(CNSNews.com) - During a campaign rally in Billings, Mont., President Donald Trump said Thursday that the person behind the anonymous New York Times op-ed is “a threat to democracy,” and he urged reporters to investigate the person’s identity.
“The latest act of resistance is the op-ed published in the failing New York Times by an anonymous...gutless coward. …Nobody knows who the hell he is or she. Although they put ‘he’, but probably that’s a little disguise that means it’s she. But for the sake of our national security, the New York Times should publish his name at once,” the president said.
“I think their reporters should go on and investigate who it is. That would actually be a good scoop,” he said. “Unelected, deep state operatives who defy the voters to push their own secret agendas are truly a threat to democracy itself, and I was so heartened when I look. I think it’s backfired seriously. People that don’t exactly dig us, and they don’t exactly like me, they’re fighting for us.
“It’s incredible. It’s actually a beautiful thing. We’ve picked up a lot of support, because at some point this whole thing is going to be exposed, and it’s really bad, and it’s really dangerous, and it’s really sad for the media and the mainstream media,” Trump said.
Trump lashed out at the Democratic Party, saying it has been “held hostage by haters, absolute haters, left-wing haters, angry mobs, Deep State radicals and their fake news allies.”
“I mean you look at the Washington Post or the New York Times. I can never get a good story. I mean you look at this horrible thing that took place today,” the president said. “Is it subversion? Is it treason? It’s a horrible thing. Even, you know the good thing about that? Even liberals that hate me say that’s terrible what they did, and it is really terrible.
“You know when I won the election, the New York Times, all of their subscribers were leaving, and when I’m ultimately no longer president and hopefully in about six and a half years from now, the New York Times will go out of business,” Trump said. “All of them will be out of business.
“CNN will be out of business. They’re almost out of business now if you look at their ratings. They’re close to out of business, but barely out of business. But the New York Times - you remember - was very famous. Nobody’s ever seen it before, maybe never done before. They apologized for their bad coverage of me,” he said.
“They apologized to their subscribers, because after I won, everyone said, ‘What the hell happened? What happened? We’re reading this piece of garbage, and the guy that they kill everyday, he won,’” Trump recounted.
“So they wrote ... an apology to their subscribers to stop the flow of people leaving and giving up their subscription to the New York Times, and it was quite amazing to watch. And you know honestly for two weeks they really covered me well, and then it began, and then it got worse and worse and worse, and now we’ve reached an all-time level. The level of hatred is quite great, but that’s okay,” the president said.
Trump said “the so-called resistance” is angry with him, “because their horrible ideas have been rejected by the American people, and it’s driving them crazy.”