The MRC's Autumn Of Swooning Over McEnany Topic: Media Research Center
We documented how the Media Research Center -- led by chief fanboy Curtis Houck -- spent the summer swooning over the alleged awesomeness of White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany's supposedly sick burns of the media for not being total suck-ups to President Trump. Well, Houck has continued to fanboy all over himself every time McEnany does a press briefing. here's a few headlines to how the swooning has gone since the last time we checked in in the run-up to the election, with more sycophantic odes to her petulant "mic drop" moments:
Houck presumably would have liked to gush over McEnany more, but that last post, on Oct. 1, was the last press conference she held before the election. He had to contain himself until Nov. 20, when his fanboying made up for lost time:
On Friday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany held a formal press briefing for the first time in almost two months and, as expected, she didn’t disappoint by opening with a timeline on coronavirus vaccines the liberal media so desperately worked to undermine and ended by smacking down the hurt feelings of liberal reporters like CNN’s Kaitlan Collins after they weren’t called on.
Houck touted her "closing statement," and added: "To be clear, McEnany’s opening statements shouldn’t be undersold either and Friday’s consisted of a thorough timeline in the federal government’s push to find coronavirus vaccine."
Houck had to wait a few more weeks for his next opportunity to gush (and McEnany's next briefing), which he did on Dec. 15, under the headline "Absolutely Fire":
On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany opened and closed the press briefing by savaging the liberal media for their behavior regarding on their hopes that a coronairus vaccine wouldn’t be available in 2020, their purposeful refusal to cover a Chinese spy cozying up to Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA), and waiting until after the presidential election to both cover and give credence to probes of Hunter Biden’s corrupt business dealings.
McEnany first addressed the liberal media’s wishes failing to come to fruition due to the overwhelming success of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative.
[...]
Surprisingly, the briefing proceeded without any real fanfare or fireworks in the Q&A portion with reporters behaving themselves and choosing not to go down the route colleagues like Jim Acosta, Peter Alexander, Brian Karem, Paula Reid, or April Ryan would normally go down. For the sake of the country, McEnany chose not to call on Acosta.
The only "Absolutely Fire" we're seeing may be Houck's apparent crush on McEnany -- and his burning hate for Acosta and every other CNN employee.
Houck is clearly going to have a hole in his heart when McEnany leaves the White House.
UPDATE: Houck capped off his year of gushing with a Dec. 28 roundup post sycophantically headlined "Tour de Force: Here Are the Top Ten Kayleigh McEnany Smackdowns of 2020." Houck gushed further in a tweet: "Kayleigh was masterful as @PressSec. In terms of personnel, she was one of President Trump's best hires. And even though her first briefing came in May, it was still a tough time narrowing down to ten. If the press had to face Kayleigh for four years, there'd be no one left."
That earned Houck praise from his idol, who retweeted the item with the message, "You are great! Thanks." Houck will probably sleep tonight with his arms around a printed version of that tweet.
Goodenough grumbled in a Nov. 13 article: "The world may be grappling with a once-in-a-century pandemic, but World Health Organization member-states dedicated four hours of its annual gathering in Geneva on Thursday to discuss and condemn Israel, accusing it of violating the health rights of Palestinians in the disputed territories and Syrians in the Golan Heights." By contrast, you'll never hear Goodenough say, "The world may be grappling with a once-in-a-century pandemic, but a 'news' operation sent its interns to pester members of Congress about transgender students in locker rooms."
On Nov. 18, Goodenough declared it a "parting blow" when the Obama administration "chose not to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution" condemning Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory shortly before Obama left office, then touted how "Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was expected on Thursday to became the first top U.S. diplomat to visit Jewish communities on disputed territory." Goodenough went on to frame the issue in right-wing talking points, writing that "Many Israelis view those areas, known for millennia as Judea (more than 800 references in the Bible) and Samaria (more than 110 references), as the Jewish nation’s historical and biblical 'heartland.'"
