Today’s New York Times Hit Piece on Kamala Harris Was Extraordinary Even for Them
The New York Times today called the Kamala candidacy wishcasting without taking any responsibility for the sanewashing of a candidate who should not have won more than ten percent of the vote.
For two years before and during the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the New York Times normalized and sanewashed a convicted felon who at least half the country knows is barely surviving on the edge of sanity.
Today, the once-esteemed (sort of) newspaper released a hit piece on Kamala Harris authored by sanewashing specialist David Leonhardt, titled Rose-colored Analysis, in which Leonhardt placed all the blame for the election results on Democratic wishcasting.
My response to this nonsense is broken into two sections: One, a brief summary of his claims, and then robust documentation of the many headlines and news stories over a three-month period in 2024 that sanewashed Trump from being someone who should have been no more than a marginal player in U.S. politics to where he is today, a stooge for an apartheid-loving immigrant who hates immigrants. Note that the New York Times continues to sanewash Trump as I write this piece even as he lets his pal Leon Musk call the shots as shadow president1 while they nominate one bizarre cabinet member after another.
The Hit Piece
I won’t paraphrase what Leonhardt said today. I’ll simply quote him and supply some annotations (my comments). Ready? You may want to grab a drink if it’s after noon where you live. Leonhardt wrote:
The first key moment in this story occurred in the summer of 2020, when Biden was choosing a running mate.
Biden was then 77, almost as old as Ronald Reagan was when he left office.
But not as old as Trump is today. Can we get a comment about JD Vance as a choice for a running mate? No? Okay, thanks anyway, David. Thanks for the debate, but the case is already closed and I won.
The likelihood that Biden would serve two terms was lower than with most nominees, which gave extra significance to his choice of a vice president: Biden and his aides were anointing an heir.
And yet mainstream media acts like Trump has all his marbles and isn’t about to initiate a Weekend at Bernie’s presidency.
That fact offered reason to pick a strong general-election candidate. The United States, after all, is a closely divided country where the two parties pursue starkly different agendas on abortion, climate change, immigration, taxes and more. Modern presidential elections tend to be close and to have high policy stakes.
Uh-oh, here we go. Please explain why a woman of color with strong creds from California is not a strong general election candidate.
Even so, Biden and his team seemed to put little weight on the future when they chose Harris. Yes, she had big strengths.
Wait. She did? So, she was a strong general election candidate?
She had been a successful attorney general and shone as a senator during contentious hearings. She was also the country’s most prominent Black female politician near the height of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. Harris would be a historic vice president.
Exactly. Refute thyself, David!
As a potential presidential nominee, however, she had major weaknesses. She was a Californian with little experience winning swing voters.
Oh, no! A Californian!!! So was Ronald Reagan, you idiot. That didn’t stop Reagan, a hard-core right-winger with a little charm but little more than spittle in his cranium, from taking this country down a 40-year road of conservative depravity that is still bullying Americans into extreme levels of wealth disparity. But go on. Sorry for the interruption.
During her brief presidential run in 2020, she struggled with basic aspects of campaigning (as I and others noted at the time).
This happens all the time. What also happens is they try again and do much better. This is an invalid point and a bad premise upon which to base an argument. Learning experiences are good, not bad. I hope you don’t have kids.
She had a hard time explaining why she wanted to be president, and she seemed to dislike giving interviews. She performed so poorly in that campaign that she dropped out before the first caucus.
So the fuck what? Dozens of future presidents started out with less than a bang. This is, quite simply, misogyny on full display.
Some of Biden’s advisers recognized these issues and argued for other candidates, such as Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, a purple state.
Oh, not misogyny then? Racism. Fine, whatever.
Yet he chose Harris. From then on, she was the Democratic heir apparent.
So you’re telling me that the centrist white woman was assured of doing better against the monolithic media sensation that media megaphones like you turned Trump into? Are you suggesting that you had no role to play in Trump’s ascension? And that Whitmer would have somehow eked out the marginal victory Harris was unable to despite Harris’ numerous strengths and intense appeal?
