Donald Trump was flayed Friday morning for allegedly misreading a New York Times article. Trump tweeted that the “failing” NYT published “fake news” when it wrote that Chinese president Xi Jinping “has not spoken to Mr. Trump since November 14.” Yet, as the president pointed out, this isn’t true: He and Xi spoke “at length” Thursday night. Trump’s critics have noted, though, that the first sentence of the article in question says, “President Trump told President Xi Jinping of China on Thursday evening that the United States would honor the “One China” policy, reversing his earlier expressions of doubt about the longtime diplomatic understanding and removing a major source of tension between the United States and China since shortly after he was elected.” So: Trump’s an illiterate buffoon, right?
Well, the people over at Axios noticed something. Like many 70-year-old men (and, well, even some millennial editors at THE WEEKLY STANDARD), Donald Trump enjoys reading print newspapers. And the print edition of the Times did indeed contain the sentence in question. So Trump is apparently angry about an article that appears in the print edition of today’s Times—and that has subsequently been updated. Making the matter more confusing for observers is that nowhere online does the Times indicate that the article has been updated. (It makes one wonder: Does Trump think the Falcons won the Super Bowl as well?)
There exists another possibility as well. Could the Trump administration have hastily arranged the phone call with Xi in anticipation of the Times story—or even after its publication? The Times wouldn’t tell us when—or if—it forewarned the White House about its story. What we do know is the article, in its original form, was published around 9 pm Thursday evening. The Trump administration, meanwhile, released a readout of the call at 11 pm.
Chinese newspapers started reporting on it around 1 am, eastern time. But the White House won’t say what time the phone call took place—or when it was arranged. But it’s a certainly a remarkable coincidence that, on the same night that the Times published a major story on Trump and Xi’s frosty relationship, they had a phone call.
Could Trump’s foreign policy be partly dictated by the Times? If so, the Old Grey Lady has a level of influence over the president it didn’t even enjoy over Barack Obama.
