MRC's Bizarre 'Chappaquiddick' Attack on Esquire Writer Topic: Media Research Center
On Sept. 14, the Media Research Center used its NewsBusters Twitter account to bizarrely attack Esquire writer Charles Pierce as "Chappaquiddick Charles Pierce":
The post being promoted -- an item by Tom Johnson complaining Pierce wrote that if modern conservatism hadn't been graded "on an intellectual curve, it would've flunked out of Human College decades ago" -- says nothing about Chappaquiddick, nor does it mention any member of the Kennedy family; it actually features a picture of Ronald Reagan. Heck, Johnson doesn't even question the accuracy of Pierce's statement.
What's going on here is a continuing petulant grudge the MRC has had against Pierce for years. As we've documented, Pierce wrote a 2003 profile on Ted Kennedy that noted the Chappaquiddick incident and added, "If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age." Ever since then, the MRC -- led by Tim Graham -- has falsely promoted this quote as a an example of fawning liberal bias toward Kennedy. In fact, as Pierce himself states, it's taken out of context from a section that takes a "tough, but fair, shot" at Kennedy by acknowledging that the Chappaquiddick incident effectively kept him from having the "moral credibility" to be president.
The MRC has continually refuse to apologize to Pierce for misrepresenting the quote, let alone give him space anywhere on any MRC website to tell the truth about it.
But then, Graham -- like his boss Brent Bozell -- never has to answer for any of his falsehoods and failures, let alone pay any sort of price for getting it wrong.
WND's Favorite Ex-Soviet Bloc Spymaster Still Silent About Trump's Russian Ties Topic: WorldNetDaily
You'd think a former Soviet Bloc spymaster would have something to say about a presidential candidate with deep ties to Russia and who has said nothing but good things about its authoritarian leader and former KGB chief, Vladimir Putin. Apparently not.
We've documented how onetime Soviet-era Romanian spy chief Ion Mihai Pacepa -- who WorldNetDaily insists on referring to as a general or lieutenant despite the fact that the regime in which he earned that title ceased to exist nearly 30 years ago -- co-wrote (with right-wing prof Ronald Rychlak) an entire e-book about the 2016 election that somehow never touched on Donald Trump's cozy relationship with the Putin regime, so busy were he and Rychlak to denigrate Hillary Clinton. Heck, they effectively pleaded ignorance by stating, "We are not personally acquainted with Donald Trump, but we firmly believe that the whole of America – Republicans and Democrats and fringe thinkers – should unite behind him in order to defend capitalism and our great country during these existentially dangerous times. The alternative is unthinkable."
Pacepa (and, presumably, Rychlak as his ghostwriter-slash-mouthpiece, given that Pacepa is in his upper 80s) is back with a Sept. 11 column attacking Hillary once again, declaring that "Hillary Clinton’s lies regarding her gross mishandling of America’s national secrets should disqualify her from running for the White House."
You'd think a former Soviet Bloc spymaster would think a personal relationship with Putin like Trump apparently has is also disqualifying for a presidential candidate. But Pacepa makes no mention whatsover of Trump in his column, let alone to note his Russian ties.
We have to wonder: Is Pacepa a coward, or is he just being led around by right-wingers and Trumpophiles like WND and Rychlak as a useful idiot to rubber-stamp their agenda? Perhaps Rychlak can speak up and clear up some things.
MRC Complains Media Didn't Do Something Its Own 'News' Division Also Didn't Do Topic: Media Research Center
While the Media Research Center is all in on defending Donald Trump against the "liberal media," it still can't quite make peace with Trump's occasional liberal tendencies. Remember that the MRC has whined that the media has ignored Trump's "past liberalism," even though that's an issue mostly for purity-obsessed ideologues like those at the MRC -- and it hasn't kept the MRC from offering a full-throated defense of Trump.
Nevertheless, the MRC trods this territory again courtesy of a Sept. 14 post by Scott Whitlock:
The three networks generally don’t hold back in slamming Donald Trump, highlighting his controversies and scandals. But when the liberal candidate offers up policy prescriptions that echo theirs, ABC, CBS and NBC are silent. On Wednesday, none of the networks offered any conservative critiques on Trump’s new federally mandated maternity leave plan. In fact, ABC hit the businessman from the left, worrying it didn’t go far enough.
[...]
