The New York Times, which constantly lambastes Trump for spreading lies, is now critical of Trump for bringing actual news to public attention, in Wednesday's story by Michael Shear and Maggie Haberman: “Trump, Once a Fan of Stop-and-Frisk, Uses It to Cudgel Bloomberg.”
Notice the headine word choice:
Trump Takes On Bloomberg and Once Again Hijacks a News Cycle -- Like an assignment editor at a tabloid newspaper, the president poured accelerant on a negative story and got it trending on Twitter and cable news.
“Hijacks a news cycle” by pointing out controversial comments made by a potential rival? Here was the piece, starting with paragraph three (click “expand”):
In a provocative early-morning tweet in which he charged, “WOW, BLOOMBERG IS A TOTAL RACIST!,” the president delivered to his millions of Twitter followers leaked audio from 2015 in which Michael R. Bloomberg, the Democratic presidential hopeful and former New York mayor, offered an unflinching defense of stop-and-frisk policing for which he has since apologized.
Originally posted by a liberal blogger on Monday night, the clip underscored one of Mr. Bloomberg’s key vulnerabilities in the Democratic primary as he seeks to convince voters that he is sorry for the aggressive policing tactics his administration used against minorities in New York...
(....)
Like an assignment editor at a tabloid newspaper, the president poured accelerant on the story, aided by his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and his campaign manager, who helped fuel a social media firestorm, already underway, that had the hashtag “#BloombergIsARacist.”...by the afternoon, the hashtag was trending on Twitter and cable news programs, including on CNN and MSNBC, where guests were still talking about the audio clip -- and Mr. Trump’s meddling.
So “meddling” now means bringing an issue embarrassing to a Democrat into public view:
Mr. Trump has himself been a vocal supporter over the years of the same police tactics that Mr. Bloomberg once championed, and the very accusation he was leveling against his potential rival -- that he is a racist -- conjures up one of the most often repeated accusations against the president himself.
Trump’s election-year turnabout is fair game. But The Times’s huffiness suggests they hated covering a legitimate issue when it’s “hijacked” by someone they dislike. It’s reminiscent of the paper’s reaction whenever a right-leaning "tabloid newspaper" breaks news the Times would rather ignore, like street crime in New York City:
The morning of presidential media distraction was a reminder, if anyone needed one, that the first reality show star turned president has mastered the art of hijacking the modern internet-dominated news cycle....
The paper again lamely attacked the messenger:
Mr. Trump has also repeatedly been accused of racism, both as a 2016 presidential candidate and during his time in office. His efforts to curb the use of food stamps, his administration’s attempts to dismantle provisions of the Affordable Care Act and his restrictive immigration policies have all been denounced as harmful to blacks and Latinos.
