New York Times Publisher Rebuts Trump’s Account of Private Meeting

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — President Donald Trump on Sunday disclosed details of a private meeting he had with the publisher of The New York Times, A.G. Sulzberger, and Sulzberger flatly disputed the president’s characterization of an exchange they had about threats to journalism.

Trump said on Twitter that he and Sulzberger had discussed “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!”

In a five-paragraph statement issued two hours after the tweet, Sulzberger said he had accepted Trump’s invitation for the July 20 meeting mainly to raise his concerns about his “deeply troubling anti-press rhetoric.”

“I told the president directly that I thought that his language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous,” said Sulzberger, who became publisher of The Times on Jan. 1.

“I told him that although the phrase ‘fake news’ is untrue and harmful, I am far more concerned about his labeling journalists ‘the enemy of the people,'” Sulzberger continued. “I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence.”

This is particularly true overseas, Sulzberger said, where governments were using Trump’s words as a pretext to crack down on journalists. He said he warned the president that his attacks were “putting lives at risk” and “undermining the democratic ideals of our nation.”

Trump, in his tweet, described the meeting with Sulzberger as “very good and interesting.” But in referring to the phrase “enemy of the people,” he did not make clear that he himself began using that label about the press during his first year in office.

He has continued to assail the news media at rallies and even at more formal presidential events, encouraging his audiences to chant “CNN sucks!” and to vent their anger at the reporters assembled in the back.

Speaking to veterans in Kansas City, Missouri, last week, Trump said: “Stick with us. Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news.” As members of the crowd booed and hissed at the press corps, he added, “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

The president invited Sulzberger to the Oval Office earlier this month, according to The Times, continuing a tradition of meetings between presidents and the paper’s publishers. James Bennet, the editorial page editor of The Times, accompanied Sulzberger to the meeting.

In a statement, Mercedes Schlapp, a White House communications adviser, said, “The president regularly meets with members of the media, and we can confirm this meeting took place.” She did not provide any further details of the meeting or explain why the president chose to publicize it.

The White House had requested that the meeting be kept off the record, according to the statement from The Times.

“But with Mr. Trump’s tweet this morning,” the statement said, “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.”

The Times published an article this weekend about Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, which noted that they had invited Sulzberger to a dinner at their home in Manhattan in honor of Nikki R. Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Until Sunday morning, Trump had spent an uncharacteristically quiet weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

In other tweets, he celebrated the recent good economic news and revived a threat to shut down the government when its funding runs out in September if congressional Democrats do not vote to pay for the border wall with Mexico.

“Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT!” the president said. “We need great people coming into our Country!”