Thread by @LarryGlickman

When we think of bad New York Times coverage of the 2016 campaign, we normally think about their obsessive coverage of her emails, but more generally they were also incredible gullible and generous in their coverage of Trump. /1
nyti.ms/1rQYK4D

For example, they claim that Trump expressed "a willingness to increase the minimum wage." Not sure what the "willingness" was: he later explicitly opposed such an increase in the Milwaukee debates. /2

They also say that, under Trump, "the wealthy may pay higher taxes than under his original proposal." So his actual proposal, which called for massive tax cuts for the wealthy wasn't the story; the story was that he might, maybe revise it! /3

They also accepted that Trump was attacking "Clinton from the left on national security and Wall Street," despite his calls to bomb the sh*t out of countries, to "take the oil," and his enthusiasm for war crimes, & despite his embrace of Carl Icahn and calls for deregulation. /4

They claimed that "plainly going to run as more of a Sanders-style populist than as a conservative," despite the fact that the vast majority of his positions were boiler-plate conservative, as I showed three months before this article came out. /5
baselinescenario.com/2016/02/03/don…

It's really hard to question their choice of people to testify to Trump's sincerity in attacking Wall Street, like "Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump," who said "he expected the presumptive Republican nominee to grow aggressive on the banks. /6

Even though they quote Trump himself saying one of the only truthful statements of his entire campaign-“I actually don’t think I’m to the left of Hillary Clinton”--they repeatedly claim that he is "trying to outflank her on the left. "/7

They also say "he will be less vulnerable to traditional Democratic attacks over Republican efforts to rein in entitlement programs," although, amazingly, the piece never mentions his promise to repeal the ACA. /8

Part of the problem is that they didn't treat Trump as the bs artist that he obviously is and was and they his took vague statements about protecting Social Security as serious, even when they were opposed by his actual plans (such as his plan to cut taxes on the rich). /9

Doubtless there was some "unease on the right" about Trump's candidacy, but this piece neglects the degree to which on abortion, guns, taxes, regulation, immigration, judges, fear about excessive debt & many other issues, Trump ran a rather conventional conservative campaign./10

This is why James Baker, the eminence grise of the traditional GOP, voted for him as did the vast majority of the Republican establishment. /11