So he must be destroyed—and to destroy him he must be lied about. Which is what the Times did.

The report, by Matthew Rosenberg, is a caricature of political frustration and resentment masquerading as news. The headline, of course, is “Trump Chooses Hard-Liner As Ambassador to Israel,” the phrase “hard-liner” being an all-purpose Times denigration of anyone who holds political views anathema to liberals, but never as a description of liberals who hold views anathema to conservatives.

Friedman, Rosenberg writes, is “a bankruptcy lawyer aligned with the Israeli far right” who “did not wait long on Thursday to signal his intention to upend the American approach” to Israel. He has “no diplomatic experience” and “could end up undercutting the security of Israel and the United States and condemn ‘the Palestinians to further disenfranchisement and dispossession.’” (The quote is from the anti-Israel activist Daniel Levy, who helped found J Street, an important detail that Rosenberg curiously omitted.)