TRUMP: The 'real story' to emerge from Flynn resignation is 'illegal leaks' to media
"The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal on N.Korea etc?" Trump asked on Twitter.
Flynn resigned as national security adviser on Monday night just 24 days after being on the job, the shortest tenure anyone has ever served in the role. The resignation came amid uproar over talks he had with a Russian diplomat and followed a Washington Post report that said the White House was warned he could be vulnerable to blackmail.
Newspapers like the Post and New York Times relied on anonymous government sources to shed light on what was taking place behind the scenes in the Trump White House, reportedly angering Trump and eventually prompting him to lash out against leakers on Twitter.
The president's sentiment against leakers echoed a narrative that had already started to play out in media outlets friendly to him.
The website Breitbart, whose former chairman now serves as the White House chief strategist, credited leakers in part for the resignation and said it "suggests that someone with access to that information also has a political axe to grind."
"Every story about Flynn published over the weekend, or on Monday, contains multiple anonymous sources, some of which flatly contradict other anonymous sources," another Breitbart story read. "That state of affairs will itself become an enduring narrative about the Trump White House if it doesn't bring the leaks under control."
The narrative was similar on Fox News. The media outlet ran a story questioning why information was leaked to the media and contributor Laura Ingraham, a conservative talk show host and Trump supporter, said on the network that Flynn's resignation "really was the death by a thousand leaks."
The Post reported on Tuesday that Trump had ordered an internal investigation to determine who was leaking information to the media.