The New York Times altered the headline on a story about the president's response to the weekend's mass shootings from 'Trump Urges Unity Vs. Racism’ to ‘Assailing Hate But Not Guns.’ | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images white house Trump complains about NYT headline ahead of visits to Texas, Ohio

President Donald Trump on Wednesday morning criticized The New York Times’ decision to alter a controversial headline on a story about his response to the weekend’s mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, hours before he was to visit the two communities savaged by gun violence.

“‘Trump Urges Unity Vs. Racism,’ was the correct description in the first headline by the Failing New York Times, but it was quickly changed to, ‘Assailing Hate But Not Guns,’ after the Radical Left Democrats went absolutely CRAZY! Fake News - That’s what we’re up against,” the president wrote on Twitter.


“After 3 years I almost got a good headline from the Times!” he added in another post.

The initial five-word headline, which was a banner first published Monday night describing a news story and a separate analysis piece, was quickly denounced by national Democrats and White House candidates as too conciliatory toward the president — whose divisive immigration rhetoric, they allege, has played a role in inciting the shooting Saturday morning in El Paso, Texas, that left 22 people dead.

Trump earlier Monday had delivered a televised address from the White House condemning white supremacy, violent video games and the “dark recesses” of the internet, but retreated from a legislative proposal tying changes to background checks for firearm sales to immigration reform.

New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet said senior editors quickly recognized problems with the original headline Monday and rewrote it, and he insisted the adjustment was not a reaction to scolding from Democratic presidential candidates. “I don’t need the entire political field to tell me we wrote a bad headline. It was evident,” Baquet said in an interview Tuesday.

Trump is expected Wednesday to visit El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, where a gunman murdered nine people early Sunday morning before he was shot and killed by police.