President Donald Trump was booed Friday when he called the news media "vicious," "mean" and "fake" during a brief question-and-answer session following his pro-America speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The president, who as a New York businessman was long a mainstay of the city's tabloids, said that over his career he's gotten a "disproportionate" amount of press. Yet it wasn't until he got into politics, he said, that he saw "how nasty, how mean, how vicious and how fake the press can be."
The comment sparked a smattering of boos and hisses from the crowd, which included world leaders, heads of global companies, intellectuals and foreign media. While such anti-media remarks are familiar to Americans, Trump's attack was extraordinary for being made before an international audience, given that U.S. presidents historically have been global clarions for a free press.
The comments came when Trump sat down to talk with Klaus Schwab, the German founder of the forum, after sticking largely to his prepared remarks and declaring, "America is open for business."
Trump also indulged his obsession with his vanquished 2016 campaign foe for the foreign audience, telling Schwab the stock market would have gone down 50 percent if Hillary Clinton had been elected.
Schwab also took a swipe at the media. Loud groans were heard from inside the hall earlier when Schwab said, as he introduced Trump, "Your strong leadership is open to misconceptions and biased interpretations."
