Joseph Vazquez’s main job at the Media Research Center is to push right-wing narratives about the economy and attack anyone who’s not a right-wing bot like he is. One of the favorite targets of Vazquez and the rest of the MRC is New York Times columnist Paul Krugman — they spent a lot of time ranting about him in 2023, and that pattern continued last year as well. Vazquez called in a right-wing economist to help him with the Krugman-bashing in a Jan. 11, 2024, post:
It’s unclear anymore whether New York Times propagandist-in-chief Paul Krugman actually believes the pro-Bidenomics psycho-babble he spits out or if he’s just trolling at this point.
Krugman tried bridging the gap between his illusion of a goldilocks Biden economy and the disgruntled, inflation-rattled consumers who aren’t as deluded as he is in his latest 1,108-word hot take, “Is Poor Economic Sentiment All About MAGA.” In Krugman’s distorted view, Americans struggling to make ends meet against the increasingly tenuous cost of living squeeze is just a mirage. “The more I look into it, the more I’m convinced that much of what looks like poor public perception about the economy is actually just Republicans angry that Donald Trump isn’t still president.” Yeah, go with that Krugman. [Emphasis added.]
Surely, it has nothing to do with the fact that the typical American household now has to spend at least an extra $11,434 per year just to maintain the same standard of living they had in January 2021, right? As The Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni told MRC Business mocking Krugman’s take: “Sure, people should feel good about the economy because an authoritarian in his ivory tower told them to be happy.”
Antoni ripped Krugman for once again deceiving his readers. “If that’s the kind of scholarship emanating from a Nobel Laureate, then the award is more a marker of hubris and arrogance than achievement.” Krugman chalking up Americans’ discontent with Biden’s decrepit economy to partisan politics is typical for the guy who spent the inflation crisis trying to brainwash readers into believing the price squeezes were “transitory.”
Vazquez failed to disclose Antoni’s right-wing bias.
From there, it was mostly whining by Vazquez, Tom Olohan and Nicholas Schau that Krugman refuses to be a good little Trump-bot like they are and won’t adhere to the right-wing narrative:
- Paul Krugman to Disgruntled Americans: You’re Not Struggling in This Economy, You Just ‘Hate’ Biden
- #MIGRAINE: Paul Krugman Made to Look Like a Fool Comparing Biden to Reagan
- REALLY? Paul Krugman Hypocritically Accuses Republicans of Fear-Mongering
- What Border Crisis? Tone-Deaf Paul Krugman Suggests Immigration Surge ‘Secret’ to US ‘Success’
- BUZZKILL! Krugman Claimed ‘Wave of Inflation’ Seems to ‘Have Broken’ Day Before Hot BLS Report
- What a Load of Crap: Paul Krugman Dry Heaves Over ‘Stench of Climate Change Denial’
- Paul Krugman to Biden: Your Economic Messaging Isn’t Working, Keep Doing It
- POST-DEBATE HYSTERICS: Krugman Says Biden ‘Best President of My Adult Life,’ then Tells Him to Scram
- FLASHBACK: Paul Krugman Bootlicked Biden for ‘Creating the Best Job Market In a Generation’
- HEAD IN SAND: Paul Krugman Claims Bidenomics Has Been Vindicated
When Krugman announced his retirement at the end of last year, Vazquez flew into an immature, spittle-flecked rage over him in a Dec. 9 post:
It finally happened. The New York Times’s ego-maniacal and perpetually wrong economics columnist is finally divorcing himself from his propaganda-mill column after nearly 25 years.
The Times Opinion Editor Kathleen Kingsbury drafted the company eulogy for Krugman’s career there, and the over the top praise for his faulty economic crystal ball was nothing short of comical.
“The authoritative voice. The lively writing. The direct style. The clear hand guiding readers through a thicket of policy, data and trade-offs,” read Kingsbury’s slobbering statement. “Paul is an important figure in the recent history of Times Opinion. Time and again, he took on the big fights, grappled with policy deeply and seriously, held the powerful to account and spoke hard truths.”
Cue the canned laughter.
This is the same Krugman who spent the past four years selling the snake oil of Bidenomics to the public as some sort of economic panacea while habitually hoodwinking Americans on the devastating inflationary crisis those undergirding policies helped create. “[S]poke hard truths?” Good grief. Did Kingsbury have to write this tongue-in-cheek?
But consumers of news shouldn’t expect anything less from the “economist” who’s essentially made his multimillion-dollar career off of deceiving the public and being on the opposite end of reality, even if it meant clearly looking ridiculous.
In a statement, MRC founder and president Brent Bozell blasted Krugman’s nightmarish tenure at the so-called “newspaper-of-record.” “Krugman’s embarrassing record of injecting leftism into his terrible economic analyses has sacrificed his own credibility. The only thing Americans will miss about Krugman’s column is its comic relief. Good riddance.”
Vazquez and Bozell, meanwhile, will never criticize Antoni for injecting right-wing politics into his economic analyses.
Clay Waters served up more Krugman-bashing in a Dec. 21 post:
On Friday’s PBS airing of Amanpour & Co., host Christiane Amanpour introduced “the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman, who’s written his last column for The New York Times, after 25 years of sharp and often indispensable takes on major issues that shape America and the world.”
Stop laughing, please.
NewsBusters has compiled decades of research proving Krugman’s knee-jerk partisanship is the opposite of sharp, and his conventional wisdom opinions far from indispensable. And he continues to claim Bidenomics has been vindicated. None of this penetrated the liberal PBS bubble, which didn’t offer the economist a single challenging question.
Cranking out partisan tirades against an economist who failed to toe the right-wing partisan line hardly counts as “decades of research.”