Trump Cancels New York Times Meeting after Paper Was ‘Not Nice’


TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Donald Trump scrapped a scheduled sitdown with the New York Times, chastising the paper early Tuesday for not being “nice” to him.

“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,” he said.

But Trump said the powwow could be rescheduled.

“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 said.

In a third tweet, he added, “The failing @nytimes just announced that complaints about them are at a 15 year high. I can fully understand that – but why announce?”

“We were unaware that the meeting was cancelled until we saw the President Elect’s tweet this morning. We did not change the ground rules at all and made no attempt to,” the Times said Tuesday in a statement.

“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,” the paper added.

It’s unclear what “conditions,” if any, had changed, but just minutes before, the Times reported about its scheduled sitdown.

“Before President-elect Donald J. Trump heads to Florida for the Thanksgiving holiday, he will meet with news organizations for a second day, this time with editors and reporters at The New York Times, a frequent target of his criticism. But after a flurry of announcements last week about high-level figures in his administration, the pace of news about the transition has slowed markedly,” the paper wrote.

The announcement comes a day after Trump scolded media bigwigs during a Trump Tower meeting, New York Post reported.

That meeting — featuring TV hosts and executives — was off the record, but a source told The Post, “It was like a f−−−ing firing squad,” with the president-elect complaining about the coverage he has been receiving.

“The meeting was a total disaster. The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing-down,” a source said.

A second source added, “He addressed everyone in the room, calling the media dishonest, deceitful liars.”