In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday night, President Donald Trump revealed the White House is thinking about canceling its subscriptions to The New York Times and The Washington Post.
The president said, “They gave the Pulitzer Prizes to people that got it wrong, OK? All these people doing it for The New York Times, which is a fake newspaper — we don’t even want it in the White House anymore.”
“We’re probably gonna terminate that and The Washington Post. They’re fake,” he said on “Hannity.”
On Tuesday morning, White House spokesperson Stephanie Grisham confirmed to Politico that Trump was indeed talking about The Times and Post subscriptions — “which we won’t be renewing.”
Among other examples, the president is likely referring to the controversial 1920s-era New York Times reporter Walter Duranty, who ignored reports of massive and gruesome Soviet atrocities, and 1950s-era Times reporter Herbert Matthews, who made the glorification of Fidel Castro a journalistic campaign. Matthews refused to accept evidence Castro was a communist — and was himself a propaganda tool.
The Times and The Post did not comment so far on the president’s words.
Donald Trump Tells Sean Hannity He’ll “Terminate” New York Times, Washington Post (Subscriptions, That Is) – Deadline #Government #PoliticalViews #Whitehouse https://t.co/dQlEOnW8kP
— Presidential News Network (@POTUSNetwork) October 22, 2019
Yet, as usual, The Post used its news pages to editorialize, calling the president’s assertion “a false claim he has made repeatedly.”
The Post reported that President Trump took specific umbrage at the lax and friendly coverage in both papers of Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, with Trump saying to Hannity, “If that were Don Jr., if that were Eric Trump, who are very outstanding young men, it would be the biggest story of the century.”
Meanwhile, Fox News reported that various Times readers were, and still are upset — and called for subscription cancellations of The New York Times as well — over the paper’s description of the alleged “whistleblower” as a male CIA agent assigned to the White House.
Some believe this amounts to doxxing the informant.
Our country’s heroes are worth far more than clicks and views. Doxxing the whistleblower endangers the individual’s life, which is especially heinous considering the whistleblower went through proper government channels. The NYT protects Trump sources better than this. #CancelNYT
— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) September 26, 2019
Because of this, a #CancelNYT hashtag yesterday became the number-one trending online topic for awhile. But when left-wing readers realized their opinion was inadvertently echoing the Trump line, many deleted their tweets.
The Times has not had an easy road of late, as last week the publication was again pilloried for reporting on a sexual assault accusation against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh — without an interview with, or comments from, the accuser.
The accuser publicly said she had no memory of the alleged assault.
But The Times ran it anyway — hence, the president’s point.
Related: ‘Cancel Those NYT Subscriptions,’ Scream Many People Over the Whistleblower Story
Most objective students of modern media give both publications very low marks when it comes to editorial fairness.
They are notoriously biased against Republicans and have been so for several decades.
During the Cold War, they took every opportunity to side with the Soviet bloc.
The papers have served as apologists for most leftist schemes, including the Great Society and affirmative action, becoming in the process temples to identity politics and PC conformity.
On their editorial pages, even these outlandish positions would be legitimate.
However, The Times and The Post have made a fetish of including these stances on the pages of their hard news coverage.
Share your thoughts on this story.
Join the Discussion
COMMENTS POLICY: We have no tolerance for messages of violence, racism, vulgarity, obscenity or other such discourteous behavior. Thank you for contributing to a respectful and useful online dialogue.