Former New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston has found a calling, and it's to take down Donald Trump by any means necessary, including assigning the R-word — racist — to the President-elect's desired policies.
In his most recent attack during an MSNBC interview, Johnston effectively smeared every American who wants to see Obamacare repealed as either a racist or someone providing aid and comfort to racists and white supremacists.
Longtime readers at NewsBusters and at my home blog may remember Johnston as a New York Times "business" reporter who put up misleading but easily debunked graphics in 2007 and 2008 (in a brief guest appearance at the Times, from which he had recently taken a buyout) supposedly showing how median annual income was suffering during the Bush 43 administration.
During the Obama administration, Johnston, who insisted in e-mails and comments responding to my criticisms nine years ago that he always plays it straight, took a different tack, among other things celebrating a 2014 increase in median annual income which was still below where it was in 2007 (of course, he compared 2014 to 2001 to turn his "objective" analysis into one including the Bush 43 economy). Imagine that.
Five years ago, Johnston, writing for Reuters, hysterically claimed that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. was able to "make money off the tax system." Because he failed to properly understand the company's basic financial statements and disclosures, he had to completely retract his writeup. The truth he was forced to admit was that:
News Corp. did not get a $4.8 billion tax refund for the past four years, as I reported. Instead, it paid that much in cash for corporate income taxes for the years 2007 through 2010 while earning pre-tax profits of $10.4 billion.
It was obvious that Johnston allowed his deep animus towards News Corp. and its two most visible news entities, the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, to cause him to commit an error that probably wouldn't have gotten past most first-year business reporters:
Fox News, the editorial pages of his Wall Street Journal and other Murdoch outlets often rail against taxes. Their attacks on government benefits for the elderly, the sick, the jobless and children focus attention on the uses of tax dollars and away from his aggressive efforts to enjoy the benefits of civilization without paying for them.
Johnston really "plays it straight," doesn't he? (That's sarcasm, folks.)
The rise of Donald Trump has completely driven Johnston to distraction. Among other things, he fully believes that Trump should be prosecuted for tax fraud going back over three decades, even though his former employer has admitted that Trump's tax-minimizing strategies, while aggressive, were legal.
Naturally, the former Times reporter treats the race card as a convenient go-to strategy. On Saturday's AM Joy show on MSNBC, Johnston twice claimed that the desire to repeal ObamaCare is rooted in racism, and even threw in a bonus "white supremacist" reference:
Transcript:
(Clip 1)
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: When we went into the campaign on this (repeal ObamaCare) rant, it was part of his racist appeal, and his white supremacist appeal to get votes. And with everything else he said during the campaign, we’re now going to start to see he’s going to do whatever he thinks is the right thing to do at the moment. I don’t see any serious policy here. Donald is not somebody who sits down and reads policy papers for hours on end like President Obama for example.
(Clip 2)
JOY REID: David Cay Johnston, briefly, do you think that in the end the Affordable Care Act would be fully repealed under this next president?
JOHNSTON: No, it would be very foolish. And whatever they do, they’re not going to do it in a rush. They’re going to take their time, they’re going to want to limit any damage for the election two years out. And they're going to be strategically smart about this. But the outcome is not going to be good for poor and working people. And we should never forget the racist element in this. There’s no question there's a strong racist element in this.
Johnston's smear of all ObamaCare repeal proponents is so baseless it doesn't deserve a comment.
But I will ask one question, based on this set of facts.
I have a friend in a southern state. He and his wife, with no children living at home, have been hit with a $30,000-plus 2017 premium, which also happens to be more than triple what they paid in 2014. Here's proof that such premiums exist (the ages, zip code and immediate area linked are slightly different from my friend's to protect his privacy).
The question for racism-obsessed David Cay Johnston is this: Which racial group is most heavily and disproportionately represented among those who are between the ages of 55 and 65 who are paying breathtakingly outrageous unsubsidized ObamaCare premiums running as high as $30,000 or more per year, funding a large portion of the health insurance premiums of the 85 percent of Obamacare participants who receive subsidies?
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
