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Many American institutions have beclowned themselves in the past 10 years — too many to list. To count the right-leaning institutions that have not succumbed to Trumpian populism takes only one hand. But the decline of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page has been particularly galling because, compared to the Heritage Foundation, Hillsdale College or the Claremont Institute, it had farther to fall.
In the pre-Trump era, the paper had some integrity. While the board was broadly aligned with the Republican Party, its editorials didn't hesitate to differ with Republicans on major questions.
In the Trump era, the Journal has become, if not Pravda, then something like the Nation. The Nation reliably whitewashed the sins of the Soviet Union and other communist regimes because it regarded anti-communism as a greater threat to the world than communism itself. Similarly, The Wall Street Journal has gradually become a parody of itself on the grounds that Democrats are always and forever the greatest threat to the country.
With that guiding principle, there is simply no Republican, no matter how deranged or unfit, whom the Journal will not prefer to a Democratic opponent. In 2022, the Journal advised its Arizona readers to choose Kari Lake for governor despite the fact that Lake had called for the 2020 election to be decertified, denounced mask wearing and encouraged the use of hydroxychloroquine during the pandemic, promised to criminally pursue journalists who "dupe the public," and pronounced the nation "rotten to the core" when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago. The Journal didn't mention most of that in its endorsement, claiming, hilariously, that Arizona's election was primarily about school choice.
This week, commenting on the drone kerfuffle, the Journal intoned that it couldn't be sure what people were seeing — but it was certain that the whole thing could be attributed to the erosion of trust in government.
Noting that "non-cranks" have reported seeing things that move strangely in the dark, the Journal quoted Jon Bramnick, a GOP state senator from New Jersey, who said, "It must be something going on that they can't tell us because they are so fearful of what the public's gonna do when they hear what the drones are doing."
You might think the paper would rebuke this state senator for getting out over his skis and encouraging conspiratorial thinking, but no, the editorial notes that "This is how deep the suspicion runs. And when that happens, conspiracy theories fill the air as much as drones do."
And guess who's responsible for this erosion of trust?
The Biden administration has squandered its credibility to the point that it's rational not to believe what it says. Remember the Chinese spy balloon that traveled across the continental U.S.? The administration downplayed its importance while it was courting better relations with Beijing, only to shoot it down over the Atlantic Ocean.