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Months After Meltdown Over Tom Cotton ‘Send In The Troops’ Op-Ed, New York Times Condemns Capitol Riot

By: Jordan Boyd
3 min read

After going to bat for leftist rioters, multiple Times journalists condemned Trump supporter riots and President Trump for not calling in federal law enforcement or condemning the violence fast enough.

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@jordanboydtx
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Months after staff at The New York Times had a meltdown, ejecting an editor over Sen. Tom Cotton’s article in June calling for federal law enforcement to stop the streak of riots in U.S. cities last summer, the publication came out condemning the destructive mob that breached the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday afternoon.

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Not only was the legacy paper’s front page scheduled to read “Trump Incites Mob. Rampage In Capitol Forces Evacuations. It’s ‘Part of His Legacy,’ A Republican Says” on Thursday, but multiple Times journalists have also condemned the riots and President Donald Trump for not calling in federal law enforcement or condemning the violence fast enough.

In June, the Times published an editorial penned by the senator from Arkansas, who urged President Trump to “send in the troops” to quell the violent riots, looting, and arson that ripped through cities around the United States following the death of George Floyd.

“The American people aren’t blind to injustices in our society, but they know that the most basic responsibility of government is to maintain public order and safety,” Cotton wrote. “In normal times, local law enforcement can uphold public order. But in rare moments, like ours today, more is needed, even if many politicians prefer to wring their hands while the country burns.”

Despite receiving backlash from its own staff, the Times originally defended publishing the op-ed, claiming that “Times Opinion owes it to our readers to show them counter-arguments, particularly those made by people in a position to set policy.”

“We understand that many readers find Senator Cotton’s argument painful, even dangerous. We believe that is one reason it requires public scrutiny and debate,” editorial page editor James Bennet wrote after some of his colleagues declared that “Running this puts Black @nytimes staffers in danger.”

The next day, however, the Times added an editor’s note to Cotton’s article stating, “We have concluded that the essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published.”

Following more public pushback from a coalition of New York Times staffers and online mobs about Cotton’s article, Bennet stepped down from his position at the publication.

The backlash continued, and the newspaper ran another op-ed from Michelle Goldberg claiming that Cotton’s writing was “fascist.” The Times’s union also spoke out, saying that the senator’s op-ed “promotes hate”

One day after the Capitol fiasco, despite previously disagreeing with Cotton’s words over the summer, Bennet admitted that he wished the military would have intervened sooner on Wednesday.

Despite the Times’s hypocrisy on rule of law, Cotton maintained the same stance he had in June, writing on Twitter that “this violence is unacceptable and needs to be met with the full force of the law.”

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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