‘Low point in history’: Critics blast NY Times over ‘anti-Semitic’ cartoon & more

President Donald Trump fired back at the New York Times over an ‘anti-Semitic’ cartoon targeting him, but the US newspaper of record is also catching flak left and right over its strange takes on Christians, Jews and ‘Russiagate.’

The Times apologized on Monday for a cartoon depicting Trump as a blind man (wearing a yarmulke, a Jewish skullcap) being led around by a dog with facial features of the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump tweeted back that he never got an apology from the Times for the cartoon  – or “all of the Fake and Corrupt news they print on a daily basis.” He called it a “low point” in the paper’s history.

His adviser Kellyanne Conway chimed in, with a reminder that the Times had also described the Body of Christ rescued from the Notre-Dame Cathedral fire as a “statue of Jesus,” in either an extremely unfortunate translation error or appalling ignorance of one of the major world religions.

The Times has also produced some troublesome takes about Jews, NBC News analyst Howard Fineman pointed out, declaring that “Something’s awry” at the Times. Among the examples he brought up were a troubling editorial just before Easter and the coverage of Saturday’s shooting at a Poway, California synagogue that killed one person.

Long considered the “newspaper of record” in the US, the NY Times prides itself on “all the news that’s fit to print.” In the two years since Trump’s election, however, it appears to have jumped on the bandwagon of identity politics and made questionable hiring decisions.

This is not the first time it ran a tone-deaf and offensive cartoon targeting Trump, either – there was a mini-scandal last November with a cartoon calling Trump’s deployment of troops on the US-Mexico border a political ploy for the midterm elections.

Journalist and author George Szamuely argued the April 27 cartoon does not meet the strict definition of anti-Semitism and that legitimate questions exist about Trump’s pro-Israel policies. He did not defend the paper, however, blasting it the very next day for a “BS article” about “Russian hacking” under a “lurid headline.”

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