CNS Still Cheering How U.S. Admits More Christian Refugees Than Muslims (Which It Always Has) Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com was long distressed that more Muslim refugees than Christian ones were being admitted to the U.S. under the Obama administration, only occasionally pointing out that the numbers may have been skewed because Christian charities tend to handle Christian refugees and, thus, wouldn't be counted in the United Nations totals the U.S. uses. But when President Trump took office, CNS championedhow more Christians were being admitted.
That trend has continued, and CNS couldn't be happier. Patrick Goodenough wrote in a Sept. 6 CNS article:
Eleven months into the fiscal year, almost five times more Christians than Muslims have been admitted into the U.S. as refugees, in sharp contrast to the situation under the Obama administration.
Christians are by far the most persecuted group worldwide. According to Open Doors USA, 245 million Christians around the world, or one in nine, are persecuted for their faith.
[...]
Of the 28,052 refugees admitted to the U.S. since FY 2019 began on October 1 last year, 22,281 (79.4 percent) self-identified as Christians and 4,574 (16.3 percent) as Muslims.
Goodenough then conceded (though not explicitly) that his Obama-era fearmongering was incorrect because, contrary to what his reporting suggested at the time, Christian refugees almost always outnumbered Muslim refugees under Obama:
During much of the Obama administration, Christians outnumbered Muslims – although not by large margins – among the far larger refugee admission numbers then prevailing.
In fiscal year 2016, when a total of 84,994 refugees were resettled – the biggest annual intake since 2000 – the balance shifted slightly in the other direction, with Muslims making up 45.7 percent of the total and Christians 44.5 percent. The following year Christians again slightly outnumbered Muslims.
Under President Trump, however, the gap has widened significantly. During the first eleven months of fiscal years 2013-2019, the Christian/Muslim ratio are among admitted refugees was:
FY 2013: 6.2 percent more Christians than Muslims FY 2014: 1.6 percent more Christians than Muslims FY 2015: 4.2 percent more Christians than Muslims FY 2016: 1.7 percent more Muslims than Christians FY 2017: 3.4 percent more Christians than Muslims FY 2018: 54.7 percent more Christians than Muslims
Goodenough went on to tout Trump's proposal for "reducing last year’s record-low refugee admission ceiling by a further 40 percent" in a Sept. 27 article. He then touted more Trump remarks in an Oct. 15 article:
President Trump said at the weekend that his administration has, in contrast to its predecessor, made it easier for Syrian Christians to come to the United States.
The president, speaking at the Values Voter Summit in Washington on Saturday, did not say whether he was referring to refugees specifically, although the totality of the remarks suggested that he was.
“If you were a Christian in Syria – which was a rough place to be – you had almost no chance, during the last administration, of coming into the United States,” he said.
“It was, they say, the hardest thing to do to come into the United States. Number one most difficult place in the world to come in was if you were a Christian in Syria.”
“If you were a Muslim in Syria, it was extremely easy to come into the United States,” Trump added.
It wasn't until the eighth paragraph of his article -- after uncritically quoting Trump -- that Goodenough gently and tentatively pointed out that Trump's assertion was misleading at best, though he never used those words (it isn't like CNS to point out Trump's falsehoods so blatantly, after all), writing that "Syrians of all faiths and ethnicities have suffered during the long and convoluted civil war that broke out in early 2011."
Goodenough didn't note, however, that there is no evidence to back up Trump's claim that Christian refugees from Syria had "almost no chance" of getting into the U.S. Instead, he touted how under Trump "the proportion of self-identified Christians among the refugees admitted into the U.S. has grown markedly, and the proportion of self-identified Muslims has duly dropped."
On Nov. 4, Goodenough highlighted how "Not one refugee has arrived in the United States since fiscal year 2020 began 35 days ago, a State Department spokesperson confirmed on Monday, adding that the last time there had been an “extended pause” in admissions was in November 2001; Goodenough included spin from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the U.S. responds to refugees in other ways, as well as criticism of the low cap.
for good measure, CNS also published a column by Michelle Malkin ranting that the U.S has taken in "enough" refugees, blaming the influx on a "tiny cabal of government contractors, mostly religious groups cloaking their profit-seeking in compassion and Scripture" that purportedly "perpetuates the refugee resettlement racket."
CNS Promotes Dubious Claim From Even More Dubious Pro-Trump Book Topic: CNSNews.com
Sure, we know CNSNews.com is slavishly pro-Trump, but managing editor Michael W. Chapman took it to an other level in an Oct. 25 blog post that's essentially a press release for a new pro-Trump book:
In best selling author Doug Wead's forthcoming book, Inside Trump's White House: The Real Story of His Presidency, it is revealed that President Donald Trump has been a devoted viewer of Christian television, and evangelical preachers, since the 1980s.
President Trump's good friend Paula White told Wead, "He had watched hours of Christian television [since the 1980s]. And not just watched it, but really listened to the messages. He had retained what he had heard. He could bring it back and repeat it to me. He would say what it meant to him.”
