- On Sunday, President Donald Trump lashed out at the media on Twitter, calling for journalists to be sued, and demanding they return their "Noble prizes" for their work reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 elections. He swiftly deleted the tweets.
- It's likely he misspelled Nobel, but the Nobel Prize is not awarded for works of journalism. He could have been thinking of the Pulitzer Prizes.
- After deleting the threat, he tweeted again and asked if sarcasm ever works.
- It's the second time this week he's tried to deflect blame by saying he was being sarcastic. The first time was for suggesting injections of household disinfectants could be a treatment for coronavirus — a dangerous suggestion that horrified public health experts.
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President Donald Trump lashed out at the media on Sunday, telling them to return their "Noble prizes" for their reporting on Russia, before he swiftly deleted the tweets.
In a thread that's since been deleted, he wrote: "When will all of the "reporters" who have received Noble Prizes for their work on Russia, Russia, Russia, only to have been proven totally wrong (and, in fact, it was the other side who committed the crimes) be turning back their cherished "Nobles" so that they can be given to the REAL REPORTERS & JOURNALISTS who got it right."
He said he could give the Nobel Committee a "very comprehensive list," of those he deemed "real" reporters, then asked when it would demand the prizes back.
In the deleted threat he also said: "Lawsuits should be brought against all, including the Fake News Organizations, to rectify this terrible injustice. For all of the great lawyers out there, do we have any takers? When will the Noble Committee Act? Better be fast!"
The Nobel Prize is not an award for journalism. They are awarded for literature, physics, chemistry, peace, economics, and physiology & medicine. It's possible he was referring to the Pulitzer Prize, which are awarded to journalists.
Earlier in the month, he said New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman should give back the Pulitzer she won for her reporting on Russia, after she wrote a critical story about Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows, which went into detail about him crying at work.
After the president tweeted, Ben Rhodes, a former national security adviser in the Obama administration, wrote on Twitter: "Trump's weird obsession with the Nobel Prize seems entirely rooted in the fact that Obama won it."
Rolling Stone reported last year that he even asked Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize for his negotiations with North Korea — negotiations that are now stalled over North Korea's refusal to de-nuclearlize.
As "Noble" began to trend on Twitter, Trump pivoted to claiming he was only being sarcastic.
After deleting the thread, Trump later tweeted: "Does anybody get the meaning of what a so-called Noble (not Nobel) Prize is, especially as it pertains to Reporters and Journalists? Noble is defined as, "having or showing fine personal qualities or high moral principles and ideals." Does sarcasm ever work?"
On Friday he also claimed he was being sarcastic when he suggested on live TV the previous day that injections of household disinfectants might be a treatment for coronavirus, Business Insider previously reported. Household disinfectants are harmful and even deadly.
He said he made the comments "sarcastically" to "reporters just like you to see what would happen."
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