Reality briefly broke through the Huffington Post's Trump embargo.
An editorial mandate consigning the Republican presidential candidate to the website's Entertainment page has been in place since July. Two blog posts on Trump posted Oct. 24, "A Tales of Two Bullies," and "U.S. Should Charge to Protect Defense Welfare Clients: Donald Trump Got One Idea Right," were posted to the website's Politics page.
"After watching and listening to Donald Trump since he announced his candidacy for president, we have decided we won't report on Trump's campaign as part of the Huffington Post's political coverage. Instead, we will cover his campaign as part of our Entertainment section. Our reason is simple: Trump's campaign is a sideshow. We won't take the bait," Huffington Post editorial director Danny Shea announced on the website July 17.
Media watchdog Newsbusters first reported on the surreptitious change in policy Monday.
"Instead of licking their wounds by publicly eating humble pie and admit they were wrong, the Huffington Post seems to be very quietly placing Trump stories on their Politics page and hoping that nobody notices the change. Well, guess what? Your humble correspondent has noticed," Newsbusters' P.J. Gladnick wrote.
One of the Huffington Post's articles covered Trump's suggestion the U.S. should charge allies for security services its military supplies. The other covered alleged bullying tactics employed by Trump and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
The Huffington Post reached out to WND on Tuesday and denied any change in policy.
"These two items are blogs posts. HuffPost Bloggers post to the site themselves and select which vertical they would like their post to appear on. On Trump related blog posts, if politics is selected, a blog editor manually removes the post from politics, which is what's been done here," Stuart Whatley, blog editor, said in a statement.
Trump has been the Republican front-runner for the 2016 presidential nomination for months, although a New New York Times/CBS News survey released Tuesday lists retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson with a slight four-point lead.
The new poll has Carson taking 26 percent of Republican primary voters nationally compared to Trump's 22 percent, WND reported. The sampling error, however, is at plus or minus six percentage points for each candidate.
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