Outstanding, uh, commentary on complaining about NYT coverage of Donald Trump complimenting Arnold Palmer:
This article shows how effective Trump is at summarizing so many of his strengths in response to simple questions.
It was a softball question, from a 10-year-old. Mr. Trump’s response was more of a knuckleball.
A group of children asked Mr. Trump questions on Friday on “Fox & Friends.” Asked to name his favorite president when he was a child, Mr. Trump at first cited one who was elected when he was 34 (Ronald Reagan). Then he ventured onto surprising terrain, including every child’s favorite subject, the revised NAFTA trade deal known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
DANIEL: President Trump, I’m Daniel. And I’m 10. And I’m from Tennessee. What was your favorite president when you were little?
DONALD TRUMP: So I liked Ronald Reagan. I thought he was, um, look — I did not love his trade policy. I’m a very good trade — I have made some great trade deals for us — the U.S.M.C.A. That wasn’t his strength, but he had a great dignity about him, Ronald Reagan. You could say, “There’s our president,” more than any of the others. Really, any of the others. Uh, great presidents — well, Lincoln was probably a great president. Although I’ve always said, why wasn’t that settled? You know? I’m a guy that — it doesn’t make sense we had a civil war.
BRIAN KILMEADE, “Fox & Friends” co-host: Well, half the country left before he got there.
TRUMP: Yeah, yeah. But you’d almost say, like, why wasn’t that — as an example, Ukraine would have never happened and Russia if I were president. Israel would have never happened. Oct. 7 would have never happened. As you know, Iran was broke, they wanted to make a deal. I told, “Anybody buys any oil from Iran, it’s, you’re, you’re finished, you know, you can’t deal with the United States.” Nobody was buying oil from Iran. They came, they wanted to make a deal — now they have $300 billion in cash. Biden has been — and her, she’s, I don’t know if she was involved in it, but she’s, she’s terrible. Hey, look, remember this, she was the border czar, she never went there.
She was border czar and the Border Patrol, the one thing you have to remember, the Border Patrol gave strongest endorsement that anybody has ever seen: He’s the best there is, there has never been — he’s the greatest president, the greatest at the border, and she’s terrible. That was their policy. And these guys are great, by the way. These are great — you know them well from the show. We got the best endorsement and that really says it all. And I think the border is the bigger thing than inflation and the economy.
You know, I watch your polling where it says the economy and inflation are No. 1, 2. And then it says — always says, like, the three — I think the border is bigger. I got elected in 2016 on the border. I did a great job. I couldn’t even mention it after that because nobody cared because I did — it was fixed. We had a great border. Then they blew it, and I have to do it again. The difference is, it’s much worse this time. Because they are allowing millions of people into the country that shouldn’t be here.
They have many more headlines these days that are showing Trump’s decline and basic insanity, and tons of op-eds now talking about how dangerous he would be as president.
It’s too late, of course, with tens of millions having already voted and also too late for this change of narrative to make any difference to voters who aren’t decided, or waffling. But, they are certainly taking a tougher line at this too-late stage.
Sigh, now the LA Times has joined in.
and
Did ‘L.A. Times’ and NBC pull punches to appease Trump? Inside the Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, and the Washington Post, journalists question whether news executives are making editorial decisions with an eye to appeasing former President Donald Trump.
Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, shown in 2012, blocked his paper’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. The editorials editor resigned, saying the decision made the paper look “craven.”*
According to Politico, Soon-Shiong twice privately met with Donald Trump during his presidential transition to unsuccessfully try and get a position in the administration.[27]
In October 2024, Semafor reported that Soon-Shiong blocked the Los Angeles Times from endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 United States presidential election, breaking a chain of presidential endorsements since the 2008 election.[68] The move prompted Mariel Garza, the paper’s editorials editor, to resign in protest.[69] In a statement released on social media, Soon-Shiong confirmed that he had requested the editorial board to not make a presidential endorsement and instead only present information on both candidates side-by-side to let readers make their own decision. Garza gave a statement to TheWrap saying that the board had pitched an endorsement to Soon-Shiong and had been rejected.[70][71]
The Times says it can’t possibly be pro-Trump because they only ran 300 articles about Hillary’s emails and they did way more articles about 1/6 than that.
One does wonder, do these news executives really believe appeasement works?
Of course with someone like Trump they probably figure the Big Baby will just focus on insulting and humiliating the public-facing talent and leave the business side be, more or less. And keeping the business going is all they care about.
The online NYTimes this morning is graced with a heading only two down from the main headline: “Could Trump Win the Popular Vote but Lose the Electoral College?”
