Trump calls on Fox News to fire reporter over veterans flap

US President Donald Trump has demanded that Fox News fire its national security correspondent after she confirmed claims that the Republican leader had disparaged the military -- a bombshell that has dogged him for two days.   

Trump came under fire after The Atlantic magazine reported that he had called Marines killed in action in World War I “losers” and “suckers” in connection with a November 2018 visit to France when he skipped a visit to a US military cemetery.   

The official explanation for that missed visit was bad weather.   

Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin said two former administration officials had confirmed to her that the president “did not want to drive to honour American war dead” at the Aisne-Marne cemetery outside Paris, implying weather was not a factor.   A furious Trump tweeted late Friday: “Jennifer Griffin should be fired for this kind of reporting. Never even called us for comment. @FoxNews is gone!”

 Trump has furiously defended himself in the wake of the story in The Atlantic.   

 Several of Griffin’s colleagues at Fox have publicly defended her on Twitter, along with Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger, who called her “fair and unafraid.”

 Just before The Atlantic published its story, a poll by the Military Times and the Syracuse University Institute for Veterans and Military Families found that just 37.4 percent of active duty personnel support Trump’s re-election bid.
WASHINGTON AFP 
Sept 5, 2020