"Trump had watched the Billy Graham telecasts as a boy and had later watched Jimmy Swaggart in the 1980’s," states Wead in the book. "But he especially loved the positive preacher, Norman Vincent Peale. Trump found televangelist Paula White while channel surfing on a Sunday morning in Trump Tower."
"Political writers were always puzzled by his connection to evangelical supporters but it had actually begun early," said Wead.
There is apparently no corroboration for White's claim, since Chapman doesn't mention any. Certainly, there's no evidence that Trump has acted since the 1980s like he believed anything those TV preachers had to say.
There's also more to this story that Chapman apparently didn't feel the need to check into, given that he was writing a press release and not a "news" article. A few days after Chapman's article was published, it was announced that White had joined the Trump administration in an outreach job.
White is an evangelist that promotes the "prosperity gospel," and former George W. Bush administration ethics lawyer Richard Painter has pointed out that White has appealed to her followers to send their first paychecks of the year to her ministry with the vague promise they would be repaid in divine blessing, which he portrayed as a Ponzi scheme. And White's recent book portrays Trump's election as part of a divine plan. (CNS has embraced the divine-Donald narrative.)
But back to Chapman, who clearly has a book to sell so badly he's copy-and-pasting PR copy into his post:
According to the page on Amazon.com, Inside Trump's White House offers a sweeping, eloquent history of President Donald J. Trump's first years in office, covering everything from election night to the news of today. The book will include never-before-reported stories and scoops, including how President Trump turned around the American economy, how he 'never complains and never explains,' and how his actions sometimes lead to misunderstandings with the media and the public.
"It also includes exclusive interviews with the Trump family about the Mueller report, and narrates their reactions when the report was finally released."
Wead's book also contains one massive screw-up (not that Chapman will tell you about that). A Fox News article previewing the book highlighted Wead's claim that the Obama White House held "nonstop PC meetings," which Wead decided meant "political correctness," for intelligence officials. In fact, "PC" meant "Principals Committee," which is the name of the group of top intelligence officials. Wead was forced to walk back the claim and his publisher said it will correct it in the next printing of the book.
These stories about White and Wead are much more interesting and newsworthy than the one Chapman thought you should know about.
CNS Slavishly Repeats GOP Spin On Impeachment Testimony Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has alreadybeen putting a pro-Trump spin on President Trump's Ukraine scandal and subsequent impeachment inquiry. But rarely do you see CNS do a spot-on recitation of Republican talking points as we recently saw.
TPM summed up a Nov. 6 CNN report on remarks by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan:
Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-OH) reactions to the revised testimony of EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland and the testimony of special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker are night and day.
According to CNN Wednesday, Jordan dismissed the EU ambassador’s revised testimony by saying that “it is Sondland’s opinion.” The three new pages of Sondland’s sworn testimony released Tuesday confirmed that congressionally approved military aid hinged on the Ukrainian government’s public support of an investigation into the gas company that former Vice President Joe Biden’s son sat on the board of and the origins of the Russia probe.
Jordan specifically railed against the section of Sondland’s revised testimony that states that he’d “presumed that the aid suspension had become linked to the proposed anti-corruption statement.” Earlier Wednesday, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway took aim at the same section of Sondland’s testimony.
Jordan then argued that Volker’s testimony is a “definitive account.” Volker’s testimony, in which he claims that he wasn’t aware of any quid pro quo, gave an inside account of how Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani pressured the Ukrainian government to help Trump dig up false allegations on his political rivals.
The same day, a CNS blog post by Craig Bannister on remarks by Republican Rep. Lindsey Graham echoed Jordan's talking point that Sondland offered an "opinion" taht differed from the Trump narrative Trmp-conforming while Volker spoke factually:
Sen. Graham also rebuked journalists for ignoring key testimony in favor of anti-Trump opinions – such as reporting that U.S. Ambassador Gordon Sondland changed his testimony to say he now “presumed” that Trump was offering a quid pro quo to the president of Ukraine during a phone call, while ignoring the fact that U.S. Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker testified that Trump did not[.]
Of course, Sondland is not "anti-Trump" -- he donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration committee, which presumably earned him his current post as U.S. ambassador to the European Union.
CNS Columnist Pretends To Be Something He's Not Topic: CNSNews.com
Kenneth Kopf began his Oct. 25 CNSNews.com column by declaring:
I rarely venture into the tangled reeds of the Washington swamp, nor do I desire to read the pompous writings of those who dwell there because I, and the tens of millions of people like me, actually prefer to read, think and interpret events for ourselves.
We do not need “columnists” to tell us what today’s facts mean, portend, or which facts are ‘true’ or not. God thankfully gave us all the intellect and common sense to understand the truth when we are presented with actual facts.
That is the starting point of the problem. We poor “folk” (as one president was condescendingly fond of referencing) are consistently presented with what the media want us to believe are facts. But the actual naked “facts” are almost always spun, biasedly interpreted, laden with opinionated adjectives and adverbs with an all too often seen-through (sometimes comical) intent to justify the presenter’s slant, or to inoculate the unsuspecting reader, like me, to change what I intuitively thought I already knew.
