CNS Editor's Double Standard On Federal Spending
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey spent his Nov. 20 column lecturing members of Congress that the longtime practice of paying a year's salary to the surviving spouse of a congressmember who dies in office is a waste of money:

The members of Congress who have enacted previous bills that included language directing the Treasury to provide the equivalent of a full year's salary to the spouse of a deceased colleague were not giving that person their own money.

They were giving that person your money — or your children's and your grandchildren's money.

And this, of course, is exactly how the Washington establishment has long shown how compassionate it is: It takes money from one group of people and gives it to another.

[...]

Since Congress plans to run annual deficits in every fiscal year for the foreseeable future, this "gift" might alternatively be paid with borrowed money — adding to the $1.1 trillion deficit the Office of Management and Budget had previously estimated the Treasury would run this year.

In that case, the Treasury will issue bonds to secure the cash needed to fund that "gift" and then roll those bonds over and over — unless the federal government actually pays off its debt someday.

Jeffrey, however, is much more cavalier when it comes to spending tax money on causes he approves of -- and he was just two weeks before his lecture to Congress.

As he has before, Jeffrey devoted a Nov. 7 article to touting how building a border wall would take up an infintesimal amount of the federal budget, then complaining that Congress isn't funding it to his satisfaction:

The $5,000,000,000 that President Donald Trump has requested Congress appropriate for border-wall construction along the southwestern border in fiscal 2020 equals just 0.1 percent of the $4,745,573,000,000 that the Office of Management and Budget estimates the federal government will spend in total during the fiscal year.

The fiscal 2020 Department of Homeland Security funding bill that the House Appropriations Committee has approved, however, provides $0 for the wall.

[...]

The $5,000,000,000 President Trump has requested for construction of the border wall in fiscal 2020 equals 0.1 percent of the $4,745,573,000,000 that the OMB estimates the federal government will spend in total in fiscal 2020.

By contrast, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved and sent to the full Senate a DHS funding bill that says: “$5,000,000,000 is for the construction of pedestrian fending.”

Unlike in his lecture over survivors' payments, Jeffrey did not mention the federal deficit at all or fret that the wall would be paid for with borrowed money. It's as if he has different standards based on things he would like to see money spent on.

CNS' Impeachment Stenography Files Continue
Topic: CNSNews.com
For pro-Trump talking points on impeachment, it's hard to find a more devoted regurgitator of them than CNSNews.com. Craig Bannister made his stenographic contribution in a Nov. 19 article:

While Democrats are now accusing President Donald Trump of bribery, the thirty-five hundred pages of sworn deposition testimony released so far reveal only one mention of the word “bribery” – and it’s used to describe the alleged conduct of former Vice President Joe Biden, Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) said Tuesday.

During Tuesday’s House Intelligence Committee impeachment inquiry, Rep. Ratcliffe noted how Democrats’ charge against Trump has morphed, from “quid pro quo” to “extortion” to, currently, “bribery”:

[...]

Ironically, the only time word “bribery” is used, it’s used to describe the behavior former Vice President Joe Biden, Rep. Ratcliffe explains:

“In fact, in these thirty-five hundred pages of sworn deposition testimony and just these ten transcripts released thus far, the word ‘bribery’ appears, in these thirty-five hundred pages exactly one time.

“And, ironically, it appears, not in the description of President Trump’s alleged conduct – it appears in the description of Vice President Biden’s alleged conduct.”

Weirdly -- or not, considering that he's in slavish-stenography mode and Ratcliffe apparently didn't elaborate or bookmark the reference -- Bannister never tells his readers the full context of that alleged reference to Biden and "bribery." Perhaps because that reference is irrelevant; as an actual news organization reported, it came "in a question one attorney asked about unfounded bribery allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden."

In uncritically repeating Ratcliffe's rant, Bannister is just repeating the apparent mandate from his Media Research Center overlords to frame discussion of "bribery" as merely a question of semantics driven by Democrats, as his MRC co-workers have similarly done. He continued to be Ratcliffe's mouthpiece, asserting that "The American people need to be aware of these facts, because the Democrat-controlled Judiciary Committee is likely to approve articles of impeachment against Pres. Trump based on the charge of bribery – even though not a single witness has characterized it as such – Ratcliffe said."

