New York Times White House correspondent Annie Karni isn’t letting the coronavirus pandemic stop her from accusing the president of sexism and racism for daring to criticize women during the crisis (news flash: Trump criticizes everyone), under a headline harkening back to the Trump-Clinton contest: “‘Nasty Woman’ Theme Returns Fully to the Fore.”
The lead sentence to Karni's Tuesday story focused on the vital issues:
As he confronts a pandemic, President Trump’s attention has also been directed at a more familiar foe: those he feels are challenging him, and particularly women.
Meanwhile, the Times’ attention has been drawn to its usual liberal trope: Accusing Trump of racism and sexism.
“Always a mess with Mary B.,” Mr. Trump tweeted last week, attacking the female chief executive of General Motors, Mary T. Barra, as he accused the company of dragging its feet on producing ventilators....
Cue the violins.
At least he mentioned Ms. Barra by name. When it came to Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan’s Democratic governor, who delivered her party’s official response to his State of the Union address earlier this year and has been pushing for a national emergency declaration in her state, Mr. Trump did not acknowledge her by name.
After Trump called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a "sick puppy" after she accused him of fiddling, Karni insured Pelosi got in the last dig.
In an interview on Monday, she rolled her eyes at his attack. “Every knock from him is a boost for me, quite frankly, so I don’t care what he says,” she said.
Karni set up PBS reporter (and former Times reporter) Yamiche Alcindor to deliver sexism and racism accusations.
And at his Sunday evening news conference, Mr. Trump snapped at Yamiche Alcindor, a PBS NewsHour correspondent whom he has criticized publicly in the past...
“Let me tell you something,” Mr. Trump said, after denying he made statements that he had, in fact, made. “Be nice. Don’t be threatening. Don’t be threatening. Be nice.”
Ms. Alcindor tweeted in response that she was “not the first human being, woman, black person or journalist to be told that while doing a job.”
Nothing about Alcindor’s own Trump-hostile reporting.
It was a sentiment echoed by Democrats, who said Mr. Trump’s pattern of singling out women for critiques ultimately takes a toll on him politically with female voters, even as it energizes some members of his base.
In other words, Alcindor and Democrats are on the same side, against Trump.
Karni snuck in details in paragraph 22 that neutralized the story’s thrust, admitting Trump’s “insults are hardly specific to gender.”
But his attacks on women even as the country together faces a pandemic have stood out, in part because they recall his dismissal of his 2016 Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, as a “nasty woman,” and of many powerful women who have challenged him since.
Karni gave a Democrat operative the last word.
“They’re all appalling,” Jess McIntosh, a Democratic strategist, said of Mr. Trump’s personal attacks on men and women alike...."