This is all doubly ironic, because Kopf is trying to pass himself off as something he's not. Despite suggesting he's just "folk," he's very much a member of the elite -- his CNS bio points out that he's "an attorney that has been practicing international law for over 30 years" -- and railing against the "swamp" while actually not being very far above it (the bio also states he "served as a Russian linguist within the U.S. intelligence service" and was once a congressional candidate).
Kopf also wrote that "We do not need 'columnists' to tell us what today’s facts mean, portend, or which facts are ‘true’ or not" ... in a column that aims to tell us what today's facts mean.
And he does exactly that in castigating another conservative columnist, Peggy Noonan, for committing the offense of criticizing President Trump and believing he committed impeachable offenses. He ranted:
Noonan’s article appears, to a Trump supporter like me, to be written mainly in an attempt to direct or influence thinking and action in support of impeachment. However, should her article be intended to educate the “untouchables” in the “fly over” lands, she does not grasp, or chooses to ignore, the true mindset and frustration of the Trump supporter.
Yes, we support President Trump. We may even be split on his use of certain “tweets” and content but given the naked (and many times downright “ugly”) political messages and harmful intent of the mainstream media, we clearly understand and agree with his need to do so.
But we have no division regarding his intent to restore what we believe to be the founding principles of this Republic which have been under attack from without and within over the past few decades.
Yes, this may be only our opinion and not that of the “left,” but our opinions are just as valid and worthy of expression and acceptance and civil debate as those of the “left.”
Kopf adds, apparently oblivious to the fact that Noonan is not of the "left":
No one reading Noonan’s article can walk away not understanding that she is for impeachment, thinks President Trump is corrupt (she said it, not even inferred it), and that anyone who doesn’t’ agree doesn’t “get it.”
While Noonan’s article does present credible facts to support her three reasons why she believes the situation is “fluid,” she nevertheless still resorts to words such as “corrupt,” “malfeasance,” and “criminal” without further explanation, support or qualification.
Kopf doesn't explain why he thinks Trump's pretty obvious corruption and malfeasance in office isn't an established fact, even as he potrays Trump as the victim of "those hell-bent on reversing the 2016 election" without explanation or supporting evidence.
Kopf concluded his column by portraying himself as a "poor country lawyer" despite, again, working in international law and working for U.S. intelligence services and living in a large city in North Carolina.
Aswe'vedocumented, CNSNews.com is essentially the unpaid (or are they?) public-relations agents for right-wing radio host Mark Levin, treating everything he says as unchalleged truth. Its 2019 pace of Levin promotion over the past two months surprisingly slowed a bit, particularly in October. Let's review, shall we?
With the unexplained October slowdown -- typically, CNS runs 8 to 10 Levin items a month -- that's just 10 items over the past two months. Still, that makes a total of 91 so far in 2019, and it's still likely the total will go past 100 for at least the third year in a row.
It was a decent month for employment numbers in Octrober, so it was pro-Trump rah-rah time again at CNSNews.com. Susan Jones wrote in the lead story:
Following September’s blockbuster employment report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday said more records were set in October.
A record 158,510,000 Americans are now working, the 23rd such record since President Donald Trump took office.
The nation’s labor force participation rate also set a Trump-era high of 63.3 percent. This number is explained in greater detail below, but the higher, the better. Payroll taxes from people who work help support programs for those who don't.
The economy added 128,000 jobs in October, higher than economists expected, given the General Motors strike that began on Sept. 15 and lasted six weeks.
Jones also touted how "the unemployment rate for black Americans, 5.4 percent in October, has never been this low." If Barack Obama were still president, Jones would be talking about how much higher it is than the white unemployment rate, which was 3.2 percent in October.
Craig Bannister served up the standard sidebar on Hispanic unemployment emphasizing the "record number" of employed Hispanics and downplaying the fact that the Hispanic unemployment rate actually went up in October.
Bannister also spun Nancy Pelosi's response to the October numbers, linking to Jones' article: "Despite record-high employment and a 4.1% unemployment rate, October’s jobs report is proof of how Republicans’ agenda is hurting the middle class, House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi said Friday."
Managing editor Michael W. Chapman, meanwhile, devoted an article to taking a potshot at a liberal economist: "The U.S. economy today is doing pretty well, with record-high employment numbers and record-low unemployment numbers for blacks, among other positive indices. Yet back in November 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president, Pulitzer Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman predicted the U.S. was 'probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.'"
By contrast, CNS was silent about Lawrence Kudlow's history of botched economic predictions after Trump named him a White House economic adviser.
UPDATE: These CNS stories are being used synergistically throughout the MRC; a Nov. 3 post by Tim Graham whined that the network news didn't cover October's numbers, huffing that "The networks keep insisting unemployment data isn't 'real news.'"
CNS' Syria Withdrawal Coverage Becomes A Little Less Pro-Trump Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com's interest in defending President Trump over withdrawing U.S. troops from northern Syria, thereby permitting Turkey to attack the Kurds that once were U.S. allies, has waned as the media in general has lost interest in the story.
