The New York Times is playing the race card on Donald Trump. Surprise!
In a front page story on Friday the so-called "paper of record" headlined the surging GOP presidential this way: "Donald Trump's Instinct for Racially Charged Rhetoric, Before His Presidential Bid."
So, you might ask. What are Times readers about to discover in this latest liberal media hit piece on The Donald? We've now been through the media manufactured Trump/McCain crisis. In the aftermath his poll numbers went up, not down, as almost universally predicted by all with the solitary exception of Rush Limbaugh. Rush shrewdly understood that the conservative base of the GOP -- no fans of McCain -- would see this particular firestorm as what it really was, another media attempt to zap a popular Republican candidate. Thus understood as what Rush called a "teachable moment," with Trump refusing to back down, Trump's numbers, as mentioned went up.
Then there was the miserably untrue "Trump raped his wife" story over at the Daily Beast. That flatly untrue story drew the outrage of Ivana Trump, who directly refuted the story, leaving the left-wing media outlet and reporter Tim Mak with egg on their face. On the heels of that was the supposed scandal of the angry response to that story by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Cohen, who in a moment of serious and decidedly provoked anger hotly misstated New York law on spousal rape, quickly apologized. Next up was a Times front-pager that a female lawyer had drawn Trump's wrath by producing a breast pump in the middle of a deposition - drawing a Trump exclamation that she was "disgusting." That story too had no traction, and his numbers kept going up. Now, but of course, its the race card.
This go-round the headline in the Times leaves readers eagerly scanning the fine print. What did Trump say that was racist? Did he use the N-word? No. Did he let loose with a rapper-style string of racial expletives? Well, no. OK. Let's bite. What exactly was this "racially charged rhetoric"?
It turns out this jewel of a story contains the following "racially charged" examples:
-- He paid for an ad about stopping a casino being built in the upstate New York region of the Catskills by the St. Regis Mohawk Indian tribe. The "racially charged rhetoric"? This sentence: "The St. Regis Mohawk Indian record of criminal activity is well documented." Wow. A statement of his opinion? Surely. But racist? Hardly. In fact, the race card was played not by Trump but by the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, which called what the paper labeled as "incendiary ads" a "naked appeal to racism." Trump was, at least, quoted as responding in what would seem the obvious non-racial fashion to anyone other than a liberal media outlet. Said Trump: "I wasn't knocking the Mohawks; I was knocking their record. That's not because they're Mohawks. That's because their record is bad and was proved to be bad at the time."
-- In 1989 a female jogger was assaulted in Central Park. The Times, in typical leftist style, quickly racialized the story, transforming the fact of a jogger being assaulted into being a "white female jogger" being assaulted. What did Trump do that was racist? He ran an ad calling for return of the death penalty. Which, if it had happened, would have been executing those convicted of specific crimes regardless of race. Trump's response to this charge was as obvious as his response to the Mohawk kerfuffle. Said he: This had nothing to do with race. I have always been a big believer, and continue to be, of the death penalty for horrendous crime."
-- The third example involved a Trump idea to sell a piece of Florida property to the Unification Church of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, which the Times notes was at the time viewed by many as a "cult." What was the "racism" here? Liberals charged Trump was using “the Unification Church as a scare tactic in an attempt to compel Palm Beach officials to submit” to his will to subdivide the property. Reverend Moon is Korean. So this, interprets the Times, meant Trump was somehow anti-Korean. Trump's duly quoted response was this, as the paper reported: "Indeed, Mr. Trump sounded incredulous at the notion. 'That's Korean,' he said of the church."So now I'm against the Koreans, too, you mean?" Yes, that is exactly what the Times was implying.
-- Last but not least, the paper cited the fact that Trump called the illegal immigrant who murdered Kate Steinle in cold blood in San Francisco "this animal." This too was supposed to be an example of racism. Apparently a common non-racial description of a murderer that has been applied to killers of all races is now suddenly racist.
So what do we have here?
What we have in this latest Trump gotcha is a blatant attempt to paint him as a racist - with one example after another that never gets even close to "proving" the case. What this does illustrate yet again is the left's perpetual dependence on race-card playing to sell everything from Big Government to, in this case, the New York Times. The laughable part of this is the paper's own record on race and the considerable hypocrisy behind it.
A few years back, after the Times published a blistering editorial on a Supreme Court decision titled "Firefighters and Race," in which the paper huffed that a decision that ruled against the racial bean counters in a case involving New Haven firemen "dealt a blow to diversity in the American workplace."
The catch? As I wrote at the time in The American Spectator:
The New Haven fire department, according to press accounts, is 43% black and Latino. Or, if you prefer the term of art, 43% of the fire department is "minority."
The New York Times editorial board, according to the information provided by The New York Times, is -- wait for it -- 12% black and Latino. Or, again, 12 % "minority" if you prefer the term.
The New York Times Op-Ed page team of columnists, an elite group of which Ms. Dowd is a star, is 19% black and, again according to the Times listing of its Op-Ed page columnists, 0% Latino."
In other words? When the standard the Times was applying to the racial composition of the New Haven Fire Department was applied to the Times itself - the paper came out looking like one big oozing sore of non-diversity. If you will, a white boys' playground.
Before the Times begins writing empty pieces falsely accusing Donald Trump of racism they should, according to their own standards, take a very good and long look in the mirror.
If the end of the GOP nomination fight winds up not with Trump on the ticket but, say, a ticket of Latino Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina? One can rest assured that the Times will quickly be out there insisting the GOP ticket is both racist and sexist. That's the way the left plays the game. That's the way the Times is playing it right now with Donald Trump.
Is there no shame at the Times when it comes to exploiting race?
No. And there never will be. This is what they do.
