It’s easy to imagine Bret Stephens sobbing as he filed his latest column for the New York Times, but he deserves some credit for writing what is probably the most thoughtful piece yet on the news media’s ugly Russia belly flop.
Stephens, a Never Trump writer driven mad by the 2016 election, wrote Thursday that the special counsel’s finding that there was no Russia collusion and no obstruction of justice should force the media to recognize that the president isn’t a stupid monster after all.
“Whichever view one takes, Donald Trump has just won a major victory over his chosen political enemies, including this newspaper,” he wrote. “Whether he’s achieved this through genius or luck, it would behoove us not to take him for a fool. This was the week to examine our own foolishness instead.”
It’s rare that you have to actually take seriously anything any columnist in any national newspaper has to say, but Stephens hates Trump so much that this is one of those rare occasions of statement against interest. (Stephens’ hatred for Trump runs so deep that he devoted an entire column to say that he doesn’t think the president is funny.)
Not that any of Stephens’ colleagues are prepared to be as forthcoming. If journalists aren’t lying about what’s in the summary of the special counsel’s report, they’re doubting the conclusion of the two-year-long investigation, or changing the subject altogether. Charles Blow, another tortured Times columnist, wrote Monday that the special counsel report was never really the main thing, even as he wrote just three months ago that Trump “openly attempted to obstruct justice.” The main thing, according to Blow, is that Trump is a mean racist. “[I]t is the moral abomination of having a racist, sexist, child-caging, family-separating, Muslim-hating transphobe as president that must remain front and center,” wrote Blow on Monday.
He and every other journalist in the national media should read Stephens’ column. He might learn something.
