Donald Trump seemed to revel in the layoffs at Huffington Post and BuzzFeed, taking to Twitter on Saturday to claim “more will come.”
Trump tweeted, “Ax falls quickly at BuzzFeed and Huffpost!” Headline, New York Post. Fake News and bad journalism have caused a big downturn. Sadly, many others will follow. The people want the Truth!”
“Ax falls quickly at BuzzFeed and Huffpost!” Headline, New York Post. Fake News and bad journalism have caused a big downturn. Sadly, many others will follow. The people want the Truth!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2019 [1]
Both BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post have announced layoffs in recent days amounting to more than 1,000 lost jobs.
HuffPo [2] called it a “horrible month for journalism.”
More than a thousand people in the media industry have lost their jobs in January, in what has been one of the most brutal months for industry layoffs in recent memory.
Big media companies ― including HuffPost, AOL, Yahoo, BuzzFeed, a bunch of newspapers under Gannett, and other brands ― saw sweeping cuts as executives blamed Google and Facebook’s duopoly in the online advertising market for the ongoing decline of digital media.
To add insult to injury, 4chan trolls have been flooding the laid-off media workers with death threats, in what NBC News [3] called “a coordinated campaign organized on the far-right message board.”
The 4chan trolling was launched well before Trump decided on Saturday to make Buzzfeed, HuffPo and the laid-off workers a target of one of his tweets.
Journalists were furious:
Trump is happy about people losing their jobs
Wait till the reaction when he loses his… https://t.co/OJIDvlZ0Ba [4]
— Roland Scahill (@rolandscahill) January 26, 2019 [5]
American workers lost their jobs. https://t.co/9VOEVTQjXl [6]
— Dominic Holden (@dominicholden) January 26, 2019 [7]
President celebrates loss of American jobs https://t.co/i3YPIi2c5I [8]
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) January 26, 2019 [9]
Actually, Google & Facebook are sucking up the ad dollars. But @realDonaldTrump [10] is gloating about Americans losing their jobs. SAD! https://t.co/B5rHNnPtEc [11]
— Janet Novack (@janetnovack) January 26, 2019 [12]
I hope that, in time, Americans and people worldwide will understand how deeply cynical and sad this statement is. Until then, keep writing. https://t.co/LJXyLYuHoe [13]
— Margarita Noriega (@margarita) January 26, 2019 [14]
Dedicated journalists who've made careers by informing the public just lost their jobs. No one should make light of that and no one, especially the President, should mock Americans losing their jobs through no fault of their own. It's not about "fake news"; it's about real people https://t.co/ThksRHPG74 [15]
— Raja Krishnamoorthi (@CongressmanRaja) January 26, 2019 [16]
Area POTUS cheers American job losses https://t.co/tBha5djPz6 [17]
— Max Burns (@themaxburns) January 26, 2019 [18]
Just the President celebrating Americans losing jobs. Thanks again, everyone https://t.co/dHHWeg4aRa [19]
— No, The Other Gallagher (@Bearded_Hippo) January 26, 2019 [20]