President Trump reportedly gets by on less than five hours of daily shuteye, making him a so-called short sleeper who can operate on minimal nocturnal rest. That’s a good thing, given that he continues to be plagued by a band of disloyal aides eager to share his deepest thoughts and passing musings with the corporate media to undermine his leadership. Trump might be wise to sleep with one eye open.
Regardless of one’s views on Trump, it’s undeniable that he can’t trust many of the people he employs at the White House. Whereas Joe Biden’s aides kept his declining mental acuity under wraps throughout most of his presidency, Trump’s administration is a real-life version of the 1998 flick The Truman Show, where every move he makes is captured and broadcast to the American public. The Truman Show relied on hidden cameras; Trump’s presidency is documented daily on his Truth Social account and by a swarm of media flies on the Oval Office walls.
As an example, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump has discussed ousting Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, after her office contradicted the president’s contention that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was damaged by vandals. The story was co-written by Natalie Andrews and Josh Dawsey and cited unnamed “people familiar with the matter.”
It’s a pretty damning story, as it validates the corporate media narrative that Trump has no respect or regard for constitutional checks and balances. At this writing, there are more than 2,400 reader comments, overwhelmingly critical of Trump and his impulses. I don’t fault The Wall Street Journal for publishing the piece, but I do question the character of the aides who leaked it—apparently first to CNN.
The Journal also reported that during a recent meeting in the Oval Office, Trump launched into a tirade against Iranian leaders, calling them scumbags and lunatics and unleashing a series of expletives. That story, co-written by Annie Linskey and Josh Dawsey, cited an unidentified “person who heard the comments.” Linskey and Dawsey also reported that Trump is “increasingly frustrated that a conflict he once thought would be over in a matter of weeks has dragged on with no end in sight.”
Exposing Trump’s doubts and frustrations about the war provides useful strategic insight to Iran, making the anonymous leaker’s motives deeply suspect.
When it comes to leaks, however, it’s hard to match the rich detail The New York Times provided about a White House meeting so hush-hush that few in the Trump administration were even told about it to guard against leaks. The meeting centered on a “hard sell” presentation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad chief David Barnea, asserting that a joint U.S.-Israeli mission could finally bring an end to the Islamic Republic.
Consider the fly-on-the-wall account Times reporters Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman provided of that supposedly top-secret session:
The black S.U.V. carrying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the White House just before 11 a.m. on Feb. 11. The Israeli leader, who had been pressing for months for the United States to agree to a major assault on Iran, was whisked inside with little ceremony, out of view of reporters, primed for one of the most high-stakes moments in his long career.
U.S. and Israeli officials gathered first in the Cabinet Room, adjacent to the Oval Office. Then Mr. Netanyahu headed downstairs for the main event: a highly classified presentation on Iran for President Trump and his team in the White House Situation Room, which was rarely used for in-person meetings with foreign leaders.
Mr. Trump sat down, but not in his usual position at the head of the room’s mahogany conference table. Instead, the president took a seat on one side, facing the large screens mounted along the wall. Mr. Netanyahu sat on the other side, directly opposite the president.
Appearing on the screen behind the prime minister was David Barnea, the director of Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, as well as Israeli military officials. Arrayed visually behind Mr. Netanyahu, they created the image of a wartime leader surrounded by his team.
Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, sat at the far end of the table. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who doubled as the national security adviser, had taken his regular seat. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who generally sat together in such settings, were on one side; joining them was John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s special envoy, who had been negotiating with the Iranians, rounded out the main group.
Swan and Haberman managed to obtain the precise seating arrangements for a top-secret meeting. The universe of people with access to that room was extremely limited. While I cannot identify the individual(s) who leaked it, the narrative fingerprint is obvious: by ensuring the Times highlighted that Vice President JD Vance opposed the action—a detail featured prominently in the article’s subhead—the source sought to signal that internal resistance to a broader war existed at the highest levels.
People who leak information have their own agendas, and stories often get framed or embellished to serve those self-interests.
Case in point: A January 25, 2018, New York Times report by Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman claimed Trump ordered the firing of special counsel Robert Mueller but backed down after White House counsel Donald McGahn II threatened to resign. The reporters cited “four people told of the matter.”
However, McGahn subsequently testified under oath that while Trump demanded he fire Mueller, McGahn never directly told the president he planned to resign—he merely left Trump with the impression he would follow through.
Furthermore, McGahn testified that while he informed key staff—Annie Donaldson, Reince Priebus, and Steve Bannon—of his intent to quit, he omitted specific details to avoid ensnaring them in Mueller’s probe, telling them only that Trump had asked him to do “crazy shit.”
The leak transformed McGahn’s unspoken intention to resign—and the impression he left Trump with—into a direct, principled threat to quit. That’s precisely why anonymous-source stories deserve careful scrutiny, even when they ultimately prove directionally correct.
While I consider talking to The New York Times—and particularly Maggie Haberman—the ultimate betrayal of Trump, he himself regularly engages both the publication and Haberman directly. About a year ago, I saw a clip of Haberman on CNN describing how Trump called to complain about a Times story. Just as a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client, so does a president who insists on managing his own media relations.
The Asymmetry of Curiosity
While the corporate media provides damning, 24/7 fly-on-the-wall coverage of Trump and his administration, they show a remarkable lack of curiosity when it comes to critical reporting on the Biden era.
Back in early 2024—when we were told CBS News was still a distinguished, objective news organization devoid of bias—veteran investigative journalist Catherine Herridge was unceremoniously fired and humiliated, supposedly as part of corporate budget cuts. The network boxed up her personal belongings but held onto her computer, notes, and confidential investigative files, informing her that CBS would decide what—if anything—would be returned.
With the presidential election just eight months away and Joe Biden still running for reelection, Herridge’s firing sparked immediate outrage and speculation that she was targeted for aggressively reporting on the Biden family’s foreign business dealings.
Herridge has continued pursuing those stories independently, recently telling NewsNation that publicly available government records—including documents prepared for the President Biden’s Daily Brief—indicated Chinese officials viewed the Biden family as vulnerable to blackmail. She noted those records received remarkably little scrutiny from the legacy media despite being publicly accessible.
It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to understand why China might have viewed the Biden family as vulnerable.
As The New York Times documented in November 2021, BHR—a Chinese investment firm co-founded by Hunter Biden—helped facilitate the 2016 sale of one of the world’s richest cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo to a Chinese state-backed company. Years later, President Biden publicly warned that China could use its control of global cobalt to disrupt America’s electric vehicle transition. When asked whether the president had been aware of his son’s role in that deal, a White House spokesman offered a one-word answer: “No.”
For years, the legacy media treated allegations that Donald Trump was compromised by Russia as a story demanding endless investigation. Yet when an award-winning former CBS News investigative journalist points to government records suggesting the Biden family may have been viewed by China as vulnerable to blackmail, that same journalistic urgency is nowhere to be found. It is a glaring double standard.
Not every allegation ultimately proves true. That’s what journalistic investigations are supposed to determine. The issue is why one president’s potential vulnerabilities sparked years of relentless media scrutiny while another’s doesn’t warrant even a modicum of curiosity.