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NYT Editor In Hot Water For Doubling Down On Incorrect Tweet

New York Times staff editor Bari Weiss is facing loads of backlash after trying to praise Mirai Nagasu’s historic Olympic performance with a very poorly misguided tweet. Nagasu is the first American woman to land a triple axle in any Olympic competition in history; Weiss retweeted a video that showed her landing a triple axel and wrote, “Immigrants: they get the job done.”

The only problem is: Nagasu isn’t an immigrant, she was born and raised in California. The history-making Olympian was born to parents who immigrated from Japan, and after much backlash, Weiss deleted her tweet–but not before doubling down hard on what she claims to have meant by calling her an immigrant.

In response to the criticism, this editor claims she was using “poetic license,” saying that her statement is a quote from Hamilton and an attempt to praise Nagasu and her parents. She pointed out other publications that she believed to be making the same point–though they didn’t wrongfully label an American-born woman as an immigrant–and continued to then act like it was the end of civilization because people were telling her she was wrong. Again, not a subjective thing here, she was just actually wrong, and instead continued to try to prove her wrong point.

Weiss deleting her initial tweet didn’t deter users from talking about the incident, amazed at just how confident she was in trying to prove she wasn’t being racist. Check out some thoughts on the incident below.