The Associated Press has retracted and corrected its story that claimed U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard described President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin as “very good friends.”
A spokesperson for the outlet, whose stories are widely distributed around the world, told The Epoch Times in an email that the story, published on March 17, was removed “because it did not meet our standards.”
“We notified customers and published a corrected story with an editor’s note to be transparent about the error,” the spokesperson said.
It added, “Gabbard was talking about Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.”
The original story quoted an interview Gabbard gave to the Indian news outlet NDTV.
Gabbard said while speaking to the broadcaster, “We have two leaders of two great countries who are very good friends and very focused on how we can strengthen the shared objectives and shared interests.”
Asserting Gabbard was referring to Trump and Putin, The Associated Press opined that the comments “reflect the dramatic shift in U.S.-Russia relations under Trump, who has boasted of his relationship with Putin, blamed Ukraine for Russia’s invasion and taken a hard line against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.”
The Associated Press also said that Gabbard’s purported remarks about Trump and Putin “alarmed some critics.” The only critic it quoted was Garry Kasparov, a Russian chess player.
David Klepper, the reporter who wrote the article, did not return a query.
“This is why no one trusts the maliciously incompetent and purposefully bias[ed] media. If this isn’t a clear example of pushing a solely political narrative, then nothing is,” she wrote.
The office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment further.
The retraction comes after the White House removed The Associated Press from its press pool, in the wake of the outlet opting to keep using the name Gulf of Mexico instead of Trump’s new name for the body of water south of Texas, the Gulf of America.
