Former President Trump gave credit to The Washington Post after it was forced to issue a major correction on a report about a phone call he had with and Georgia elections investigator Frances Watson, in an exclusive interview with “Fox News Primetime.”
The Post initially reported Trump had told an official working in Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office to “find the fraud” in the state, which he lost narrowly to Joe Biden, and that she would be a “national hero” if she did.
However, a newly emerged recording of the Dec. 23 call found he didn’t use those words. Instead, Trump said she would be “praised” when the “right answer comes out” and encouraged her to closely examine mail-in ballots in Fulton County, the heavily blue and most populated county in the state.
During the phone interview on “Fox News Primetime,” Trump called the error a “terrible thing” that “probably affected” the Georgia Senate races that the Democratic candidates won.
“I will say this. I was very happy that the Washington Post had the courage or whatever you want to call it for at least admitting their mistake. I hope it was a mistake,” Trump told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. “They were told something that didn’t exist and it made me sound bad and when I heard it, I said, ‘That’s ridiculous. I never said that.'”
He continued, “The Washington Post did a correction. A lot of pressure was put on them but they did a correction because they realized what they did was wrong.”
The Post published a lengthy correction to its story: “Correction: 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. The recording revealed that The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source. 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.”