Trump threatens to sue authors and media who use anonymous sources
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — United States (US) President Donald Trump, furious over a disparaging new tell-all book about him, threatened Wednesday to sue authors and media outlets that use anonymous sources.
Trump has made suing people an integral part of his brand as he made his way up from New York real estate mogul to the US presidency twice, and this time he is taking aim at the common practice of books and news stories using unnamed sources.
Trump is also famously contemptuous of mainstream media in America, which he routinely labels the “fake news” media.
His latest move comes after the publication of a new expose by journalist Michael Wolff that has Trump and his team livid.
Among other assertions, the book says that after surviving an assassination attempt last summer during the election campaign, Trump “seemed possibly on the verge of cracking,” unable to finish sentences and flying into rages that were stunning even for the famously thin-skinned former reality TV star.
In a social media post, Trump said that after what he called his wildly successful first month back in power, “fake books and stories” with anonymous sources are coming out and “at some point I am going to sue some of these dishonest authors and book publishers” to determine if these sources exist, “which they largely do not”.
Trump added: “They are made up, defamatory fiction, and a big price should be paid for this blatant dishonesty. I’ll do it as a service to our country. Who knows, maybe we will create some NICE NEW LAW!!!
The new book by Wolff — he had a bestseller that came out in 2018 called “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” — among other bombshell claims also quotes a Mar-a-Lago source as saying Trump’s wife Melania hates him.
The Trump White House is skirmishing early and often with the news media as the president presses relentlessly his hard-right agenda targeting immigrants and gutting the federal government through the free-wheeling work of billionaire Elon Musk, an adviser with an outsize role in Trump’s so far very busy second term.
On Tuesday the administration broke decades of tradition by announcing that the White House itself would pick which media get close access to the president in confined quarters like the Oval Office as part of what is known as a press pool.
Until now an independent association of American media organisations covering the White House made this selection.
