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As we’ve previously reported, the gaslighting from supposedly objective news reporters at the New York Times (among other media outlets) when it comes to the Portland riots is out of control.

Unfortunately – but not surprisingly – the gaslighting is not confined to their “straight news” division. Times columnist Paul Krugman is among the more notorious gaslighters on the official opinion side, but his fellow liberal columnist Nicholas Kristof gave him some stiff competition with his latest piece in which he asks readers to “help me find Trump’s ‘anarchists’ in Portland.”

The clear insinuation is that they don’t exist:

Good grief. pic.twitter.com/zzeurUmgi7

— Sister Toldjah 😁 (@sistertoldjah) July 30, 2020

Most of Kristof’s column reads as though it was written through the eyes of a riot apologist – because that’s exactly what he is. Before we get to his big admission about the anarchists in Portland, let me give you some examples of his mockery of the idea that (leftist) anarchists have taken root in the city:

Maybe the rioting anarchists were in front of the crowd, where there are discussions about Black Lives Matter? I found musicians and activists and technicians, who were projecting a huge sign on the wall of a nearby building — “Fed Goons Out of PDX” — that seemed a bit geeky for anarchists.
[…]
Oh, wait, there was a man using angry language about the federal “occupation” and calling it “abhorrent.” Lots of protesters don’t seem to like him, so could he be a crazed anarchist rioter?

Oops, no, that’s just Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, sputtering after being tear-gassed by the feds.
[…]
Then I heard someone calling for the overthrow of Portland’s “leadership,” and I’d figured I’d finally found an anarchist. But it turned out to be Maria Bartiromo of Fox News, asking Chad Wolf, the acting head of homeland security, “Why can’t you just arrest the leadership in Portland because of their ignoring what’s really happening on the ground?”

She may be a crazed anarchist trying to topple legitimate authority, but I doubt she’s the kind Trump meant.

Here, Resistance wingman Kristof actually suggests some of the “late-night protesters” are playing 6D chess or something with Trump and the federal officers on the scene, while also alleging without evidence that Trump sending federal forces in to quell the unrest is part of an elaborate plot to instigate violence in an election year:

Some of these late-night protesters try to provoke the federal forces, partly to show how federal agents overreact with indiscriminate force. Meanwhile, Trump is deploying federal forces to provoke protesters into using violence that he can campaign on.

There is not a paragraph in the piece where Kristof doesn’t make excuses for the rioters and blame their plight on federal intervention – in spite of the fact that left-wing anarchist/Antifa violence in Portland predates Trump’s decision to send in federal officers, oh, by a decade or so.

Kristof did get around to acknowledging the existence of anarchists in the Democrat-run city, but absurdly painted it as a “complicated” situation:

OK, I’ll fess up: Sure there are anarchists and antifa activists in the Portland protests, just as there are radiologists and electricians, lawyers and mechanics. Report on the ground here and any single narrative feels too simplistic. The protesters aren’t all peaceful, nor are they primarily violent. They’re a complicated weave, differing by time of day.

The only “complicated weave” being woven here is from a sympathetic leftist hack columnist who actually embedded himself with the “protesters” specifically so he could file what he wants people to believe is an informed report almost entirely absolving them of any wrongdoing:

So @NickKristof has a new opinion piece up at the NY Times titled "Help Me Find Trump’s ‘Anarchists’ in Portland.

13 paragraphs in he admits they are there. pic.twitter.com/Uihj8xrJo0

— John Sexton (@verumserum) July 29, 2020

So he admits they do exist! Good to know. But they’re doing the wrong things for the right reasons because Orange Man Bad or something. Also good to know. (insert eyeroll here)

For what the situation really looks like in Portland, see our extensive coverage here and also follow independent journalist Andy Ngo’s Twitter feed.