Quotation about Trump administration’s ‘incredible’ accomplishments taken out of context

A recent X post appears to quote writer Bari Weiss endorsing former President Donald Trump’s work while he was in office. But the post quotes a recent article co-authored by Weiss out of context. The post says:   

"Journalist Bari Weiss, a Jewish liberal who quit the New York Times over its anti-Semitism, writes: 

'As a Democrat who has been left homeless, who is now definitely in the center but probably leaning increasingly right, I am left yet again with an appreciation, despite the messenger, of the message of the Trump administration because what those guys did was pretty incredible in hindsight.’ 

‘So much of the work that happened in that [Trump] administration turns out to have been right. And that’s what is so frustrating for me. The work on the border wall? We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message. Turned out it was right. Issuing long-term debt to refinance when rates were at zero? We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message. A structural peace in the Middle East? We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message.’ 

‘When are we gonna stop shooting ourselves in the foot? And when are we going to actually see and take the time to look past who is saying things and actually listen to them word for word?’ 

‘If it’s clear that the last two weeks have been a wake-up call, the next question is: Why?’ 

‘Part of the answer is the sheer depravity of Hamas’s terrorism. That depravity has made the justification and celebration of their acts by those who police pronouns that much starker. The contradictions and moral bankruptcy of a worldview that spends years worrying about microaggressions and tone policing, but can’t decide what side it is on after the beheading of babies, aren’t exactly difficult to spot.’ 

‘To put it another way: when Black Lives Matter organizations are lionizing Islamist terrorists by posting a paraglider logo, you’d be a fool not to reassess things.’ 

‘The events of the last week have shattered the illusion that wokeness is about protecting victims and standing up for persecuted minorities. This ideology is and has always been about the one thing many of us have told you it is about for years: power.

‘And after the last two weeks, there can be no doubt about how these people will use any power they seize: they will seek to destroy, in any way they can, those who disagree.’

All of those lines come from an Oct. 23 story by Weiss and Oliver Wiseman in The Free Press, a media company Weiss founded.

Featured Fact-check

Instagram posts

stated on September 21, 2024 in a video

Tim Walz said "we can't afford four more years" of Kamala Harris.

"A political reawakening?" the headline says. "A mass emergence from the woke slumber."

But most of the text quoted in the X post comes from Weiss and Wiseman citing other people. Only the lines put in bold by PolitiFact were written by Weiss and Wiseman. 

They write that venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and President Joe Biden in 2020, said: "As a Democrat who has been left homeless, who is now definitely in the center but probably leaning increasingly right, I am left yet again with an appreciation, despite the messenger, of the message of the Trump administration because what those guys did was pretty incredible in hindsight." 

They also attribute this line in the X post to him: "So much of the work that happened in that administration turns out to have been right. And that’s what is so frustrating for me. The work on the border wall? We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message. Turned out it was right. Issuing long-term debt to refinance when rates were at zero? We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message. A structural peace in the Middle East? We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message. When are we gonna stop shooting ourselves in the foot? And when are we going to actually see and take the time to look past who is saying things and actually listen to them word for word?"

The last quote in the X post, meanwhile, is attributed in Weiss and Wiseman’s article to writer and podcast host Konstantin Kisin.

Weiss said she voted for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 and President Joe Biden in 2020. She’s also voted Republican, for Sen. Mitt Romney over then-President Barack Obama in 2012. In 2019, she said that some of Trump’s policies were "very good for the state of Israel" and that she was in "full-throated support of them." She also said that Trump was "bad for the Jews" while being good for Israel.

But the claim that she said what the Trump administration did "was pretty incredible in hindsight" is False.