New York Times reporter Jonathan Martin disputes 'preposterous' quotes attributed to him in new White House tell-all

Fox News anchor Howard Kurtz's new book on the White House, Media Madness: Donald Trump, the Press, and the War over the Truth, is already being compared to Michael Wolff's tell-all Fire and Fury — and now it even has the backlash to boot, CNN reports. In the book, which Politico describes as "[portraying] the news media … as excessively negative in its treatment of President Donald Trump," Kurtz alleges that New York Times political reporter Jonathan Martin bashed Trump in a phone call with an RNC staffer.

"Donald Trump is racist and a fascist, we all know it, and you are complicit," Martin reportedly said. "By supporting him you're all culpable." The staffer supposedly called Martin later, prompting "another tirade," CNN writes, citing Kurtz' book. That conversation led to an "angry phone call from then-Republican National Committee Communications Director Sean Spicer to a Times editor to complain," CNN reports.

Martin, though, says the anecdote is not true — and what's more, that it doesn't even sound believable. "Of course I didn't yell 'you're a racist and a fascist' or 'you are complicit' or 'you're all culpable' at anybody," he told CNN. "Does that sound like me? More to that point, do those sound like real life lines any human being in the news business would use?" Backing up Martin's story, Politico Playbook comments that the quote attributed to him "doesn't sound like something JMart ever would've said."

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Kurtz and the book's publisher, Regency, stand by the story, saying it is supported by "sources with direct knowledge of the conversations."

Martin added to Politico: "Howie paraphrased a vague, preposterous-sounding quote to me that I told him sounded ridiculous and not the kind of thing I'd say ... I still have no idea what he or Sean Spicer are talking about.”