Trump Threatens CBS, Bob Woodward and The Des Moines Register: ‘We Have to Straighten Out the Press’

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President-elect Donald Trump took questions from the press on Monday and promised a bevy of new lawsuits against media organizations in the wake of his settlement with ABC News, which saw the network pay out some $15 million and issue an apology.

Trump repeated his vow to sue pollster Ann Selzer, who published a bombshell survey in The Des Moines Register ahead of the election showing Trump trailing in Iowa – a state universally viewed as solidly in his column.

“She said I was going to lose by 3 or 4 points. And it became the biggest story all over the world because I was going to win Iowa by 20 points,” Trump began, adding:

The farmers loved me and I love the farmers. And it was interesting the way she did it. She brought it down two weeks before she said I was going to only win by four. That was a big story. But that was good because she brought it down from like 22 points to four or whatever the number was.

Way up, Way up. Easy win. Never even thought to go there. I respect them. I love them. And they understand there’s no reason to go there because she brought it from way up, walk away, which it was. And it turned out to be in the election too, by the way. It was a win by many, many points. And then she brought it down very smartly to four a couple of weeks before, and everyone said, Wow, that’s amazing. He’s only up by four points. Then she brought it down to I was down by 3 or 4 or whatever number she used, and that was The Des Moines Register and it was their parent.

Trump then explained why he believes he has a basis for a suit against the pollster, saying “And in my opinion, it was fraud, and it was election interference. You know, she’s got me right, always. She’s a very good pollster. She knows what she was doing. And she then quit before and we will probably be filing a major lawsuit against them today or tomorrow.”

“We’re filing one on 60 Minutes. You know about that, where they took Kamala’s answer, which was a crazy answer. Horrible answer. And they took the whole answer out and they replaced it with something else she said later on in the interview, which was a great answer, but it wasn’t like the first one,” Trump continued, repeating his criticism over CBS’s pre-election interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.

CNN reported in early November that “Trump filed a lawsuit Thursday against CBS, demanding $10 billion in damages over the network’s 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. The suit was immediately ridiculed by First Amendment attorneys, who called it ‘frivolous and dangerous.’”

“The first was grossly incompetent. It was weird, and that was fraud and election interference by their news magazine. A big part of CBS News. So, as you know, we’re involved in that one,” Trump continued on the topic, adding:

We’re involved in one which has been going on for a while and very successfully against Bob Woodward, where he didn’t quote me properly from the tapes. And then on top of everything else, he sold the tapes, which he wasn’t allowed to do. He could only use them for reporting purposes, not for sale purposes. And he admits that.

And I think we’ll be successful on that one. And we have one very interestingly on Pulitzer because reporters at The New York Times, Washington Post got Pulitzer Prizes for their wonderful, accurate, and highly professional reporting on the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. Well, it turned out to be a hoax and they were exactly wrong.

People, like many people, John Solomon, Sean Hannity, he’s not for Pulitzer, but Sean Hannity got it right. Many people got it right, Tucker [Carlson] got it right. Jesse [Watters] got it right. Laura [Ingraham] got it right. Jeanine [Pirro] got it right. A lot of people got it right. They get everything. They gave it to reporters.

“They got it absolutely wrong. And now everybody admits it was a hoax. And I want them to get back, take back the Pulitzer Prizes, and pay big damages,” concluded Trump. “And I think we’re doing very well on that one. They have no excuse for it. They gave a Pulitzer Prize to writers that got Russia, Russia, Russia wrong. And so I think we’re doing well. And I feel I have to do this. I shouldn’t really be the one to do it. It should have been the Justice Department or somebody else. But I have to do it. I costs a lot of money to do it, but we have to straighten out the press. Our press is very corrupt, almost as corrupt as our elections are.”