The Wall Street Journal's editorial page earlier this week ran a letter to the editor from former President Donald Trump in which he falsely claimed that Attorney General Bill Barr and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, among others, were responsible for stealing the 2020 election from him.
The editors defended their decision to run Trump's letter in a Thursday column in which they said it was important to get an unfiltered view of the former president's thinking.
"We think it's news when an ex-President who may run in 2024 wrote what he did, even if (or perhaps especially if) his claims are bananas," the editors wrote.
They then went on to debunk some of Trump's claims, even though they acknowledged that the exercise was pointless because Trump would simply come out with even more false claims.
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"He insinuates that the presidential results include thousands of tardy votes, and 'none of these should have been counted.'" they write. "They weren't, per a directive by Justice Samuel Alito... Mr. Trump says that "25,000 ballots were requested from nursing homes at the exact same time." His citation for this -- no kidding -- is a Nov. 9 cable-TV hit by Sen. Lindsey Graham."
After debunking some of Trump's claims, the Journal defended its decision to run his letter.
"Mr. Trump is making these claims elsewhere, so we hardly did him a special favor by letting him respond to our editorial," they write. "We offer the same courtesy to others we criticize, even when they make allegations we think are false."
Read the whole editorial here.
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