MRC's Tabloid Hypocrisy Continues
Topic: Media Research Center

Is the Media Research Center still being hypocritical about the credibility of tabloids regarding the sex lives of presidential candidates? You bet it is.

The MRC continues to be aghast that the National Enquirer's report on alleged affairs by Ted Cruz though it demanded in 2008 that the media pick up tabloid reports of a John Edwards affair. Scott Whitlock huffs that "there’s a complete lack of solid sourcing in the sleazy National Enquirer allegations against Ted Cruz," and Curtis Houck complains that late-night hosts are "promoting the smear as legitimate."

And as expected, Tim Graham and Brent Bozell devote an entire column to whining about it, harrumphing that "The National Enquirer's name in journalism is synonymous with factually unsupported drivel of the lowest kind. It is a sacred truth that no responsible journalist would reference the kind of garbage found in this tabloid" and further complaining about "the awful National Enquirer."

Funny, Bozell (and, thus, Graham since he was Bozell's ghostwriter at the time) didn't have that problem in 2008. In his column on the Edwards scandal, he hurled no epithets at the Enquirer for pedding "garbage" and "drivel," instead touting how "for months ... the National Enquirer has been trickling out the goods they collected on John Edwards having an affair and possibly a love child with campaign aide Rielle Hunter, staking out Edwards in a California hotel - and how he hid in the bathroom to avoid them." He went on to  praise the Enquirer for having "dug out the Edwards affair."

And the MRC was desperate to promote the Edwards scandal at the stage that it was "factually unsupported drivel." As early as October 2007, it was demanding that "MSM" coverage of the Enquirer's reports on Edwards because "the mere allegation would be worthy of a media frenzy based upon its recent behavior."

However, the MRC is so dedicated to keeping up the double standard that MRC video guy and world's lamest fake transsexual Dan Joseph went out and "asked Americans" -- read: played man-on-the-street in front of the White House -- about the Cruz-Enquirer story, which he introduced this way:

Last week, America's most-famous tabloid newspaper, “National Enquirer,” printed a story alleging that Republican presidential candidate Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has had extramarital affairs with multiple women throughout the course of his political career. Many of Cruz's detractors immediately took the story as fact and used it in an effort to derail his campaign. 

Apparently, “National Enquirer” is now considered, by some, to be a legitimate source of political news and information.

MRCTV went to the White House and asked Americans what they thought of this shining beacon of journalistic integrity. 

Joseph didn't tell the "Americans" he ambushed that his employer considers the Enquirer a "shining beacon of journalistic integrity" -- when they go after Democrats, anyway. But he does ask one person, apparently without irony, "Do you think it's a good thing that we're starting to have political discussions about stories that were broken in a tabloid like this?"

MRC Transgender Freakout Watch
Topic: Media Research Center

The mere idea of transgenders, for some reason, is a berzerk button at the Media Research Center, particular for MRC official Tim Graham. And Graham does his freakout thing once again in a March 25 NewsBustsers post:

The PBS NewsHour is nothing if not sensitive to the “LGBT community.” A Thursday night segment drew the online headline “How North Carolina signed a bill dubbed the most anti-LGBT law in the U.S.” Or, as the gay-left site Towleroad gushed over it, “PBS News Hour Takes Apart North Carolina’s Anti-LGBT Law: WATCH”.

The PBS anchor on this story was John Yang, an openly gay journalist who gave advice about being “Out on the Air” at last year’s convention of the activist National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.  The guests were Time Warner Cable reporter Loretta Boniti and Dominic Holden, “national LGBT reporter for BuzzFeed news.”

Those opposed to say, letting men who “identify” as female use the ladies restroom, were barely noticed.

[...]

Notice how PBS uses all the usual leftist lingo. Their progressive groups are merely “legal rights groups” fighting for what Yang called an “anti-discrimination law” that “expanded protections for LGBTQ people, including letting transgender people choose which bathroom to use.”

[...]

Yang kept the PC lingo going asking if this is the new frontier for “LGBTQ rights.” The PC crowd may faint: He left out “Intersex” and “Asexual”! Why can't PBS go all the way to LGBTQIA?

Graham goes on to deny the discredited right-wing myth that sexual predators will exploit transgender non-discrimination laws to sneak into women's restrooms ... by citing alleged examples from an anti-abortion website and one he claims is "feminist-activist" but actually smears transgenders as "Transjacktivists." And actually, the anti-abortion website's example (involving a convicted sex offender who pretended to be transgender sexually assaulting women) is irrelevant to the issue at hand since it involved a homeless shelter, not a public restroom, and the incidents took place before a transgender accommodation law was passed. The anti-abortion website's article is strategically vague about the timing of the incident vis-a-vis the accommodation law.

