Updated Jan. 18, 2018: The results are in! Trump announced the winners Wednesday night (and by “announce,” we mean he tweeted out a link to a list that didn’t actually work until over an hour later). Check out our coverage here.
Original Story Jan. 17, 2018: There’s a dubious cloud of uncertainty over Trump’s alleged “Fake Media Awards.”
First, what the president referred to on Twitter as “THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR” was scheduled for Monday, Jan. 8.
I will be announcing THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR on Monday at 5:00 o’clock. Subjects will cover Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media. Stay tuned!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018
Then it was postponed to Wednesday, Jan. 17 (today) because Trump really wanted to get it right.
He tweeted a day before the original awards date, “The Fake News Awards, those going to the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media, will be presented to the losers on Wednesday, January 17th, rather than this coming Monday. The interest in, and importance of, these awards is far greater than anyone could have anticipated!”
The Fake News Awards, those going to the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media, will be presented to the losers on Wednesday, January 17th, rather than this coming Monday. The interest in, and importance of, these awards is far greater than anyone could have anticipated!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018
At a press conference earlier this month, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “I certainly don’t want to spoil anything, but my guess is that there are quite a few individuals that could be up for those awards.”
Based on the outlets Trump has called out in the past, these “losers” could be, among others, CNN, ABC, NBC, The New York Times, Washington Post and MSNBC.
As recently as Sunday, Trump called out another news outlet, The Wall Street Journal, for misquoting him.
Trump tweeted: “The Wall Street Journal stated falsely that I said to them ‘I have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un‘ (of N. Korea). Obviously I didn’t say that. I said ‘I’d have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un,’ a big difference. Fortunately we now record conversations with reporters…” adding, “…and they knew exactly what I said and meant. They just wanted a story. FAKE NEWS!”
The Wall Street Journal stated falsely that I said to them “I have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un” (of N. Korea). Obviously I didn’t say that. I said “I’d have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un,” a big difference. Fortunately we now record conversations with reporters…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018
…and they knew exactly what I said and meant. They just wanted a story. FAKE NEWS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018
According to The Guardian, the White House released audio from the WSJ interview showing that Trump said “I’d” as opposed to “I.”
The WSJ stands by its original quote, tweeting, “We have reviewed the audio from our interview with President Trump, as well as the transcript provided by an external service, and stand by what we reported.” They then provided their own audio.
We have reviewed the audio from our interview with President Trump, as well as the transcript provided by an external service, and stand by what we reported. Here is audio of the portion the White House disputes. https://t.co/eWcmiHrXJg pic.twitter.com/bx9fGFWaPw
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) January 14, 2018
Former White House lawyer Norm Eisen has said that if staff helps Trump with the awards, it would be breaking the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch, provisions of which prohibit the “use of government time and money to harm some media and aid others.” Walter Shaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics, agreed.
Some ethics experts, however, agrue that this wouldn’t violate executive branch standards. Columbia Law professor Richard Briffault told Politico that White House staff members would be breaking the rules, “only if they endorsed or criticized an enterprise” that was “unrelated to the office.”
So when are Trump’s Fake Media Awards?
In theory, today.
At the White House press briefing yesterday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that the Fake Media Awards were a “potential event,” according to the L.A. Times.
When asked if there were any other details, Sanders said she had none.
Will they be at 5:00 p.m. like Trump originally planned? Will Trevor Noah or Stephen Colbert make an appearance like they wanted? And will Oprah deliver a groundbreaking speech and announce her candidacy for 2020?
Stay tuned, folks.
