Trump Uses Facebook Exec Tweet To Call Media "Fake News"

"The Fake News Media never fails," Trump said after Facebook ads Vice President Rob Goldman tweeted that news outlets are not reporting on aspects of the Russian ad spend because it "doesn’t align with the main media narrative of Tump and the election."

President Trump approvingly passed along comments from Facebook ads Vice President Rob Goldman on Saturday, using Goldman's remarks about the Kremlin-linked chaos campaign on Facebook to call reporters covering the situation, the "Fake News Media."

Goldman, reflecting on special counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of 13 individuals linked to a Russian troll farm, took the opportunity to call out reporters covering the developments.

"Most of the coverage of Russian meddling involves their attempt to effect [sic] the outcome of the 2016 US election. I have seen all of the Russian ads and I can say very definitively that swaying the election was *NOT* the main goal," Goldman said at the start of a two-day tweetstorm, spanning Friday and Saturday.

"The majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election. We shared that fact, but very few outlets have covered it because it doesn’t align with the main media narrative of Tump and the election," Goldman added.

Trump seized on these comments, using them to continue his attempt to discredit the news media's efforts to report on a Kremlin-linked campaign to influence the 2016 US presidential election and sow discord in its aftermath.

"The Fake News Media never fails. Hard to ignore this fact from the Vice President of Facebook Ads, Rob Goldman!" Trump said in one tweet quote tweeting Goldman's remarks.

"'I have seen all of the Russian ads and I can say very definitively that swaying the election was *NOT* the main goal.' Rob Goldman Vice President of Facebook Ads," Trump wrote in a subsequent tweet.

On the same day Goldman sought to blame the media, Facebook and Instagram were mentioned 41 times in Mueller's indictment, far outpacing Twitter, YouTube, and Paypal.

A spokesperson for Sen. Mark Warner, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Twitter that focusing on the ad spend Goldman referenced is "missing big picture."

Also, ads were only a small percentage of the content pushed by IRA. FB itself said the 3000 ads reached 10 million… https://t.co/YtKjt64a9t

Asked to comment, a Facebook spokesperson pointed BuzzFeed News to a subsequent tweet from Goldman where the Facebook VP said, "I am only speaking here about the Russian behavior on Facebook. That is the only aspect that I observed directly."

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