President Trump took to Twitter this morning to once again rage against the “fake news media” and all of their “anonymous sources” after getting all riled up after watching a FOX News segment.
“Anonymous Sources are really starting to BURN the media.” @FoxNews The fact is that many anonymous sources don’t even exist. They are fiction made up by the Fake News reporters. Look at the lie that Fake CNN is now in. They got caught red handed! Enemy of the People!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2018
When you see “anonymous source,” stop reading the story, it is fiction!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2018
Aside from being ridiculous, the idea of Trump complaining about “anonymous sources” is ludicrous, since Trump himself is infamous for pretending to be an “anonymous source” as a way to get the media to write stories about him and feed his vastly overinflated ego and sense of self-importance.
The New York Times‘ star White House reporter took to Twitter and called him out for his hypocrisy for all to see.
Pete Hammill didn’t want to run Trump stories at the NYDN in the 1990s because he said they were too often Trump trying to serve as an anonymous source about himself. https://t.co/wUMbBJ96mJ
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 29, 2018
And, to be clear, often trying to make claims on background about himself with tenuous factual basis https://t.co/WBNBUEtUEH
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 29, 2018
But perhaps worst of all, Trump once cited an anonymous source as evidence in his disgustingly racist “birther” campaign against President Obama, accusing him of lying to the American people about where he was born and thus questioning his eligibility to lead this country.
Trump tweets that stories citing anonymous sources are fiction. In 2012, he cited an anonymous source claiming Obama’s birth certificate was fake. pic.twitter.com/uFtX3aE5f6
— Chenue (@ChenueHer) August 29, 2018
Trump is seemingly incapable of doing anything without plunging into the swamp of shameful hypocrisy. After observing the President so closely for so long, certain patterns in his behavior are becoming clear, like the way he interprets things solely through the lens of his own experiences and stubbornly refuses to consider any information that would discredit or conflict with his preconceived notions.
Take, for instance, the controversy around his administration’s decision to re-legalize the use of toxic asbestos in construction in the United States. Trump famously once called the mountain of scientific evidence indicating that asbestos is highly toxic and causes cancer “a mob-led conspiracy” because in New York, the companies that worked to remove asbestos from buildings were largely linked to the mafia, and he resented having to pay them to remove the stuff from his buildings.
Those past experiences — or perhaps more specifically, that past resentment — has convinced Trump that asbestos is, in fact, safe, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Similarly, since Trump himself has used “anonymous sources” to spread fake news in the past, he can only conceive of “anonymous sources” as part of a larger conspiracy against him by his enemies, because that’s what he would do.
It just goes to show that at every possible level, even the cognitive, Donald Trump is unfit and unqualified to hold the presidency of the United States.