In the week since he won the presidency, Donald Trump has issued 23 140-character press releases on Twitter. Of those 23, six were complaints about the New York Times and its coverage.
“The failing @nytimes story is so totally wrong on transition,” Trump tweeted, using his favorite adjective to describe the paper. “It is going so smoothly. Also, I have spoken to many foreign leaders. I have recieved [sic] and taken calls from many foreign leaders despite what the failing @nytimes said.”
But the Times reported that Trump had spoken with foreign leaders. It was just that he seemed to do so without preparation or a plan of whom he hoped to speak with and when.
This is usually the case when Trump is complaining about the Times, which he's done on Twitter more than 60 times since entering the presidential race. He'll either broadly disparage the newspaper and its business success or isolate one point with which he wants to take issue, using that to suggest that the entire article is inaccurate. In every case where we could link Trump's tweets back to his complaints, the Times' reporting has held up.
Aug. 3, 2015: Trump is mad about an article on Jeb Bush.
Three tweets, including:
The Times reported that Bush's team saw Trump's rise as beneficial, freezing out other more viable competitors to Bush. Whether or not that was spin from the Bush camp, the Times was simply reporting on how Bush's team viewed the race. There's no indication the reporting was wrong — though the Bush team's analysis certainly was.
Sept. 24, 2015: Trump is mad about a sparse crowd at a speech in South Carolina.
Trump got very mad in September 2015 when media outlets noted that a last-minute speech in South Carolina was given to a room about a third full of empty chairs. Trump insisted that the chairs were empty because people rushed the stage; we looked at this claim and found it to be untrue.
Oct. 17, 2015: Trump is mad that Hillary Clinton was on the front page of the paper instead of him.
She was.
Nov. 6, 2015: Trump is mad that the Times described Ben Carson as being in the lead.
At the time of the Times article, Carson had surged in national polling to take a slight lead over Trump, according to the average from RealClearPolitics. In the wake of the terror attacks in Paris, Carson's support collapsed — but it was not the case that Trump was "#1" at that point, much less “easily.”
Nov. 26, 2015: Trump is mad that the Times reported on his mocking a disabled reporter.
Six tweets, including:
Trump's imitation of Times reporter Serge Kovaleski was one of the most resonant issues among voters in poll after poll. It was featured in many of Clinton's ads over the course of the campaign, the image of Trump mimicking Kovaleski's arm being used to reflect on Clinton's arguments about Trump's character. In the wake of the speech where he did the imitation, Trump repeatedly insisted that he wasn't mocking Kovaleski, whom he claimed not to know.
Kovaleski pointed out that he and Trump had met many times and that he was on a first-name basis with Trump thanks to his reporting at the New York Daily News.
Dec. 8-9, 2015: Trump is mad that the Times suggested the race in Iowa was close.
Two tweets, including:
The Times reported that the race overall was uncertain and that the result in Iowa seemed fluid.
Trump led in the last polls before the state's caucuses, and ended up losing to Ted Cruz.
Dec. 24, 2015: Trump is mad at Times reporters.
Haberman wrote a piece looking at Trump's unorthodox campaign, but it's not clear what this refers to.
Mar. 13, 2016: Trump is mad that the Times doesn't “fact check.”
The genesis of this one isn't clear either. The Times reported on Trump's predilection for aggressive behavior toward protesters the same day, indicating that the Trump campaign wouldn't comment.
Mar. 24, 2016: Trump takes a victory lap for calling Brussels a “hell hole” before a major terror attack there.
The story ran at the end of January, relaying the negative feedback of residents of the city to Trump's comments. For example:
Jean-Philippe Schreiber, a historian at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, said Mr. Trump was stirring up xenophobia. Brussels has its problems, he added, but Mr. Trump’s “hyperbolic” comments were not worthy of a response.
How the bombing at the city's airport proved him correct isn't clear.
Apr. 10, 2016: Trump is mad at how the Times described his foreign policy goals.
This was the period during which Trump was playing up the idea that our NATO commitments might be on the table for negotiation. The Times report focused on the fact that Trump often said things off-the-cuff and then had to scramble to qualify the comments — which is precisely what his tweet did, too.
