For decades, the editorial page of The New York Times has served as the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. But in a sign of the left’s panic over Donald Trump, the Times has moved beyond pushing an agenda to becoming a political hack, dirty tricks and all.
That’s the only reasonable conclusion to draw from the fishy aftermath of a Trump meeting with the edit board. The meeting happened in early January, but only on the eve of Super Tuesday did word spread about something the leading Republican candidate supposedly said in an off-the-record segment.
Buzzfeed suggested that an audiotape reveals Trump “secretly” walking back some of his most forceful immigration positions. The online news outlet reported that the recording has “reached near-mythical status at the Times” and that “some” people there believe the contents “could deal a serious blow” to Trump if they were made public.
The phrasing and lack of specific attribution tells me that Buzzfeed’s sources are top people at the Times who demanded anonymity. Executive editor Dean Baquet was among those at the meeting.
Under any definition of journalism ethics, anyone at the paper who leaked Trump’s off-the-record comments would be committing a serious violation. After the paper’s top editors promised Trump that his remarks would not be used, all Times staffers were duty-bound to honor that promise. Outsourcing a tease of Trump’s remarks to Buzzfeed is, ethically, no different from publishing them in the Times.
Equally troubling, the timing of the leak appears designed to rock the campaign at a crucial moment. The Times has greeted the prospect of a Trump victory as the end of the world, and projections that key Super Tuesday victories would put him on a glide path to the nomination meant time was running out to stop him. The off-the-record comments would have been of zero interest if Trump had been at the back of the GOP pack.
The dirty leak achieved some of its aim. Trump’s main rivals, Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, pounced on the Buzzfeed report and demanded that Trump release the tape. Cruz told a Texas crowd, “If you’re sitting in Manhattan telling The New York Times that you’re lying to the voters, the voters have a right to know.”
Again, the Times played along. Editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal coyly said that if Trump “wants to call up and ask us to release this transcript, he’s free to do that and then we can decide what we would do.”
No subtlety there. By publicly inviting Trump to make the request, Rosenthal was putting the candidate in a box while making the tape seem important. Other anti-Trump news organizations hyped the intrigue even further, with The Week declaring the tape contains a “rumored bombshell.”
Trump has not accepted Rosenthal’s invitation, so we don’t know what the tape contains, though it’s not likely to be anything as dramatic as the Times hopes. If history is any judge, Trump’s voters won’t be swayed by nuances or even policy contradictions.
Still, Trump ought to have his head examined for going off-the-record with an editorial board that has repeatedly savaged him, and especially for allowing that portion to be recorded. The Times edit board regards conservative white voters as ignorant racists, so Trump had to know he was in enemy territory.
Indeed, the Times is not so much a newspaper anymore as an agenda-driven house organ for America’s left. It serves as a cheerleader for high taxes, cop bashing and open borders, and as an enforcer against critics of liberal orthodoxy.
Trump, in every conceivable way, is on the wrong side of everything the Times stands for, so ethics were trashed in a desperate gambit to stop him.
That’s not journalism. That’s politics, dirty politics.
Hollywood laughs off left jab
Now that Hollywood has flagellated itself for being so white, it’s worth imagining how the problem would have been dealt with if conservatives had committed the offense.
Instead of giving Vice President Joe Biden a standing ovation, the audience might have been floored by his announcement of a federal civil rights probe for discrimination on the basis of “disparate impact.”
That flimsy standard, which has been used to win huge settlements from numerous firms and local governments, doesn’t require the feds to prove intentional or actual discrimination, only that, on the basis of population, blacks should hold a proportionate number of jobs — or win a minimum number of Oscars. Facing a suit, filmmakers could fight back, but most would pay a fine and accept a racial quota system.
No suit was brought against Hollywood, of course, and host Chris Rock inadvertently explained why. He recalled being at a fundraiser for President Obama where “all of you were there.”
In an aside to Obama, Rock said he flagged Tinseltown’s bigotry: “Mr. President, you see all these writers and producers and actors? They don’t hire black people, and they’re the nicest white people on Earth! They’re liberals!”
The Oscar crowd roared with laughter, relieved that liberal racism doesn’t matter because liberals are so nice.
A Tower of Cabel
File this one under common sense dumbed down.
The city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission is determined to abolish the requirement that cab drivers be able to speak and understand English. “In a city with a significant immigrant population, where some for-hire vehicle service providers may serve those immigrant communities almost exclusively, it is . . . not clear there is a demand for this language requirement,” Commissioner Meera Joshi told the City Council.
In plain English, this is nuts. Road signs are in English, and a cabby who can’t read them is more likely to get lost or in an accident. And how are English-speaking passengers expected to communicate with the driver? Even the sample test for getting a hack license on the commission’s website is in English.
The benefits aren’t limited to cab driving. English is the language of opportunity in New York, and anybody who can’t speak and understand it is walled off from the best the city has to offer.
No, he can’t police police
Richard Emery, the head of the police Civilian Complaint Review Board, is willing to risk the board’s credibility so he can have his cake and eat it, too. And Mayor Putz doesn’t say peep.
Emery is refusing to step down after it was revealed that his law firm was making money by suing the city after the CCRB substantiated claims of police misconduct. Fighting calls to resign, Emery dug his hole deeper by saying police unions were “squealing like a stuck pig.”
He issued a half-hearted apology only after Gov. Andrew Cuomo intervened, and now says he will further separate his dual roles, but won’t quit either.
That’s about as meaningful as his lame apology. If he won’t voluntarily take a walk, the mayor must show him the door.