Former New York Times columnist and pseudo-economics savant Paul Krugman clearly isn’t taking retirement too well, as he’s taken to going on rants against his former employer and President Donald Trump, who lives rent-free in his brain.
In a January 24 interview with the Columbia Journalism Review, Krugman expressed his “rage” at his editors, which apparently began to balk at the extremism that plagued his columns (shocker).
“I’ve always been very, very lightly edited on the column,” Krugman whined. “And that stopped being the case [in 2024]. The editing became extremely intrusive. It was very much toning down of my voice, toning down of the feel, and a lot of pressure for what I considered false equivalence.”
Krugman bellyached that he approached “Mondays and Thursdays with dread,” and “often spent the afternoon in a rage.”
Are you laughing yet?
The target of his ire was Times Opinion Deputy Editor Patrick Healy, who Krugman seethed “rewrote crucial passages; I would then do a rewrite of his rewrite to restore the original sense, and felt that I was putting more work—certainly more emotional energy—into repairing the damage from his editing than I put into writing the original draft.”
Krugman bellowed that the editing process — which every career journalist and columnist goes through — “both made my life hell and left the columns flat and colorless.”
Healy pushed back in an email to CJR: “[Krugman] never called or emailed me saying I was changing his meaning or censoring his views, and he never lodged an objection to me that I overrode.”
If the nutty columns MRC wrote up in 2024 was supposedly just the, er, toned-down version, it begs the question of how bad it must have become for even The Times. His Substack definitely provides a clue.
“Donald Trump Wants You to Die,” Krugman shrieked in an insane January 24 Substack blog, published the same day as his CJR interview. After smearing the MAGA movement’s disdain for the “deep state” as “paranoid” — which itself is just stupid in light of the evidence of former President Joe Biden’s agencies pressuring Big Tech to censor speech — Krugman wailed the “the assault on professional government” by the Trump administration includes an effort “intimidate and politicize civil servants, too.”
Krugman is so absorbed with himself that he’s charging Substack readers subscriptions to have full access to his babble: $7 for a monthly subscription, $70 for a yearly subscription, and a $210 minimum for a “Founding Member” subscription.
So what evidence did Krugman have for his incendiary claim that Trump wants everyone “to die?” Trump’s nixing of woke diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies within federal agencies:
About the broad attack on the civil service: The Trump administration has ordered an immediate end to all diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across the federal government. That’s pretty shocking, especially because it’s open-ended. What counts as D.E.I.? Is it forbidden even to mention anything involving race, gender or socioeconomic status? Probably.
Then Krugman outrageously compared Trump’s policy to have federal employees report on colleagues who defy his anti-DEI measures as “our own private East Germany.” Yes, Krugman actually compared this to a Communist country where its notorious Stasi ran one of the most sophisticated, tyrannical and Orwellian surveillance empires ever.
Krugman’s political prediction, which is about as useless as his economic forecasts, is that Trump will politicize the NIH and “other health agencies” by prohibiting the release of “information and research whose implications the Trump administration doesn’t like,” and by banning officials from “making policy recommendations that are inconvenient for Trump or at odds with the prejudices of the MAGA base.” In turned, bleated Krugman, “many Americans will die as a result.”
Did Krugman forget that the Biden administration, of which he repeatedly fawned over, was exposed for suppressing dissenting views supporting the credible lab leak theory on the COVID-19 virus origins? Oh, never mind.
But what can you expect from a notorious, egotistical has-been who’s been reduced to charging people money to read his certifiable opinions on his personal blog? As CJR humorously wrote, “When Krugman left the paper, last December, his departure attracted little notice, apart from some standard encomiums from his boss.”
