With only three days left until President Donald Trump unveils the winner of the “Fake News Awards”, the Wall Street Journal has apparently outmaneuvered the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN for frontrunner status after reporting that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen paid off former porn star Stormy Daniels to stop her from publicly dishing about a sexual encounter she had with Trump back in 2006, when his wife Melania Trump was pregnant with their son, Barron.

Both Cohen and the White House communications department have vociferously denied the report. Additionally, the White House is also assailing the broadsheet - owned by Trump ally Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. - for allegedly misquoting the president in an interview it published Thursday that, like the porn star report, was overshadowed by the lingering fallout from “shithole-gate”.

Trump criticized the paper this morning in a series of tweets...

The Wall Street Journal stated falsely that I said to them “I have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un” (of N. Korea). Obviously I didn’t say that. I said “I’d have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un,” a big difference. Fortunately we now record conversations with reporters... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018

...and they knew exactly what I said and meant. They just wanted a story. FAKE NEWS! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018

So much Fake News is being reported. They don’t even try to get it right, or correct it when they are wrong. They promote the Fake Book of a mentally deranged author, who knowingly writes false information. The Mainstream Media is crazed that WE won the election! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 13, 2018



While White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders sent out a “fake news alert” last night…

The detail in dispute is whether Trump said “I probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un of North Korea” or “I’d [I WOULD] probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un of North Korea.”

Both WSJ and the White House have published audio records of the interview, and WSJ and its editors have opted to stand by the paper’s reporting...

Here’s WSJ:

We have reviewed the audio from our interview with President Trump, as well as the transcript provided by an external service, and stand by what we reported. Here is audio of the portion the White House disputes. https://t.co/eWcmiHrXJg pic.twitter.com/bx9fGFWaPw — The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) January 14, 2018

Regardless of what the president said exactly, the idea that the meaning is in dispute has been seriously overblown by the media. Judging by the context, it’s obvious that Trump - who has never met Kim Jong Un - presently has a very hostile relationship with the leader of isolated North Korea. What Trump clearly meant, is that, presumably after meeting or engaging in talks with his fellow world leader, the two might be able to forge a productive relationship, given the close relationships Trump has forged with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Afterward, Trump controversially claimed that Democrats don’t really want to preserve DACA protections. “DACA is probably dead,” Trump tweeted, “because the Democrats don’t really want it..."

DACA is probably dead because the Democrats don’t really want it, they just want to talk and take desperately needed money away from our Military. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018

The tweet appears to confirm what we presumed in the wake of the Washington Post report that kicked off “shithole-gate” early this week: That Republicans and Democrats are nowhere near an immigration deal, despite a bipartisan group of senators reportedly having reached an “agreement in principle” last week.