Want to know why President Trump rails about a “dishonest” press? Consider a Page One “news” story in Monday’s New York Times.
The headline, “Widespread Cuts in Trump Budget Bypass Military,” suggests news about the president’s spending plans. But the piece never says much about them — because it gets lost recalling the glories of President Barack Obama to rebut Trump’s claim that he inherited a “mess.”
The article gushes, for instance, about how Obama, after a similar few weeks in office, had practically saved the world: “The country was losing 700,000 jobs a month, and the global financial system was teetering on the edge of collapse” until Obama raced to the rescue.
By the time Obama gave his first speech to Congress (Trump gives his Tuesday), the Times claims, he already had an “impressive string of accomplishments,” including “actions that would ultimately help stabilize the financial and automotive sectors.”
Uh, no: Congress OK’d the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program while George W. Bush was president, and it was TARP that calmed the financial crisis. And the $800 billion “stimulus package” Obama pushed through in his first weeks was a flop. He himself later admitted those “shovel-ready jobs” didn’t exist.
Then comes the real fiction: “Despite his lament that he was handed ‘a mess,’?” goes the story, “Trump inherited a low unemployment rate” and “a lack of international crises requiring immediate attention.”
Yes, the rate is down — but the share of the US population that’s given up even looking for work (and so doesn’t count in the unemployment rate) reached historic highs under Obama, and is still up there.
But the real “huh?” moment is that “lack of international crises.” The Times’ reporters (and editors and fact-checkers) somehow forgot Syria, where nearly a half-million have been killed and whose refugees are overwhelming nations across the region. And also ISIS, North Korea, Iran, China — and Russia, which the Times now deems quite the threat.
The Gray Lady is welcome to showcase opinions — but she does herself no favors by doing so in what’s supposed to be news.
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