Donald Trump hits out at media, says no chaos inside the White House

Trump said that the media is trying to attack his administration.

Washington, Feb 17: US President Donald Trump on Friday asserted that his administration is "running like a fine-tuned machine" and there is "no chaos" inside the White House as being reported by, what he called, the "dishonest" media.

"The media is trying to attack our administration because they know we are following through on pledges that we made, and they're not happy about it for whatever reason," he told reporters at a hurriedly convened White House news conference.

Trump, who has used the medium of Twitter and Facebook to convey his views and react to news stories, said that a lot of people are happy about his administration. But his political opponents and the media is not that happy, he said at his fourth news conference in a week. The other three were with the visiting world leaders from Japan, Canada and Israel.

"I turn on the TV, open the newspapers, and I see stories of chaos. Chaos! Yet, it is the exact opposite," Trump asserted during the news conference wherein he continued to bash the media calling them "dishonest and very fake". "This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine, despite the fact that I can't get my Cabinet approved," Trump asserted as his top aides were sitting in the front row including Vice President Mike Pence, top strategist Steve Bannon and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.

"So we have a wonderful group of people that's working very hard, that's being very much misrepresented about, and we can’t let that happen," Trump said in an apparent explanation of him holding a news conference that went on for 80 minutes.

In his lengthy opening statement, Trump listed out his achievements on multiple fronts including domestic, foreign, economy and defence. "We have made incredible progress. I don’t think there's ever been a President elected who, in this short period of time, has done what we've done," he said. "I ran for President to represent the citizens of our country. I am here to change the broken system so it serves their families and their communities well. I am talking, and really talking, on this very entrenched power structure, and what we're doing is we're talking about the power structure, we're talking about its entrenchment," he said.

"As a result, the media is going through what they have to go through to oftentimes distort -- not all the time -- and some of the media is fantastic, I have to say; they're honest and fantastic. But much of it is not -- the distortion," the President said. At several points, he was challenged by reporters on his allegations that the media is fake.

"I just see many, many untruthful things. I tell you what else I see. I see tone. You know the word 'tone'. The tone is such hatred. I'm really not a bad person, by the way. No, but the tone is such -- I do get good ratings, you have to admit that. The tone is such hatred," he told CNN's White House correspondent.

PTI