Donald Trump Targets NBC’s Katy Tur At A Florida Rally, And The Internet Rallies Around Her

Donald Trump’s vendetta against the media continued on Wednesday as he called out NBC’s Katy Tur in front of a crowd of more than 4,000 people in Miami. This situation comes after the Secret Service began protecting her due to Trump calling her out at a December rally. Trump has not hidden his distaste for the media. He castigates them whenever he can, and that narrative continued in Miami:

“Never before have so many media organizations, old and new, abandoned all pretense of fairness to take sides to try to pick a president. It’s unbelievable. For instance, we’ll have a great story. We’ll give it out to the media [and] they’ll make it look as bad as possible.”

His supporters agreed, and chants of “CNN sucks!” overwhelmed the crowd. But Trump’s complaints didn’t stop there, and he criticized President Obama for not working hard enough and bullied Tur about her reporting. He was not subtle about this and called her out by her first name:

“He ought to be working on jobs, on the border, on building up our military instead of campaigning for crooked Hillary Clinton. It’s what he ought to be doing. They’re not reporting it. Katy, you’re not reporting it, Katy. But there’s something happening, Katy. There’s something happening, Katy.”

This is not the first time Trump has called out Tur in front of a crowd, as he did it this past December. And even members of his campaign are not above using intimidation tactics with other reporters. Like any good reporter, Tur brushed off the name calling, but as she wrote in Marie Claire in April, the Secret Service was taking it seriously:

“It’s unlikely, however, that any of Trump’s future attacks will be as scary as what happened in Mount Pleasant, where the crowd, feeding off Trump, seemed to turn on me like a large animal, angry and unchained. It wasn’t until hours later, when Secret Service took the extraordinary step of walking me to my car, that the incident sank in.”

The situation surrounding Tur is unfortunately not a new one, as a frenzied Trump crowd can go to extreme lengths to preserve their fearless leader’s name, but some are concerned things could escalate quickly:

Trump isn’t afraid to rile up his crowds through inflammatory remarks, and he may keep it up. But Tur is not alone, as social media has gathered around her with the #ImWithTur hashtag campaign:

(Via Media Matters for America, Talking Points Memo, Raw Story & Marie Claire)

Go Vote

×