After teasing the press for more than a week, President Trump is expected to hand out his “Fake News Awards” on Wednesday, but it was still unclear as of Tuesday night what the mock ceremony will entail, including whether Trump will hand out any awards himself.
Asked Tuesday by the Washington Examiner if the White House had any other details about the event, press secretary Sarah Sanders said she had none to offer.
The awards were originally scheduled for Jan. 8, but Trump postponed them, writing on Twitter, “The interest in, and importance of, these awards is far greater than anyone could have anticipated!” There was some speculation that the event could be postponed again.
Neither the White House nor Trump have indicated who will receive awards or how or where it will happen. It’s not clear whether the awards will be handed out to individual reporters, entire news organizations, or both.
In late December, the “Trump Make America Great Again Committee,” a joint project between the Republican National Committee and the Trump presidential campaign, sent out an email asking supporters to vote on a potential “2017 KING of Fake News.”
That email suggested three stories about the White House that contained crucial errors, including last January when a Time reporter wrongly asserted that Trump had a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. removed from the Oval Office. Others were a CNN report last month that suggested the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., had been given exclusive early access to WikiLeaks documents during the campaign when the information was already available to the public as well as a report by ABC’s Brian Ross that said incorrectly that Trump, as a candidate, had directed his adviser Michael Flynn to contact Russian officials.
The Wall Street Journal stated falsely that I said to them “I have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un” (of N. Korea). Obviously I didn’t say that. I said “I’d have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un,” a big difference. Fortunately we now record conversations with reporters…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018
Trump has repeatedly referred to specific reports and outlets, as well as the general news media, as “fake news” for what he has called unfair coverage of his administration.
On Sunday, he singled out a Wall Street Journal report that said Trump, in an interview, had said he had a “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“The Wall Street Journal stated falsely that I said to them ‘I have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un’ (of N. Korea),” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Obviously I didn’t say that. I said ‘I’d have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un,’ a big difference. Fortunately we now record conversations with reporters……and they knew exactly what I said and meant. They just wanted a story. FAKE NEWS!”