On Oct. 21, Patrick Goodenough detailed a backtracking on Trump's withdrawal (though, of course, he didn't call it that): "As U.S. troops are being redeployed from Syria to western Iraq, there were indications at the weekend that President Trump may be prepared to leave a residual force across the border in eastern Syria, in a bid to keep a lid on ISIS and help to ensure that oilfields in the area to not fall into hands of the Iranians, whose forces are in Syria to bolster Bashar Assad’s regime." The same day, James Carstensen touted a German plan to create an "internationally controlled security zone" in Syria.
More stuff came in over the next couple days:
Goodenough reported on a "bipartisan Senate bill" seeking to move U.S. military operations out of Turkey .
Dimitri Simes reported on a Turkish pact with Russia to attack the Kurds.
Goodenough went for the default pro-Trump narrative by highlighting how "The U.S. special envoy for the Syrian conflict pushed back Tuesday on the charge that, had President Trump not pulled back a small number of U.S. troops from northeastern Syria this month, Turkish forces would not have crossed the border to attack Syrian Kurdish fighters."
A follow-up story by Goodenough reported how "Russian troops rolled into Kobane in northeastern Syria on Wednesday, on a mission to oversee the withdrawal of Syrian Kurdish fighters and their weapons from the area in line with an agreement reached by the Russian and Turkish presidents a day earlier."
Melanie Arter dutifully repeated Trump claiming that "Turkey has informed the Trump administration that it will stop combat in Syria and will make the ceasefire brokered by the United States permanent."
Goodenough also repeated an attack line from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the Obama administration "invited" the Russians to intervene militarily in the Syrian civil war by having "them come in and pretend to be chemical weapons inspectors."
CNS then turned the narrative to the U.S. trying to capture Syrian oil:
Meanwhile, CNS did publish an op-ed by conservatives Ken Blackwell and david Phillips asserting that "Turkey is practicing genocide again" in northern Syria and that "by allowing ethnic cleansing to remove the Kurds from northern Syria, the U.S. may be seen as an accomplice to Erdogan’s war crimes." But it also published a couple of pieces by managing editor Michael W. Chapman trying to retroactively justify Trump's withdrawal by dismissing the Kurds as terrorists and, perhaps even worse, a bunch of commies.
Although many liberal news outlets and some politicians have described President Donald Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria as a “betrayal” of the Kurds, our allies in fighting against ISIS in the region, it is important to note that the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK, is a “Marxist-Leninist separatist organization” that was designated as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” by the U.S. State Department in October 1997.
The next day, Chapman served up a somewhat altered version of the first article that walked back that one a bit:
Although many liberal news outlets have described President Donald Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria as a “betrayal” of the Kurds -- our allies in the fight against ISIS -- the Kurds who make up the People's Protection Units (YPG), are a direct offshoot of the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) in Turkey, which was designated a terrorist organization in 1997.
This does not apply to all the Kurds in Syria but specifically to those in the YPG.
But as actual foreign policy experts point out, the links between the PKK and the YPG are not as clear-cut as Chapman portrays them; the YPG denies direct links with the PKK though there is some overlap and shared goals. Perhaps Chapman can write another article walking back things a bit more.
Terry Jeffrey Trump Deficit Blame Avoidance Watch Topic: CNSNews.com
In case you were wondering: No, CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey stillhasnot explicitly assigned blame for increasing federal debt where it belongs: at the feet of President Trump and Republicans. He lamented in an Oct. 16 article:
The federal debt increased by $1,203,343,570,253.55 in fiscal 2019, according to data released by the U.S. Treasury Department.
That equaled approximately $9,432 for each of the 127,586,000 households the Census Bureau estimated were in the United States in 2018.
In the decade that began on the first day of fiscal 2010 and ended on the last day of fiscal 2019, the federal debt increased by $10,809,572,749,922—for an average of $1,080,957,274,992.20 per year.
That $10,809,572,749,922 in additional debt accumulated by the federal government over the past decade equaled approximately $84,724 per each of the 127,586,000 households in the United States in 2018.
As usual, Jeffrey avoided using the words "Trump" and "Republicans" in his article, and it was accompanied with yet another stock photo that included Nancy Pelosi, even though she leads only one-half of one branch of government, while Republicans control one and a half branches.
Federal spending programs that are "designed to transfer income ... to individuals or families" are set to hit a record $3,223,943,000,000 in fiscal 2020, according to projections published by the Office of Management and Budget.
These so-called "payments for individuals" (as the OMB calls them) are projected to account for 67.9% of all federal spending this fiscal year and consume 14.4% of the nation's gross domestic product.
Again, no mention of Trump or Republicans -- despite vaguely huffing that "The people who run our government are truly record setters — when it comes to taking money from one group and giving it to another" -- and again there's a stock photo that included Pelosi.
More budget-related huffing came in an Oct. 28 article:
The amount of money the federal government collected in individual income taxes and the total amount of money the federal government spent both set records in fiscal 2019, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released Friday afternoon.