But as political analysts have detailed, "bribery" is not an inaccurate word for what Trump is accused of doing, and a quid pro quo is an usually a component of bribery. Bannister won't tell you that, of course, because he's not being paid to report the full truth.

CNS Dutifully Repeats More GOP Anti-Impeachment Talking Points
Topic: CNSNews.com

The loyal Trump-bots at CNSNews.com have been slavishly repeating pro-Trump talking points in its "news" coverage of the impeachment hearings against President Trump. Here are a couple more examples.

CNS has dutifully regurgitated the claims of Republican congressmen, particularly Devin Nunes, trying to build a Ukranian conspiracy theory around a woman named Alexandra Chalupa:

• Nov. 11: Susan Jones quoted Rep. Ron Johnson dropping Chalupa's name as an example of "connections between Democrats" and Ukraine.
• Nov. 12: Jones cited as one witness Republicans would like to call at the hearings "Alexandra Chalupa, former Democratic National Committee staffer, who has admitted to providing anti-Trump dirt to the DNC and the Clinton campaign."
• Nov. 13: Melanie Arter copied-and-pasted transcript of Nunes asking one witness about Chalupa, who he claimed "admitted to Politico that she worked with officials at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C., to dig up dirt on the Trump campaign, which she passed on to the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign."
• Nov. 15: Jones quoted Nunes ranting that "Democrats on this committee ignore Ukrainian election meddling, even though (DNC operative Alexandra) Chalupa publicly admitted to the Democrats' scheme."
• Nov. 21: Jones served up another rant from Nunes huffing that Democrats "got caught covering up for Alexandra Chalupa, a Democratic National Committee operative who colluded with Ukrainian officials to smear the Trump Campaign by improperly redacting her name from deposition transcripts and refusing to let Americans hear her testimony as a witness in these proceedings."
• Nov. 22: Jones repeated a letter by House Republicans requesting records on alleged Obama White House meetings with Demomcratic and Ukranian officials including "Alexandra Chalupa, a contractor for the DNC, who reportedly worked with Ukrainian government officials to undermine the Trump campaign."

In none of these articles, however, did Jones or Arter tell the full story of Chalupa -- presumably because that would expose the truth that anything Ukraine did regarding election interference was small potatoes compared to the systematic, large-scale interference conducted by Russia on behalf of Trump.

As that 2017 Politico article explained, Chalupa played a key role in helping to expose Trump adviser and campaign manager Paul Manafort's work in Ukraine. She stopped working for the DNC in mid-2016, but continued to pass along information about Manafort to other journalists. Chalupa has since said that the Ukranian government did not engage in a Russian-like interference campaign, and that efforts to attack her like the Republicans are doing originally began with Russia.

Given that Manafort was later convicted and sent to prison for bank and tax fraud regarding the millions of dollars he was paid for his work in Ukraine, Chalupa's work could hardly be called "anti-Trump dirt" -- no, more like in-depth reporting. CNS won't tell its readers that, of course, since keeping the allegations vague makes her sound more sinister than she is.

Jones uncritically repeated another GOP talking point in a Nov. 14 article, this time copying-and-pasting testimony from Republican Rep. John Radcliffe emphasizing that Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelensky (whose first name Jones once again failed to use in her article) has denied feeling pressure in that notorious phone call with Trump:

I think everyone knows that House Democrats have made up their mind to impeach one president. The question that we've just learned is, whether or not they're prepared to impeach two.

Because to be clear, if House Democrats impeach President Trump for a quid pro quo involving military aid, they have to call President Zelensky a liar. If they impeach him for abusing his power or pressuring or making threats or demands, they have to call President Zelensky a liar to do it. If they impeach President Trump for blackmail or extortion or making threats or demands, they have to call President Trump (he meant President Zelensky) a liar to do it.

But as an actual journalist reported, Zelensky's words are more nuanced than CNS and the GOP are portraying:

Zelensky ran for the presidency on an anti-corruption platform, and won in a landslide. Admitting to giving in to pressure — or admitting to pressuring independent members of his government to conduct investigations — would mean not only losing bipartisan support from the U.S. Congress but also destroying his credibility among Ukrainians.