Presumably, the kind of person Graham would like to voice the right wing's anti-transgender agenda on NPR and elsewhere is MRC intern Daniel Garza, who goes on the kind of anti-LGBT tirade that shows him to be prime MRC employment material in a March 28 post:

A time-tested, common-sense civic and cultural norm is currently under direct assault. Specifically, the inherent right to gender privacy, that fittingly separates men and women when it comes to access to public restrooms, has become the latest battlefield of the left.

Not surprisingly, Fusion, the hyper-left sister network of Univision, has gone off the deep end in support of this latest manifestation of the LGBTQRSTUVXYZ (so many letters it’s impossible to keep up so we might as well just list them all) agenda that it’s become a borderline obsession.

In recent days, Fusion has given favorable attention to subjects including but not limited to: a queer-friendly sex-ed guide, a celebration of a trans woman resisting police, San Francisco banning city employees from going to North Carolina and an article about a supermarket’s gender-neutral restrooms.

Most prominently though, has been Fusion’s constant push for acceptance of Trans people being able to decide what restroom they want to use.

Those who are trying to stand in the way of this latest offensive point out there is much at stake in the outcome of this battle. Not only is the right to privacy and decency for women and girls being threatened, but also a basic right to feel ostensibly safe in public areas, since the potential for more sexual assaults and sexual harassment would no doubt increase.

[...]

Where is such madness taking us, and where do we draw the line? For even more convoluted complexity you only need to take a look at nonbinary.org. Genders there include “faegender”, which is "When an individual’s gender changes with the seasons, equinoxes, and moon phases." As well as “kronosgender” described as “where you are a different gender at certain times of the day” and of course, “condigender”, where you basically only feel like a boy or girl under specific circumstances.

On second thought, maybe you better just hold it next time you need to use a public restroom.

In addition to Garza's entire rant being hateful and silly -- anyone who spouts "LGBTQRSTUVXYZ" as a way to mock those who do not conform to right-wing gender norms is simply interested in having a serious conversation on the subject -- Garza's description of  Fusion as "hyper-left" is just as meaningless; after all, the MRC thinks simply donating money to Democrats makes you "ultra-liberal," so its ideological scale is highly defective.

MRC Denounces Media Coverage of Cruz 'Tabloid Smear' -- But Demanded Media Coverage of Tabloid Story on Edwards
Topic: Media Research Center

In a March 25 NewsBusters item, Media Research Center research director Rich Noyes complained: "Despite the complete lack of any evidence, and only unequivocal denials from women named in the story, a story based on what even the National Enquirer itself labeled only as 'rumors' against GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz found its way onto both the ABC and NBC evening newscasts on Friday." Noyes followed up the next day with more complaints about coverage of thte story, for which he again pointed out "there is still no on-the-record source or any other supporting evidence."

That's a big change from 2008, when the MRC demanded coverage of another tabloid story when it was similarly unsubstantiated.

As we noted at the time, the MRC's Tim Graham huffed that the media was ignoring the story of John Edwards having an affair (at a time when only the Enquirer had advanced it, the current state of the Cruz story), complaining that the media more quickly jumped on the Larry Craig airport restroom toe-tapping scandal -- which, unlike the Edwards story, involved an actual guilty plea in court to an actual criminal charge. Other NewsBusters bloggers complained that one news outlet banned its bloggers from repeating the story, and another whined about the "MSM wall of silence."

And even when the Edwards story was proven to be true after all, MRC chief Brent Bozell still ranted that the story didn't get the play of Republican scandals.

So this is the MRC's chance to  prove it doesn't have a double standard: It should promote the Cruz affair story as much as it demanded the so-called MSM promote the John Edwards affair story. Alas, at this writing the story is nowhere to be found on the front page of MRC's "news" outlet, CNSNews.com.

So, it appears the MRC is satisfied with hypocritical ranting instead of honesty.

A Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory So Nice, Cruz Says It (And MRC Quotes Him Saying It) Twice
Topic: Media Research Center

Republican presidential candidate and Senator Ted Cruz (Tex.) sat for an interview with CBS’s John Dickerson Friday afternoon in National Harbor, Maryland that aired on Face the Nation. Cruz lambasted the media for “hav[ing] a coronation” of Donald Trump as the GOP nominee so he could be viciously defeated by Hillary Clinton in November.

