Trump said journalists 'should be executed' and are 'scumbags', ex-aide Bolton claims

US president’s private comments prove more shocking than his public statements against ‘fake news'

Former national security adviser John Bolton has claimed that Donald Trump called journalists “scumbags” who should be “executed”.

Those comments, which Mr Bolton alleges were made last summer, were published on Wednesday night alongside other alleged wrongdoings contained in a new tell-all book.

The extract states that Mr Trump attacked journalists during a meeting last summer in New Jersey.

He was said to have called journalists “scumbags” who should be jailed so they would have to expose their sources, wrote Mr Bolton.

“These people should be executed. They are scumbags,” Mr Trump said, according to Bolton’s account from “The Room Where It Happened.”

The alleged comments, made in private, prove to be more shocking than Mr Trump’s previous public attacks against reporters.

He also renewed his attacks on Mr Bolton on Wednesday, who he called “a washed-up guy” some nine months after he was ousted as an advisor.

“He broke the law – he was a washed up guy, I gave him a second chance”, Mr Trump told Sean Hannity on Fox News on Wednesday, as the book’s extracts were published.

“He couldn’t get [the] senate confirmed so I gave him a non-senate confirmed position. This is highly classified information & he did not have approval”, added Mr Trump.

His administration made a second bid to block Mr Bolton’s book from publication on Wednesday night, with an application submitted to a district court seeking an injunction and emergency restraining order against Mr Bolton.

The book, due out on Tuesday, also claims that Mr Trump tried to persuade Chinese President Xi Jinping to assist in his 2020 re-election bid with large agricultural products purchases.

“I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations,” wrote Mr Bolton.