“Anyone who reads my book, Merchants of Truth, will find I revere @nytimes and praise its tough coverage of you," former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson responded to the president. | Lisa Lake/Getty Images for Pennsylvania Conference for Women Media Trump spars with ex-NYT editor over new book

President Donald Trump on Saturday seized upon the upcoming release of a new book by former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson to bash the newspaper as “Horrible and totally dishonest,” while Abramson defended the Times from charges of bias and applauded its White House coverage.

“‘Former @NYTimes editor Jill Abramson rips paper’s “unmistakably anti-Trump” bias,’” the president tweeted , appearing to parrot the headline of a recent Fox News story on Abramson’s book, “Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts.”


“Ms. Abramson is 100% correct. Horrible and totally dishonest reporting on almost everything they write,” Trump continued. “Hence the term Fake News, Enemy of the People, and Opposition Party!”

Abramson, who was fired from the Times in 2014, responded to the president by quoting his tweet and writing : “Anyone who reads my book, Merchants of Truth, will find I revere @nytimes and praise its tough coverage of you.”

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The former newsroom chief complained last week of what she argued was an inaccurate representation of her book by Fox News host Howard Kurtz in a Wednesday report headlined, “Former NY Times editor rips Trump coverage as biased.”

Abramson told POLITICO that Kurtz took her book “totally out of context,” adding: “His article is an attempt to Foxify my book, which is full of praise for The Times and The Washington Post and their coverage of Trump.”

According to its publisher, Simon & Schuster, Merchants of Truth “follows four companies: The New York Times, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, and VICE Media over a decade of disruption and radical adjustment,” and serves as the “definitive report on the disruption of the news media over the last decade.”