The New York Times published a sloppy and frankly damnably dishonest smear Thursday against U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley Thursday. The first five paragraphs of the piece and its headline strongly suggested that she is responsible for spending more than $52,000 on curtains for the U.N. ambassador's pricey, taxpayer-funded residence in New York City.

It's not true, but you'd have to read further than most people (and most other journalists who blog on such stories) in order to find that out.

First, Haley does indeed reside in an expensive government-leased flat. She also had nothing to do with selecting its location. CNN’s Jake Tapper reported, independent of the Times, that a source at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. said, “It was decided, well before the election in 2016, that the U.S. ambassador’s residence would move from the Waldorf to its new location.”

“In June of 2016 it was decided that the State Department's Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations would outfit the new residence,” the source added. “It's [standard operating procedure] for outfitting Ambassadors' Residences. The outfitting of the USUN residence just happened to start in 2016.”

Bottom line, per the source: Haley “had no choice in the location of the residence or what curtains were picked out that summer.”

Now, compare all of that to the Times’ original headline, which read, “Nikki Haley’s View of New York Is Priceless. Her Curtains? $52,701.”

The headline has since been amended so that it now reads, “State Department Spent $52,701 on Curtains for Nikki Haley’s Residence.”

[Related: New York Times blames Nikki Haley for Obama-era spending decision on pricey curtains]

Also, compare what Tapper reported Friday to the Times’ opening paragraph, which reads, “The State Department spent $52,701 last year buying customized and mechanized curtains for the picture windows in Nikki R. Haley’s official residence as ambassador to the United Nations, just as the department was undergoing deep budget cuts and had frozen hiring.”

Why, it’s almost as if the paper is trying to give a false impression! Spokespersons for the Times did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.

As the story fell apart Friday, one its on-the-record sources, Brett Bruen, who served as the director of Global Engagement for the Obama White House, tried to salvage it. He tweeted a screengrab from the State Department’s Office of Acquisitions webpage highlighting the agency’s $29,900 contract for the curtains (the other $22,801 went to installing motors and mounting hardware).

What’s missing from Bruen's supposed “gotcha” tweet is a copy of the Office of Acquisition Management’s sole justification letter, approving the $29,000 award. That letter is dated Nov. 15, 2016, which, of course, was during Obama's presidency and more than two months before Haley was confirmed as ambassador.

The Times apparently didn’t investigate the contract's origins even after a Haley representative said her office had nothing to do with them. But it is was well-known before that the Obama administration decided in 2015 to abandon suite 42-A in the Waldorf Astoria as home base for the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., and despite the fact that the story’s only on-the-record sources are Obama alums, reporters, pundits, and a lot of former Obama administration officials were eager Friday morning to share the Times’ discernibly sloppy reporting on social media.

“It’s all just one incredible con job,” said Mother Jones’ Mark Follman. I don’t think he knows how right he is.

The Times’ Jonathan Weismann also tweeted the story with a comment that read, “For $52,701, Nikki Haley’s new taxpayer-funded curtains better be special.”

His colleague Eric Lipton also shared the story on social media, characterizing it as “our latest update re housing/decor from the Trump-era diplomatic front.”

“Small government? Less government spending? The hypocrisy is stunning — and stunningly consistent — across the entire Trump Administration. Don't serve the people, take from them,” complained former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Former Obama White House “ethics Czar” and CNN analyst Norm Eisen added elsewhere, “I paid for my own damn curtains when I was an ambassador — & much more. Cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. (My wife is still mad.) What the hell is the matter with these people—they see taxpayers as chickens to be plucked. Well, voters are soon gonna say ‘pluck you.’”

Boy, is he going to be angry when he finds out who solicited and approved those contracts. I guess he may have to go pluck himself.