On Monday, President Trump took aim at the “failing” New York Times in response to a story that Vice President Mike Pence plans to run for his job in 2020.

“The failing @nytimes, which has made every wrong prediction about me including my big election win (apologized), is totally inept!” Trump posted to Twitter around 6:30 a.m.

His remarks prompted one NYT reporter to defend the newspaper on MSNBC’s Morning Joe hours later, and his line of rebuttal is seemingly proving the president is correct, according to True Pundit.

“Nick Confessore, first of all, the failing New York Times, an interesting word – failing – it usually suggests that your subscriptions are down, your influence is waning. How is The New York Times doing over the past six months or so?” host Joe Scarborough asked the young reporter.

“Well, pretty good actually,” Confessore said as he read off a sheet of notes. “I think in the last quarter we added 100,000 new digital subscriptions. We’re hiring people.”

“Oh wow, that’s great,” Scarborogh said.

Confessore then used another interesting metric of success.

“The sushi in the cafeteria is pretty good, so I think the Times is doing great,” he said, apparently attempting to make a joke.

Neither the hosts nor other guests on the show seemed to think it was very funny, forcing Confessore to move on after the failed punch line.

“I would say, that tweet to me was the all-clear sign to the vice president,” he continued. “Because it was clearly a tweet aimed at the story on Vice President Pence. And I think that the Vice President Pence had successfully shifted the conversation away from his own ambitions to the failings of The New York Times alleged.”

Pence adamantly denied the allegations in the Times about his alleged aspirations for the presidency and chastised the newspaper in a statement posted to Twitter on Sunday.

My statement regarding the absurd @NYtimes article. pic.twitter.com/htvYSbS2dy

“Today’s article in the New York Times is disgraceful and offensive to me, my family, and our entire team. The allegations in this article are categorically false and represent just the latest attempt by the media to divide this Administration,” Pence wrote.

“Thanks to the President’s leadership, we are rebuilding the military, ISIS is on the run, and we’ve seen more than 1 million jobs created while the stock market hits all time highs,” he continued. The American people know that I could not be more honored to be working side by side with a president who is making America great again.

“Whatever fake news may come our way, my entire team will continue to focus all our efforts to advance the President’s agenda and see him re-elected in 2020. Any suggestion otherwise is both laughable and absurd.”