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Daniel Dale just tweeted that Bloomberg journalists were NOT his source for OTR comments
He's responding to Trump blaming Bloomberg and wanting an apology from them.
Dale's multi-tweet thread starts here:
Link to tweet
I’d said I wasn’t going to say anything about my source for the quotes Trump made off the record to Bloomberg.
However, I don’t want to be party to the president’s smearing of excellent, ethical journalists. So I can say this: none of the Bloomberg interviewers was my source.
Trump is calling Jennifer Jacobs, Margaret Talev and their editor liars. They aren’t, and they didn’t violate their “off the record” promise to him. I don’t want to be a party to his attempt to make fellow reporters look deceitful.
So: I’m not going to engage in an “OK if it isn’t them than who was it” game, but the president is incorrect when he claims he was wronged by his interviewers.
Maybe I should have expected the president would confirm a Toronto Star story (!) and use this to go after Bloomberg reporters, but I did not - thought it was likely he’d either a) ignore it or b) or call it fake news and go after my own ethics, which would’ve been fine.
Anyway, this is an unusual thing to do, but this is an unusual situation. That’s all.
I’m not beating myself up, actually - I’m very happy with the story, don’t think I did anything wrong. Just didn’t expect the president to smear Bloomberg reporters rather than me, and want to deal with it.
However, I don’t want to be party to the president’s smearing of excellent, ethical journalists. So I can say this: none of the Bloomberg interviewers was my source.
Trump is calling Jennifer Jacobs, Margaret Talev and their editor liars. They aren’t, and they didn’t violate their “off the record” promise to him. I don’t want to be a party to his attempt to make fellow reporters look deceitful.
So: I’m not going to engage in an “OK if it isn’t them than who was it” game, but the president is incorrect when he claims he was wronged by his interviewers.
Maybe I should have expected the president would confirm a Toronto Star story (!) and use this to go after Bloomberg reporters, but I did not - thought it was likely he’d either a) ignore it or b) or call it fake news and go after my own ethics, which would’ve been fine.
Anyway, this is an unusual thing to do, but this is an unusual situation. That’s all.
I’m not beating myself up, actually - I’m very happy with the story, don’t think I did anything wrong. Just didn’t expect the president to smear Bloomberg reporters rather than me, and want to deal with it.
My own guess is that Trump himself leaked the OTR comments -- or, rather, ordered a WH staffer to leak them -- because he'd decided he wanted them made public, and because he saw it as a way to attack Bloomberg for supposedly reneging on an agreement.
2 replies
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