The real truth is that Trump should never have had more than ten percent of the vote, especially in 2024. Not after that pandemic, and certainly not after he blathered something about Haitians eating dogs in a national debate where every observer on planet Earth agreed he sounded insane and that Harris won with extreme effect.
Instead, the media normalization machine went into overdrive.
People like David Leonhardt spent countless hours sanewashing Trump before Musk jumped in and directed his new social media toy, Twitter, to influence his many fanboys and 300 million users to help elect Trump.
Sanewashing
It’s important to note that every major media outlet with any ties to traditional newspapers or broadcasting entities, without exception, sanewashed Trump. The process began, I believe, with The Morning Joe broadcasts on MSNBC in 2015. There, Joe Scarborough jovially bootlicked Trump during regular interviews early during the Republican primaries when the full list of potential candidates was still quite large.
Other primary candidates were ignored by Scarborough in favor of Trump, who received what amounted to free advertising. Scarborough never apologized for his role in elevating a marginal player (at that time) with autocratic tendencies and a full, existing record of hatred towards women and other groups to a leading presidential contender.2
One thing in Trump’s favor during the primaries was that the general pack of hounds running for the 2016 Republican nomination was generally a who’s who of toddlers with Oxfords. The list included such intellectual pillars as Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, and Ted Cruz. Others running in the primaries included Hewlett-Packard’s layoff supervisor and one-time CEO Carly Fiorina (30,000 layoffs while CEO) and Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon with the missing brain.
You may recall that Carson had sort of a Trumpy appeal without the rage. His numbers soared while Trump’s did, but his candidacy fell to pieces with quotes like, “Is that necessary, or can you sort of slip that area down into Egypt?” regarding a Palestinian state within Israeli borders.
If that sounds like something Trump would say, all I can say is that mainstream media was much less kind to Carson because his skin tone was a bit darker than Trump’s, so he was held to a much higher standard.
The most normal Republican candidate in terms of general human decency was probably a fellow named John Kasich, who was perhaps more popular among Democrats than Republicans because he had the fewest improprieties and didn’t blather out a swarm of odd beliefs during his stump speeches. He, too, was vanquished by Trump, not in small part because of Scarboruogh’s fawning fixation that, by the time of the first Republican presidential debate, had spread to other media outlets and journalists.
Sanewashing became institutionalized almost overnight. The same media that destroyed America’s first Trump, Sarah Palin, whose views were almost as eccentric as Trump’s but who was cursed with the lethal handicap of being a woman, elevated Trump for reasons no major media personality or journalist has bothered to explain in public.
It might be fair to say that Trump wasn’t as crazy in 2016 as he was during the 2024 elections, but he’s never been lacking in bizarre and uneducated positions. The fact that he has a third-grade reading level (if we’re being generous) was never explored by major media. He never should have been more than a marginal character in American politics. He’s always been a misanthropic rage machine as a politician. The media, though, loves him and always will.
Fast forward to 2024, when sanewashing reached absurd levels. What follows is an extensive, and far from complete, list of New York Times sanewashing headlines and stories covering approximately three months. I’ve included original headlines and corrections that reflect what should have been written. The New York Times was and is representative of how the media has normalized Trump to the point that America is now buried under the debris of hate and despair. Millions of people are trying to figure out how to cope with the damage that is likely to overwhelm them.
The focus is on the New York Times because it has always supposedly represented the East Coast liberal mindset. It has proven to be anything but.
The New York Times was at the vanguard of the effort to obfuscate Trump’s devastatingly fatal response to the pandemic and the economic calamity that his response to that crisis created. Instead, they want us to believe that Kamala was somehow an insufficient candidate, when, in truth, she was one of the most qualified presidential candidates in American history.
Substackers and other independent organizations like ProPublica did a noble job of fighting off the sanewashing during the election cycle, but it wasn’t enough.
Note that this is a collection of observations I originally wrote on the dates they were written. For that reason, some of the remarks may seem out of date. The most startling thing about this is that it covers only a three-month period. I also removed many of the original headlines because of lowered relevancy, which means the real number of pro-Trump stories from the New York Times is significantly more.
