NYT Runs Softball Interview with Democrat Super Donor and Disgraced FTX Boss Sam Bankman-Fried

The New York Times appears to be treating disgraced crypto CEO and Democrat megadonor Sam Bankman-Fried, accused of mishandling FTX customer investments on a massive scale, with kid gloves.

With questions still swirling about the amount of customer money lost and potentially misused by Bankman-Fried, the New York Times obtained access to the crypto CEO for a one-on-one interview, only to deliver little but softball questions.

Throughout the article, the Times presented Bankman-Fried’s downfall not as the result of irresponsible and potentially criminal decisions, but as honest investment mistakes.

The Times switches between softball characterizations of the crypto CEO’s activities as “expand[ing] his business interests too quickly,” and highlighting his “ambitious philanthropic operation,” along with an inexplicable ending focused on his personal hobbies, such as playing the video game Storybook Brawl, without mentioning FTX owns the game’s developer.

Tech blog Gizmodo was scathing in its assessment of the Times’ interview.

Via Gizmodo:

Paragraph after paragraph in the Times gives a gentle light to FTX’s extraordinary implosion, explaining that SBF’s “ambitions exceeded his grasp” or speculating that perhaps he was “overly dependent” on a small group of advisors.

And, according to the Times, SBF’s lean staff count wasn’t further evidence that it was all just smoke and mirrors, but rather something to be proud of, along with his charitable contributions.

Again, this characterization from SBF makes it sound as if he just overextended himself in an otherwise reputable venture. In reality, SBF had built a house of cards “where each individual card is itself a house of cards,” as Rusty Foster put it yesterday.

The New York Times, of course, shares something in common with Bankman-Fried: both are closely aligned with the Democrat party, with Bankman-Fried spending millions of dollars to elect Joe Biden in 2020, and millions more to elect Democrat candidates in 2022.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.