President Donald Trump has tweeted his support for Tom Cotton after the New York Times’ opinion editor, James Bennet, quit following the release of an op-ed written by the senator who said the publication surrendered to a ‘woke child mob’.
Bennet resigned from his position on Sunday after the Times disowned the incendiary opinion piece by Cotton entitled, Send in the Troops, which advocated using federal troops to quell unrest across the US caused by the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
On Sunday afternoon, Trump tweeted: ‘Opinion Editor at @nytimes just walked out. That’s right, he quit over the excellent Op-Ed penned by our great Senator @TomCottonAR. TRANSPARENCY! The State of Arkansas is very proud of Tom. The New York Times is Fake News!!!’
Cotton then retweeted the president after sharing a copy of a Times article about Bennet’s resignation, calling it ‘false and offensive’.
He said he advocated using military force as a backup, only if police are overwhelmed, to stop riots – not against protesters.
Earlier on Sunday, Cotton appeared on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, where he criticized the Times.
‘The New York Times editorial page editor and owner defended it in public statements but then they totally surrendered to a woke child mob from their own newsroom that apparently gets triggered if they’re presented with any opinion contrary to their own, as opposed to telling the woke children in their newsroom this is the workplace, not a social-justice seminar on campus,’ Cotton told Fox News.
President Donald Trump slammed the New York Times on Sunday for being ‘fake news’ after the newspaper’s opinion editor, James Bennet, quit following the release of an op-ed written by Sen Tom Cotton who said the publication surrendered to a ‘woke child mob’
Earlier on Sunday, Cotton (right) appeared on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures , where he criticized the Times
Cotton said Times leadership ‘surrendered to a woke child mob from their own newsroom that apparently gets triggered if they’re presented with any opinion contrary to their own’
Cotton was referring to the writers and staff at the Times who eviscerated his piece on Twitter.
The Republican senator from Arkansas on Wednesday used his op-ed to call for the ‘overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers’ participating in the various protests across the country.
Cotton claimed that the Insurrection Act authorizes the president to ’employ the military “or any other means” in “cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws.”‘
‘Throughout our history, presidents have exercised this authority on dozens of occasions to protect law-abiding citizens from disorder,’ Cotton claimed.
‘Nor does it violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which constrains the military’s role in law enforcement but expressly excepts statutes such as the Insurrection Act.’
Op-ed contributor and author Roxane Gay declared that Cotton’s piece put black staff at the Times in danger.
‘As a NYT writer I absolutely stand in opposition to that Tom Cotton “editorial.” We are well served by robust and ideologically diverse public discourse that includes radical, liberal, and conservative voices.
‘This is not that. His piece was inflammatory and endorsing military occupation as if the constitution doesn’t exist.’
James Bennet (pictured) resigned and his deputy, James Dao, is being reassigned at the newspaper, the Times said Sunday
Cotton claimed that he was advocating using military force as a backup, only if police are overwhelmed, to stop riots – not against protesters (pictured on June 2)
Cotton’s op-ed was eviscerated on Twitter by the New York Times community and many readers declared their intent to stop reading the publication altogether
Op-ed contributor and author Roxane Gay declared that the op-ed but black staff at the New York Times in danger.
Many pointed out that the op-ed was released on the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 when Chinese troops killed protesters
Many pointed out that the op-ed was released on the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 when Chinese troops killed thousands of young protesters who they claimed had been ‘rioting’.
‘The decision to publish @SenTomCotton calling for troop deployments to quell unrest falls short of sound journalistic practice,’ said former NYT’s Op-Ed Editor Sewell Chan.
‘It calls for “an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers” but offers no evidence that existing law enforcement efforts—by National Guard troops, county sheriffs, city police departments—is failing,’ Chan continued.
‘As @EsperDoD said today: “The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort—and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.”‘
Chan said that the NYT has published controversial and provocative perspectives in the past – and especially during his time as editor.
But he asserted that Cotton’s piece was not ‘original’ or ‘timely’.
‘The decision to publish @SenTomCotton calling for troop deployments to quell unrest falls short of sound journalistic practice,’ said former NYT’s Op-Ed Editor Sewell Chan
‘It might have been 2 days ago, but Pentagon, @EsperDoD and Mattis have been clearly pushing back,’ he added.
‘The governors haven’t asked for military deployments—in fact, several told Trump it would make things much worse’.
‘#TruthMatters, and I will always read @nytimes. But the richest, largest and most powerful newspaper in America needs to exercise discretion and prudence in the use of its platform. This fell far short.’
Brian Schatz, a Senator from Hawaii, shared that he had sent numerous ‘non-fascist opinion pieces to the Times,’ calling Cotton’s piece ‘sour grapes’.
He shared that he had done one on climate, one for medicaid and one for debt free college.
Others rebuked the Times leadership for running the piece at all.
‘You think that Cotton is using the Times’ neutered bothsidesism to call for domestic massacres but in fact the Times ownership and leadership are using Tom Cotton to launder their own desire for and advocacy of domestic massacres in the name of order and getting back to Cipriani,’ stated author Jacob Bacharach.
A.G. Sulzberger, publisher for the New York Times, sent a letter to the company saying that while he stood behind the publishing of the piece, he was listening to black employees at the company.
‘It is clear many believed this piece fell outside the realm of acceptability, representing dangerous commentary in an explosive moment that should not have been found in The Times,’ he said. ‘Even as a counterpoint to our own institutional view.
He added: ‘It’s essential that we listen to and reflect on the concerns we’re hearing, as we would with any piece that is subject of significant criticism. I will do so with an open mind.’
‘Our journalistic mission — to seek the truth and help people understand the world — could not be more important than it is in this moment of upheaval.’
Bennet resigned on Sunday and his deputy, James Dao, is being reassigned at the newspaper, the Times.
A.G. Sulzberger, publisher for the New York Times, sent a letter to the company saying that while he stood behind the publishing of the piece, he was listening to black employees at the company
Following a review, the newspaper said Cotton’s piece should not have been published, at least not without substantial revisions.
Katie Kingsbury, a Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial writing who joined the Times from the Boston Globe in 2017, will oversee the opinion pages through the November elections, the Times said.
It was the second high-level journalism job lost because of mistakes made in coverage of the nationwide protests about the treatment of blacks by law enforcement. The top editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Stan Wischnowski, resigned Saturday after uproar over a headline that said, ‘Buildings Matter, Too.’
Even before Bennet’s resignation and the paper rescinding its support for Cotton’s piece, Sulzberger had called for beefing up the opinion section’s fact-checking and suggesting that it was publishing too many opinion pieces by outsiders.
The Times reported that Cotton’s piece was edited by Adam Rubenstein. But Dao, in a tweet on Saturday, revealed that he supervised the acceptance and review of Cotton’s piece and that blame should be placed on the department’s leadership and not Rubenstein.
Bennet, who had revealed in a meeting in a meeting on Friday that he had not read Cotton’s piece before it was posted online, had defended it following the initial protests, saying it was important to hear from all points of view.
But the Times review criticized several aspects of Cotton’s piece, starting with the headline, ‘Send in the Troops,’ which the newspaper said in an editor’s note Saturday was ‘incendiary and should not have been used’.
Cotton’s essay referred to ‘left-wing radicals like antifa infiltrating protest marches to exploit’ Floyd’s death when, in fact, there has been little evidence of antifa’s involvement in the demonstrations.
Cotton’s statement that police had borne the brunt of violence stemming from the demonstrations should have been challenged, the newspaper said.
The newspaper said that ‘given the life-and-death importance of the topic, the senator’s influential position and the gravity of the steps he advocates, the essay should have undergone the highest level of scrutiny’.