This Day In Fake News History: TIME Reports Trump Removed MLK Bust

Eric Scheiner | January 20, 2019
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Shortly after President Donald Trump was sworn into office on January  20, 2017, TIME White House correspondent Zeke Miller reported the bust of MLK Jr. had been removed from office.

The report came out the evening of Jan. 20, 2017 and quickly received national media attention. It was refuted by The White House that same evening.

Miller issued a correction. Saying the MLK Jr. bust “was apparently obscured by a door and an agent earlier.”But the story was out.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer addressed the issue in his very first daily briefing.

“Where was the apology to the president of the United States?” Spicer said. “Where was the apology to millions of people who read that and thought how racially insensitive that was?”

The President himself dubbed the reporting “fake news.”

“Somebody said I took the statue out of my office. And it turned out that that was fake news. Fake news,” Trump said at an African- American History Month event in February of 2017. “The statue is cherished. It was never even touched, so I think it was a disgrace, but that’s the way the press is. Very unfortunate.”

The event made President Trump’s list of fake news award winners in January of the following year.

 

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