NYT publisher disputes

NYT publisher disputes Trump's retelling of off-the-record conversation

Trump has not abandoned some of his most highly charged rhetoric about the press, including calling journalists the 'enemy of the people.'

By ANDREW RESTUCCIA and BRENT D. GRIFFITHS

It was supposed to be an off-the-record meeting. But President Donald Trump had other plans.

On Sunday morning, nine days after sitting down with New York Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger at the White House, Trump decided to make the once-private meeting public. At 8:30 a.m., the president declared on Twitter that he had talked with Sulzberger, one of most powerful media executives in the country, about "the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media," sending the Times scrambling to offer its own version of events.

The Times has long been a convenient foil for Trump, a regular Times reader who has a fascination with the paper despite his loud criticism of its coverage. So it was no surprise that Trump would try to spin the meeting with Sulzberger to his advantage.

“Had a very good and interesting meeting at the White House with A.G. Sulzberger, Publisher of the New York Times,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Spent much time talking about the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media & how that Fake News has morphed into phrase, ‘Enemy of the People.’ Sad!”

The tweet forced the Times to explain in detail what happened at the meeting, arguing that Trump’s decision to discuss the meeting publicly nullified their off-the-record agreement.

"I told the president directly that I thought that his language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous," Sulzberger said in a statement released by the Times about the July 20 meeting at the White House. "I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence."

"I repeatedly stressed that this is particularly true abroad, where the president’s rhetoric is being used by some regimes to justify sweeping crackdowns on journalists," Sulzberger continued. "I warned that it was putting lives at risk, that it was undermining the democratic ideals of our nation, and that it was eroding one of our country’s greatest exports: a commitment to free speech and a free press."

Sulzberger's pleas appeared to have had little effect on Trump, who last week bashed the news media during a speech in Missouri and whose White House separately barred a CNN reporter from covering an event. And the president appears to have no plans to abandon his most highly charged rhetoric about the press, including calling journalists the “enemy of the people,” a phrase he repeated in his Sunday tweet about the meeting.

Later on Sunday, Trump showed no change of heart in a series of tweets about the media, saying that the New York Times and Washington Post "do nothing but write bad stories."

"When the media - driven insane by their Trump Derangement Syndrome - reveals internal deliberations of our government, it truly puts the lives of many, not just journalists, at risk! Very unpatriotic!" he wrote in tweets. "I will not allow our great country to be sold out by anti-Trump haters in the...dying newspaper industry."

The conversation between Trump and Sulzberger came amid heightened tensions with the media. The president has continued to claim that coverage he does not like is "fake news." During the speech in Missouri this past week, Trump said what the media is covering is "not what’s happening" and urged his supporters not to believe the news. “Don’t believe the crap you see from these people — the fake news,” he said during the speech.

Meanwhile, a CNN reporter was barred from covering an event last week at the White House, a decision that prompted widespread outrage from journalists.

Sulzberger's paper has been a frequent target of Trump, who has attacked both the Times and some of its reporters, including White House correspondent Maggie Haberman, by name.

It’s common for publishers of major newspapers, including the Times, to meet with U.S. presidents. Sulzberger also attended a recent dinner party at the home of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, according to a story about the couple published on Saturday. But the Times' critics pounced on Sulzberger’s meeting with the president, arguing it gave Trump an opportunity to use the meeting to amplify his attacks on the press.

“The media always gets played by Trump. Always. Going to the meeting, The Times was going to get played,” Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal group, wrote on Twitter. “His tweet after the meeting will do more damage than anything gained by going to the meeting. Do you think your pleas will be heard?”

It’s not the first time the Times has had to navigate an off-the-record conversation with Trump. In 2016, BuzzFeed reported that then-presidential candidate Trump wavered on immigration during an off-the-record conversation with the Times’ editorial board, a revelation that put pressure on Trump to give his consent to release the audio and transcript of the discussion (which he resisted). The Times ultimately decided to honor their off-the-record agreement.

Sulzberger said he told Trump that previous presidents have taken issue with the coverage of their administration but that he should reconsider his broader anti-press diatribes.

"I made clear repeatedly that I was not asking for him to soften his attacks on The Times if he felt our coverage was unfair," Sulzberger said. "Instead, I implored him to reconsider his broader attacks on journalism, which I believe are dangerous and harmful to our country."

The statement from The New York Times said Sulzberger had gone to the White House accompanied by James Bennet, who oversees the editorial page of The Times.

“Mr. Trump’s aides requested that the meeting be off the record, which has also been the practice for such meetings in the past," the statement said. "But with Mr. Trump’s tweet this morning, he has put the meeting on the record, so A.G. has decided to respond to the president’s characterization of their conversation, based on detailed notes A.G. and James took."