President Donald Trump spreads misinformation. A lot of it. Really, a lot.

But every once in a while he will come out guns blazing in defense of the truth, demanding corrections and consequences for spreading falsehoods told by others, and using incorrect news reports to undercut the media as a whole.


He executed the well-practiced maneuver once again on Tuesday, seizing on images of detained migrant children in bare-bones holding areas that had been spread on Twitter to attack his immigration policies but turned out to have been taken in 2014 while President Barack Obama was still in office.

“Democrats mistakenly tweet 2014 pictures from Obama’s term showing children from the Border in steel cages,” Trump wrote on Twitter on Tuesday morning. “They thought it was recent pictures in order to make us look bad, but backfires. Dems must agree to Wall and new Border Protection for good of country...Bipartisan Bill!”

Then, hours later, came the broader indictment of the press: “The Fake Mainstream Media has, from the time I announced I was running for President, run the most highly sophisticated & dishonest Disinformation Campaign in the history of politics. No matter how well WE do, they find fault. But the forgotten men & women WON, I’m President!”

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In recent months Trump has called for the firing of a Washington Post reporter over an inaccurate tweet, slammed the media for mischaracterizing his characterization of some immigrants as “animals” and called for ABC to fire Brian Ross over an incorrect report concerning the Russia investigation.

This kind of rhetoric is emerging as a central element of his 2018 and 2020 campaign strategies. Republican strategists, including officials behind Trump’s reelection effort, are operating under the premise that Democrats will be plenty energized for the midterms and 2020 elections — and they largely see their job as helping the GOP match, or exceed, that energy.

“This is what happens when two parties are at war,” said former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, referring to Trump and the news media. “But like two combatants in a war, all the civilians can do is shake their heads. The issue of who fired the first bullet doesn’t really matter anymore. It’s just a war.”

But whereas mainstream media outlets correct false reports, Trump and his White House refuse to back down from exaggerations, falsehoods and outright lies. On Saturday, the president claimed on Twitter that a White House official quoted by The New York Times “doesn’t exist.” In fact, the official the paper cited spoke to dozens of reporters in a background briefing arranged by the White House press office — on the condition that the official not be quoted by name.

Some Republicans contended that the Times misrepresented the official’s statement, while others in the White House blamed the official for going too far beyond the official line during the background call.

“It’s almost like a political nihilism,” said one former White House official. “They’re just so used to these sorts of issues popping up that it’s just normal.”

GOP campaign strategists say they need to close the intensity gap with Democrats, who are anticipating an anti-Trump wave.

Stoking outrage has proven effective. An October POLITICO/Morning Consult poll found that 76 percent of Republicans think the news media fabricate stories about Trump. And a Poynter Institute study last year found that more than 60 percent of respondents who supported Trump believe that the media is the “enemy of the American people.”

“Taxes. Pelosi. Immigration,” said one person involved in Trump’s reelection effort. “These are red-meat issues.”

Trump has also focused on the economy and tax cuts, tweeting on Monday that Democrats would try to repeal the Republican tax reform bill passed last December if they win control of Congress.

“This is too good to be true for Republicans,” Trump telegraphed of the nascent repeal push, which has virtually no chance of passing.

In the same tweet, the president pivoted to a theme that some believe will resonate even better with GOP voters: demonizing House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat, whom Trump falsely accused of coddling criminals.

“Remember,” Trump wrote, “the Nancy Pelosi Dems are also weak on Crime, the Border and want to be gentle and kind to MS-13 gang members...not good!”

Pelosi has not shown favor to MS-13 gang members, as Trump alleged in his tweet. What she has done, including in a recent speech, is argue that “calling people ‘animals’ is not a good thing.”

Trump went further this past weekend, misleadingly casting blame on Democrats for his own administration’s policy to criminally prosecute all illegal border-crossers, which results in some parents being separated from their children.

Josh Schwerin, of the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA, said he expects the trifecta of tax cuts, Pelosi and immigrant scare tactics to fall flat in key swing states, and pointed to Virginia Republican Ed Gillespie’s gubernatorial defeat by Democrat Ralph Northam last year.

“Running ads on MS-13 is an excuse to put a brown person with a face tattoo on TV,” Schwerin said. “You can ask Gov. Ed Gillespie how well it worked running racist scare-tactic ads in Virginia.”

But Trump has one more topic those close to him believe he’ll turn to: the Russia investigation.

The president routinely calls the sprawling probe, in which at least five former Trump associates have pleaded guilty, a “witch hunt.” And he has complained about “spying” overseen by the Obama administration — a reference to the FBI’s use of an informant early in its investigation, a standard bureau practice.

Trump lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said he expects Trump will make the case as the midterms draw closer that support for congressional Democrats will translate directly to his impeachment — even as Democratic leaders have explicitly sought to rule out that they would seek to remove Trump from office.

“I have no reason to believe that wouldn’t work to keep control of the Senate for sure and the House probably,” Giuliani told POLITICO last week.

While Democratic leaders have cautioned rank-and-file members to avoid campaign rhetoric around impeachment, Giuliani said it wouldn’t matter even if just a few candidates are in public discussing the issue: “That’s all you need to lead the charge.”

Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.