Politics

NYT Columnist Says Media Should Collude Against Trump

REUTERS/Leah Millis

David Krayden Ottawa Bureau Chief
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New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wants the mainstream media to collude against Trump by featuring the president’s “every tweet” instead of his economic successes. Rather than ignoring Trump’s chronic social media reports, Friedman suggested Wednesday in a column that a steady diet of the “toxic lying” will destroy Trump’s support.

“Some healthy soul-searching is taking place in newsrooms across the country these days over whether the mainstream media should be covering President Trump’s every tweet and rally,” Friedman wrote. “My answer: Absolutely! It’s the right thing for us to do professionally, and, as last night’s election results indicated, it’s the right thing to do politically if you want to see a check on Donald Trump’s power.”

Covering the president’s words will reveal his “toxic lying, bullying and unpresidential behavior,” Friedman believes.

The columnist asks, “Imagine how well President Trump would be doing if he weren’t Donald Trump — if he weren’t such a lying jerk.”
Ironically, Friedman admits that Trump has done an admirable job as president: “America’s unemployment rate is 3.9 percent, inflation for the moment is moderate, the stock market keeps setting records, and the president is coming off a crisis-defusing summit with North Korea.”
But he still wants Trump out of the White House.
He suggests that “a single pool camera” at Trump rallies would enable the media to avoid being “props at Trump’s rallies.” But this is not enough. Americans need to read Trump in his own words because this will apparently be a moment of revelation to many of his supporters.
“[T]he whole country needs to see every tweet, every rally, every word and every reaction so that they can ask themselves: ‘Is this who I want my kids to see as our president? Are these the people with whom I want to be aligned?’ It’s too late to move Trump’s core base on these questions, but I would not give up on his passive supporters.”

As Friedman notes, Trump ’s job approval rating stands at 43 percent, which is only down three percentage points from December. That rating is at almost 90 percent with Republicans.

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