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President-elect Donald Trump abruptly canceled a meeting with The New York Times on Tuesday, accusing the newspaper of covering him "inaccurately" and "with a nasty tone," before reversing course hours later and agreeing to go ahead with the meeting.
"I cancelled today's meeting with the failing @nytimes when the terms and conditions of the meeting were changed at the last moment," Trump tweeted Tuesday morning. "Not nice."
He continued in a subsequent tweet: "Perhaps a new meeting will be set up with the @nytimes. In the meantime they continue to cover me inaccurately and with a nasty tone!"
But then, after a back-and-forth of accusations from Trump and The Times, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks told reporters that the meeting was taking place as planned.
A Times spokeswoman released this statement after news of the rescheduling had emerged: "Mr. Trump's staff has told us that the President Elect's meeting with The Times is on again. He will meet with our publisher off-the-record and that session will be followed by an on-the-record meeting with our journalists and editorial columnists."
Earlier Tuesday morning, The Times had contended that the newspaper "did not change the ground rules at all and made no attempt to."
A spokeswoman for The Times said in a statement that Trump's team tried to change the ground rules, "asking only for a private meeting and no on-the-record segment," ground rules to which the newspaper refused to agree. Trump held a similar off-the-record meeting with television executives and anchors on Monday, one that reportedly laid bare some of the disagreements still simmering from the campaign trail.
"In the end, we concluded with them that we would go back to the original plan of a small off-the-record session and a larger on-the-record session with reporters and columnists," the Times statement said.
The Times was apparently unaware that Trump had canceled the meeting until he tweeted about it.
Trump continued railing against The Times after his tweets about the canceled meeting. In yet another tweet, he said: "The failing @nytimes just announced that complaints about them are at a 15 year high. I can fully understand that — but why announce?"
This was an apparent reference to the Times' public editor noting in a column that in the wake of the presidential election the newspaper had seen an influx of letters to the editor that was among its largest since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
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