Chloe Malle’s social media history reveals a commitment to fashionable left-wing causes.
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks. This week, we look at the political leanings of the new editor-in-chief of Vogue and cover more media misses.
Left-Wing Politics in Vogue
Anna Wintour has finally appointed her successor as editor-in-chief of Vogue: current Vogue.com editor Chloe Malle.
Anyone hoping the change in leadership would lead to a new political direction for Vogue is likely to be disappointed; a review of Malle’s social media record and professional contributions reveals a commitment to fashionable progressive causes and politicians.
Malle, who first joined Vogue in 2011 as the publication’s social editor, has retweeted posts from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren.
She shared a 2019 tweet from radical climate activist Greta Thunberg: “Over 4 million on #ClimateStrike today. In 163 countries. And counting… If you belong to the small number of people who feel threatened by us, then we we have some very bad news for you: This is just the beginning. Change is coming – like it or not. #FridaysForFuture.”
She’s interviewed Symone D. Sanders, whom she called a “star,” and also apparently spent six weeks reporting on the youth climate group Sunrise Movement, which she said “made me feel old but also awed.” She said the scope of the aforementioned climate strike “owes much to them.”
Malle also retweeted leftist Representative Ilhan Omar when she congratulated fellow Squad member Rashida Tlaib on her 2018 victory.
That same year, she shared a Vogue piece, “Stormy Daniels Isn’t Backing Down,” and criticized Nikki Haley’s comment that it was “patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America.”
One year earlier, she shared a photo of a child from the Women’s March wearing a sign that said “I love naps but I stay woke.”
Malle’s politics are a good fit for the magazine, which featured former First Lady Michelle Obama on its cover three times during President Barack Obama’s two terms in office, and First Lady Jill Biden twice on its cover during President Biden’s term. Meanwhile, First Lady Melania Trump has been excluded from the cover of the magazine.
Unnamed editors from another Conde Nast publication, Vanity Fair, told the Daily Mail that they are outraged over the idea of Melania Trump being potentially featured on the magazine’s cover. Global editorial director Mark Guiducci apparently floated the idea of putting the first lady on Vanity Fair’s cover, according to Semafor.
“I will walk out the motherf—– door, and half my staff will follow me,” one editor told the outlet.
Vogue, for its part, also infamously wrote a glowing cover story about then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris last year that involved Harris sitting for a glamorous photoshoot during the anniversary of Hamas’s mass civilian slaughter. The Vogue cover ultimately labeled Harris the “candidate for our times.” It was the second time Harris was invited to grace the magazine’s cover.
The magazine also came under fire for its first Harris cover, after critics suspected that her skin had been artificially lightened and she appeared wearing casual Converse sneakers. The magazine defended the latter styling choice, saying “the more informal image captures Vice President-elect Harris’s authentic, approachable nature, which we feel is one of the Biden/Harris administration.”
Back in 2017, Vogue published a glowing profile of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.), that treated her as a top contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
And who can forget in 2020, when the magazine promised to “live more sustainably every day, in every way.”
“Vogue stands committed to practices that celebrate cultures and preserve the planet for future generations. We speak with a unified voice, across 26 editions standing for the values of diversity, responsibly, and respect for individuals, communities, and for our natural environment,” the magazine’s editors-in-chief said.
As NR’s Jim Geraghty wrote at the time:
What does Vogue do? It prints a high-circulation glossy paper magazine that showcases beautiful celebrities wearing extremely expensive clothing, sustained by advertising by the biggest luxury brands in the world. The fashion industry is responsible for an estimated 10 percent of all carbon emissions. When you see gold and diamond Bulgari watches that cost five figures advertised in its pages, do you think that gold and those diamonds wasn’t mined from somewhere? Do you think the leather in the Sketchers footwear doesn’t come from cows?
Headline Fail of the Week
The New York Times reported that “Minneapolis Suspect Knew Her Target, but Motive Is a Mystery,” and in a separate article says, “What Motivated the Minneapolis Church Shooter? We May Never Know.”
“The shooter who attacked a Catholic school on Wednesday posted social media videos and writings that betrayed a litany of grievances and obsessions,” the outlet added in a subheading.
And despite the Times’s head-scratching, New York Post reporter Diana Nerozzi translated the shooter’s manifesto and found it included thoughts about shooting up a different Catholic Church in Minnesota.
“It’s a Catholic Church too. Payback!” the shooter wrote.
Media Misses
• Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki was blasted online last week over her response to the Minneapolis Catholic school shooting. “Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayers does not end school shootings. prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers,” she said in one post. “When kids are getting shot in their pews at a catholic school mass and your crime plan is to have national guard put mulch down around DC maybe rethink your strategy,” she added in another.
She doubled down on her MSNBC show, saying, “So, the issue I raised yesterday and I will raise again today and I will not stop raising, is that people in power, like, say, people in the White House, who are using their platforms to do anything other than call for action for sensible gun safety measures — they’re doing anything else, like attacking me, which is a waste of time. They’re doing anything but saying what should be done to help prevent tragedies like the shooting in Minneapolis.”
• Like the New York Times, NPR was also preoccupied with respecting the preferred gender identity of the Minneapolis shooter, who was a trans-identifying male. After Senator Amy Klobuchar correctly referred to the shooter as “he” during an interview with the outlet, NPR host Ailsa Chang noted the gender of the shooter was “unclear.”
“And just a point of clarification, Senator Klobuchar referenced the shooter as ‘he.’ Although police have identified a suspect, it’s still unclear at this time what that person’s gender is or how they identify,” Chang said.
• Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem on Sunday accused CBS News of deceptively editing her interview to “whitewash the truth” about alleged MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia. During an interview with Face the Nation, host Ed O’Keefe asked Noem why the Trump administration was working to deport Abrego Garcia instead of forcing him to face charges in the U.S.
“Prosecution decisions are always made by the Department of Justice and Pam Bondi’s department, so we will let them do that, although this individual does have criminal charges pending. He has charges pending against him civilly as well. And the one thing that we will continue to do is to make sure that he doesn’t walk free in the United States of America,” Noem replied in a clip that aired on TV.
In a portion that was cut from the TV segment, but made available on YouTube, Noem added, “This individual was a known human smuggler, an MS-13 gang member, and an individual who is a wife beater, and someone who is so perverted that he solicited nude photos from minors and even his fellow human traffickers told him to knock it off. He was so sick in what he was doing and how he was treating small children. So, he needs to never be in the United States of America, and our administration is making sure we’re doing all that we can.”