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President Donald Trump’s long-running feud with The New York Times has escalated in recent weeks, with new insults coming from the White House and lawsuits filed against and by the newspaper.
Trump erupted last week over a report co-authored by White House correspondent Katie Rogers headlined, “Shorter Days, Signs of Fatigue: Trump Faces Realities of Aging in Office,” that suggested the 79-year-old is slowing down.
Trump ripped the outlet for the “hit piece,” and said Rogers was “ugly, both inside and out.”
The Times quickly defended the report and said Trump’s “name-calling” didn’t change anything.
TRUMP KNOCKS NEW YORK TIMES AS ‘CREEPS’ OVER ‘HIT PIECE’ QUESTIONING HIS ENERGY LEVELS, SCHEDULE
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wasn’t finished scolding the Times and blasted the report as “unequivocally false” during Monday’s press briefing.
“It’s deeply unfortunate that the story was written by the same outlet and the same reporter who wrote this: ‘Biden is doing 100% fine after tripping while boarding Air Force One,’” Leavitt said, holding up a story Rogers penned in 2021.
“Oh, same outlet, same reporter who wrote that President Trump is not fit for the job. Are you kidding me? You all see him almost every single day. He is the most accessible president in history. He is taking meetings around the clock,” she said.
“Another one, ‘Biden declared healthy and vigorous after his first presidential physical,” Leavitt said, holding up another Times article. “I don’t see headlines like that too often about this president.”
The New York Times defended Rogers and the rest of their White House team in a comment to Fox News Digital.
“The Times’s White House team, including Katie Rogers, the same reporter Ms. Leavitt singled out today, have reported without fear or favor across multiple administrations from both parties. Katie’s reporting on President Biden was just as unflinching as it has been on President Trump, despite cherry-picked headlines attempting to prove something that simply isn’t true,” the spokesperson said.
The Times spokesperson linked to an article by Rogers, titled, “Inside Biden’s Protective White House,” and the paper was lambasted by some liberal media figures and Biden allies for critical reports about his age while he was in office.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday called out the Times at its own event, suggesting at the 2025 DealBook Summit in New York City that the paper has lost credibility.
“The New York Times is no longer the paper of record,” he told Times columnist and event moderator Andrew Ross Sorkin.
“I read this article, like ‘President Trump is slowing down… It is 100 percent fake. He only called me twice at 2 in the morning last week, instead of three times,” Bessent said.
“I actually don’t read the New York Times anymore,” he continued.
The following morning, in unrelated timing, the Times filed a lawsuit against Trump’s Department of War over its new policy that bars journalists from entering the Pentagon for not adhering to its newsgathering terms.
The Times is claiming the Pentagon violated the paper’s First Amendment and Fifth Amendment rights when it implemented the policy, which the Times says gives the Pentagon “standardless discretion” to punish reporters without due process by revoking their press badges based on the policy’s “incurably vague language” on how they go about their newsgathering.
TRUMP ANNOUNCES $15 BILLION LAWSUIT AGAINST THE NEW YORK TIMES FOR DEFAMATION, LIBEL
The Times also alleges viewpoint discrimination, pointing to several reporters and outlets who were invited to Tuesday’s press briefing after having signed the Pentagon’s pledge and are outspoken Trump supporters.
“We are aware of the New York Times lawsuit and look forward to addressing these arguments in court,” chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told Fox News Digital.
All the recent drama has played out weeks after Trump refiled his massive lawsuit against the Times in October after a federal judge previously rejected the original suit due to its length.
The amended complaint accuses The New York Times of defamation, citing two articles published in 2024 and a book authored by two Times reporters last year. He is seeking $15 billion plus punitive damages.
WHY TRUMP IS SUING THE NEW YORK TIMES, HIS WHITE WHALE, WITHOUT CITING MISTAKES
“President Trump is continuing to hold the Fake News responsible through this powerhouse lawsuit against the New York Times, its reporters, and Penguin Random House,” a spokesman for Trump’s legal team told Fox News Digital.
The named defendants are The New York Times Company, reporters Susanne Craig, Russ Buettner and Peter Baker, and Penguin Random House, publisher of “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success,” which was authored by Craig and Buettner.
A spokesperson for The New York Times told Fox News Digital, “As we said when this was first filed and again after the judge’s ruling to strike it: this lawsuit has no merit. Nothing has changed today. This is merely an attempt to stifle independent reporting and generate PR attention, but The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics.”
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Trump has always had a unique relationship with the Times, his hometown paper for much of his life. The Queens native has sought approval of the Times since he was merely a real estate developer in the 1970s and Trump’s love-hate relationship with the paper has evolved over the years.
Trump has said he has “great respect” for the Times, but he’s also blistered their coverage as biased and failing. The Times has published scathing editorials strongly recommending against his elections in all three of his White House races, and its roster of columnists are almost uniformly anti-Trump.
Fox News Digital’s Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
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