President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign will not issue press credentials to Bloomberg News until it restarts investigating 2020 Democratic candidates after its billionaire founder, Michael Bloomberg, announced his presidential bid.
“The decision by Bloomberg News to formalize preferential reporting policies is troubling and wrong,” Brad Parscale, President Trump’s reelection campaign manager, said in a statement on Monday, according to several news reports. “As President Trump’s campaign, we are accustomed to unfair reporting practices, but most news organizations don’t announce their biases so publicly,” he added.
“Bloomberg News has declared that they won’t investigate their boss or his Democrat competitors, many of whom are current holders of high office but will continue critical reporting on President Trump,” Parscale wrote. “Since they have declared their bias openly, the Trump campaign will no longer credential representatives of Bloomberg News for rallies or other campaign events.”
Parscale said the campaign will make a decision on interfacing with individual Bloomberg reporters or answering questions.
“This will remain the policy of the Trump campaign until Bloomberg News publicly rescinds its decision,” he said.
Last month, the news outlet’s editor announced in a letter to staff it won’t investigate the former New York City mayor or other Democratic candidates but said Trump is fair game.
“For the moment, our P&I team will continue to investigate the Trump administration, as the government of the day,” said Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait. “If Mike is chosen as the Democratic presidential candidate (and Donald Trump emerges as the Republican one), we will reassess how we do that.”
He added, “We will continue our tradition of not investigating Mike (and his family and foundation) and we will extend the same policy to his rivals in the Democratic primaries. We cannot treat Mike’s democratic competitors differently from him.”
It’s really hard to imagine what might come next on the Bloomberg News side of this campaign event ban. Their White House reporters are exceptionally talented, and a few are at the very top of their field. Not sure how tying their hands will affect them, or if they’ll all stay.
— David Martosko (@dmartosko) December 2, 2019
After Trump’s campaign made the announcement, Micklethwait claimed that Bloomberg News is not biased against Trump.
“We have covered Donald Trump fairly & in an unbiased way since he became a candidate,” he told Fox Business on Monday. “And will continue to do so despite the restrictions imposed by the Trump campaign.”
From The Epoch Times
