The following article by Kevin Quealy was posted on the New York Times website July 26, 2017:
Six months into his presidency, President Trump continues to use his Twitter account to insult people. Increasingly, those people are journalists. His attacks against the news media are at their highest frequency and intensity since he took office.
In recent weeks, more than half of his insults have been directed at the media in some way, and the rate has been increasing for weeks amid recent reports that the White House is seeking to discredit journalistsreporting on the allegations of collusion between Russia and members of the Trump campaign.
As president, Mr. Trump has insulted the media with comments on Twitter like “dishonest”, “Fake News”, “phony”, “sick”, “DISTORTING DEMOCRACY in our country!”, “highly slanted”, with an “agenda of hate”, “phony sources”, “fabricated lies” and “the enemy of the American People.”
He has also increased attacks on two other prominent targets.
First, as his party has struggled to repeal Obamacare, Mr. Trump has repeatedly used Twitter to denigrate the law, calling it “failing”, “broken”, “dead”, a “disaster”, “in a death spiral”, “bad healthcare”, “imploding fast”, “a complete and total disaster,” “torturing the American People,” among other things. In a tweet Wednesday, he turned on a fellow Republican, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, saying she let the country down with her Tuesday vote against allowing the health bill to proceed.
Second, he has ridiculed the Russia investigation – and any investigation of his administration at all. Insults have included “Witch Hunt”, “phony”, “Sad!”, “fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election”, a “taxpayer funded charade”, “a total hoax”, “A total scam!”, “FAKE NEWS”, “the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history.” Among the targets is his attorney general, Jeff Sessions. Mr. Trump has said he now regrets appointing him in light of his recusal from the Russia inquiry. Mr. Trump called Mr. Sessions “beleaguered” and “VERY weak.”
And in the background still, despite the protests of his lawyers, Mr. Trump has continued to use Twitter to attack a diverse group of other people, places and organizations. These targets remain as wide-ranging as ever, including members of his own party, television personalities, the former F.B.I. director James Comey and television executives.
While the increased focus on the news media is new, the general behavior is consistent with a pattern we’ve identified before: Mr. Trump usually picks out a couple of chief enemies and attacks them until they are no longer noteworthy to him. This can last weeks or even months.
The chart above shows this quite clearly: Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton have all held Mr. Trump’s attention in this way. Nearly one in every three insults in the last two years has been directed at one of them. After winning the nomination, Mr. Trump narrowed his focus on Mrs. Clinton. After the election, his attention turned toward the subjects described above: primarily the media, Obamacare and the allegations of collusion.
These, too, fit a pattern. Mr. Trump has used simple and consistent messages, and his phrases have tended to be memorable – and in some cases textbook marketing. It’s an effective branding technique, researchers say, but Mr. Trump has not used it often to market his administration’s policies or legislation.
Finally, Mr. Trump has continued to find new targets. His pace of finding new people, places and things to insult has not changed since he became president. Our count stands now at 350, with more than 50 of them coming since his election. If he keeps to his current rate, he will have insulted more than 650 people, places and things by the end of his first term, and would reach more than a thousand by the end of a second presidential term.
These new entries are remarkably diverse, including the Broadway show “Hamilton”; the rapper Snoop Dogg; North Korea; Mr. Comey; John Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign; the recount effort in Wisconsin; the Freedom Caucus; the European Union; and dozens more.
As the list grows, we’ll keep reading, tagging and sorting through them all. Here’s our full list as of Wednesday morning.
View the post here.