However, even while collecting a record amount in individual income taxes, the federal government still ran a deficit of $984,388,000,000 during the fiscal year.
The template was followed again: no mentionof Trump or Republicans, and a stock photo featuring Pelosi even though she's never mentioned in any of these articles either.
Jeffrey returned to the subject again in his Oct. 30 column, and he misportrayed the situation by arguing that Republicans and Democrats share equal blame for the deficit situation:
The leaders of both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party in the U.S. Senate proved again this week that they favor a bigger federal government that spends and borrows more money.
[...]
Congress is continuing what is now a bipartisan tradition.
In the first two decades of the 21st century, real federal spending has increased by 70.7%.
[...]
When Republicans and Democrats work together in Washington, D.C., today, it is not to cut a bloated federal government but to cut the chances this nation will be solvent and prosperous for our children and grandchildren.
But Jeffrey still couldn't bring himself to utter the word "Trump," even though the president signs those buget bills he considers too bloated and, thus, is ultimately responsible for them.
In January, CNS' Craig Bannister promoted a petition on the White House "We the People" website, "created by a person known only as M.G.," demanding that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi be impeached for treason, touting how 12 days after its creation"the petition had garnered more than 130,000 signatures – enough to earn a response" from the White House.
The petition, devoid of supporting evidence, is pure wackiness:
Nancy Pelosi is a TRAITOR to the American People! The Constitution defines, "Treason against the US.. ..adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." Illegal aliens are enemies that invade our country with drugs, human trafficking, and terrorist causing death and crime to American citizens. Nancy Pelosi adheres to these enemies by voting for and providing them aid and comfort through Sanctuary policies funded by US citizen tax dollars, and refuses to protect American people by refusing to fund our border wall, leaving our borders open and unsafe. Pelosi refused to meet with Angel families, caused the government shut down then traveled on US dollars to Hawaii and Puerto Rico while 800,000 Fed workers don't get paid, and uninvited Trump for SOTU. IMPEACH Pelosi for treason!
Yet Bannister thought this was of significant enough importance to devote an article to. So much so, in fact, that he did another article on it on Oct. 23, giving it the same undeserved serious coverage:
A White House website “We the People” petition calling on Congress to “IMPEACH Pelosi for treason!” has garnered more than a quarter-million signatures to-date.
As of Wednesday, October 23, 2019, more than 260,000 people have signed the petition to impeach House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) created January 18, 2019 on the “We the People” website - more than two and a half times the minimum of 100,000 required to warrant an official response.
The Georgia woman who created the petition in January, Marjorie Taylor Greene, personally delivered a copy of the petition to Speaker Pelosi’s House office on February 22 of this year. Greene continues to encourage Americans to sign the petition, aided by President Donald Trump’s recent calls for Pelosi’s impeachment for the way she has conducted her impeachment inquiry of him.
Since posting the petition, Greene – a business owner, wife and mother – has launched a campaign to become the Republican House candidate for Georgia’s 6th district.
Bannister won't tell you, however, that Greene is a far-right activist -- enough of one to have earned a profile from the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC states that Greene has been livestreaming her various stunts on Facebook (of which her delivery of the Pelosi petition was just one), where she "uses a cheery persona and smiles to sugarcoat a message of intolerance toward different targets – all based on the opportunity for publicity. She hangs out with Islamophobic extremists like Laura Loomer as well as anti-government militia leaders, and she has also heckled survivors of the Parkland school massacre as "brainwashed" for pushing to change gun laws.
CNS Still Loves DiGenova's Insult Comedy -- But Censors His Involvement In Ukraine Scandal Topic: CNSNews.com
We've documentedhowenamored CNSNews.com has become with the insult-comedy stylings of right-wing lawyer Joe DiGenova. He's contributed a couple more to the ouvere over the past few months, lovingly documented by CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman:
What you're not going read about from Chapman or anyone else at CNS, however, is the involvement of DiGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing, in the Ukraine scandal for which President Trump is being scrutinized (and which Chapman uncritically let DiGenova bizarrely denounce as "regicide").
In late September, Fox News -- on which DiGenova and Toensing are frequent guests -- reported that the pair were working with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani in an off-the-books operation to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, with the apparent knowledge of Trump. (They deny that Trump knew about it.)
A few days later, it was revealed that DiGenova and Toensing are representing Dmitry Firtash, a Ukranian oligarch fighting extradition to the U.S. on bribery charges. It was later discovered that Firtash has paid the pair around $1 million for their defense, while he was also helping Giuliani dig up Biden dirt.
It has since turned out that another of DiGenova and Toensing's clients is John Solomon, who has been writing pro-Trump stories spinning away the Ukraine scandal for The Hill (which he recently left). DiGenova has apparently been leaking information from Firtash to Solomon for publication.
You'd think all this intrigue would be worthy of news, and it is -- or it would be if you're not a pro-Trump outlet like CNS and looking to curry favor with the president.
CNS is verymuchsticking to the Trump White House's preferred narrative on the Ukraine scandal, and telling readers the full truth about DiGenova does not align with that narrative.
