The New York Times admitted an explosive attack against Vice President Kamala Harris was "basically true" after running a fact-check saying former President Trump's claim "needs context."
Trump took aim at his progressive rival after CNN reported that Harris supported taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for illegal immigrants who are in custody, according to a 2019 ACLU questionnaire she filled out as a presidential candidate.
"Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison," Trump said during Tuesday's presidential debate.
Times health reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg provided a fact-check as part of the paper's live coverage of the debate that ruled Trump's claim "needs context."
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Except the context her fact-check provided just further confirmed Trump's claim. In addition to quoting the ACLU questionnaire and Harris' response, Stolberg wrote, "she said she supported using taxpayer funds to give access to gender-affirming care to transgender and nonbinary people, including those in immigration detention and prison."
Stolberg did appear to knock CNN's reporting by saying it "drew sharp criticism from supporters of gay, lesbian and transgender people" and later noted that a Harris campaign spokesman attempted to distance the vice president from her far-left stance, saying, "That questionnaire is not what she is proposing or running on."
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Conservative critics online mocked The Times' "This needs context" label when the context supported Trump, instead of marking it true.
Fox News contributor Guy Benson wrote, "NYT: ‘Needs context!’ The context: It's literally her position."
Conservative digital strategist Greg Price similarly posted, "Trump: ‘She wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison.’ NYT: ‘This needs context’ The context: ‘Oh yeah she actually supported that.’"
The next day, in a report offering highlights from the political showdown, a Times article acknowledged there was validity to Trump's comment, saying it was the "wildest sounding attack line that was basically true."
The Times did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
The rush to dismiss Trump's attack on Harris was widespread across the legacy media. Time magazine was forced to issue a correction after declaring his claim as "false."
"The original version of this story mischaracterized as false Donald Trump's statement accusing Kamala Harris of supporting ‘transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison.’ As a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris filled out a questionnaire saying she supported taxpayer-funded gender transition treatment for detained immigrants," the Time correction read.
The New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser wrote in a post-debate column, ""His line about how the Vice-President ‘wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison’ was pretty memorable, too. What the hell was he talking about? No one knows, which was, of course, exactly Harris’s point."
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The Atlantic's Ali Breland was also quick to laugh off Trump's claim, writing, "'Transgender operations for illegal aliens in prison' is a phrase ChatGPT would spit out if you fed it right-wing posts and asked it to parody them."
After initially accusing Trump of "falsely" suggesting Harris wanted to provide transgender surgeries for illegal migrants, Breland's article was updated to admit that's what Harris actually told the ACLU.
