In the wake of the violent shooting that ravaged their newsroom Thursday and left five people dead, the staff of the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis published a hopeful and defiant thank-you letter Sunday, taking the opportunity to take a thinly veiled swipe at President Trump for his combative rhetoric about the media.

“We won’t forget being called an enemy of the people,” reads the letter, referencing one of Trump’s many rebukes of the media while neglecting to explicitly state his name.

In February, during a trip to his Mar-a-Lago golf resort in Palm Beach, Fla., the president took to Twitter to lash out at media organizations he deemed “fake news."





The letter from the Capital Gazette also hit out at “Death threats and emails from people we don’t know celebrating our loss, or the people who called for one of our reporters to get fired because she got angry and cursed on national television after witnessing her friends getting shot.”

Signed by more than two dozen staff members, the letter featured many words of gratitude for the displays of sympathy that occurred after the shooting, as well as a determined attitude to return to work.

“We will never be the same as we were, now that Rebecca, Wendi, John, Gerald and Rob are gone,” the letter, which was signed by more than 30 people, reads. “Some day we hope to be as good again. That’s all we can do.”

Rob Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman, Wendi Winters, John McNamara and Rebecca Smith were the five individuals who died in Thursday's attack.