Huffington Post Won't Call Trump Names Anymore

The Huffington Post won't be calling President Trump a "rampant xenophobe" on every story it writes about him over the next four years. Since late January, the news site has appended the following to the end of every Donald Trump-related article:

• "Editor's note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S."

No more. Politico got its hands on a memo sent to staffers by HuffPo Washington Bureau Chief Ryan Grim Tuesday night that said in the spirit of starting with a "clean slate," the editor's note was coming down. For now. "If he governs in a racist, misogynistic way, we reserve the right to add it back on. This would be giving respect to the office of the presidency which Trump and his backers never did," Grim wrote. He further explained the thinking in a note to readers: "If [Trump] follows his worst instincts and caters to the klatch of white supremacists who endorsed him, we won’t flinch from calling him racist. But we have hope that the man we saw on the trail at his worst moments is not the man who will enter the White House." Read Grim's explainer in full here. (More Huffington Post stories.)