Mainstream media spent more than two years sanewashing Trump while Democrats sought answers to the media problem without success.
I present to you (a few of you are familiar with it), the…
No need to read them all. Read a couple and you’ll get the idea.
New York Times, April 14, 2024
Headline: Four Years Out, Some Voters Look Back at Trump’s Presidency More Positively
Subhead: A new poll by The New York Times and Siena College finds that voters think highly of the former president’s record on the economy, but memories of his divisiveness largely remain intact.
Comment: Is a comment really needed here?
Corrected Headline: Poll Shows That Some Voters Have Forgotten Why Trump Had Record-Setting Unfavorable Approval Numbers
Corrected Subhead: A new poll shows voters have forgotten the devastated economy Trump left behind for Biden to clean up.
New York Times, April 14, 2024
Headline: Sununu Says Trump ‘Contributed’ to Insurrection, but Still Has His Support
Comment: The New York Times acts as if it is normal for the governor of a major industrial state to abandon basic, moral principles. One tiny comfort: One of the NYT headline writers managed to sneak the word “Insurrection” past his/her editors (the Times usually refers to the events of January 6 as a riot these days).
Corrected Headline: Sununu Acknowledges Trump’s Role in Insurrection, but Will Campaign For Him Anyway
Washington Post, April 13, 2024
Headline: Strong economy can be double-edged sword for Biden if rates stay high
Subhead: President Biden has spent his presidency touting the country’s economic growth. But the economy’s unfettered strength is becoming more of a political liability for the White House.
Comment: This is almost self-parody
Corrected Headline: Strong economy for Biden could carry him easily to a second term
Corrected Subhead: After inheriting a decimated economy from Trump, Biden roars into the November election hoping to address remaining issue in a second term
New York Times, April 12, 2024
Headline: Inside Donald Trump’s Embrace of the Jan. 6 Rioters
Comment: Another prominent feature article that downplays the insurrection and the insurrectionist in chief. The article, co-authored by the New York Times’ official Trump Normalization reporter, Maggie Haberman, portrays Trump’s embrace of the January 6 rioters as something new (he has always embraced them, despite his occasional social media posts to the contrary of the bulk of his posts).
And it doesn’t talk about the criminal element or the importance of his violent bully pulpit until the ninth paragraph:
“It normalizes violence as a legitimate solution to political grievances,” said Robert Pape, a scholar at the University of Chicago who has studied American political violence in the wake of the Capitol attack. “And so it makes it more likely that politically angry people will resort to it.”
The New York Times no longer calls the events of January 6 an insurrection, despite the fact that the insurrectionists intended to force Michael Pence to install Trump as President.
Corrected Headline: Trump accelerates his support of the January 6 insurrection through increasingly violent rhetoric and social media posts
New York Times, April 12, 2024
Headline: Pro-Palestinian Protesters Complicate Democrats’ Ability to Campaign
Comment: Not Trump-specific. A high-profile video that emphasizes division and discontent in the Democratic Party over Gaza. The emphasis should be on how the Democratic Party has two distinct interest groups to appease, those who support Israel and those who are infuriated by Israel’s disproportional response to Hamas’ attack. Pro-Israel folks can’t turn to the Republican Party because it has lost its way.
In these kinds of stories, the emphasis should always be on how America currently only has one legitimate political party that has to appeal to a huge tent of disparate interests.
Corrected Headline: As “Normies” Flee the Republican Party, Gaza Demonstrates the Challenges of a Bigger Tent in the Democratic Party
New York Times, April 10, 2024
Headline: After Trump Broadside, Surveillance Bill Collapses in the House
Comment: The New York Times loves itself some strong, powerful Trumpy Trumpleness. They should include an AI-generated photo of Trump wearing a cape and flexing muscles. Trump doesn’t want the bill because he claims the surveillance is about him, although it isn’t. The Bill was passed two days later. He’s not as powerful as the New York Times portrays him.
