This is how Republicans get away with their lies: The media lets them do it, again and again

Start with a story that spends paragraphs repeating a series of Republican lies about abortion before getting around to acknowledging that there are lies involved, but gosh, it sure is a problem for Democrats. Now, how do you make it worse? The New York Times found a way. 

It’s simple, really. You take that abysmal story and you promote it by tweeting out arguably the worst part of it. The Times has deleted the original tweet, but it read “With grisly claims that Democrats promote ‘birth day abortions’ and are ‘the party of death,’ Republicans are employing unusually forceful messaging on abortion that has created challenges Democrats did not expect.”

Wow. “Unusually forceful messaging” is an unusually crappy translation of “blatant falsehoods.” Also “grisly claims” is a shoddy translation of “grotesque lies.”

The newspaper did delete that tweet, after a backlash, and posted a new one saying that “We have deleted an earlier tweet to this story that did not clarify that some of the Republicans' claims on late-term abortions are false or misleading, context that is provided in the article.” Which, since the article itself was an abomination of recycled Republican messaging posing as reporting on a strategic difficulty for Democrats, is still weak, weak, weak.

Some media organizations have risen at least partway to the challenge provided by Donald Trump and the Republican Party circa 2016-2019. The New York Times, sadly, has failed again and again.