Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz, whose writing often draws controversy, is calling a social-media post in which she called U.S. President Joe Biden a “war criminal” an “obvious meme,” two days after she indicated that the image was doctored.
Jon Levine of the New York Post reported on Aug. 15 that Lorenz posted the comment “war criminal” with a symbol indicating a frowning face over an Instagram “story” depicting Biden. (That kind of post expires after 24 hours.)
A spokesman for The Washington Post told the New York Post that the paper is “aware of the alleged social media post and are looking into it.”
The day before, when Levine posted the image on social media, Lorenz responded with an obscene term and suggested that the image had been edited.
Two days later, after the New York Post ran Levine’s article, Lorenz wrote, “I literally never ‘denied it was real.'”
She added that people are “falling for (charitable view) something that’s an obvious meme reference by taking it seriously.”
“Please don’t put words in my mouth,” she said.
“There had been speculation online that Lorenz was making an obscure reference to musician Lucy Dacus, who called former President Obama a ‘war criminal’ on social media last year, also with a frowny face,” the New York Post reported.
It added that “Fox News Digital learned that the post was made in an Instagram story specifically using the ‘close friends’ feature as indicated by the green star icon, meaning it was not posted publicly and could only have been seen by a select group of Instagram users of her choosing.”
In January, Lorenz wrote that “the term ‘genocide Joe,’ which many activists have adopted in speaking about his handling of the crisis in Palestine, originated with disabled people who began calling him that after he removed all pandemic safety measures and his administration said disabled people will die/’fall by the wayside.'”
“Taylor Lorenz’s articles ignore campus antisemitism, she reposted accounts who excused violence against Jew, and she spreads debunked libels about famine,” the media watchdog HonestReporting posted.