Corrected Headline: Weak Republican Leaders Again Fall Prey to Trump’s Social Media Tantrums, Allowing Surveillance Bill to Die in House
New York Times, April 10, 2024
Headline: Trump Says He Wouldn’t Sign a Federal Abortion Ban, Criticizing Arizona Ruling
Comment: We all know he’s a liar. This is an easy headline change. This may seem like a subtle change, but cumulatively, these kinds of differences become important to the body politic.
Corrected Headline: Trump Claims He Wouldn’t Sign a Federal Abortion Ban As Arizona Guts Women’s Health Care
New York Times, April 9, 2024
Headline: Swing-State Republicans Embrace Trump’s New Abortion Stance
Comment: The New York Times ignores the obvious: That Trump’s Supreme Court picks gutted women’s healthcare in America.
Corrected Headline: Swing-State Republicans Join Trump in Encouraging States To Ban Abortion
New York Times, April 8, 2024
Headline: Biden and Other Democrats Tie Trump to Limits on Abortion Rights
Comment: The New York Times buries the lede yet again. The lede exists somewhere in this third paragraph of the story:
In a blistering 604-word statement, President Biden said via his campaign that Mr. Trump was “responsible for creating the cruelty and the chaos that has enveloped America since the Dobbs decision,” referring to the 2022 Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson, which overturned Roe v. Wade.
Corrected Headline: In Blistering Statement, Biden Reminds Voters Who Killed Roe
New York Times, April 3, 2024
Headline: Many Democrats Are Worried Trump Will Beat Biden. This One Isn’t.
Comment: The reason Democrats are worried about Trump is because mainstream media outlets like the Times are not only normalizing him. They are making a feeble, psychologically unwell man with a clear case of dementia who is no longer capable of stringing together a coherent paragraph when he speaks appear invincible. Please stop.
Corrected Headline: Simon Rosenberg Pushes Back Against the Questionable Media Arc of a Likely Trump Victory
New York Times, April 1, 2024
Headline: The Church of Trump: How He’s Infusing Christianity Into His Movement
Comment: A high-profile article on how Trump attracts evangelical Christians into his cult. The Times, as usual, buries the lede, which is several paragraphs from the lead paragraph:
Mr. Trump has long defied conventional wisdom as an unlikely but irrefutable evangelical hero.
He has been married three times, has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault, has been convicted of business fraud and has never showed much interest in church services. Last week, days before Easter, he posted on his social media platform an infomercial-style video hawking a $60 Bible that comes with copies of some of the nation’s founding documents and the lyrics to Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the U.S.A.”
Instead, the lede paragraph is:
Long known for his improvised and volatile stage performances, former President Donald J. Trump now tends to finish his rallies on a solemn note.
There’s nothing solemn about Donald Trump. Please stop.
Most stories like this, by a more responsible news outlet, would take this opportunity to compare him to Jim Jones.
Corrected Headline: The Makings of a Cult: How Trump Has Manipulated the Media to Form a Dangerous Political Cult
New York Times, March 25, 2024
Comment: This isn’t a headline, it’s a comment on the New York Times’ live update page covering Trump’s hush money trial. Haberman is a classic Trump-normalizing troll. Here, she editorializes on a statement issued by the White House about how pathetic Trump is, and she just can’t help herself. It’s also false. The presidential race has not been reduced to the two candidates calling each other “confused.” The race has, however, been undermined by Haberman’s incessant normalization techniques regarding Trump.
Correction: Can’t Haberman report the news without editorializing? Did they teach this in her journalism school, or did she learn this from a mentor somewhere?
New York Times, March 17, 2024
Headline:
Comment: No headline because no dedicated story in the New York Times of Trump’s salute to convicted January 6 insurrectionists at his rally in Vandalia, Ohio on Saturday, March 16. According to numerous reports, a loud MAGAphone announced over a PA system:
“Please rise for the horribly and unfairly treated January 6 hostages.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
Then, Trump saluted the convicts, calling them “unbelievable patriots” and “hostages.”
This should have been a front-page headline in the Sunday New York Times. Instead, it was buried in the article below.
Trump’s messaging has been clear. If he doesn’t win, it will be a bloodbath. Led, presumably, by more unbelievable patriots.
