PALM BEACH, Fla. -- President Donald Trump claimed Sunday that The Wall Street Journal deliberately misquoted him as saying he probably has a good relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
In two tweets from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., the president applied a familiar denigrating term -- "fake news" -- to a Journal report Thursday that said Trump had boasted during an interview: "I probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un. I have relationships with people. I think you people are surprised."
"Obviously I didn't say that," Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday morning. "I said 'I'd have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un,' a big difference," Trump continued. "Fortunately we now record conversations with reporters..."
In the second tweet, Trump finished the thought. "...and they knew exactly what I said and meant," Trump wrote. "They just wanted a story. FAKE NEWS!"
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It is unclear what Trump meant by saying that the White House records "conversations with reporters." It is standard for White House communications staff members to make audio recordings of interviews with the president, though they do not publicly release a transcript of the interview.
Such sessions are usually also taped by the news organization for the purpose of getting accurate quotations and creating an accurate transcript.
The Journal has not been targeted as often as other news organizations by the president's "fake news" claims.
The president's accusation echoed one from White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Saturday evening. She posted the White House recording of the session.
Sanders posted a message on Twitter earlier Saturday saying "fake news is at it again" and accused the newspaper of "falsely quoting" Trump.
"President Trump said, I'D probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un of North Korea. I'D - I'D - I'D - NOT I!" Sanders wrote.
On Sunday, Sanders wrote on Twitter that the White House "first contacted the WSJ Friday morning and asked for a correction. They repeatedly refused to issue one despite clear audio evidence they'd misquoted" the president.
In an article posted shortly after 1 a.m. Sunday, the Journal stood by its report and said ground rules for the Thursday's interview had included a pledge from the White House that recordings made by both reporters and the White House would be used only for purposes of transcribing the session.
"The Journal stands by what it reported," the article said.
"After the White House challenged the Journal's transcription and accuracy of the quote in a story, the Journal decided to release the relevant portion of the audio. The White House then released its audio version of the contested segment," the newspaper wrote.
Listening to the recordings, it is difficult to tell whether Trump said "I" or "I'd."
Elsewhere in the interview with several Journal reporters, Trump asked to be treated "fairly," to which a reporter replied, "We always do."
In a follow-up question in Thursday's interview, Trump was asked directly if he had spoken with Kim. "I'm not saying I have or haven't. I just don't want to comment," he said, according to the newspaper.
Meanwhile, Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona, plans to compare Trump's repeated attacks on the media to those made by Josef Stalin, the infamous dictator of the former Soviet Union, in a speech this week.
"When you reflexively refer to the press as the enemy of the people or fake news, that has real damage," Flake said Sunday in an interview on ABC's This Week.
"And then now, today, you have authoritarians across the world using the term 'fake news' to justify cracking down on their opposition or -- or stanch legitimate debate," Flake said. "That's nothing we should be proud of."
Flake said he'll expand on the Trump-Stalin comparison during a speech on the Senate floor, probably on Wednesday. That's the same day that Trump is expected to give out awards to media outlets he claims are producing "fake news."
"The Fake News Awards, those going to the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media, will be presented to the losers" on Jan. 17, Trump said in a Jan. 7 Twitter message. "The interest in, and importance of, these awards is far greater than anyone could have anticipated!"
The president has repeatedly railed against what he says is fake news. In February, he called the media "enemy of the people" in a tweet.
"The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" Trump wrote.
"It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase 'enemy of the people,' that even (later Soviet leader) Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of 'annihilating such individuals' who disagreed with the supreme leader," Flake will say in his Senate speech, according to NBC News, citing excerpts provided.
In addition to his regular claims of "fake news," Trump attempted this month -- through a cease-and-desist order sent by an attorney -- to halt publication of a book critical of him and his administration, Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.
Flake has been a vocal critic of the president in recent months. The first-term senator announced in October that he won't seek re-election in 2018. In November, Trump tweeted that Flake, whom he called "Flake(y)," was "unelectable" and had quit the race amid "anemic polls."
In response to Trump's planned awards, the Committee to Project Journalists, a nonprofit organization that promotes press freedoms worldwide, announced a "Press Oppressors" awards list on Jan. 8. The president was named as a winner along with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and others.
Information for this article was contributed by Anne Gearan of The Washington Post; by Michael D. Shear of The New York Times; and by Mark Niquette and Chris Strohm of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 01/15/2018