White House officials dishing anonymously to journalists, including specifically to Bob Woodward, is nothing new in Washington. All presidents have had to deal with leaks and insider sniping, though most have fared better than what President Trump apparently calls his den of "snakes."
"We had people who left the Bush administration and turned on us immediately," Eric Edelman, an undersecretary of defense in the George W. Bush administration, tells Politico, specifically mentioning former Press Secretary Scott McClellan. "But to have people inside the administration doing this while they're there, no." Former President Barack Obama, on the other hand, did have a mole of sorts, using the then-new medium of Twitter, as Politico explains:
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