CNS Reporter's Copy-And-Paste Defense of Trump Topic: CNSNews.com
President Trump's most aggressive defender at CNSNews.com is reporter Susan Jones. Over the past month or so, Jones' idea of defending Trump over the Ukraine scandal has been adding chunks of the transcript of the phone call between Trump and Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky to various CNS articles.
A Sept. 27 article by Jones complained that Rep. Adam Schiff, "with a straight face and no hint of a smile," was being criticized for "attributing words to President Trump that Trump never said." by serving up a parody version of the phone call. Jones responded by stating that "Here is what Trump said, according a memorandum summarizing the call," followed by several paragraphs of transcript" while helpfully inserting editorial comments like "Note that the 'favor' involves the origin of the Trump-Russia investigation" and "Note that Zelensky brings up Giuliani."
Jones also uncritically passed along Trump's transcript reference to Crowdstrike without mentioning that he's pushing a conspiracy theory.
In an Oct. 1 article ostensibly about Democrats seeking censure of President Clinton instead of impeachment, Jones again complained that Schiff was "misrepresenting what Trump said -- making Trump’s words sound sinister -- in Schiff’s opening statement at last week’s committee hearing," then added that approximate section of phone call transcript, again inserting a "note that Zelensky brought up Giuliani’s name and referred to 'all the investigations.'"
On Oct. 2, Jones groused that "Democrats, including their liberal media amplifiers, are making much of Mike Pompeo's reluctance to say whether he was listening to President Trump's July 25 phone call to Ukraine President Zelensky, copying and pasting the same selection of transcript from the previous day.
Jones took a break from wholesale transcript insertion for a while, then returned with an Oct. 30 article lamenting that the impeachable offenses Trump is alleged to have committed are so far vaguely defined (as permitted in the Constitution). Jones retorted with a summary of her usual Trump defense:
In his phone call with the newly elected Ukraine president on July 25, President Trump asked Zelensky to "do us a favor" that involved Ukraine's role in the Trump-Russia investigation. The "favor" had nothing to do with Joe Biden or his son Hunter.
Later in the conversation -- after Zelensky mentioned Rudy Giuliani and assured Trump that "all investigations will be openly and candidly" -- Trump said:
... followed by three paragraphs of cut-and-paste transcript.
Jones did punt on the transcript-pasting in an Oct. 29 article, linking to the White House website's version of the transcript and stating only that "The summary of Trump's phone call with Ukraine President Zelensky can be read here in its entirety." Shelater wrote up in normal journalistic style "the part of the phone call that sent Democrats into impeachment overdrive," then editorialized (in bad journalistic style): "The 'swamp' that Trump supposedly drained is now rising up against him, with the full support of Democrats and the liberal media."
(Weirdly, in none of these articles does Jones use Zelensky's first name -- too difficult to spell, apparently.)
But Jones' reliance on the White House-released transcript of the phone call may prove to be folly. On top of the transcript not being a fully accurate one -- it's based on "notes and recollections" of staffers who listened to the call -- one of the persons who actually listened to the call, National Security Council staffer Alexander Vindman, testified that he tried but failed to make the transcript more accurate by adding Trump's reference to the name of the company Joe Biden's son had worked for.
Jones wasn't the only CNS writer to rely on the transcript; a Sept. 25 article by Melanie Arter on the release of the transcript included lengthy copy-and-paste sections.
CNS Falls In Love With Barr's Pro-Religion Speech Topic: CNSNews.com
How much did CNSNews.com love Attorney General William Barr's speech at Notre Dame in mid-October that cheered religion and attacked secularism? It devoted three "news" side articles and two columns to it.
As it usually does with things it likes, CNS split claims up over several articles, presumably to increase clickability. The first was an anonymous written piece touting how Barr said that the framers of the U.S. Constitution believed that a "free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people." The article repeated that phrase four times -- three times in the body and once more in a transcript -- as well as in the headline.
Craig Bannister then contributed a couple blog posts excerpting other parts of Barr's speech: the first attacking "secular religion" that is supposedly "an inverse of Christian morality," and the second going further on the attack against "militant secularism" purportedly inflicting "organized destruction" on American society by attacking religion and "traditional values."
CNS then called in its favorite dishonest right-wing Catholic, Bill Donohue, to gush all over Barr's speech, proclaiming it "an historically accurate and sociologically sound presentation" that made "astute" points. He conlcuded: "Bill Barr gave a courageous and much-needed statement on the current state of religious liberty. It sounded like it was taken right out of the Catholic League playbook."
This lovefest was capped by a column from CNS' editor in chief, Terry Jeffrey (which seems to have disappeared from the CNS website, possibly lost in the site's redesign; here's the syndicated version at Townhall). Jeffrey loves his football metaphors, and he fully indulged in themhere:
Many Americans know Notre Dame as the place where Knute Rockne once coached the football team and George Gipp -- played by Ronald Reagan in the movie -- was his legendary halfback.
It should now also be noted as the place where Attorney General William P. Barr delivered one of the most important speeches any Cabinet official has given in recent times.