Apr. 24, 2016: Trump is happy the failing Times is failing.
This seems to be about news that the paper was shuttering a bureau, not about anything it wrote about him.
May 16-19, 2016: Trump is mad that the Times reported on his inappropriate behavior with women.
Seventeen tweets, including:
Well before the release of a hot-mic tape in which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women, the Times looked at Trump's relationships with women at his businesses and in his beauty pageants. The report suggested a pattern of unusual or inappropriate behavior, launching Trump — then just entering the general election — into a lengthy tirade in response.
One of the women in the article, Rowanne Brewer, went on Fox News to defend Trump, enough for him to declare that the whole article had been “exposed ... as a fraud.” It wasn't.
May 28, 2016: Trump is mad that the Times questioned his leadership.
This was a reported piece examining how Trump managed his team. The report suggested that Trump liked pitting staff against one another and that he was often “swayed by the last person he talked to.”
Trump was correct that he was at that point essentially tied with Clinton, thanks to his firming up the GOP nomination and Clinton continuing to fend off Bernie Sanders. Within a month, though, Trump was trailing badly and campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was fired.
June 2, 2016: Trump is mad about a report on how he uses threats and flattery to get his way.
Michael Barbaro was one of the reporters who wrote the piece about Trump and women. Trump didn't dispute Barbaro's look at the notes Trump sent to people during his time in the public eye, but it would have been hard for him to do so: The notes are all in his own handwriting.
July 2, 2016: Trump is mad that the Times reported he didn't know the convention had to be in Cleveland.
Trump was understandably annoyed about a Times report suggesting that he thought the Republican convention could be moved out of Cleveland, the city that won a bid to host it before he was even a candidate. The Times' report to that effect was confirmed by two aides, it said.
July 27, 2016: Trump is mad that the Times criticized his call for Russia to hack Clinton's emails.
The Times wasn't “pushing a narrative.” It was “reporting what Trump said.” The report called Trump's comments “another bizarre moment in the mystery of whether Vladimir V. Putin’s government has been seeking to influence the United States’ presidential race.”
Incidentally, Putin never called Trump a genius.
Aug. 14, 2016: Trump is mad at reports that his team wants him to bite his tongue.
Three tweets, including:
In one of a series of articles about Trump being encouraged to change his tone, the Times reported that then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump's children were encouraging Trump to stick to a Teleprompter and not get drawn into unhelpful attacks and asides. On Twitter, Trump denied all of this.
By the end of the month, Manafort was out and Trump was sticking to Teleprompters. In our oral history of the campaign, Manafort confirmed that he'd wanted Trump to use a Teleprompter.
August and September 2016: Trump is mad for unspecified reasons.
Three tweets, including:
The tweet above coincided with a big look at Trump's use of debt and murky business ties. Two other tweets, complaining about Times reporting on Clinton's email server and the paper's “dishonest hits,” are hard to pin to a source.
Sept. 17, 2016: Trump is mad about a story looking at tax breaks he received.
Three tweets, including:
After complaining about Maureen Dowd, Trump took to Twitter to vaguely complain about the Times' coverage, probably because of this look at how he'd benefited from huge tax breaks. Trump's threat to sue the Times never came to fruition, but it would be repeated.
Oct. 2, 2016: Trump is mad about a report on his avoiding paying income taxes.
Trump tried to wave away Times reporting looking at how he'd benefited from risky debt practices. During the first presidential debate, in response to another Times article, he said that not paying taxes made him “smart.”
Oct. 13, 2016: Trump is mad about a story in which women allege he assaulted them.
Two tweets, including:
The bombshell report that Trump had allegedly fondled and kissed women in his past followed the release of the “Access Hollywood” hot-mic tape. Trump went on the offensive, insisting that the stories were made up, though without any strong evidence to the contrary. Here, too, Trump threatened to sue the Times but, in a likely sign that he recognized his suit would fail, apparently decided against it.
Nov. 13, 2016: Trump is mad at the Times' coverage broadly and its description of his foreign policy specifically.
Three tweets, including:
