There is no tragedy in American life so grave, no crime so horrifying, that the mainstream media won’t find a way to make it about Donald Trump. Natural disasters, economic downturns, cultural rot – the playbook never changes. Find the pain, find the cameras, pin it on the 45th and 47th president. Rinse, repeat, collect your clicks.

But what happens when that reflex crosses into genuinely grotesque territory? What happens when a columnist at America’s supposed paper of record seizes on an alleged gang rape – a real woman’s nightmare – and turns it into a political bludgeon against a president who wasn’t even in office when it happened? Because that’s exactly what just occurred.

From Fox News:

The New York Times is under fire after one of its columnists suggested that President Donald Trump is responsible for creating the culture that led to an alleged sexual assault against a woman at Cornell University by seven men.

“What this is, is it’s a fundamental disrespect for women,” columnist Michelle Cottle said on ABC News on Sunday. “You can’t send those messages no matter how drunk you are as a frat boy without having some kind of misunderstanding about what women are there for and whether this is a real person you’re dealing with.”

“And that, I think, starts, you know – we can go to the president for this one,” Cottle went on. “I mean, we are in a moment in this culture where the glorification of being thuggish and swaggering and mistreating women is kind of making you a cool kid.”

So let’s get the facts straight – since Cottle apparently couldn’t be bothered. The alleged assault took place in 2024. Joe Biden was president. Not Trump. Biden. The civil lawsuit, filed by a woman identified as Jane Doe, describes a ketamine- and alcohol-fueled incident involving seven men at Cornell University. No criminal charges have been filed. The accused deny wrongdoing.

And yet somehow, in Cottle’s telling, Donald Trump conjured this horror from the cultural ether. The New York Times owes its readers – and frankly, the alleged victim – an explanation for how one of its columnists landed on this fantasy and broadcast it to millions on national television without a shred of factual grounding.

A pattern the Times refuses to own

The backlash was immediate, and it wasn’t limited to the usual suspects. Fox News contributor Joe Concha flagged the glaring timeline problem. One observer on X put it bluntly: “This happened in 2024 when Biden was President. Did she not know that?”

CNN contributor Scott Jennings – no MAGA warrior, mind you – offered the sharpest jab: “Latest edition of ‘Trump turned me into a newt!’ brought to you by a very very smart person.”

Former DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin went straight for the jugular: “Media and pundits fall all over themselves trying to make everything and anything about Donald Trump. It’s embarrassing and so incredibly lazy.” Conservative commentator John Ziegler was even less diplomatic: “This take is SO far beyond delusional that you can’t even see sanity from here.”

Worth noting: nobody on that ABC News panel challenged Cottle in the moment. Not one person said, “Hold on – Trump wasn’t president when this happened.” The silence was its own kind of endorsement.

Real victims deserve better than this

Here’s the deeper damage. A woman alleges she was brutally violated by seven men. Her pain, her pursuit of justice – all of it gets conscripted into the Times’ endless war on one man. That’s not cultural commentary. That’s exploitation dressed in a byline.

Personal responsibility used to mean something. When a crime occurs, you hold the perpetrators accountable. You don’t saddle a politician – one who was a private citizen at the time – with moral ownership of someone else’s alleged depravity. That’s propaganda wearing a press badge.

The case has only grown more tangled. New York Attorney General Letitia James – whose previous civil fraud case against Trump was overturned on appeal – is now leading the investigation. Draw your own conclusions about the neutrality of that arrangement.

The Gray Lady owes an answer

Fox News Digital reached out to the New York Times for comment. The response? Nothing. No defense. No correction. No acknowledgment that attributing a 2024 crime to a president who took office in 2025 might warrant a modicum of intellectual honesty.

Americans with long memories remember when the Times masthead actually meant credibility. Today, every story is a weapon, and Trump is always the target – facts, timelines, and victims be damned. Until the paper answers for this kind of reckless fabrication, every word it prints deserves an asterisk.

Key Takeaways

• A NYT columnist blamed Trump for an alleged assault that happened under Biden’s watch.
• Bipartisan critics – including a CNN contributor – called the claim delusional and lazy.
• Politicizing sexual assault allegations exploits real victims and dodges true accountability.
• The New York Times has offered no correction, retraction, or explanation for the remarks.

Source: Fox News