President Donald Trump on Wednesday reacted to Politico making major corrections to a story it wrote about loans Trump took on in 2012.
The original article claimed Trump owed tens of millions of dollars to China, citing one of his real estate partners refinancing a building for $1 billion in a deal that included $211 million from the Bank of China.
But the outlet was forced to significantly alter the piece when the bank said it sold the debt just weeks after the deal was completed, making the article eight years too late.
In an unsigned editor’s note, Politico said reporters did not contact the Bank of China before the report was published. Matt Kaminski, Politico’s editor in chief, told staffers in a note that “we got a central premise of our original story wrong.”
Kaminski called not reaching out to the bank before publication “a basic and inexcusable fault.”
Politico did not publicly apologize to Trump, who shared Kaminski’s note and wrote in a statement: “At least they admit it.”
The New York Times and Washington Post “never correct their Fake Reporting!” he added.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment. Politico didn’t respond to questions about whether the three reporters who worked on the story would face punitive action for failing to reach out to the bank.
Brad Parscale, Trump’s campaign manager, said it was “good to see” Politico “own up to its colossal” so-called fake news report.
“Now, if only the media pursued Hunter Biden’s Chinese business deals or asked Sleepy Joe about Tara Reade!” he added, referring to the son of former Vice President Joe Biden and a woman who recently accused Biden of sexual assault.
Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons, said he spoke to a reporter for 30 minutes before the story was published and told them their facts were wrong.
“They want to ‘get’ us so badly (and cover for Biden true corruption) that they ended up looking like complete fools,” he added.
In the unsigned editor’s note, Politico said the story has been updated twice.
“Our commitment at POLITICO is to journalism that gets its facts straight. We regret we fell short in this case,” it stated.
