‘Headline Lunacy’: NY Times Ridiculed for Framing on Trumps’ Eugenics Remarks As ‘Intellectual Curiosity’

(Photo by zz/Andrea Renault/STAR MAX/IPx)

The New York Times was ridiculed by journalists across the media industry who blasted a headline in the newspaper for a story about former President Donald Trump’s comment that immigrants who commit crime have “bad genes.”

Trump digressed into a eugenics-themed tirade after calling into The Hugh Hewitt Show on Monday for an interview and attacked the Biden administration’s border policy, claiming 13,000 murdered had been allowed into the country and added: “A murderer — I believe this — it’s in their genes. And we have a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

While the Trump campaign tried to soften the blow by clarifying that the former president was “clearly referring to murderers, not migrants,” the backlash was immediate and intense. Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough called the comments “kind of fascist” and compared them to race science pushed in Nazi Germany.

Reporting on the comments, a NY Times’ headline read : “In remarks about migrants, Donald Trump invoked his long-held fascination with genes and genetics.”

“For decades, including long before he became a political figure, Mr. Trump has been publicly obsessed with bloodlines and his stated belief that genetics are the best predictor of a person’s success,” the article noted.

For many in the media, however, the wording failed to capture the gravity of Trump’s statements.

Former NY Times reporter Andrew Revkin blasted the copy as “headline lunacy.”

While Zeteo founder and ex-MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan called the newspaper out for “the sanewashing of Trump.”

Mark Jacob , former editor at The Chicago Tribune , slammed the NY Times for failing to call out the remark as “racist” and instead posing it as a “deep intellectual curiosity about genetics.”

Talking Points Memo founder John Marshall shared the headline alongside a similarly flat headline about Vice President Kamala Harris, criticizing the newspaper for “editorial gloss” typical of the coverage seen throughout the presidential campaign.

…