The New York Times published an article Wednesday afternoon laying out a stark picture of how President Donald Trump is seeking to use the full power of his office for retribution against anyone who took part in the impeachment investigation or objected to the withholding of security aid from Ukraine — as well to reward his friends who are in legal trouble.
But the Times surely missed the mark with its headline, “Trump’s War Against ‘the Deep State’ Enters a New Stage,” that seemingly legitimized Trump and right-wing media’s collective paranoia about a supposed “deep state” of saboteurs.
The sub-headline of the piece read: “The suggestion that Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman should now face punishment by the Pentagon was one sign of how determined the president is to even the scales after his impeachment.”
The Times initially framed Trump’s retaliatory action toward Vindman, who was subpoenaed to testify in the House impeachment inquiry, as an attempt to “even the scales as he sees it,” overlooking the fact that Trump is the president of the United States — now seemingly granted carte blanche by the Republican-controlled Senate — and Vindman is a military officer under his authority as commander-in-chief.
The text of the article has important context and qualifiers that reasonably seem to depict Trump as genuinely out of control. Yet in other ways, the manner in which it frames some arguments can still be read as the author giving Republican paranoia too much credit.