It’s not as though there isn’t harsh criticism from conservatives on this plan. Radio host Mark Levin said the plan “sucks” and that Trump “is, in his heart, a liberal.”
You know who else didn't provide any conservative critiques of Trump's "liberal" maternity leave plan? The MRC's own "news" outlet, CNSNews.com.
A Sept. 14 CNS article by Susan Jones uncritically outlines Trump's proposed policy without quoting any conservatives critiquing it. There is no separate article quoting conservative critics of the plan.
If the MRC really thinks this is such a major issue, why didn't it order CNS to do the story the networks won't do? That's supposed to be CNS' mission, isn't it, to "provide an alternative news source that would cover stories that are subject to the bias of omission and report on other news subject to bias by commission"?
Or it could be that the MRC is just tossing this out as another cynical excuse to attack the media -- hypocritically demanding the media do something its own "news" division has thus far refused to do -- and really doesn't care how pure a conservative Trump is as long as he beats the hated Hillary.
HIllary Email Bullet List: You Read It Somewhere Other than WND First Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily runs a continual feature on its front page called "You Read It Here First," which purports to identify things WND has published before other selected news outlets. But it goes the other way too.
On Sept. 2, the Washington Post published an article headlined "12 things I learned from the FBI report on Hillary Clinton’s private email server":
Five days later, WND published an article by Art Moore with the suspiciously similar headline "10 things we've learned about Hillary from her emails":
Not only did Moore apparently steal his story idea from the Post, he was a bit lazy about it, coming up with two fewer things to be learned.
Moore duplicated only two items from the Post's article of rthings he supposedly "learned": that Hillary used 13 mobile devices during her tenure as secretary of state, and that she received emails from Sidney Blumenthal (whose name Moore misspells). Moore apparently spent the rest of the five days between the Post article and his own trying to find the things that made Hillary look as bad as possible, i.e., "She suffered a blood clot that, by her own estimation, hindered her mental capacity."
So not only is WND highly biased to the point nobody believes what it reports, it's not even terribly original in its bias. No wonder WND is in deep finanical trouble.
CNS Hints At Pushing Zika Conspiracy Topic: CNSNews.com
We've noted how medical misinformer Jane Orient of the far-right-fringe Association of American Physicians and Surgeons has been pushing the idea that the Zika virus really isn't anything to worry about by insisting without credible evidence that Zika is hardly to blame for birth defects. It seems that CNSNews.com wants to further that conspiracy.
In a Sept. 8 CNS article, Penny Starr complains that "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are collecting data on women who are pregnant and infected with the Zika virus and the number of children born with birth defects, but they are not reporting the number of children born from virus-infected mothers who have no birth defects." Starr seems a bit annoyed at this:
CNSNews.com asked the CDC if it could provide the number of children from mothers infected with the virus who were born without birth defects.
A spokesman responded that the voluntary “registry” created by the CDC does not track those babies.
“We are only reporting the number of pregnant women in the registry and [the] number of adverse outcomes,” the spokesman said via email. “Bottom line is we're not reporting other outcomes because we are just beginning to understand the full spectrum of adverse outcomes associated with Zika infection in pregnancy.
“The decision was made to only report [the] number of pregnancies and adverse outcomes at this point,” the spokesman said.
Starr then cited a study showing that "12,000 Zika-infected women gave birth to children without microcephaly" in Colombia, but also that there is "an impending microcephaly epidemic in Colombia" due to Zika.
This was followed by Starr citing the tabloid TV show "Inside Edition" about a baby born to a Zika-infected mother taht didn't have microcephaly but appears to have other signs that the virus has affected the baby.
Starr seems to be following in Orient's steps in downplaying the threat of Zika, even though all the risks and consequences of the virus aren't known yet. Since Starr is an anti-abortion activist, we can assume that her story is linked to, or inspired by, the fight over a federal bill to fight Zika that's being held up in part because Republicans inserted a clause that prohibits funding from the bill to Planned Parenthood (though Starr doesn't mention the battle in her article).
Because if Zika doesn't really harm fetuses, there's no need to fund Planned Parenthood because (in Starr's mind) the only possible thing they would want to do is an abortion. That's how the right-wing mind works.
We Call BS on WND's Hillary Parkinson's 'Diagnosis' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Remember last month when WorldNetDaily cited an anonymous poll claiming that Hillary Clinton was losing support among Jewish voters? We called BS on it. It's time to go there again.
