A reporter for the Business Insider website has made a slew of Instagram posts denigrating President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence since Trump won the presidency.
John Haltiwanger is currently a politics reporter for the outlet, according to his Twitter profile. But on his social media, especially his Instagram page, he has proclaimed his disgust for Trump and the presidency.
On Nov. 9, 2016, as Donald Trump became president-elect, Haltiwanger took to the streets of New York City to join in a protest against the election of Trump. “Donald Trump is #NotMyPresident,” he wrote.
In another post, he said that a taxi driver was chanting the slogan. “I love this city. #LoveTrumpsHate,” he added.
Later in 2016, he posted a picture of a rainbow flag at his parent’s house, claiming that “this is our middle finger” to Pence, who Haltiwanger said lives around the corner. On Christmas Day, he posted a picture of three dolls he got from his mother, one of former President Barack Obama, one of former first lady Hillary Clinton, and one of Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.).
“My mother knows me well,” he said.
In January 2017, Haltiwanger joined in the “Women’s March” in Washington, at the location where people were protesting Trump. He shared a picture from the march with the caption “the popular vote,” referring to how Trump won the election but some supporters of Clinton feel she should have won since she got more votes overall than him.
Haltiwanger made a slew of anti-Trump posts throughout 2017, including one that showed Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, and Trump’s daughter and White House adviser Ivanka Trump with the pope. “When your presence is toxic but you didn’t get the memo,” the self-described reporter wrote.
In another post, where he posed in front of the White House with friends, he called the president “an orange man-baby.” In another, he called Trump “a [expletive] liar.” And in yet another, he said that Trump “will kill us all.”
According to Haltiwanger’s LinkedIn, he worked for Newsweek from August 2017 to February 2018 and joined Business Insider that month.
The anti-Trump posts from Haltiwanger were first reported by Breitbart.
A Business Insider spokesman told the outlet that Haltiwanger’s statements “are not appropriate coming from journalists.”
But there would be no action taken against Haltiwanger, the spokesman added. “The comments John made on Instagram were posted prior to his employment with Insider,” he said.
Haltiwanger declined to comment on the issue and made his Instagram private. A link to the page remains in his Twitter profile.
Like many political reporters, Haltiwanger’s Twitter feed is almost exclusively anti-Trump and anti-Republican, with a number of posts about the conspiracy theory that the president colluded with Russians to win the election. All of the stories about the Trump administration on the first page of his posts on Business Insider are negative.
Asked on Twitter about one post that seemed to veer into propaganda territory, Haltiwanger responded: “It’s my job to report the facts. That’s what I’ve done here.”
Embarrassing that @BusinessInsider allows a literal leftwing resistance activist to cover Trump and Republicans for them. Just another Democrat operative masquerading as an “unbiased journalist.”
Maybe this is why so many people don’t trust the media??? https://t.co/ggZWDjPQGz
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) March 21, 2019
Donald Trump Jr., one of the president’s sons, shared a link to the story, writing: “Embarrassing that @BusinessInsider allows a literal leftwing resistance activist to cover Trump and Republicans for them. Just another Democrat operative masquerading as an ‘unbiased journalist.’ Maybe this is why so many people don’t trust the media???”
Since Trump was elected, coverage of him from many outlets has been overwhelmingly negative, prompting criticism from some longtime journalists.
A former White House official noted to Breitbart that Jeff Bezos, the owner of the openly anti-Trump Washington Post, and Amazon, is also a partial owner of the parent company of Business Insider.
“This total disgrace to journalism is, sadly, not much of a surprise considering Jeff Bezos was an early investor in Business Insider,” the official said. “He knows fake news when he sees it.”
Another source told the outlet that Business Insider “lose all credibility if this guy doesn’t get his walking papers.”
