Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Kevin Tober complained in a July 2 post:
CNN’s State of the Union co-moderator Dana Bash is always quick to interrupt and correct her Republican or conservative guests when they make claims she believes are false or misleading. Yet, on Sunday when Bash brought up the Supreme Court case 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis had no interest in doing the same to Biden’s Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg when he made the pants-on-fire claim that there’s “no evidence” wedding website maker Lorie Smith was requested to design a website for a same-sex wedding. He then went a step forward and lied through his teeth that Smith went into the “wedding business” to provoke this recent Supreme Court case.
These outright lies would never be allowed to go unchallenged if they were uttered by a Republican cabinet official. Sadly, that’s exactly what happened. Bash turned to Buttigieg and asked her long winded question:
[...]
After reading Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s well thought out legal reasoning, Bash asked if there’s “any merit to that argument.
Buttigieg claimed there wasn’t and then began smearing Smith and her business 303 Creative LLC: “I think it's very revealing that there's no evidence that this web designer was ever even approached by anyone asking for a website for a same-sex wedding.”
“As a matter of fact, it appears this web designer only went into the wedding business for the purpose of provoking a case like this,” Buttigieg falsely claimed.
Bash let Buttigieg say these unproven claims without any pushback or clarification. Instead of following up, she proceeded to move onto another topic and let the smears stand.
Ytober curiously omitted that Buttigieg's claim really does have a basis in fact. In her lawsuit, Smith claimed that a man named Stewart had previously requested that she make a website for his wedding to a man named Mike. But Stewart came forward a few days before Tober's post and explained that not only did he never ask Smith to make a website for him, he has been married to a woman for the past 15 years. (Smith's attorneys at the right-wing Alliance Defending Freedom later insisted that the allegation was not only false but irrelevant.)
Strange that Tober would not only hide that information from his readers but also falsely accuse Buttigieg of lying. It appears that, once again, narratives are more important than facts at the MRC.
Tober's post seems to be part of the MRC's overall derangement about Buttigieg and his husband.
