RUTHFULLY YOURS

Dean Baquet is not a very bright guy. The New York Times isn’t there for any obvious reason except his willingness to be both a token, and, unlike his predecessor, submissive to the Sulzberg clan, while pushing assorted identity politics agendas.

It takes a very ‘not bright guy’ to make the admission that Baquet did about the Times’ hit piece on Tara Reade, the former Biden Senate staffer who had accused him of sexual assault.

The New York Times whitewashing piece had initially included and then deleted a paragraph that attracted a lot of attention.

“The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses, and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable.”

The “pattern” is pretty obvious and the sentence is self-contradictory.

Aside from all the groping, there was no pattern of sexual misconduct.

Baquet then went on to explain the deletion.

“Even though a lot of us, including me, had looked at it before the story went into the paper, I think that the campaign thought that the phrasing was awkward and made it look like there were other instances in which he had been accused of sexual misconduct. And that’s not what the sentence was intended to say.”

Which campaign? Not the campaign for accuracy in the New York Times. But the Biden campaign.

The paper’s editor not only admitted that the paper is in touch with the campaign, but that it edits pieces about Biden after prompting from the campaign. The Times has destroyed what little is left of its credibility and the incident will be repeatedly used to hammer the paper by the Trump campaign. And the hammering will be thoroughly deserved.

This sort of thing goes on all the time. But Baquet was an idiot to admit it.