White House reporters must show solidarity against Trump's "racist" attacks, leading media correspondent says
CNN’s chief media correspondent Brian Stelter just demolished
Donald Trump for the way he handled questions from CBS’s Weijia Jiang at the White House press conference in the rose garden.
Stelter said the president was clearly rattled by tough questioning at the end of the presser by Jiang. He tried to cut her off and turn to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins instead, but Collins deferred to her colleague to try to let her finish her questioning before Collins asked her question. Trump then tried to cut Collins off when she tried to ask her own question, and then abruptly ended the presser and walked off when Collins continued to try to ask hre questions.
“He didn’t want to hear the questions from Kaitlan and Weijia. It has racist overtones. It’s racist to look at an Asian-American correspondent and say ‘ask China’, it’s part of a pattern from the president,” Stelter just commented, live on CNN.
He continued: “He’s been rattled by Weijia Jiang’s questions in the past...he treats minority journalists in a very different way,” Stelter said.
He recalled how Trump dealt inappropriately with a question from correspondent April Ryan, who is black, when he asked her if she could arrange a meeting for him with the Congressional Black Caucus, in 2017.
Stelter continued, moments ago, that Trump “routinely targets women and minority journalists”.
Weijia Jiang describes herself in her autobiography as a Chinese-born West Virginian.
Stelter said: “The pattern [of Trump’s attacks] suggests a racial reaction...that’s deeply disturbing...normally you wouldn’t talk about her background.”
He called on all White House press corps journalists to support each other in solidarity against such targeting.
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