In a Dec. 1 article, Goodenough defended the honor of Jared Kushner for allegedly negotiating all those minor peace deals:
As President Trump’s administration winds towards a close, critics took to MSNBC airwaves on Monday to tear into White House senior advisor Jared Kushner for traveling to the Middle East, characterizing the president’s 39-year-old son-in-law as an abject failure and a “ridiculous” figure, and expressing relief that “serious, competent, intelligent people” will be returning to the executive branch soon.
In the space of less than three months Kushner, tasked to tackle a problem that has vexed U.S. administrations for more than half a century, helped to deliver three Israeli-Arab normalization agreements, with the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan.
He attributed the achievements to the administration’s rejection of “the failed conventional thinking of the past” – the dogma stating that the resolution of the Palestinian problem is the prerequisite for any progress in Middle East peacemaking.
[...]
Before the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan agreed to normalize ties with Israel in the summer and fall of 2020, only two other Arab nations had taken similar steps since the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948 – Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994.
And when Morocco signed a normalization pact with Israel -- with the help of the U.S. recognizing Morocco's sovereignty over a disputed African territory -- Goodenough was on hand to gush once more:
President Trump on Thursday announced a fourth Arab-Israeli normalization agreement in as many months, as Morocco agreed to recognize the Jewish state. In return he issued a proclamation recognizing Morocco’s longstanding claim to sovereignty over a sparsely-populated disputed territory in north-western Africa – an attempt to break a decades-long stalemate.
“Another HISTORIC breakthrough today!” the president tweeted. “Our two GREAT friends Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco have agreed to full diplomatic relations – a massive breakthrough for peace in the Middle East!”
According to the White House, Morocco and Israel will restore diplomatic relations and expand economic and cultural cooperation, launch direct flights and grant overflight rights, and immediately reopen liaison offices in Rabat and Tel Aviv, followed “in the near future” by embassies.
As part of the agreement, the U.S. has agreed for the first time to back Morocco’s claims in the Western Sahara.
The dealmaking is characteristic of the Trump administration’s norm-breaking approach to the region: Sideline for now the Palestinian issue, and encourage Arab and Muslim states to normalize relations with Israel, offering concessions from the U.S. as an incentive.
It wasn't until the 21st paragraph of his article that Goodenough got around to admitting that "Morocco’s human rights record in Western Sahara has been widely condemned. The territory is the seventh lowest-scoring country or territory in Freedom House’s annual assessment of civil liberties and political freedoms, just one place above North Korea." He then let Kushner simply handwave the issue by declaring that "Obviously, we don’t share the same values with all these countries" and that "we obviously respect the sovereignty of different places."
MRC Lets Mark Levin Whine Some More About Facebook 'Censoring' His Falsehoods Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center and its president, Brent Bozell, are close friends of right-wing radio host Mark Levin -- to the point that its "news" division, CNSNews.com, is essentially his (paid?) PR agent -- so it's been giving him space to whine about how he's being "censored" by Twitter and Facebook. Alex Schemmel gave him space agan in a Nov. 19 post:
Mark Levin, the host of Fox’s Life Liberty & Levin, has had enough social media censorship. After getting throttled yet again by Facebook, Levin has said he will “probably” be leaving the platform “by the end of the year.”
For the third time since October, Levin received a notification from Facebook indicating the social media giant reduced the reach of his page and levied other restrictions against it for repeatedly sharing what it considers false news. “Your page has reduced distribution and other restrictions because of repeated sharing of false news,” Facebook said in a notification, according to a screenshot from Levin. “People will also be able to see if a Page has a history of sharing false news,” the notification added.
“I've been restricted and censored on Facebook. Please make sure you transition to Parler ASAP as I will be leaving Facebook probably by the end of the year,” Levin said on Twitter.
