After canceling a meeting at the New York Times and calling it “failing” in an early-morning tweet, Donald Trump had a meeting Tuesday afternoon … at the New York Times.
Despite a brief disagreement over the rules, the president-elect seemed calmer during his sit-down with editors and reporters later in the day, the Times itself reported.
“The Times is a great, great American jewel, a world jewel,” Trump said in the boardroom meeting, according to the newspaper. “And I hope we can all get along,” he added.
While sitting next to publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. during the 75-minute meeting, Trump even joked with some of the top names on the Times masthead. The paper’s report described Trump’s change of heart as his “chameleonlike approach to the news media” being on full display.
It certainly seemed very different from the tweet he sent at 3:16 a.m. ET on Tuesday, in which he wrote: “I cancelled today’s meeting with the failing @nytimes when the terms and conditions of the meeting were changed at the last moment. Not nice.”
On Monday, Trump tore into top broadcast and cable news executives and on-air talent as representatives of the “dishonest” media, the New York Post reported.
He specifically named CNN president Jeff Zucker in the off-the-record meeting, according to the Post, which described the atmosphere as like a “firing squad” by the real estate mogul turned reality TV host turned politician.
After slamming the “dishonest” media, Trump softened his stance on libel laws during the Times meeting, and told staffers he wants to improve his relationship with the paper.
“To me, it would be a great achievement if I could come back here in a year or two, and have a lot of folks here say, ‘You’ve done a great job,’” he said.
Trump’s relationship with the Times has been rocky since he declared his intentions to run for president in 2015. The paper was aggressively critical of Trump, but recently promised to cover him fairly and “without fear.”
In a series of tweets he fired off earlier this month, Trump said the 165-year-old news organization was “dishonest” in attributing to him the opinion that “more countries should acquire nuclear weapons.”
Over the past few months the paper also called out Trump’s fabrications, aggressively investigated his real estate deals and leaked his partial tax return, with Trump even threatening a lawsuit at one point.