“Trump didn’t decline anything, all he did was take credit again for the nightmare he created. That’s the news that’s important here. We cannot and we will not give Trump a free pass.”
Corporate media outlet USA Today changed its headline on the position that likely Republican nominee Donald Trump took on abortion after the media was scolded by the Biden campaign in a press call.
During the call on Monday, after reports of Trump's abortion statement, deputy communications director Brooke Goren spoke to members of the mainstream media and was displeased that many of them had reported that Trump was leaving the issue of abortion up to the states.
Goren ripped into members of the media for accurately reporting the message that Trump conveyed about the "will of the people" in relation to abortion laws. She emphasized that the media needed to do a better job of reporting.
"Trump kept his word to overturn Roe in his last term and he will not rest until he has banned abortion across the entire country, period. We all know this and the coverage needs to reflect it. Yet today we're still reading headlines that say Trump 'declines to endorse a national abortion ban' that Trump 'rebuffed pressure to the campaign on a national limit' that Trump 'decided to punt the politically fraught issue to the states and not back in national abortion ban.'"
"One particularly egregiously false headline even said Trump, ‘opposes a national abortion ban and will leave it up to the will of the people,’" Goren added. "Trump didn’t decline anything, all he did was take credit again for the nightmare he created. That's the news that's important here. We cannot and we will not give Trump a free pass.”
The "particularly egregiously false headline" was likely USA Today's, that read, "‘The will of the people’: Trump opposes national abortion ban; says states should decide." An archived version of the article bears the previous headline on the page.
Trump said in the statement on Truth Social on Monday, "The states will determine by vote, or legislation, or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land – in this case, the law of the state," the former president said. "Many states will be different. Many states will have a different number of weeks…at the end of the day it is all about the will of the people."
According to a report from Mediaite, this headline was changed after the call to say, "Donald Trump says states should decide abortion policy, avoids talk of a national ban."
USA Today told Fox News in a statement, “Our mission is to report the facts as accurately as possible. As part of our routine editorial process with breaking news, headline updates are not uncommon. In this instance, the headline was updated to more precisely reflect the story."
Libby’s Desk
Commentary and must-reads from Libby’s desk, straight to your inbox.
TPM Newsletter
The Post Millennial’s top stories, delivered to your inbox.
