WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump launched a bitter attack against the “illegal” media and his political enemies Friday, as a speech at the Department of Justice turned into a grievance-filled diatribe.
Trump — the first convicted felon to sit in the White House — was meant to be talking about law and order at an organisation supposed to be insulated from political pressure.
But instead the 78-year-old Republican spent much of his time rehearsing complaints that predecessor Joe Biden had “weaponised” the department against him and pledging to “expose” his foes.
“Our predecessors turned the Department of Justice into the Department of Injustice,” Trump said. “I stand before you today to declare that those days are over, and they are never going to come back.”
Since returning to office Trump has taken a sledgehammer to the Justice Department, which previously brought two criminal cases against him including one for allegedly trying to overturn the result of the 2020 election.
But in his speech he vowed to go a step further and investigate his foes, saying: “We must be honest about the lies and abuses that have occurred within these walls.”
He said his administration would “expel the rogue actors and corrupt forces from our government, we will… very much expose their egregious crimes and severe misconduct.”
Trump reserved special ire for US media outlets which cover him critically.
Speaking to an audience of prosecutors and law enforcement agents, Trump said broadcasters CNN and MSNBC and unidentified newspapers “literally write 97.6% bad about me” and “it has to stop. It has to be illegal.”
He described the media outlets as “political arms of the Democrat party. And in my opinion they’re really corrupt and they’re illegal. What they do is illegal.”
‘Fake news’
Trump has made attacks on the US media a central part of his message ever since his first election to the presidency in 2016 — describing them as “enemies of the people” and “fake news.”
Since starting his second term in January, Trump has moved quickly to pressure mainstream media like The Associated Press while boosting access to the White House for formerly fringe right-wing outlets.
Trump’s extraordinary speech stepped up his breaking of decades-old political norms aimed at preserving judicial independence from the White House.
Trump pledged on the campaign trail in the 2024 election to overhaul the department if he won a second term.
He had it in his sights ever since Special Counsel Jack Smith charged him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he still refuses to admit he lost, and illegally taking thousands of secret documents with him on leaving the White House in 2021.
But neither case came to trial and the special counsel, in line with a Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president, dropped them both after Trump won the November presidential election.
Trump rocked the department on his first day back in office by pardoning more than 1,500 supporters who, in an unprecedented act of US political violence, stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, seeking to interrupt certification of Biden’s election win.
