Journalist Says Bloomberg Not Source Of Trump’s Off-The-Record Canada Remarks

The Canadian journalist who published President Donald Trump’s disparaging, off-the-record remarks about trade talks with Canada flatly rejected the president’s charge that the Bloomberg journalists who had conducted the Oval Office interview had leaked the material.

“I’d said I wasn’t going to say anything about my source for the quotes Trump made off the record to Bloomberg,” Daniel Dale, the Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star, wrote on Twitter Saturday. “However, I don’t want to be party to the president’s smearing of excellent, ethical journalists. So I can say this: none of the Bloomberg interviewers was my source.”

Dale, who was not personally present for the Star interview on Thursday, published off-the-record comments from the meeting in which Trump told the Bloomberg News journalists that he was not compromising with Canada on ongoing trade talks.

“Here’s the problem, Trump said. “If I say no — the answer’s no. If I say no, then you’re going to put that and it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal … I can’t kill these people,” Trump said, referring to the Canadian government.