Hillary Clinton has stage-three Parkinson’s disease and suffers from seizures, according to three sources who have had a personal relationship with the Democratic Party presidential nominee.
The sources, who spoke to WND on condition of anonymity, explained that her seizures or dizzy spells can be triggered by being out in the sun, such as apparently occurred Sunday when she was videoed collapsing as she was escorted into her limousine in New York City.
We call BS.
First, given that Corsi is a notorious Clinton-hater -- just check out his book "Partners in Crime," which is flopping so badly WND is begging people to buy it in bulk -- so it's highly unlikely, if not impossible, that anyone with a "personal relationship" with Hillary would deign to talk to him, let alone the "three sources" that he claims who can somehow identify the exact stage of Parkinson's that Hillary purportedly has.
Second, Corsi is also a knownliar, so it's not unreasonable to believe he's making this up as well. And WND is in deep financial trouble, and it may very well be desperate enough to gin up a fake story to generate clicks.
Corsi also mentioned in his article a WND article the day before, in which Bob Unruh touts two doctors who also speculate that Hillary has Parkinson's, but a close look reveals that to be kind of bogus as well.
Unruh first cites an anonymous "board certified internist" published at the right-wing Powerline blog. Powerline insists the doctor is "prominent," but is also making "admittedly speculative comments." The second actually has a name, Ted Noel, who "assembled a 16-minute video explaining that the evidence suggests she has had Parkinson’s and has known about it, for several years."
But a look at Noel's website, Vidzette, reveals an agenda: "Our purpose is to show the world how unfit Hillary Clinton is for office." It also provides a big reason not to believe him: "Much of VidZette will be parody or caricature in nature." Here's a screenshot of Noel's website stating that:
Further, as fact-checkers havenoted, Noel is an anesthesiologist, which means he has no formal training in neurological conditions like Parkinson's.
So, more BS. Exactly what we'd expect from Corsi and WND.
WND Is Happy to Portray Trump As The Messiah Topic: WorldNetDaily
When people linked Barack Obama to messianic imagery, WorldNetDaily was outraged. For instance:
Before the 2008 eleciton, WND played up a quote from the hated (by WND) Louis Farrakhan, who said when Obama talks “the Messiah is absolutely speaking.”
In April 2009, Drew Zahn whined that "On his 100th day in office, President Obama will be 'crowned' in messianic imagery at New York City’s Union Square" through an artist's rendering "featuring Obama with his arms outstretched and wearing a crown of thorns upon his head."
WND columnist Jesse Lee Peterson huffed in a 2012 column: "President Barack Obama is the most divisive man to ever occupy the White House –period! Yet, 95 percent of black Americans worship him as if he’s the messiah. Why?" He added, "Blacks have been looking for a physical messiah and have forgotten that Christ has already come and made a way for them to be free."
WND claimed in 2013 that an available school lesson plan allegedly portrays Obama as a messiah, quoting right-wing activist Kyle Olson as retorting that the lesson plans "are more fitting for an authoritarian regime in which children are taught to deify and praise their dear leader. One can almost envision teachers in Cuba, Venezuela and Iran using similar books and lessons."
Another 2013 article approvingly features Rush Limbaugh noting that millions on the left who still believe Obama is the messiah, lamenting, "They’re wedded to Obama for a host of reasons, ideological loyalty, race, hatred of conservatism. They are going to support anything that denies us any kind of a real or perceived victory."
But now that the target of deity-esque worship is its favorite candidate Donald Trump, WND is totally cool with such messiah comparisons.
In a Sept. 5 WND article, Leo Hohmann highlights how a "Jewish rabbi from New Jersey" is using that imagery to describe Trump, "making clear in the process that he doesn’t see the GOP presidential nominee as the Messiah but rather a messiah." Hohmann uncritically summarizes how Rabbi Mendel Kessin "says the Hebrew numerical value of Donald Trump is the same as that of Moshiach ben David (Messiah son of David). He quickly assures his listeners that Trump is not the long-awaited Messiah of the Jewish people. At the same time, Kessin plainly asserts that Trump has the qualities of a messiah-like figure."
Hohmann called in a couple of WND authors to back up the concept: Joel Richardson says "the rabbi’s view of Western Christianity fits right into the mainstream of Judaism even if his eye-popping views on Trump seem controversial," and Carl Gallups is quoted as saying that "I think the main thrust of Rabbi Kessin’s message is that, somehow, Yahweh might be in the process of using Donald Trump to bring about some much-needed biblical reformation to the United States and, thus, the world."
