GUNS/MEDIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump condemned the deadly newsroom shooting in Maryland, declaring on Friday [6-29-18] that ‘journalists, like all Americans, should be free from the fear of being violently attacked while doing their jobs.’ Mr. Trump has labeled the news media ‘the enemy of the people’ and routinely encourages supporters at his rallies to join in his verbal attacks against the journalists covering him. On Friday, however, he chose the standard vocabulary of a political leader offering condolences. ‘This attack shocked the conscience of our nation and filled our hearts with grief,’ he said. Speaking at a White House event to celebrate his tax cuts, Mr. Trump, in brief remarks, expressed his ‘warmest, best wishes and regrets’ to families of the five people killed by a gunman who shot his way into the newsroom of The Capital Gazette in Annapolis, a local newspaper on Maryland’s shore…Mr. Trump did not refer to his own vexed relationship with the news media, choosing on this day to sympathize with a profession he normally vilifies. But his long history of antagonism with the media inevitably shadowed his response to the tragedy.”
-Mark Landler, “Condemning Deadly Newsroom Shooting, Trump Tempers Hostility Toward Media,” The New York Times online, June 29, 2018