Trump is a very far-right politician, so if you go a little bit left of him then you're still on the right. It's just relativity. The NYT is obviously very left

Trump is a very far-right politician, so if you go a little bit left of him then you're still on the right. It's just relativity. The NYT is obviously very left of Trump, and that leaves them still being overly uncritical of Trump. And it's not just them, it's virtually all "left-wing" media. They do this in a few ways: 1. Sane-washing, as talked about. They will take legitimately incoherent ramblings that sound straight out of an insane aslyum and rewrite them to be understandable. This gives the impression that Trump is reasonable, when he is not. 2. Attributing reason to action. Trump often does erratic things without providing reasoning. The NYT and other media like MSNBC will then fabricate potential reasoning behind it. Often this reasoning is as good as it can be, even though that usually means it's still bad. 3. Benefit of the doubt. Trump is at a point where he lies more than he tells the truth, however, all his statements are still taken as truthful, or at least as being something he believes to be true. Nobody believes Trump is malicious on anything, even if he has shown he is malicious.