Donald Trump has called whistleblower Chelsea Manning an “ungrateful traitor” and criticized Barack Obama’s decision to commute her 35-year sentence by declaring that she “should never have been released from prison”.

Trump’s tweet on Thursday morning is the first time he has addressed Manning’s impending release, since Obama commuted her sentence in his final week in office:

Ungrateful TRAITOR Chelsea Manning, who should never have been released from prison, is now calling President Obama a weak leader. Terrible! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2017

As Mediaite noted, Trump tweeted his response using the same language that had appeared in a Fox News segment just 14 minutes earlier. As a picture of Manning was shown onscreen with the words “ungrateful traitor” brandished across it, Fox News anchor Abby Huntsman announced: “In a new article for the Guardian, the disgraced former army private is slamming President Obama as a weak leader with few permanent accomplishments.”

Minutes later Trump, who is known for getting his news from cable television, particularly Fox, tweeted using the same “ungrateful traitor” and “weak leader” language. This is the third such instance of Trump echoing Fox News coverage recently: Trump’s tweet about threatening to “send in the feds” to eliminate Chicago’s gun violence on Tuesday, and about flag-burning in November, also followed Fox News segments on those same subjects.

In a column for the Guardian on Wednesday, Manning wrote that the country needed a strong progressive president since the Obama administration’s policy of compromise would not work in a divided nation.



“Barack Obama left behind hints of a progressive legacy. Unfortunately, despite his faith in our system and his positive track record on many issues over the last eight years, there have been very few permanent accomplishments ... The one simple lesson to draw from President Obama’s legacy: do not start off with a compromise. They won’t meet you in the middle. Instead, what we need is an unapologetic progressive leader.”

In her column, Manning also chronicled the “seething vitriol and hatred” for Obama that she encountered in the military.



Manning, 29, will go free on 17 May, almost exactly seven years since she was first arrested outside of Baghdad, for passing on classified information in the biggest security breach in US military history.



The former US army intelligence analyst was sentenced in 2013 for leaking more than 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, exposing US military’s actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.