What fresh hell is this?! Trump winning wasn’t enough of a nightmare scenario that someone had to spin an alternative nightmare? A lesser one than Trump pulling a Cleveland, but a nightmare all the same. Harris winning without the popular vote would embolden MAGAts to make January 6 look like a mere skirmish! And it wouldn’t only be Trumpers who’d consider Harris less than wholly legitimate; Democratic sentiment against the Electoral College is based as much on principle as the fact that it handed wins to GOP candidates.
So I reluctantly clicked on the headline. The subhead is “It’s not likely, but it’s not something that can be dismissed either, recent polling suggests.” After reminding the reader that the election is close, close, close, as if anyone had forgotten that, Nate Cohn states his thesis: “All of this raises a possibility that few people would have contemplated at the beginning of the cycle: a Trump victory in the national popular vote.”
Cohn cites various factors disfavoring Harris in the popular vote, including weak tea like Biden is unpopular (polarization, and Harris isn’t Biden) and most people don’t believe the nation is on the right track (which as often means “you haven’t gone far enough” as “you’ve gone too far”). He wraps up the popular side of the equation by stating “Of course, Ms. Harris could easily win the national vote. Mr. Trump has plenty of his own weaknesses. … But together, there’s more than enough here to make it easy to imagine a Trump popular vote victory.” So far, I’m not impressed.
Cohn then cites various factors favoring Harris in the Electoral College battleground states, including Harris doing well with white voters and Democratic wins in 2022 and special elections. But I don’t see why those factors aren’t equally applicable to Harris winning the popular vote. 
Instead of the horse conclusion that Harris wins the popular vote and squeaks through the EC, Cohn hears the zebra of Harris losing the popular vote and winning the EC. “Most obviously, the polls still show it: Ms. Harris is still tied in the Northern swing states, even as she’s barely ahead nationally.” I’m no political scientist, but tied in battleground states and barely ahead nationally sounds a lot more like my horse than Cohn’s zebra. About the only thing that Cohn points to that supports Trump winning the popular vote and losing the EC vote is that his gains have been in states where the GOP was already ahead.
But it’s all idle speculation, purely academic. 
“I wouldn’t completely write off a Harris win in the Electoral College, even if Mr. Trump narrowly won the popular vote. I’m absolutely not saying it’s likely.” Then what, pray tell, was the purpose of throwing out this idea?!
Well…
The widely believed conventional wisdom is that the GOP EC advantage is roughly 3 points. No better way to illustrate that such is far from written in stone than to make the case that it not only might significantly decrease, but it could even reverse.
Maybe it shakes some off their panic that she has lost if she is not at least 3 ahead in the national popular vote.
And it gets people reading about why the GOP EC advantage might not be what it was the last two cycles.
It’s legitimately nothing more than some guy named “Nate Cohn” putting his stake on an unlikely outcome so he can gain insta-cred if this scenario comes to pass. No more than that.
Anyway, Keith Olbermann floated this possibility last week on his Ranty-Grandpa-Of-The-Left podcast, so… among the punditacracy… Keith has more of a claim to being able to say “called it!” than Cohn has, if this actually happens.
Speaks for itself. Something is and has been afoot.
Not sure why you put his name in quotes, but Nate Cohn is a well respected pollster who is as insightful and accurate as anyone else in the business. The NYTimes polls show different results than most others this cycle, based mainly on how they treat recalled vote from prior elections. They are showing the race basically tied nationally with Harris doing well in the midwest and poorly in the sunbelt. So this isn’t idle speculations (like I assume it is for Olbermann), but a reasonably conclusion from the results they are seeing. Harris could lose the national vote but the blue wall might still hold. As this is outside what others are seeing it makes sense to write about it as a possibility and explain the reasoning. I personally really like how forthcoming Nate Cohn is about his process and results, even if I wish the results were different.
Seriously. He doesn’t need to raise his cred. It is as high as it gets in the election models world, in the top echelon.
The NYT model has been for a while discussing how their take on the data shows a closer national vote than many others had been seeing but with a smaller GOP EC advantage, so similar forecasts but different details. I also appreciate the transparency he helps provide to the thought processes behind the models, the various theories of the electorate.
Surely the leopards won’t eat their faces.
Cowards. If trump wins, they know he will retaliate.
USA Today - no endorsement announcement yet, but had endorsed Biden by now (10/20/2020)
LA Times - announced will not endorse, endorsed in previous cycles
Washington Post - announced will not endorse, endorsed in previous cycles
New York Times - endorsed Harris
P.S. to last post:
Chicago Tribune — endorsed Biden 9/25/2020 and has not yet endorsed this year
Do they even still have an editorial staff?
If you mean the Chicago Tribune:
Tribune Editorial Board endorsements for the 2024 general election
It was a joke. Like The Trib is. The Trib is a faint shell of what it once was. Alden Global Capital bought it in 2021 and dramatically cut the staff, widely described as having “gutted newsrooms”. The top editors had already left before that. No idea how many people still read it either in print or on line. I know it is a decreasing number.