Departure of New York Times columnist puts a spotlight on the void of pro-Trump voices in its opinion pages

Ross Douthat is heading to CBS, and suddenly the New York Times opinion page has to reckon with math it clearly hoped nobody would do. Twelve columnists. Two who call themselves conservative. Both voted for Kamala Harris. That's not diversity of thought, that's a company party with a "no MAGA allowed" sign taped to the door, dressed up as balance because the two conservatives technically exist on the masthead.

This isn't really about Douthat personally. He's a thoughtful writer who never pretended to be a Trump cheerleader, and that's fine, people can disagree with the president in good faith. The problem is what his departure exposes: a paper that has spent a decade telling readers it wants to understand "the other side" while quietly making sure that side is never actually represented by anyone who voted for the guy who won the last election. You can hire ten conservatives who voted against Trump and still have zero columnists who speak for the roughly half the country that voted for him.

The Times will say this is about quality, not ideology, the same thing every institution says when the numbers get embarrassing. But readers aren't dumb. When your idea of ideological range tops out at two guys who pulled the lever for Harris, you haven't built a big tent. You've built an echo chamber with a welcome mat.

If the paper wanted real range, it had four years of an actual Trump-voting electorate to hire from. It chose not to. That's a decision, not an accident, and it says more about the Times than any column Douthat ever wrote.