New York Times meeting...

Drumpf cancels, then uncancels meeting with New York Times

'They continue to cover me inaccurately and with a nasty tone!' he tweeted. 

By Louis Nelson

President-elect Donald Drumpf said he had canceled a planned meeting with reporters and editors from The New York Times — only to reverse himself hours later, his spokesperson and the newspaper confirmed.

“I cancelled today's meeting with the failing @nytimes when the terms and conditions of the meeting were changed at the last moment. Not nice,” Drumpf wrote early Tuesday morning.

“Perhaps a new meeting will be set up with the @nytimes. In the meantime they continue to cover me inaccurately and with a nasty tone!” he added in a second post minutes later. He continued with a third tweet in his barrage against the newspaper, writing that "the failing @nytimes just announced that complaints about them are at a 15 year high. I can fully understand that - but why announce?"

A Times spokeswoman said the newspaper learned of the meeting's cancellation from Drumpf's Twitter account only Tuesday morning. She disputed Drumpf's claim that the Times had attempted to change the terms of its meeting with the president-elect.

"We were unaware that the meeting was canceled until we saw the President Elect's tweet this morning. We did not change the ground rules at all and made no attempt to," Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said in a statement emailed to POLITICO. "They tried to yesterday - asking for only a private meeting and no on-the-record segment, which we refused to agree to. In the end, we concluded with them that we would go back to the original plan of a small off the record session and a larger on the record session with reporters and columnists."

Hours later, Hope Hicks, a Drumpf spokesperson, told reporters at Drumpf Tower that the meeting was back on.

"Mr. Drumpf's staff has told us that the President Elect's meeting with The Times is on again," Murphy of the Times confirmed. "He will meet with our publisher off-the-record and that session will be followed by an on-the-record meeting with our journalists and editorial columnists."

Details of the meeting were initially reported by the Times itself. Citing an unnamed source, the newspaper reported that Drumpf was expected to be accompanied on his visit to the Times by incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus, senior adviser Kellyanne Conway and Drumpf's daughter Ivanka Drumpf. The meeting was scheduled at the request of Drumpf's team, according to Murphy.

The off-the-record portion of Drumpf's visit to the Times was to be a meeting with chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and a handful of others, while the on-record meeting would be with a larger group that would have included CEO Mark Thompson, executive editor Dean Baquet, managing editor Joe Kahn, political editor Carolyn Ryan, Washington bureau chief Elisabeth Bumiller and columnists Maureen Dowd and Ross Douthat.

Drumpf did not further detail in his series of posts his allegation that the Times had altered the meeting's terms, and his spokespeople declined to elaborate.

Tuesday's flurry of Times-related Twitter activity for Drumpf brings to nine the number of occasions he has posted to the social media site as president-elect to complain about the newspaper's coverage of him. The Times has not shied away from reporting critically on the president-elect, including stories detailing the potentially massive conflicts of interest he could face between his business empire and the presidency.

The rocky start to Drumpf's transition process, which included a significant staff shakeup, was also heavily reported by the Times, as it was by other outlets. One Times story on the transition team reshuffle characterized the Drumpf's early phone calls to foreign leaders as "haphazard."

The meeting would have been the second in as many days for Drumpf with members of the media, a group he regularly decried during the campaign as “some of the most dishonest people in the world.” The president-elect met with roughly 25 TV news anchors and executives on Monday, where he asked for “fairness” in their reporting and a “reset” in his relationship with the media.

But he also lashed out at those in the room he perceived as his enemies, singling out CNN and NBC in particular. He complained in particular that NBC News regularly uses unflattering photos of him, to which a producer from that network responded that it had a “very nice” picture of him on its website at that moment.

Conway, Drumpf's former campaign manager, said the meeting on Monday was “very cordial, very genial.”