Back when Christopher Rufo was exposing critical race theory in public schools, he tweeted about exactly what he was doing — making critical race theory a dirty word. Liberal reporters pounced on the tweet, thinking it was some sort of "gotcha" moment.

Rufo scored a big win with critical race theory and moved on to academic queer theory. Now he's all over the plagiarism scandal at Harvard, claiming more than 40 instances where Harvard President Claudine Gay committed academic theft — no, wait — what did the New York Times call it? "Duplicative language."

Rufo is taking a victory lap over the coverage, and once again, he's fully admitted to what he's doing. And it's working.

NBC News "dystopia beat" reporter Ben Collins — who'd said he'd be leaving journalism in the new year — thinks that mainstream media outlets are being "gamed" by Rufo who's just laying out the playbook right in front of them:

That's the problem here — newspapers covering the biggest academic scandal of our time.

Collins is really butthurt that outlets like the New York Times are reporting on Gay's "duplicative language."

What is the most important thing in the world, and why isn't Collins covering it?

He won't even use the word plagiarism — instead, it's "internal politicking."

That's the conversation we're having, and Collins doesn't like it. He's upset that newspapers are covering a story that originated in the "right-wing."

At the beginning of the Biden administration, we noted the number of newspapers publishing pieces on how freedom of speech wasn't that important. Collins would rather you not know about any of this. Some "journalist."