As Paul and Steve have noted, the ultra-left New York Times has struggled to defend Joe Biden’s Afghan catastrophe. What to do when your man can’t be defended? Change the subject. To what? Donald Trump, of course.
Thus, we find one columnist in today’s Times trying to blame the Afghan debacle on Trump. Good luck with that:
More notably, the Times Editorial Board–perhaps the most far-left assemblage outside the Politburo–but wait, the Politburo no longer exists, while sadly, the Times still does–authored a group editorial today on the subject of dictators who assassinate dissident exiles from their countries. This is a practice that no American condones, and in which the U.S. has never engaged. Yet the Times’ editorialists can’t escape their reflexive prejudices:
The moral ambiguity inherent in such technology makes it difficult to refute the familiar strongman claim that they are only doing what leaders of democracies routinely do. Mr. Kadyrov’s quote is uncomfortably similar to what former President George W. Bush’s press secretary Ari Fleischer said after the C.I.A. began using armed drones to strike at terrorists: “We will fight the war on terrorism wherever we need to fight the war on terrorism.”
One might think that even the Times could grasp the difference between killing terrorists who are plotting against American and killing political opponents. Or, for that matter, killing people in general. But the Times is not big on nuance.
The use of lethal drone strikes escalated dramatically under President Barack Obama’s administration. By the end of 2009, his first year in office, the C.I.A. had conducted its 100th drone strike in Pakistan, a country with which the United States was not at war. His administration also ordered the first targeted killing of an American by drone without due process, the strike on Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni American imam, in 2011.
All true. But of course, Obama is not the Times’s target:
In his four years in the White House, Donald Trump often dispatched with even the fig leaves that past presidents had employed around the rule of law.
So you might expect the editorialists to cite at least one thing Trump did that was arguably illegal. But you would be disappointed.
He demonized his political foes and the free press…
Fortunately, criticizing reporters is not yet illegal. And no one in public life since Abraham Lincoln has been demonized like Donald Trump.
spread lies…
Notice that none of this has anything to do with the subject of the Times editorial.
and lauded strongmen. On Mr. Xi’s bid to remain president for life, Mr. Trump said: “I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
Does the Times seriously not understand that this was a joke? Liberals are so crazed with hatred these days that they can’t think straight.
He also tried every trick to overturn a democratic election.
That is to say, he went to court. One thing he didn’t do was fabricate a conspiracy theory to the effect that Joe Biden won the election because he colluded with Russians.
In the end, Mr. Trump was impeached twice and voted out of office. But the willingness of many of his supporters to embrace authoritarianism should be a warning for our democracy and others.
When the Times says “embrace authoritarianism,” they mean things like opposing mask mandates and vaccine requirements for people who have had covid, along with wanting fewer regulations and lower taxes. In other words, anti-authoritarianism.
I am not sure it is still worth while to kick the carcass of a rag like the Times, but there is entertainment value in observing that paper’s apparently incurable obsessions.
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