President-elect Donald Trump initially canceled a meeting with The New York Times, then apparently decided to keep the exchange on his schedule.
About 6:15 a.m., the president-elect said he had canceled the meeting, claiming the conditions of the meeting were changed at the last moment:
He later tweeted that “perhaps a new meeting will be set up” and then attacked the Times for “inaccurately” covering him:
Later Tuesday morning, his spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, texted that “the meeting is taking place as planned,” according to the pool report.
Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said the meeting will still include an off-the-record session with publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and an on-the-record meeting with journalists and columnists.
Assistant masthead editor Clifford Levy tweeted earlier Tuesday the Times had not changed the rules.
A quote attached to Levy’s tweet said it was the transition team who tried to alter the meeting to a private, off-the-record tete-a-tete and that the Times was unaware the meeting was canceled until seeing Trump’s tweet:
.@realDonaldTrump cancelled his meeting w/@nytimes. Our response: "We did not change the ground rules at all and made no attempt to."
Donald Trump canceled today's meeting with The New York Times. NYT's response: nyti.ms/2fleK89
According to Murphy, Hicks talked to Sulzberger around midafternoon Monday and said Trump’s schedule had become busy and he would only have time for the off-the-record session. Sulzberger said that would not work, and Hicks told him she would get back to him.
About 20 minutes later, Murphy said, Hicks called again to say Trump would be able to accommodate both the off-the-record and on-the-record parts of the meeting, and the meeting remained scheduled.
Trump’s attacks Tuesday morning included a swipe over complaints lobbied at the Times, possibly in reference to a piece by its public editor, Liz Spayd, published over the weekend:
Spayd categorized the number of complaints coming to her as being “five times the normal level,” but she did not write that they were at a 15-year high.
The Times describes the role of the public editor as one that is “outside of the reporting and editing structure of the newspaper and receives and answers questions or comments from readers and the public.” Spayd’s opinions and conclusions are her own, not those of the Times’s.
The sudden cancellation and rescheduling comes the morning after Trump met with leading executives and anchors from major news outlets, where he ripped into the media, sources told the Times.
It was not immediately clear what had changed that caused Trump to cancel the meeting in the first place.
Trump has had a hostile relationship with the Times, both during the campaign and after the election. He has repeatedly called the newspaper “failing,” while the Times has reported increased subscriptions since Trump won the presidency.
During the campaign, Trump had said that he would “open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”
Meetings with potential candidates for positions in the Cabinet and at the White House will continue Tuesday, Trump tweeted.
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