President Trump called Carl Bernstein, the veteran journalist who helped uncover the Watergate scandal, “sloppy” and thinking like a “degenerate fool,” comments that come after he accused CNN of “being torn apart from within.”
“CNN is being torn apart from within based on their being caught in a major lie and refusing to admit the mistake,” Trump tweeted Wednesday evening. “Sloppy @carlbernstein, a man who lives in the past and thinks like a degenerate fool, making up story after story, is being laughed at all over the country! Fake News.”
[New: Carl Bernstein to Trump: ‘No taunt will diminish my commitment’ to journalistic mission]
CNN is being torn apart from within based on their being caught in a major lie and refusing to admit the mistake. Sloppy @carlbernstein, a man who lives in the past and thinks like a degenerate fool, making up story after story, is being laughed at all over the country! Fake News
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2018
The tweet comes after Lanny Davis, who is representing President Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, admitted he was an anonymous source for a CNN report about the famous Trump Tower meeting that has come under scrutiny.
The report was written by several reporters, including Bernstein, and claimed that Cohen saw Donald Trump Jr. alert his father of the meeting with a Russian lawyer before it occurred. The report was significant because Trump has denied he was aware of the meeting ahead of time.
Additionally, the report cited anonymous sources and claimed that Davis declined to comment. But in a report published by BuzzFeed on Monday, Davis confessed he was a source.
[More: Trump rekindles war against ‘totally dishonest’ media]
As CNN’s reporting attracted scrutiny, Davis went on the record with other outlets to say he was their confirming source in follow-ups and apologized. A Washington Post follow-up to CNN’s story, which said Cohen told associates he witnessed a discussion between Trump Jr. and his father about the forthcoming Trump Tower meeting, had Davis as an unnamed source.
He admitted in a Post report last weekend that he was the source and that he doesn’t know for sure what his client may know about the Trump Tower meeting.
“I should have been more clear — including with you — that I could not independently confirm what happened,” Davis told the Post in admitting on the record he was the source. He added: “I regret my error.”
Davis also admitted to misleading viewers on CNN just last week, during an interview with Anderson Cooper, when he said he was not a source in the CNN report. “I think the reporting of the story got mixed up in the course of a criminal investigation,” Davis told Cooper. “We were not the source of the story.”
Davis told BuzzFeed News that this was false and that he was an anonymous source for the CNN article. “I made a mistake,” Davis said.
CNN has so far stood by the piece, and said the outlet is “confident in our reporting of it.”
