Why New York Times Columnists Are Admitting They Were Wrong

BUCK: Clay and I talk about this off-line, because we’re always texting and discussing the show. And this is a constant — people say, what’s your show prep. I’m like, it never stops. We’re sending ideas and stories and concepts and quotes and clips to each other at all hours. Apologies to Mrs. Travis, Clay, if I ever wake you up with the 3.00 a.m., “Look at this story. This will be great tomorrow!” Just make sure you have the phone on silent.

But here we are looking at a lot of issues where, if you see the narrative thread of this program for the last year on crime: What are the causes of the increase in it, why is it getting so bad and what needs to be done to change it? You look at covid. We were having, in July — maybe we should pull some of it — we were having Berenson on among others. We’ve also been an early adopter of the Truth Train courtesy of Dr. Marty Makary. We’ve had the truth serum that he delivers on air. We’ve been willing to look at people or to have people on who look at the numbers and say this doesn’t add up with what we’re being told. Essentially, on some of the biggest things, we’ve been right. And those who listen to us, you vote for that every time you listen. Every day you’re tuning into us you’re saying, yeah, being right on stuff — and I know all we agree on this, too — but being right on this stuff should matter. It’s interesting.

I bring this up — by the way, if we were wrong, you know, we got a little ahead of our skis, we had a little too much fun yesterday with the Trump statement because it was so hilarious. Turns out it was a parody. Nobody is perfect. But if we’re wrong it’s like breaking news, tiny issue factual. It’s not broad-sweeping narrative that shows dramatic misunderstanding of fundamental concepts, principles and reality. And the elite, we get that stuff right all the time, I’m just going to say. We’re right all the time. The elite media over at New York Times and CNN — although, have you seen CNN’s ratings recently? There are like Season 6, DIY Cabins of Manitoba shows that are getting more viewers than CNN. I do love those DIY shows.

CLAY: To your point on CNN, they need Donald Trump so desperately. And MSNBC, too. They don’t exist. He is the one-man stimulus package for their ratings. If he doesn’t exist, there’s nothing for them. It’s wild.

BUCK: They also made a decision, which is, you know, you know A Man for All Seasons? There’s the argument, would you get rid of all the laws if it meant you could get the devil. And he turns around and he says, I’m paraphrasing and some of you know the quote better than me, once you’ve cut down all the laws of England to get the devil himself, what are you going to do when the devil turns on you? What are you going to do once you’ve done this? And the media, the Democrat media abandoned the pretense of — I think it always was a pretense — but they at least abandoned the make-believe framework of neutrality, journalism, news gathering against Trump.

So it’s entirely understandable that now, to your point, without Trump, what do they exist to do? They already told us their propaganda organ. They already told us that they aren’t actually unbiased. And it’s interesting because also now that they ran with some of these narratives as long as they did, you’re seeing some of these big-named journos coming out and saying, a number of them, yeah, I was really wrong. Because the game is up. They can’t play it anymore. Perfect example, Paul Krugman. Paul Krugman is a Nobel Laureate in economics who is a smug, delusional leftist, who is more consistently wrong on economic policy questions than any human being I can think of off the top of my head. Clay, he just said, yeah, turns out I was wrong about inflation. And I know we’re all supposed to clap for him and say oh, okay. But, yes, spending trillions of dollars when you’re already 27, 28 trillion in debt is going to make inflation worse.

CLAY: Not only was he wrong about inflation, he was wrong about the entire Trump economy, too. To your point, if you’re an expert in one thing and you get consistently everything wrong in the field of which you are considered to be an expert, how do you still have a job? How were there not consequences for being immensely wrong?

When your job is to be an opinionist for the New York Times on economics, and everything you say about economics is wrong, in any other job you would lose it, right? If you are a football coach and you lose every game, even if you’re considered to be an expert in football coaching, you get fired. Our industry, when it comes to media opinionists and being an expert in something and being wrong all the time, there don’t appear to be real consequences. Paul Krugman is a great example at the New York Times, wrong about everything. And not only wrong, but wrong in a way if he had been right, he would have been more wrong.

