Donald Trump meets TV executives, journos, calls them deceitful liars

Donald Trump is meeting with the New York Times, and Times media reporter Mike Grynbaum is live tweeting the on-the-record portion of the meeting.

The Republican – known to be an avid media consumer – said the newspaper had switched the terms at the last moment, adding: “Not nice”. We did not change the ground rules at all and made no attempt to.

That’s a significant shift from Trump’s past statements that climate change is a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese to make US manufacturing less competitive.

All parties agreed beforehand that the meeting would be off the record, and reports of what occurred diverged widely.

Trump had been scheduled to do the same, reportedly to be accompanied in the meeting by adviser Kellyanne Conway, daughter Ivanka Trump and chief of staff Reince Priebus, before he abruptly canceled via Twitter Tuesday morning. And unlike yesterday’s summit with news executives and on-air talent from CNN, Fox News Channel, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News, it will be partially on-the-record.

Great meetings will take place today at Trump Tower concerning the formation of the people who will run our government for the next 8 years.

Sources told The New Yorker that television anchors, reporters and executives expected to discuss why the president-elect had not held a news conference since July, but were instead subjected to a barrage of insults and complaints.

One unnamed source who was at the meeting said that it was “like a f**king firing squad”.

Trump kept saying ‘We’re in a room of liars, the deceitful dishonest media who got it all wrong’. “He criticized some in the room by name, including CNN’s president, Jeffrey A. Zucker”.

The Times and other news organizations have also reported extensively on the unprecedented conflicts of interest posed by Trump’s hundreds of business holdings around the world.

When asked if the meeting was about mending fences, Conway said, “There’s no need to mend fences”.

As of 11am Tuesday morning, the meeting is back on.

Trump also formally disavowed support from the alt-right and hate groups that seem to have been emboldened by his win.

She called it a congenial and candid meeting, giving few details.

Mr. Trump also talked about his domestic agenda, which includes a very expensive infrastructure plan. But no he did not explode in anger.

“I think he’s thinking of many different things as he prepares to become the president of the United States and things that sound like the campaign aren’t among them”, she said.

Conway interceded to say that the new Trump administration appreciated the press corps’s hard work during the campaign and wanted a reset on its relationship to the press.

Trump met with several Times reporters and columnists as well as the paper’s top brass, touching on topics from climate change to whether he favored a further criminal investigation of his general election opponent, Hillary Clinton.