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Media not reporting terror: Donald Trump’s latest extraordinary attack

President Donald Trump has accused the media of refusing to report terror attacks.

During a speech at US Central Command in Florida, Mr Trump pointed to recent extremist attacks in San Bernardino, California, Boston and Paris.

“Radical Islamic terrorists are determined to strike our homeland,” he said.

“It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported. And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it.

“They have their reasons, and you understand that.”

Mr Trump did not specify at the time which terrorist incidents had been or were being ignored by journalists, but the White House reportedly later issued a list of terror attacks they believed had been “under reported”.

Among the attacks were the 2015 Paris attacks and the 2015 shooting in San Bernardino, which were widely reported by US media outlets.

The speech came soon after he had attacked the media on Twitter, accusing the New York Times of writing “total fiction” in a story about confusion in the Trump administration.

He also said on Monday that “any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election”.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump’s White House aide Kellyanne Conway has been pilloried for referring to a fake “massacre” three times.

The controversy began last week when Ms Conway defended Mr Trump’s travel ban on selected Muslim-majority countries by referring to the so-called “Bowling Green massacre”.

Ms Conway told US media outlet MSNBC that two Iraqis who had come to the US had been radicalised and become “the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre” — an event that never happened.

Ms Conway defended her wording by claiming she had misspoken, but raised the incident twice in two further interviews with Cosmopolitan magazine and TMZ to justify the Trump travel ban.

Kremlin demands apology from Fox News

The Kremlin added that it wanted an apology from Fox News over comments made by host Bill O’Reilly during an interview with Mr Trump on Sunday evening (US time).

Kremlin demands apology for Fox news interview

Bill O’Reilly labelled Vladimir Putin a “killer”. Photo: YouTube/Fox News.

In the interview, Mr O’Reilly described Mr Putin as “a killer” as he tried to press the president to explain more fully why he respected his Russian counterpart.

“We consider such words from the Fox TV company to be unacceptable and insulting, and honestly speaking, we would prefer to get an apology from such a respected TV company,” Mr Peskov said.

Fox News and Mr O’Reilly did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

US intelligence agencies have accused Moscow of having sponsored computer hacking to help Mr Trump win office, and critics say he is too complimentary about the Russian leader.

Mr Trump, when commenting on the allegations against Mr Putin in the same interview, questioned how “innocent” the United States itself was, saying it had made a lot of its own mistakes.

– with AAP

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