President Trump went after the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell Jobs today.
Powell owns a stake in The Atlantic magazine, which ran the story that said Trump had called U.S. war soldiers and war dead ‘losers’ and ‘suckers.’
‘Steve Jobs would not be happy that his wife is wasting money he left her on a failing Radical Left Magazine that is run by a con man (Goldberg) and spews FAKE NEWS & HATE,’ Trump tweeted early Sunday morning. ‘Call her, write her, let her know how you feel!!!’
Trump had shared a tweet from Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, a youth conservative activist, that claimed Jobs had donated ‘at least $500,000 to Joe Biden’s campaign this year.’
A 70 per cent stake of The Atlantic was purchased by Jobs’ Emerson Collective in 2017.
Trump has been infuriated over Jeffrey Goldberg’s story about him in The Atlantic, first addressing its contents Thursday night after returning to Joint Base Andrews from his Latrobe, Pennsylvania rally.
He’s continued to tweet about it through the weekend.
Trump’s attack comes after he spent lashed out at another woman in media – Fox News Channel’s Jennifer Griffin, who used her own unnamed sources to back up chunks of the Atlantic’s reporting.
‘Jennifer Griffin should be fired for this kind of reporting. Never even called us for comment. @FoxNews is gone!’ Trump tweeted late Friday.
After Goldberg first reported anecdotes about Trump disparaging war dead and wounded veterans and not wanting to go to a military cemetery during a trip to France, Griffin matched must of his reporting.
She confirmed that the president’ did not want to drive to honor American war dead’ at the Aisne-Marnce cemetery.
Weather was the president’s original excuse for not making the trek.
An official also told Griffin that Trump used the word ‘suckers’ to describe those for fought in Vietnam.
‘When the President spoke about the Vietnam War, he said, ‘It was a stupid war. Anyone who went was a sucker,’ Griffin was told by an unnamed official. ‘It was a character flaw of the President. He could not understand why someone would die for their country, not worth it,’ the source said.
Former acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney accused Goldberg of entirely fabricating the report.
‘As you all can probably imagine, I have seen more than my share of outrageous (and false) attacks on the President over the last few years. But this whole injured soldiers thing really, really pushes the envelope,’ Mulvaney tweeted.
The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg told CNN’s ‘Reliable Sources’ on today that he expects ‘more confirmation and new pieces of information’ to come out in the coming days and weeks that will corroborate about the alleged incendiary comments.
Goldberg also addressed his use of anonymous sources, which has come under criticism from the president and others who believe that officials should not be allowed to launch bombshell allegations under the cloak of anonymity – particularly in the build up to an election.
‘These are not people who are anonymous to me,’ Goldberg told CNN. ‘We all have to use anonymous sources especially in a climate in which the president of the United States tries to actively intimidate journalism organizations and people who provide information to journalism organizations.’
Goldberg said his decision to publish the article was made confidently, because of the number of sources he had, and their close ties to the president.
‘The formula is simple,’ he continued. ‘What you do is you have to say, does the public’s right to know or need to know a particular piece of information outweigh the morally complicated and ambiguous qualities of anonymous sourcing.
‘Most of us, most of the time, don’t rely on anonymous sourcing for most things because there are difficulties there. But in this climate, with information that we judge the voters to need, we are going to use anonymous sources because we think the public has a right to know. Especially when you have four or five or six sources, primary sources, corroborating sources, telling you the same thing.’