US President Donald Trump
on Thursday said the newspapers that won the coveted Pulitzer Prize for their
coverage of the Russian investigation should return the highest award in
journalism.
"They are not
journalists. They are thieves. All of those journalists that we see with the
Pulitzer Prize should be forced to give those prizes back because they were all
wrong. You saw it today, more documents came out saying there was absolutely no
collusion with Russia," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office of the
White House. He said this after the Department of Justice said it was dropping
its prosecution of his former National Security Advisor Gen. (retd) Michael
Flynn.
"Pulitzer prizes
should all be returned because you know what, they were given out falsely. It
was fake news, they are all fake news. Those Pulitzer prizes should be given
back immediately and the Pulitzer committee, or whoever gives the prizes, they
are a disgrace unless they give those prizes back because they got Pulitzer
prizes for what turned out to be false stories," Trump said.
"Pulitzer prizes
should be given to the ones who got it right and I could give you a long list
of those names too, and you know who I am talking about," he added. Trump
said Flynn was an innocent man. "He is a great gentleman, he was targeted
by the Obama administration and he was targeted in order to try and take down a
president, and what they have done is a disgrace and I hope a big price is going
to be paid, a big price should be paid. There has never been anything like this
in the history of our country," he said.
"What they did, what
the Obama administration did is unprecedented. It has never happened, never
happened. A thing like this has never happened before in the history of our
country and I hope a lot of people are going to pay a big price because they
are dishonest, crooked people. They are scum and I say it a lot, they are scum,
they are human scum. This should never have happened in this country," the
president said.
He alleged that they went
after a duly elected president. "They went after him by going after fine
people and those fine people said no, I am not going to lie, I cannot lie. He
is not the only one, there are many of them and they all said I cannot lie.
They could have said something like make up a lie, Trump loves somebody or
something or some country and they said you would not have any problem. That is
what they were trying to do and it is a disgrace," the president said. --
PTI