While discussing the possibility of a brokered Republican National Convention, Cruz pointed to how he’s remained close to Trump in the delegate count but at the same time, “the media wants to just have a coronation” of Trump “because the media knows Donald can't win the general, that Hillary would wallop him.”

-- Curtis Houck, March 6 MRC NewsBusters post

During his Super Tuesday election speech, Ted Cruz called out the media as Donald Trump surrogates, hitting them for the disparity in coverage given to Trump. Talking to supporters, Cruz denounced, “The mainstream media, the network suits who make the decisions, want Donald Trump as the Republican nominee.”

He added, “That's why they've given him hundreds of millions in free advertising because they are partisan Democrats ready for Hillary and they know that Donald may be the one person on the face of the Earth that Hillary Clinton can beat in the general election.” 

-- Scott Whitlock, March 15 MRC NewsBusters post

The idea that the "liberal media" is deliberately colluding to make Trump the Republican nominee so he'll be beaten by Hillary in November is a conspiracy promulgated by the Media Research Center.

NEW ARTICLE: The Semi-Birthers At The MRC
Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center writers didn't exactly support Obama birtherism, but they didn't exactly denounce it either. Only when eligibility questions popped up around Ted Cruz did the MRC get passionate on the subject. Read more >>

MRC Mocks Idea That Transgenders For Cruz Is Like 'Jews For Hitler,' Ignores Cruz Hung Out With Pastor Who Wants To Kill Gays
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center got a bit of mileage out of "The View's" Joy Behar declaring that "Transgenders for Cruz is like Jews for Hitler":

Kristine Marsh complained that "The media’s attacks on presidential candidate Ted Cruz have been unprecedented, with comparisons to Nazis, the KKK, even a major newspaper using an image of a gun pointed towards his head."

The Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard promoted the clip in his weekly MRC-derived column, featuring this quote from MRC VP of research Brent Baker: "Classic example of excessive hyperbole exposing the prejudice of a media personality. So, since Ted Cruz is not an advocate for the specific rights and new laws transgender activists want imposed, that means he's planning a transgender Holocaust? Besides, I thought it was Trump who is the new Hitler according the media?"

But Marsh, Bedard and Baker all ignore evidence that Behar's statement might not be as hyperbolic as it seems. All they have to do is look at the anti-LGBT sentiments of the people who are supporting Cruz.

Last November, Cruz and other GOP presidential candidates attended a forum hosted by right-wing pastor Kevin Swanson who used said forum to advocate for executing gays. As we noted at the time, the MRC completely ignored Swanson's declaration, and it was not until three months later that Cruz bothered to try and distance himself from Swanson's remarks.

Cruz has aalso accumulated the endorsements of numerous anti-LGBT activists, including Sandy Rios and Linda Harvey.

Perhaps Marsh, Bedard and Baker can explain why an LGBT person would want to vote for someone who hangs out with such folks, at least one of whom has advocated their execution -- and why they shouldn't fear for their lives if Cruz is elected.

MRC Lets GOP Activist's False Birther Claim Stand
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's history on Obama birtherism is an ambivalent one -- it would alternate tepid endorsements with tepid denials. It's only when Ted Cruz faced birther-style claims that it got aggressive on the subject -- and even then it wouldn't target close personal friends of the MRC for going birther on Cruz.

That particular Trump-induced birther storm has passed ... which apparently has made it OK for the MRC to promote Obama birther attacks again.

Brad Wilmouth uses a March 13 MRC NewsBusters post to promote how a CNN anchor Poppy Harlow was "confused" by how "her guest, Ohio GOP chairman Matt Borges, turned the tables by implicating Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign in dabbling in similar mischief against her then-opponent Senator Obama." Wilmouth uncritically repeated Borges' assertion that Obama birtherism was "created by Hillary Clinton in 2008," noting only that Harlow pointed out that "Hillary Clinton never asked for the President's, you know, then-Senator Barack Obama's birth certificate."

In fact, numerous fact-checkers have found no link between Hillary Clinton and birther attacks on Obama.

USA Today: "While it's true that some of her ardent supporters pushed the theory, there is no evidence that Clinton or her campaign had anything to do with it."

PolitiFact: "It’s an interesting bit of history that the birther movement appears to have begun with Democrats supporting Clinton and opposing Obama. But Trump, and others who have made this claim, neglect to mention that there is no direct tie to Clinton or her 2008 campaign. The story appears to have started with supporters of Clinton, an important distinction."

