Ira Stoll writes for the Washington Free Beacon about a major legacy media columnist who rarely knows his subject matter.
Eighty-two-year-old Nina Totenberg had the 2026 prize for most embarrassingly false Supreme Court coverage published in a legacy media outlet nearly wrapped up with her June NPR report claiming, incorrectly, that Justice Alito had retired.
Yet Thomas Friedman’s insatiable appetite for journalism prizes is apparently such that he isn’t content with the three Pulitzers he has; Friedman’s latest New York Times column gives Totenberg a serious challenge for the Supreme Court inaccuracy award.
Friedman writes, in a 67-word trainwreck of a sentence: “But because this is the only country I have, because the midterms will be razor close and because I am convinced that two more years of Donald Trump completely unchained — controlling the House, the Senate and tacitly the Supreme Court — could bring about the end of America as we have known it, I have to think about how to make the best of some not great choices.”
My Webster’s Second Unabridged defines “tacitly” as “in a tacit manner; silently; by implication; without words.” Say what you will about Trump, but he is more voluble than taciturn. Does our president do anything silently? As for the claim that Trump controls the Supreme Court and is therefore “completely unchained,” it’s just not consistent with reality.
Here is the Wall Street’s Journal’s James Taranto in his Saturday interview with Justice Alito: “The president lost three major cases in the 2025-26 term: Learning Resources v. Trump (tariffs), Trump v. Cook (Federal Reserve independence) and Trump v. Barbara (birthright citizenship). Each of the decisions was written by Chief Justice Roberts and joined by the three liberals and one or two of Mr. Trump’s three appointees.”
Or if Taranto is too right-wing for Friedman, how about Justice Kagan, a former dean of Harvard Law School who was nominated to the court by President Barack Obama? Kagan said last month, as reported in the New York Times, “is this court kind of a puppet for the current administration? I think definitely not.”
