Who Is Bending the Truth — Trump or the New York Times?

The New York Times, in a full newspaper page on April 18 under the headline “The Technique To How Trump Bends the Truth,” accuses President Trump of “dishonesty.” It asserts that “his words focused heavily on attacking his political rivals, self-aggrandizing and stoking fear to make his case for 2024. In doing so, Mr. Trump often relied on repeated falsehoods and half-truths.”Yet many of the quotes from Mr. Trump that the Times’ Angelo Fichera singles out as “falsehoods and half-truths” are drawn from facts that can be readily found in the pages of the New York Times itself.The Times first faults Trump for saying that President Biden “is pushing the largest tax hike in American history” and “wants to quadruple your taxes.” Yet the Times itself reported on March 12 that Biden “would also quadruple a 1 percent surcharge on corporate stock buybacks. That tax passed along party lines in 2022.”That same article reports that “Overall, Mr. Biden is proposing $5 trillion in additional taxes on corporations and high earners over the next decade.” There’s never been a tax increase that big in American history; as recently as 1989 the federal government’s entire annual revenues amounted to less than $1 trillion a year.The Times then faults Mr. Trump for criticizing Mr. Biden’s electric vehicle mandate. “Mr. Biden has not implemented an electric car mandate,” the Times says, complaining that Mr. Trump “grossly distorts his opponents’ records and proposals to make them sound unreasonable.”Yet the New York Times itself ran a front-page print headline in August 2021 that read, “Biden Rolls Out Plan to Shift U.S. To Electric Cars.” The online headline is “Biden, in a Push to Phase Out Gas Cars, Tightens Pollution Rules.”That Times article quotes Mr. Biden saying, “There’s a vision of the future that is now beginning to happen, a future of the automobile industry that is electric — battery electric, plug-in hybrid electric, fuel cell electric.”Another supposed falsehood mentioned by the Times is Mr. Trump’s claim that Nikki Haley “is counting on the Democrats and liberals to infiltrate your Republican primary.”Yet the Times itself reported, under the headline “Nikki Haley Is Chasing Independents,” that “about 4,000 Democrats have re-registered as Republicans or independents to vote in the G.O.P. primary, in some cases to thwart Mr. Trump’s steady march to the nomination.”The Times also said that among New Hampshire independent voters were “Independents on the left who are loyal to their next-door senator, Bernie Sanders.” The Times article reported that “David Fournier, 78, of Nashua, considers himself a lifelong Democrat and said he volunteered for the campaigns of Bill Clinton and Howard Dean. But he is not registered with a political party, he said, so he can keep the flexibility to vote in either party’s primary depending on the contest.”Another supposed falsehood was Mr. Trump’s claim, “I’ve been indicted more than Alphonse Capone.” The Times complains that Trump has been indicted four times to Capone’s six, but, as another article in the Times points out, “Mr. Trump faces dozens of counts across the four cases in which he has been charged,” a total of at least 88 counts.The Times doesn’t say how many counts Capone was indicted for. It counts as a falsehood Mr. Trump’s claim that if he were president, Russia wouldn’t have attacked Ukraine, inflation wouldn’t be a problem, and Hamas wouldn’t have attacked Israel. The Times calls it “unverifiable” and “impossible to prove.”It seems to me to be totally within the range of normal politicking. Truth is, though the Times doesn’t acknowledge it, Mr. Trump was president for four years, and during those four years, Russia didn’t invade Ukraine, Hamas didn’t invade Israel from Gaza, and inflation was not a big political issue.The Times faults the 45th president for talking about the Army’s desire for electric tanks. The paper insists, “There are no plans to make Army tanks all electric.” Yet a Bloomberg article in November 2022 was headlined “Swift Electrifying of Warfighting Vehicles Underway, Army Says.”A June 2023 Bloomberg article reported, “The military’s grand vision of an all-electric fleet of tanks is being stymied by a battery sector that’s not even close to delivering the power the Army needs, according to two Pentagon officials.”It quoted Lieutenant General Ross Coffman of the Army Futures Command’s next generation combat vehicle team, saying, “Ideally, we would be able to go to a full electric vehicle.”If the Times is going to go all-in stoking the fear that Mr. Trump is a liar, it might want to take more care itself with the truth. Otherwise, people might conclude that Mr. Trump is more trustworthy.

Who Is Bending the Truth — Trump or the New York Times?

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