The New York Times was shocked, shocked, to find “a startling breach of decorum and of the norms” by a member of President Trump’s cabinet, on Saturday’s front page. Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Coral Davenport covered a heated social-media spat between far-left Congressman Raul Grijalva and Ryan Zinke, Trump’s Secretary of the Interior
The headline was: “Zinke’s Insults At Lawmaker Rattle Capitol.”
It took chutzpah on the paper’s part to complain about Zinke’s insulting tweet about Rep. Grijalva's drinking, given the paper’s support of Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee smearing Judge (now Justice) Brett Kavanaugh about drinking during his confirmation hearings a couple of months ago -- Democrats Sen. Mazie Hirono, Sen. Cory Booker, and Sen. Kamala Harris, to name a few. And don’t forget the paper’s proud promise to keep up its smear-campaign “investigation” into Kavanaugh’s drinking habits from his student days.
[CNN's Jake Tapper also used that spin, as you can see above.]
Suddenly, conveniently, allegations about a public figure’s drinking are a shameful upending of decorum. Wonder what changed? It's not hard to guess.
In one corner was Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, a swaggering cowboy type who once rode to work on a horse named Tonto and has faced at least a dozen ethics investigations.
In the other was Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who has been accused of having ethical issues of his own -- and who is itching to take on Mr. Zinke next year from his perch as the chairman of a committee on Capitol Hill.
Their tensions exploded on Friday into one of the more remarkable public feuds in recent Washington history -- a brutal exchange that began with Mr. Grijalva calling on Mr. Zinke to resign, followed by Mr. Zinke calling Mr. Grijalva a drunkard who had used taxpayer “hush money” to cover up misbehavior, and Mr. Grijalva telling Mr. Zinke to, in effect, bring it on.
“It’s hard for him to think straight from the bottom of the bottle,” Mr. Zinke wrote on Twitter, in a message that left many in the Capitol slack-jawed. “This is coming from a man who used nearly $50,000 in tax dollars as hush money to cover up his drunken and hostile behavior. He should resign and pay back the taxpayer for the hush money and the tens of thousands of dollars he forced my department to spend investigating unfounded allegations.”
He included “#TuneInnForMore,” a reference to the Tune Inn, a popular Capitol Hill watering hole that Mr. Grijalva frequents. An industry newsletter reported that the congressman was there on Friday when Mr. Zinke blasted out his tweet to his more than 88,000 followers.
The “hush money” reference was to a 2015 agreement between Mr. Grijalva and a former House employee who had accused him of overseeing a hostile work environment and frequently being drunk. The employee had threatened to file a lawsuit, and was paid $48,395 in severance.
....
But even by the combative and vituperatively partisan standards of President Trump’s Washington, the Zinke tweet was a startling breach of decorum and of the norms that usually govern relationships between senior government officials -- particularly a cabinet secretary and a member of a congressional committee overseeing his department.
It also made little political sense, said Aaron Weiss, a spokesman for the Center for Western Priorities, an environmental advocacy group that is critical of Mr. Zinke.
“My jaw did literally drop when I read it,” Mr. Weiss said in an interview. “It is so far outside the norms and just disgusting, I guess, to even go there...”
A Republican former congressman from Montana, Mr. Zinke, 57, is a constant target of liberals and environmentalists who have criticized him for his work to weaken environmental rules and for what they call his suspect ethical conduct.
The Times has also long targeted Zinke, who is (not coincidentally) moving to unwind some of the federal overreach regarding land use and environmental issues.
It's not the first time the paper has zeroed in solely on Republicans for supposedly breaking political “decorum": They did so, unsurprisingly, during the Kavanaugh hearings as well.
