The NYT Performs Loyal Stenography—Masquerading as Journalism—to Protect AOC
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Munich and Berlin trips exposed her foreign policy inexperience—30-second stumbles on Taiwan, Venezuela’s equator misstatements, and deflecting Ukraine questions. The NYT’s Kellen Browning, a reporter who previously amplified her errors, published a stenographic piece omitting context or opposing views, framing her struggles as overshadowed by "viral conservative critiques." This pattern reveals media’s complicity in protecting political figures over truth, regardless of ideology, undermining public trust in journalism. [Automatically generated summary]
I want to talk to you about a genuinely unbelievable article in the New York Times about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
And when I say genuinely unbelievable, I mean, even for somebody like myself who has expressed disgust and contempt for the practice of corporate media for more than two decades, it's kind of a you have to read it to believe it article, which is why I think it's worth covering.
Before I do that, just quickly, for those of you who don't know, and you probably, I think most of you do, we recently moved from Rumble back to Substack last Monday.
There you can see it on the screen, our Substack page at Blind Greenwald.
We already have a lot of articles, a lot of different kinds of content.
It's really freeing not to have to do a nightly show every single night live at the same exact time, doing a ton more writing, which is what I've always loved doing and is my passion.
So if you want to check it out, you can do so there.
All right.
As most of you know, if you watch this channel, because we did a video report on it two days ago, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spent two weeks telling the national, really the international media that she was about to have her big coming out party as a foreign policy expert, as someone who has gravitas on international affairs, who's ready to offer a competing vision of what American foreign policy should look like.
That draws a sharp contrast with the one established by Donald Trump and JD Vance and Marco Rubio.
This was her debut on the international stage to show that she is not just somebody who can call people racist and sexist and just kind of spew clichés, but she's actually a very deep, informed, thoughtful, philosophical foreign policy thinker.
And there were all these articles dutifully written in every major newspaper in the United States and Europe about how she's about to make her big appearance, so highly anticipated.
And she went to Munich and really, I mean, she just, there's no other way to put it.
She really just fell flat on her face.
We covered one, probably the most egregious embarrassment where she went to Munich and was asked the simplest question, which is, should the United States commit military troops in the event China attacks Taiwan?
And she stumbled and stuttered for close to 30 seconds and then muttered some totally non-responsive stuff.
And there were a lot of other things like that that just proved that she hasn't completed her tutoring.
She's not able to give book reports, even though she studied really hard.
You know, she is studious, but it doesn't always translate into good performance.
So it's created a lot of attention, a lot of controversy, a lot of embarrassment that has really utterly overshadowed everything else that she wanted to do on this trip.
And she knows that.
She's probably the most connected politician on a national level to social media.
She's, that's one thing where she has demonstrated skill and adeptness.
She's very, very good at being an influencer, at being a social media presence.
No doubt about that.
And so she understands how viralized these videos have been, how kind of embarrassing these criticisms have been.
And she had a couple of options.
One is she could have just produced a video herself and spoke about her flubs and mistakes.
She could have put out statements on her own social media platforms, which are very sizable and reached a lot of people, had a lot of people hurt.
No, that's not what she chose to do.
Instead, what she did is totally unsolicited.
She picked up the phone and called her favorite New York Times reporter, just handpicked the one she wanted.
He was on this trip in Germany covering her in a very, very, very positive way.
She's obviously very comfortable with him.
She called him up and she's like, hey, I'd like to tell you some things that I want you to publish in the New York Times about my trip.
I want to respond to these criticisms.
So get a pen and you're going to write down what I say and then you're going to publish it in the New York Times.
It wasn't like they were chasing her for an interview, that they got some scored some exclusive.
She picked them.
She picked up the phone and called him and said, Hey, I'd want you to, I have some things to say.
You're going to put it in the New York Times.
He's like, okay, tell me.
I got my pen ready to write down like everything.
Okay.
Yeah.
What else?
Okay.
Is that yeah?
And she's like, yeah.
And it ended up exactly like that in the paper.
It's, I mean, it's, it's not even a glorified press release of AOCs.
