President Trump, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, once again railed against the media, telling the enthusiastic crowd that media outlets “shouldn’t be allowed” to use unnamed sources.
“I’m against the people that make up stories and make up sources,” Trump said. “They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name. Let their name be put out there. Let their name be put out.”
He also accused outlets of making up sources. He cited a story recently “where they said, ‘nine people have confirmed.’ There are no nine people. I don’t believe there was one or two people.”
He appeared to be referring to a Feb. 9 Washington Post story that cited nine sources in reporting that Michael Flynn, then the National Security Adviser, had discussed sanctions in a late December conversation with the Russian ambassador despite denying that it had been a topic. After the story appeared, Flynn resigned.
The use of unnamed sources, however, is ingrained in coverage, by the media and the White House. The Trump administration, like previous administrations, frequently holds background briefings where officials ask that they not be quoted by name. Trump himself cited unnamed sources in 2012 when he raised suspicions about President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
Trump also pushed back at reaction to a tweet he sent out last week, in which he said that “fake news” was the “enemy of the people.”
In the tweet, Trump singled out CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC News and the New York Times as “fake news” and, ostensibly, the “enemy of the people.”
Trump accused the “dishonest media” of dropping off the word “fake” in its reporting about the tweet and “all of the sudden the media is the enemy. They take the word fake out. And now I’m saying, ‘Oh no. This is no good.’ But that’s the way they are. So I’m not against the media. I’m not against the press. I don’t mind bad stories if I deserve them.”
Trump also said that he had a right to criticize “fake news.” “I love the First Amendment. Nobody loves it better than me,” he said.
Trump continued to cast the media as “dishonest” and not representative of the country.
“It doesn’t represent the people, it never will represent the people and we’re going to do something about it,” he warned.
Barry o shadow government. Only an idiot changes a classified dept days before he leaves office and extends it to include 16 departments with the criminal intent of funneling false info to the media allowing publishing false statements about the country; without identifying the liar, escaping a prison sentence, and funding paid street violence.
That’s a criminal syndicate.
How many times have we heard Trump downplay his outrageously false or inaccurate statements with bullshit attributions like “I’ve been hearing it from a lot of people,” or “I’ve been told,” with no sources or factual information to back it up? Trump is truly Hypocrite in Chief. But all the Republicans who denounced Trump’s “values” during the campaign and are now sucking up deserve equal disdain. Fake Christian Mike Pence may be the most the morally bankrupt of the bunch.
Once again, Drumpf displays his encyclopedic ignorance of how things work in an actual democracy. This sexist, bullying misogynist with no neck, has no comprehension of how anything works outside his real estate bubble. He certainly has no knowledge of the Constitution, world affairs, or much of anything else.
Tranquilize Trump. And place his entire cabinet in Guantanamo, including Pence and him.
Thank God it will come some day, but I can’t until this ugly, foul, dishonest, corrupt, racist, sexist pathological lying blast from the past is gone. I’ll wait for the return to normality, but again, thankfully this nightmare will be over one day, though I hope it’s not due to him causing the end of the world. But that’s very possible.
He’s been in office for one month and already is far better than Obama. Good job, President Trump.
Please explain how ? Given the he campaigned in draining the swamp and appointed millionaires, said he would have time to vacation and golf and has been away from the White House three times in a month, has cost the taxpayers millions prot citing trump tower because his wife doesn’t want to live with him, and has blatantly lied to the American people many times. How is he better ? Because he’s “Christian” who’s is the biggest lie of all he supports none of the Christian ideals and I doubt has ever even opened a bible or even a book for that matter.
Trump doesn’t represent the people either. He sounds like LYndon LaRoache. He and Brannon and all the conspiracy theorists should dig a nice deep bunker and stock it with 10 years of food and get in close it up and talk to each other. They can name it Bedlam.
26,000 shrinks all used their real names. Why doesn’t that mean anything to the Trumpies?
Don’t they realize there are no unskilled factory jobs coming home and they don’t have the math or English skills for the ones are can come back. People have to take responsibility for their own retraining and comtinued education. The unskilled labor is in China. Send unskilled. Americana there to work.
Yeah the usual spring-loaded leftie spew. I picture flecks of foam forming in the corners of your sneering lips as you even mention his name. Well, here’s what he has done in less than a month in office:
– ordered regulators to cut two for every new regulation
– started the rounding up and deportation of illegal aliens who have committed felonies and others subject to deportation orders
– revoked Obummer’s crippling orders destroying the coal industry
– banished the fraudulent AGW leftie horse pucky from federal agencies
– revoked the stupid letter to educational institutions threatening them if they set common sense rules about whether folks with peckers can use the bathrooms of those with vah-jay-jays
– reduced the cost of that idiotic F-35 program
– Extreme vetting of folks getting visas into the US
– whether millionaires or not, appointed cabinet secretaries who will finally deal with the corrupt crony capitalism endemic with both parties
– we’re finally going to get school vouchers…and hopefully destroy public teachers unions that have thoroughly corrupted our politics
– Obamacare…GONE SOON
And finally, for the first time, the house organs of the Democratic Party are being called out for the frauds that they are. Nothing but fake partisan news.
I think that’s a damn good start with 8 more years to go.
– Krumhorn
This could be an interesting trend. If the president and politicians just start saying, “I don’t respond to unnamed sources. Next question.” That would change some things. Fascinating times we are in.
When I hear “no anonymous sources” I also hear “Nixon should NEVER have been impeached.”
You know, none of the millennial that I work with know you Nixon is. One man told me the other day on set, “Clinton is the first president I remember.” I thought, man I’m getting old. This new bunch don’t know Kennedy and they don’t know Nixon. They also don’t know Stanley Kubrick.
Or maybe you just work with idiots, cuz I know who all of those people are and love the Kubrick films I have seen. Lumping all millennials together like that is idiotic. The majority of them to k ow who Kennedy Nixon are maybe not as many know Kubrick.
Or maybe millennials are just plain stupid.