Ted Cruz makes example of NYT writer who claimed his denouncement of white supremacy was insincere

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has no time for dishonesty in the mainstream media and he made that very clear on social media Sunday.

The Texas Republican denounced the New York Times and one of its reporters for accusing him and fellow Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) of issuing strong statements about white supremacism only to posture for the upcoming presidential election in 2020.

Cruz and Rubio issued strong statements about the violence that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend that was fueled by racial divisions.

Cruz said that white supremacists are "evil" and "all of us have a moral obligation to speak out against the lies, bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred that they propagate." He also called on the Department of Justice to investigate an incident of domestic terrorism where a 20-year-old alleged neo-Nazi plowed through a crowd of people resulting in one death.

Meanwhile, Rubio wrote on Twitter that white supremacists and those rallying in Charlottesville are the "direct opposite of what America seeks to be." He also called on President Donald Trump to denounce the white nationalists, who at the time had failed to do so. On Monday, Trump denounced the white supremacists.

While the statements represented strong repudiations of racism from Cruz and Rubio, New York Times investigative reporter Eric Lipton thought they were insincere and disingenuous.

"Sorry to be cynical, but most of all Rubio and Ted Cruz to me seem mostly to be doing a tremendous job of posturing for 2020," he wrote on Twitter Sunday afternoon.

Cruz, however, was not going to stand to be marred like that, so he hit back with two tweets blasting Lipton and his employer.

"Gosh, you're right. Because Nazis & the Klan have such love for Cuban-Americans. If only we worked for a paper that shilled for Stalin," Cruz wrote. "I know it's hard to understand. Too many schools don't teach NYT's shameful history covering up Soviet atrocities."

In his second tweet, Cruz linked to a Wikipedia article about a journalist who served as the Times Moscow Bureau chief during the height of Russian dictator Joseph Stalin's genocidal atrocities in the 20th century. According to the article, that journalist, Walter Duranty, denied an ongoing widespread famine in the U.S.S.R. in the 1930s. The denial eventually led to his Pulitzer Prize to be posthumously revoked.

Stephen Hayes, editor of conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, offered a short commentary on Lipton's criticism Monday. According to Hayes, Lipton's criticism proves exactly why conservatives and those in America's heartland don't trust the media: because conservatives are "damned if they do" and "damned if they don't."

Conservatives who do the right thing still criticized by NYT reporter. This is why conservatives distrust big media:https://t.co/iZkGBOwHts

— Stephen Hayes (@stephenfhayes) August 13, 2017

So, conservatives who say nothing, are guilty of assenting w/their silence. And conservatives who speak out are playing politics. #hackery

— Stephen Hayes (@stephenfhayes) August 13, 2017