It's just a press release that ended up in the New York Times.
And it illustrates a lot about how modern corporate journalism works.
What really is my biggest critique?
It's not so much that they're like left-wing or right-wing.
They're just utterly captive to political power and to the people who can do them the biggest favors.
This is a young journalist from San Francisco.
This is like a big opportunity for him.
He knows that a relationship with AOC can serve him well in his career.
And so he was unbelievably subservient.
I'm amazed that it made it past its editors with the editors without at least some attempt to disguise it better as journalism.
They barely masqueraded it as anything other than stenography.
And the amazing thing is, he's so unself-aware that he basically way too candidly admitted what happened.
The article in the New York Times, it's not an opinion article by label.
It's a news article.
It doesn't say that AOC called the New York Times.
It says in an interview with the New York Times, which makes it sound like it's every type of interview that happens where a journalist or a media outlet chases down a major figure and says, Hey, I really want to interview you.
And then they say, No, yes, maybe later, here are the conditions.
No, she called them.
She's like, New York Times, I'm going to say some things here.
I'm going to publish it.
And the amazing thing is, is that he basically came out and said it in this way that was so candid that I don't think he realized what he was doing.
His name is Kellen Browning.
He's, you know, like a pretty young guy.
There you see his New York Times bio page.
Seems to be in his 20s.
He says, I'm a political reporter for the New York Times based in San Francisco.
And I don't know.
I just don't think he really has an understanding of what the meaning of these words were that he posted.
But here is his, here are his tweets where he's promoting this story.
He said, quote, AOC came to Munich to warn about the far right coverage focused on 2028 and verbal missteps.
She gave me a call.
Quote, everyone's got this story wrong that this is about me running for president, she said.
Global democracies are on fire the world over.
So there you say he admits, she gave me a call.
She like, you know, I was just like hanging out at night on my couch, kind of sitting around.
And AOC called me and she's like, hey, I got some things to say and I want them in the New York Times.
And he's like, oh, amazing.
I'm not doing anything.
Go ahead.
I got my pen, everything.
So also note here, I also highlighted the part where he said, she said, and he just quotes her because that's basically all he does, which is what a press release does.
A politician, their office puts out a press release.
You know, Chuck Schumer denounces this bill or Ted Cruz vows to do this.
And it's just quote after quote from that politician that they want people to read and hear.
And that shapes the perception that they want to create for themselves.
That's generally not what newspapers do, though.
There is supposed to be a difference between the press office of a politician and a journalistic outlet or a major newspaper like the New York Times.
But in this case, there wasn't.
This she said is the entire formulation of the article.
Here's a couple other tweets from him where he says it again.
There you see it.
He quotes her and she said she worried that her message was being lost in all commotion.
She said her meetings in Munich had been substantive, but what went viral was her flub on Taiwan and speculation about 2028.
So that was the article he set out to write, and he admits how it happened and what he did.
And it's exactly what he ended up producing as the main New York Times news report on AOC's trip to Germany and the debacle that ensued and the embarrassment and unmasking of her that it caused.
Here's the New York Times article.
There you see the headline.
After first big overseas trip, Ocasio-Cortez expresses her frustration.
And then the sub-headline is: the congresswoman argued in an interview that presidential speculation, which included scrutinies of her slip-ups, had overshadowed her anti-authoritarian message at the Munich Security Conference.
Yeah, you know, if you go around and are incapable of answering the most basic questions on foreign policy when you're claiming this is going to demonstrate your expertise and seriousness on foreign policy, when you say things that are completely wrong about major countries that are in the news, like Venezuela, about where they're located vis-a-vis the equator, when you have to constantly correct yourself because everything you're saying is just confused, like you just spent two months in a cliff notes program to study up on foreign policy,
and you demonstrate that beyond a few cliches you memorize, you know, nothing.
Yeah, that's going to be scrutinized, especially given that you were the one who called all media attention to yourself and announced that this was your big coming out party.
But the headline here is she expresses frustration.
And here, this is where they're pretending.
The congresswoman argued in an interview.
