White House correspondent Peter Baker indulged his paranoia in a story in Friday’s New York Times: “In Trump’s Washington, a Moscow-Like Chill Takes Hold — A new administration’s efforts to pressure the news media, punish political opponents and tame the nation’s tycoons evoke the early days of President Vladimir V. Putin’s reign in Russia.”
The odious Russia comparison is not just a stray metaphor but the entire story, predicated on the idea that Trump’s America and Putin’s Russia are similar authoritarian entities run on political vengeance. (And this ran before Trump and Vance’s contentious Oval Office meeting with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.)
Baker reached back to his years covering Moscow to paint Trump as dangerous.
She asked too many questions that the president didn’t like. She reported too much about criticism…