Hohmann lets Gallups uncriticallyengaged in his usual weasel words to spin his long history of likening Obama to the Antichrist (remember, WND touted Gallups' video rather explicitly making the claim back in 2009 when he was hiding behind the pseudonum PPSIMMONS), claiming that "a number of Christians and even biblical scholars have examined Obama’s journey, candidacy, and eight-year presidential legacy and point out his clearly ‘antichrist’ characteristics without ever believing him to be, or declaring him to be, the actual antichrist."
Hohmann also lets Gallups get a anti-Jewish dig at the rabbi: "I so wish that Rabbi Kessin could see that Yeshua/Jesus is the soon-coming Messiah!"
We've highlighted WND columnists -- such as fanfiction writer Theodore Roosevelt Malloch -- portraying Trump in near-messianic terms, but for sheer idol worship at WND, one needs look no further than Gina Loudon's Sept. 4 column:
I stood in front of my television as Donald Trump was speaking. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing as he addressed the crowd at the Great Faith International Ministries church in Detroit.
My jaw dropped as I realized Donald Trump is the candidate we have been waiting for all these years since Ronald Reagan. It’s funny how God delivers what you need, when you need it, but not always in the package that you were expecting.
[...]
Donald Trump is uniquely positioned to fix the problems that plague cities like Detroit.
Had any other Republican attempted to promise factories, schools, wealth and prosperity to that church that day, it would have been seen as an empty promise. Only Trump can actually deliver.
Trump can see value where others cannot. He has proved over and over in his career that he has the ability to take a piece of property and make it beautiful and profitable. He has shown how he can create high-paying jobs in the private sector and make others wealthy along with him.
Also notable is that Trump didn’t dodge the topic of discrimination. He stated, “I fully understand that the African-American community has suffered from discrimination and that there are many wrongs that must still be made right.”
Trump won’t make it right by giving speeches and throwing taxpayer money at the problem. Factories, schools, wealth and prosperity was his pledge, and Trump will do what he says. Trump’s career proves that he follows through.
Watch his speech again and try to envision any other candidate from the GOP primary battle delivering his speech. And don’t forget to watch it again and be inspired.
Loudon didn't call Trump a messiah, but it's clear she was thinking it -- and that WND approves.
At The MRC, The Truth About Trump Is 'Anti-Trump' and 'Propaganda' Topic: Media Research Center
MRC Latino's Edgard Portela is in full froth in a Sept. 7 post, under the headline "Taxpayer-Funded Anti-Trump News on Azteca":
The Obama administration’s expenditure of tens of millions of dollars to spur recent immigrants to become citizens and vote this November isn’t the only evidence that taxpayer funds are possibly being used to favor the election of Hillary Clinton.
In fact, there’s even more direct evidence available by simply taking a look at taxpayer-funded Voice of America (VOA) reporting that is rebroadcast domestically to Spanish-language viewers of Azteca America, the U.S. subsidiary of one of Mexico’s top television networks.
Such was the case during a recent report on the U.S. presidential campaign by VOA correspondent Gonzalo Abarca, who characterized the Republican presidential candidate as “having offended Mexicans, and in addition Latinos, calling them rapists and drug addicts” and also slammed Trump for his “bilious comments trying to erode Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.”
Abarca’s politically-charged report was aired during Azteca America’s principal national evening newscast.
So it's "politically-charged" and "anti-Trump" for a news program to accurately report that Trump has denigrated Mexicans and Latinos and rapists and drug addicts and has said nasty things about Hillary?
Portela goes on to blame "the Obama administration" for repealing the Smith-Mundt Act, which kept VOA and other government-run broadcast outlets targeted at advancing U.S. interests in foreign countries from airing in the U.S. But he doesn't mention that the defense bill in which the repeal was contained had to pass a Republican-controlled Congress, or that the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012, the repeal bill that was incorporated into the defense bill, was co-sponsored by a Republican.
Still, Portela huffed that "if VOA material such as this is now, in effect, being used and spread as domestic partisan propaganda, it may very well be high time to reinstate the old prohibition or one like it, to prevent such abuses" -- despite that Portela, despite all his ranting about "propaganda," doesn't dispute the accuracy of the VOA report, let alone that any "abuse" has taken place.
