Washington Post lost faith in Taylor Lorenz after she misled bosses about Biden war criminal post: report

Editors at The Washington Post “lost faith” in Taylor Lorenz after she branded President Joe Biden a “war criminal” in a social media post — and was “willfully misleading” when confronted about it by her bosses, according to a report.Lorenz — the controversial tech columnist who has grabbed headlines for doxing “Libs of TikTok” and weeping on MSNBC only to later accuse the network of deceptive editing — announced last week that she left The Washington Post to start her own Substack newsletter.But that was after she reportedly lost the trust of top editors in the newsroom after The New York Post’s Jon Levine posted a screenshot of an image that Lorenz uploaded to her Instagram account, according to National Public Radio.In the photo, Lorenz is seen wearing a mask while Biden speaks to an audience in the background.Directly underneath the photo of Biden appears the caption “War criminal” with a frowning emoji next to the words.Biden has been branded a “war criminal” primarily by pro-Palestinian supporters who are outraged over policies related to Israel amid its ongoing military action in Gaza, Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries.Lorenz, who was attending a “Creators’ Summit” of online influencers at the White House in August, intended for the image to be seen by a select number of “close friends” — an Instagram feature that allows users to target a select group of followers rather than the general public, according to Levine’s report in The Post.She would later claim that the photo was digitally altered, saying: “You people will fall for any dumb*** edit someone makes.”NPR, however, corroborated Levine’s report and confirmed that the original post with the “war criminal” caption was authentic.Lorenz then wrote on X: “I literally never ‘denied it was real.’” She claimed that the post was an “obvious meme.”Lorenz was “willfully misleading” her editors when asked about the social media post,...