After The New York Times’ published a photo of a scantily clad Melania Trump, the woman who would be first lady should Donald Trump become President, with a profile published online Wednesday, the paper apparently thought better of the decision and removed it.
The photo appeared in one of Melania Trump’s tweets that she posted earlier this year. Her tweet contained the simple message: “Perfect beach day” with two emojis. The close-up photo showed her wearing white bikini bottoms.
The Times embedded the tweet in the article.
Perfect beach day ☀️? pic.twitter.com/9SV3zuwQrt
— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) January 25, 2015
The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty first flagged the Times photo and its subsequent disappearance.
Pretty sure this marks the first time the NYT has ever featured a photo of the crotch of a potential first lady. http://t.co/FD3DTF2tAE
— Karen Tumulty (@ktumulty) September 30, 2015
But as of late Wednesday afternoon, the New York Times article no longer included the embedded selfie. Viewing the story on NewsDiffs.org, a site that tracks changes by media organizations like the Times and BBC, indicates that the while the photo appeared in the version of the story live at 2:49 p.m. ET, it had been deleted by 3:07 p.m.
Asked about why the paper decided to remove the crotch photo, a Times spokeswoman told TPM: “We regularly edit the text and art in articles all the time, for a variety of reasons, over the course of the day online and between editions for print.”
This story has been updated.
