Here is how fake news operates within the confines of its No. 1 American purveyor, The New York Times.

After President Trump inartfully — but accurately – implied that a leap in sexual crime in Sweden was attributable to outsized immigration by Muslims – clusters of largely crime-prone thugs — the Times last week sloppily Page One’d a heated refutation of the president’s claim because the boys there hate Mr. Trump. Openly.

What matters at the ultra-liberal Times is refuting all that Mr. Trump asserts, facts be darned.

Pete Baker, a veteran journalist, wrote the nasty attempted takedown. Running hot on anti-Trump emotion, either he never verified his denial claims or he knew Mr. Trump was correct and suppressed the truth.

Its reputation limply hanging half in, half out of an overflow garbage can, by Sunday the red-faced Times slowly began walking back its emotion-based cover story.

Burble, burble. Gargle, gargle. Choke, choke.

Under the byline of an apparent beginning freelance reporter in Sweden, the Times awkwardly headlined its weak walkback “Sweden, Nation of Open Arms.”

What did that have to do with anything?

The Muslim crime angle in the furry mea culpa was so nuanced that I expected to read a crowd of Jews or Christians had forced the Muslim bad boys to fly to Sweden and attack girls.

Buried deep inside the overwrought 39-paragraph story was a soft confession that, err, ahem, cough, cough, uh yes, arrival of crowds of Muslim bad boys has triggered a jump in crimes, especially against women.

For sort of, kind of, almost acknowledging that Muslims have brought waves of crime to Sweden, the Times hopes to be credited with truthtelling, which stretches honesty to the breaking point.