Washington Post: "This is simply not true. Clinton's campaign, one of the most thoroughly dissected in modern history, never raised questions about the future president's citizenship. The idea that it did is based largely on a series of disconnected actions by supporters of Clinton, mostly in the months between Obama's reaction to the Jeremiah Wright story and the Democratic National Convention. ... the Clinton campaign never pursued the idea that Obama was literally not American, and therefore ineligible for the presidency."

It would have been nice if Wilmouth was honest and told the truth. But telling the truth about Obama is simply not in the MRC's best political interest.

The Trump-Flip-Flopping Continues At The MRC
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center is taking its indecisiveness over whether to attack or defend Donald Trump to new contradictory levels.

In a March 14 post, Rich Noyes complains that Trump, not "left-wing protesters who forced the cancellation of a presidential campaign event," is getting the blame for violence at Trump campaign events, according to an "an MRC analysis of ABC, CBS and NBC news coverage" spanning "a whopping 45 segments totalling nearly 85 minutes of airtime."

A mere seven hours later, Curtis Houck -- the MRC's king of the conspiracy theory that the "liberal media" is conspiring to make Trump the GOP nominee so he'll lose to Hillary Clinton in November -- devoted an entire post to complaining that Trump got "a whopping 84 percent of the Republican campaign segments" on the TV networks prior to the most recent Super Tuesday elections. 

While Houck noted that the Trump coverage was largely made up of stories on "the ongoing fears of violence at Trump rallies," he didn't note that, as his MRC colleague wrote seven hours earlier, that coverage was almost uniformly negative -- which you'd think would be a good thing since MRC boss Brent Bozell is an anti-Trump activist.

The MRC needs to decide on what Trump message it wants to send, because being contradictory isn't working.

MRC's Graham Mad That NPR Brings Back Satire Mag, Doesn't Mention Hillary
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Tim Graham really did devote an entire post to complaining that NPR had on the founders of the now-defunct satire magazine Spy to talk about their longtime targeting of Donald Trump -- Spy invented the term "short-fingered vulgarian" to describe him -- but didn't mention that Spy also targeted Hillary Clinton in the '90s.

But Graham glosses over the reason why Spy was worth a story: Trump is still mad about Spy's decades-old mocking of him, and the story came in the wake of the Republican presidential campaign's descent into the gutter of obliquely discussing the gential size of Trump, to which Spy's "short-fingered vulgarian" reference even more obliquely addresses.

By contrast, Hillary has apparently not complained, then or now, about Spy's mocking of her, making any reference to her in this story superfluous.

And despite the fact that Spy devoted three covers (and, presumably, related editorial content) to Hillary-mocking, Graham still insisted on calling Spy a "lefty satire rag." Gotta keep that "liberal media" meme alive, even if you've totally discredited it.

Graham, of course, made sure to include the Spy covers mocking Hillary. He seemingly dismissed them as "juvenile," adding, "These are not sophisticated covers. They're low-class enough to make a high-school joke giggle." And, it would appear, a high-ranking official at a right-wing media-monitoring organization.

 

MRC Does More PR for Right-Wing Filmmaker
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has a history of serving as a shill for right-wing filmmaker Phelim McAleer, to the point where it appears McAleer was paying the MRC for the privilege of having it say nice things about him and promote crowdfunding campaign for his new film.

It appears the MRC is at it again. Sam Dorman does some dutiful stenography in a March 7 NewsBusters post, declaring that McAleer "said Facebook censored him after he challenged anti-drilling activists on his documentary’s social media site," purportedly for mocking a man who's suing over fracking -- a subject McAleer produced a dishonest film about in order to promote the practice and attack its critics. Dorman's apparent sole source for his post is McAleer himself; all he cites is a press release issued by McAleer and what "McAleer told MRC Business."

Dorman made no apparent attempt to verify anything McAleer said, nor did he apparently contact Facebook  for a response to McAleer's charge of censorship. Given McAleer's record of hyperbole and questionable grasp of the facts -- he's been called "climate denial's Michael Moore" -- there's no reason his claims should be taken at face value.

Unless McAleer is paying for that service from the MRC, which may very well be the case once again.

MRC Uses Levin For Cover To Criticize Fox News
Topic: Media Research Center

The business relationship between the Media Research Center and right-wing radio host Mark Levin is apparently so close now that Levin has a hand in the MRC's editorial agenda.

On Feb. 28, Ted Cruz faced tough questioning from host Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday," who pressed Cruz on factually inaccurate claims he had made. You know MRC chief Brent Bozell is a big fanboy of Cruz; Levin is too, to the point that Levin's fiancee's son works for his campaign.

