The White House said Tuesday that it is canceling subscriptions to The New York Times and The Washington Post less than a day after President Trump suggesting terminating them.
“We have no plans to renew them,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told The Hill of the subscriptions on Tuesday.
{mosads}“We don’t even want it in the White House anymore,” Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity during an interview that aired Monday night, referring to the Times. “We’re going to probably terminate that and The Washington Post. They’re fake.”
Trump regularly criticizes the Times and the Post over coverage of his administration that he deems unfair, and repeatedly refers to the broader media as “fake news” and “corrupt.” During his “Hannity” appearance, he referred to the Times as “a fake newspaper.”{mosads}
During an interview with the Times earlier this year in the Oval Office, Trump said “everybody thinks The New York Times treats me terribly.”
“Washington Post also, but The New York Times even more so treats me unbelievably terribly,” Trump said.
He added that he didn’t think he’d had a “good story” in the newspaper since becoming president.
Earlier this month, the Post’s publisher spoke out against Trump’s “fake news” claims, saying in an op-ed that comparing unflattering news to fake news is “corrosive” to the country.
“That truth might not always be what a leader wants to hear. But there is an enormous difference between ‘unfavorable news’ and ‘fake news.’ It is wrong to conflate them. Doing so is an attack on the truth — and it is corrosive to our democracy,” Fred Ryan wrote.
— Morgan Chalfant contributed to this report, which was updated at 2:40 p.m.