President Donald Trump slammed The New York Times on Monday for its latest article accusing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, asserting that the paper is “destroying lives.”
Trump declined to say whether or not the reporters and editors involved in the story, which required a major editor’s note, should be fired, instead only stating it’s a “fair question.”
WATCH:
I just asked @realDonaldTrump if he thinks the individuals involved in the NYT’s “corrected” Kavanaugh story should be fired.
His response here: pic.twitter.com/laaxxeNsnJ
— Amber Athey (@amber_athey) September 16, 2019
“It’s a very fair question,” the president said in response to a question from the Daily Caller. “I think they have to be very embarrassed, but much more importantly, what they do is wrong and they do it all the time.” (RELATED: Washington Post Passed On Thinly Sourced Kavanaugh Story Before NYT Published)
The president also stated that the Times’ correction is not the first time it has made a “terrible mistake.”
“I think The New York Times made another terrible mistake. It’s a shame that a thing like that could happen — I see that they’re making a big correction today. They just announced there’s a correction, but to do that about a Supreme Court justice is a terrible thing. It’s a false accusation. Whatever happened with The New York Times, I mean, I can tell you personally that they never check … they used to have a thing called fact checking — they don’t do fact checking anymore.”
He continued, “How can they do a thing like that and destroy somebody’s life? I mean, they’re destroying lives. And it’s fake news.”
The Times reported over the weekend that a former classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale University claimed to have witnessed an incident in which Kavanaugh’s friends pushed his penis into a female classmate’s hand.
However, the reporting — which was adapted from a book excerpt by two Times reporters — failed to include that the female classmate did not want to speak on the record about the incident, and according to friends, didn’t even remember it.
The Times issued the following editor’s note after backlash:
“An earlier version of this article, which was adapted from a forthcoming book, did not include one element of the book’s account regarding an assertion by a Yale classmate that friends of Brett Kavanaugh pushed his penis into the hand of a female student at a drunken dorm party. The book reports that the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say that she does not recall the incident. That information has been added to the article.”
The president previously suggested the paper should be sued for libel over the accusation.