So they don't say what he said on social media, which is, oh, she called us.
They make it seem like, hey, we got an interview with AOC and we're going to tell you now what she said.
Now, it's obviously fine for journalistic outlets to interview political figures and summarize or quote what they say.
That's a legitimate function.
But that's supposed to be done with critical context, journalistic scrutiny, fact-checking, and balance.
To obviously, there's another side to the AOC frustration where she feels like she was victimized by unfair coverage.
And you're supposed to give voice to those people as well.
This does none of that.
This is an AOC press release.
So here's one of the paragraphs where he begins and says, here's her frustration.
She made this big trip.
She has such important messages, quote, but rather than the substance of her arguments, it was her on-camera stumbles when answering questions about specific world affairs that rocketed around conservative social media and drove plenty of the discussion about her visit as political observers speculated whether they would make a dent in a potential run in 2028.
That's exactly what AOC wants.
She wants the New York Times to say these criticisms, they're just coming from the far right, from conservative influencers on social media, just to immediately discredit them.
And he dutifully went and framed it in exactly that manner.
Now, what's so odd about that, among many things, is that before she called him and blessed him with the present, with their opportunistic careers present of getting an interview with her that she wanted because she hand-picked him, he was one of the people who put that cliff on social media and spread it.
Here he is with his own camera that he filmed.
And he says AOC hesitates for quite a bit when asked at the Munich security conference whether the US should send troops to defend Taiwan if China invades.
I'm having an allergic reaction to him.
I mean, he was one of the people who, before AOC called him, he's one of the people who spread it around social media.
He posted the video clip of it and said she hesitates for quite a bit, but now that he's doing the bidding of AOC, he frames it exactly the way she wants that it rocketed around conservative social media.
Is he conservative social media?
No, he most definitely is not.
Then he goes on: The most notable instance, and there were many, many.
The most notable instance was when she was asked whether the United States should send troops to aid Taiwan if China invaded the island.
She stalled for roughly 20 seconds before offering a response that reflected the United States' long-time policy of strategic ambiguity.
Okay, that phrasing.
She stumbled for quite a bit, but then gave an answer that reflected U.S. long-standing policy of strategic ambiguity, made it sound as if she just lost her attention for a little bit.
She's overseas, there's jet lag.
Just 20 seconds, she kind of stumbled around a bit, but then she gave a very sophisticated answer where she aligned herself with the decades-long U.S. policy toward Taiwan and China of strategic ambiguity.
Meaning, we don't say, we, the United States, whether we're going to intervene militarily to defend Taiwan if China invades.
It's just best left unsaid.
There's ambiguity around it.
Now, Joe Biden didn't realize that was the policy because on many occasions he came out and explicitly said, the only president in history: if China attacks Taiwan, we will wage war to defend Taiwan from China.
And his aides always had to run and go say, Oh, he didn't mean that and walk it back because that's not U.S. policy.
But Biden, in his he knows that he's been around Washington forever, probably has said it many times.
But in his kind of brain-melting stage, he lost any kind of control over what he was saying.
But he's trying to make it seem like AOC knows that the policy was strategic ambiguity, and she ultimately aligned herself or reflected that policy.
I mean, that is the most why you could say she reflected strategic ambiguity, which is the phrasing he generously chose for her, is because if you just babble enough, if you just spew nonsensical phrases, one way that you could describe very generously what you've done is you've created ambiguity.
And so she did, I guess, in a sort of way by just not answering, by having no idea what she was supposed to say, she did sort of stumble into an unintended ambiguity by not answering the question, like left it ambiguous, but she didn't do that intentionally.
She had no idea what she was supposed to say.
She had no idea what the policy was of strategic ambiguity.
I mean, it's like, oh, she ended up reflecting strategic ambiguity.
Yeah, by being a complete ignoramus, by knowing nothing about the topic.
She just babbled.
And yes, that is a certain form of ambiguity, but to say as if she adjusted herself and found her footing, that she ended up basically embracing long-standing bipartisan policy toward Taiwan and China is generous to the point of being extremely deceitful.