After the Sept. 25 meeting with Trump, Zelensky met with Ukrainian journalists, who immediately asked him for clarification. He said that for him, it was simple: He didn’t want his words to be interpreted to mean that Ukraine would interfere in another country’s elections. Still speaking Ukrainian, he added: “That’s why I said, ‘No one canpressure me. And no one will pressure me.’ ”

In both colloquial Ukrainian and in colloquial Russian, “he pressured me” does not mean merely “I felt pressured.” Instead, it implies you’ve actually been compelled to do something. In Ukrainian politics, “pressure” (tysk) means not just applying pressure; it usually means that the person being pressured cooperated. In Zelensky’s statement to Ukrainian journalists that “no one can pressure me,” he was not commenting on Trump’s action; he was clarifying his own response.

If Zelensky had wanted to convey that there truly was no pressure involved, he could have said, “No one tried to pressure me.”

But CNS won't tell you that either, because it undermines the pro-Trump agenda its impeachment coverage is centered around.

CNS Trump-Defending Piece Undercut By CNS Story The Day Before
Topic: CNSNews.com

Susan Jones devoted a Nov. 13 CNSNews.com article to pushing a pro-Trump talking point as impeachment hearings were about to begin:

According to witnesses quoted in the Mueller report, even before he was elected president, Donald Trump was leery about the United States getting too involved with Ukraine.

During platform committee meetings in July 2016, before the Republican National Convention, a proposed amendment endorsing "lethal assistance" to Ukraine was watered down to read "appropriate assistance."

According to the Mueller report, J.D. Gordon, a senior Trump campaign advisor on policy and national security, diluted the proposed amendment. Instead of supporting "lethal" assistance to Ukraine in response to Russian aggression, Gordon requested that the platform committee revise the proposed amendment to state that only "appropriate" assistance be provided to Ukraine.

Gordon said he sought the change because he believed the proposed "lethal" language was inconsistent with Trump's position on Ukraine.

This talking point might have been more effective if CNS hadn't undercut it the day before by touting Trump surrogates bragging about Trump giving that "lethal assistance" to Ukraine. Patrick Goodenough wrote in a Nov. 12 article:

The fact that President Trump – unlike his predecessor – sent lethal military aid to Ukraine in the face of Russia’s aggression is “the real story that’s been lost in all this,” National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien said Sunday, in reference to Democrats’ drive to impeach the president.

Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” O’Brien recalled visiting Ukraine as an election monitor in 2014 and being asked by Ukrainians why “the arsenal of democracy” would not provide their country with military aid.

[...]

O’Brien said “the Obama-Biden administration” had provided “no military aid” to Ukraine, but “when President Trump got into office, he sent military aid.”

“So I think what people ought to be focusing on is the president has been helping the Ukrainians defend themselves by sending them lethal – lethal military aid to stand up to the Russians,” he said. “That’s the real story that’s been lost in all this.”

At the center of the impeachment push are allegations that Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine, in an attempt to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden.

“President Trump is the first president to send lethal military aid to Ukraine,” O’Brien reiterated. “I think it’s very important. And I think that’s something that’s been lost in – in all the hullabaloo about the – about the telephone call [between Trump and Zelensky on July 25].”

Jones did reference Goodenough's article in the final paragraph of her article -- even highlighting the O'Brien "hullabaloo" statement excerpted above -- but she did not address the fact that his surrogates promoting the aid Trump gave to Ukraine undercuts her talking point about Trump being "skeptical" of foreign aid. And it doesn't make for a suitable excuse for Trump putting a hold on that aid when it's become increasingly clear that he did so over his scheme to force Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.

CNS' Jones Still Leaning On Trump-Zelensky Transcript
Topic: CNSNews.com

We've already highlighted how CNSnews.com writer Susan Jones has leaned heavily on the infamous July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky inserting excerpts of the released transcript of the conversation into several CNS articles in an attempt to defend Trump.

