Also, Trump also accused Kovaleski of “using his disability to grandstand”.
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The incident took place on Tuesday at a SC rally as Trump was in the middle of defending a claim he recently made that he witnesses Muslims cheering during the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center tragedy.
It seems to me that Donald Trump has hurt a lot of people’s feelings- Hispanics, Muslims, Seventh Day Adventists, Democrats, Republicans, POWs, Asians, blacks, women, reporters, broadcasters, protesters, and even the disabled.
Mr Kovaleski has a congenital condition that affects joint movement.
Donald Trump said he couldn’t have been making fun of a reporter’s disability because he doesn’t know the man. Not so, says the reporter.
Trump’s assertions about Muslims celebrating in 2001 have been fact-checked and discredited by law enforcement and government officials who were in New Jersey in the days and weeks after the terrorist attacks.
The allegations could not be corroborated but persisted in rumors online for 14 years.
Trump lashed out Tuesday about the back-pedaling.
Kovaleski, who had previously worked at the Washington Post and the New York Daily News, had covered Trump many times in New York.
And for all his troubles, Trump is demanding that The Times issue him an apology. His impression of “a flustered reporter trying to get out of a statement he made long ago” was too exact, too specific, too close to Kovaleski’s reality to not be about him and his condition. Trump, however, says he doubts he ever actually met the reporter in question and Tom has more on that story.
The controversy started when Trump cited Kovaleski’s reporting during a speech earlier this week in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Since entering the Republican presidential race Donald Trump has been insulting our intelligence, shouting a seemingly endless string of exaggerations, misstatements, fantasies and fabrications that reporters have a hard time keeping up with. “I don’t know if he’s J.J. Watt or Muhammad Ali in his prime – or somebody of less athletic or physical ability”. “Despite having one of the all-time great memories I certainly do not remember him”, the candidate added. Kovaleski maintains the two knew each other for years. So when Trump began touting the Post article as proof of his claim, Kovaleski felt compelled to clarify his story.
“The measure of men”. That makes it hard to believe that the candidate has forgotten, or never knew, who Kovaleski is. “So now this person is going around saying I did know him, that he reported on me in the 1980s. This is despicable”, said Don Van Natta Jr., ESPN writer, via Twitter.
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And then this, hitting back directly at the newspaper: “The failing @nytimes should focus on fair and balanced reporting rather than constant hit jobs on me”.
