Why Donald Trump's Accusation About A Former Pulitzer Prize Win Is Causing A Stir

Although Donald Trump can no longer communicate via Twitter and is going to court to try and have the social media platform reinstate him (via The Washington Post), the former president still uses email to get his messages out there onto the internet with often outrageous press releases, letters, and demands. Trump's press aide then tweets his statements, which then get amplified by reporters and other Twitter users who screenshot his statements and tweet them out themselves. 

One of his emailed demands on Oct. 3, 2021, raised a few eyebrows. Trump spent much of his presidency calling almost anything written about him that painted him in a negative light "fake news" and took special offense to any reporting that even hinted at allegations that his 2016 presidential campaign coordinated with Russia to help get him elected. 

Apparently, Trump is still smarting about that time in his life and wants the Pulitzer Prize Board to rescind 2018 awards to The Washington Post and The New York Times.

Donald Trump's letter to the Pulitzer Prize Board and is an emphatic demand that the 2018 prizes be rescinded for covering what he calls a "politically-motivated farce."

According to the board (via HuffPost), the awards for national reporting were given to The Times and The Post for "deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation's understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect's transition team and his eventual administration."

In his letter, Trump claims that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's 2019 report "exonerated" him of any wrongdoing in the Russia case. He also claims that a second special prosecutor, John Durham, indicted a cybersecurity expert who did work for Hillary Clinton's campaign for making false statements to the FBI, which proves his innocence. 

The former president also mocks both papers' reporting. "When it becomes apparent that a Pulitzer Prize-winning work was based on shoddy, dubious, and manifestly false reporting — as is the case here — The Pulitzer Prize Board must act accordingly."

As HuffPost points out, Mueller himself said that Trump had not been exonerated. "If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so," he said soon after the report's release.