Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America

by Sarah Kendzior

Steele was horrified when The New York Times ran a story on November 1—the day after Corn’s bombshell—titled INVESTIGATING TRUMP, FBI SEES NO CLEAR LINK TO RUSSIA. The article, which was frequently cited over the next year to validate Trump’s claim that his illicit ties to Russia were an elaborate hoax, contradicted what both Steele and other interviewees had said. The editor of The New York Times, Dean Baquet, had ordered the article to be rewritten so that it reflected an alternate and inaccurate narrative—one contradicted by his writers’ own interviews with FBI officials.10 One of the authors of the article, Eric Lichtblau, later quit the Times in part because of the way Baquet had handled that article. The New York Times public editor, Liz Spayd, wrote about how the newspaper had chosen to ignore or play down Trump’s Russia ties and illicit attempts to influence the election in a November column.11 She was harshly criticized by upper management,12 and in May 2017 The New York Times fired Spayd and then eliminated the public editor position entirely.13