Corrected Headline: Evoking Images of Civil War, Trump Celebrates Convicted January 6 Insurrectionists with Military Salute
Update: Now he’s saying he’ll pardon them.
New York Times, March 16, 2024
Headline: Trump Says Some Migrants Are ‘Not People’ and Predicts a ‘Blood Bath’ if He Loses
Subhead: In a caustic and discursive speech in Ohio, former President Donald J. Trump once again doubled down on a doomsday vision of the United States.
Comment: You did okay in the headline, NY Times. Why was your subhead so weak?
Corrected Subhead: In a caustic and rambling toxic speech in Ohio, former President Donald J. Trump raised the specter of civil war if he loses the election
New York Times, March 15, 2024
Headline: Pence Says He Won’t Endorse Trump, but Won’t Vote for Biden Either
Comment: You said all you needed to say with the first half of the headline and you avoided mentioning that the insurrectionists wanted to hang a Vice President of the United States on January 6. Stop minimizing the insurrection.
Corrected Headline: Citing January 6 Insurrection, Pence Says He Won’t Endorse Trump
New York Times, March 11, 2024
Headline: Trump’s Biden Mockery Upsets People Who Stutter: ‘We’ve Heard This Before’
Comment: Trump, unsurprisingly, mocked Biden’s stuttering in a recent speech. Apparently, this behavior only upsets people who stutter
Corrected Headline: Speech Therapists Apallled at Trump’s Mockery of People Who Stutter
New York Times, March 9, 2024
Headline: Britt Tells Misleading Border Story in State of the Union Response
Comment: It was an all-out, fully fabricated lie. Alabama Senator Katie Britt deliberately lied about the misfortune of a woman who was trafficked by child sex peddlers beginning when she was 12 years old during the Bush administration in Mexico nowhere near the border. The woman’s tragic tale has nothing to do with immigration or the border. It does, however, say much about the insanity of American drug laws and the endless, failed war on drugs that has damaged Mexico for decades.
Corrected Headline: Katie Britt Lies About 12-year-old Mexican Cartel Victim During Her State of the Union Response
New York Times, March 8, 2024
Headline: A big night — but will it matter?
This was the headline in a newsletter from the Times.
The linked story had a different headline:
In Two Speeches, Trump and Biden Offer Starkly Different Views of the Country
Comment: One speech was cogent, one was batshit crazy.
Corrected Headline: Biden’s Speech Celebrates Normalcy, Trump Delivers Another Off the Rails Speech
New York Times, March 5, 2024
Headline: Haley’s Failed Campaign Highlights G.O.P. Rifts and Trump’s Dominance
Subheadline: Falling well short in a spirited campaign to dethrone Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley brought to a close the latest struggle over the soul and direction of the Republican Party.
Comment: Another New York Times headline that portrays Trump as a manly man whose virility is unmatched. And, dummies, you nailed part of it in the subhead: “spirited campaign.”
Corrected Headline: Haley’s Spirited Campaign Fails to Halt the GOP’s Descent into Fascism
Corrected Subheadline: The world shudders as the ranks of Republican sycophants swell
New York Times, March 5, 2024
Headline: Trump’s Conquest of the Republican Party Matters to Every American
Comment: This headline is from an editorial from the newspaper. The first two paragraphs are considerably more adversarial:
The party has become a vessel for the fulfillment of Mr. Trump’s ambitions, and he will almost certainly be its standard-bearer for a third time.
This is a tragedy for the Republican Party and for the country it purports to serve.
The editorial continues with:
The Republican Party is forsaking all of those responsibilities and instead has become an organization whose goal is the election of one person at the expense of anything else, including integrity, principle, policy and patriotism.
The headline was somewhere in there, wasn’t it? How did they manage to ruin a good thing?
The editorial continues to rough up Trump something fierce. This is all good. But the headline is not. It’s passive and weak. And, once again, it uses a word, “conquest,” that continues to push the New York Times narrative that he is invincible.
The paper had an opportunity to give voice in its headline to what we all know, and failed.
Corrected headline: The Failure of the Republican Party to Stop Trump is an Existential Threat to America.
