NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump is going after The New York Times again.
In a series of tweets Wednesday, Trump attacked a Times story about firings and infighting that have left his transition team in a “state of disarray” — reporting backed up by CNN and other major news organizations.
“The failing @nytimes story is so totally wrong on transition,” Trump tweeted. “It is going so smoothly. Also, I have spoken to many foreign leaders.”
The Times story also described revelations that American allies were “blindly dialing in to Trump Tower to try to reach the soon-to-be-leader of the free world.”
During his Twitter tear, the president-elect said he had taken calls from “many foreign leaders.” He also claimed the Times “is just upset that they looked like fools in their coverage of me.”
Trump’s latest feud with the Times follows a Twitter rant Sunday in which he claimed that the newspaper “is losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the ‘Trump phenomena.'”
Trump did not cite evidence to back up that claim, and the Times shot it down. The newspaper’s parent company, in a tweet responding to Trump, said new subscriptions are surging. Stock in the Times’ parent company has climbed 9 percent since Election Day.
Media outlets have expressed widespread concern about the lack of access to Trump. On Tuesday night, he took his family to a New York restaurant for dinner, and the so-called press pool, which is meant to be the public’s eyes on the president-elect, was not notified.
CNN’s Sara Murray told Anderson Cooper on Tuesday night that this “appears to be yet another misunderstanding of exactly how much gravity his new title as president-elect holds. If something, God forbid, were to happen to him, that’s a matter not only of public record but also a matter of national security, given that he is next in line to take the White House.”
