President Donald Trump lashed out against reporting about his suspicious transactions flagged by Deutsche Bank as potential money laundering.
The president attacked the newspaper that reported the concerns raised in 2016 and 2017, and denied that he had trouble getting loans from U.S. banks.
"The Failing New York Times (it will pass away when I leave office in 6 years), and others of the Fake News Media, keep writing phony stories about how I didn’t use many banks because they didn’t want to do business with me," Trump tweeted. "WRONG! It is because I didn’t need money. Very old fashioned, but true. When you don’t need or want money, you don’t need or want banks."
Trump insisted that banks were always willing to lend him money, and dismissed numerous reports to the contrary as made-up political attacks.
"Banks have always been available to me, they want to make money," he said. "Fake Media only says this to disparage, and always uses unnamed sources (because their sources don’t even exist)."
The president rolled out his habitual attack on journalists as "the enemy of the people," and again called the special counsel investigation of his campaign a "hoax."
"The Mainstream Media has never been as corrupt and deranged as it is today," Trump tweeted. "FAKE NEWS is actually the biggest story of all and is the true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! That’s why they refuse to cover the REAL Russia Hoax. But the American people are wise to what is going on."
Eric Trump, who now runs the Trump Organization while his father serves as president, admitted in 2014 that the family's business got "all the funding we need out of Russia," which the president flatly denied in his tweet storm.
"Now the new big story is that Trump made a lot of money and buys everything for cash, he doesn’t need banks," Trump said. "But where did he get all of that cash? Could it be Russia? No, I built a great business and don’t need banks, but if I did they would be there...and DeutscheBank was very good and highly professional to deal with - and if for any reason I didn’t like them, I would have gone elsewhere....there was always plenty of money around and banks to choose from. They would be very happy to take my money. Fake News!"