Bloomberg canceled an ad for a new show with political pundit Olivia Nuzzi after a left-wing online campaign slammed the New York magazine reporter for an exposé on President Biden’s mental decline, according to a report.
Nuzzi, the magazine’s well-known Washington correspondent, was tapped by Bloomberg’s TV unit to host an interview show, “Working Capital,” earlier this year and had planned a splashy introduction for his debut in mid-July.
However, an article she wrote for New York magazine titled “Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden” published on July 4 sparked backlash from liberals in the X — prompting Bloomberg to change his plans and instead quietly start the show, according to Semafor co. founder Ben Smith.
Nuzzi, 31, confirmed to Bloomberg that he was touched by the online outrage.
“I have no illusions about massive corporate media entities and their tolerance for even the slightest murmur of a PR crisis, so I can’t say I was surprised, but I was disappointed,” she told Semafor.
Bloomberg did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Her exposé of the 81-year-old president — which followed Biden’s disastrous debate — detailed a “conspiracy” to hide the Democrat’s mental decline.
Nuzzi’s story reinforced concerns that Biden was unfit to serve another term and detailed the White House’s control over the president’s public image.
“His words, as always, had a habit of slipping into a heap of rhetoric, an affliction that has worsened in the four years since he began running for president for a third time in 2020,” Nuzzi wrote in her July op-ed.
Nuzzi asserted that Biden “couldn’t spend much time outdoors” — especially not in environments with “volatile variables” that had to be “aggressively managed.”
“The concern is not that Biden will say something too honest, or that he won’t say it, but that he will communicate through his appearance that he’s not really there,” Nuzzi wrote.
Concerned liberals took to X to attack the reporter and complained about the cover accompanying the story, which showed a cartoon Biden wearing his signature shades with his mouth hanging open.
“When I write something that agitates the right, I get accused of being a liberal activist,” Nuzzi told Semafor. “When I write something that agitates the left, they accuse me of being a conservative activist.”
Some critics also dug into Nuzzi’s digital footprint, uncovering old posts slamming President Barack Obama.
After Obama said he missed the opportunity to skip the tie, Nuzzi tweeted: “You don’t have to wear a tie in Kenya!”
The New York Magazine reporter retweeted a photo of Obama and a child eating pie with their mouths open and captioned it: “Kenyan anti-colonial shows teeth at little kids.”
Dems said the posts were clearly racist.
But Nuzzi’s defenders have said the posts were comical in the context of the time, when Nuzzi could have been mocking racist conspiracy theories that claimed the first African-American president was born in Kenya and falsified his birth certificate.
“I know many journalists who long ago made the wise decision to delete all their old posts to protect themselves,” Nuzzi told Semafor.
While she said she would not judge journalists for deleting their past posts, she said being a journalist means meeting people in “grey areas”.
“I see an attempt to hide jokes that I made in the context of the Internet five or 10 or 15 years ago as a kind of dishonesty that I’m not comfortable engaging in,” she said.
X users attacked the Semafor reporter for publishing Nuzzi’s response.
“Maybe no one wants to watch @Olivianuzzi because she’s a racist piece of st, Ben,” one X user posted.
“It’s embarrassing how men in journalism have to constantly cover the fact that Olivia Nuzzi is bad at her job,” another X user posted.
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Image Source : nypost.com