From the lead, front-page news article in Sunday's New York Times, about a Trump Organization lawyer, Michael Cohen: "He has spent much of his personal and professional life with immigrants from Russia and Ukraine. His father-in-law, who helped establish him in the taxi business, was born in Ukraine, as was one of Mr. Cohen's partners in that industry. Another partner was Russian."
From an op-ed column by Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg, in the May 8 New York Times, headlined, "Why Did a Creepy Israeli Intel Firm Spy on Obama Alums?":
On Saturday, the British newspaper The Observer published an article that, if true, should rocket into the top tier of Donald Trump scandals. Aides to the president, it said, "hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a 'dirty ops' campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal."
The Israeli agents, said The Observer, specifically targeted Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama's national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, a deputy assistant to Obama and national security adviser to Joe Biden. ...
The Observer did not identify the Israeli intelligence firm.... the same fake firm that a female operative for the Israeli intelligence firm Black Cube used as a cover when she spied on the actress Rose McGowan for Harvey Weinstein.
It's outrageous that Black Cube, a company of former Israeli intelligence agents, appears to have spied on Americans to undermine the Iran nuclear agreement... if Trump's team had any role at all in using foreign spies against American citizens, it should end his presidency...
"I have zero — zero — evidence that Trump aides did this," Kahl told me. "None. But it needs to be explained, this weird coincidence of this strange fixation on Ben and me by a handful of White House aides at the exact same moment in time that this Israeli firm gets hired to dig into us and our families."
It's odd that the New York Times, which accuses President Trump of xenophobia when he dwells on the Mexican background or immigration status of criminals, seems to apply a different standard when it comes to Russian, Ukrainians, or Israelis. It's almost as if the Times doesn't really have a consistent, principled stance when it comes to not whipping up fears about foreign crime or influence. The Times, for example, hasn't voiced a lot of objections to the Steele dossier, compiled by a former British intelligence officer meddling in American politics. Yet when Israelis get involved in opposition research or even issue-oriented campaigns, it's a "scandal," at least to the Times.
Trump's critics may view it as a sad day that the president's xenophobia is spreading to the left. Trump's defenders may see it as proof that the president's critics are hypocrites, or that the attacks on Trump for xenophobia are partisan rather than sincere. Whatever you make of it, it's interesting to see resurgent nationalism breaking out at the Mexican-owned (Carlos Slim) and ostensibly globalist New York Times.