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.
The Washington Post had originally reported on the call with Watson back in January. The audio of that call, which wasn’t released until March, revealed that Trump had been misquoted in the original reporting and that he never told Watson to “find the fraud,” as reported by the Washington Post.
In an article published March 11, after the recording was released, the Washington Post explained that the error in Trump’s quote came from “an account from Jordan Fuchs, the deputy secretary of state, whom Watson briefed on his comments.”
According to the audio recording, which the Post reports was found “on a trash folder on Watson’s device,” Trump claimed Watson would find “dishonesty” in Fulton County’s election results, and also told her that “when the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised.” Trump never said that Watson would be a “national hero” as had been originally reported.
Part of the correction to the original January article reads as follows: “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.’”
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