BUCK: If economists were as smart as they want people to believe, they wouldn’t be teaching undergrad. They’d be running multibillion dollar hedge funds. I’m just telling you the truth, that’s reality.

CLAY: That’s right. The best, the smartest people in the field of finance either run hedge funds or are in private equity because that’s where they make money based on having to put the principles to the test.

BUCK: Tenured Ph.D.s in economics, look, teaching is a very valuable thing in itself, but this notion that somebody who has a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton or is teaching at Princeton with a Ph.D. has a better understanding of the economy than say, you know, the guy who starts a massively successful chain of national restaurants or something — who was it recently, was it Andy Puzder who came out recently and said the Biden Administration has no one who understands business, has no one who understands actual market forces? I think it was.

CLAY: It was also us.

BUCK: Yeah, that’s true, too. By the way, there’s a whole list here. And hats off to the New York Post for compiling this. But it’s all starting to happen. I don’t think it’s happening because of inherent honesty or sense of honor that these individuals have. I think they just realized that the game is up and they have to pivot in some way.

Bret Stephens, somebody used to write for Wall Street Journal, left to go to the New York Times, has admitted that effectively he —

CLAY: I read this —

BUCK: — that he was dripping with condescension for Trump voters. And this is a guy who was supposed to be a conservative, was writing at the Wall Street Journal. A lot of what the Trump voters were feeling about how the apparatus and the elites thought of them and treated them was confirmed by people like Bret Stephens, who abandoned his post to speak the truth to them and defend them at the same time. He decided to do it for the amusement for smarmy libs, and he’s now coming out to say, yeah, it was nasty what I said about Trump supporters. He said they were appalling. He said Trump supporters were appalling. And that was another example of this.

I still to this day, one of my prouder moments professionally, I did not even have a job lined up of any kind. And CNN was offering me money to stay on in 2016, after Trump won. And I was, like, under no circumstances am I ever working for your network again. Like, I’m out of here. I want no part of this. I would rather have to go get a normal job-job, than to continue to work in media for CNN. Clay, there are a lot of these people formerly on the right who went to these places and they made, speaking of the devil, they made a deal with the devil, they made a Faustian bargain to go do things for the amusement of libs.

CLAY: One of the conversations — and maybe we can talk about this for a minute when we come back — one of the conversations I’ve been having is to what extent was Trump an exception in terms of the way CNN and MSNBC behaved and to what extent is, even if Trump is not the nominee, the new reality is every single Republican candidate for national office is an awful human being who is the devil incarnate? I’m genuinely curious to think about that going forward. I had some conversations about it.

BUCK: There are two more columnists who said, yeah, I was really wrong. We’ll get to those, two of four.

CLAY: We’ll tie all those together. By the way, we’re not perfect but we’re not generally —

BUCK: We’re like 98 percent of the time right, though.

CLAY: Yeah, right. Yesterday’s quote was on me, but it was funny.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: You mentioned there were a couple other — where we got things wrong from the New York Times, Where they’re trying — I think they have eight of them — eight different columnists wrote on the things they had most gotten wrong, if I’m not mistaken, total. And they’re still rolling them out as we continue through the week here.

BUCK: The Bret Stephens one, I think he’s realized he made a Faustian bargain. I don’t know him. I just know his work. I know he’s one of these guys who became a Never Trumper who then seized with disdain of all Trump voters and then thought that getting a pat on the head from the New York Times was — no, it was not a good idea. They have disdain for him. That’s probably what he’s figured out.
Now he’s a man with no party essentially and is doing the bidding of libs, pretending to be a conservative. So that’s what happens there.

