President Trump has proposed a plan to cancel all government subscriptions to the New York Times and the Washington Post, saying that it will save hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“Not renewing subscriptions across all federal agencies will be a significant cost saving—hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars will be saved,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in an email to the Wall Street Journal‘s Andrew Restuccia.
The proposal comes in the wake of the president canceling the White House’s subscriptions to the print versions of the newspapers, calling them ‘fake news’.
“We don’t even want it in the White House anymore,” Trump said of the Times during an interview with Hannity earlier this week.
“We’re going to probably terminate that and the Washington Post. They’re fake.” Trump added.
The WSJournal reported that a White House official has indeed confirmed that print editions of the Times and the Post were not delivered to the White House on Thursday.
The impact on the newspapers is sure to be significant, for example The New York Times receives around two-thirds of its revenue from subscriptions.
Both newspapers have profited massively from opposing Trump’s presidency.
Meanwhile, the Times via Paul Krugman suggested this week that Trump and his supporters will start using “mob” tactics such as “roughing up the witnesses” called to testify in impeachment hearings on Capitol Hill.
Phase one: try to discourage any investigation
Phase two: try to stonewall, telling officials not to testify
Phase three: physically disrupt the hearings
Phase four: ??? I hope Schiff, Pelosi et al are thinking about precautions. Anything is possible https://t.co/XAOypKHvcI
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) October 23, 2019
Krugman suggested that the Republican interruption of the closed impeachment hearing would be followed up, and that House Democrats should start “thinking about precautions” because “anything is possible.”
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