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"Sometimes it's the reverse, to make people—or to make others—look bad," President Donald Trump said, regarding the ongoing wave of terroristic bomb threats and vandalism at Jewish community centers and cemeteries across the country. He reportedly made the comments at the White House to a gathering of state attorneys general Feb. 28. Although his precise meaning was ambiguous, the suggestion—without a shred of evidence—that the threats were anything but anti-Semitic hate crimes and were instead staged to make certain non-Jews "look bad" led to a demand for clarification from the Anti-Defamation League—as well as Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, who was present for Trump's remarks. "You don't have to be Jewish to be shocked by a statement like that," Rosenblum, who is Jewish, told WW. (Disclosure: Rosenblum is married to the co-owner of WW's parent company.)
"When I was young, in high school and college, everybody used to say, 'We haven't lost a war'—we never lost a war," Trump said at a Feb. 27 meeting with state governors. "America never lost. And now we never win a war. We never win." Trump received five draft deferments—four for college, one for "temporary" bone problems in his heels—during the Vietnam War, the most indisputable U.S. military defeat of Trump's lifetime.
"I'm against the people that make up stories and make up sources…. [The press] shouldn't be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody's name," Trump said at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 24. Of course, his White House staff frequently cite and serve as anonymous sources. Also, for decades, Trump sometimes posed as his own spokesman—using the name "John Miller" or "John Barron"—to call reporters in New York. Trump denied this practice when a recording surfaced during the campaign, although he had previously admitted to it after his then-wife Marla Maples caught "John Miller" bragging to reporters about Trump's new girlfriend, an Italian fashion model.