The New York Times editorial board has come out in favor of several of Hillary Clinton’s policy positions in the last few weeks, a jarring show of support when compared to many of the Times’ stories that have broken news about various Clinton scandals.
The Times’ reporting staff broke some of the stories that did the most to damage Clinton’s White House ambitions, including the revelation that she conducted all her official business as secretary of state through an obscure email address hosted on a home server registered to an alias. The Times also reported on allegations from a new book claiming that the Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit she runs with her husband, might have served as a way to line her pockets and wield influence when she was secretary of state.
The Times editorial board has offered only mild criticism of Clinton on these issues.
In March, the Times said it was “disturbing” that Clinton used her own email server, and said the State Department should find a way to recover the “private” emails that Clinton said she deleted.
Regarding the Clinton Foundation, the paper said in April that the issue was merely of “political concern” and suggested the nonprofit cease taking money from foreign countries and disclose all of its private donors.
But mostly, the Times editorial board has focused on supporting Clinton’s policy initiatives. Clinton has said she wants to reform the tax code, foster innovation and incentivize business to raise employee wages, and the Times editorialized Wednesday that she has a “meaningful economic agenda.”
Earlier this month, Clinton gave a speech on expanding voting rights and simplifying voter registration. The Times lauded the speech as a “transformative step toward modernizing the nation’s archaic, error-filled approach to registering voters.”
On immigration policy, the Times described Clinton in May as “up front and to the left” of President Obama. “That is a good place to be for a presidential candidate who proposes to get the stalled debate moving again,” the Times said, reacting to a speech wherein Clinton vowed to “go even further” than Obama has in offering legal protections to illegal immigrants.
