Even though Paul Krugman retired from the New York Times at the end of last year, the Media Research Center can’t stop raging that he refuses to to spout pro-Trump narratives on the economy. Joseph Vazquez ranted in a Jan. 27 post under the headline “GO AWAY”:
Former New York Times columnist and pseudo-economics savant Paul Krugman clearly isn’t taking retirement too well, as he’s taken to going on rants against his former employer and President Donald Trump, who lives rent-free in his brain.
In a January 24 interview with the Columbia Journalism Review, Krugman expressed his “rage” at his editors, which apparently began to balk at the extremism that plagued his columns (shocker).
“I’ve always been very, very lightly edited on the column,” Krugman whined. “And that stopped being the case [in 2024]. The editing became extremely intrusive. It was very much toning down of my voice, toning down of the feel, and a lot of pressure for what I considered false equivalence.”
Krugman bellyached that he approached “Mondays and Thursdays with dread,” and “often spent the afternoon in a rage.”
Are you laughing yet?
Looks like Krugman is living rent-free in Vazquez’s head. And he goes on to further prove it:
Then Krugman outrageously compared Trump’s policy to have federal employees report on colleagues who defy his anti-DEI measures as “our own private East Germany.” Yes, Krugman actually compared this to a Communist country where its notorious Stasi ran one of the most sophisticated, tyrannical and Orwellian surveillance empires ever.
Krugman’s political prediction, which is about as useless as his economic forecasts, is that Trump will politicize the NIH and “other health agencies” by prohibiting the release of “information and research whose implications the Trump administration doesn’t like,” and by banning officials from “making policy recommendations that are inconvenient for Trump or at odds with the prejudices of the MAGA base.” In turned, bleated Krugman, “many Americans will die as a result.”
Did Krugman forget that the Biden administration, of which he repeatedly fawned over, was exposed for suppressing dissenting views supporting the credible lab leak theory on the COVID-19 virus origins? Oh, never mind.
But what can you expect from a notorious, egotistical has-been who’s been reduced to charging people money to read his certifiable opinions on his personal blog? As CJR humorously wrote, “When Krugman left the paper, last December, his departure attracted little notice, apart from some standard encomiums from his boss.”
As we’ve noted, the CIA said it had “low confidence” in an assessment hyped by the Trump administration that a lab leak caused the pandemic, and the idea that the virus developed naturally in a market in Wuhan has not been disproven. Further the Trump administration has targeted federal employees for the offense of doing their job in fulfilling DEI initiatives, which comes off as more than a little Stasi-esque.
Vazquz spewed more insults at Krugman in a Feb. 14 post under the headline “Oh Blow It Out Your Nose!”:
Amazing. Just amazing. The consummate Bidenomics simp and former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is trying to make “Trumpflation” a thing in the public discourse.
“Lies, Damned Lies and Trumpflation,” railed Krugman in his latest February 14 certifiable screed. What was hilarious was that the first five paragraphs of his piece literally had little to do with the economy aside from drumming up random conspiracy theories about President Donald Trump’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention potentially hiding data on the next hypothetical pandemic.
Then came the kicker: “But while I’m not an epidemiologist, I do know something about inflation.” Well it turns out he’s not much of a serious economist either. It’s quite bold for him to make this claim after being the same transitory apologist that blurted out March 2022 during the Bidenflation disaster that he didn’t “understand what the hell has been going on” with inflation. He still doesn’t.
Meanwhile, Vazquez has long been a Trump simp on the economy, expressing anger that most normal people wouldn’t relentlessly trash the economy under Biden the way he did. And he’s still desperate to talk down the Biden economy:
Newsflash to Krugman: Nothing Biden did made consumer prices cheaper writ large, and yet you still tried to convince everybody and their mother that his inflationary policies were the best thing since sliced bread. So excuse us if we choose to throw our heads back in laughter at your insinuation that anybody should be taking you seriously now.
“Trumpflation?” Seriously: Take a hike.
Vazquez got a little help in his Krugman derangement from Clay Waters, who wrote in a post the same day:
If PBS wants to combat accusations that the tax-funded news network is a haven for smug elitist politics (PBS, where even the conservatives are liberal!), Thursday night’s segment featuring former New York Times columnist and (once) respected economist Paul Krugman wasn’t the way to go about it.
Krugman really leaned into his natural unlikability in the remote interview with PBS’s resident economics reporter Paul Solman, who drew Krugman out on the stupidity of his now-former newspaper and low-income Trump voters[.]
Vazquez returned to Krugman derangement in an April 14 post — under yet another attempt at an insulting headline, “Look In the Mirror, Sport” — in which he groused that Krugman wouldn’t spout his preferred pro-Trump talking points on tariffs:
It seems impossible for former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to stay out of the limelight and make himself look even more ridiculous.
The insufferable economic dunce-in-chief joined the show Here & Now on National Public Radio to go on a predictable tirade against President Donald Trump’s tariff battle with trading partners, and completely downplaying the significance of trade deficits. NPR asked Krugman during an April 8 segment, “Trump has long criticized U.S. trade deficits with countries including Japan and China. Do trade deficits with individual countries matter?”
Then Krugman had the temerity to accuse Trump of using dumb economics, as if he really has any leg to stand on following the extent to which he simped for the disaster of Bidenomics. “No, just as simple as that. This is all junk economics. I have a trade deficit with my supermarket. I have a trade surplus with my employer. Bilateral trade deficits are all around us. It’s how we live.”
Yes, the same person who spent months trying to convince the country that the inflation crisis under Biden was “transitory,” that America would witness a Biden boom, and who told Biden before his inauguration “ Don’t Worry About Inflation” is complaining about so-called “junk economics.” He also even had the audacity to bleat that Biden “created the best job market in a generation.” The level of projection here is just unreal.
[…]Krugman further stoked alarmism when asked about the effects of a persistent trade war, ““In the longer run, meaning a year or two from now, it just means increases in prices that will run well ahead of increases in wages. So, we’ll be talking about people having less purchasing power. It’s a pretty serious cost.”
Oh, so now all of a sudden Krugman is concerned about increased prices running ahead of wages after he effectively treated Americans as being dumb for panning Bidenomics?
Actually, prices are indeed going up because of Trump’s tariff war, but Vazquez instead decided to play dumb and stick to his hateful script:
What the end result of Trump’s trade war is, nobody knows. But there is enough evidence to show that the last person anybody in the media — including NPR — should be looking to for a serious take on the economy’s future is an unhinged ideologue like Krugman who acts like Bidenomics was the best thing since chocolate ice cream. Good grief.
The only unhinged ideologue we see here is Vazquez. Good grief, indeed.