In a major development, the US daily Washington Post corrected its article on Thursday (March 11) after falsely accusing former President Donald Trump of pressurising an election investigation official two months ago. The update comes after Wall Street Journal published the full audio recording which refused the claims.
In a statement issued by the former US President Donald Trump on Monday, he said, “Establishment media errors, omissions, mistakes, and outright lies always slant one way—against me and Republicans.” He even thanked The Post for correcting the article. He reportedly also called his alleged efforts to influence Georgia election results the “Georgia Witch Hunt” and a “Hoax.”
The left-propagandist newspaper ran a story in January this year about a phone call made by Trump to a top election investigator named Frances Watson in Georgia on December 23. The former US President, who lost to Joe Biden by a slim margin of 12,000 votes, had told Watson that ‘something bad’ had happened and asked her to scrutinise the mail-in ballots in Fulton County in Georgia. The official worked at the office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
In his phone call, Trump said that he believed that he won the elections in the State and told the official that she would find ‘dishonesty’ in mail-in-vote count in Fulton County (given that Joe Biden was declared the winner in the State). Donald Trump told the investigator that she had the ‘most important job in the country.’ He emphasised, “When the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised.”
Leftist newspaper misquotes Trump, casts aspersions
Frances Watson informed Trump that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was interested only in the facts of the case. She replied, “I can assure you that our team and the (Georgia Bureau of Investigation), that we are only interested in the truth and finding the information that is based on the facts.” This 6-minute phone call between Trump and Watson was misquoted by the Washington Post to suggest that he had been ‘obstructing’ the results in the US Presidential elections.
real bad. this quote was and still is everywhere. pic.twitter.com/jZwQ9rPwRp
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) March 15, 2021
Attributing it to ‘anonymous sources’, the left propagandist newspaper had claimed in January that Donald Trump had asked the top election investigator to ‘find the fraud’ and that she could be a ‘national hero’ if she did so. Washington Post accused the former US President of meddling with election results and coercing investigation officials. The same story was picked up by other left-propaganda media houses such as CNN, Vox and ABC and NBC news.
Washington Post ‘corrects’ its story about Trump obstructing investigator
However, after the full call recording was published by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on March 11 (Thursday), the Washington Post corrected and updated its story. “Two months after publication of this story, the Georgia secretary of state released an audio recording of President Donald Trump’s December phone call with the state’s top elections investigator, ” it said. “The recording revealed that The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source,” it clarified.
The Washington Post further emphasised, “Trump did not tell the investigator to ‘find the fraud’ or say she would be ‘a national hero’ if she did so. Instead, Trump urged the investigator to scrutinize ballots in Fulton County, Ga., asserting she would find ‘dishonesty’ there. He also told her that she had ‘the most important job in the country right now. A story about the recording can be found here. The headline and text of this story have been corrected to remove quotes misattributed to Trump.
Trump had repeatedly maintained that he lost the elections only due to widespread voter fraud and cited examples of rigged elections against him. However, the officials had rejected the claims after conducting several audits and investigations. Trump slammed The Post and media at large and alleged that the media in America has always been against him.
