Donald Trump Cancels Meeting With The New York Times Over 'Conditions,' Then Reinstates Gathering

President-elect Donald Trump backed out of meetings scheduled for Tuesday with reporters and editors from The New York Times, claiming that the newspaper changed the terms of the meeting at the last minute — only to reverse his decision hours later after the Times denied the New York businessman's assertion.

“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,” Trump posted on Twitter Tuesday morning.

“Perhaps a new meeting will be set up with the @nytimes. In the meantime they continue to cover me inaccurately and with a nasty tone!” he wrote in a second tweet minutes later.

In yet a third tweet he posted: "The failing @nytimes just announced that complaints about them are at a 15 year high. I can fully understand that - but why announce?"

However, hours later, Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks told reporters at Trump Tower that the meeting was back on.

"Mr. Trump's staff has told us that the President Elect's meeting with The Times is on again," New York Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy confirmed. "He will meet with our publisher off-the-record and that session will be followed by an on-the-record meeting with our journalists and editorial columnists."

Earlier on Tuesday, Murphy said that they only learned of Trump canceling the meeting from his Twitter postings and that nobody from the Trump camp had reached out to inform them directly. She also said that it was the Trump team that tried to change the terms of the meeting, not them.

"We were unaware that the meeting was cancelled until we saw the President Elect's tweet this morning. We did not change the ground rules at all and made no attempt to," Murphy said in a statement.

She added: "They tried to yesterday — asking for only a private meeting and no on-the-record segment, which we refused to agree to. In the end, we concluded with them that we would go back to the original plan of a small off the record session and a larger on the record session with reporters and columnists."

According to the Times, the off-the-record portion of Trump's meeting was meant to be with chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and a handful of others, while the on-the-record meeting would be with a larger group that would have included CEO Mark Thompson, executive editor Dean Baquet, managing editor Joe Kahn, political editor Carolyn Ryan, Washington bureau chief Elisabeth Bumiller and columnists Maureen Dowd and Ross Douthat. Trump was scheduled to have with him at the meeting incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus, campaign adviser Kellyanne Conway and his daughter, Ivanka Trump.

The cancelation comes one day after Trump reportedly met with executives and anchors of several news networks in which he excoriated the media for their coverage of him. He was particularly critical of CNN, according to reports.

While one attendee described Monday's meeting as a "firing squad," Conway, who scheduled the gathering, described it much differently.

“There was no need to mend fences,” Conway said. “It was very cordial, very genial. But it was very candid and very honest. From my own perspective, it’s great to hit the reset button.”

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr Commons