One might think that an athlete like Kaepernick, not long ago fined for calling an opposing player the N-word, would be a tad reluctant to blast America for its alleged racism and oppression. But this is about America’s racism, not his own. The recent Will Smith movie “Concussion” argues that football causes brain damage. As for Kaepernick, it might well be a case of early onset.
Bottom line is Colin Kaepernick’s protest will do more to hurt race relations in America than heal them because they’re not rooted in reality. Millions of minority kids that looked up to him will grow up with a false impression that a cop will kill them, instead of believing that if they work as hard as Kaepernick, they too can be successful.
Hopefully, he’ll be cut and he can go worship Allah out of the spotlight so he won’t damage any more black kids who want to be like him.
Kaepernick is a special sort of treasonist, though, one whose hypocrisy is as boundless as our western frontier. Literally, a poster child for why this country is indisputably the land of opportunity, this spoiled punk still can’t conceal his contempt for a country that has given him everything. Where else in the world could a biracial orphan abandoned by his birth parents be embraced in the loving arms of white adoptive parents, get a top-notch education and enjoy the opportunity to earn millions of dollars because he has a modicum of athletic talent?
Nowhere.
But we do, as I say, owe a debt to Kaepernick and others who are unable to secrete their true cause. This country is not perfect, but it has an unbridled capacity to constantly better itself. Through war and natural disasters and financial calamity, through slavery and Jim Crow laws and the passage of the Civil Rights Act, people who believe in what this nation stands for – people of every creed and color – have joined together to overcome our darkest hours. In every instance, people who love this country have loved it enough to make it better.
But that’s not Colin Kaepernick. That’s not any of these America-hating, flag-despising traitors to whom political correctness has given rise and voice.
Kaepernick is empty and unfulfilled because he’s never known the love of his parents – especially his father. No matter how loving and decent his adoptive parents may be, they can never fill this void. I know of well-meaning white parents who adopt black or biracial children, and they provide the best home and education, and in some cases even try to immerse the child in so-called “African-American culture” – thinking this will help get them in touch with their “roots” – but all this does is make the child more insecure.
This is why Kaepernick has gone from a clean-cut Christian when he entered the league to wearing an outsized afro that would make Huey Newton proud.
In the case of the politically and religiously distorted Kaepernick, a man who not coincidentally has seemingly converted to Islam at his girlfriend’s urging and is now a self-styled black Muslim, he has become the poster boy for hatred against police offices of all shades, as well as a bona fide white, Jew and Christian hater in the mold of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.
MRC's Crowdfunding Campaign for Anti-Obama Film Fails Topic: Media Research Center
So, remember that Obama-bashing film -- ostensibly about coal miners purportedly harmed by government clean-air policies -- the Media Research Center was trying to raise money to finish through a crowdfunding campaign? That didn't go so well.
The Kickstarter page for the MRC's "Collateral Damage" film states that it raised just $11,228 of the $15,000 being sought, making the campaign a failure.
This despite the MRC lamely attacking our critique of the crowdfunding campaign (so lame the author wouldn't put his/her name on the attack, nor would he/she identify us by name) and then using our critique to raise even more money.
Why did it fail? We'd like to think that the MRC followers figured out that the MRC, which raised $15 million last year, didn't really need the money, or that the premise is flawed because the growth of fracking, and its related reduction in oil and natural gas prices, is as least as big a culprit in the decline of coal as clean-air policies, or that as MRC "news" division CNSNews.com admits, there are currently more mining jobs than there were during much of the presidency of Republican George W. Bush.
But, hey, we can't read minds like the MRC can. So it remains to be seen whether the MRC will make use of the money raised and supplement it with its own (though sometimes a failed crowdfunding campaign doesn't get to use any of it). The next move is yours, MRC.
It's Always the Cold War In Cliff Kincaid's Head Topic: Accuracy in Media
The Cold War ended decades ago, but Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid apepars not to have gotten the memo -- he's as obsessed with finding communists under every rock as any cold warrior. Thus, we have this overly lengthy Sept. 1 AIM piece from Kincaid that starts out thusly:
The lack of coverage in 2008 of the embarrassing facts in Barack Obama’s background, especially his deep personal relationship with a Communist by the name of Frank Marshall Davis, stands as a sensational example of how dishonest the national media can be when they are determined to elect somebody. If Obama’s opponent, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), had been linked to a Nazi or a Klansman, the press would have jumped on the story, with endless follow-ups. But the story of Obama’s Communist mentor was suppressed by a journalist for The Washington Post who had all the essential details and could have broken the story wide open.
