Trump allies to investigate news reporters

CNN's Wolf Blitzer

As the 2020 presidential election approaches, it appears that reporters won't be the only ones "investigating."

Allies of President Trump are trying to raise $2 million to investigate reporters and editors who have been campaigning against him through their comments and editorials.

"I have been suggesting this for over 25 years, that journalists need to be investigated," radio host Rush Limbaugh said Tuesday, "because they sit there on a moral high horse claiming they have the authority to judge everyone else."

"They are stunned and they are paranoid and they are outraged."

The anti-Trump bias began during the 2016 election.

Jim Acosta of CNN made a spectacle of himself at one news conference when he refused to give up the White house microphone after the president had moved on to another reporter.

Then he "heckled" Trump at a G7 Summit news conference.

NPR reporter Yamiche Alcindor badgered the president during that news conference.

The president had said, "President Putin outsmarted President Obama" over the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Alcindor interrupted Trump.

"Why have you been using the misleading statement that Russia outsmarted President Obama when other countries have said that the reason Russia was kicked out (of the then-G-8) was very clearly because they annexed Crimea? Why keep repeating what some people would see as a clear lie?"

The Federalist described the exchange as a "member of the White House press corps rising to protect President Obama while calling President Trump's perfectly reasonable assertion a lie."

The report said that while the press "was soft" on Obama, its members have been "brutal" to Trump.

Jim Acosta (CNN screenshot)

Only about 14 percent of Republicans trust the media, and just 51 percent of Democrats believe the press would "do its job right."

Now Axios reports President Trump's political allies are trying to raise at least $2 million to investigate reporters and editors of The New York Times, the Washington Post and other outlets.

Axios reviewed a three-page fundraising pitch.

"This group will target reporters and editors, while other GOP 2020 entities go after the social media platforms, alleging bias, officials tell us," Axios said.

The strategy will be to "slip damaging information about reporters and editors to 'friendly media outlets,' such as Breitbart, and traditional media, if possible."

Those involved include GOP consultant Arthur Schwartz.

The move developed after a Times editor was exposed for past anti-Semitic social media statements, and the new group now is "using the exposure to try to formalize and fund the operation."

The primary targets, Axios reported, include "CNN, MSNBC, all broadcast networks, NY Times, Washington Post, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, and all others that routinely incorporate bias and misinformation in to their coverage. We will also track the reporters and editors of these organizations."

The left has been doing the same for years through the group Media Matters.

The Hill reported Trump long has labeled those who attack him as "fake news," and the New York Times described the targets, including itself, as "legitimate news reporting.

"Operatives have closely examined more than a decade’s worth of public posts and statements by journalists, the people familiar with the operation said," according to The Hill. "Only a fraction of what the network claims to have uncovered has been made public, the people said, with more to be disclosed as the 2020 election heats up. The research is said to extend to members of journalists’ families who are active in politics, as well as liberal activists and other political opponents of the president."

But the information released so far has been "authentic" and "much of it has been professionally harmful to its targets."

The White House said it is not even aware of the operation.

When the New York Times editorial board recently lashed out at the president over "fomenting anti-Semitism," suddenly in the news were "documented anti-Semitic and racist tweets written a decade ago by Tom Wright-Piersanti, who was in college at the time and has since become an editor on the Times’ politics desk."

When a CNN effort to expose old posts by a Trump appointee – "spreading suggestions that Barack Obama was a Muslim" – surfaced, suddenly there were documented reports of anti-Semitic tweets from a CNN photo editor.