Once again, President Trump has been caught in yet another lie:
WASHINGTON — President Trump falsely accused The New York Times on Saturday of making up a source in an article about North Korea, even though the source was in fact a senior White House official speaking to a large group of reporters in the White House briefing room.
The president was referring to an article about the on-again, off-again summit meeting between Mr. Trump and Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, which Mr. Trump had canceled Thursday.
The article, headlined, “Trump Says North Korea Summit May Be Rescheduled,” said that the United States was “back in touch with North Korea” and that the meeting might yet happen.
Mr. Trump posted on Twitter to denounce part of the article, which reported in the 10th paragraph that “a senior White House official told reporters that even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.”
In a tweet, the president took issue with that sentence, saying, “WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.”
It is not clear whether the president was simply unaware of the actions of his own senior staff or if he knowingly ignored the truth. The source of that sentence was a White House official who held a briefing on Thursday afternoon in the White House briefing room that was attended by about 50 reporters, with about 200 or so more on a conference call.
Reporters often request such briefings to be on the record, which would allow the official to be named. But, in this case, the rules of the briefing imposed by the White House required that the official be referred to only as a “senior White House official.” The Times is continuing to abide by that agreement.
In the course of the briefing, the official was asked about the possibility that the summit meeting could be held on June 12, despite the president’s decision to cancel it a day earlier. The discussion was prompted by earlier statements from the president suggesting that the meeting might still happen.
Politico also pushes back against the President’s assertion that there was no basis for the Times report, as does The Washington Post:
President Trump on Saturday falsely accused the New York Times of using an unnamed source “who doesn’t exist” in a story on negotiations between the United States and North Korea, but the official cited spoke to reporters Thursday in a briefing arranged by the White House.
“The Failing @nytimes quotes ‘a senior White House official,’ who doesn’t exist, as saying ‘even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed,’” Trump tweeted Saturday morning. “WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.”
The senior White House official cited by the Times spoke to dozens of reporters Thursday at the White House and on a conference call to brief them on Trump’s decision earlier that day to cancel his June 12 summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The Washington Post, which participated in the briefing, agreed to the rules as laid out by White House press officials at the time, which were to refer to the briefer as a senior White House official. The Post also used information from that briefing in subsequent stories and continues to abide by the agreed upon ground rules.
When an Associated Press reporter asked Thursday why the briefing was not on the record, the official noted that Trump had already spoken on the topic through his letter to Kim, as well as at a bill-signing event earlier that day. The White House wanted to “let the president’s remarks stand,” the official said.
The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment Saturday on why Trump was accusing the Times of falsifying the source when it arranged the briefing for reporters and insisted that the official not be named.
Administrations routinely brief reporters, on background, on a variety of issues, but it is extraordinary for a president to then accuse reporters of making up the officials who take part in the event.
Here are the President’s tweets:
Unlike what the Failing and Corrupt New York Times would like people to believe, there is ZERO disagreement within the Trump
NBC NEWS is wrong again! They cite “sources” which are constantly wrong. Problem is, like so many others, the sources probably don’t exist, they are fabricated, fiction! NBC, my former home with the Apprentice, is now as bad as Fake News CNN. Sad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 4, 2018
Administration as to how to deal with North Korea…and if there was, it wouldn’t matter. The @nytimes has called me wrong right from the beginning!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2018
The Failing @nytimes quotes “a senior White House official,” who doesn’t exist, as saying “even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.” WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2018
This also isn’t the first time that Trump has used his Twitter account to attack the media for reporting about his Administration based on information obtained from sources who asked to remain anonymous. Here are just a few examples:
With all of its phony unnamed sources & highly slanted & even fraudulent reporting, #Fake News is DISTORTING DEMOCRACY in our country!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2017
NBC NEWS is wrong again! They cite “sources” which are constantly wrong. Problem is, like so many others, the sources probably don’t exist, they are fabricated, fiction! NBC, my former home with the Apprentice, is now as bad as Fake News CNN. Sad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 4, 2018
….non-existent “sources” and a drunk/drugged up loser who hates Michael, a fine person with a wonderful family. Michael is a businessman for his own account/lawyer who I have always liked & respected. Most people will flip if the Government lets them out of trouble, even if….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 21, 2018
All of this is consistent, of course, with the President’s general disdain for the media, something that he has displayed from the time he entered the race for President three years ago, a history I have recounted here at OTB several times in the past. As a candidate, Trump attacked individual reporters and news organizations and encouraged his supporters to hold the media in contempt, thus reinforcing the preexisting conservative belief that the media is biased against them. While Trump was merely a private citizen or a candidate for President, this behavior was shocking but, for someone appealing to the right-wing populists that have taken over conservatism generally and the Republican Party in particular, hardly surprising. Indeed, Trump’s rhetoric as a candidate was hardly different from anything that any of the sixteen other people he ran against were saying, and hardly different from what you can hear daily on conservative talk radio, Fox News Channel, or read on a regular basis in the conservative blogosphere.
