President Trump weighed in on the controversy surrounding a conservative New York Times columnist’s reaction to being compared to “bedbugs” on Twitter.
He agrees, columnist Bret Stephens is “loaded up” with bedbugs, he said in a tweet late Tuesday.
A made up Radical Left Story about Doral bedbugs, but Bret Stephens is loaded up with them! Been calling me wrong for years, along with the few remaining Never Trumpers – All Losers! https://t.co/KlzzMC40Vt
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2019
He doubled down on Wednesday morning.
“The infestation of bedbugs at The New York Times office” @OANN was perhaps brought in by lightweight journalist Bret Stephens, a Conservative who does anything that his bosses at the paper tell him to do! He is now quitting Twitter after being called a “bedbug.” Tough guy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2019
Stephens has been clear in his columns that he is not a fan of President Trump, which is likely what prompted the President’s reaction. The conservative columnist was criticized on Tuesday for retaliating against a media professor at George Washington University who made a joke about him being the source of the “bedbugs” outbreak at the New York Times.
Stephens reached out to the professor, Dave Karpf, to complain about the tweet and copied Karpf’s boss, the provost of George Washington University, on the email. Karpf told TPM Tuesday that it was clear Stephens wanted to get him in trouble professionally over the tweet, a move he called an abuse of his power as a New York Times columnist.
Stephens maintains that he wasn’t trying to damage the professor professionally, but rather, he wanted the school to know how Karpf was interacting “with the rest of the world.”
