Speaking to raucous supporters at a faith rally at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington Saturday night, Mr. Trump brought the crowd to its feet by condemning news organizations.
“The fake media is trying to silence us,” Mr. Trump told the crowd at the concert hall, after returning to Washington briefly from his weekend getaway at his golf club in New Jersey. “But we will not let them. Because the people know the truth. The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House. But I’m president and they’re not.”
.. The president may have been referring to the latest hidden camera video produced by James O’Keefe, the right-wing activist. The video appears to show a producer for CNN’s “New Day” program calling Mr. Trump “a clown” and “crazy,” among other things. The producer also appears to say American voters are “stupid.”
Mr. O’Keefe’s previous videos have been found to be selectively edited and designed to disparage his subjects.
Expect a Coverup
Russia may have indeed affected the election, through the farcical Mr. Comey.
FBI Director James Comey’s ill-fated decision to clear Hillary Clinton publicly on intelligence-mishandling charges. His choice, it now appears, was partly shaped by a false intelligence document referring to a nonexistent Democratic email purporting to confirm that then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch had vowed to quash any Hillary charges.
.. On May 26, CNN adumbrated that Mr. Comey “knew that a critical piece of information relating to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email was fake—created by Russian intelligence—but he feared that if it became public it would undermine the probe and the Justice Department itself.”
.. “Comey cited that intelligence as the primary reason he took the unusual step of publicly announcing the end of the Clinton email probe. . . . Comey did not even mention the other reason he gave in public testimony for acting independently of the Justice Department—that Lynch was compromised because Bill Clinton boarded her plane and spoke to her during the investigation.”
.. The noisy, obnoxious ways Russia meddled amounted to nothing. The public was able to discount them. It was only through a bumptious act of our own law-enforcement community, in a way the public didn’t know at the time may have been influenced by planted Russian intelligence, that the Kremlin conceivably really may have affected an extraordinarily close race in the Electoral College.
.. Russia did not seek to hide its meddling. The Russian goal was to sow confusion and bring disrepute on the U.S. leadership class. If so, any investigation of Russian meddling that fails to focus on the Comey actions will amount to a coverup.
.. In the U.S., to acknowledge the truth would be to complete the task Russia set itself in discrediting the U.S. leadership class.
The fake news is coming from inside the White House
To believe Donald Trump, you must believe two largely contradictory things.
You must believe that there are a slew of leakers in the executive branch who are providing damning details to the press illegally, and who must be rooted out and punished. (See tweets here, here, here, here and here.)
You must also believe that the press makes up imaginary leakers simply to slowly and incrementally report false stories
.. On the campaign trail, he mastered the art of vague assurance that he stood for whatever his audience stood for, and, in office, that skill doesn’t seem to have faded. If it is best that people think a leak was made up by the media — like The Washington Post’s report that Jared Kushner asked Russia to help set up a secure communication system with the Trump team — then Trump will argue that the media made it up.
If the leak is incidental to him or if he’d like to put the heat on someone else — if, say, someone in law enforcement leaks photos of a terrorist attack in the U.K. — he’ll argue that the leakers need to be caught.
.. Couple those SAOs with Trump’s hundreds — literally — of untrue statements since he came into office and his tendency to have staff make claims that he later undercuts (something he himself admits), it seems pretty clear where the fake news originates, if Trump is to be believed.
Incidentally, for those curious about why Trump might think that someone would create a fictitious source to make a ridiculous claim, we return to the same well we’ve visited so many times before: His tweets.
An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama‘s birth certificate is a fraud.
Trump Takes Aim at White House Leaks
Tweets are first time president has weighed in on reports over Kushner, Russia
“It is my opinion that many of the leaks coming out of the White House are fabricated lies made up by the #FakeNews media,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter. “Whenever you see the words ‘sources say’ in the fake news media, and they don’t mention names….it is very possible that those sources don’t exist but are made up by fake news writers. #FakeNews is the enemy!”.. the president is discussing major changes in the White House, including having lawyers vet his tweets and shaking up his top staff,