Trump goes on a tear against the media The president-elect attacks Vanity Fair as 'dead' and claims media is unfairly reporting on his vast business conflicts.

President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday morning popped off at the media — one of his favorite targets — taking to Twitter to rail against Vanity Fair and numerous reports hammering him for failing to disentangle himself from his business empire.

The billionaire reserved special scorn for the magazine, which has long been a foe of Trump’s. Graydon Carter, its veteran editor, coined the term “short-fingered vulgarian” to describe Trump while he was at Spy magazine.


“Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of @VanityFair Magazine. Way down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!” Trump tweeted at 8:05 a.m.

The magazine’s “Hive” online page has been needling Trump for days with provocative headlines, including “Trump Grill could be the worst restaurant in America,” “Does Reince Priebus have the ‘worst f***ing job’ in Washington?” and “Someone has finally agreed to perform at Donald Trump inauguration.”

But Vanity Fair wasn’t the only target of Trump’s ire on Thursday morning during his flurry of Tweets. He also railed against “the media” more generally, especially when it comes to his vast business conflicts of interest.

“The media tries so hard to make my move to the White House, as it pertains to my business, so complex - when actually it isn't!” he tweeted at 8:28 a.m.

It’s hard to know which article provoked that missive, but there’s been a slew of coverage about Trump’s failure to build a firewall between his presidency and his real estate empire.

Trump earlier this week pushed back a news conference that was due to be held on Thursday in which he was going to announce a grand plan to minimize his conflicts.

Instead, his team pledged an announcement in January ahead of his inauguration, and he sent off a few tweets with vague details about his plans.

In those tweets, he promised that “no new deals” would be done while he’s in office and said that two of his children — Donald Jr. and Eric — plus executives would run the Trump Organization. He notably left out his eldest daughter, Ivanka, who presumably will join him in Washington along with her husband, Jared Kushner.

In the absence of a detailed plan for managing the conflicts, Trump has faced a deluge of coverage. Plenty of headlines popped up this week over a letter from the U.S. Office of Government Ethics urging Trump to divest his businesses or place his assets in a blind trust, instead of asking his children to manage them.

Four congressional Democrats piled on, saying that the General Services Administration has concluded that Trump must divest his financial interests in his new luxury Washington hotel, located in the historic Old Post Office building. If he refuses, the lawmakers argued, he will violate the terms of his lease with the federal government as soon as he is inaugurated, since it bars elected officials from benefiting from the arrangement. The GSA, however, wasn’t as forceful in its own statement on the matter.

The activities of Trump and his adult children also are further raising eyebrows. POLITICO reported on Wednesday that Donald Jr. was involved with the interview process for interior secretary, despite his role overseeing Trump’s business interests while his father is in the White House.

And Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka all sat in on Trump’s high-profile meeting on Thursday with tech executives at Trump Tower.

But it wasn’t just the media that was irking Trump on Thursday morning. He also fired off a tweet again claiming political influence in the CIA’s assessment that Russia not only meddled in the U.S. election but was also trying to specifically boost Trump’s chances.

NBC News came out with a report Wednesday evening that went even further, citing senior U.S. intelligence officials who believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the hacking campaign against Democratic targets.

“If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House waite [sic] so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?” Trump tweeted at 8:39 a.m.

Trump did, however, have one upbeat tweet during his rant on Thursday morning. He offered gratitude to two media outlets who recently paid homage to how he’s upended modern politics — including through his Twitter feed.

“Thank you to Time Magazine and Financial Times for naming me ‘Person of the Year’ - a great honor!” Trump tweeted at 8:09 a.m.