New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger kind of has a point when he says that it “crosses a dangerous line” for President Trump to accuse his paper of “a virtual act of treason” because it’s a crime “so grave it is punishable by death.”

On the same grounds, Sulzberger should probably evaluate what’s going into his own paper.

Three of the Times’ own columnists have now accused Trump of treason. Last July, the paper published a column by Charles Blow, “Trump, Treasonous Traitor.” To really drive home that biting use of alliteration, Blow incoherently closed out the piece writing, “Trump is a traitor and may well be treasonous.”

The Times’ Michelle Goldberg did the same thing that same month. In an appearance on MSNBC, she said that Trump conducted himself in a way that was “potentially treasonous.”

And still that month, Thomas Friedman wrote, “There is overwhelming evidence that our president, for the first time in our history, is deliberately or through gross negligence or because of his own twisted personality engaged in treasonous behavior…”

Charles Blow, Michelle Goldberg, Thomas Friedman. (Wikimedia Commons)

Fine — that’s the Bill of Rights in action. All political speech is fair under the First Amendment. That covers the president, too. But Sulzberger’s real complaint isn’t that Trump isn’t fighting fair. It’s that he’s fighting at all.

“There is no more serious charge a commander in chief can make against an independent news organization,” Sulzberger wrote Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal. Coincidentally, he said nothing about whether there’s a more serious charge the writers at a news organization can make against a president.

You can believe that the president, no matter who, should have his hands tied. But as it stands right now, the First Amendment kind of cuts both ways.

Trump's own reason for accusing the Times of a "virtual act of treason" is arguably more legitimate, anyway. He made the assertion after the paper published information about the administration's ability to breach Russian cyber systems. Times writers call Trump treasonous because they still believe the hoax conspiracy theory that he colluded with Russia. Or maybe just because it's Monday.

Demanding that Trump shut up and take it is not pro-freedom. Sulzberger tried his hardest to make that case, writing with no evidence of a gag reflex that “Journalism guards freedoms, binds together communities, ferrets out corruption and injustice, and ensures the flow of information that powers everything from elections to the economy.” Okay, but how does calling the president a traitor fit into that guarding of freedom, binding of communities and empowering of elections?

If Sulzberger wants Trump to take the word “treason” more seriously, he should first ask that his own writers do the same.