Tuesday’s New York Times featured a humdrum personal profile of its own reporter, Maggie Haberman, whose only point of interest was an offensive comparison the White House reporter made between Michael Bloomberg’s 2001 run for mayor of New York City and Donald Trump’s run for president in 2016. In both cases, “an unprecedented form of terror in an election” resulted in an unlikely result. One was an Islamist terrorist attack that murdered over 3000 people; the other, some embarrassing campaign emails that may have damaged Clinton’s prospects over Trump. Same thing, really, right?
Jennifer Steinhauer queried: Haberman:
When we first met, 9/11 had just happened, the lame duck mayoralty of Rudy Giuliani was in a latent ascent and a who-the-heck-is-that-guy Mike Bloomberg was on his unlikely path to take the reins at City Hall. What do you reflect on most often from that time in your career?
Haberman lunged for an offensive comparison, equating the 9-11 terrorist attacks that murdered thousands to the political damage inflicted on the Clinton campaign by WikiLeaks publishing emails from campaign manager John Podesta.
There were a lot of points during the 2016 race and right after Trump won that I found myself thinking how similar his election was to Bloomberg’s, in retrospect. Not in the specifics. But to the extent that the WikiLeaks email spread of [John] Podesta’s material was an unprecedented form of terror in an election, and one that led to an event that seemed unlikely (Trump’s election), it was not dissimilar.
The hypocritical New York Times was an enthusiastic partner of WikiLeaks when it was leaking diplomatic secrets, but now is persona non grata after engaging against the Clinton campaign once too often.
Haberman is not the only Times person to have lunged into an offensive take on 9-11. Left-wing columnist Paul Krugman saw a bright side three days after the horror, in a gruesome take on the “broken window” hypothesis: “Now, all of a sudden, we need some new office buildings.” Krugman continued to offend regarding 9-11 on an anniversary basis.
