WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - President Donald Trump made a scathing attack of the New York Times over its reporting on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who is facing a fresh allegation of sexual misconduct.
In an essay published in last weekend's Sunday Review, the Times had quoted Max Stier, who was Kavanaugh's classmate at Yale University, as saying that he had seen Kavanaugh exposing himself to a female student. Kavanaugh, however, denied it.
The Times has since deleted and apologized for an offensive tweet published with this essay from the Opinion desk's Twitter account.
Later, The New York Times was forced to the defensive after they posted an update to its report, saying the woman who was said to have been involved declined to be interviewed and friends said she did not recall the incident.
On Monday, a reporter asked Trump if he thinks New York Times should fire the individuals responsible for claiming that Kavanaugh committed sexual misconduct without including exculpatory information.
Trump replied that the New York Times made another terrible mistake. 'It's a shame that a thing like that could happen. I see they're making a big correction today. They've just announced there's a correction'.
'It's a false accusation. To do that about a Supreme Court justice is a terrible thing', according to the President.
Trump alleged that the newspaper does not do fact-checking, and is destroying lives.
'They used to call and say, 'What about this? What about that?'. How can they do a thing like that and destroy somebody's life? I mean, they're destroying lives,' he told reporters.
Trump repeated that the New York Times story about the Supreme Court judge is fake.
Earlier, Trump had criticized the media and Democrats, saying Kavanaugh was the victim of false accusations.
He suggested the apex court judge should file lawsuit for libel.
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