Yet and still

Like so many other liberals, I'm sick and tired of the New York Times' normalizing and both-sidesing Trump. Many times over the past few months have I considered killing my subscription rather than continue to be outraged on a daily basis. If I wanted to tear my hair out over a bad slant on the news, I'd sign up for Fox News or the New York Post.

But the other day, I had to laugh. The Times must be getting a little nervous about defections by readers like me. In an editorial and in an in-house opinion column, they were sure to start off with the plain truth about how bad Orange Caligula is, before they went back to their usual know-nothing act. First we got the editorial:

The most important distinction between the two candidates for the White House is that Vice President Kamala Harris is committed to democracy and the rule of law and Donald Trump is not. It’s a race that is, fundamentally, about who has the right temperament and is fit to be the next president, and the answer is not in question.

Consider, for instance, Liz Cheney’s endorsement last week of Ms. Harris. Ms. Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman, supports the vice president even though she disagrees with many, perhaps most, of Ms. Harris’s policy positions. “As a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this, and because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris,” she said. Her father, Dick Cheney, a former vice president and fellow lifelong conservative, followed suit the next day.

Yet policy matters, too. And voters have been clear that they are less interested in debates about the future of democracy than they are in the matters of governance that affect their everyday lives....

How courageous! Two whole paragraphs of the truth before the turn at "Yet...." One page later, Paul Krugman wrote:

On Saturday, at a rally in Wisconsin, Donald Trump said some bizarre and potentially damaging stuff about economic policy. “So what?” you may say; it was, after all, a day ending in “y.” And to be honest, the most vile thing he said at that event wasn’t about economics; it was his declaration that his vision or plan for “getting them out” — deporting undocumented immigrants — “will be a bloody story.”

Still, his remarks about how he would use tariffs to preserve the dollar’s status as a reserve currency should worry anyone imagining that international economic policy during a second Trump term would be like policy in his first term — a lot of sound and fury signifying not much.

Old Paul couldn't get more than one paragraph out before the "Still," but at least he spoke the truth briefly before moving on to the daily normalizing.

Trump has obviously been quite a meal ticket for the Times, and they can't seem to let go of him. But they're losing friends fast, and when he's gone, you have to wonder what they'll have left.