Imagine your team is backed up on its own 1-yard line. On first down, the quarterback hands the ball off to the fullback in a play cautiously designed to put another few yards between the line of scrimmage and the goal line.
The fullback smashes through a defensive tackle, runs over a linebacker, straight-arms a safety straight into the ground and ends up running 99 yards for a touchdown.
Humbly, he does not even spike the ball.
Bill Barr was that fullback last Friday while speaking at Notre Dame Law School.
Of course, Jeffrey and the rest of the CNS crew have been more than happy to spike the ball in Barr's stead (and, yes, the line "free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people" made its sixth appearance at CNS in Jeffrey's column). Indeed, Jeffrey wasn't done with his secondhand football-spiking (or other football metaphors). He cheered Barr's criticism of schools teaching about gender identity that refuse to let children out out, interpreting his words this way: "In other words, if you cannot afford to liberate your child from the government school, you must allow that government agency to teach your child that a boy can become a girl."
At no point in any of these CNSarticles was any criticism of Barr permitted, meaning that it was a completely one-sided presentation. Yet Jeffrey concluded his column by declaring: "Score: Barr 7, secularists 0." It's easy to declare victory when you don't allow the other side a chance to take the field.
CNS Suddenly Loves Dem Tulsi Gabbard Now That She Supports Trump, Hates Hillary Topic: CNSNews.com
It wasn't that long ago that CNSNews.com treated Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard with the same right-wingdisdain it has applied to all Democratic presidential candidates. For instance, Craig Bannister highlighted how Gabbard "boasted that she has forsaken the values instilled in her by her parents," while Michael Morris gave a platform to its favorite right-wing radio host, Mark Levin, to bash her as a "clown," "crackpot" and "moron" whose "propaganda on behalf of Syria & Iran is disgraceful."
But supporting President Trump is Job 1 at CNS like it is at the rest of the Media Research Center, followed closely behind by Clinton derangement, and when Gabbard started sounded more like Trump -- then got into a spat with Hillary Clinton -- she was suddenly treated as a sane and credible candidate.
A Sept. 26 blog post by Bannister promoted Gabbard's opposition to Democratic impeachment efforts against Trump, adding that "Gabbard then cautioned that impeachment may well backfire on Democrats."
When Gabbard echoed Trump's call to remove U.S. troops from Syria during a debate, an Oct. 16 article by Melanie Arter touted how Gabbard claimed "The New York Times and CNN smeared" her for wanting to end "regime change war" -- never mind that only a month earlier CNS was letting Levin declare her support for Syria as "disgraceful."
Shortly thereafter, Hillary Clinton suggested that the Russians were grooming Gabbard to make a third-party presidential run, CNS rushed to Gabbard's defense. Managing editor Michael W. Chapman touted Gabbard's response that Clinton is the "queen of warmongers" and the "personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long." This was followed by an item by Susan Jones about another Democratic presidential candidate being asked about Gabbard.
Chapman returned to boost Gabbard's "new video response to Hillary Clinton's charge that she is being groomed by the Russians to be a third-party candidate," in which she ranted that if you "stand up against Hillary" and the "war machine," they will try to "destroy you."
The same day, Chapman complained that "On the very day Democratic presidential contender Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) said that The New York Times and CNN were smearing veterans like herself because she opposes the "regime change" war in Syria, CNN analyst Bakari Sellers told a panel of CNN reporters "there is no question that Tulsi Gabbard ... is a puppet for the Russian government." He added, "Clinton, like CNN and Bakari Sellers, presented no evidence to support her claim," then weirdly moved to suggest Clinton is discredited because of the Mueller report:
From late 2016 and through 2017, 2018, and part of 2019, Hillary Clinton and most of the liberal media either claimed or strongly suggested that President Donald Trump had colluded with Russia to win the presidential election.
The report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded, “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
Finally, Melanie Arter served up her usual stenography work by uncritically passing along President Trump's mocking that Clinton "is accusing everyone of being a Russian asset, but her recent accusation against Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) probably helped the congresswoman like it ended up helping the Trump administration."
How Is CNS' Managing Editor Being More Catholic Than The Pope Now? Topic: CNSNews.com
We've documented how CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman is such a right-wing Catholic that he thinks he can lecture the Pope Francis (who's too liberal for him) about Catholicism. Here's how Chapman has been acting more Catholic than the pope over the past couple months.
Sept. 4: Chapman touted how one Catholic school removed the Harry Potter book series from the school library because "they misrepresent magic as 'both good and evil, which is not true,' he said, and because some of the curses and spells are 'actual curses and spells.'"
Setp. 9: In a crossover with his gay-hating tendencies, Chapman huffed that the "gay media" praised a new Catholic cardinal, citing a right-wing Catholic website to claim that he was from a diocese that is "a hotbed of leftist politics and LGBT activism."
Sept. 13: Chapman was upset that the Catholic church in Switzerland would bless same-sex marriages in a special ceremony (but not actually marry them), ebven though "the Catholic Church teaches that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered" and cannot be approved under any circumstances."
