By Brian Cates – UncoverDC

At his very first press conference as a newly inaugurated President, Trump boasted of having held a secret meeting with intelligence officials, then watching news of that secret briefing appears in the mainstream media. That initial press conference was where Trump first said the words “The leaks are real, the news is fake.”

Trump used that briefing with intelligence officials as an opportunity to prove top officials in the Swamp would eagerly leak details of classified briefings to the news media.

Trump doing this was stunning to Mollie Hemingway, who has several times commented on how quickly this event was memory-holed. It was so rapidly forgotten for this reason:  President Trump effectively pulling off even a simple intelligence operation to expose leakers and rubbing the media’s faces in it simply did not fit their deeply ingrained view of the former reality television star as being an idiot.

President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York, Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2017. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Here’s what Trump said at that press conference:

I’ll tell you what does happen. I have many meetings with intelligence. And every time I meet, people are reading about it. Somebody’s leaking it out. So, there’s — maybe it’s my office.

Maybe in my office, because I have a lot of people, a lot of great people. Maybe it’s them. And what I did is I said I won’t tell anybody. I’m going to have a meeting, and I won’t tell anybody about my meeting with intelligence.

 And what happened is I had my meeting. Nobody knew, not even Rhona, my executive assistant for years; she didn’t know—I didn’t tell her. Nobody knew. The meeting was had, the meeting was over, they left. And immediately, the word got out that I had a meeting.

Look carefully at what Trump said there. The only people who knew that briefing took place were Trump and the particular intelligence officials in the room with him. Nobody else knew about it.

So, when the details of that briefing turned up in news media reports, who leaked it was not exactly a mystery to Trump.

Read the full story here: The Leaks are Still Real, The News is Still Fake – UncoverDC