Now that he’s President, though, Trump’s rhetoric against the press has become worse, and more alarming. Over the course of the past sixteen months, for example, he has called the news media the “enemy of the people”. This is a phrase he has returned to several times over the past sixteen months. Last summer, his admittedly temporary Communications Directory Anthony Scaramucci suggested that reporters should be criminally charged for publishing leaked information regardless of whether or not the information is classified.. During a speech in Arizona last summer, Trump referred to members of the media as “sick people” who “don’t like our country,” and who are “trying to take away our history and our heritage.” That last part, of course, was a reference to the negative coverage that Trump received in the wake of his remarks about the deadly protest in Charlottesville, Virginia. In October, he threatened NBC with unspecified government action including pulling their broadcast license. Earlier this year, the President’s private attorneys to sent a “cease and desist” letter to the author and publisher of a book critical of the Trump White House and once again brought up the possibility of strengthening the nation’s libel laws in response to the negative coverage his Administration was receiving. Throughout it all, the President has frequently referred to so-called “fake news,” a label that he applies quite regularly to anything having to do with the Russia investigation among other matters. That label has been picked up by his supporters and sycophants, who are quick to label any news item they don’t like as “Fake News.” Earlier this month, the President admitted the already blindingly obvious when he said that when he refers to “Fake News” he means any news coverage that is critical of him or his Administration regardless of whether it’s true or not.
This attack on The New York Times isn’t the only time he’s lied recently, he also stood before the graduates of the United States Naval Academy and flat-out lied to them:
- First, Trump claimed that the latest Defense spending bill had gotten rid of the sequestration rules that many people claimed unduly restrained military spending when he said “We have ended the disastrous defense sequester. No money for the military, those days are over.” This is untrue. While it is true that the Defense spending bill passed in February did bust through the spending caps that had been in place since 2011, during the seven years since then the Defense Department budget exceeded $600 billion per year. That’s obviously not “no money at all.”
- Second, the President claimed that ”Very soon, you’re going to have 355 beautiful ships — 355. That’s almost a couple hundred more ships.” This is untrue. Currently, there are 283 active duty ships in the Navy. While that number is expected to increase to 355, that number isn’t projected to be reached until 2050, more than 30 years from now.
- Third, the President claimed that ”We just got you a big pay raise, first time in 10 years.” First of all, military pay has risen every year for the last 10 years, and nearly every year since 1945. During the Obama Administration, the pay raises ranged from “1 percent in 2014 and 2015 to 3.9 percent in 2009.”
This is the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief, lying to the next group of Naval Ensigns and Marine 2nd Lieutenants, some of whom are likely to be called into action due to military missions that he authorizes in the coming years. If he’s going to lie to them, then how do you expect he’s going to treat the American people?
To put it bluntly, the President is a serial liar. As of earlier this month, the fact checkers at The Washington Post had counted over 3,000 lies by the President in his first 469 days in office a pace that would have him at nearly 10,000 lies by the end of his first term and, if he is re-elected, nearly 20,000 by the end of a second term. The most frustrating thing about this is that many times it seems like even the so-called “Fake News” media as Trump calls it isn’t willing to call the President what he is. The headline for the article from The New York Times that is quoted at the top of this post is “Trump Falsely Says Times Made Up Source in Report on Korea Summit Meeting.” And that’s just one example of how the media tends to shy away from calling Trump out for his lies. Every time this President lies, the media calls him something other than what he is. He didn’t make a “misstatement.” He didn’t “falsely claim” something. He lied. Because Donald J. Trump is, and always has been, a serial liar. They shouldn’t be afraid to tell the truth about him.
