Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs on Monday night theorized that the New York Times, Buzzfeed News, and the Republican Party worked together to use a report of Donald Trump’s off-the-record meeting with the New York Times to hurt the Republican frontrunner at the polls on Super Tuesday.
“The effort required the alignment of quite a string of institutions and folks. It involved the alignment of The New York Times, Buzzfeed.com, Trump’s two principle rivals Cruz and Rubio,” Dobbs said on his show, referring to a Buzzfeed report that the New York Times has a recording of Trump indicating that his views on immigration could be flexible.
“Now, we don’t know whether Trump knew there was a recording. We don’t really know for sure that they have a recording. But Buzzfeed says so,” Dobbs continued.
He mentioned that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) have both called on Trump to let the New York Times publish the recording, suggesting that they were in on the effort to take down Trump.
“Rubio and Cruz have the same kinds of meetings, by the way,” Dobbs said. “This attack on Trump on election eve is collusion, certainly among the Republican Party, The New York Times, Buzzfeed, and all, working together to take down Trump.”
Dobbs suggested it was more than coincidence that an off-the-record interview that took place in January has bubbled up just before Super Tuesday.
Buzzfeed News reported on Monday that Trump may have suggested to the New York Times that his stance on immigration is flexible.
Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith noted that the Times’ Gail Collins, who was present at the meeting with Trump, recently wrote a column that touched on Trump’s immigration positions. She wrote:
The most optimistic analysis of Trump as a presidential candidate is that he just doesn’t believe in positions, except the ones you adopt for strategic purposes when you’re making a deal. So you obviously can’t explain how you’re going to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, because it’s going to be the first bid in some future monster negotiation session.
According to Buzzfeed’s Smith, sources told him that “the second sentence is a bit more than speculation. It reflects, instead, something Trump said about the flexibility of his hardline anti-immigration stance.”
Buzzfeed did not obtain a recording or transcript of the interview, and the Times has refused to release it without Trump’s approval.
Watch Dobbs’ comments via Media Matters:
