I trust Newt more than either politico or WSJ. Newt has a lot more to loose by being wrong than Politico or WSJ, so I think Newt is being truthful. Besides I read both accounts and he never even said what they said he said.
“Incumbent presidents have enormous advantages. And I think what Republicans ought to do is what’s right for America. They ought to do it calmly and pleasantly and happily,”Or are the "good quotes" real, and the "bad quotes" made up?[the senate bill is] “an absurd dereliction of duty.”
“Obama is so inept as a president, and the Congress is so dysfunctional as an institution, that we are lurching from failure to failure to failure,”
“a Senate majority leader who is totally disruptive and a president who is basically campaigner-in-chief, who has no interest in solving the problems of the American people.”
“It’s very hard for the legislative branch to outperform the president in communications,” he said. “He has all the advantages of being one person. He has all the advantages of the White House as a backdrop, and my experience is presidents routinely win.”
It is rare that you find a journalist actually manufacturing quotes. They are generally punished for that sort of thing. This isn't some fly-by-night paper.
But I guess we should take the candidate's e-mail word that the story is false, because why? If there is a video of the press conference, it should be easy to post it to prove that these words were not spoken.