We now know why the potential blockbuster story about Obama’s Communist mentor was deliberately ignored by Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist David Maraniss. He had personal and political conflicts that prevented him from telling the truth about Obama to the American people. Simply put, his parents were Communists, just like Davis.
Maraniss, in other words, was a red-diaper baby.
The shocking truth can finally be told. His parents, Elliott and Mary Maraniss, along with Davis, were members of the same international conspiracy which had groomed Obama for the presidency, in order to hasten the decline and destruction of the United States.
We're into some serious guilt-by-association territory here. It's a very tangental attack on Obama by going after the author of a book Kincaid didn't like.
And Kincaid is just spouting off by claiming that Maraniss "deliberately ignored" and "suppressed" the story of "Obama’s Communist mentor." He knows no such thing -- he's just ranting and speculating.
And these sorts of weird, tangental attacks are a big reason why few people take AIM seriously as a source for credible media criticism.
WND Has To Beg People to Buy Corsi's Clinton-Bashing Flop Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jerome Corsi's WorldNetDaily-published anti-Clinton book "Partners in Crime," is flopping bigtime -- due in part, we can assume, to Corsi's less than factual trackrecord and the fact that the book is dedicated to a convicted criminal. The book's market failure is arguably one big reason WND is in serious financial trouble, and WND was no doubt counting on it to be a success and pull it of of said hole.
Now WND is trying the next step to goose sales: begging people to buy it, preferably several copies at once. A Sept. 5 article states:
Would you like to see Hillary Clinton go down to a crushing defeat this November?
The Democratic nominee and her ex-president husband have plenty of skeletons in their closet.
And the Clintons created a “vast, criminal conspiracy” when they set up the Clinton Foundation, as revealed by No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Jerome Corsi in his newest book “Partners in Crime: The Clintons’ Scheme to Monetize the White House for Personal Profit.”
Now you can help get this explosive book in the hands of your friends and family members fast. WND is offering 50 percent discounts to those who order five copies or more for this purpose.
That’s five copies of Jerome Corsi’s “Partners in Crime” for $63.75, plus shipping; 10 copies for $127.50; and 24 copies for $306.00.
“Many others have noted this election is the most important one we’ve faced in a generation,” said Joseph Farah, chief executive officer and founder of WND.com and WND Books. “Jerry Corsi’s ‘Partners in Crime’ is a game-changing book that needs to be read by millions before November.
“I’m hoping and praying that Americans who agree with me about this will do their part to help us get the word out by buying at least a few copies at great discounts and distributing them to their friends and family members who may not realize what the stakes are in this election. What’s at stake is America itself.”
So don’t wait! Order five or more copies of “Partners in Crime” by visiting the WND Superstore.
Corsi's book is being so roundly ignored by pretty much everybody that we had trouble finding trouble finding mention of it on anything besides low-level right-wing blogs (and WND's own incestuous promotion of it). Even liberals who normally critique such things don't care.
Inadvertently proving that Corsi is serving up more of the same-old same-old, WND helpfully published chapter 9 of Corsi's book the same day it begged people to buy it in bulk. There's lots of guilt by association, with Corsi heavily implying that Marc Mezvinsky, husband of Chelsea Clinton, is just as crooked and deceitful as his father, who spent time in prisonon fraud charges. There's lots of anti-elitist snobbery over Chelsea and her husband allegedly visiting a resort that "easily costs more than the average American worker makes in a year."
Corsi also cites as credible sources Roger Stone, the Trump confidante with a sexually charged swinger lifestyle Corsi would denounce as immoral if he wasn't so busy slurping up the unverified sleaze Stone is dishing out, and Ed Klein, who completely lackscredibility and is valuable only has long as he keeps cranking out the Clinton attacks that somehow never have an on-the-record source to back them up.
WND added a note to the book chapter reminding readers that "You can also order 'Partners in Crime: The Clintons’ Scheme to Monetize the White House for Personal Profit' in bulk at the WND Superstore, so you can have copies of this hugely important work to hand out to friends still unconvinced 'Crooked Hillary' isn’t right for the White House."
