state visit to China this week, raged to New York Times journalist David Sanger over questions about Trump’s war with Iran.
“We’ve had a total victory, except from people like you, who don’t write the truth,” he went on, after listing all the reasons he believes the conflict, which remains subject to a shaky temporary ceasefire, has been a “complete” success.
“You should write the truth. I actually think it’s kind of treasonous, what you write,” the president said, becoming visibly more irate. “You and the New York Times, and CNN, I would say, are the worst. You should know better, you know better, you’re a professional. Your editors tell you what to write, and you write it. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
Another reporter then interjected with another question, but Trump refused to let it go. “I actually think it’s treason,” he fumed. “You write like, ‘they’re doing well militarily,’ and they’ve no navy, no air force, no anti-anything!”
Trump then further reeled off a list of all the things he says he can still do to hurt the Islamic regime. “In two days, we could knock out the whole thing,” he said. “And then I read the New York Times, and they act like they’re doing well. Everybody knows that’s why your subscribers are way down!”
“Way down!” he then barked at the reporter, before pivoting to take questions from a BBC journalist, who asked about the alleged U.S. missile strike that hit an Iranian school on the first day of Trump’s campaign.
“Who are you with?!” the president demanded to know. “Fake BBC! You mean the one who put AI in my mouth? The ones that had me saying a statement that they now admit was not true? The ones that put terrible words in my mouth, and then had to admit that it was fake?”
“You’re with BBC? They’re another fake outfit!” he added.
The BBC did not “put AI” in Trump’s mouth. He is currently suing the British broadcaster after it spliced together two sections of his speech ahead of the January 6 attack on the Capitol, pulled from nearly an hour apart, in a way that gave the impression he had directly urged supporters to storm the building.
The edit in question, which was included in a 2024 documentaery that never aired in the U.S., featured Trump saying “walk down to the Capitol” and “fight like hell.” He made both of those comments, just not one after the other, and had earlier issued a call to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
The BBC has since apologized for what it called an “error of judgment” over the show, which was commissioned from an external production company. Two of its senior executives resigned over the fallout, and the broadcaster has now vowed to fight Trump’s $10 billion defamation suit in court.
Trump’s mid-air meltdown comes after a China trip ridden with snubs, gaffes, blunders, and embarrassing U-turns.
These have included Chinese President Xi Jinping skipping the tarmac welcome, and Chinese state censors allowing a wave of social media posts mocking the U.S. as a “paper tiger” to go viral.
U.S. pundits have meanwhile blasted Elon Musk, who accompanied the president on the trip, for pulling bizarre faces at a state banquet held in Trump’s honor.
