O'Keefe said that this exposed the Washington Post's "hidden agenda."[191][193] (Wikipedia)
O'Keefe was criticized for his failed sting, and The Washington Post was praised. Rod Dreher of The American Conservative praised the Post and called on conservative donors to stop giving money to O'Keefe's outfit.[194] Dan McLaughlin of the conservative National Review said that O'Keefe's sting was an "own goal" and that O'Keefe was doing a disservice to the conservative movement;[195] Jim Geraghty of the National Review made a similar assessment.[196] Byron York of The Washington Examiner said that O'Keefe's "idiocy" was "beyond boneheaded," and that "O'Keefe really ought to hang it up."[197] Ben Shapiro, the conservative editor in chief of The Daily Wire, said that the botched sting was "horrible, both morally and effectively."[197] Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic wrote, "If James O'Keefe respected the right-wing populists who make up the audience of Project Veritas ... he would tell them the truth about all of the organizations that he targets. Instead, Project Veritas operates in bad faith, an attribute it demonstrated again this week in the aftermath of its bungled attempt to trick The Washington Post."[198] Noah Rothman of the conservative magazine Commentary chastised O'Keefe for being exploitative of his audience: "No longer are institutions like Veritas dedicated to combating ignorance in their audience. They're actively courting it."[199] Jonathan Chait of New York magazine said that O'Keefe, having set out to prove that the Post was fake news, ended up disproving it. O'Keefe's plot collapsed because it was premised on a ludicrously false worldview, wrote Chait. . . . " A ludicrously false world view . . .