Jones used a Nov. 13 CNS article to lecture Rep. Adam Schiff for trying to keep the impeachment hearings focused on Trump's actions and not Republican obsessions over the Bidens:

Schiff, by shutting down questions about the Bidens and Ukraine’s alleged interference in the 2016 U. S. election, is refusing to allow Republicans to explore what Trump apparently believed when he spoke with Zelensky on July 25.

Certainly Trump’s personal attorney and close friend Rudy Giuliani believed Ukraine corruption impacted his client.

Giuliani has told various media outlets he spent months investigating "corruption at the highest levels of the Obama administration, which included illegal impact from Ukraine on the 2016 election. I was investigating this as an attorney to vindicate my client," Giuliani tweeted on Oct. 1. "It began and was largely done before Biden announced his run for President."

Giuliani alleges that Joe Biden "obstructed an investigation of Dem 2016 election interference" by forcing the firing of a former Ukraine prosecutor general.

Jones then spent several paragraphs once again summarizing the Trump-Zelensky call (as she did before, Jones once again omitted Zelensky's first name). She did, however, add a minor correction; after stating that Trump asked Zelensky to look into "a supposed Ukrainian link to the hacking of the DNC server," she parenthetically added, "The U.S. intelligence community blamed Russia, not Ukraine, for the hacking."

But she also wrote:

In 2018, Biden bragged that as the sitting vice president, he threatened to hold up a U.S. loan guarantee to Ukraine unless that country's prosecutor-general was fired. Biden and other witnesses have said Biden was carrying out U.S. and international efforts to get rid of a corrupt prosecutor.

But at the time, Biden's son Hunter was earning big money by sitting on the board of Burisma, a Ukraine energy company owned by an allegedly corrupt oligarch whom the Ukraine prosecutors had been investigating.

That is false. In fact, the corrupt prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was not investigating Burisma or much other corruption in the country, which is why the U.S. and the international community wanted him gone. Not only that, the prosecutor had actually been shielding the head of Burisma by refusing to hand over documents in a British probe of the company.

That seems like important information for Jones to tell her readers. But defending Trump is her first priority, not reporting all relevant facts.

NEW ARTICLE: Spinning for Trump on Syria
Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com's main job when President Trump abruptly pulled U.S. troops out of Syria, allowing Turkey to attack U.S. allies in the region, was to portray Trump as correct and downplay criticism. Read more >>

CNS Writes Around Criticism of Rand Paul
Topic: CNSNews.com

In a Nov. 11 CNSNews.com article, Susan Jones touted how Republican Sen. Rand Paul, on NBC's "Meet the Press," "said it's not fair to impeach President Trump for doing "the same thing that Joe Biden did" -- threatening aid to Ukraine if some kind of corruption was not investigated":

Chuck Todd, the host of NBC's "Meet the Press," said he wanted to "set aside what Vice President Biden did." He asked Paul if it's "appropriate" for President Trump to withhold U.S. military aid until the Ukrainians agreed to publicly announce corruption investigations involving the 2016 U.S. election and the Bidens:

"I think there is a real question whether you think the president should specifically go after one person, but there is a real question whether Joe Biden should have gone after one prosecutor. It's exactly the same scenario," Paul responded.

"There is a real question about that. But if it were me, I wouldn't give them the aid, because we don't have the money. We have to borrow the money from China to send it to Ukraine, so I'm against the aid. And I think it's a mistake to do the aid, so I wouldn't have played any games. But I think the American people think it's unfair to treat Trump under one standard and Joe Biden under a different standard."

An hour later, Jones wrote another article based on the same edition of "Meet the Press," this time focusing on Democratic Rep. Jim Himes saying that testimony in the impeachment hearings would feature "immensely patriotic, beautifully articulate people telling the story of a president who -- let's forget quid pro quo, quid pro quo is one of these things to muddy the works -- who extorted a vulnerable country by holding up military aid"and arguing that Trump "acted criminally and extorted in a way a mob boss would extort somebody, a vulnerable foreign country."

Jones added: "Himes argued that "what the president did was wrong and impeachable," nothing at all like Joe Biden holding up a loan guarantee until Ukraine fired the prosecutor-general; and nothing at all like Hillary Clinton using foreigners to do opposition research on Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign."