New York Times, March 5, 2024
Headline: Fewer Voters Think Trump Committed Crimes, Polls Show
Comment: I’d like you to take a minute to review a graph of these findings:
Tell me what your corrected headline is before you look at mine.
You’ll notice that the majority of Democrats and independents believe he has committed crimes. But do you notice something in that red Republican line? That’s a serious uptick considering its overall trendline.
The Times, instead, spends its newsprint on analyzing a slight downtick in other voters, one that is no different than other brief dips, and one that will surely climb as the legal news starts to hammer Trump again.
Corrected headline: Number of Republican Voters Who Think Trump Committed a Serious Crime Shows Steady Increase Since July, Polls Show
New York Times, March 5, 2024
Headline: Do Americans Have a ‘Collective Amnesia’ About Donald Trump?
Comment: That’s a good start, but there’s no reason to avoid the nature of their collective amnesia in the headline unless you’re the New York Times, which seems to be on a sacred mission to see Trump in power. Or as the New Yorker might say, reëlected. (Dear New Yorker, please stop. It’s re-elected or reelected).
“91 felony indictments” should be part of almost every headline about Trump, even if his cult considers them a feature and not a bug.
The Times also buried the lede, which is in a photo caption: Donald J. Trump’s approval rating when he left office was 34 percent.
Corrected Headline: Do Americans Have a ‘Collective Amnesia’ About Donald Trump’s Thousands of Documented Lies and 91 Felony Indictments?
Alternative Corrected Headline: Donald J. Trump’s approval rating when he left office was 34 percent. Do Americans remember why?
New York Times, March 3, 2024
Headline: Majority of Biden’s 2020 Voters Now Say He’s Too Old to Be Effective
Subhead: A New York Times/Siena College poll revealed how much even his supporters worry about his age, intensifying what has become a grave threat to his re-election bid.
Comment: This one has to be seen to be believed. So, just in case there’s enough uproar for the New York Times to change the headline later, here’s a screenshot:
The headline says the Majority of Biden’s 2020 Voters. As Jerry Weiss noted on Jay Kuo’s excellent Substack response to this, only “823 potential voters nation-wide completed the full survey.”
A majority of Biden’s 2020 voters would equal at least 40 million people. This survey questioned 980 voters (only 823 completed the survey, but Cohn saw fit to include the incompletes in the results, too).
980. IN THE ENTIRE NATION. That’s a far cry than the screaming headline of “Majority of Biden’s 2020 Voters.” That’s a far cry from 40 million.
This is journalistic malfeasance. It’s clickbait. It’s equivalent to false advertising. It should be illegal for a mass-market communications company to publish a lie that is this far over the top. As Jerry notes:
There were over 154 million voters in the 2020 election. A little basic arithmetic reveals that the survey questioned .0005 of 1% of the number of actual voters in 2020. It's absurd to suggest that some magic formula can correctly identify the demographic of any one person who accurately represents 187,000 others.
This is the very definition of small sample size. It’s not even a statistical anomaly. It’s the most insignificant number they could have produced. Statisticians rightly laugh at such ridiculous sample sizes. It’s also lazy polling. Why does Nate Cohn have a job when so many other qualified statisticians could probably produce something of actual relevance?3
For a formal rebuttal to the New York Times polling methodologies, I strongly recommend you read Jay Kuo’s excellent corrective analysis (where you’ll find Jerry Weiss’s comment, along with a lot of other great observations from Jay Kuo’s Substack readers in addition to Jay):
Corrected Headline: Hi. I’m Nate Cohn, and Substackers are legit asking if I’m related to Roy Cohn.
I won’t bother correcting the subhead. It’s just all too insane. But I will suggest a correction to the poll with two new separate questions:
True or False? Trump, with his 91 indictments and a civil rape conviction, is just too crazy and crooked to be an effective president.
True or False? Biden, with his 0 indictments and no civil rape convictions, is too honest to be an effective president.
New York Times, February 21, 2024
Headline: The Informant Turned Defendant Who Took Aim at the Bidens
Subhead: How Alexander Smirnov managed to convince business partners, law enforcement agencies and politicians he had something of value to offer remains an enigma.
