RECKLESS

New York Times Editor: Trump’s Trolling Has Put My Reporters’ Lives at Risk

In an interview, Dean Baquet also defended his decision not to allow the newspaper to brand the president a racist.

Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, has accused President Donald Trump of putting his reporters’ lives at risk by subjecting them to personal abuse and describing them as “enemies of the people.” Speaking to The Guardian, Baquet hit out at Trump for targeting political reporter Maggie Haberman. He said: “I think his personal attacks on reporters, including Maggie, are pretty awful and pretty unpresidential... I think personal attacks on journalists, when he calls them names, I think he puts their lives at risk.” Asked whether Trump was a racist, Baquet, the first black American top editor of the newspaper, said: “I don’t know. I think Donald Trump says racially divisive things. I think that’s a little bit different. I’m not in his head enough to know whether he says them because he wants to stoke his base.” Baquet, who has forbidden writers in the paper to brand Trump racist or sexist, added: “I will tell you the most powerful writing I’ve ever seen about race, as a black man who grew up in the South, did not use the word ‘racist.’ It quoted people saying what they had to say, and described the world they live in. And you made your own judgment. And the judgment was pretty clear. And I think that’s the way to write about Donald Trump and everybody else. It’s just to let them talk.”