No One Should Listen To The New York Times When It Declares Trump ‘Unfit’ For The Presidency
“He is dangerous in word, deed and action.”
“He puts self over country.”
“He loathes the laws we live by.”
So begins Thursday’s New York Times editorial, ominously casting the words against a black-and-white image of an American flag fluttering in the background. The Times renders these indictments with the gravitas of an undertaker, like Moses descending the mountain with stone tablets in hand. In reality, the Times has proven it’s entirely unfit to evaluate the fitness of presidential candidates, whether it’s Joe Biden or Donald Trump.
If the Times were qualified to speak to the American people about presidential fitness, it would not have misled them about Joe Biden’s health less than a week before the first 2024 presidential debate. The Times called videos of Biden’s miscues “deceptive” and “misleading,” parroting the White House’s narrative about “cheap fakes” and denouncing “wild and false claims.”
Earlier this year, in the wake of Robert Hur’s report and Biden’s gaffe-laden rebuttal, the Times editorial board said Biden “must do better.” Despite referencing the president’s age and infirmities, the Times didn’t question Biden’s fitness for the presidency. It should have — if not in 2020, then certainly in February 2024. Instead, the editorial board urged Biden “to do more to show the public that he is fully capable of holding office until age 86.”
It was dishonest or delusional for the Times editorial board to have written such a sentence. Everyday citizens with access to far less information than the Times’ editors (“whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values”) could easily see that Biden was “not fully capable of holding office until age 86.” But these citizens were dismissed or derided, even after The Wall Street Journal reported that Biden was “slipping.”
The fact that the Times editorial board has now twice called for Biden to drop out after his debate disaster fails to restore its credibility. The board called for Biden to drop out because it now sees him as unelectable — because he can no longer articulate basic leftist talking points — it already knew he was unfit.
The Times’ editorial that declares Trump unfit for office doesn’t boost its credibility either. It childishly repeats the lie about Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” comments. Snopes recently fact-checked this lie after waiting seven years to do so, and Trump made it clear multiple times that he was talking about people on both sides of the debate about tearing down old statues — not Nazis or white supremacists. The Times also said Trump’s telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand down” in a September debate was “literally” an order to storm the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, which is quite an odd use of the word “literally.”
The Times goes on to castigate Trump for “subvert[ing] the rule of law” before launching personal attacks on Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito two sentences later. Trump, “not content to work within the law to defend himself … is instead turning to sympathetic judges,” the Times says. But in this case, working outside the law means appealing a case to the Supreme Court, which is the very definition of working within the law.
Of course, the newspaper also denounces Trump’s “disregard for democracy.” What exactly the Times means by “democracy” here is unclear, since it later implies that the will of primary voters can be overturned, saying that “the Republican Party is making its choice next week.” Actually, the choice has already been made, and it was made by the people, not the party.
Perhaps the most disingenuous argument the editorial makes against Trump is that the Times only opposes Trump so vociferously because he is a radical outlier — not because he is a Republican. The editorial board refers to the Republican Party as “once great,” but a curious reader would immediately wonder if there was any other point in his lifetime when the Times described the GOP as “great.” Glowing references to Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney follow.
But when it comes to Reagan, the Times must have briefly forgotten his stance on abortion. Reagan expressed regret for signing a sweeping California abortion bill, and he famously observed, “I’ve noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born.” Given the editorial board’s radical pro-abortion stance, Reagan would be vilified if he were running for president today.
If the Times portrays the latter three Republicans as heroic statesmen, the simplest explanation is that these men (who lost three presidential races to Democratic candidates) no longer pose a political threat to leftist objectives.
Even so, it should be noted that Times’ view of Romney in 2012 was not so glowing. A 2012 Times editorial described Romney as a “class warrior” who was seeking to turn the rich against the poor for political benefit. It charges him with “bone-chilling cynicism and revolting smugness,” which is strange since readers are now led to believe that Trump is the only politician on the right who exhibits those qualities.
Another 2012 Times editorial asserted that “Romney has a problem with female voters,” blasting Romney for his positions on abortion, contraception, and when life begins. After the first presidential debate, the Times mocked Romney for his position on Russia: “His comments display either a shocking lack of knowledge about international affairs or just craven politics. Either way, they are reckless and unworthy of a major presidential contender.”
The point of mentioning this is to underline how disingenuous the Times is when it aggrandizes Republicans it used to demonize so it can portray Trump as the political arch-villain. One of the media’s biggest lies is that they would embrace a Republican presidential candidate and give him the same congenial coverage they do Democrats if he were just moderate enough. But the media favor only Joe Biden “moderates,” politicians who support abortion until birth, gender ideology and the mutilation of children, unobstructed illegal immigration, and out-of-control spending.
Even if a Republican held these sorts of positions, the media would still vilify him if he posed a threat to Democrats’ grip on power. The left isn’t planning on letting go anytime soon — regardless of who the Republican nominee is.
Joshua Monnington is an assistant editor at The Federalist. He was previously an editor at Regnery Publishing and is a graduate of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
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