Paul Krugman is a joke. If you invest based on Paul Krugman pronouncements you’re going to lose all your money. So Paul Krugman is not somebody that anybody who cares about being right listens to. He’s also a loon. He hates guns. He knows nothing.

Michelle Goldberg, this is interesting, also New York Times, she said she got it wrong when she called for Al Franken’s resignation from the Senate without an investigation. I want to know is that something, a rule we can extend to Republicans as well? Or is it, man, we just shouldn’t have thrown Franken under the bus because he’s a Democrat and what do we really get out of that?

CLAY: Look, I understand she said I got that wrong. She’s not the reason that Al Franken had to resign. The reason Al Franken had to resign was because of his own Senate colleagues.

BUCK: Kirsten Gillibrand, of New York, yes.

CLAY: She was the one who was leading the pitch fork brigade.

In the grand scheme of things, let’s be honest. What Al Franken was accused of was, I think, one of the many things that — he lost his job over #MeToo, and now there’s an irony because certainly Democrats were all about Me Too and everything else until the chickens came home to roost. And there’s an incredible irony I think that Johnny Depp has basically ended Me Too because he bankrupted Amber Heard and she’s appealing that ruling right now, by the way. But, look, Al Franken being photographed 15 years ago making a joke which may have been inappropriate with somebody on a military jet is just basically him pretending to make out with her.

BUCK: I think the bigger problem was the forced making out with other women, if I remember, which is not good.

CLAY: I’m not claiming that Al Franken was an incredible guy. But the standard of, if you have ever had any woman who is upset about anything that you’ve ever done, therefore you are ineligible, like noncriminal behavior, you’re ineligible to ever be a politician, I think is a crazy standard whether you’re Democrat, Republican or independent.

BUCK: I think the bigger trend right now that these “what I got wrong columns” from New York Times columnists is about the Democrat media doesn’t have anything to champion and doesn’t have anything, the Biden administration, they can’t be cheerleaders because it’s too depressing and, too, incompetent. And they don’t have Trump to attack. So what are they really doing? What do they really represent on a day-to-day basis for their readers? This is true at CNN. This is true at the New York Times. They have to pivot. They have to shift because this all-in against the right, all in for the left, it doesn’t really work for these outlets when you have an administration that’s — the Obama administration they can get away with it. But the Biden administration, not so much.

CLAY: The Pew Research came out — or maybe it was Gallup — came out with research in the last ten days or so, showing that newspapers and television news had reached lowest levels of respect and support and trust basically in any of our lives. And so what they are recognizing is the Trump administration, for the Washington Times, the Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC was a sugar high; it existed, but it was not sustainable because even if Trump had won in 2020 and was still in office right now, Trump eventually is no longer going to be able to be in office.

So they sold this idea of the Great Satan, as they were pivoting to a subscription model. It’s actually kind of a fascinating business analysis story, and I think they’re trying to pull now blood out of a stone because everybody who hated Trump has already subscribed to the New York Times, right? If you hate Trump, you’re already a Washington Post subscriber. And now they’re looking around saying, wait a minute, where are the rest of our subscribers? And the people they’re trying to be persuadable, are done with them.

BUCK: I can’t believe that they would be in a position to really rub it in the faces of the mask opponents, vaccine mandate opponents. I think they were expecting going into the midterm to say, “Oh, look at those stupid red states. Look at Florida with its super high death rate and everyone is fleeing.” I think they believed that, and now the reality has sunk in that that is the opposite of reality, that the red states are putting out no vacancies signs because they’re so full because they’ve handled the economy better, handled covid better, they’re pushing back on vaccine mandates was the right move. All of it. So basically the left is in free fall now, Clay.

CLAY: They got everything wrong. And the more it mattered, the more egregiously wrong they were. And I don’t know how they pull themselves out. And I think you’re right. I think this is why the New York Times is trying to have all these mea culpas, saying we got all these things wrong because no one trusts them at all anymore.

BUCK: They should have a new columnist called Captain Obvious, we got everything wrong.