What Conservative Columnist Could Freely Write for The New York Times?

Tim Graham on Aug 5, 2026

The Left's perennial scolds of CBS News churned out barrels of umbrage over hiring conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat as part of the new team of correspondents at "60 Minutes." They suggested this was some sort of "desperate" lurch to the right, an obstreperous overthrow of Pelleyesque arrogance on 57th Street.

But that created a vacancy at the Times that may prove challenging to fill. Douthat has often been pitched as the "thoughtful liberal's favorite conservative," as if "thoughtful liberals" can stand being in the same room as a conservative.

After all, take a look at the opinion lineup on the Times homepage. The remaining columnists are from left to center-left: Jamelle Bouie, Maureen Dowd, David French, Thomas Friedman, M. (formerly Masha) Gessen, Michelle Goldberg, Ezra Klein, Nicholas Kristof, Carlos Lozada, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Lydia Polgreen and Bret Stephens.

French and Stephens came to the Times from conservative salons, but like David Brooks before them, quickly became raging haters of Donald Trump, pleasing their new masters. Both men also endorsed Kamala Harris for president in 2024. French laughably argued, "To save conservatism from itself, I'm voting for Harris." It's simply implausible to claim to be conservative and then vote for the current reigning ideology among the Democrats.

The Times team routinely claims Trump is an existential threat to democracy, but this argument is losing all its plausibility as the Democrats are being taken over by a socialist faction that explicitly wants to abolish the Senate, the Supreme Court and the presidency. That is easily defined as an existential threat to democracy, even if Democrats try to claim they're merely organizing a "big tent." Democrats from Kamala Harris on down eagerly start their list of "reforms" with ending the Electoral College and expanding the Supreme Court with four more (leftist) seats.

The Left loves describing itself as bravely "transgressive," but all they do is impose strict limits and boundaries on expression. One can never "normalize" Trump by treating him like a legitimately elected president.

No one should expect the Times to hire a new columnist who writes positive words about Trump. Remember that their opinion editor James Bennet was forced out by the newspaper's internal wokeness caucus for the grave sin of soliciting and publishing an op-ed by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton in June 2020 arguing in that if police were overwhelmed by rioters, the president could invoke the Insurrection Act and send in the military to restore order.

The Times never put the Cotton op-ed in the printed newspaper, but the damage was done. To assuage the Left, they appended the article with a long, confessional Editor's Note with paragraphs of apologies and regrets. What self-respecting conservative could observe this imbroglio and discern that this is a workplace that would tolerate his or her free expression of oppositional opinion?

None of these media elitists recognize the irony in their hardened position -- that Trump is such an authoritarian threat that these troubled times demand complete anti-Trump unanimity -- no internal democracy allowed. Debating that internal orthodoxy, that Trump might express a good idea or engage in a noble action on any matter, sounds like it would be immediate grounds for dismissal.

Unless a columnist has the goal of entering an impossible situation with a plan to write a juicy tell-all memoir about just how intolerant they are at the Times, I would advise any self-respecting conservative opinionator to politely decline any offer.

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Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.