Now that Charles Krauthammer is gone, that leaves the country with exactly no columnists of influence who don’t begin each day thinking, “What do I hate most about President Trump?”
It’s stunning, but not unbelievable, that not a single national newspaper has been able to find even just one writer who can put forth a robust argument on behalf of the people who voted for Trump (ie. half of the country).
New polls show Trump with an approval rating of about 90 percent among Republicans, an astonishing number. Even Saint Ronald Reagan didn’t enjoy that level of support at the same point of his first term.
Yet, there’s no one who can reflect that on the opinion pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today or even, to a lesser extent, the Wall Street Journal?
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was kicked out of a restaurant in Virginia last week when the staff complained to the manager that they felt triggered by her presence. (Somehow, according to the manager, they had succeeded in serving Sanders and her company a cheese board without incident so it remains unclear why they couldn’t fulfill the rest of the very easy job they’re paid to do.)
At least two other officials in the administration, Department of Homeland Security Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen and senior White House adviser Stephen Miller, were subject in recent days to similar public abuse (which is easy in the metro area, by the way, because only liberals and government workers live here).
Liberal New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote Monday that it was all fine because Trump is a racist.
“As long as our rulers wage war on cosmopolitan culture, they shouldn’t feel entitled to its fruits,” she wrote. “If they don’t want to hear from the angry citizens they’re supposed to serve, let them eat at Trump Grill.”
Now let’s flip to the counterargument to Goldberg’s piece.
Wait, there is none. The most the Times’ roster of writers could put forth was Ross Douthat, a sleepy columnist who feels passionate about pornography and little else.
The paper’s in-house conservative weighed in Wednesday on the Sanders-Restaurant affair by — wait for it — empathizing with the manager.
“[I]f I were making a list of Trump administration officials who deserve to feel the sting of public censure, the office of the press secretary is actually a reasonable place to start,” wrote Douthat.
This is what passes for robust discourse in America’s premier newspaper.
The Times also employs David Brooks, a conservative columnist who hates Trump, and Bret Stephens, a conservative columnist formerly with the Wall Street Journal who predicted Trump would lose the election and announced he was leaving the GOP shortly before it. (Purely by coincidence, he received a job offer from the Times right after both of those events!)
To be clear, Stephens, like Brooks, hates Trump.
Without Krauthammer, The Washington Post’s marquee conservative columnist is George Will, who, when not writing about baseball, is calling on American voters to elect Democrats in November.
Michael Gerson, the former Bush, 43, official retained by the Post, fills each column bemoaning the “lack of character” in the current administration.
Jennifer Rubin is the one person at the Post tasked with representing the Republican view. And she loves Trump.
Just kidding, she hates him, too.
As spectacularly demonstrated in December by National Review’s Charles Cooke, whereas Rubin was once a Republican who supported traditionally Republican things, she now opposes nearly all of them for the sole purpose of taking the opposite position of Trump.
USA Today has the brilliant academic Glenn Reynolds, fairly sympathetic to the White House, but you’ll never see him sling the invective that someone like Michelle Goldberg at the Times does. He would be instantly fired if he did.
The nation voted for Trump but our most prestigious papers can’t offer any journalists who can effectively argue why that is.
Dana Milbank at the Post shames Jews who work in the White House.
Charles Blow at the Times, in addition to being a clunky writer, belittles blacks who support the president.
I can accept that that’s the most insightful commentary liberals have but is it the only kind the national paper’s have space to print?
