Donald Trump Announces His "Fake News Awards;" Washington Post Fact-Checks Each One

Donald Trump finally announced his much-hyped "Fake News Awards" last night on the Republican National Committee's website.

There was a sense of irony in that the posting and subsequent traffic caused the website to crash.

In any case, if you're wondering what's really bothering Donald Trump these days, here are his biggest pet peeves in terms of "news" from his first year in the White House.

1. The New York Times’ Paul Krugman claimed on the day of President Trump’s historic, landslide victory that the economy would never recover.

2. ABC News’ Brian Ross CHOKES and sends markets in a downward spiral with false report.

3. CNN FALSELY reported that candidate Donald Trump and his son Donald J. Trump, Jr. had access to hacked documents from WikiLeaks.

4. TIME FALSELY reported that President Trump removed a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. from the Oval Office.

5. Washington Post FALSELY reported the President’s massive sold-out rally in Pensacola, Florida was empty. Dishonest reporter showed picture of empty arena HOURS before crowd started pouring in.

6. CNN FALSELY edited a video to make it appear President Trump defiantly overfed fish during a visit with the Japanese prime minister. Japanese prime minister actually led the way with the feeding.

7. CNN FALSELY reported about Anthony Scaramucci’s meeting with a Russian, but retracted it due to a ‘significant breakdown in process.’

8. Newsweek FALSELY reported that Polish First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda did not shake President Trump’s hand.

9. CNN FALSELY reported that former FBI Director James Comey would dispute President Trump’s claim that he was told he is not under investigation.

10. The New York Times FALSELY claimed on the front page that the Trump administration had hidden a climate report.

11. And last, but not least: “RUSSIA COLLUSION!” Russian collusion is perhaps the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people. THERE IS NO COLLUSION!

On that last issue, it is well known that no final report has been filed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, so Trump's assertion that "there is no collusion" is merely his own used-car salesman hyperbole.

Sane folks should wait for the conclusion of the investigation to determine whether or not someone from Team Trump somehow cooperated with Russian agents during the 2016 election.

The Washington Post has taken the time to actually delve into the reality behind each of these. I encourage you to read the brief details behind them all here.

Here's the WaPo's summary:

To sum up, at least eight of the “Fake News” winners resulted in corrections, with two reports prompting suspensions or resignations.

Two of the winners were simply tweets that were quickly corrected and never resulted in news articles.

One was an opinion article in which the author later retracted his prediction.

This 2017 Fake News Awards... coming from an Australian you guys look like a goddamn joke to the world right now. Your government is about to be shutdown and this is what the president is focused on.

— Titan Butthole (@TitanButtHole) January 18, 2018

Looking at Trump's list for the 2017 Fake News Awards, I can't help but notice just about every example he listed was of the institutions issuing retractions and apologizing.

So Trump's idea of a bad thing is owning up to a mistake and apologizing. How revealing.

— HP (@Convoycation) January 18, 2018