Did the Washington Post Correct a Report About Trump’s Call With the Georgia Secretary of State?

No. The correction was to an article about Trump’s call with a different official.

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After the Washington Post issued a correction to its article reporting on a December 23 phone call between former President Donald Trump and Georgia’s top election investigator, Twitter has been abuzz with different accounts of what actually occurred. 

A widely shared tweet from freshman GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn falsely claimed that, “The Washington Post just RETRACTED their story on Trump’s phone call with Georgia’s Secretary of State.”

The Washington Post did not “retract” its story about the January 2 phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger; the paper issued a correction to an entirely different article about an entirely different phone call. The correction in question is related to a December 23 phone call Trump had with Georgia’s top election investigator, Frances Watson. 

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  1. Harrison.Smith

    Can you guys do a fact check and breakdown the recent attacks on Asians in this country by the race of the attacker? We are being told it is all being done by white supremacists, but when I dig a little and find an image of the perp, they are almost always black. Are there black white supremacists?

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    Victor Clairmont

    Right, but the the big problem here is not just the WP, but other outlets that are high profiled piled on saying the same single source was credible, when it was not. You need at minimum two sources, single source stuff is too easy to invent or mess things up.

    And that's the problem with the past 4 years of Trump, and journalism for the past twenty. Anonymous single sources have led to some of the worst journalistic malpractices. Happy they outed their source for lying, but this has been going on for awhile.

    Good fact check by the way though! It is very important people realized it wasn't Raffensperger for historical analysis sake and for the future.

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    1. Scroop Moth

      There’s no evidence in these stories that the source was lying, as you charge.

      The call transcript supports, in similar language, the investigator’s and assistant secretary’s reported conclusion(s) that Trump came across like he was asking for a construal of election fraud. The transcript lines up with Trump’s well-known game plan.

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        Luke Thompson (not that one)

        Yes, the audio proves that the source was lying. There's actually no room for dispute at this point. Anyone who claims otherwise is lying and should forevermore be distrusted.

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        1. Scroop Moth

          The source was Jordan Fuchs, the deputy secretary of state. He was not on Trump’s call, but got briefed later, according to the WP. By this account, he had second-hand knowledge of the call. The statements Fuchs gave to WP about the call were therefore hearsay. They were statements about the briefing, not the call.

          The audio doesn’t give the briefing Fuchs got, so how can it prove that he lied to WP? It can’t.

          Trump’s call to the investigator sounds to me like Trump was asking for findings to be cooked up on the pretext that “everyone knows.”

          So, whatever you can do, Francis . . .

          Trump’s request was as transparent as it was absurd.

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    Nick H

    The reporting on this WP correction has not been clear at all about which phone call it was. (Although it says a lot that there are multiple phone calls in the first place.) A big part of the confusion it seems is that one was with the GA Secretary of State, and the other was leaked by someone in the Secretary's office. Thanks for clarifying this.

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    Francesca

    Wow I read about this in the WSJ and arrived at the impression that it was the Raffensperger phone call that had been misrepresented.

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  5. Tim Johnson

    Amazing. He can include the actual text that SHOWS he's wrong because he realizes his followers don't care what's true or not.

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    I Am the Eggman

    Trump was misquoted, but what he actually said carries the same message. "Find the fraud" and saying that they would find "dishonesty" is pretty much the same thing in context. Likewise saying that she would be a "national hero" vs. "you'll be praised" and that she had "the most important job in the country right now." These are distinctions without significant differences. Of course the media should quote people accurately, but if the Post reported the best information they had at the time, and posted a correction once they got better info, then they're doing their job.

    Madison Cawthorn apparently can't tell the difference between Brad Raffensperger and Frances Watson, let alone the difference between a lie and a substantively accurate story that happens to get some quotes wrong. He's either a liar or an idiot, if not both.

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      Philbnichols

      Share your disdain for Cawhorn but I got this story mixed up as well. I think the role of Raffensperger in releasing the corrective audio is what got me. That, and the fact I had never heard of the call in question, just the Raffensperger call. On a separate note, I hope you're not editor of a major newspaper, the way you glossed over the WaPo's 'best imformation' paradigm of news reporting. Rules like that would lead to a constant stream of misleading stories with back-page corrections.

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    2. Sprat

      It's all just so absurd.

      "CORRECTION: We previously reported that Trump spent the afternoon on a patio, drinking Coke. He actually was on a porch, drinking Sprite. The Post regrets the error."

      Trumpers and anti-anti-Trumpers: "ANOTHER lie by the FAKE NEWS MEDIA! This kind of FLAGRANT DISHONESTY is EXACTLY why we the people don't trust these DISGUSTING ELITES anymore!!!!"

      And all this while many of the same people let Trump himself get away with telling the most outrageous, unambiguous lies right to their faces.

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        Aylene Wright

        Something similar happened over the technicalities of whether "tear gas" was used on protesters to clear a path for Trump to go on his "holding up a Bible in front of a church" photo op, or whether he held the Bible upside down, etc.

        I recall a certain Federalist writer really went on a tear about how it was Fake News that tear gas was used. As I recall a few weeks afterward a reporter Tweeted out a photo of a canister of actual tear gas found at the scene, but of course the lady whose name rhymes with Holly had nothing to say about that.

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          David Chen

          The federalists descent into Magaland is a real disappointment since I use to enjoy their radio hour podcast back when they first launched.

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      Luke Thompson (not that one)

      The major difference is that the original report was (reasonably) read as saying that she should invent fraud and be a hero, even though none existed. The actual audio made it clear that Trump was saying there actually was fraud that she'd find if she looked. The first is a crime, the second is what you'd expect him to say if he actually believed there was fraud. The distinction is extremely important. The whole reason this call was newsworthy is that distinction.

      A big problem here is that WaPo was relying on an anonymous source (now revealed to have been Fuchs), who was wrong on the critical details of the story. Additionally, other outlets claimed to have independently confirmed those details. How? Did Fuchs go to them as well? Did they just lie about confirmation? Contra Jonah, this is why our response to these stories based on anonymous stories SHOULD be to criticize the sourcing, not discuss the claims. Because there's no sense in discussing claims that aren't supported.

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      1. Scroop Moth

        “Find” is equivocal between discovery and construal, neither one nor the other. “Find the dishonesty” sounds the same to me. Trump didn’t say, “Find out whether or not there was dishonesty.”

        What readers “find” in reports from unnamed sources is on readers, not the reporters. Trump was perfectly capable of giving his own version to reporters.

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          Luke Thompson (not that one)

          Trump said there WAS fraud and she'd find it there. The ambiguity you're proposing doesn't exist and was the crux of the story.

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          1. Scroop Moth

            Yes, she’d find that signatures often evolve, if you look back at least two or more years. But that’s not fraud. She knew it, and Trump knew it, and the request was shocking.

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