'Journalist' Who Wrote Trump Thanksgiving Lie Fired
A self-described political reporter wrote a whopper of a lie, and now she’s out of a job.
Jessica Kwong likely regrets her Thanksgiving piece about President Donald Trump, a story where she outright lied about the executive’s holiday activities. According to the Washington Examiner, Kwong was fired by leadership at Newsweek after a thorough review of the article.
Although Newsweek has now heavily edited the piece, an archived version shows Kwong’s shockingly inaccurate reporting.
“President Donald Trump has been spending his Thanksgiving holidays at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, which he calls the ‘winter White House,’ and this year is no exception,” Kwong originally wrote.
Kwong asserted that Trump would be golfing, tweeting and more during Thanksgiving.
She even noted that the president’s past holiday feasts reportedly consisted of up to 24 luxurious courses that included lamb, crab and lobster.
There’s only one problem with Kwong’s “reporting.”
President Trump wasn’t kicked back at Mar-a-Lago and cracking into some crab legs; he was eating with U.S. military members in the war-torn country of Afghanistan.
Just returned to the United States after spending a GREAT Thanksgiving with our Courageous American Warriors in Afghanistan! pic.twitter.com/b2vgY5BH6z
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2019
The article quickly went viral as the president’s true actions were revealed.
Twitter users piled on Kwong and roasted her for the lie, some suggesting she quit journalism entirely. The reporter quickly issued a correction, without taking any of the blame for the story.
Kwong claims that her abject failure at reporting the truth behind Trump’s Thanksgiving activities was simply “an honest mistake.”
Trump headed to Afghanistan to surprise U.S. troops on Thanksgiving https://t.co/f7Xeqz1ZGQ Deleting this tweet because it was written before knowing about the president’s surprise visit to Afghanistan-an honest mistake. Story has already been updated, as shown in the screenshot. pic.twitter.com/g9CfPaV2kQ
— Jessica Kwong (@JessicaGKwong) November 29, 2019
Her employers, despite their anti-Trump bias, didn’t see it that way and canned Kwong right in the middle of the holidays.
On Saturday, Kwong told the Washington Examiner that she was assigned the story a week in advance and submitted it to her editors on Wednesday. According to Kwong, she told the editor on duty about Trump’s trip on Thursday, but the editor had another reporter cover Trump’s visit to Afghanistan and neglected to update Kwong’s published story in a timely manner.
Although the piece was quickly corrected after being published to reflect Trump’s true Thanksgiving work, the damage to the paper was already done.
President Trump took a shot at Newsweek’s finances, a matter that this embarrassing piece of fake news isn’t likely to help.
I thought Newsweek was out of business? https://t.co/3ro4eSJloo
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2019
They might not be out of business yet, Mr. President, but a few more pieces of “reporting” like that and they won’t be around for much longer.
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