Jones did not, however, write an article on what happened between those two segments: Himes destroyed Paul's argument that Biden acted no different that Trump is alleged to have done, specifically articulating why that's the case in a way that Jones' one-paragraph summary glossed over, and criticized Todd for not pointing out that fact:

Chuck, if you'll, if you'll grant me one second here, my head is only now decombusting from the exchange you had with Rand Paul. I've spent 11 years in public service defending the press, and when Senator Rand Paul comes on and says that what Donald Trump did -- and the transcript is there -- extorting a foreign government for his personal political gain, and that's exactly the same thing as Joe Biden, "Exactly the same thing," is what he said [...] When Joe Biden is acting in consistency with American foreign policy and back then we had a whole list of things that had to be done and this was American foreign policy, it was European Union policy, it was IMF policy that this prosecutor needed to go. When Rand Paul says that that's exactly the same thing as the president of the United States saying, "You need to find dirt on my political opponent," and with all due respect, Chuck, when you say, "Well, do two wrongs make a right?" Let's be very clear. The president of the United States demanding, extorting a vulnerable country to do his political bidding, to go after his opponent, has nothing to do with Joe Biden executing the foreign policy of the United States or Hillary Clinton, who is a private citizen, doing opposition research on her, on her presidential opponent. Those are radically different things. What the President did is wrong and impeachable.

If Jones was a fair and balanced reporter, she would have provided this information to her readers in the same manner that she gave Paul an uncritical platform to spin his bogus claims. But, of course, we know she's not.

CNS Reporter Loves Her Pro-Trump Boilerplate
Topic: CNSNews.com

We've documented how CNSNews.com's most aggressive defender of President Trump, Susan Jones, has copied-and-pasted her pro-Trump defenses, heavy on transcript excerpts from the notorious phone call between Trump and Ukranian President Volodomyr Zelensky. But she does good condescending pro-Trump boilerplate too.

In a Nov. 14 article, Jones hurls pro-Trump talking points at Nancy Pelosi after reporting her statement that Trump engaged in "bribery" in withholding military aid to Ukraine in exchange for a promise that the country would conduct an investigation into the Ukranian company Joe Biden's son worked for:

For the record, the summary of Trump's July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president does not show that President Trump threatened to withhold military aid in exchange for anything, although he did say the Ukraine president would be doing him a favor by looking into alleged Ukraine efforts to work against Trump in 2016. Later in that conversation, Trump brought up the Bidens, saying that their dealings with Ukraine sounded "horrible."

Unfortunately for Jones' boilerplate, it's since been revealed that Trump moved to withhold the aid as early as the beginning of July, and that Ukraine was likely aware of it at the time of the Trmp-Zelensky phone call -- making the question of whether that was discussed during the call irrelevant.

Jones had some more talking points to spread around after repeating another quote from Pelosi:

"The president used power and violated his oath by threatening to withhold military aid and a White House meeting in exchange for an investigation into his political rival -- a clear attempt by the president to give himself the advantage in the 2020 election."

As Republicans have noted, the aid eventually flowed; President Zelensky never made a public statement about investigations; and both presidents said they were very satisfied with the phone call in which Democrats insist a bribe was made.

Jones conveniently leaves out the fact that the aid "eventually flowed" only after a Politico story revealing that Trump had blocked the aid, which blew up the negotiations with Ukraine to get an investigation announced. And it turns out Zelensky may not have been telling the full truth about the call; it's since been reported that he did indeed feel pressure from the Trump administration even before the call, and it's likely that Zelensky is publicly denying feeling pressure in an attempt to not upset Trump and keep U.S. aid flowing.

But as with its parent, the Media Research Center, perpetuating Trump-friendly political narratives comes before reporting the full truth at CNS.

CNS Lazily Recycling Repubican Attack Lines
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com is so slavishly devoted to the pro-Trump narrataive on impeachment that it's just lazily rehashing the same Republican talking points.

For instances, an Oct. 31 article by Melanie Arter is headlined "McCarthy: This Is an Attempt to Undo the Last Election and Influence the Next One" and states: 

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Thursday the impeachment is not just an attempt to undo the last election, it is an attempt to influence the next one as well.