The MRC is also a big booster of Fox News, to the point that it deliberately excludes Fox from its TV analyses in order to avoid having to hold Fox accountable to the same standards it applies to other TV networks (on, for instance, Trump boosterism). So it would never criticize Wallace so directly for something it would have no problem attacking him for were he employed anywhere but Fox News. 

However, it has no problem attacking Wallace while using Levin as cover. Hence, Randy Hall's March 1 NewsBusters post:

One day after Ted Cruz was a guest on the Fox News Sunday program, conservative radio personality Mark Levin hammered that show's host -- Chris Wallace -- for performing a “hit job” on that Republican presidential candidate after conducting a softball interview with Donald Trump, even though the GOP front-runner has made several of the same mistakes Cruz was accused of making.

Levin began the segment by stating that “Wallace went after Cruz” and is a person he's “never liked” because Wallace is “a chip off the old block,” a son of longtime liberal CBS journalist Mike Wallace, which the radio host stated “is the problem” with his interviews and coverage of the news.

“And no, this isn't journalism or anything of the sort,” Levin stated before airing Wallace's first question to the senator from Texas.

[...]

Levin noted that Wallace had conducted two “totally different interviews. That's why I can't watch these Sunday shows.”

“And it's not a coincidence that Rupert Murdoch the other day tweeted out that Trump, Rubio, Kasich and the establishment need to unite to beat the Democrats,” he stated.

“Now who was left out of that?” the host asked. “Cruz … because Cruz is the true outsider, and he's the true conservative.”

Judging from this incident, it appears that Levin has found a downside to the Fox News Channel being “fair and balanced.”

And it appears the MRC has finally found a way to Heather Fox News for insufficient adherence to right-wing orthodoxy without sullying its hands doing so.

MRC Bashes Media For Not Immediately Hopping on Trump-Reporter Incident -- But CNS Has Buried It
Topic: Media Research Center

According to the Media Research Center, the TV networks didn't move fast enough to cover an alleged incident in which Donald Trump's campaign manager manhandled a conservative reporter. Curtis Houck writes in a March 10 post:

Two days after Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski allegedly forcefully grabbed the arm of Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC finally noticed this disturbing incident just as a Trump protester was sucker punched at a rally on Wednesday night.

Houck praised ABC for offering "the most extensive and substantive time on this matter" and touted how it "secured an interview with Fields."

You know who who gave even less attention to this incident? The MRC's own "news" division, CNSNews.com.

A search of the CNS archive for "michelle fields trump" turned up only two links to a single story, an Associated Press article dated March 13. CNS did not put the story on its front page -- which means it may as well not have been published at all since few CNS readers are likely to venture beyond the front-page headlines -- and no CNS reporter covered the controversy.

Houck, of course, is suggesting that this plays into the MRC's conspiracy theory that the "liberal media" want Trump chosen as the Republican presidential nominee so he'll lose to Hillary Clinton in November. But his own organization downplayed the controversy even more than the networks purportedly did.

Does that mean CNS is part of the "liberal media" conspiracy too?

MRC's Trump Dilemma Still Leaves It Flip-Flopping
Topic: Media Research Center

Defend or bash Donald Trump? The Media Research Center, whose boss is on record as anti-Trump, keeps wildly swinging between the two.

The latest example is kicked off by a March 8 item by Scott Whitlock complaining that "ABC and NBC on Tuesday hyped the comparison of Donald Trump to the Nazis and Adolf Hitler" by noting that Trump
"has asked crowds to take a loyalty oath," adding that "In December, CNN, ABC and CBS touted the Philadelphia Daily News likening Trump to Hitler."

This might have been more effective criticism had the MRC's NewsBusters not also, at around the same time, posted an item in its "editor's picks" section from the conservative site Twitchy pointing out thgat the "pledge of allegiance to Trump is NOT a good look." (Screenshot captured above.)

Apparently clueless about the contradiction, Whitlock continued to complain that "when Tea Party members compared Obama to Hitler, an angry CNN reporter deemed it 'offensive,'" even though the tea party critics in question named no Obama actions -- a huge contrast with Trump -- and had only "a mocked-up sign in which President Barack Obama is melded with Adolf Hitler." Whitlock doesn't mention that even the person who wrote that post, the since-departed Seton Motley, agreed that likening Obama to Hitler is "a bit over the top."

