You know it’s gotten horrible for the New York Times when even members of the corporate press are criticizing them. The alleged news outlet was pilloried by journalists for overhyping the anonymous anti-Trump author who penned a scathing piece in 2018 about the president. 

The anonymous author, who wrote the piece for the Times, revealed himself as Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security staffer. After this revelation hit the news, it became obvious that the New York Times exaggerated his role in the Trump administration, telling its audience that he was a “senior” official. 

In reality, Taylor was a low-level staffer at the time that he wrote the piece. Matt Whitlock, Senior Advisor at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, pointed out on Twitter that the author of the piece was only a policy advisor. He wrote: 

“The NYT answered a bunch of written questions about why they decided to publish the op-ed, and defended the use of “senior administration official.

They used the phrase ‘upper echelons of an administration.’ But Taylor wasn’t even upper echelons of DHS.”

To put it simply, Taylor was not some high-level official who was “in the know” like the Times made him sound. To anyone with common sense, it seems obvious that the alleged newspaper deliberately exaggerated Taylor’s role in the government to make his article seem more credible. 

And the Never Trump folks fell for it like lemmings walking off a cliff. Progressives salivated over Taylor’s article like an adolescent boy looking at a naughty magazine. But it didn’t stop there, the “anonymous” government official even wrote a book titled “A Warning,” which was just a long-form version of his article. 

After Taylor identified himself as the “anonymous” author the grift was exposed and people on social media clobbered the New York Times for its role in deceiving the public. Even left-leaning members of the media lashed out at the Times for being so brazenly dishonest. 

“I also didn’t realize the definition of ‘senior administration official’ could be *this* expansive,” said Axios reporter Jonathan Swan.

Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias posted a tweet noting that the Times framed the article in a way that made it seem more authoritative. He wrote: “There’s a legitimate role for anonymity in journalism but that op-ed embodied one of its worst uses, where you obscure the source of information primarily to make the source sound more authoritative than he really is.”

Bloomberg News Senior White House Reporter Jennifer Jacobs tweeted: “A lot of this reaction from senior Trump aides who work very closely with the president. Some saying they barely knew Miles Taylor, and argue he wasn’t significant part of big decisions or meetings with Trump or Pence.”

Of course, it goes without saying that right-leaning journalists also lambasted the former government official. Fox News’ Greg Jarrett tweeted: “People who trash others anonymously are cowards.  Those who then LIE about it are dishonest. Perfect for CNN. Miles Taylor was a distant, disconnected figure who pretended to be some prominent Trump administration insider. His tweet today also shows he’s a grammatical idiot.”

The Washington Examiner’s Jerry Dunleavy also weighed in: “BTW, the Miles Taylor saga is a great example of why bad reporters and journos trying to push political agendas much prefer anonymous sources over on the record ones.”

Taylor, who left the White House in 2019 and is now a CNN contributor (of course) endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for president despite claiming to be a Republican. It was also revealed that he allegedly donated to President Barack Obama’s campaign, so it seems obvious which side he’s on. 

The former staffer’s motivation seems clear: He wanted attention and money, and he used an all-too-willing New York Times to achieve both. His book was published in 2019 and it sold hundreds of thousands of copies. In fact, it had over 100,000 preorders before it was even released. It appears Taylor made a decent chunk of change by simply appealing to the TDS crowd. 

In the words of the all-perceiving Uncle Hotep, “It’s grifting season.” When he and Hotep Jesus finally hold their “Grifter of the Year Awards,” on their podcast, “Hotep’s Been Told You,” Taylor should most definitely be in the running. 

This individual found a way to cash in on the Never Trumpers and progressives who will greedily lap up anything that confirms their anti-Trump attitudes like a thirsty puppy drinking water on a hot Texas day. And he even got the Times to help him do it. That’s pretty impressive even if he didn’t do it on purpose, isn’t it? I mean, if you’re going to be a Trump hater, why not get paid to have TDS?

But in the end, it says more about the people who blindly bought into the “anonymous” hype than it does about anyone else. By now, we should know not to trust unnamed sources without evidence. Moreover, we should also know that anyone who uses a word like “lodestar” does not deserve to be trusted. 

Let’s hope they have learned their lesson.

Let me know what you think in the comments below!

Follow me on Twitter: @JeffOnTheRight