MRC Mocked Matt Lauer Before Candidate Forum, Lauds Him Afterward For Furthering Its Agenda Topic: Media Research Center
Prior to last week's "Commander in Chief Summit," the Media Reseaqrch Center mocked moderator Matt Lauer, with Kyle Drennen asserting that "one wonders if NBC couldn’t find someone with a little more gravitas to host the presidential campaign event" and citing, among other things, how "on three separate occasions Lauer has dressed as a woman for the Today show’s annual Halloween episode."
After the forum, however, the MRC has decided that Lauer is full of gravitas. Why? He devoted a full one-third of his interview with Hillary Clinton to questions about her email server and gave Donald Trump a pass on his falsehoods like claiming to have always been against the Iraq war.
Thus, the MRC has repeatedly run to Lauer's defense over widespread criticism of his handling of the forum.
Curtis Houck touted how Lauer "hammer[ed] home concerns that the American people have about her with the private e-mail servers." He later complained about " near-universal excoriations ... of moderator and Today co-host Matt Lauer by the so-called objective media critics with reviews that the Clinton campaign probably couldn’t have written any better." Nicholas Fondacaro similarly cheered how Lauer "hammered Hillary Clinton repeatedly about her e-mail scandal."
Tim Graham whined that those reporting on critics of Lauer only cited "leftists" and tried to spin Lauer's softballing with Trump: "Let’s assume that’s about Trump claiming he opposed the Iraq war. CNN’s media team didn’t protest that Lauer also let Hillary say she has great respect for classified information and we didn’t lose an American in Libya."
Clay Waters also whined that "Those oh-so-objective journalists at the New York Times went after a fellow journalist, NBC’s Today show host Matt Lauer, for the crime of being unfair to Hillary Clinton and not sufficiently attacking Donald Trump."
With so-called neutral media critics throwing temper tantrums late Wednesday and early Thursday about NBC’s Today co-host Matt Lauer harshly questioning both presidential candidates (including Hillary Clinton) at the Commander in Chief Forum, Fox News Channel’s Bill Hemmer and Howard Kurtz appeared to have had enough as they fired back at the desperate criticism on America’s Newsroom.
Houck insisted that "there were many Trump supporters not happy with Lauer either so both Hemmer and Kurtz properly noted this fact and that it should instead lead to a conclusion that Lauer did a good job." He didn't mention that neither Hemmer nor Kurtz are "neutral media critics," being employed by Fox News but are simply parroting conservative talking points -- and Hemmer is actually a "news" anchor so he shouldn't be displaying any sort of bias at all (if the MRC ever bothered to apply its standards to any Fox News anchor besides Shepard Smith).
Houck's post, however, is the only post-forum MRC item to mention that the MRC mocked Lauer before the forum.
MRC research director Rich Noyes defended Lauer in an appearance on Fox News: "Well, I think Matt Lauer is getting bashed today not because Matt Lauer did a bad job. He actually has tough questions of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. He interrupted Donald Trump, but Trump stopped and didn't try to plow through him. He’s under fire from the left today because Hillary Clinton didn't do a good job answering those questions."
Noyes went on to claim that because of the criticism of Lauer, his NBC co-worker Lester Holt, who will be moderating a presidential debate, is "going to try to be very careful with the questions he's asking Hillary Clinton because of the way he's seeing his colleague being treated," adding, "It’s called playing the refs and I think, you know, it's something that Democrats are doing right now because they have a press corps that is sympathetic to the idea of stopping Trump."
Noyes didn't mention that his boss, Brent Bozell, was playing the refs more than a month ago -- before the debate moderator were even named -- was warning of biased moderators and declaring that "I'm watching to see to what degree are you going to have more impartial moderators this time."
Houck returned again to complain once more about criticism of Lauer, harrumphing that "the onslaught against Lauer has served as a reminder to readers and viewers where exactly the media’s priorities lie, no matter who they end up going after (e.g. one of their own)."
What Houck doesn't say: The fact that the MRC is defending Lauer shows where its priorities lie, even if it means contradicting itself.
Graham followed up by dismissing any criticism of Lauer as "Clinton-toady spin" (and insisting that "Lauer interrupted Trump more than he interrupted Mrs. Clinton"), then hilariously whining that Hillary Clinton is fundraising off Lauer's performance the same way Republicans like to fundraise off any perceived media criticism of them.
