Grumpy Editor notes a Friday article in USA TODAY stirred some White House reaction with the headline and subhead: "The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down for no good reason. Trump wants to pull funding from Stars and Stripes, a newspaper for American troops that began in the Civil War and has been serving our soldiers.
Then a few hours later President Donald Trump said he planned to reverse Pentagon budget cuts that would have permanently closed Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper that has informed and spoken for American troops over the decades.
The USA TODAY story mentioned, "Under Defense Department spending plans, the paper would cease print and online publication by Sept. 30, a move seen as expanding the Trump administration’s war on news media to include those paid by the government to cover the military.”
The Wall Street Journal and Associated Press later carried similar stories on Stars and Stripes.
Trump late Friday tweeted, "The United States of America will NOT be cutting funding to @starsandstripes magazine under my watch,” adding, “It will continue to be a wonderful source of information to our Great Military!”
Grumpy Editor observes Trump, curiously, described Stars and Stripes as a magazine, not a daily newspaper distributed around the world to U.S. troops.
That means Trump is not familiar with Stars and Stripes.
The newspaper, headquartered in Washington and a souce of information for American troops since the Civil War, publishes four daily print editions for military service members with European, Middle Eastern, Japanese and South Korean editions.
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