The New York Times’ (NYT) Jonathan Weisman lost the plot in the article that he wrote in response to Tucker Carlson asking Republican presidential candidates about Ukraine. Titled “Tucker Carlson Turns a Christian Presidential Forum Into a Putin Showcase”, this self-described “veteran journalist” wanted to manipulate his audience’s perceptions about his much more popular peer by getting them to think that he’s shilling for the Russian leader. Instead, Weisman came off as cringey, desperate, and hateful.
Right at the start, the NYT’s correspondent declared that “Jesus is out. Vladimir V. Putin is in”, which was meant to make it seem like the Christians at Friday’s Family Leadership conference in Des Moise abandoned their god for a false idol. Nobody who sincerely respects Christians would ever imply what Weisman just did, which suggests that he was so triggered by Tucker’s questions about Ukraine that he lost his cool by attacking all of his target’s fellow believers as a form of collective punishment.
This wouldn’t be the first time that he couldn’t control his emotions either since he was demoted in August 2019 after an ethno-misogynist bigotry scandal that he sparked on social media. Weisman therefore has a track record of lashing out against certain identity groups in response to being offended by something that one of their representatives said or did, which extends credence to the abovementioned interpretation of what he intended to convey in that particular passage of his article.
Moving along, Weisman described Tucker as “confrontational” for reacting to former Vice President Mike Pence’s criticism of the Biden Administration’s supposedly slow dispatch of military aid to Ukraine after he wondered aloud why that Republican presidential candidate is so distressed about this. There’s nothing “confrontational” in asking why a person running for the country’s top office cares more about a foreign country than their own, however, which is another example of Weisman’s false framing.
The next one came right after when he wrote that “For good measure, Mr. Carlson called Ukraine an American ‘client state,’ accused Ukraine’s Jewish leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, of persecuting Christians and strongly indicated Mr. Pence had been conned, despite evidence to the contrary.” Weisman wanted his audience to think that Tucker was just peddling conspiracy theories, but the reality is that it’s this NYT correspondent who was yet again attempting to manipulate his audience by falsely framing everything.
To debunk each of his points in the order that they were shared: 1) Ukraine’s top commander Valery Zaluzhny complained to the Washington Post on the same day as Weisman’s article that Kiev’s allies have placed conditions on the use of the weapons they’ve provided; 2) Kiev is cracking down against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) on the pretext that it’s a ‘fifth column’; and 3) Zelensky’s former advisor Alexey Arestovich recently admitted that Ukraine only has “emotional” influence over the West.
Expanding on the above: 1) No truly sovereign state would ever accept anyone telling them what they can do with weapons in the hands of their own soldiers; 2) Pope Francis’ and the UN’s public expressions of concern over this crackdown prove that it’s not just the Kremlin that’s critical of Kiev’s campaign against the UOC; and 3) Arestovich, who can’t credibly be described as a so-called “Russian agent”, has a solid point about the means that Ukraine employs to manipulate Western perceptions about the conflict.
It should also be said that Weisman’s reference to Zelensky’s Jewish faith doesn’t discredit Pope Francis’ and the UN’s concern about Kiev’s latest campaign against a particular Christian community, which is being carried out for Russophobic reasons, not any other ones. In fact, drawing attention to the Ukrainian leader’s religion risks being interpreted by anti-Semites as a dog whistle prompting them to remind everyone that local Jews were responsible for the Romans putting Jesus to death.
This observation is tragically ironic since Weisman’s brief NYT bio mentions that he’s the author of “(((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump”, which warns about what he claims is the revival of anti-Semitism in the US. He previously told NPR that he was inspired to write it after being viciously trolled by fascists on Twitter, yet now he might have just unwittingly provoked them into more online hatemongering after falsely implying that Zelensky’s faith means that Kiev can’t be anti-Christian.
Nobody’s identity immunizes them from being bigoted towards anyone else, which Weisman himself knows for a fact as proven by his previously cited ethno-misogynist bigotry scandal. Likewise, Zelensky’s Jewish faith is irrelevant to his regime’s anti-Christian policies, just like any particular aspect of an anti-Semite’s identity is irrelevant to their hatred of Jews. Had Weisman not been so triggered by Tucker getting Pence to discredit himself before voters, then he’d likely never have suggested otherwise.
His train wreck of an article then continued after he declined to address the indisputable fact brought up by his much more popular peer in his question to Senator Tim Scott about why he cares more about dead Ukrainians than about his own fellow Americans who are killed by fentanyl from Mexico. All that Weisman could muster in response was to describe Tucker’s question as “a signature dismissive response”, which was actually another example of he himself attempting to dismiss Tucker’s valid point.
He then tries to explain away his efforts thus far to manipulate his audience’s perceptions by writing that “The divide in the Republican Party between traditional conservatives who favor the projection of American military might and a new, more isolationist wing that leans toward Russia is nothing new. But the Family Leadership Summit was supposed to be a showcase of Christian values, where social issues like abortion and transgender rights were expected to be center stage.”
What Weisman either can’t countenance due to his hardcore liberal bias or is too dishonest to openly admit is that Tucker’s questions about Ukraine are inextricably connected to Christian values from the Republican base’s perspective. As they see it, pumping a country with tens of billions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer-provided weapons to fight a proxy war that’s impossible for their side to win perpetuates the internecine slaughter of tens of thousands of fellow believers, which is anti-Christian to the core.
While he has the right to see things differently, it was extremely disrespectful for him to mock Christians in the way that he did in his response to Tucker, which shows that Weisman was once again unable to remain calm after being triggered by a contrarian opinion. The NYT’s editors should have caught his thinly disguised attack against that entire religious community, especially considering his earlier bigotry scandal, but it’s likely that they agree with him and that’s why they declined to remove that part.
The takeaway is that liberals have lost the plot now that they’re attacking Christians like Weisman just did in his piece for the NYT after one the world’s most popular journalists questioned Republican presidential candidates about their support for NATO’s proxy war on Russia in Ukraine. They can’t accept that Kiev’s counteroffensive failed and peace talks will thus likely resume by year’s end since it goes against their ideology, which is why they’re attacking an entire religion out of cognitive dissonance.
