Trip Gabriel

NYT: Republican Cuccinelli Is Controversial in Virginia Gov. Race, but Not Ex-Clintonite Terry McAuliffe?
By Clay Waters | March 1, 2013 | 8:47 AM EST

In "G.O.P.'s Ideological Split Appears in Virginia Governor's Race," New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel saw a controversial candidate on one side of the Virginia governor's race -- Republican candidate Kenneth Cuccinelli, Virginia's attorney general, who has support in the Tea Party and social conservative wings of the party.

His likely Democratic opponent? Terry McAuliffe, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and controversial fundraiser for the Clinton administration. But judging by the paper's lack of coverage so far, only Republicans have a problem. Gabriel doesn't even mention Democrat McAuliffe until paragraph 12, and in an odd omission, calls him only "a businessman and former political operative."

NYT's Trip Gabriel Warns GOP: Don't Rule Out Hollywood Star Ashley Judd as a Senator
By Clay Waters | February 19, 2013 | 2:26 PM EST

New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel promoted movie star and aspiring liberal politician Ashley Judd on Saturday: "Kentuckians Don’t Rule Out a Star as a Senator." Gabriel wrote: "How serious could such a candidacy be? Plenty, it turns out."

NYTimes Suggests GOP Ignored 'More Moderate, and Diverse, Direction of the Country' With Ryan Pick
By Clay Waters | November 8, 2012 | 1:44 PM EST

New York Times campaign reporter Trip Gabriel in the paper's Election 2012 section Thursday suggested Paul Ryan's brand of fiscal restraint was a dead end for the GOP in the "demographically diverse" United States: "Ryan in Republican Forefront, But Loss May Bring Blame – Questions on Whether Ticket Needed More Moderation."

For Representative Paul D. Ryan, defeat is not the political career-ender that it is for Mitt Romney. For one thing, he still has his day job -- he won an eighth term from his Wisconsin district on Tuesday. For another, Mr. Ryan is now a household name who is situated, at age 42, at the forefront of the next generation of Republicans.

Among New York Times's Excuses for Obama's 'Disaster' Debate: His 'Disdain' for Romney
By Clay Waters | October 8, 2012 | 11:20 AM EDT

On Monday's front page, New York Times reporters Peter Baker and Trip Gabriel used the upcoming vice presidential debate to criticize Obama's performance in his debate with Mitt Romney last week: "Biden Up Next, Obama's Aides Plot Comeback."

The Times didn't flinch from calling out Obama's "disaster" of a debate performance, but did find some excuses for the president, including distractions like the terrorist massacre in Libya (though that didn't stop Obama from attending a fundraiser in Las Vegas the next day). The Times also dropped in this revelation: "Mr. Obama made clear to advisers that he was not happy about debating Mr. Romney, whom he views with disdain."

NYT's Trip Gabriel Defends Biden's 'Stray Sentence' About the Buried Middle Class As 'Yanked from Context'
By Clay Waters | October 3, 2012 | 2:50 PM EDT

Vice President Joe Biden's latest gaffe came when he asked a North Carolina crowd how Romney and Ryan can "justify raising taxes on the middle class that’s been buried the last four years?" perhaps forgetting his boss has been in charge during that exact time frame (and that the Romney campaign denies it will raise taxes on the middle class). It predictably failed to make the print edition of the New York Times.

Campaign reporter Trip Gabriel did blog about it on Tuesday, but did his best to minimize the damage by suggesting the comment was a "stray sentence" wrenched from proper context: "Republicans Seize On Biden’s ‘Middle Class’ Remark."

NYT's Trip Gabriel Makes 'Mountain' Out of a Molehill Over Latest Dem Attack on Paul Ryan
By Clay Waters | September 7, 2012 | 3:21 PM EDT

New York Times campaign reporter Trip Gabriel joined vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan and his brother Tobin on a plane above the Rocky Mountains – and devoted a full story to probing Ryan's claims on climbing them, in Friday's "For Ryan, Perks Of Joining Ticket Can Be Weighty."

Gabriel rode with the paper's trendy passion for partisan-slanted "fact-checking," but at an even more petty level. After last week's controversy over Ryan's marathon time, Gabriel portrayed Ryan as on the defensive over another silly atheletic-related controversy, this time over how many mountain summits he had climbed, which Gabriel linked to Ryan's debunked claim to have run a super-fast marathon.

The photo caption: "Paul D. Ryan with his brother Tobin on Wednesday over the Rockies, where they sorted out the facts behind a mountainous claim."

