In a speech praising confrontation with the media, Donald Trump mocked reporters who were thrown around “like a little bag of popcorn” whilst covering protests this summer.
Speaking in Moon Township, Pennsylvania, the US president praised the National Guard’s actions against Minneapolis protesters as he attacked those sent to report on racial unrest.
Repeating well-worn attack lines against the media, Mr Trump said on Tuesday that reporters being manhandled by law enforcement was “beautiful”.
Providing supporters with an impersonation of reporters being pulled down, Mr Trump told the crowd: “They were grabbing them left and right,”
“Sometimes they’d grab — they grabbed one guy,” mocked the president.“ ‘I’m a reporter, I’m a reporter.’ Get out of here. They threw him aside like he was a little bag of popcorn,”
“I mean, honestly, when you watch the crap we’ve all had to take so long, when you see that it’s actually — you don’t want to do that — but when it, it’s actually a beautiful sight,” added the president.
He repeated: “It’s a beautiful sight,”
The same phrase was used to decide the moment Minneapolis police shot an MSNBC reporter with rubber bullets amid protests, which Mr Trump said on Sunday was another “beautiful sight”.
Speaking at a campaign rally in Minnesota on Saturday, the president had also praised the deployment of the National Guard to stop demonstrations this summer, following anger over the killing of George Floyd by police.
The US president has repeatedly accused the media of being “fake news” and an “enemy of the people”, saying recently in an interview with Fox News that it was not as bad as the others.
