The editors of the New York Times still are in shock. Less than eight months ago, the newspaper’s editorial board triumphantly published an editorial entitled “Donald Trump, Felon.” Despite the fact that New York City’s district attorney Alvin Bragg was relying on untested legal theories, and despite the fact that the trial itself resembled a tag team effort between the prosecutor and Judge Juan Merchan—a partisan Democrat—the NYT solemnly assured its readers that everything was fair and honorable:
In a humble courtroom in Lower Manhattan on Thursday, a former president and current Republican standard-bearer was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The jury’s decision and the facts presented at the trial offer yet another reminder — perhaps the starkest to date — of the many reasons Donald Trump is unfit for office.
The guilty verdict in the former president’s hush-money case was reached by a unanimous jury of 12 randomly selected New Yorkers, who found that Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, was guilty of falsifying business records to prevent voters from learning about a sexual encounter that he believed would have been politically damaging.
On June 21, 2024, the NYT ran an article claiming that the videos of a seemingly confused Joe Biden were nothing more than “cheapfakes” that were “misleading” the public. Seven days later, after assuring the public that Biden was fit for office, that same newspaper ran an editorial calling for Biden to drop out of the presidential race following his disastrous debate with the newly-convicted Donald Trump.
The NYT got its way with Biden and the Democrats dutifully nominated Vice-President Kamala Harris, another favorite of the Grey Lady’s editorial board. Its columnists and reporters were all hands on deck to promote her candidacy. David French wrote that he was voting for Harris to “save conservatism from itself.”
This is a newspaper used to having its way. From the bogus Russiagate investigation to the numerous attempts by Democratic prosecutors contriving criminal charges against Trump, the NYT was eager to promote the latest conspiracy theories. Despite the fact that the original Steel dossier that gave much of the fire to the so-called investigation was made up of whole cloth, the NYT then declared that the whole affair was legitimate, anyway.
Ironically, both the NYT and the Washington Post shared Pulitzer prizes in 2018 for their coverage of Russiagate. It was the second time each paper had won a Pulitzer for pushing a hoax, the Post winning it for the fake “Jimmy’s World” story in 1981 while the NYT won it in 1932 for a series of false stories by its “star” reporter Walter Duranty that covered up the infamous Ukranian famine caused by Josef Stalin. (Duranty was a committed follower of Stalin and used the NYT to help prop up one of the most murderous political leaders in history.) At least the Post returned the Pulitzer; the NYT never cared about the truth and displayed the prize in its lobby for years.
But despite the best efforts of the NYT and its reporters and editorial writers, the American voters decided to put the “unfit” Donald Trump in office, defying the cumulative progressive wisdom that oozes from the newspaper’s pages. David French, who is always quick to let everyone know that HE WRITES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES, declared that elite progressives are morally superior to those who would stoop to vote for Trump:
Regardless of how a populist movement starts, it virtually always devolves into a cesspool of corruption and spite.
And that’s exactly where we are today.
Here was his assessment of Trump’s first term:
We’ve seen this clearly with Republican devotion to Donald Trump. He inherited a growing economy and maintained its growth for the first three years of his term. While he deserves a degree of credit for that continued economic success, Trump’s messaging was relentless — he had created the strongest economy in the world.
But what of the failures of Trump’s first term? Well, that’s a “they” problem.
The soaring murder rate in 2020 wasn’t Trump’s fault. That was all about B.L.M. and the left.
The confusion, incompetence and deception that marked Trump’s response to the pandemic were forgotten. The left was the real villain of the pandemic, with its school closings and mask mandates.
It is hard to know where to begin with this rewriting of the facts. One does not need to endorse Trump’s actions as president during his first term to recognize that French is being dishonest. First, and most important, the long-term lockdowns, mask mandates, and long-term school closings were not the handiwork of Trump or of most Republican officials.
Instead, the rioting and murder rates that rose afterward came in places like Minneapolis that were governed by progressives, not to mention the looting that broke out in numerous cities in 2020, looting which progressive media and politicians like Bernie Sanders openly endorsed. That mainstream media outlets claimed the violent protests were “mostly peaceful” (sometimes as flames burned in the background) only further demonstrates the dishonesty of legacy media like the NYT and CNN.
In fact, it is well-known that the states and cities with the most restrictive lockdown policies also were governed by progressive Democrats. Given that French supported extremely restrictive covid policies (he referred to those policies as being “pro-life”), for him to claim that these policies successfully stemmed the negative effects of the virus is delusional at best and dishonest at worst. Nor has French ever addressed the lies told by the media and officials of the Biden administration about the Wuhan lab-leak origins of covid which came from gain-of-function research.
Yet, this is the kind of coverage we can expect from the legacy media for the next four years. Instead of dealing with the likely negative fallout of Trump’s tariffs and other policies that likely will cause economic harm, the media coverage will be fixated on Elon Musk, DOGE, and the loss of the giant media slush fund that has been USAID.
As the leader of the mainstream media empire, we can expect the New York Times to take the lead in trying to bring down the Trump administration. So far, the new playbook seems to be related to the old one. Children will die because of the lack of USAID funding. Trump is on the “wrong side” of history. (This is reaching back into the past, as 40 years ago, the NYT claimed that the US was on the “wrong side” of history because it failed to endorse socialism.) Given that Trump has already reached out to Russia in hopes of finding an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, one can anticipate that the editorial pages of the NYT and Washington Post once again will declare the president to be a “Russian agent.”
At the end of his most recent anti-Trump screed, David French quoted from the Book of Ecclesiastes, declaring, “There is nothing new under the sun.” Indeed, he also is speaking of himself and the legacy media he represents, as we are sure to see a repeat of Trump 1.0 coverage. The empire indeed is striking back, but it is likely to be less effective this time around as maybe the media itself is on the “wrong side” of history.
Read the full article here
