Mark Halperin criticized The New York Times over its recent treatment of far-right online personalities Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene on Monday, arguing that the Gray Lady is treating the pair like “heroes” now that they’ve broken with President Donald Trump.

“Over the weekend, Tucker Carlson interview with The New York Times dropped — New York Times is so funny. Their heroes now are people who used to support Donald Trump, but no longer do. If you supported Donald Trump like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Tucker, and now you’re adverse to Trump, boy, The New York Times loves you,” marveled Halperin on Monday’s edition of 2WAY’s The Morning Meeting. “All of a sudden, Marjorie Taylor Green and Tucker Carlson are the two finest people in America. It’s very funny. I’m also thinking about Graham Platner. Guys, imagine there was a Republican Senate candidate in a targeted race, like a really-, one of the critical races determining control of the Senate. And imagine the Republican nominee, okay, beat an establishment candidate and that Republican nominee had a tattoo that was a Nazi symbol up until recently, and had said things about rape, and about all sorts of controversial things. Imagine if that were a Republican.”

Carlson sat down with the Times‘ Lulu Garcia-Navarro in a new interview that both Carlson’s friends and detractors characterized as being relatively friendly, given the pair’s facially distinct politics.

“I really think she [Garcia-Navarro] tries to be fair,” submitted Megyn Kelly, who has defended Carlson from charges of anti-Semitism amid his promotion of various conspiracy theories and relentless focus on Israel, in her review of the conversation. “She, I thought, did a very nice job with Tucker.”

After Garcia-Navarro described the conversation as being “intense” on X, The Manhattan Institute’s Jesse Arm pushed back.

“If you watch the full interview, it’s pretty clear the conversation was far from ‘intense.’ There are a few moments of mild, respectful pushback, but it’s largely a cordial, friendly, and agreeable exchange,” argued Arm. “There is a reason the New York Times constantly runs polished, quasi-glamorous profiles of figures like Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Marjorie Taylor Greene, James Fishback, etc.—but hardly ever does the same for senior Trump administration officials or right-of-center media/political figures in good standing with the president and his team. It is because Tucker and his ilk represent everything MAGA conservatives aren’t—but what New York Times readers want to believe them to be: cartoonishly bigoted and far too fringe, conspiratorial, and bizarre to win national elections—yet nevertheless, substantively much closer to the far-left on foreign and economic policy questions.”

“Only add is they are also now able to be cast as anti-Trump and thus @nytimes heroes,” added Halperin in a quote-tweet of Arm. “The enemy of their enemy….”

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