Graham wrote in another post: "It’s quite clear that if Hillary Clinton had actually won this side-by-side interview, the media elites would not be brutalizing Lauer. " It's even clear that if Lauer hadn't attacked Clinton more than Trump, the MRC would still be passing around that montage of a cross-dressing Lauer -- which is what the MRC really thinks Lauer is about. Funny how quickly that went down the rabbit hole once Lauer served the MRC's agenda.
Wash. Examiner Touts Trump As 'Doer-in-Chief' With DC Hotel Opening Topic: Washington Examiner
We haven't paid attention to the Washington Examiner for a while, since right-wing financier Philip Anschutz turned it from a conservative daily newspaper to a conservative opinion journal more like its sister publication The Weekly Standard. But this was too egregious and ridiculous to ignore.
Paul Bedard, the Examiner's "Washington Secrets" gossip-ish columnist, wrote a Sept. 11 post that is a thinly Donald Trump press release that declares Trump a "doer-in-chief" for his new hotel in Washington, D.C.:
Donald Trump could be in Washington for the Jan. 20 inauguration whether or not he beats Hillary Clinton in November.
That's because his newest Trump International Hotel, inside the historic Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue, is expected to be operating at full capacity — and be sold out — for the 58th presidential inauguration.
The massive hotel, already being dubbed a Washington "grand dame," wasn't scheduled to open until August 2018, but on Monday managers plan a "soft launch" nearly two years ahead of schedule, proving his claim that he can get things done well and fast, at least in the world of development. At the end of October, most of the rooms are expected to be finished and the hotel will host a grand opening.
[...]
A walk around the Trump International Hotel Washington, between 12th and 13th Streets NW on Pennsylvania Avenue, found workers putting finishing touches on the brightened up exterior, which features awnings stamped with "Starbucks" and "BLT Prime," a steakhouse.
From the street, observers can see into some of the 263 guest rooms and suites fixed up in a $200 million rehab. All appeared to be painted in white and lit with a chandelier. Photos of the rooms on the Trump Hotel website show them decorated in white, gold and navy blue.
In fact, the Washington Business Journal reported February that despite the Trump Organization's insistence that the project is "two years ahead of schedule, "the opening is in line with what Trump has been projecting all along — it was always slated to open in late 2016."
And who's calling the hotel a "grand [sic] dame"? Bedard cites nobody actually doing so. A Sept. 6 Boston Globe article called the building the hotel is in, a historic building originally constructed as a post office, an "architectural grand dame," but that was in the context of asking whether Trump's divisive presidential campaign is hurting business by keeping people from staying at Trump-branded hotels.
Further, Bedard's touting of the hotel's restaurants (of which the second most prestigious is apparently Starbucks) omits the fact that the celebrity chefs behind the two restaurants originally planned for the hotel pulled out after Trump's disparaging remarks about Mexicans. BLT Steak is one replacement, and the space where the second restaurant was to be located will become a conference room instead.
We know the Examiner is an unambiguously conservative publication that purports to be more journalism-y than The Weekly Standard, but such sycophantic cheerleading has to be embarrassing even for Bedard, who already demeans himself by doing a weekly post on whatever "liberal media" outrage Media Research Center wants to push that week, called the "Mainstream Media Scream."
You'd think a former Soviet Bloc spymaster would have something to say about a presidential candidate with deep ties to Russia and who has said nothing but good things about its authoritarian leader and former KGB chief, Vladimir Putin. Apparently not.
While the Media Research Center is 
We've 
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Colin Kaepernick thinks he’s being bold. He thinks he’s being courageous. He thinks he’s being a serious person.
So, remember that Obama-bashing film -- ostensibly about coal miners purportedly harmed by government clean-air policies -- the Media Research Center was trying to raise money to finish 
The Cold War ended decades ago, but Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid apepars not to have gotten the memo -- he's as obsessed with finding communists under every rock as any cold warrior. Thus, we have this overly lengthy Sept. 1 AIM 
Jerome Corsi's WorldNetDaily-published anti-Clinton book "Partners in Crime," is flopping bigtime -- due in part, we can assume, to Corsi's less than factual 
We haven't paid attention to the Washington Examiner for a while, since right-wing financier Philip Anschutz turned it from a conservative daily newspaper to a conservative opinion journal more like its sister publication The Weekly Standard. But this was too egregious and ridiculous to ignore.