Comment: Seriously, NYT? This is how you treat the Russian infiltration of the Republican Party? And the asinine impeachment effort?
Corrected Headline: Republican Impeachment Hearings Upended by Russian Spy
Corrected Subhead: How Russian infiltrators have taken control of the Republican Party.
New York Times, February 21, 2024
Headline: Biden Chips Away at Student Loan Debt, Bit by Bit, Amid High Expectations
Comment: This egregious effort from Zolan Kanno-Youngs to malign Biden shows up in the HTML title element of the story, which the Times forgot to change:
<title>Biden Cancels $1.2 Billion in Student Loan Debt for 150,000 Borrowers - The New York Times</title>Why the hell did they change the original headline?
Subhead: The president announced another $1.2 billion in forgiveness, bringing the total canceled to $138 billion. But the piecemeal efforts have garnered him little praise.
Comment: Dudes, he did this yesterday afternoon.
Headline Correction (duh): Biden Cancels $1.2 Billion in Student Loan Debt for 150,000 Borrowers
New York Times, February 14, 2024
Headline: Not an Ordinary Special Election, and Yet a Typical Result
Comment: Huh? What does that headline even mean? Another Nate Cohn special, where he ignores the string of Democratic victories in local elections since the Supreme Court destroyed Roe v. Wade. By scuttling their own immigration bill (something many New York Times readers may not be aware of), Republicans probably added a couple of points to the victory margin in the special election in New York’s Third Congressional district to replace comedy powerhouse George Santos.
Cohn doesn’t bother covering this obvious likelihood, even though evaluating polls (election or their crazy IPSOS/Reuters stuff) is supposed to be his job.
Cohn buries himself in contradictory statements in this article to the point where the story becomes nonsensical. Example (within the same paragraph):
I think it’s entirely plausible to argue that these results are great for Democrats, given what’s going on in New York. It’s a lot less plausible, however, to interpret the results as a repudiation of Democratic weakness in the Empire State.
Cohn works so hard to push the message that we aren’t learning anything from all these localized Republican destruction events that reading through articles like this is like scraping your eyeballs.
Correction: Our Own Nate Cohn Explains Away Another Democratic Victory With Obfuscation and Contradiction
New York Times, February 14, 2024
Headline: Europe Wants to Stand on Its Own Militarily. Is It Too Little, Too Late?
Comment: Europe is justifiably terrified of another Trump Presidency. Say so.
Correction: Terrified of Another Trump Presidency, Europe Considers Alternative to the NATO Alliance
New York Times, February 14, 2024
Headline: They Know Haley’s Chances Against Trump, but They’re Voting for Her Anyway
Comment: Another “Trump is an unstoppable force” headline that the New York Times uses to create the spirit of inevitability.
Correction: Nikki Haley Begins South Carolina Bus Tour To Fight Media Bias Toward Trump
New York Times, February 14, 2024
Headline: House Republicans Impeach Mayorkas for Border Policies
Comment: Mayorkas was impeached for political reasons that had nothing to do with crimes or misdemeanors. This headline is Trump-related because, with no Trump, there is no impeachment. Instead, this is part of the Republican Party’s ongoing effort at a putsch.
Correction: In Historic First, Republicans Impeach Homeland Secretary Mayorkas Despite No Claims of Impeachable Offense
New York Times, February 13, 2024
Headline: Biden Denounces Trump’s Support for Russian Attack on Allies as ‘Un-American’
Comment: You need to read several paragraphs into the story to find any hint about how unhinged Trump’s words were. You might think that the first paragraph in the story would be okay, but in this case, it is okay to call something that is unhinged “unhinged” in the lede. The initial paragraph reads: “President Biden denounced former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday for encouraging Russia to attack certain NATO allies, calling the comments “dumb…” whereas the lede should have just laid it out: “President Biden denounced former President Donald J. Trump’s unhinged comments,” and then should have gone directly to quoting a professional psychologist to explore the strange patterns of Trump’s speeches in general, with this one as a prime example. The New York Times is an ongoing Master Class in burying the lede.
