The paper had tried to head off the controversy. Times Print Editor Tom Jolly posted a replacement, second-edition headline exactly 59 minutes after the original. “Assailing Hate But Not Guns.” The liberal mob was not mollified.

That was obvious in the pathetic journalism think pieces that followed. Politico wrote how angry Democrats are about media coverage. You read that right. Democrats who control nearly every aspect of traditional media narrative are complaining their team isn’t giving 110 percent. It’s like a baseball coach who is winning 100-1 launching into an insane tirade because it’s not a shutout.

Politico quoted whimpering “Pod Save America” Co-host Dan Pfeiffer, who served as an Obama adviser. “A vast swath of Democratic voters are pretty angry at the media,” he argued. Pfeiffer went on to ridiculously pretend media treat Trump like they are “too afraid to call him a racist or a liar.”

Jack Shafer, Politico’s senior media writer, added a tiny bit of normalcy to the debate. He revealed the unhinged leftist strategy, noting it had “more to do with the political validation that liberals and lefties have come to demand from the news media they consume.”

 

Members of the Resistance “want every column-inch of copy in the Times to reinforce and amplify their resistance values, right down to the headlines,” he wrote. Then he went off track, claiming “the paper completely rejects” the demands of the hardcore left.

Only it didn’t. It caved as soon as liberal readers and liberal staffers yowled together in anger. And that’s where journalism is in 2019. With 15 months left until a presidential election, one of the nation’s premier publications surrendered to the mob. Over a headline.

I’ve been saying the entire Trump presidency that news coverage will keep getting worse. This episode is a reminder that normal rules are gone. Most journalists are part of the political movement trying to unseat the president.