Tuesday morning, President-elect Donald Trump backed out of a meeting with the New York Times, claiming that the paper changed the ground rules. After calling off the meeting, Trump followed up with a tweet. Then, several hours later, he posted that the meeting was back on.
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
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2016
The meeting with the @nytimes is back on at 12:30 today. Look forward to it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2016
Eileen Murphy, a spokesperson for the Times, responded that no arrangements for the meeting had been changed. The Times was supposedly unaware of the meeting being canceled until reading Trump’s tweets.
According to the company, Trump’s team requested on Monday to have the meeting’s protocol changed, but the paper declined.
“We did not change the ground rules at all and made no attempt to,” Murphy told the Times.
“They tried to yesterday – asking for only a private meeting and no on-the-record segment, which we refused to agree to,” she said.
The Times relayed that three people who knew of Trump’s decision to cancel the meeting said Reince Priebus, Trump’s appointed White House chief of staff, had been among those urging the president-elect to cancel it. They allegedly worried Trump would face impromptu questions that he wouldn’t be prepared for.
It was Priebus who told Trump, incorrectly, that The Times had changed the conditions of the meeting, believing it would result in a cancellation, these three people said. However, despite this convoluted back and forth, Trump showed up to the meeting a half hour late.
An uncertain tension hangs between Donald Trump and the New York Times after the meeting flip-flop, but Trump hopes that the strained relationship can be mended.
“I would like to turn it around,” Trump says of his relationship with the NY Times. “I think it would make the job I am doing much easier.”
— Mike Grynbaum (@grynbaum) November 22, 2016
This meeting took place one day after Trump hosted a meeting with news anchors and executives from NBC, CNN, CBS, and ABC at Trump Tower. According to anonymous sources, he verbally attacked media executives and television anchors. Trump allegedly spoke harshly of each media network, insisting they had “gotten it all wrong,” misrepresenting him and missing the signs of his ascension to presidency.