Jonathan Last, a one-time conservative pundit who grew isolated from the Republican Party due to its embrace of former President Donald Trump, shredded the New York Times for publishing an editorial that he described as "bad-faith gaslighting."
The editorial in question, written by Matthew Schmitz, argues that former President Donald Trump is actually a "moderate" on policy issues who is only guilty of rhetorical excesses that his critics falsely use to paint him as an authoritarian menace.
One particularly damning passage in Schmitz's editorial, writes Last in his latest piece at The Bulwark, is its treatment of the January 6th Capitol riots that Trump incited in an effort to block the peaceful transition of power.
As Schmitz describes it, Trump's "term in office was frequently chaotic, and the chaos seemed to culminate in the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021."
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Last points out that using the passive voice to describe the actions that led up to the riot completely twists the history of what Trump did before and during the violent assault on the Capitol.
"Donald Trump falsely proclaimed that the presidential election was illegitimate," Last writes. "He attempted, through both legal and extralegal means, to overturn the result of the election.Trump’s maneuverings in both the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense were so dangerous that ten former secretaries of defense penned an op-ed warning that it was not lawful to use the military in an election dispute. Trump then called thousands of people to Washington, assembled them into a crowd which he knew was armed, and personally directed them to march to the Capitol and 'take back' the country 'with strength.'"
This is dangerous, Last argues, because "if you came down from Mars and simply read today’s NYT op-ed, you would have absolutely no idea that any of this happened" and "instead, you’d think that Trump was some kind of a ne’er-do-well or scamp."
