Trump: Tweeting is 'my only form of defense' against media

Detroit — Ahead of the Democratic debates in Detroit Tuesday, President Donald Trump told C-SPAN he's unfairly treated by the media and uses Twitter as his armor.

Following recent tweets on the state of Baltimore, Trump joined a C-SPAN interview and reacted to being called a racist by Maryland's Congressman Elijah Cummings saying, "the word is so over-used and I can tell you I'm the least racist person in the world... they use it almost when they run out of things to criticize you."

He was also asked about his rhetoric and behavior. C-SPAN reporter Steve Scully prefaced his question saying on election night, Trump said, "Now it is time for America to bind the wounds of division. I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all of Americans, and this is so important to me."

Scully asked: "They read the tweets - Do you think that you're a uniter as president?"

The president called his tweets a defense against bias in the media.

"If I got fair coverage I wouldn't even have to tweet. It's my only form of defense," Trump said.

"If the press covered me fairly, I wouldn't need that. But they don't cover me fairly," he said and continued with a story of a protester who disrupted his speech in Jamestown, Virginia who he said, got more publicity than his speech on Fox.

Of Trump's 43,000 tweets, he says he doesn't regret sending one out, but his retweets can be problematic.

"Not much," he said. "I sent the one about the 'wiretapping' and it turned out to be true... The bigger problem is the retweets. 

"You'll retweet something that sounds good, but turns out to be from a player that's not the best player in the world... but overall I would say no. It's a modern-day form of communication."

srahal@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @SarahRahal_