Stumbling Into Ambiguity00:02:51
Just as a reminder, I know you probably have seen it.
We did a video report on it, as I said.
But here's what actually happened when AOC was asked that question.
Just compare what she did and what she said to his description that she just stalled for about 20 seconds and then finally aligned herself with strategic ambiguity.
Should the U.S. actually commit U.S. troops to defend Taiwan if China were to move?
You know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is a this is, of course, ah, just please spit this out.
I mean, this is more than just stumbling for 20 seconds.
Every single person in that room, these are the Europeans who like gathered thinking they were going to hear some like really impressive, important, insightful foreign policy figure from the United States, share her wisdom with the Europeans about the world.
I mean, it's no matter what you think of AOC, hater, lover, anything in between, this is uncomfortable to watch.
A very long-standing policy of the United States.
And I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point.
And we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise.
Okay.
As I said the other day, everybody hopes it never happens, but the question was not, do you hope it happens?
Do you hope that China attacks Taiwan?
And then the United States has to decide if it wants to intervene in a war against China to defend Taiwan.
And then had that been the question, her answer would have been good.
No, everyone, no, no, of course we don't want that.
We hope, but that wasn't the question.
The question was, if it happens, as it's at least possible, if not likely at some point to happen, maybe even in the near future, should the United States intervene by sending its soldiers to go fight China on behalf of Taiwan?
And if you really want to, if you know that the policy is strategic ambiguity and you want to agree with that policy, remember she's supposed to be there as a radical critic of U.S. foreign policy.
So the idea that, oh, she's just going to like reflexively align herself with foreign policy doctrine is kind of contrary to the branding she's trying to sell.
But if she wanted to defend strategic ambiguity, American politicians have been doing that easily and explicitly for decades.
You just wind up a DC politician asking that question.
They say, our policy is that we don't say we'll decide if that happens.
You know, we hope China doesn't do that.
But if they do, we'll have to make that decision.
But we're not going to say in advance.
That's strategic ambiguity.
AOC's Strategic Ambiguity Misstep00:13:08
She didn't say any of that.
She didn't know that was the policy.
She didn't know how to express it.
She didn't know how to critique it.
She's never thought about, do I agree with strategic ambiguity or I don't.
So as I said, she inadvertently and unwittingly ended up being ambiguous on that question the way that any person who doesn't know what they're talking about and can't answer and talks in nonsense and babbles ends up being ambiguous.
But to say that she ended up reflecting strategic ambiguity, a very slimy choice of words, because he's not actually saying that she purposely expressed strategic ambiguity or defended it.
He's saying she reflected it, reflected it by being an ignoramus.
But this is a New York Times press release, not a news article, which is why that phrasing is there.
Now, just to give you a couple other examples, this goes on and says, Ms. Ocasio Cortez argued that efforts to make clips of any quote five to 10 second thing from her remarks go viral online, especially in the conservative ecosystem, had been done to quote distract from the substance of what I was saying.
These are more than five to 10 second clips.
Again, the New York Times reporter himself was among the people posting it because of how obviously newsworthy and noteworthy it is.
And the problem is there's not much substance if you demonstrate that you're utterly ignorant about the topic on which you're pontificating.
And then he says, on the ground in Germany, on the ground, like I'm not real, like getting my fingernails dirty, working class, like shoe leather reporter.
I'm on the ground.
On the ground in Germany, the reaction to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez's visit seemed mostly positive.
Now, he took that, and you can imagine who he talked to.
He talked to, you know, she went to Berlin, met with a bunch of left liberal leaders, progressives, then went to speak at a university in Berlin filled with left liberal German students where she got a warm welcome.
There's only three people quoted in this entire New York Times article, and it's pretty long.
One is AOC, which is about 80% of the article where he's just writing down what she's saying, doing his role as stenographer.
And the other two.
are two European officials, a former president, a prime minister of Ireland, who's very much on the left, and a mayor of Warsaw, Poland, who's also a progressive, saying how much they admire and loved AOC and what her message was.
So yes, if you seek out European leftists, they're going to have positive things to say about AOC.