Speaking on the House floor, McCarthy said “elections have consequences” and Americans “used their vote to choose who will work for them.”

[...]

“It is about the integrity of our electoral process. Democrats are trying to impeach the president, because they are scared they cannot defeat him at the ballot box. That's not my words. That's the words of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle that has offered impeachment three different times,” McCarthy said.

“This impeachment is not only an attempt to undo the last election, it is an attempt to influence the next one as well. This is not what Democrats promised when they entered the majority 11 months ago,” he said.

Then, on Nov. 4, Susan Jones wrote an article headlined "McCarthy: Democrats Trying to Change Outcome of 2016 Election and Influence the Next One," stating:

The Democrats' impeachment inquiry is a partisan effort to undo the last presidential election and influence the one coming up, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday.

"Never in our history have we ever moved through with what's such a partisan impeachment movement. This is unheard of," McCarthy said.

"And what they're trying to do -- remember, what is today? November 3. We are exactly one year away from Americans going to the polls to vote for the president. They're trying to change the outcome of 2016 and influence the next one."

That's right: CNS devoted two articles five days apart to pushing the same exact talking point by the exact same Republican politician, albeit in two different places.

That's some serious dedication to pushing a narrative. Or is it just that CNS editors don't actually read the website they work for before posting stories to it?

CNS Touts How 'Pelosi Caves' On Impeachment Vote -- But Much Less Cheering About The Vote
Topic: CNSNews.com

When House Democrats agreed to hold a formal vote on an impeachment inquiry into President Trump, CNSNews.com immediately found a pro-Trump angle by arguing capitulation to the president. The headline on an Oct. 28 post by Craig Bannister read, "Pelosi Caves to Republican Demands for Impeachment Vote, Transparency, Due Process, Rules." He continued:

Even though President Donald Trump’s call for a full House vote on Democrats’ impeachment inquiry “has no merit,” the vote will take place, anyway, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declared Monday.

“Multiple past impeachments have gone forward without any authorizing resolutions,” Rep. Pelosi said in a letter to her Democrat [sic] colleagues announcing that a full House vote will be held this week, reportedly, on Thursday. The resolution “affirms the ongoing, existing investigation that is currently being conducted by our committees,” Pelosi writes. But, as The Wall Street Journal reports, "This isn't a vote to authorize starting an impeachment inquiry."

But when the actual vote took place, there was much less enthusiasm, even though its passage in the Democratic-controlled House was never in doubt. So unenthusiastic was CNS that editor in chief Terry Jeffrey couldn't even be bothered to add much of his operation's trademark bias and wrote a longish, relatively straight and balanced Oct. 31 article on the vote.

But don't worry -- Melanie Arter served up a much more biased version focusing on Trump White House complaints about a purported lack of due process, despite the fact that due process is generally not granted during the investigation phase of any criminal proceeding (which, of course, Arter failed to mention).

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 championed how 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 already been 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.

CNS-Mark Levin Stenography Watch
Topic: CNSNews.com

As we've documented, 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?

September

• Mark Levin Warns: ‘Everybody’s Going to Get Ripped Off’ If Dems Employ Federal Wealth Tax
• Mark Levin: Media Are Hysterically and Desperately Pushing Climate Change Ideology
• Mark Levin: CAFE Standards Are ‘Mass Killers;’ Yet Congress Is Focusing on Gun Control
• Mark Levin Warns: If Something Serious Isn’t Done, Iran Will Take This Attack as a First Step
• Mark Levin to ‘Clown’ Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: ‘Your Propaganda on Behalf of Syria & Iran Is Disgraceful’
• Mark Levin Disagrees with Nancy Pelosi: If Sitting President Is Indicted, We the People Suffer
• Mark Levin: Today’s Hearing on Trump-Ukraine Is Another Spectacle, Another Drama for the Media

October

• Levin Agrees with Trump: ‘Yes, Romney Is a Pompous Ass’
• Levin: ‘Serial Murderers Get More Due Process Than Democrats Want to Give the President’
• Levin: Trump Impeachment is an ‘Abomination,’ ‘No Comparison in American History’

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.