New York Times didn't publish op-ed calling for Trump to withdraw from presidential race

What is the claim? 

Social media users are sharing a screenshot of a fake opinion piece published in The New York Times headlined "For The Good of The Country, Rapist, and Convicted Felon, Donald J. Trump Should Drop Out Of The Race" credited to "The Editorial Board." The screenshot shows the logo of The New York Times and the publication date of June 28.

Screenshot of social media users posting a fake screenshot from NYT (Source: Threads/X/Modified by Logically Facts)

The image has been shared widely on X (formerly Twitter) and Threads. One X post alone has garnered over one million views and 28,000 likes at the time of writing this fact-check. Some captioned the purported screenshot as “The New York Times comes to its senses.” Archived versions of these posts can be seen here, here, and here.

However, The New York Times has not published any articles or opinion pieces stating that Trump should drop out of the presidential race.

What are the facts? 

No opinion pieces or reports with the headline seen in the viral photo published on June 28, 2024, or earlier exist on The New York Times website, its archives, or its social media accounts.

We found that on June 28, 2024, The New York Times published an opinion piece about U.S. President Joe Biden titled “To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race,” with a photo of Biden. 

Original June 28, 2024 article published by the New York Times (Source: The New York Times/Modified by Logically Facts)  

The article explained some of the key points that were discussed during the Biden-Trump debate on June 27, 2024, offering insights into Biden’s responses to Trump's arguments. 

What discrepancies did we spot?

We noticed several similarities between this opinion piece on The New York Times website and the viral screenshot. In addition to having the same date of publication, this piece about Biden was also credited to "The Editorial Board," similar to the one in the viral screenshot. 

Further, the backgrounds of both images are noticeably similar, with CNN written on them under dim lighting. This led us to find that the image of Biden, which was the cover image of the genuine New York Times opinion piece, has been edited to add Trump. 

Similarities between the original op-ed and the viral screenshot (Source: NYT/X/Annotated by Logically Facts)

Most of the photos circulating online were cropped. However, we found a full-length photo of the purported piece on X (archived here). A reverse image search showed that the photo of Trump used in the fake screenshot was taken by Jim Watson for AFP and can be found on Getty Images.  

Original photo of Trump from 2017 (Source: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images/Modified by Logically Facts)

The image showed Trump as he boarded Air Force One before flying to Vietnam to attend the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit at Beijing Airport on November 10, 2017. The original version of this photo had no background with CNN written on it; further, the lower portion of Biden's body from the original cover photo can be seen awkwardly digitally manipulated with Trump’s 2017 image. The same tie and microphone appear in the lower half of the viral image.

The original cover image and the morphed photo of Trump. (Source: NYT/X/Modified by Logically Facts)

Moreover, The New York Times no longer includes timestamps in their publications, unlike the fake screenshot which displays a timestamp after the date of publication.

Nicole Taylor, Managing Director, External Communications, for The New York Times, confirmed to Logically Facts that the media outlet did not publish the article or headline shown in the purported screenshot.

Notably, Trump is the first former president in U.S. history to be convicted of felony crimes, having been found guilty of falsifying business records connected to a payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels in 2016. He also faces three more criminal cases regarding the 2020 Capitol riots, criminal conspiracy to overturn his defeat in Georgia in the 2020 U.S. presidential elections, and mishandling of White House classified documents, for which he has not been tried yet. However, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that former presidents, including Trump, are partially immune from criminal prosecution for actions taken while in office. 

The verdict

The viral screenshot purporting to be on an opinion piece published by The New York Times against former U.S. President Donald Trump is fabricated. No such opinion or editorial piece was published by the news outlet on June 28, 2024, or at any time before. Therefore, we have marked this claim as fake.