NYT Op/Ed with a trump normalization piece "Trump Is Crude. But He's Right About Saudi Arabia."

[NRaleighLiberal]

I won't paste any of the text - the link is here. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/opinion/trump-saudi-arabia-khashoggi.html

This is how it is done folks. Plant those false equivalence pieces.

They are being taken to task in the comments.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

[raging moderate]

1. I am thankful for those critical comments, and their authors.

It gives me hope to know that there are others who can see through this current fog.

[NRaleighLiberal]

6. THIS!

[milestogo]

2. Its not that he's crude - he is immoral.

[oberliner]

3. The US has been looking the other way with respect to Saudi Arabia for a long long time

It's ugly.

[randr]

4. He's just dancin with them who brung him

[EarlG]

5. Yeah these two wrote a hit piece on Khashoggi recently

Yes, the Saudi Crown Prince may have ordered a Washington Post journalist to be hacked to pieces — but he was no angel!

https://nypost.com/2018/10/18/why-the-saudis-despised-jamal-khashoggi/

According to the authors, this murder wouldn’t be a big story if it weren’t for “Obama officials” who “have an interest in stoking outrage at Khashoggi’s death.”

[NRaleighLiberal]

7. thanks for adding that insight, EarlG!

[redstateblues]

8. Whataboutism for Thanksgiving

[hlthe2b]

9. Important note, tho, this is opinion piece, not from NYT editorial board, but two RW think tanks

By Michael Doran and Tony Badran

Mr. Doran is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Mr. Badran is research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

[NRaleighLiberal]

10. exactly. thanks for that.

[edhopper]

11. The Hudson Institute

is a Koch funded "think tank".
And the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is a right wing, pro-Isreal (read as pro Netenyahu) group.

In other words, it's bullshit,

[dalton99a]

15. Yep.

[edhopper]

16. Shame on the NYT

for publishing these paid propagandists.

[bitterross]

12. Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Michael Doran is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Tony Badran is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Whenever I see the name of an organization like Foundation for Defense of Democracies I know - right away - the organization is about the exact opposite of its name. The right has been using names like that for decades. They sound great but they usually do the opposite. As usual, my inclination about these things is correct. The authors are not at all about democracy, but the established order.

The Hudson Institute's web page says it is non-partisan. However, a quick look at their posted videos and articles reveals a decidedly right-wing bias.

No surprise that two people from such places came up with such a bad op-ed piece in support of their Dear Leader.

[Demonaut]

13. it's a terrible piece, they should have written it anonymously

to avoid ridicule

[dalton99a]

14. So now they're praising Shithole for his "strategic wisdom"

Sickening

[Skidmore]

17. Authored by these guys

Michael Doran is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Tony Badran is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Hudson Inst. and the Foundation are neocon think tanks. If you look at their who's who lists, you find Scooter Libby at Hudson as Senior VP and Clifford May as president of the Foundation. Now we know what happened to the guys who outed Valerie Plame.

Neocons rearing their heads. This OP could use some pushback.

[Buckeyeblue]

18. The Saudi's attacked us on 9-11-01 (or at least financed it)

And in response, we went to war with Iraq.

That tells us everything we need to know about our policy toward Saudi Arabia.

[PubliusEnigma]

19. In 20 years, oil will only be good for making plastics. Saudi Arabia will return to a desert waste.

Are we really going to trade American values for them??

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. Jeet Heer connects the 2 con thinktanks to Saudi Arabia, UAE, George Nader and Elliott Broidy

who are up to their necks in Trump's Russian collusion. Twitter thread here:

Link to tweet

The meat of it:

The earlier Times report focused on 2 men, George Nader, an advisor to the ruler of the UAE and Elliott Broidy, a big GOP donor. Made clear that Nader was using Broidy as a front man

Hudson Institute & Foundation for Defense of Democracies (sic!) are not supposed to take foreign funding or funding from autocracis. But via Broidy, Nader got Saudi & UAE sway over them.


...
If you read only the oped, this is all you'd know about authors. Nothing about think tanks tied to Arab autocrats, or Nader, or Broidy, or child sex abuse, or the Mueller investigation. Just two normal guys from a normal think tank. Foreign policy experts.
...
One takeaway from this is that the Times Op Ed page is in a different universe than Times news section. By publishing that op ed in the form they did, they were denying or erasing the hard work Times reporters did.

His New Republic article on it: https://newrepublic.com/minutes/152387/new-york-times-publishes-pro-saudi-writers-think-tanks-deep-autocratic-ties