President Trump responds to a question about Ukraine and the whistleblower report while holding a report from the New York Times during a joint news conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto at the White House on Oct. 2, 2019. (Kevin Lamarque, Reuters)

Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Trump, wanted her nearly 3 million Twitter followers to click on a New York Times report that had just surfaced:

The story was pretty straightforward, detailing how the CIA whistleblower concerned about Trump’s dealings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky channeled his concerns to Rep. Adam B. Schiff’s (D-Calif.) House Intelligence Committee before he filed his famous complaint. “The early account by the future whistle-blower shows how determined he was to make known his allegations that Mr. Trump asked Ukraine’s government to interfere on his behalf in the 2020 election,” notes the story. “It also explains how Mr. Schiff knew to press for the complaint when the Trump administration initially blocked lawmakers from seeing it.”

As those details suggest, the story went deep into arcane government processes that have been under the spotlight in recent weeks. “Like other whistle-blowers have done before and since under Republican and Democratic-controlled committees, the whistle-blower contacted the committee for guidance on how to report possible wrongdoing within the jurisdiction of the intelligence community,” a Schiff spokesman told the Times.

The story also featured this passage:

The whistle-blower’s decision to offer what amounted to an early warning to the intelligence committee’s Democrats is also sure to thrust Mr. Schiff even more forcefully into the center of the controversy.

Perhaps that’s what Conway seized upon in her assessment that the “Fix Was In.”

Trump was seizing, too, on a printout of the story. In his news conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, he fielded a question on the story. “I love that question,” responded Trump. “It shows that Schiff is a fraud . . . I hate to say it’s the New York Times. I can’t believe they wrote it. Maybe they’re getting better . . . I think it’s a scandal that he knew before. I’d go a step further. I think he probably helped write it. Okay, that’s what the word is. I give a lot of respect for the New York Times for putting it out. Just happened as I’m walking up here, they handed it to me. And I said to Mike, I said, ‘Whoa, that’s something, that’s big stuff. That’s a big story.'" Repeating his allegations against Schiff, Trump said, “It’s a scam.”

Not quite as big a scam as touting -- and exaggerating -- a scoop from a newspaper that you’ve sought to undermine from the most powerful desk in the world:

"Failing New York Times" iterations from the Trump Twitter Archive. (erik wemple/Trump Twitter Archive)

Outing this mainstream media-citation hypocrisy has become a portfolio of the Erik Wemple Blog. An entire series of posts is dedicated to exposing this syndrome as it surfaces on Fox News.

Though Conway works for the country’s most egregious MSM-citing hypocrite, she herself has occasionally stood up for the New York Times, as when she defended White House reporter Maggie Haberman from the jealous digs of author Michael Wolff. Conway even has a couple of even-the-New-York-Times tweets in her history:

So we asked Conway whether she had a disagreement with the president about the New York Times. And we posed this question, too: Do you believe that the New York Times is an honest news outlet?

We’re awaiting a reply.