The New York Times lived down to its reputation of disingenuous coverage of probable Democratic presidential candidates in its recent reporting on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
During an appearance at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, Ocasio-Cortez offered up a valuable working-class perspective on international relations—but the Times didn’t seem to notice.
In its article, “Ocasio-Cortez Offers a Working-Class Vision in Munich, With Some Stumbles,” the Times complained that she “stalled for roughly 20 seconds” when addressing whether the United States would send troops if China invaded Taiwan.
It also directly transcribed her comments, including stuttering and words like “uh”—something that news outlets, especially the Times, rarely do.
The Times certainly didn’t characterize President Donald Trump’s mixing up of Greenland and Iceland in a January speech as a “stumble,” and it definitely hasn’t transcribed any of his strange digressions, verbal malapropisms, or otherwise nonsensical deviations.
In a follow-up story on the Munich conference, the Times amplified right-wing disinformation on Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks, which highlighted her response on Taiwan. The Times’ justification? The clip had “rocketed around conservative social media and drove plenty of the discussion about her visit.”
This, of course, is how the right-wing propaganda machine has operated for decades, ignoring the context of statements from Democrats to convince the public that they’re unworthy of leadership.
The right did this during the 2024 presidential election cycle, insisting that Democratic candidate Kamala Harris’ very clear speeches were “word salad.”
Ocasio-Cortez bluntly told the Times that the right-wing crusade to make “any five- to 10-second thing” from her speech go viral was a concerted effort to “distract from the substance of what I am saying.”
She’s right, and the Times plays a key role in amplifying this sort of smear.
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In this instance, the target was Ocasio-Cortez. But history has shown that other Democrats will be in the paper’s crosshairs, even while the outlet gives Republicans a pass.
The public was subjected to this double standard during the 2024 campaign cycle, when the Times and other outlets—the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times, for instance—focused like a laser on former President Joe Biden’s advanced age while ignoring the fact that Trump is only four years younger.
In April 2024, a Times reporter told Politico that the adversarial coverage of Biden was because publisher A.G. Sulzberger was “pissed” at Biden for not granting the paper an interview.
Similarly, back in 2016, the Times and its mainstream compatriots were flogging story after story about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails. An analysis from Media Matters for America found that the Times published nearly three times as many stories about Clinton’s emails as it did stories with headlines that mentioned Trump.
But this pattern goes back even further.
During the 2000 election cycle, the Times and other outlets promoted the narrative that Democratic candidate Al Gore was a “phony” who repeatedly exaggerated the truth, such as his role in investigating chemical contamination in the Love Canal region of New York.
The storyline was false, but the Times—and the Post—didn’t let that get in the way of their character assassination of Gore. Ironically, it was those same publications who then took the lead in amplifying George W. Bush’s lies about the Iraq War, peddling the lie that Saddam Hussein sought to acquire nuclear bombs.
The tradition of targeting Democrats while coddling the right has persisted, showing up in the Times with proclamations hailing “the age of Trump” while refusing to call out his racism. In one absurd instance from 2020, Times writer Maggie Haberman described Trump’s bigotry as a “focus on racial and cultural flash points.”
The paper has a pattern of using its outsized power and influence to mischaracterize Democratic leaders and amplify bad faith right-wing attacks and smears.
So whether it’s Ocasio-Cortez or another candidate, any Democrat who runs for president will face the same problem with the Times.
Oliver Willis February 18, 2026 at 11:30PM From Daily Kos
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