Topic: CNSNews.com
When newly elected Rep. Rashida Tlaib declared of President Trump at a party at a bar with other activists that she'd like to "impeach the motherfucker," CNSNews.com was ON IT.
Susan Jones kicked off the tsk-tsking in a Jan. 4 article noting that the "consensus" at CNN was that Tlaib "had gone too far." She also cited an op-ed Tlaib co-wrote discussing the need to impeach Trump in which she asked, "This is not just about Donald Trump. This is about all of us. What should we be as a nation? Who should we be as a people?" Jones lectured in response: "Tlaib has made it clear that she and others who agree with her should be the ones to answer those questions -- not the voters who elected Trump."
The same day, Craig Bannister lamented that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "said she has no intention of trying to limit the vulgarity of her party."
Two days later, CNS seemed to have settled on a strategy on referencing Tlaib's comment about Trump in the headline and/or lead paragraph of every story it published on her.
An anonymously written Jan. 6 article had to go back seven years, to a 2012 speech she made as a Michigan state legislator, to find something to attack Tlaib with in addition to her Trump comment. The headline reads "Rep. Tlaib Who Called Trump ‘Motherf*****: ‘Stop Having Sex With Us, Gentlemen. Find Somebody Else to Do It With’," and the lead paragraph restates that Tlaib is "the newly elected congresswoman who last week called President Donald Trump a 'motherf****r'."
A Jan. 7 article by Patrick Goodenough again restated that Tlaib is "the new congresswoman from Michigan who last week called President Trump a 'motherf****r'." The same day, an anonymously written article broke with the pattern by not referencing the Trump statement at all but, rather, highling that she "told the New York Times in August that her 'Allah is she.'"
That's five articles in four days after Tlaib made her Trump statement. But CNS wasn't done.
On Jan. 8, Bannister highlighted how Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin claimed to offer an apology to "all Americans" for Tlaib's "deplorable" comments.
An anonymously written Jan. 11 article resumed the pattern by carrying the headline "Rep. Rashida—Trump’s a ‘Motherf*****’—Tlaib Gives First Floor Speech—on Drunk Driving" and stating in the lead paragraph that Tlaib is "the newly elected congresswoman who stirred controversy by calling President Donald Trump a 'mother*****.'" -- even though that had nothing to do with the subject of the article, which summarized her first House floor speech on the subject of drunk driving.
And yet another anonymously written article, on Jan. 14, carried the headline "Rep. Rashida (Trump’s a ‘Motherf*****’) Tlaib Says ‘Congress Will Never be the Same’ With Her in It" and stated in the lead parafraph that Tlaib "gained significant publicity for declaring President Donald Trump as “mother*****.'"The anonymous CNS writer didn't note that this was the seventh article CNS had published since that remark was made -- six of which referenced the remark and five of which put the remark in the headline even though most of those article were not about the remark.
In other words, CNS itself is going out of its way to give Tlaib's remarks "significant publicity." It's hypocritical for it to complain about that.
By contrast, CNS was much more deferential to a Republican politician to similarly used a swear word. After President Trump reportedly used the term "shithole countries" in reference to other countries from which immigration is purportedly undesirable, Jones uncritically repeated a statement from Trump denying he used the word, and later claimed that "not everyone is distracted by the president's poor word choice," citing Fox News host Tucker Carlson's assertion that "Trump said something that almost every person in America actually agrees with."
