What else is New (York Times)? The chain of ineptitude and institutional failure that facilitated Russia's election interference was enabled further by media malpractice in 2016, particularly in the failure of NY Times reporting on James Comey’s mistakes.
We now revisit those mistakes in the recent book promotion for Andrew McCabe, and Individual-1 remains on the defensive, as #TrumpRussia closes in, while the New York Times casually identifies Trump’s obstructive actions since the election. This is framed against the over 1,100 attacks Trump has made.
As Marcy Wheeler has pointed out recently, the NY Times remains complicit in the obstruction by continuing to roll over for Trump. By trying to place the blame somewhere else, the NY Times continues to divert accountability for helping shape the cognitive dissonance of Trumpian disinformation prior to an eventual reckoning with justice. It cannot be excused as a mere “obsession”, it is criminal pathology.
However unintentionally, the NY Times highlights “his inability to shape reality to his liking.” Yet, even as it reports on Individual-1’s malevolence, it also enables it like an abused spouse. The NY Times steps away from explanation and normalizes such “brazen behavior” by not taking that next comparative step that frames his turpitude as unpresidential. Are these the rationalizing stakes wagered in order to maintain their WH access?
The story of Mr. Trump’s attempts to defang the investigations has been voluminously covered in the news media, to such a degree that many Americans have lost track of how unusual his behavior is. But fusing the strands reveals an extraordinary story of a president who has attacked the law enforcement apparatus of his own government like no other president in history, and who has turned the effort into an obsession. Mr. Trump has done it with the same tactics he once used in his business empire: demanding fierce loyalty from employees, applying pressure tactics to keep people in line and protecting the brand — himself — at all costs.
It is a public relations strategy as much as a legal strategy — a campaign to create a narrative of a president hounded by his “deep state” foes. The new Democratic majority in the House, and the prospect of a wave of investigations on Capitol Hill this year, will test whether the strategy shores up Mr. Trump’s political support or puts his presidency in greater peril. The president has spent much of his time venting publicly about there being “no collusion” with Russia before the 2016 election, which has diverted attention from a growing body of evidence that he has tried to impede the various investigations.
www.nytimes.com/...