Donald Trump is easily one of the most media-accessible candidates to have ever run for president in either party, but in a new book, he is quoted as having an intense disdain for the press, and even names a few reporters he finds particularly worthy of his scorn.
In the new book, Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success, by former newspaper reporter Michael D’Antonio, Trump says the news media is corrupt and untrustworthy. “There is tremendous dishonesty, tremendous dishonesty, in the press,” the Republican presidential candidate says in the book, which publishes Sep. 22.
Trump named three journalists who he holds in contempt.
One is Timothy O’Brien, the author of TrumpNation, an unflattering biography that led to Trump suing O’Brien for defamation.
Another is Graydon Carter, founder of the satirical magazine Spy, which mocked Trump as a “short-fingered vulgarian.” And the third is Wayne Barrett, who authored a book that painted Trump’s financial history as, at the least, shady.
“I believed in the press,” Trump says in Never Enough. “And when this guy [Barrett] wrote this way, I realized, ‘Wow, we’ve got a different situation than I thought. This is not an honest business.'”
“Now I’ve met some great reporters and writers and I’ve met some really dishonest ones, I mean, some really, really dishonest reporters and writers,” he said. “O’Brien would be one.”
He refers to the Spy magazine founder as “scumbag Graydon Carter.”
The book chronicles Trump’s ascendance in wealth and fame as a media sensation through more than three decades. The author’s interviews with him took place before Trump announced his bid for the GOP presidential nomination.
At the time, Trump anticipated that, should he run, the media would dutifully scour through all of his history.
“I’ll expose them as being very dishonest and it may work and it may not,” he said of his plan of defense. “Ultimately, it’s hard to beat the press. The press is so dishonest. But I will go after them. It’s hard to beat the press, but the good news is there’s some very honest media.”
By “honest media,” Trump was referring to Facebook and Twitter, where he often speaks directly to his millions of followers on social media.
Since his campaign launch in June, Trump has stuck to his word. He has lashed out at several media personalities and reporters, perhaps most memorably Megyn Kelly, a Fox News anchor who challenged Trump to answer for past disparaging comments he has made publicly about women.
Trump warned Kelly that he may stop being “nice” to her. After the debate, he attacked her on Twitter and in other interviews, saying she had “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her, wherever.”
Trump’s wariness of the press shows in D’Antonio’s new book, as Trump even takes a swipe at the author.
“It’ll probably be a bad book and I’ll regret doing it [interviews],” he said. “But, okay, I could sue you if it’s bad, but I won’t bother because the book won’t sell. People want positive, inspiring. That’s what you should write if you want a success.”
A spokesperson for Trump said he had not read the book.
Neither O’Brien, Carter, nor Barrett returned requests for comment from the Washington Examiner media desk.
