Topic: WorldNetDaily
It went without saying that the rabidly pro-Trump worldNetDaily would lash out against Rep. John Lewis' questioning of Donald Trump's legitimacy as president.
An anonymously written Jan. 15 WND article complained that "that kind of rhetoric is in keeping with a highly partisan record of accusing all Republican presidential candidates of racism as well as calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush," adding:
His reason Trump isn’t a legitimate president-elect, according to Lewis, is because the Russians helped elect him. To date, not a single shred of evidence to suggest Russian hacking had any impact on the outcome of the election. Indeed, as Democrats are fond of pointing out, Clinton won the popular election. She merely failed to win the prerequisite number of electoral votes of the states.
Lewis’ comments are not only conspiratorial and divisive, they also question the legitimacy of the nation’s electoral process and the integrity of the vote.
This is yet another example of WND sucking up to Russia in order to protect Trump -- and WND offers no evidence that Russian meddling did not have an effect. WND also had no problem questioning the legitimacy of the nation’s electoral process and the integrity of the vote by promoting evidence-free fearmongering about vote fraud that couldn't be blamed on Trump.
The anonymous WND writer went on to rehash "other famous but forgotten slurs from Lewis in recent years," complaining that Lewis has "been friendly to socialist and communist causes throughout his career," and even huffing that "Lewis’ prepared remarks had to be toned down" for the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King gave his "I Have A Dream" speech.
WND put a lot of work into attacking Lewis. Why is the writer so afraid to put his name to it?
Not afraid to attack Lewis under their own names, meanwhile, are WND's resident angry black right-wingers, Jesse Lee Peterson and Mychal Massie.
In his tradition of saying things that would be racist were he a white man, Peterson, Peterson ranted that "Lewis has used his participation in the civil-rights movement as a shield against criticism for his race baiting and poor record for years. It’s about time someone called him out on it. He is a bitter man fighting a false illusion of 'racism' that only exists in his mind. The hate, blame and victimhood that Lewis is projecting are antithetical to Dr. King’s dream."
Peterson added: "Trump is telling the truth about John Lewis. Lewis’ metropolitan Atlanta district covers predominantly black communities. The FBI’s latest crime report ranks Atlanta as No. 14 for violent crime in the nation!" Actually, PolitiFact rated Trump's claim to be "mostly false," because crime is declining in the district and while it has "higher unemployment and poverty rates than the national average, it still has a thriving economic hub in Atlanta and higher educational attainment."
Massie let loose a similar Lewis-hating rant:
That Lewis was beaten by police during the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery in March 1965 does not make him a hero today. Nor do I view his experiences during the civil rights movement of the 1960s as kryptonite to be used against those like President-elect Donald Trump who rightly reminded Lewis that he should show a modicum of true leadership pursuant to the voters of Georgia.
[...]
Lewis must believe in forgiveness. How else could he be a member of the party responsible for creating the KKK, responsible for Jim Crow, which produced Nathan Bedford Forest, and supported Bull Conner? He supports the political party that had a 124-year history of opposing rights for blacks, beginning with its inception. Democrats even opposed a black pastor giving an invocation in Congress.
Massie seems to have missed the part where (mostly Southern) Democrats who refused to go along with supporting civil rights became Republicans.
Massie also complained that Lewis "cozied up to the likes of the late Grand Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in an attempt to deny civil rights specifically for blacks," again forgetting inconvenient history --namely, that Byrd long ago renounced his segregationist ties.
But Massie wasn't done ranting about Lewis:
Lewis insulted We the People, and he should apologize to us. Lewis insulted the Constitution of the United States for providing a vehicle that allowed the will of We the People to be exercised.
His petulant arrogance is worthy of scorn. We didn’t need his approval to vote for the person of our choice. Russia might have hacked the Democratic Party, a fact that has not been categorically proven, but Russia didn’t cast any ballots for Trump. As has been said by others: Russia, if anything, simply did what the mainstream media refused to do.
So the "mainstream media" should've stolen DNC emails?
By contrast, Gina Loudon's Jan. 15 column is a voice of reason by WND standards, acknowledging that "Rep. Lewis is a face of the new Democratic Party, which sees arguments for “states’ rights” as reminders of the 'dark past' when states routinely denied their citizens basic human rights."
But then, Loudon twists Lewis' words to bizarrely argue that California has "the distinction for the greatest disparity between rich and poor because the masses crave the plantation economy of the Old South" and assert that "Our fellow countrymen in California, Washington, Oregon and other 'blue states' toil under the tyranny in the resurgence of the Old Democratic Party, one-party control and the new feudalism." She goes on to complain that "The New Democrats built the new plantation on taxpayer money funneled through unions and by eroding election integrity" and declare that "we must also be dedicated to the fundamental rights of people suffering behind the blue state walls."
