The Wall Street Journal published a “puff piece” on Saturday about Senate candidate Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) which claimed he has “broken with his party” by opposing some of President Joe Biden’s policies, but the piece failed to mention that the congressman has voted with the president 100 percent of the time.
The article, written by Douglas Belkin and John McCormick, appears to be an in-depth story about Ryan running for the open Senate against J.D. Vance. The article detailed how the failed 2020 presidential candidate “avoids calling himself a Democrat,” has instead insisted he has an “independent record,” and “has broken with his party,” including with some of Biden’s policies.
Additionally, the Journal’s story also inserted Ryan’s complete response to a joke that former President Donald Trump made about Vance when the two were at a rally together:
At a rally in support of Mr. Vance in September, Mr. Trump said, “J.D. is kissing my ass, he wants my support.”
Mr. Ryan responded on the campaign trail. “Do you want someone who is going to fight for Ohio to rebuild the middle class, even if it means taking on their own party?” Mr. Ryan asked. “Or do you want someone who is now widely known as an ass kisser?”
However, the authors refused to include a full quote from Vance’s campaign explaining how the congressman would “suck up” to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who is currently the Democrats’ leader in the Senate.
You know your campaign is in trouble when name calling is what you use to distract from the fact you’ve voted for every one of Joe Biden’s inflationary policies and admitted on record to needing to ‘suck up’ to Chuck Schumer because he’s your “future boss.”
The Journal instead paraphrased response the response from Vance’s spokeswoman Taylor Van Kirk:
A spokesman for Mr. Vance’s campaign, Taylor Van Kirk, said that Mr. Ryan was calling Mr. Vance names to distract from his support of Mr. Biden’s policies.
When the Vance campaign confronted the Journal about not publishing the full quote, Washington Bureau editor Janet Adamy claimed that two other editors reviewed the campaign’s request to add the full quote “post-publication,” but it was ultimately denied, according to emails obtained by Breitbart News.
Adamy also claimed that it is “extremely rare” to add the campaign’s full quote after publication. But, she did, in fact, note that she should be more than happy to talk about the situation further on the phone when she gets into the office on Monday, days after the story was published.
Furthermore, the emails also indicated that the Journal had an issue with including Ryan’s voting record that showed the congressman — who was a 2020 Biden surrogate after his own race failed — voted 100 percent of the time with Biden.
If fact, not only does FiveThirtyEight — which keeps track of “how often every member of the House and the Senate votes with or against the president” — show that Ryan voted with Biden 100 percent of the time, but the congressman also did not dispute the claim when he was confronted about his voting record earlier this month.
In response to the Journal‘s refusal to update the story with the full quote from the Vance campaign and include relevant information about Ryan’s voting record, Van Kirk told Breitbart News, “We were told by the author of the story that it was the editors call to not include our on-the-record response to Ryan’s attacks in the Journal’s write up. When I asked why that was, he told me that the editor did not believe our claim that Tim Ryan votes with Joe Biden 100% of the time. It is, of course, a documented fact that Tim Ryan has voted with Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi 100% of the time since Biden was elected.”
“Even more mystifying is that when I asked to jump on the phone with the editor to show her the evidence and make our case for a story update, I was told that she wouldn’t take my call until she was back in the office on Monday,” Van Kirk added. “I’m astounded that the Wall Street Journal would behave in this type of dishonest and unprofessional manner.”
Neither Adamy nor Ryan’s campaign responded to Breitbart News’s request for comment.
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.
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