Trump Battles Reporter Over Nuke Deal, Enriched Uranium: ‘Why Do You Call It Dust? It’s Not Dust!’

President Donald Trump brawled with New York Times White House and National Security Correspondent David Sanger aboard Air Force One over the Iran nuclear deal, former President Barack Obama, and “nuclear dust.”

The president has just wrapped up a high-stakes trip to Beijing, China, where he was feted by and conferred with China’s President Xi Jinping amid a blanket of pageantry and secrecy.

Trump emerged in the press cabin aboard Air Force One on the trip home to answer questions for nearly half an hour. When Sanger pressed him about the Iran War, the president unleashed a close-quarters barrage — and appeared to call him “Ed”:

NYT CORRESPONDENT DAVID SANGER: What would the use be in repeating the bombing? You did it for 38 days And you did not get the political changes in Iran–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I got, I had a total military victory. But the fake news, guys like you write incorrectly. You’re a fake guy, Ed (SIC)–.

And guys like you write about incorrectly. We had a total military victory. We knocked out their entire Navy. We knocked down their entire Air Force. We knocked all of their anti-aircraft weaponry. We knocked off all of the radar. We knocked of all of our leaders, number one.

And then we knocked out all of their leaders in the second division. And we knocked out numerous of their leaders in the 3rd Division, and they’re very confused.

We’ve had a total victory except… By people like you that don’t write the truth, you know, you should write.

I actually think it’s sort of treasonous what you write, but you and The New York Times and CNN I would say are the worst.

REPORTER: On another war–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And you should know better than that. You know better. You went to write. And you’re right. And you should be ashamed of yourself.

REPORTER: Another war. Is there any…

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I actually think it’s treason. When you write like they’re doing well militarily and they have no Navy, no Air Force, no anti-anything.

By the way, we knocked out 85% of their manufacturing for the missiles. We knocked out everything.

We haven’t knocked out other than one bridge and we did because they misbehaved. But we have bridges we can knock down. We can knock out their bridges and their electrical capacity. Within two days, we can knock out the whole thing.

And then I read The New York Times, and they act like they’re doing well. And everybody does it. That’s why your subscribers are way down. You know, The Times subscribers are way down because it’s fake news. Subscribers are way, way down, way there.

Sanger co-wrote an explainer a few weeks ago, torpedoing Trump’s use of the term to describe “Iran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium, which is stored in canisters about the size of large scuba tanks.”

“The material is not, in fact, ‘dust.’ It is typically a gas when stored inside the canisters, though it becomes a solid at room temperature,” he wrote.

Watch above via CNN.

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