Correction: Trump’s Unhinged Encouragement of Russia To Attack NATO Called “Shameful,” “Dangerous” and “Un-American” by President Biden
New York Times, February 12, 2024
Headline: G.O.P. Officials, Once Critical, Stand by Trump After NATO Comments
Subhead: Defending Donald Trump or deflecting his statements, some top G.O.P. officials reflected the trajectory of a party that the former president has largely bent to his will.
Comment: Once again, a headline/subhead combo that presents Trump as an immovable force of power. This goes beyond normalization and treats a man with 91 federal indictments, a finding by a jury in civil court that he was guilty of rape and defamation, and is broadly looked upon by the majority of the nation as an insurrectionist, as all-powerful.
Correction: G.O.P. Officials Cower at Trump NATO Comments That Alarm Europe
Subhead Correction: Defending Donald Trump or deflecting his statements, former G.O.P. Trump foes convert from challengers to sycophants
New York Times, February 9, 2024
Headline: For Voters, When Does Old Become Too Old?
Subhead: Polling shows it’s a broad concern expressed about President Biden, not just one person’s opinion.
Comment: A Nate Cohn classic with lines like this:
What’s clear is that the report raised the burden on Mr. Biden to demonstrate his fitness for the presidency.
No similar burden is suggested regarding Trump’s obvious and potent cognitive decline. This is partly because the press is so buried in multi-faceted volumes of Trump malignancy that they barely notice how crazy he sounds on the hustings.
No mention is ever made that Trump is three years younger than Biden. And acts about 100 years older.
Correction for Headline: How Long Will Concerns About Biden’s Age Trump Concern Over Trump’s Cognitive Decline?
Subhead Correction: Polling shows President Biden’s age is a broad concern, but as evidence of Trump’s cognitive issues mounts, can he survive the same scrutiny?
New York Times, February 7, 2024
Headline: Border Deal Fails in the Senate
Comment: Republicans in both houses of Congress torched the bill they originally wanted and agreed to after His Highness objected to it, saying it would help Trump get elected.
Correction: Bowing to Trump, Senate Republicans Scuttle their Own Border Deal
New York Times, February 5, 2024
Headline: Who Should Be Trump’s No. 2?
Comment: The subhead in the email for this is: The most important vice-presidential selection question for Mr. Trump is less “who?” than “why?” The guest essay is by Kellyanne Conway. Need I say more? Probably not, but I will. The real question is, why is the New York Times giving Kellyanne Conway, a known purveyor of lies, a forum?
Correction: Kellyanne Conway Asked Us To Run a Guest Essay. We Said No.
That’s just a small sample of the New York Times’ appalling coverage of Trump. I no longer have a subscription, but I still get many of their newsletters for some reason. I can report that they’re still busy sanewashing the man.
Between mainstream media’s normalization and, often, encouragement of Trump, and Musk’s takeover of Twitter, Kamala Harris never had a chance. Many of us knew it down deep in our souls, but I guess we were doing a little wishcasting.
Thanks for reading!
Please restack if you want to help fight media bias.
Notes
Then, after changing his mind about the knave, Scarborough attacked Trump relentlessly until Trump won again. Scarborough, to the surprise of no one, jumped on the first plane to Mar-a-Lago he could get his wretched feet onto and crawled before his new king to pay homage.
Nate Cohn, of course, is now taking victory laps for early polls showing a close race, without acknowledging how his polls helped see Trump’s victory into existence.
The press loves Trump because he's such a volatile madman, he's certain to bring them viewers and readers. Ultimately, it's the press who have destroyed America. Profit over people. None of them have a sense of honor or duty. They are not legitimate or honest. Independent journalism is the only way to go now. Where did integrity go? :(
This is great, I quit NYT when these kind of articles began, first I wrote and complained, but that got nowhere. After subscribing for close to 20 years I cancelled them. Someone from the Times actually called me and asked me why, I did not hold my anger and disappointment at them for treating Trump as a viable presidential candidate after all the crimes he's committed. So now they have normalized and obviously condoned rape and treason. They can all rot in hell.