A CHARITABLE EXPLANATION FOR THE LATEST NEW YORK TIMES REPORTING FAILURE

In the New York Times story I discussed yesterday -- Shawn McCreesh's report from the Moms for Liberty gathering -- there's a detail that was apparently too good to check. A conference attendee was explaining why Donald Trump's offensive social media posts don't bother her:

“I don’t care what he says — it’s just about actions,” said Panina Mintz, a microbiologist from Galloway, N.J., who said she was a Democrat until the pandemic; she felt that the Democrats and government bureaucrats were too draconian in their lockdown measures. “As a voter, if you’re relying on tweets, that’s your problem. It’s not mine.”

Mintz claim that "she was a Democrat until the pandemic" was debunked by social media users in a few hours. One found this at a right-wing Substack:

Dear Cherry Hill Voters
Just Say “No” to the Bond Referendum

Our good friends in Cherry Hill are facing an uphill battle in the November 8th BOE election. Pnina Mintz, Ph.D., has recently been elected to chair the Cherry Hill Republican Organization after many years as a vocal conservative leader in both social and fiscal issues of Cherry Hill.

Another found this:

Once again NYT cannot be bothered to do even a tiny bit of due diligence. They talk to Mom For Liberty Pnina Mintz of NJ, who says she was a Democrat until the pandemic. Voter records show she’s been a registered Republican since at least 2008

[image or embed]

— Leporello (@sigill.bsky.social) Aug 31, 2024 at 8:42 PM

Something similar happened at CNN a couple of weeks ago:

A man introduced as an undecided voter during a CNN segment following Kamala Harris' speech on Day 4 of the Democratic National Convention has a history of supporting MAGA online. CNN host Gary Tuchman said all panelists claimed to be undecided voters at that time.

Meet Bryant Rosado, who, when asked to grade Kamala Harris' speech, gave it a "C" while the other seven panelists rated it either an "A" or a "B." ...

Rosado then confirmed he wasn't ready to vote for Kamala Harris. Moments later, he raised his hand, indicating that he was ready to make a commitment. When asked, he stated that he was now voting for Trump.

... despite telling CNN that he was an undecided voter who just decided to vote for Trump, Rosado has a substantial MAGA social media history....

On Twitter, Rosado retweeted Trump's mugshot multiple times. The retweet of Donald Trump's post of the mugshot contained a link to Trump's website, which redirected to a fundraising page....

Rosado has other pro-Trump social media posts. In 2022, Rosado tagged Elon Musk in a tweet asking to "Bring Back Trump" and "Make Twitter Great Again." He retweeted a picture of Trump at Mar-a-Lago with another call to "reinstate Trump on Twitter." ...

Rosado indicated disappointment that Vice President Mike Pence refused to overturn the electoral college vote for Trump. Rosado replied "SMH," shake my head, to a CNBC tweet on January 6th reporting that "Mike Pence rejects Trump's call to overturn Biden election."

You get the picture. So why doesn't the media do due diligence on these people? And why don't mainstream news outlets ever make the opposite mistake?

An uncharitable explanation for this would be that much of the mainstream media wants Trump to win and allows Republicans to get away with this sort of thing because of that pro-Trump bias. But let's give the press the benefit of the doubt. There's a reasonable explanation that doesn't involve journalists actively colluding in Republican deception.

I think the mainstream media makes these mistakes because journalists can't quite imagine why anyone would do this. Journalists don't make the opposite mistake because Democrats simply don't try to pretend they're Republicans or independents. Democrats think doing that would be weird -- and they're right.

By contrast, Republicans and the right-wing media are obsessed with trying to convey the impression that moderate independents and (especially) Democrats are suddenly seeing the light and switching their allegiance to the GOP.

A decade ago, we regularly talked about "Fox News Democrats" -- pundits such as Tammy Bruce, Kirsten Powers, Bob Beckel, and Lanny Davis, lawyers such as Alan Dershowitz and Jonathan Turley, and pollsters like Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen (and, more recently, Mark Penn). For years, Fox has retained a stable of commentators whose job is to say, I'm a Democrat, but people in my party have gone crazy.

Some Republicans have gone the opposite way, especially in the Trump years, but generally they're well-known pundits or nationally prominent elected officials (or former elected officials) whose political allegiances are readily examined. Many of these people will be Republicans in good standing again if the party ever becomes slightly less crazy.

The Murdoch press, by contrast, likes to pretend that little-known citizens are suddenly waking up to the sinister truth about Democrats and abandoning the party in this moment of unusually dangerous Democratic extremism. (In the right-wing media, every moment is a moment when Democrats are worse than they've ever been.) Here's a column that ran last week in Murdoch's New York Post. The author is Maud Maron:

RFK Jr. could persuade moms like me to choose Trump as ‘Kennedy Republicans’

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement of former President Donald Trump is a classic example of Ronald Reagan’s famous explanation for the change in his political allegiance: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.”

And it has the power to tip the election in Trump’s favor, especially in the swing states that will decide it....

Kennedy, a blue-blood Democrat from the nation’s most famous political dynasty, is speaking to many fellow “former Democrats” — especially newly activated moms like me.

Maron is not, in fact, a "newly activated mom." As she acknowledges later in the piece:

I even ran for office as a Democrat — for City Council in 2021 and Congress in 2022 — trying doggedly, and unsuccessfully, to pull my party out of the fringe left and back to the moderate middle.

And not only that:

In 2019, Maron co-founded Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education NYC (PLACE NYC) to oppose Bill De Blasio's plans to widen access to selective middle and high schools....

In 2021, Maron and Yiatin Chu co-founded the New York City Chapter of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, which advocates against Critical Race Theory....

She's been writing for the Post since 2020; her first column was a denunciation of anti-bias training headlined "Racial Obsessions Make It Impossible for NYC Schools to Treat Parents, Kids as People." Other columns include "Why This Pro-Choice Democrat Is Voting Lee Zeldin for Governor" and "DeSantis Did What Hochul Won’t — Boot a DA Who Won’t Do Their Job," both published during the 2022 New York gubernatorial election that pitted Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul against Zeldin, a Trumpist Republican. In 2023, Maron spoke at a Federalist Society forum and at a rally sponsored by the Independent Women's Forum.

So, no, Maud Maron is not a "newly activated mom." But the GOP and the Murdoch press regularly try to sell voters on the notion that Republican (or pseudo-Republican) activists and operatives are just ordinary Democrats who've had road-to-Damascus conversions to the Republican cause.

I've said for years that the mainstream press doesn't pay enough attention to the right, especially the right-wing media. The MSM ignored talk radio during its heyday and has mostly ignored Fox News and other right-wing cable channels. Internet grumblers like me know the right's obsessions, but most reporters at The New York Times and CNN don't. So they're surprised, I think, whenever someone claims to be a former Democrat who saw the light just yesterday.