New York Times tech reporter Kevin Roose did not appreciate conservatives questioning Joe Biden’s apparent victory in the presidential election (even though nothing is official yet).
All over the Times, questioning the preliminary election results was seen as dangerous “disinformation.” On Tuesday, David Sanger and Julian Barnes blamed Trump and “conservative news media outlets” for “disinformation,” using as an expert source former Obama flack Jeh Johnson.
….From early in the campaign, President Trump did more to undermine confidence in the system’s integrity than America’s rivals could have done themselves.
And in the aftermath, Mr. Trump’s baseless accusations, amplified by conservative news media outlets, have only intensified, leaving the Russians and the Iranians with the relatively easy task of bouncing his messages back into the echo chamber of social media.
Wednesday’s sole editorial was headlined, “The G.O.P Is Attacking Democracy,” and the front page featured “Fighting Election Results, Trump Employs a New Weapon: The Government.” The subhead tried to broom Trump off the stage to make way for Biden: “As President Trump and his administration insist he didn’t lose, the rest of the world has increasingly moved to accept Joe Biden’s victory.”
Speaking of fighting presidential election results….the Times has done so in the past on behalf of Democrats, from nodding along to Al Gore’s 37-day fight against George W. Bush in the Florida courts, to 2004, when it advanced a left-wing vote fraud conspiracy around Ohio, which put Bush over the top in his re-election against Democrat John Kerry, to 2016, when the paper cheered the Green Party’s funding of recounts in three states after Trump shocked Hillary Clinton.
A December 2004 headline didn’t sound willing to accept that November's election results: “As Questions Keep Coming, Ohio Certifies Its Vote Count.”
The Ohio secretary of state officially certified on Monday that President Bush won that swing state by roughly 119,000 votes, but an array of Democrats, third-party candidates and independent groups continued to question the results, issuing new demands for a statewide recount and a formal investigation of the vote.
A story from August 2006 (talk about obsessed!) kept hope alive for 2004 vote conspiracists regarding the vote count in Ohio, which put Bush over the top: “Ohio, Facing Suit, to Delay Destroying Ballots From 2004 Election." The text box: "A group of critics says it has found signs of widespread voting irregularities." The phrase "far-left critics" would have been more accurate, but there were no labels in the story.
After excoriating Trump for off-the-cuff pre-election comments about not accepting the results, the paper turned around and pushed Green Party loser Jill Stein’s doomed calls for recounts in three Midwestern states that turned to Trump. The Hillary Clinton campaign itself joined that effort. Who’s not accepting election results now?
The Times even ran a post-election op-ed from a faithless Republican presidential elector, calling for electors to change their vote.
And of course, the paper reveled in the street protests after Trump’s victory in the free and fair election.
