Even the NYT article itself shows that what the NYT claimed happened, did not happen. The NYT article’s headline is “Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation”. The first paragraph of the article states: “President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.” See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/us/politics/james-comey-trump-flynn-russia-investigation.html?_r=0
So far, the NYT is not quoting from the memo (which it did not see, by the way), but only CHARACTERIZING the memo. The first alleged quote from the memo is in the second paragraph of the article: “’I hope you can let this go,’ the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.”
We have to wait for the seventh paragraph in the article to get the full alleged quote: “’I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,’ Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. ‘He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.’”
Therefore, based on the article alone, there is no allegation that “Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation” or that “Trump Asked Him [Comey] to End Flynn Investigation”.
There is a difference between expressing a hope that the investigation will end in a particular way, and ordering that the investigation end in a particular way. Assuming that Trump used the words reported, people can argue over whether Trump intended to convey an order to end the investigation with his words. But the NYT was dishonest in taking sides in that argument by reporting its characterization of the conversation as being the actual conversation.
Most of the media has simply reported the NYT’s characterization of the alleged conversation as being the actual conversation.
It is so sad to see American journalism sink even lower than it has before the NYT article was published.
I think it is time for Trump not only to keep characterizing the MSM as purveyors of fake news, but to become sarcastic about it in his tweets.
He could start comments like, "Did you hear the latest fiction from the NYT? They're saying they know what is written in a private memo that they don't have and no one can possibly have seen. And they are running this memo as news! They should win a fiction award!