Imagine the headline: “Trump repeats unconfirmed claims on inauguration crowd size.” Ha ha ha, right? Because it was a blatant and obvious lie. Except now the New York Times has a headline dubbing a much more substantive Trump lie an “unconfirmed claim,” which is exactly what Trump was looking for when he made up his “spygate” lie.
The headline: “Trump repeats unconfirmed claims of campaign spying.”
The reality:
Trump told one ally this week that he wanted “to brand” the informant a “spy,” believing the more nefarious term would resonate more in the media and with the public.
And lo, the New York Times wrapped it up in a bow and handed it back to him. As former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has explained, the FBI was “spying on—a term I don't particularly like—on what the Russians were doing, trying to understand were the Russians infiltrating, trying to gain access.” If Trump wants to say that the FBI spying on the Russians is the same as the FBI spying on the Trump campaign, that’s … interesting, and perhaps a matter for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Seriously, New York Times, it’s called a lie. It’s not an unconfirmed claim, it’s a lie Trump came up with for very obvious tactical reasons. There are two possibilities behind this headline: one is a total surrender to Trump’s tactics and the other is that a significant number of staffers at the Times are too stupid to breathe, let alone create and edit content at the paper of record.