Turkey's President Gave Trump Props For Shutting Down A Reporter
In refusing to take a question from a CNN reporter, Trump put him “in his place,” Turkish President Erdogan, whose country jails more journalists than any other, said on Thursday.
During his first news conference since the election, President-elect Donald Trump refused to take a question from CNN, deriding the outlet as spreading "fake news."
“No, I’m not going to give you a question," Trump yelled at CNN's Jim Acosta. "I’m not going to give you a question.”
“You are fake news,” he announced, having spent much of his earlier time during the conference addressing a CNN report about an unverified dossier of accusations against him — and BuzzFeed News' publication of the entire document.
Lucas Jackson / Reuters
But Trump got praise for his actions from an unsettling place: Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Erdogan railed against people in the press as attacking Turkish solidarity during the Gezi protests in 2013 and later terror attacks, comparing the local media's actions to those of their US counterparts. "Mr. Trump put the reporter of that [media] group in his place there," he said.
According to the Daily Sabah, which posted the video of Erdogan's remarks, the president was speaking "with local administrators at the Beştepe Presidential Complex in Ankara" when he gave Trump the verbal pat on the back.
That's a little worrying as according to the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, there are more reporters behind bars in Turkey than anywhere else on the planet.
Following a failed coup attempt in July, Erdogan launched a crackdown on journalists. At least 81 of them are behind bars and more than 100 outlets have been shutdown in the aftermath.
Ozan Kose / AFP / Getty Images