Trump’s highly anticipated “Fake News Awards” land with a thud

Impact

President Donald Trump’s “Fake News Awards” landed with a giant thud Wednesday night, as the link to the award page Trump tweeted out led to a 404 error page.

“And the FAKE NEWS winners are...” Trump tweeted, with a link to the Republican National Committee’s website that teased, “The Highly-Anticipated [sic] 2017 Fake News Awards.”

The link, however, didn’t load.

Those who clicked through either got a 404 error page, or a message saying, “The site is temporarily offline, we are working to bring it back up. Please try back later.”

RNC

In order to see the actual Fake News Awards, one had to search a cached version of the site.

Once it eventually loaded, users found the rather predictable results — all outlets the presidents has criticized in his first year in office.

ABC’s Brian Ross received a gong for an incorrect report on the Russia investigation that led to the journalist’s suspension from and eventual demotion at the network.

Most of the other acknowledgements were petty, and about unimportant events.

One Fake News Award went to a tweet from a Washington Post reporter who incorrectly said the crowd size at a Trump rally was small — a tweet the reporter ultimately corrected.

TIME received a Fake News Award after a reporter had incorrectly sent out a White House pool report that Trump had a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. removed from the Oval Office. The reporter quickly corrected himself in a subsequent pool report.

Another went to CNN, which showed video of Trump appearing to over-feed fish at a koi pond in Japan in November 2017.

Fox News, the Trump-friendly conservative network which has made a number of errors in its reporting, predictably didn’t receive any of the president’s Fake News Awards.

Trump faced backlash for the awards, including from Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, who delivered a stinging rebuke of Trump’s attacks on the press in a speech Wednesday on the Senate floor.

“No matter how powerful, no president will ever have dominion over objective reality,” Flake said.

Facing backlash, Trump sought to soften the blow by tweeting that some reporters are good.

“Despite some very corrupt and dishonest media coverage, there are many great reporters I respect and lots of GOOD NEWS for the American people to be proud of!” Trump tweeted, shortly after releasing the awards.