The New York Times published honest-to-God disinformation this week following the withdrawal of President Joe Biden’s nominee to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
The paper didn’t publish misinformation but actual disinformation. Big difference.
“Saule Omarova,” the New York Times announced Tuesday evening in a breaking news alert, “a Cornell Law professor whom President Biden picked for a key banking regulator job, is withdrawing from consideration for the post. Bank lobbyists and Republicans painted her as a communist because she was born in the Soviet Union.”
This is not even close to being true. It’s a willful, intentional lie.
Republicans lawmakers opposed Omarova’s nomination to supervise an estimated 1,200 U.S. financial institutions because she wants to nationalize the banking system. They opposed her because she wants, according to her own words and policy papers, a complete federal takeover of all wages, gas, and food prices. They opposed her because she believes all capital and credit should be controlled by a single, unelected government bureaucracy.
That Omarova also has a rosy view of Soviet economic policies, paired with her stated desire to bankrupt the oil industry, is just icing on the cake.
It’s worth mentioning that at least five Senate Democrats joined Republicans in opposing Omarova’s nomination. Clearly, this was about more than just the fact that she was born in the former Soviet Union. Indeed, if it were as simple and petty as the New York Times alleges, Jelena McWilliams, who was likewise born in the U.S.S.R., wouldn’t have been confirmed to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 2018 by a vote of 69-24.
The text of the New York Times’s coverage of Omarova’s withdrawal is no better than its breaking news alert.
“Saule Omarova,” the New York Times reports, “a Cornell Law School professor whom critics painted as a communist after President Biden picked her for a key banking regulator job, is withdrawing from consideration for the post.”
It adds, “Ms. Omarova, who grew up in the former Soviet Union, faced months of criticism from Republicans and bank lobbyists who cast her as a threat to the American economy … Republicans in Congress [claimed] that both her academic work and her Soviet origins should disqualify her.”
The New York Times also accuses the Wall Street Journal of publishing an editorial “suggesting that Ms. Omarova’s Soviet childhood meant that she could not be trusted.”
Like Senate Republicans, the Wall Street Journal did no such thing. Rather, like Republicans, its editorial merely highlighted Omarova’s own words. The New York Times is simply lying.
The New York Times report then struggles, ever so briefly, with the fact that Omarova’s nomination also drew opposition from at least five Senate Democrats, including Sen. Jon Tester of Montana and Mark Warner of Virginia (the paper doesn’t mention this uncomfortable fact until the story’s 12th paragraph). Like Republicans, the five Democrats were taken aback by Omarova’s stated positions. However, unlike Republicans, the New York Times gives them the benefit of the doubt, suggesting their opposition was rooted in policy and ideological differences.
But Republicans also opposed Omarova’s nomination over policy and ideological differences, not merely for the fact that she was born in the U.S.S.R. Republicans were disturbed by her many fanatical proclamations, including when she said in 2019, “Until I came to the U.S., I couldn’t imagine that things like gender pay gap still existed in today’s world. Say what you will about old U.S.S.R., there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best.’”
She added, “I never claimed women and men were treated absolutely equally in every facet of Soviet life. But people’s salaries were set (by the state) in a gender-blind manner. And all women got very generous maternity benefits. Both things are still a pipe dream in our society!”
Sure, we were poor, basic goods and services were strictly regulated by a central committee, and our Soviet-produced products were scarcer and far inferior to those produced by the U.S. But at least we all suffered equally!
Hey, let’s put this lady in charge of the banks!
The New York Times knows Republicans objected not to where Omarova was born, but rather her radical, Soviet-esque policies. Its reporters followed her now-scuttled nomination closely enough to know what the objections were.
This is what makes the paper’s coverage this week not mere misinformation, but actual disinformation. It’s an intentional lie, pushed and promoted by people who know better, attacking a specific political target.
In this case, the target is Republicans who objected to Omarova’s nomination.
