Newsweek Fires Journalist Over Trump Fake News Story

Newsweek has fired the journalist who was responsible for the false story that President Donald Trump spent Thanksgiving “tweeting” and “golfing,” when in fact the president was secretly traveling to Afghanistan to surprise U.S. troops for the holiday.

Newsweek told Breitbart News in a statement that the magazine has moved away from “knee-jerk political snarkiness” to focus on real reporting.

A Newsweek journalist was terminated Friday after an article entitled, “How is Trump Spending Thanksgiving? Tweeting, Golfing, and More” by Jessica Kwong was published Thursday morning. The piece sparked major backlash, as President Trump had actually been landing in Afghanistan, where he surprised American troops for Thanksgiving.

Jessica Kwong

“The problem with this story is that it didn’t contain reporting,” said a Newsweek spokesperson to Breitbart News in a statement. “It was published before Thanksgiving was over. We are trying to pull Newsweek away from that, and into reporting.”

The article was later updated to reflect the president’s visit, changing the headline to: “How Did Trump Spend Thanksgiving? Tweeting, Golfing–and Surprising U.S. Troops in Afghanistan,” along with an added footnote stating that the story had been “substantially updated and edited at 6:17 p.m. EST to reflect the president’s surprise trip to Afghanistan” via additional reporting by James Crowley.

Jessica Kwong told the Washington Examiner that she was assigned to write a story about what the president was doing on Thanksgiving a week in advance and filed it to her editors on Wednesday.

Kwong went on to explain that she sent a message to the editor on duty with the president’s latest actions and the editor published the piece.

That editor decided to have a reporter write a new story on Trump’s surprise trip to Afghanistan, and neglected to update Kwong’s original piece in a timely manner.