Sept. 16: Chapman promoted a right-wing Catholic priest whining about Pope Francis' criticism of "rigid priests" and his lament that "I must honestly and painfully say that I am wearied from being scorned and demonized by you" despite not offering any evidence that the Pope actually knows who this priest is.
Sept. 17: Chapman gave an article to one of his favorite right-wing Catholics, the Francis-hating Carlo Vigano, to assert that the pope is provoking a schism over his support for something called the Amazon Synod. In August, Chapman touted right-wing attacks on the synod calling it an "apostasy" because it would discuss "ecology, economy and politics."
Sept. 19: Chapman gave space to another right-wing attack , this time on liberal priest James Martin because he advocates the view that people are born gay and generally doesn't hate the LGBT community to their (and Chapman's) satisfaction.
Sept. 26: Chapman featured a former bishop of Hong Kong complaining that "Rome no longer dares to criticize the Chinese government."
Ot. 7: Chapman dialed up another "apostasy" attack on the Amazon Synod from his other favorite right-wing Catholic, Cardinal Raymond Burke.
Oct. 9: Chapman pushed a claim from "Pope Francis' longtime atheist friend and interviewer, Eugenio Scalfari," who "claims that the Pope told him that once Jesus Christ became incarnate, he was a man, a "man of exceptional virtues" but "not at all a God." Chapman had to update the article to add a Vatican statement that the claim "cannot be considered as a faithful account of what was effectively said, but represent more a personal free interpretation of that which he [Scalfari] heard."
Oct. 17: It's another attack on the Amazon synod, a tangental one featuring one bishop accusing it of being funded with "blood money" because "money used to fund some of the groups participating in the Vatican's Amazonian synod came from the pro-abortion Ford Foundation -- whose Board members include former Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards."
You'd think Chapman would have enough to do running his "news" organization than to obsess over right-wing Catholic politics.
Cleanup Mode, Part 2: CNS Tries To Retcon Mulvaney's Quid Pro Quo Admission Topic: CNSNews.com
Part of being a pro-Trump stenographer at CNSNews.com is having to clean up after President Trump or a surrogate when they screw up. We've caught them doing that already as the impeachment inquiry has progressed, and now they've done it again.
The big news from last week's press conference by acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney is that he effectively admitted that Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine because Trump wanted the country to investigate conspiracy theories that involved the 2016 election and Joe Biden's son -- then tried to walk back the claim shortly thereafter. But, of course, that's not the way CNS framed it.
Susan Jones' first article started by framing Mulvaney's remarks the way he wanted them framed -- by uncritically quotinghim saying there was no issue with Trump holding up aid to Ukraine because "President Trump is not a big fan of foreign aid, never has been, still isn't." The quid pro quo admission is buried far down and not highlighted. Sometime after the article was published, a note was added to the top of the article stating that "Mulvaney issued a statement pushing back on reports that he admitted to a quid pro quo involving Ukraine, i.e., U.S. military aid in exchange for Ukraine's cooperation with the ongoing 2016 election-corruption investigation"; it's not explained that those reports he's "pushing back" on are accurate and that he's now saying something different than his original claim.
Jones' next article tried to reframe things by criticizing the way Mulvaney was asked questions and parsing his answers to leave out the whole quid pro quo stuff:
Listen to these two questions asked of Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney on Thursday:
(1) "Can you describe the role that you played in pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens?" and (2) "Can you walk us through the meeting that President Trump was dangling over Vladimir Zelensky to have him right here at the White House? What were the preconditions of that meeting and was investigating Burisma one of them?"
Both questions assume guilt on the part of the Trump administration, but Mulvaney answered them.
The answer to the first question is "none," Mulvaney said. "I didn't have any--any--what was your question? What did I do to Ukraine or something? Nothing."
[...]
The reporter repeated: "The second question is about the meeting that was supposed to happen here at the White House between the two presidents. Could you walk us through the discussions for that meeting? What was on the table for a precondition, and was the investigation of Burisma ever brought up as a condition to meet with President Trump?"
"No," Mulvaney said. "Not to me and not to anybody I know of. I was never in a conversation that--that had the word Burisma in it...or the Bidens. That never happened with me in there.
Jones was pretty much the only person trying to make that argument -- even among her fellow right-wingers.
Melanie Arter gave it another shot in an Oct. 21 article, uncritically recounting Muvaney's "Fox News Sunday" appearance in which he continued to reverse himself on the quid pro-quo admission. It's straight, boring, badly formatted stenography that again buries the fact that Mulvaney is contradicting himself.
CNS is doing its readers a disservice by refusing to accurately and honestly report the news, instead serving as an extension of the White House press office. It hardly inspires trust in CNS' work.
CNSNews.com was long distressed that more Muslim refugees than Christian ones were being admitted to the U.S. under the Obama administration, only occasionally pointing out that the numbers may have been skewed because Christian charities tend to handle Christian refugees and, thus, wouldn't be counted in the United Nations totals the U.S. uses. But when President Trump took office, CNS championed how more Christians were being admitted.
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