Tom Cotton Once Again Owns the NY Times Over Divisive Flag Piece, Further Exposes Bigger Issue in the MSM

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is pretty good at owning the New York Times, as evidenced by how he single-handedly took down the supposed “newspaper of record” last June by getting them to expose themselves for the partisan hacks they are over an op-ed he wrote, and then moving on to his next adventure – which was to run anti-Biden ads in the paper using the very money he made from fundraising over the op-ed controversy to pay for them.

Here we are a year later, and Cotton is owning the Times yet again, this time over a predictable piece the paper ran over the weekend that labeled the American flag an “alienating” symbol. For those who missed it, here’s a snippet:

Supporters of former President Donald J. Trump have embraced the flag so fervently — at his rallies, across conservative media and even during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol — that many liberals like Mr. Treiber worry that the left has all but ceded the national emblem to the right.

What was once a unifying symbol — there is a star on it for each state, after all — is now alienating to some, its stripes now fault lines between people who kneel while “The Star-Spangled Banner” plays and those for whom not pledging allegiance is an affront.

And it has made the celebration of the Fourth of July, of patriotic bunting and cakes with blueberries and strawberries arranged into Old Glory, into another cleft in a country that seems no longer quite so indivisible, under a flag threatening to fray.

The piece quoted some Democrats who said they no longer flew the flag because they felt like its message had been coopted by Trump supporters.

During an appearance on Fox News Monday, Cotton blasted the paper’s skewed reporting about the flag, especially on a weekend meant to celebrate America’s independence, and explained the history of our founding and in the process talked about why no one should be ashamed to fly the flag regardless of their political affiliation:

“Over the weekend, you saw The New York Times running a long story about how the flag, for goodness sake, is now a divisive symbol for many Americans. Look, we should be proud of our heritage and our founding principles. Two hundred and forty-five years ago this weekend, our founding fathers declared our independence not just because of local grievances over taxes or the quartering of soldiers, but because they wanted to found a new republic dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, as Abraham Lincoln said at the Gettysburg Address.

Now, we haven’t always achieved that practice, but our history has been one of continuingly struggling to realize those ideals. That’s exactly what Dr. Martin Luther King said in his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in which he explicitly and repeatedly invoked the declaration and said that we are the – our work is the full realization of America’s founding principles. We should teach our children, whether it’s in the schools or in our movies and television or our comic books, to be proud of and celebrate America’s traditions.”

Watch (starts at around the 3:55 mark):

Tom Cotton discusses different states sending help to TX over the border crisis, and rips the NYT over piece labeling American flag as "divisive symbol" https://t.co/tGWiQCzxRp

— Sister Toldjah 😁 (@sistertoldjah) July 6, 2021

Look, if someone doesn’t display an American flag, that’s their personal choice, but if they’re not displaying it specifically because they don’t want to be mistaken as part of one party and/or another or because they believe America is a “racist” country because of the flaws of our founders, I’m sorry but that’s just stupid.

We saw a similar sentiment after 9/11 when Bush was President. There were Democrats who took their American flags off their front porches because they were afraid they’d be associated with the Republicans who proudly flew it in support of their country and the U.S. military that was waging the war on terror overseas. Now, there are people who don’t fly the flag because of that and because they’ve been taught warped versions of American history, versions that “news” outlets like the New York Times and other news outlets enthusiastically endorse (like Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project) – which is the real reason why we see pieces like the one the Times ran this weekend.

The American flag is not about any President and it’s not about a party. It’s meant to show love and support for the greatest country on earth, faults and all. As Cotton indicated, we are indeed an imperfect nation but we work every day to live up to the “all men are created equal” principle expressed by our founders. If people aren’t flying their flag because they’re worried about being associated with another political party and/or have been taught to believe that America is a racist country because our founders weren’t perfect people, then the flag is not the problem: