In an Aug. 17 NewsBusters post, P.J. Gladnick lamented that "Two more conservative commentators at CNN appear to have joined the growing club of suppressed conservative pundits," asserting that "the reason for the sidelining appears to have been due to pressure from the left."
But when it came to the actual reported resons for these two conservatives -- Ben Ferguson and Steve Cortes -- to be sideline, Gladnick a lot less forthcoming. He let pass without comment excerpts he inserted from The Hollywood Reporter that explained things way down in his post. In the 16th paragraph, he repeated a Reporter statement that "Ferguson's absence seems to have followed a March 6 story by the progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters for America called 'CNN commentator Ben Ferguson’s Facebook page is a cesspool of bigotry, false info and fabricated quotes.'"
Media Matters pointed out that Ferguson "regularly uses his Facebook page to post memes with false information and fabricated quotes" and engages in anti-black bigotry. He had even used his Facebook page to promote "vitriolic and conspiratorial attacks" against CNN, the network that employed him. Does Gladnick think this sort of thing is perffectly fine coming from a conservative commentary.
Gladnick's cut-and-paste of the Reporter's statement on Cortes appeared slightly earlier -- in the 10th paragraph -- but went similarly unremarked upon. The Reporter stated that Cortes' benching appeared around the time he appeared in a PragerU video insisting that media claims that President Trump praised white supremacists as "very fine people" were false. Except, well, it wasn't.
But who needs facts when there's a narrative to reinforce? Gladnick does his duty here, huffing that "Apparently that commitment to 'ideological diversity' by [CNN chief Jeff] Zucker at CNN is true but only if it runs from far left to merely very liberal" and that "Liberals can't stand a serious opposing view. They can only stomach never-Trump Republicans that sound like Democrats, like Max Boot."
That's the point of Gladnick's post. The facts are purely incidental.
After more than two fruitless years accusing President Trump of collusion with Russia, some liberals apparently still consider that tactic a winning strategy -- when used to attack anyone even remotely connected to the Republican occupant of the White House.
One example of that is the claim from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and Kevin Poulsen of the liberal Daily Beast website since both have suggested the One America News Network -- which Trump has called his new favorite news outlet -- is a fountain of Russian propaganda.
OANN has demanded retractions from Maddow and the Daily Beast with angry letters from their law firm Miller Barondess.
The controversy centers on a writer named Kristian Rouz, who the Daily Beast revealed is an on-air reporter at OANN while also writing for Sputnik News, a Kremlin-operated "news" operation. According to OANN's letter, Rouz "never had decision-making authority with respect to the content that is aired on OAN" and that "His outside work for other media outlets has no relation to -- or bearing on -- his work for OAN."
Neither of those statements contradict the central premise of the Daily Beast article: that OANN published someone who was also working for a Russian propaganda outlet while not disclosing that connection to its readers.
The thinness of OANN's case is such that Hall resorted to touting how the cease-and-desist letter included a personal attack on Kevin Poulsen, who wrote the Daily Beast piece, pointing out that he served prison time for computer hacking in the 1990s. There was no mention, of course, of how Poulsen has since become a tech journalist who busted registered sex offenders using MySpace to solicit sex from children and developing an open-source platform to facilitate secure communication between journalists and sources.
The OANN case is so thin, in fact, that even other conservative media outlets, unlike Hall, are pointing that out. The Washington Examiner reported that OANN really does have synergy with Russian propaganda, having repeated bogus Russian claims regarding a chemical attack in Syria.
Hall huffed: "It's all about mocking Trump and any media outlet he likes."Of course, it's not hard when said media outletsd make it this easy. Oh, and Hall never once admitted that OANN has a prounounced right-wing ideological tilt, though he claimed the Daily Beast is "liberal."
Friday’s New York Times showed the paper again trying to falsely link the publicly harmful anti-vaccination movement to political conservatism. Reporters Julie Bosman, Patricia Mazzei, and Dan Levin drew the strands together for “Celebrities, Conservatives and Immigrants in Disparate Groups of Skeptics.”
It’s not the first time the paper has tried to falsely smear “conservatives” as the main thrust of anti-vaccine action, even though the most recent polling on the matter suggests it’s more of a left-wing cause. In fact, two “red states” often mocked as backward, Mississippi and West Virginia, are nationwide leaders in getting their children vaccinated.
Amazingly for a story whose headline blasts “conservatives” for being anti-vaccine, the first sentence features the anti-vaccine conspiracist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., of the famous uber-liberal Democrat political family.
[...]
Robert F. Kennedy, who falsely believes that vaccines cause autism, was not even identified as part of the liberal Kennedy clan, though he is the son of the late Democratic Attorney General (in the administration of his brother John) and a Democratic U.S. Senator.
At no point does Waters prove that RFK Jr. is a "liberal," despite playing guilt-by-association, as it were, by invoking the politics of his family -- in fact, the Kennedy family has distanced itself from him on the issue of vaccines -- nor does Waters link him to any anti-vaccine movement on the left. To the contrary: When RFK Jr.'s anti-vaccine activism first became known, it was right-wing outlets like WorldNetDaily and Newsmax -- not liberal outlets -- that gave him an uncritical platform. Indeed, Waters unironically illustrates his piece with a screenshot of RFK Jr. on ... Fox News in 2017, where Tucker Carlson fed him softball questions and did not challenge his anti-vaxxer beliefs.
Waters' evidence that anti-vaccine activism is "more of a left-wing cause" is a 2014 article on the right-wing Real Clear Science website sorting states with the highest vaccine exemption rates by the margin by which a presidential candidate won in 2012 -- which, of course, is an imprecise measure because it says nothing about the individual political views of those seeking exemptions. After all, while New York is considered a liberal state, this year's measles outbreak occurred mostly among unvaccinated people in an ultra-Orthodox enclave in New York City not known for liberal politics.
And, of course, Waters also forgets that the publisher of his blog posts was anti-vaxxer at one point, fearmongering that HPV vaccines like Gardasil had "dangerous" side effects and even encouraged children to have sex.
NewsBusters Blogger Attacks Time For Covering Story -- But Not Fox News Topic: NewsBusters
A June 11 NewsBusters post by Randy Hall is your usual Media Research Center bias blather:
The dinosaur publication Time magazine, which you may have forgotten still existed (or you only see at the dentist now), still pumps out liberal spin and reporting from a left-leaning perspective.
The latest example of that trend is an article published in the Sunday, June 9 edition that focused on a small hotel in Michigan offering pregnant women free stays and no-cost transportation from states that have “severe restrictions” on abortion.
[...]
Of course, the article depicted those on the other side as representative of violent haters ready to attack O’Brien.
Hall does acknowledge that the hotel owner has received violent threats, so the "violent haters" stuff is an accurate representation of her situation, whether he admits it or not.
The headline on Hall's item claimed that Time was "promot[ing]" the hotel's offer -- another example of the Depiction-Equals-Approval Fallacy, which falsely assumes that a given news outlet approves of the given news it's reporting on because it doesn't explicitly denounce it.
Curiously, Hall's post is illustrated with a screenshot of ... a Fox News report on the same story. Hall made no mention of the Fox News story in his item, let alone complain that Fox News was, like Time, "promoting" the hotel simply by reporting on its existence.
It's as if the MRC refuses to hold Fox News to the same journalistic standards it demands from media that aren't slavishly right-wing.
NewsBusters Blogger Concerned About Notorious Prison ... When A Trump Associate Was Set To Go There Topic: NewsBusters
The Media Research Center, it seems, is concerned about prison conditions only when it's feared a prominent Trump supporter might end up in one.
Mark Finkelstein spent a June 10 NewsBusters post ranting at MSNBC's Joe Scarborough for being cheerful about the possibility that convicted felon Paul Manafort, onetime Trump presidential campaign manager, might be sent to a New York City prison whose reputation precedes it:
The liberal media feigns horror over "lock her up" refrains. But when it comes to a Trump associate actually being locked up in a notoriously awful jail, well, that's a cause for mirth and hilarity.
And thus it was that on today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough joked about Paul Manfort being confined at Rikers Island, which has been described as a "hellhole," as here, here, and "the most notorious jail in America."
[...]
At the end of the segment, there was more ribbing by the panel of Lemire's clothes. Meacham facetiously spoke of "the Paul Manafort Collection." Responded Scarborough: "available at Rikers Island." The panel found that amusing, with laughter all around.
A regular laugh riot, that Joe. Wonder if he's ever visited Rikers? Keep this one in mind next time you hear Scarborough or another member of the liberal media expressing righteous indignation about "lock her up."
It will not surprise you to learn that the MRC is not been concerned about conditions at Rikers Island before now. In 2014, Tim Graham cheered conservative actress Stacey Dash's retort to Kanye West's likening of paparazzi to rape that "maybe he needs to spend some time on Rikers Island. Go to Rikers for a little while and then he'll know what rape is." And in 2018, Randy Hall denounced the "progressive" leanings of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, expressed in part by his criticism of New York City's plans to take 10 years to build new jails to replace Rikers.
Manafort, though, escaped his Rikers fate after Trump's Department of Justice curiously and unusually intervened and had him placed at a less notorious NYC facility. Finkelstein has yet to provide a follow-up about that.
NewsBusters Blogger Defends Author's Dubious Claim About MLK Topic: NewsBusters
Clay Waters complains in a June 5 NewsBusters post:
The New York Times suddenly distrusts left-wing scholar and Pulitzer Prize-winning Martin Luther King Jr. biographer David Garrow. Why? Because the scholar unearthed F.B.I archives suggesting the civil rights icon once laughed along as a colleague raped a woman in his presence in a hotel.
Garrow’s bombshell piece was rejected by many news outlets, including the Times (which actually ran an pre-emptive op-ed against it, evidently before the paper’s skeptical news piece was even posted). It was eventually picked up by the British magazine Standpoint.
While Garrow relied on summaries of wiretaps, not the original tapes, which are sealed until 2027, he argued there is no obvious reason to embellish such details, since such records would not have been expected to have any public or historical value.
First: Waters provides no evidence to back up his claim that Garrow is a "left-wing scholar" -- instead, he seems to boost the opposite view by noting that "his biographies have become more critical of liberal heroes." Second: As we've documented when WorldNetDaily similarly latched onto Garrow's claim, there is plenty of reason to suspect a claim might be "embellished": The FBI was engaged in a disinformation war against King at the time of the illicit bugging incident Garrow documented. Garrow is relying only a summary of a wiretap; the tapes themselves are under seal until 2027.
Waters then complained that the Times article "threw in some extraneous personal attacks against Garrow" by noting Garrow's alleged mistreatment of his co-workers. As if NewsBusters' publisher, the Media Research Center, has never leveled much more personal attacks on its most despised targets.
NewsBusters Blogger Gets Mad Trump's Affinity For Right-Wing Strongmen Is Pointed Out Topic: NewsBusters
Blogging at NewsBusters, former Media Research Center intern Ryan Foley tries the ol' whataboutism route in a May 16 post:
Opening Wednesday's CNN Tonight, the horribly biased Don Lemon pondered: “Why this President loves to surround himself with strong men, with dictators?” Naturally, Lemon proceeded to criticize Trump for meeting with dictators, apparently forgetting that President Obama attended a baseball game with Cuban dictator Raul Castro while administration officials had numerous meetings with Iranians. Lemon went further by saying that President Trump wants to “follow their lead” by acting like a king.
While Obama did attend a baseball game with Castro -- though some people were more upset that he did so in the wake of a terrorist attack in Europe -- he also held a joint news conference in which Castro was allowed to be asked questions by the news media for the first time in, well, ever. Foley also offered no evidence that any Obama administration officials treated those Iranians with the same deference Trump has treated his right-wing strongman buddies.
And who are those right-wing strongmen that are Trump's buddies, anyway? Foley mostly avoids them in his post. Two of them -- Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Viktor Orban of Hungary -- are two of the MRC's favorite right-wing strongmen as well; its "news" division CNSNews.com just loves them.
Foley did complain that Lemon pointed out Trump said to Chinese president Xi Jinping, "you’re President for life and therefore, you’re king," then sneered: "The far-left CNN host asserted that 'it should be no surprise President Trump is behaving like a king.' His evidence? Trump saying 'I alone can fix it' at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Big whoop."
NEW ARTICLE -- NewsBusted: The Sports Blogger Files Topic: NewsBusters
One recent NewsBusters sports blogger hid behind a "pen name," while the current one has no media presence outside the blog so that may be a fake-name writer too. Not that the content differs all that much. Read more >>
NewsBusters Forgets Dershowitz Is A Sleazy Porn Lawyer Too Topic: NewsBusters
P.J. Gladnick complained in an April 22 NewsBusters post: "Compare the legal backgrounds of Harvard's Alan Dershowitz versus sleazy porn lawyer Michael Avenatti. Who has the more distinguished career? Yet CNN chose Avenatti over Dershowitz for the go-to person for legal analysis of the Trump-Russia collusion probe."Gladnick went on to reference "sleazy Michael Avenatti."
But Gladnick forgot that Dershowitz has his own sleazy-porn-lawyer record as well.
As we've noted, Dershowitz has served as a lawyer for Jeffrey Epstein, known for his political connections and his sex-trafficking scandal. Dershowitz has also been accused by one of Epstein's underage victims of engeging in sex with her (which Dershowitz has denied).
NewsBusters loved to talk about the Epstein scandal when Bill Clinton's name came up with it, but since it turns out Donald Trump had ties to Epstein as well -- he liked to hang out at Mar-a-Lago to the point that he picked up one of his victims there, who was working as a towel girl -- blogger Mark Finkelstein can't change the subject fast enough.
Somebody need to tell Gladnick that Dershowitz and Avenatti aren't that different after all.
MRC Sports Blogger Repeatedly Triggered By 50-Year-Old Protest Topic: NewsBusters
Colin Kaepernick is not the only athlete about whom mysterious NewsBusters sports blogger Jay Maxson goes into regular freak-out mode over. He (or she) is also triggered by something that happened 50 years ago: the raised-fist salute by medal-winning U.S. sprinters on the podium at the 1968 Olympics.
Last October, Maxson fumed when Kaepernick and the sprinters were mentioned in the same breath, dropping the term "social justice warriors" for both of them, which is apparently the most serious thing Maxson can think of to call them:
As the 50th anniversary of the protest-marred 1968 Olympic Games nears, the New York Daily News' Carron J. Phillips and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are glorifying Colin Kaepernick, as well as the two disgraced sprinters who staged a black power salute during the national anthem in Mexico City. The International Olympic Committee stripped Tommie Smith and John Carlos of their medals and expelled them from the Olympic Village. A 1968 headline in the Evening News declared, "Games are Rocked by Black Power." Media reporting has shifted 180 degrees since then, as many reporters sympathize with radical social justice warriors.
[...]
In the decades since then, the sprinters have been turned into heroes by the Left. There's a statue honoring them in California. President Barack Obama celebrated them in the White House. They are the subjects of documentaries and invited, as heroes, to speak on college campuses.
October 16 marked the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Olympic Games protest by U.S. sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Their black power salute on the medal stand at Mexico City angered many Americans and divided the media. But today, the united American media celebrates them as royalty. Media treat another athlete disliked by many, Colin Kaepernick, as the successor to Smith and Carlos as a social justice icon.
[...]
Today one is hard pressed to find any opposition to Kaepernick and other SJW protesters. When he started protesting during the national anthem in 2016, he said, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”
In February, Maxson was still ranting, complete with another SJW reference:
Former U.S. Olympic athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos shocked with black power salutes at the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City. They were sent home in disgrace then, but now that the media has a love affair with social justice warriors like Colin Kaepernick, Smith and Carlos are treated like heroes and adorned with honors by the progressive, social justice crowd. The Golden State Warriors saluted Smith during a game Wednesday, and visiting San Antonio Coach Gregg Popovich predicted that Kaepernick, too, will become greatly admired.
[...]
But, hey, it's 2019 and social justice warriors are cool now! No apology, no mea culpa are required in the Left's world of low standards. So then, in the far-, far-out world that is the Bay Area, Smith received a jersey from the Warriors in recognition of Black History Month.
For many Americans, social justice warriors in sports uniforms have disrespected America and turned them away from sports. The Nation's Dave Zirinhas made a slobbering career of apologizing for and glorifying these malcontents. He's written books on 1968 Olympic protester John Carlos and radical NFL player Michael Bennett. He staunchly defends Colin Kaepernick and others who politicize sports, too. Zirin is the "parallel universe," and this week he bitterly complains that Carlos and fellow '68 Olympic protester Tommie Smith are being disrespected by their alma mater, San Jose State University.
Fifty years ago, Smith and Carlos were America's top sprinters. In the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City they won two of the three medals in the 200-meter dash. On the victory stand, during the playing of the Star Spangled banner, they looked down at the ground and raised their gloved hands to the air in protest to racism. Those in the stadium and watching around the world were stunned. The International Olympic Committee booted them out of the Olympic Village and sent them home in disgrace.
America's disgrace became a "noble" cause for far Left writer Zirin and San Jose State U. He wrote the book, The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World. San Jose State built statues to the two malcontent sprinters, but Zirin claims the two SJWs are now being treated horribly by the university.
Maxson noted Zirin quoting someone saying that San Jose State University removing the track where Carlos trained and replacing it with a parking lot was "another sad day for the Spartans," Maxson huffed: "A sad day for the Spartans and a sadder reminder for Americans offended by the acts of Smith and Carlos."
You know, if Maxson keeps getting so triggered by events that happened 50 years ago, maybe he's the one in a parallel universe.
MRC Mad At 'Black Press Only' Event, Silent On Pompeo's Briefing Only For 'Faith Based Media' Topic: NewsBusters
Randy Hall found something to be offended about in a March 29 NewsBusters post (boldface in original):
One of liberal Democrats’ favorite tactics these days is to smear anyone who doesn’t agree with them as a racist. However, they don’t always follow their own rules due to an apparent “do as I say, not as I do” mentality.
That philosophy was on full display in Savannah, Georgia, on Wednesday night, when reporters attempting to cover an event for candidates in the upcoming mayoral election were greeted with signs that said “Black Press Only.”
According to an article by Amanda Prestigiacomo, a writer with the Daily Wire, attendance at the Bolton Street Baptist Church was even more restricted than that, as other signs stated that “No Audio or Video Recording!” would be allowed.
Prestigiacomo then quoted the Savannah Morning News for noting that the event was coordinated by Rev. Clarence Teddy Williams, owner of the Trigon Group consulting group, "to garner support for just one black candidate in Savannah’s mayoral election."
[...]
While several black reporters and public officials attended the gathering, none of them would state they agreed with the overtly racist policy demonstrated there:
[...]
Of course, if this event had been arranged by a conservative Republican, and there were signs on the doors of “White Press Only” and “No Audio or Video Recording,” it would be virtually impossible to escape the scathing coverage across the country from virtually every outlet in the “mainstream media.”
Meanwhile, Hall -- not to mention anyone else at NewsBusters or any other Media Research Center website, for that matter -- has yet to mention a similar act of bigotry perpetrated not by a political candidate but by the Trump administration.
On March 18, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held a press briefing conference call only for "faith-based media" -- thus effectively creating a religious test for reporters wanting to cover Pompeo. Not only has the State Department refused to release a list of the "faith-based media" outlets who took part in the briefing, it has also refused to release a transcript of what was said in the briefing.
If the coverage restriction by the Georgia candidate is so offensive to Hall -- as judged by the boldface he used in writing about it and the word "SEGREGATED" in all-caps in his headline -- why isn't Pompeo's discriminatory and segregated coverage restriction? We may never get an answer.
NewsBusters Blogger Thinks Roy Cohn Was A Good Guy Topic: NewsBusters
In a March 29 NewsBusters post, Mark Finkelstein complained that a "bitter" Joe Scarborough said that President Trump found his "own Roy Cohn" in Attorney General William Barr. Finkelstein then explained what he thought was the reason liberals hate Cohn so much: "In liberal-speak, Roy Cohn is a synonym for "someone we really hate." After all, he committed the egregious sin of successfully prosecuting the Rosenbergs, communist spies who worked to divulge America's nuclear secrets to the Soviets at the height of the Cold War."
Um, no, Mark. It's more that Cohn was Joe McCarthy's henchman in purging alleged (but not necessarily proven) communists from federal jobs, then followed that up with working to purge alleged (but not necessarily proven) homosexuals from federal jobs despite being a closeted homosexual himself. He was disbarred shortly before his 1986 death from AIDS for various unethical deeds. Cohn was also a mentor to, and attorney for, a young Donald Trump -- and such an influence that President Trump once lamented, "Where's my Roy Cohn?"
A couple days later, Alex Christy similarly took offense to Scarborough likening Barr to Cohn, but offered a different defense, insisting that Scarborough "may have bungled his analogy, because the real McCarthyites were people like Scarborough who saw Russian agents or Manchurian candidates behind every corner."
NewsBusters Blogger Still Denying Trump-Epstein Link Topic: NewsBusters
As we've documented, NewsBusters blogger Mark Finkelstein is very much in denial that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has with President Trump and tries to steer the conversation at every opportunity to former President Clinton's links to Epstein, despite the fact that, well, Clinton hasn't been president for nearly two decades.
Finkelstein slid even more into denial in a March 28 post, whining that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough "is test-marketing a new line of attack: attempting to tie President Trump to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein" and "fantasizing about the possibility that Epstein was at the table at Mar-a-Lago when Trump reportedly mentioned to wealthy friends that he had made them money with his tax cuts." Finkelstein huffed in response: "Just one problem with Joe's fantasy: as Scarborough presumably knows, Epstein couldn't have been there. As reported in the Washington Post, according to court documents Trump has barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago for assaulting an underage girl."
Well, temporarily overlooking the fact that Finkelstein seems to be conceding that being banned from Mar-a-Lago means Epstein must have been a regular there and, thus, linked to Trump, let's take a look at that Post article Finkelstein is citing. It notes that Trump was an "occasional guest" of Epstein, adding:
One woman, Virginia Giuffre, sued Epstein’s longtime friend Ghislaine Maxwell, who she said recruited her in 1999 from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club to be Epstein’s “sex slave,” starting with “massages” and moving to sex acts. Giuffre had worked at the club as a 15-year-old locker room towel girl. She settled with Maxwell last year.
In a different civil case against Epstein, records showed that he had attended parties at Mar-a-Lago and that Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet at least once. Trump told New York magazine in 2002 that Epstein was “a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
During the 2016 presidential campaign, another young woman, known in court records only as Jane Doe, said Trump had raped her when she was 13, in 1994, at a party at Epstein’s New York mansion. But the woman dropped her lawsuit and canceled a news conference at which she was expected to spell out her allegation.
On top of that, Trump's labor secretary, Alex Acosta, is a former prosecutor who cut a deal with Epstein that got him a short jaill stint despite the severity of the charges against him.
That's a lot of links to Epstein. Why doesn't Finkelstein want to admit that these ties exist? Indeed, Finkelstein is so desperate to district that he adds a note at the end of his post: "If there is one President who deserves to be tied to Epstein, it is, of course, Bill Clinton. He reportedly flew 26 times on Epstein's private Boeing 727, AKA the 'Lolita Express,' ditching his Secret Service protection on several occasions."
Finkelstein continuing to deny the truth about Trump and Epstein just makes him look even more pathetic.
NewsBusters Blogger Insists Clinton's Link to Epstein Is More Important Than Trump's Topic: NewsBusters
Mark Finkelstein whines in a Feb. 22 MRC NewsBusters post:
Court documents show that Bill Clinton took at least 26 trips on convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein's notorious "Lolita Express" party plane. There's no indication that Donald Trump ever did. But in a segment on Epstein on her MSNBC show today, Joy Reid managed to refer to President Trump six times, accompanied by extended photo displays of Trump in Epstein's company.
Number of times Reid mentioned Lolita Express frequent flyer Clinton? A New York bagel, of course.
It's almost cute how Finkelstein is pretending that Trump has no links whatsoever to Epstein. As we've documented, Trump has flown at least once on the "Lolita Express," Epstein hung out at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, and one of Epstein's sex trafficking victiitems was recruited while working as a 15-year-old towel girl at Mar-a-Lago. Additionally, the attorney who cut the deal that let Epstein get off with a relative slap on the wrist, Alexander Acosta, is Trump's labor secretary.
(There's also the fact that Trump is currently the president while Clinton has not been for quite some time.)
Additionally, the video montage Finkelstein supplies is a bit on the curious side. Two of the instances are of Reid edited to say only "Donald Trump" without context, which tells us that Finkelstein is trying to hide something. One reference noted the fact that Trump ws a friend of Epstein, another noted the link to Acosta, and a fifth noted Trump's previous praise of Epstein.
This is the first time Finkelstein has tried an Epstein deflection; in 2016, he wanted to talk about Clinton's connection to Epstein instead of former Republican congressman Dennis Hastert's admission to molesting children.
NewsBusters Blogger Tries to Justify Black Guest's Eviction From Hotel Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters blogger Brad Wilmouth complained in a Jan. 1 post that "CNN has devoted a substantial amount of time to hyping the story of a black man who complained about racial discrimination after he was evicted from a DoubleTree hotel in Portland, Oregon. Two employees were fired for the incident." Wilmouth snarked that the security guard who challenged the guest "should have known he was going to be on CNN in heavy rotation....and out of a job," then tried to justify that the man deserved to be evicted from the hotel he was staying at because "became loud" after being challeged about being in the lobby:
Viewers could see why a black man would feel singled out. But you also wonder why, if he wanted privacy, [guest Jermaine] Massey didn't simply go to his room. Other guests appeared to be walking to their rooms, and not "loitering" in the lobby. It's also obvious that taking Massey to his room to get his things would certainly demonstrate he was a guest at the hotel.
In contrast with the other networks, Friday's CBS This Morning did at least inform viewers that, according to the police report, Massey "became loud and started yelling that the hotel was racist."
He also allegedly got angry and slid a hotel Bibleacross the floor while berating the security guard as he packed his items in his room, according to the police report. “While he was getting his belongings he took the Bible from the hotel room and slid it across the carpet toward [security guard Earl] Meyers and told him he needed to read it and learn how to be a human.”
Wilmouth is leaving out certain details that more fully explain the story. According to a news article to which Wilmouth links, Massey had just returned to the hotel following a concert and had stayed in the lobby to return a phone call to his mother when the security guard approached him and demanded that he prove he was staying at the hotel or leave. When Massey couldn't immediately give the guard his room number, the guard had the manager call police. Massey claims he was singled out because he was a black man wearing a hoodie while white guests in the lobby were not similarly questioned.
Rather then demanding that the hotel explain why it singled Massey out in an instance of what looks to all the world like racial profiling, Wilmouth seems to believe the man deserved to be thrown out of the hotel because he objected to being singled out.
In an Aug. 17 NewsBusters post, P.J. Gladnick lamented that "Two more conservative commentators at CNN appear to have joined the growing club of suppressed conservative pundits," asserting that "the reason for the sidelining appears to have been due to pressure from the left."
Randy Hall writes in a July 31 NewsBusters 
Clay Waters whines in a June 15 NewsBusters 
A June 11 NewsBusters 
The Media Research Center, it seems, is concerned about prison conditions only when it's feared a prominent Trump supporter might end up in one.
Clay Waters complains in a June 5 NewsBusters 
P.J. Gladnick complained in an April 22 NewsBusters 
Colin Kaepernick
In a March 29 NewsBusters 
NewsBusters blogger Brad Wilmouth complained in a Jan. 1 
