Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman unloaded Thursday on media outlets that he feels are failing to call out President Donald Trump's "lies."
Krugman, who recently left The New York Times, citing editorial disagreements, took the opportunity to bash news outlets in a new piece published to his Substack.
Krugman lamented that reporting on Trump's trade deals are being misreported, pointing to a Times headline that reads, "Trump is winning his trade war. What will that mean for the economy?"
He accused Trump of "min[ing] our harbors based on the false claim that other nations have rocky coasts" and complained that media outlets are "declar[ing] that he’s winning."
"I’ve talked about the media’s problem with calling a lie a lie for many years — in fact, since my first year writing for the Times," wrote Krugman. "Back then, faced with George W. Bush’s lies about taxes and Social Security, I suggested that if a candidate said the earth was flat, the headlines would read 'Views differ on shape of planet.' Yet media organizations still haven’t figured out how to deal with it."
Krugman insisted Trump is pushing "pure fantasy" by insisting America is being exploited by other countries and blocking its exports. He then tore into other Trump falsehoods, including his insistence that Americans are being "terrorized by immigrant criminals."
"In fact, crime has plunged," Krugman noted, pointing to a decades long trend of violent and property crimes falling to near historic lows in recent years. "But how many headlines have you seen pointing out that Trump is destroying basic civil liberties in the name of fighting a nonexistent crime wave? There have been a few — my sense is that the media are a little more willing to call out lies about crime than lies about economics. But Trump’s hyping of a fake crime wave should be central to all reporting about his anti-immigrant policies, and it isn’t."
Krugman said universities also haven't been overcome by "woke" or diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
"I’m a lot more afraid of MAGA, which is infested with actual Nazis, than I am of a few leftist college students," said Krugman.
And Trump, he said, isn’t winning his trade war — except, "possibly, in the media, which have apparently decided that shooting yourself in the foot and not facing retaliation is a victory."