NYT's Trip Gabriel Accuses GOP of Out-of-Context 'Misrepresentation' of Obama's 'You Didn't Build That'
By Clay Waters | August 23, 2012 | 1:25 PM EDT

New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel posted Wednesday on "Chris the Baker" -- Chris McMurray, a cookie store owner who made waves when he turned away VP Joe Biden from a prospective shop visit. Yesterday he joined Rep. Paul Ryan at a campaign rally in Roanoke, Va., site of President Obama's infamous "You didn't build that" remark, widely seen as dismissive of individual initiative and entrepreneurship.

Gabriel predictably accused McMurray and the GOP of "willfully twisting the president's remark" and blamed Ryan for having "continued the misrepresentation" of what Obama actually said. But do Obama's actual words help him at all?

NYT: Obama Makes Strong Pitch for 'Women's Rights' in Colo., While Romney Left Twisting in the 'Wind' in Iowa
By Clay Waters | August 10, 2012 | 11:08 AM EDT

On Thursday Jackie Calmes (pictured) and Trip Gabriel, two of the New York Times's more slanted campaign reporters, teamed up to cover Obama's campaign trip to Colorado and Romney's trip to Iowa: "Obama Assails Romney on Women’s Health Care." Covering Obama in Denver, the Times credited the president's popularity among women, while the Romney coverage from Iowa emphasized a controversy in that state, underlined by an accompanying photo caption: "Mitt Romney, visiting Iowa, kept quiet about his opposition to tax credits for wind power."

NYT's Trip Gabriel Rides to Defense of Obama on Relaxing Welfare Rules, Calls Conservative Charges 'a Stretch'
By Clay Waters | August 9, 2012 | 9:35 AM EDT

Riding to the defense of the Obama administration, New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel questionably termed allegations by conservatives that Obama had weakened federal welfare policy "a stretch" in a Wednesday news story, "Romney Presses Obama On Work in Welfare Law."

But scholars from the Heritage Foundation disagree and rebut the main point in defense raised by the Times. "[Health and Human Services] now claims that states receiving a waiver must 'commit that their proposals will move at least 20 percent more people from welfare to work compared to the state’s prior performance.' But given the normal turnover rate in welfare programs, the easiest way to increase the number of people moving from 'welfare to work' is to increase the number entering welfare in the first place." Heritage also defended Romney against the White House's hypocrisy charge.

On Illegal Immigration, New York Times Keeps Hammering Romney, Boosting Obama
By Clay Waters | June 27, 2012 | 5:00 PM EDT

New York Times reporters have been hammering away at Mitt Romney over his handling of the immigration issue, using last week's Supreme Court decision that unanimously upheld the main component of Arizona's immigration enforcement law to portray him as in an awkward and defensive position with Latino voters (while downplaying the fact that illegal immigration is a lower priority for Latinos than employment).

Campaign reporter Jeff Zeleny said on PBS's Washington Week last Friday that Romney "really took a hard right stance during this Republican primary nomination" on immigration enforcement, and several minutes of Friday's TimesCast were devoted to portraying Romney on the defensive.

NYT's Trip Gabriel Digs Spurs In, Takes Ann Romney's Horse Story for Another Pointless Lap
By Clay Waters | June 18, 2012 | 7:54 PM EDT

New York Times campaign reporter Trip Gabriel followed up on his vital hard-news front-page expose of Ann Romney's horseback riding with an update on Sunday that also conveniently illuminated the stereotype of the Romneys as rich and out of touch, this time with the help of that quintessential man of the people, comedian Stephen Colbert: "Romney Horse Wins Spot on Olympic Dressage Team."

Surprise: NYT's Coverage of New Obama Immigration Policy Utterly Slanted Toward Amnesty
By Clay Waters | June 18, 2012 | 3:28 PM EDT

President Obama on Friday bypassed Congress to put in place the New York Times' beloved Dream Act by executive order that halted deportation of young people who came to the United States illegally. That merited Saturday's lead story slot, occupied by immigration beat reporter Julia Preston and John Cushman, "Obama To Permit Young Migrants To Remain In U.S."

Preston and Cushman devoted precisely two of their 28 paragraphs to opposing views from "angry" Republicans in Congress. The rest were devoted to Obama's announcement, joyful illegals, and their liberal supporters happy that immigrants could finally, as the Times has reported ad nauseum, "come out of the shadows" (Preston's reporting in particular is notoriously pro-amnesty.) And the paper's succeeding stories on the issue were little better.