President Donald Trump has downgraded Washington, D.C., from a swamp and placed the news media squarely in the center.
In a tweet early Monday, the president said:
Drain the Swamp should be changed to Drain the Sewer - it's actually much worse than anyone ever thought, and it begins with the Fake News!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2017
The reference harkened to the days when Washington Post cartoonist Herblock used to depict then-Republican Senator and VP candidate Richard Nixon coming out of a manhole to suggest the level of his political dealings and character.
That Trump downgrade followed a tweet Sunday about the "failing New York Times"—the president's favorite description of the newspaper to which he recently granted an interview—and "Amazon Washington Post," a reference to its ownership by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, saying it was hard to read either because all the stories that should be positive are "bad."
That came amidst tweets about "crooked" Hillary Clinton and calling Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, "sleazy" for appearing on TV—he is a frequent face on CNN, for example, another news outlet the president regularly attacks—talking about concerns with possible Trump administration ties to Russia.
