Some stories are too damn stupid to be made up.
Last Friday, the president told CPAC that “fake news” outlets like CNN “shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name.” Four days later, he instructed CNN to quote him as a “senior administration official.”
Yes. Really. Donald Trump had a private conversation with a network he calls “fake news,” a network that Sean Spicer locked out of a White House press gaggle. A network that was pointedly left off the invite list for Trump officials making the rounds before and after his speech. What did Trump have to tell them? Great things! His speech was going to include an immigration plan with a path to citizenship, and a whole immigration reform package that would force congressional Republicans to accept some real and reasonable compromises to go along with Trump’s wall and Muslim ban.
And of course it was all a lie. Trump’s actual speech attached the term “immigration reform” to a Republican wet dream “merit-based” plan that would lock out vast majority of immigrants and allow Republicans to set up an infinite set of custom hurdles. So why did Donald Trump break out his John Barron fake publicist persona?
Let's just change gears entirely and talk about the bait and switch that the president pulled when it came to immigration yesterday. He had this meeting with the anchors, he talked about a path to legal status. Basically they fed up things that they thought these anchors would like, that they thought would give them positive press coverage for the next few hours.
Donald Trump told CNN a stack of lies about his immigration proposals, then told them to treat him as an anonymous source. So he and Bannon could gather around the set and giggle.
Does it mean you can’t trust anonymous sources? It means that you can’t trust Donald Trump, no matter what name he’s using. If CNN didn’t know that before—which is amazing—hopefully they know it now.