President Trump often is quoted anonymously in news reports as a senior White House official, according to a new book from author Ronald Kessler.

Kessler, a former Washington Post reporter who has written books on the Secret Service, made that claim in his book, The Trump White House: Changing the Rules of the Game, which was released Monday.

“Trump phones Maggie Haberman of the New York Times directly, as well as Philip Rucker of the Washington Post, and Jonathan Swan of Axios, feeding them stories attributed to ‘a senior White House official,’ creating the impression that White House leaks even more than it already does,” Kessler wrote.

Kessler did not name sources for the claim, but as a businessman Trump was well-known for acting as his own spokesman using pseudonyms with reporters.

Despite an antagonistic public relationship, Kessler wrote that Trump craves positive coverage in the Times, and also in Time magazine. An unnamed aide told Kessler that Trump aims to win Haberman’s approval.

“He wants eventually to win her over,” the aide said. “The president subscribes to the general theory that a little love can go a long way. Even if a story will be bad, give it a shot and maybe it will come out a little better."

“He believes like this is his hometown paper,” former White House press secretary Sean Spicer told Kessler. “He likes the respectability of being in the Times.”

“He will say he had seven New York Times page-one stories before he ran for president, but on one day as president, he counted seven,” former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said.

Kessler's book attracted pre-release attention for Kessler's claim during a CNN interview that White House adviser Kellyanne Conway is a primary leaker within the White House and said disparaging things about Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner.

"While I was interviewing Kellyanne Conway at the White House, she forgot that she was on record, and she started lashing into Reince Priebus," Kessler said. “She said the most mean, cutting and obviously untrue things about Reince. And I didn't include them in the book because they were so unfair. She also lit into Jared and Ivanka, saying that they leak against Steve Bannon.”