Topic: Media Research Center
On the day of the Georgia Senate election runoff, the Media Research Center continued to whine that Republican Herschel Walker's failures were being pointed out by the media. Mark Finkelstein played whataboutism in a Dec. 6 post when "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski questioned whether Walker could do the job if elected, huffing, "You had to wonder: was Mika talking about Herschel Walker—or John Fetterman?" He had more whataboutism when it was pointed out that Walker would be nothing but a GOP rubber stamp: "Unlike Raphael Warnock? That brave, independent-minded, iconoclast who has only voted with Joe Biden . . . 96.4% of the time?" He ended with one last bit of huffiness:
Note: Morning Joe regular Eugene Robinson was not on the panel today. But he has a Washington Post column out claiming [emphasis added],"If Walker wins, it will be because Republican voters decided that loyalty to party was more important than having effective representation in the Senate."
Not loyalty to party, Mr. Robinson. Loyalty to principles that are important to many Georgians. Warnock will not be providing "effective representation" for those Georgians, when, if sent back to the Senate, he will dutifully vote for lax border control, higher taxes, more gun control, etc.
FInkelstein didn't mention Walker's loyal to the "principles" of committing domestic violence and handing out abortions like candy to his girlfriends. And needless to say, the MRC censored the fact that five more women came forward to accuse Walker of abuse.
Kevin Tober sounded a little desperate in a Dec. 6 post, loudly complaining that Walker's scandals were being accurately reported on while his preferred right-wing anti-Raphael Warnock narratives were being ignored:
On Tuesday evening, as many voters in Georgia were heading to the polls after work, ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News continued to provide in-kind contributions to the campaign of Democrat Senator Ralphael Warnock by burying his scandals and ties to a noted racist and anti-Semite and getting in one last hit job on his Republican opponent Herschel Walker.
ABC unsurprisingly left the smears to one of their most partisan “reporters” congressional correspondent Rachel Scott, who dutifully regurgitated DNC talking points by sneering: “Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock says this race comes down to two things: character and competence. He says his Republican rival Herschel Walker has neither.”
“For months, Walker has fended off a barrage of scandals, accused of domestic violence, of lying about his resume, failing to publicly acknowledge several children, and paying for two women to have abortions, which he has denied,” Scott continued.
She even interviewed voters, many of whom were voting for Warnock due to his perceived lack of qualifications and scandals which the media were responsible for hyping.
Tober didn't explain why he was continuing to defend such a scandal-ridden candidate like Walker. Also, his anti-Warnock link went to a Fox News story, but he didn't accuse Fox News of offering "in-kind contributions" to Walker's campaign by publishing it. Instead, he concluded by whining, "If Walker does indeed lose on Tuesday, the leftist media’s election interference and censorship of damaging stories about Warnock will certainly be a contributing factor."
Yes, only in the MRC's right-wing bubble would accurate reporting be considered "election interference."
Walker did lose to Warnock like he lost the general election, and this time the post-election whiner was Curtis Houck, who complained like Tober that accurate reporting was so unfair:
The flagship broadcast network news programs were ebullient Wednesday morning on the heels of their team’s victory in Tuesday’s Georgia Senate runoff election with Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) defeating Republican Herschel Walker, whom ABC, CBS, and NBC boasted had “struggled to overcome” “one scandal after another” (and thus allowed Warnock to evade questions about his past).
On ABC’s Good Morning America, liberal congressional correspondent Rachel Scott bragged that Walker “spent much of his campaign fending off one scandal after another, accused of domestic violence, of lying about his resume, failing to publicly acknowledge several children and paying for two women to have abortions, which he denies” even though it “turned some voters...away.”
In the show’s second hour, Scott repeated this narrative: “Warnock said that this race was about two things, competence, and character, pointing to a string of controversies that plagued Herschel Walker's campaign.”
[...]
NBC correspondent Peter Alexander was similarly happy about the Warnock win on Today and promoted how the Peach State senator “reflect[ed] on his mother’s extraordinary journey” from a poor woman picking cotton to mother of a senator.
On Walker, Alexander only had negativity and focused on scandals: “Walker struggled to overcome a series of public scandals from allegations of domestic abuse to accusations he paid for two women to have abortions, claims that he vehemently denied.”
Houck didn't explain why he chose to defend such a morally compromised candidate even after that immorality could not be denied.If he can't do that, he -- like the rest of the MRC -- has no moral authority to pass judgment on anyone else.
Finkelstein returned for one last post-election defense, whining in a Dec. 7 post that S.E. Cupp, whom he dismissed as a "CNN Republican: said that Walker wouldn't have been a candidate "if you had a strong Republican leadership willing to say to Donald Trump, this candidate is crap," huffing in response: "Can you imagine Cupp, or any CNNer, ever disparaging a Democrat in such a scatological manner?" He then tried to wash his hands of Walker by blaming GOP primary voters, not Trump, for picking Walker as their nominee (though Trump did, in fact, endorse him) -- and he still couldn't stop playing whataboutism:
David Urban, a former Trump adviser, pushed back. He said there are no smoke-filled rooms choosing candidates, and that Walker was not the pick of the GOP establishment, but of one man: Donald Trump.
In fact, although Trump did push Walker's candidacy, it was not even the former president who chose Walker--it was the Republicans of Georgia, who gave him a resounding 68% of the GOP primary vote.
Lemon stubbornly clung to his notion that the Republican establishment hand-picked Walker. That was Lemon's way of suggesting that Republicans are condescending to black candidates and voters, falsely assuming that black voters will support any black candidate, regardless of qualifications.
In fact, if there is a group that truly disparages black Republicans, it is the liberal media, particularly fellow African-Americans.
In denial to the end. So much for putting principles before party.
