President Donald Trump on Thursday again lashed out at the media and attacked the use of anonymous sources in reports about his administration.
Trump claimed journalists “never use names anymore” and “make the source up.”
“They don’t exist in many cases,” he said at a rally in Montana. “These are really bad people.”
However, as at least one reporter pointed out, Trump himself has a history of being an anonymous source. Fox Business Network senior correspondent Charles Gasparino wrote on Twitter:
Trump made a similar complaint in May, saying an unnamed “senior White House official” cited by The New York Times “doesn’t exist,” only to be proved wrong when audio of the official speaking at a background briefing was released.
That audio included White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah not only introducing the source but specifically asking reporters to refer to him only as “a senior White House official.”
Other journalists have pointed out that Trump himself has often acted as his own anonymous source over the years.
Trump’s latest attack on journalists, whom he also called “so damn dishonest,” comes one week after five newspaper employees were killed in a mass shooting in Annapolis, Maryland.
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