The Gray Lady Weighs In: NY Times Editorial Backs Stormy Daniels

NEW YORK CITY—It's probably no secret that The New York Times is not a fan of Donald J. Trump. The "Grand Dame" of "All the news that's fit to print" editorialized before the 2016 election, both on the editorial pages and more subtly in news stories, against him (and Bernie Sanders) and in favor of Hillary Clinton, and their opinion (and news coverage) hasn't much changed in the intervening 19 or so months. So perhaps it should be no surprise that, for the first time in over a century and a half of publishing news, a porn star, Stormy Daniels, has not only appeared on the daily's front page, both in photo and article—above the fold!—but also today, The Times actually published an editorial that tacitly supports her claim to have been threatened by a Trump minion not to speak about her relationship with the then-mogul. Titled "All The President's Thugs," the Times Editorial Board reported on Daniels' statement on 60 Minutes last Sunday that "a man approached her in a parking lot, while she was with her infant daughter, and said: 'Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.' 'And then he leaned around,' she continued, 'and looked at my daughter and said: "That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom."'" "There is, of course, only Ms. Clifford’s word on this incident, which reads like a scene from a low-grade gangster movie," the editorial continued. "But this is not the first time that someone who has crossed Donald Trump has spoken of being threatened." The editorial then went on to note that in the past, Trump or one of his representatives, in 2009, threatened an attorney representing some investors who had funds tied up in Trump's Atlantic City casino, which was then undergoing bankruptcy proceedings, and in 1982, New York City Housing Commissioner Anthony Gliedman told New York City Police Commissioner Robert McGuire "that he had received a call 'threatening his life'" after Gliedman had "declined to grant a $20 million tax abatement for Trump Tower." Bottom line for The Times? "We live at a time when a porn star displays more credibility and class than a president, the president’s lawyers distinguish themselves through swagger more than legal skill, and we seriously wonder just how thuggish the man in the Oval Office is. It seems like a bad dream." Sure sounds to us like an endorsement of the validity of Daniels' threat claim—and that's got to be another Times first! (BTW, Daniels has been getting an increasing amount of publicity in The Times, which in addition to the editorial has published four stories and opinion pieces in the past two days referencing the actress' battle with Trump and his team. They all make for pretty good reading, and they can be found here, here, here and here—and this one, about the legality of indicting a sitting president, might be of interest as well.)