During Rally, Trump Says Media ‘Are Part of the Corrupt System’

By Chris Ariens 

Pres. Donald Trump used a new tactic in his “running war” with the media: quoting a former president who also railed against the fourth estate.

“I want to speak to you without the filter of the fake news,” Trump said at the start of his Saturday evening rally in Melbourne, FL. “The dishonest media which has published one false story after another with no sources, even though they pretend they have them–they make them up in many cases–they just don’t want to report the truth.”

“They’ve become a big part of the problem. They are part of the corrupt system,” said Trump, before quoting Pres. Thomas Jefferson.

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“Jefferson said, ‘nothing can be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself,’ he said, ‘becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.'” Jefferson wrote this on June 14, 1807, as a response to a request from 18-year-old John Norvell. Norvell wrote to Jefferson seeking his opinion on newspaper reporting, as he intended to become a newspaper editor. Norvell would go on work at newspapers in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Lexington and, eventually, was one of the first U.S. Senators from Michigan.

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