Spend any time on YouTube, and you’ll be forced to watch Sen. Jon Ossoff begging for dollars, underlining he’s the only Democrat Senator up for re-election that’s in a state Trump won in 2024. He’s no shoo-in. So The New York Times sought to shore him up in Georgia by touting his presidential timber. Here’s the gooey headline:
This Senator Is an Internet Sensation. Is He Running for President?
The 39-year-old senator has become an internet sensation for Democrats seeking a 2028 contender. He says he’s focused on winning a second term in November.
Reporters Reid Epstein and Patricia Mazzei began by noting he’s vulnerable, but everything’s coming up roses:
As the most vulnerable Democratic senator seeking re-election this year, Jon Ossoff of Georgia would rather do most other things than talk about whether he wants to run for president in 2028.
A lot has gone right for Mr. Ossoff over the last 19 months. The first-term senator has proved to be a formidable fund-raiser. His fiery rhetoric accusing President Trump of corruption has drawn an online audience of millions. Gov. Brian Kemp, the state’s most popular Republican, passed on running against him.
In three different passages, The Times insisted the Ossoff message is “resonating,” like this:
Mr. Ossoff has repeatedly denied any desire to run for president — “zero interest,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Yet his argument — that the Trump administration is fundamentally corrupt and threatens American democracy — is resonating on the ground and online, with a helpful boost from his Senate campaign....
Yet his singular idea for what his party’s direction should be is resonating: Take the country back from Mr. Trump. And he delivers his searing critiques in a way that few other Democrats have been able to do, with crisp lines that travel well on social media....
Back home, voters say Mr. Ossoff’s focus on how the Trump administration is hurting their daily lives is resonating.
Say it often enough, and maybe people will believe it. The Times even suggests that far-left extremists who favor Hamas and who think America deserved 9/11 favor this “moderate.”
Even Hasan Piker, the left-wing, pro-Palestinian streamer, recently ranked Mr. Ossoff, a moderate Jewish senator, third on his presidential wish list, behind only progressive Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ro Khanna of California.
So it's a little shocking when in the next paragraph, Ossoff is touted for calling his Republican opponent Mike Collins a “a notorious bigot, antisemite, and extremist." That sure sounds like Hasan Piker, but The Times is very soft on the leftist extremists and antisemites.
Ossoff is NOT a moderate. He gets perfect 100-percent scores from the AFL-CIO, the League of Conservation Voters, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL), and the LGBTQ lobbying group the Human Rights Campaign. It's quite an act of journalistic chutzpah to push a 100-percent liberal pol as a "moderate."
