BuzzFeed has fired back at Donald Trump, who called the website a “failing pile of garbage” during a press conference on Wednesday, with merchandise featuring the president-elect’s quote.
The site now offers a “limited edition” BuzzFeed trash can, “Failing Pile of Garbage” t-shirts and a variety of bumper stickers. One of the stickers says, “My bae works at a failing pile of garbage,” while another says, “My cat’s famous because of a failing pile of garbage.”
Trump opened his first press conference since the election by denying a report released by BuzzFeed on Tuesday regarding an unverified Russian dossier, calling it a “tremendous blot” on the intelligence community if it had been released as part of an agenda against him.
Trump also called BuzzFeed a “failing pile of garbage” when asked to comment further on the published documents.
The president-elect suggested that the document had been leaked to the press “maybe by the intelligence agencies, who knows, but maybe the intelligence agencies, which would be a tremendous blot if they did that… because it never should have been written and certainly never should have been released.”
BuzzFeed sent the internet into a frenzy when it published a collection of unsubstantiated memos accusing Trump of improper contact with Russian officials — and alleging, without corroboration, that the former reality TV star arranged “golden showers” with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room. Trump has denied all the accusations.
BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith used Twitter to post an internal email that explained his logic for posting the documents, which had been known to several journalists and politicians for some time.
Smith wrote that BuzzFeed’s “presumption is to be transparent in our journalism and to share what we have with our readers,” saying the site has “always erred on the side of publishing.”