Topic: CNSNews.com
When Republican Sen. Jeff Flake successfully stalled the nomination process of Brett Kavanaugh by forcing a weeklong FBI investigation into him, the pro-Kavanaugh forces at CNSNews.com knew what they had to do: attack and mock Flake.
An Oct. 1 blog post by Craig Bannister promoted how right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro called Flake a "sucker" purportedly duped by Democrats into pushing for the investigation and ranted that Flake "collapsed" because "some protesters screamed at him in an elevator. I’m not kidding. At all."
This was followed a half-hour later by a blog post from managing editor Michael W. Chapman, who seized on Flake's statement that he would not have pressed for the investigation if he were running for re-election to engaged in a Heathering campaign to bashhim for failing to be sufficiently right-wing, grumbling that "Flake has been a staunch critic of President Donald Trump and compared him to the Soviet genocidal dictator Joseph Stalin" and adding: "While in Congress, Flake introduced legislation to provide a 'pathway to citizenship' for illegal aliens. He also voted to repeal the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Act. Flake supports abortion in the cases of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the mother."
Chapman never explains the context of Flake's Stalin reference: that Trump's use of the term "enemy of the people" to attack media outlets that fail to be pro-Trump stenographers -- you know, like the website Chapman manages -- is an echo of language Stalin used against his enemies. Nor does Chapman dispute its accuracy.
Two hours after this, Chapman decided that he found it amusing that Flake "was born and raised in the small town of Snowflake, Arizona," featuring this trivia under the headline "Sen. Jeff Flake is a Native Born Snowflake." ("Snowflake," of course, is right-wing slang for a liberal who can't handle opposing views, though it appears that Chapman is the real snowflake here for his assault on Flake because the senator doesn't share his dogmatic right-wing ideology.) Chapman againgroused that Flake "once compared Trump to genocidal dictator Joseph Stalin" and repeated a poll claiming "only 18% of Arizonans approved of Sen. Flake's job performance."
Of course, CNS' two minutes hate -- in the form of three Flake-bashing blog posts in a two-and-a-half-hour span -- would seem to prove Flake right ... and put the onus on Chapman to explain why his "news" outlet is so willing to attack whomever Trump deems must be attacked.