That doesn't entitle you, right?
On the ground, like on the real nitty-gritty of reality that I had to like fly to Munich to really confront.
I went to the factories of Bavaria and like industrialized East Germany or deindustrialized East Germany.
He spoke to a bunch of like progressives and saw her getting cheered at a college.
So the only three people who are quoted in this article is AOC defending herself and saying why it's so unfair to focus on this.
And then two left-leaning politicians, not even major figures, the mayor of Warsaw, the former prime minister of Ireland, who had a few surprise for her.
Not a single person quoted who's one of the people saying, no, this was actually pretty embarrassing.
This reflected poorly on her.
This can't happen.
I mean, even he, and maybe this is like forced by his editors, but very buried down in the article, was forced to admit, though, look at how much cleanup he instantly did.
Still, meaning, despite all these defenses, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez's missteps were striking, striking.
Her missteps were striking for a politician who is usually quick on her feet and is considered one of the best communicators in politics.
So the one nod that he gives to the fact that, wait, actually, this is kind of important is like an introductory cause to a sentence that ends up focusing on how incredibly talented and marvelous AOC is of how out of character this is for her because she's so nimble on her feet and such a like a supreme communicator.
AOC, you know, I've always been willing to admit, does have a certain charisma.
I think part of that comes from her looks and her youth, but also like, I think she's just like a native, you know, like I said, I think she's a very talented social media influencer.
I could definitely see why she commands like an audience of like-minded people, of young people in particular online.
That is, I think, one of her talents, no denying that.
But this, like one of the greatest political communicators in our country and someone who's quick on her feet in the same sentence where you're forced to acknowledge that, you know what, these missteps were quote unquote striking.
I think really reveals exactly what he's up to and what he's not up to.
Now, just to give you just one other kind of sense of what AOC did that has caused so much embarrassment.
Here she is.
This was her speaking at the university in Berlin at their event when it was all very positive, all very favorable.
She was asked questions, one of which was about Venezuela, and here's what she said.
A remark on who Maduro was as a leader.
He canceled elections.
He was an anti-democratic leader.
That doesn't mean that we can kidnap a head of state and engage in acts of war just because the nation is below the equator.
And now, I agree with the position she's taking that the United States doesn't have the right to go in and take Maduro.
I've done a lot.
I've written articles about that.
I've done a lot of interviews on it.
I've put videos here on it if you're interested in the substance of my position.
But that was like a 10-second clip.
She said Venezuela is below the equator.
It's actually not.
It's all of Venezuela is above the equator.
This like such basic geography of South America.
Okay, that's just like, if you don't know where Venezuela is, vis-a-vis the equator, don't talk about it.
But the other thing is, she said Maduro canceled elections.
He didn't.
The charge is that he manipulated and defrauded the outcome of elections, not that he canceled them.
Some of her cult members went back to 2016, 10 years ago, when there was an election recall election that the Venezuelan electoral board delayed.
And they're like, no, look, she's right.
He did cancel elections.
Obviously, that isn't what she's talking about.
That's not accurately described as canceling.
And this just, it just goes to show that she's speaking about things and pontificating them as an expert on them as an expert, in which she's completely not well versed.
Her knowledge of these issues is thin, it's like an inch deep.
The kind of knowledge that you have, if you've just been like quickly tutored by someone who's supposed to be an expert to prepare you to talk about this and you don't really have any foundational knowledge about it, you don't have any real interest in it.
You're not connected to it.
This is the kind of thing that's going to happen.
And yes, it matters.
It shows her complete inability to understand the complexities of the issues that she's been sent to Opine on.
Speaking of which, I want to give you a little bonus.
On that same panel where AOC humiliated herself by not being able to talk about China and Taiwan and strategic ambiguity, she was also on a panel with two other people, one and the journalist, one of whom was the Michigan governor, the Democratic governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer.
And she was asked a question about Ukraine, a very simple, basic question that Americans, not just politicians, but American citizens, people who watch the news, read the news even casually, have been thinking about and debating for four plus years now.
And she was utterly incapable of answering.
