President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday canceled a meeting with the New York Times after “the terms and conditions of the meeting were changed at the last moment.”
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
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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2016
While Trump’s cancellation tweet implies that the Times changed the terms, the publication’s officials say it was the other way around, and that they learned the meeting was canceled from Trump’s tweets.
“We were unaware that the meeting was canceled until we saw the president-elect’s tweet this morning,” Eileen Murphy, the Times vice president of communications, said in a statement. “We did not change the ground rules at all and made no attempt to. They tried to yesterday—asking for only a private meeting and no on-the-record segment, which we refused to agree to.”
If the Times account of events is correct, it is unclear whether Trump meant that the paper’s refusal to agree to an off-the-record meeting was “not nice” or whether Trump himself was “not nice” for changing the conditions and then canceling the meeting.
Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The canceled meeting comes one day after Trump met with hosts and executives from major cable and broadcast news networks, during which Trump reportedly berated the news outlets, complained that NBC News made it look like he had two chins in photographs used on-air, and vowed to start anew in his relationship with the press while taking questions about his policies.
Update 1pm CT, Nov. 22: Trump decided to meet with the Times for an on-the-record meeting, after all.