New York Observer Attack on Kimberly Guilfoyle Selfie Pic Backfires

Guilfoyle
Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
Matthew Boyle
Washington, D.C.

The New York Observer’s most recent escapade involves hitting Fox News star and Donald Trump, Jr., girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle as somehow part of a giant conspiracy theory because one of hundreds of people who snapped selfie pics with her on the Fourth of July happens to be a conspiracy theorist himself.

The attack, which originally argued that Guilfoyle had a “pow-wow” with a Pizzagate conspiracy theorist, has backfired significantly as the Observer issued a correction and buried the story on its website.

The current headline on the story continues to imply that Guilfoyle spent the entire Fourth of July celebrating America’s independence with somebody who  spreads unsubstantiated conspiracy theories: “Kimberly Guilfoyle Spends July 4th With Trumps, Snaps Photo With Pizzagate Conspiracy Theorist.”

The article, by Davis Richardson, originally falsely stated that Guilfoyle “pow-wowed” with the conspiracy theorist with whom she was photographed.

But the Observer has since corrected the inaccuracy with an “editor’s note” at the bottom of Richardson’s article:

The newspaper still has not retracted the inaccuracy, or pulled the article down. But, the whole thing is based off of one of hundreds of people Guilfoyle took photos with on the Fourth of July at the Trump International Hotel.

In the article with the appended correction, the Observer still smears Guilfoyle as having “galavanted across” the White House grounds on the Fourth of July with the first family and says in the same sentence that “Guilfoyle also was photographed at the Trump International Hotel with a fringe character associated with #Pizzagate—a dispelled conspiracy theory from 2016 about a human trafficking ring orchestrated by Democratic operatives.”

In the next several paragraphs, the Observer describes the Pizzagata conspiracy theory the “fringe character” with whom Guilfoyle was photographed–before quoting that person in a profanity-laced quote saying they did not discuss the Pizzagate conspiracy theory at all.

It isn’t until the second to last paragraph that the entire story is blown to smithereens with a background detail from a spokesperson for Trump, Jr., and Guilfoyle:

A spokesperson for Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle told Observer the Fox News personality was inundated with “hundreds” of photo requests on July 4th and could not have possibly known about Seaman’s background.

The fact that the paper is keeping the article up in this form is rubbing a lot of folks in Trump world the wrong way.

“It’s this kind of fake news that undermines real journalism,” Sean Spicer, the former White House Press Secretary, told Breitbart News. “Not only should the story be retracted, but an apology is clearly in order.”

Spicer, who is due to come out with a book soon on the media documenting his time as Press Secretary in the White House, is hardly the one Trump official upset about this.

“As someone who also has had thousands of selfies taken with people I have just met, this is absurd,” former White House adviser and former Breitbart News national security editor Dr. Sebastian Gorka told Breitbart News. “If the new standard for ‘investigative’ media is graciously taking selfies with random, anonymous fans, then every Democrat who has taken a picture with someone who happens to be an Antifa activist or even worse, knowingly taken a picture with known radicals like Louis Farrakhan, will be very vulnerable.”

“After being forced to update and correct their story, it’s no surprise that the author and the New York Observer did their best to bury it,” a source close to Trump, Jr., and Guilfoyle said. “Is it too much to ask for a publication to tweet out the corrected story with an apology when they get something so wrong? It’s a clear example of why so many people no longer trust the establishment media.”

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