Team Trump: Media ‘angry’ Hillary lost now gunning for prez

“It’s completely absurd,” said one key insider, adding, “That just doesn’t exist here.”

While some bitterness between aides has surfaced, top aides said that reports of fighting between Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, senior advisors Stephen Bannon, Kellyanne Conway and others are wrong, as are rumors that Trump is already interviewing replacements.

A key associate blamed the reports on outlets still shocked that Trump beat Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“They’re going after staff to get at Trump,” said the source. “They are so angry they lost.”

It has worked, however, to put the Washington media’s focus on charges of staff infighting instead of policy, a point Trump hit on in his Thursday press conference.

And it’s forced top staffers to spend time with some media, like Time magazine, to make the case that the staff turmoil stories are bunk, as Bannon did this week, telling Time that he is “proud” to work with Priebus and ripping a Breitbart story of palace intrigue.

Trump led the pushback Thursday when, unprovoked, he lauded Priebus.

“We are running — this is a fine-tuned machine. And Reince happens to be doing a good job. But half of his job is putting out lies by the press,” said the president.

“Here’s my chief of staff, a really good guy, did a phenomenal job at RNC. I mean, we won the election, right? We won the presidency. We got some senators. We got some — all over the country, you take a look, he’s done a great job. And I said to myself, you know — and I said to somebody that was in the room — I said, ‘You take a look at Reince, he’s working so hard just putting out fires that are fake fires.’ They’re fake. They’re not true. And isn’t that a shame, because he’d rather be working on health care. He’d rather be working on tax reform,” added Trump in a broadside blast on the mainstream media.

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]