And Whitlock's post was followed by one by Mairead McArdle whining that "liberals get far more of a pass" in likening people to Hitler. McArdlewaited until way near the end of her lengthy piece to concede that conservatives regularly subject Obama to such comparisons:

People on both political sides sometimes give in to the easy temptation to caricature opponents as Nazis, and plenty of conservatives reacted that way to Obama’s statist tendencies over the course of his presidency. However, the extreme reactions of liberals can only be hypocritical.

[...]

Both sides should refrain from comparing elected representatives of the United States to the man whose name has become the byword for evil. But let us not forget who made invoking Nazism routine, and for which side the fascist sky is always falling.

But has McArdle denounced those Obama-Hitler comparisons as extreme beyond that tepid declaration that both sides should stop? Not that we've seen -- which makes her just as hypocritical as she claims liberals are.

Cruz Spouts More Media-Bashing Direct From the MRC
Topic: Media Research Center

One key reason you can presume that Brent Bozell and the Media Research Center loves Ted Cruz is because he spouts the MRC's anti-media talking points.

The latest example: the MRC's conspiracy theory that the "liberal media" is secretly plotting to make Donald Trump the Republican nominee so that he'll lose to Hillary Clinton in November. From the MRC's mouth to Cruz's ears, as chief conspiracy-monger Curtis Houck eagerly regurgitates in a March 6 post:

Republican presidential candidate and Senator Ted Cruz (Tex.) sat for an interview with CBS’s John Dickerson Friday afternoon in National Harbor, Maryland that aired on Face the Nation. Cruz lambasted the media for “hav[ing] a coronation” of Donald Trump as the GOP nominee so he could be viciously defeated by Hillary Clinton in November.

While discussing the possibility of a brokered Republican National Convention, Cruz pointed to how he’s remained close to Trump in the delegate count but at the same time, “the media wants to just have a coronation” of Trump “because the media knows Donald can't win the general, that Hillary would wallop him.”

As we noted the last time Houck pushed this, his theory conveniently omits -- and he does so again here -- the facts that 1) even conservative voters like Trump; 2) the "liberal media" has produced much negative reporting on Trump, which competitors like Cruz have largely ignored until recently; and 3) Fox News, which is decidedly not the "liberal media," has been the biggest Trump promoter of them all.

But Cruz may have been reading from a list of talking points faxed to his campaign by the MRC, and that's the only important thing to Houck.

MRC Still Flip-Flopping On Denouncing, Defending Trump
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center still can't get its act together regarding whether it should denounce or defend Donald Trump.

In a March 1 post, Ken Shepherd praises the Daily Beast for uncovering Trump denouncing Ronald Reagan as weak in 1987. Shepherd adds his own denunciation of Trump for good measure:

There's always a willing audience for doom-and-gloom populists who insist that only they have the key to restoring American "greatness," all the while heaping praise on other, less democratic regimes for supposedly being smarter, more successful, and potentially more enduring than our constitutional regime.

Trump's answer has always been electing the right hard-nosed bully, not in trusting the genius and greatness of the American people to fuel the nation's economic progress.

Kudos to Daly for reminding us all just how wrong, and consistently wrong, Trump has been with his simplistic populist messages and denunciation of real conservatives. 

Then literally three hours and 27 minutes later, MRC Latino's Edgard Portela rushed to Trump's defense over the whole KKK thing:

The portrayal of Donald Trump as a racist continues full bore on Univision and Telemundo.

On Monday evening, the national evening newscasts of both networks craftily played up Trump’s stumbling Sunday morning answer to CNN’s Jake Tapper on the question of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke’s endorsement.

It’s clear that both networks committed journalistic malpractice by completely ignoring Trump’s unequivocal rejection of Duke’s endorsement just the Friday before, as well as his repetition of his rejection of the endorsement both Sunday afternoon on Twitter and Monday morning on NBC’s Today show.

In their woefully incomplete coverage of the important matter, the agenda of portraying Trump as a KKK-embracing racist could not be more patently manifest.

Portela conveniently ignored what exactly Trump did during the Jake Tapper appearance: he said nothing stronger than "I don't know anything about David Duke, OK?" even after Tapper asked him three times to disavow Duke and the KKK.

It's interesting, however, that the MRC is not going after Tapper for asking the question -- even they realize he was as fair as one could be about it, giving him three full chances to answer. So Portela had to bash outlets for reporting it and not all the times Trump wasn't a racist.

Which seems to contradict the MRC's whole anti-Trump vibe. You'd think Shepherd, as NewsBusters managing editor, would be cool with Trump being portrayed as a racist.