Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Clay Waters huffed in an Aug. 18 post:
New York Times "democracy reporter" Nick Corasaniti adopted a vengeful tone in his report on some Trump allies getting their legal comeuppance. The gloating was even in the headline on Wednesday: “After Years of Lies, Election Deniers Face Something New: Consequences.”
Waters didn't explain why it was "vengeful" for people to face the consequences of their actions. When the article pointed out that one of the schemes used by thetruthers was 'filing reams of frivolous lawsuits," Waters complained: "Charged for filing lawsuits someone somewhere considers to be frivolous? Aren’t lawsuits a routine method for liberals to get their way? It’s certainly easier going through the courts then actually getting legislation passed." Waters cited no "liberal" court action that has been found similarly "frivolous," He also failed to explain why he believes no Trump-related lawsuit should have been deemed as such, and he did not follow up on his suggestion that partisan intent has something to do with all those "frivolous" findings.
Waters then ranted that it was "sinister" for the reporter to forward the argument -- made by legal experts -- that violent pro-Trump insurrectionists feeling the full force of the law after the Capitol riot is discouraging others from trying to stage similar protests out of fear or arrest. Rather than explain why, exactly, this was "sinister" -- actually, most people would consider law enforcement discouraging people from committing crimes and being violent to be a good thing -- he resorted to his usual whataboutism: "In January 2017, feminists in pink pussy hats protested Trump’s looming inauguration at the Women’s March in D.C. and were greeted with the Times by joy, not the threat of arrest. The Black Lives Matter protests often devolved into rioting, but that violence was underplayed by the paper."
He concluded by pretending to read the mind of the reporter, claiming that he "more or less admitted that the fourth indictment against Trump was a legal stretch, though of course he couched the revelation in terms that wouldn’t frighten his liberal readership," allegedly by stating that "bringing criminal charges for trying to overturn an election is relatively uncharted legal terrain."
The actual stretch here was Waters trying to mine this article as yet another reason to hate the Times. But that's his job, so his paycheck mandates that he manufacture that hate any way he can.
