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LA Times manages to make O.J. Simpson obituary about Trump

April 12, 2024 | | Print Article

You could say that the left-wing Los Angeles Times has a Trump obsession after even the obituary for O.J. Simpson featured the name of the presumptive GOP nominee.

After the news broke that the former NFL star running back had passed away at the age of 76 years old following a battle with prostate cancer, the media exploded with coverage of a man whose trial for allegedly murdering his wife and a male friend would come to define American culture, and not in good ways.

But the L.A. Times, the newspaper for the city that Simpson was tried in, drew criticism after the former president’s name popped up in its lengthy obit, something that just shouldn’t happen at an outlet with a competent editorial staff without an agenda.

In its final tribute to Simpson, the paper substituted the name of the left’s greatest boogeyman in a paragraph about when “The Juice” was released from a Nevada prison in 2017 after serving nine years of a 33-year sentence for armed robbery.

“Long before the city woke up on a fall morning in 2017, Trump walked out of Lovelock Correctional Center outside Reno, a free man for the first time in nine years,” read The Times obit. “He didn’t go far, moving into a 5,000-square-foot home in Las Vegas with a Bentley in the driveway.”

After drawing attention, the paper later corrected its “mistake” with an editor’s note added to the obituary.

“An earlier version of this obituary used the wrong name when describing Simpson leaving Lovelock Correctional Center. The error has been corrected,” read the update.

Some were skeptical that The Times’ insertion of Trump into its O.J. piece was really a typo.

“I mean… there’s no shot this wasn’t intentional,” wrote Fox News contributor Joe Concha on X.

Other users reactted to the inexplicable inclusion of the former president’s name in the totally unrelated obit:

On the opposite coast, another newspaper of note, The New York Times, also drew fire for the altering of its own sendoff to Simpson.

“He ran to football fame on the field and made fortunes in movies. But his world was ruined after he was charged with killing his former wife and her friend,” the NY Times noted in the initial version, later tweaking the line to make it more about race.

“He ran to football fame and made fortunes in movies. His trial for the murder of his former wife and her friend became an inflection point on race in America,” read the updated line.

The Times also altered another line about the so-called “trial of the century” and its effect on O.J.’s life.

“The infamous case, which held up a cracked mirror to Black and white America, cleared Mr. Simpson but ruined his world,” the Times stated, updating its line to later read, “The jury in the murder trial cleared him, but the case, which had held up a cracked mirror to Black and white America, changed the trajectory of his life.”

There are good reasons why millions of Americans no longer trust the media, and these are just the examples of the day.

Chris Donaldson
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