I don't know how these are professional politicians their whole lives.
They work in politics.
And yes, as she points out, Gretchen Whitmer is a governor.
So it makes sense she's not, her focus and specialty isn't foreign policy.
But she wasn't asked some like very obscure, in-depth, you know, the intricacies of Ukraine and Russia and the United States.
She was asked the most basic question.
And it's like she barely had heard of the war in Ukraine, even though the Democratic Party has elevated that support for Ukraine to probably their most important and talked about foreign policy priority over the last four years.
How do you not know that?
If you're a governor, but even if you're just like someone casually connected to politics on the periphery, you would be able to answer this question.
And here's the funniest part is how she begins her excuse for why she doesn't know.
Should the U.S. and what does victory look like?
That was it.
What does victory look like?
Look at that face.
Like, you know what that face is?
And you're going to see it.
It's like, I think we've all had that experience before.
Like you go into class, high school or college or graduate school, and you didn't do the reading, but it's like an interactive class.
Like the professor calls on students not to raise their hand.
She's just like in law school, they always did that.
They'd just be, Mr. Johnson, what?
And if you didn't do the reading, like you would just totally be screwed and you would have to either like try and BS your way through it or admit you didn't do it, neither of which is a good outcome.
Probably admitting you didn't read it is the better outcome.
That's the face Gretchen Whitmore has.
She's like, oh my God, I've been asked about Ukraine.
I know nothing.
And watch how she just squirms around.
Ambassador.
No, please.
I love you.
I'd love to hear your answer.
It is.
The two that I am on the panel with are much more steeped in foreign policy than a governor is.
One of whom is AOC.
You know, I do think that Ukraine's independence, keeping their land mass and having the support of all the allies, I think, is the goal from my vantage point.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Like, do these people even read like newspapers or news articles or listen to anyone talking about world affairs?
Like, how, how is your ability to say what the goal in Ukraine is confined to those banalities?
There's like, oh, she reflected strategic ambiguity.
Unfortunately for her, that's not the U.S. policy toward Ukraine.
She reflected strategic ambiguity in the same way OOC did.
All you have to say is every Russian troop out of Ukraine, including Crimea, full sovereignty for Ukraine, and then put Ukraine and NATO or whatever you want.
And she kind of, I guess, in like the simplest ways, the most unsophisticated manner possible, kind of expressed something in the same universe, like their landmass, their land mass, and the allies and the allies.
I think, you know, the allies, that's my, that's my view.
AOC and the ambassador know much more.
She didn't even want to answer.
The first thing she did is like, oh, here, here's the microphone.
Please take it from me.
This is our political class.
Just independent of the ideology, the ignorance of it is so stunning.
And the role of the corporate media is not really so much left or right or Democrat versus Republican, at least in the pre-Trump era, it wasn't.
Remember, the reality is the national media loved George W. Bush as a person during that campaign and really thought Al Gore was irritating and annoying.
It was the New York Times that took the lead in selling Bush and Cheney's records to the American people, along with liberal outlets like The Atlantic and The New Yorker.
Those media outlets are more subservient to the U.S. security state and to foreign policy dogma than they are to one of the two parties.
At least they were again in the pre-Trump era.
I do think they've now taken on like sabotaging and destroying Trump as their overarching mission.
And in the new economic model of journalism, they have begun much more overtly to cater to only a liberal audience, which is their financial model.
But I do think the way they most operate, like the supreme overarching paramount bias is that they want to serve powerful institutions and powerful political figures that can do things for their career.
And that's the dynamic you see here with AOC.
I'm sure this guy would not have done that with a young conservative politician because at the New York Times in the media world that he, in which he resides, that he inhabits the currency are left liberal politicians like AOC.
And so that's who he's offering himself up to.
It's just such an extreme version of it.
Like the New York Times at least tries usually to mask what they're up to in a way better than this, but from his admission that she called him and dictated, you're going to write down what I'm saying and put it in the New York Times to the way in which he wrote this article.
I don't even think AOC's office would have said she ended up reflecting bipartisan policy or strategic ambiguity.