On the eve of the 2020 presidential election Levin received the same notificationfrom Facebook stating it would be reducing the distribution of his page. Before that, in October, Levin had shared an article labeled by an "independent fact-checker" as "missing context," which led to the same throttling of his page.
"It’s a clear effort at censorship. Every link I post is from a legitimate source," Levin tweeted after receiving the notification from Facebook. "But because so many people are seeing what I’m posting and we’re within weeks of the election it’s clear that Facebook is trying to influence the election’s outcome."
"Legitimate source" or not, Levin has, in fact, been using Twitter and Facebook to spread false information. Notice that Levin doesn't actually deny spreading false information -- which, as we've documented, he has; one of those "legitimate sources" actually did report something false, and Levin apparently never told his readers that the source corrected the false information -- he's just mad he got caught.
Also notice that Schemmel won't admit it either; he claims Levin is being flagged for spreading "what it considers false news." The MRC pulled that dishonest rhetorical trick last time too.
Another thing Schemmel didn't mention: Levin was in the middle of a month-long binge of writing daily posts on Twitter and Facebook about how he was "probably" going to leave Twitter and Facebook at some undetermined time in the future. When finally called out on it, Levin huffily asserted that he would be leaving Facebook at the end of the month. Of course, conservatives using Twitter to vocieferously tell us they're leaving Twitter for Parler while not actually getting around to leaving Twitter is a staple these days.
And, as usual, Schemmel's plug for Parler censored the conflict of interest that a key Parler investor, Rebekah Mercer, is also a key funder of the MRC and on the MRC board of directors.
WND's Election Conspiracy-Mongering, Part 5 Topic: WorldNetDaily
Trump's numbers, 5 million more than 2016, are inconsistent with the expected "voter suppression" practiced by all the major polls that gave Biden double-digit leads until the end to discourage Republican turnout.
Nevertheless, as Stalin said, "It does not matter so much as to who votes; what matters most is who counts the votes!" Corruption in tabulation in Democrat-controlled cities is legendary. But battleground Philadelphia, which also benefits from visiting voters from three surrounding states, took the lead this year, followed by cities in the swing states. Characteristically, the daily results come in and are posted up until after midnight, then there's a typical stop in counting. Then in the middle of the night there's a "dump" of more than enough votes to guarantee a Democratic victory.
What is said to happen in the middle of the night? Some votes are "lost" intentionally while others are "found," or manufactured. Pennsylvania even counted 700,000 more mail-in ballots than were mailed out!
I feel disenfranchised with last month's vote because of such apparent widespread voter fraud in six key swing states. But the media say, "There's nothing to see here." As of this writing, 40 court decisions seem to agree with them.
Thank God for the alternative media, which is a lifeline of information and which big tech, big media and the cultural elites are doing their best to suppress. But you can't suppress the truth forever.
[...]
I showed my wife a compilation of highlights of the Giuliani-Ellis Michigan hearings of alleged voter fraud. After a while, she almost wept, wondering how this could happen in her adopted country. She is originally from Norway and gladly became a U.S. citizen many years ago.
Democracy is messy. But to ensure voter integrity, it's worth sorting through this mess.
The Trump MOAB, dropped on Monday, is the Texas lawsuit against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which, as of this moment, six states have formally joined, with 17 signing on to a friend-of-the-court brief. The timing is perfect in that the several evidence-based lawsuits alleging criminal election fraud have finally arrived at the high court. The Texas case itself is perfect in that it is a matter of pure constitutional law over which SCOTUS has original jurisdiction. Indeed it is so perfect that I predict even John Roberts will vote with the conservative majority, because it solves the election crisis without the court having to take a stance on the validity of the allegations of fraud – allegations which, though absolutely true, are inextricably bound up in partisan politics.
This is not say that SCOTUS will rule against Trump on the other suits, but if it rules for him, those opinions will very likely be 5-4, while the Texas case could (conceivably) be unanimous – and, indeed, there could be horse-trading going on even now by the liberal justices to limit the court's action to just the Texas complaint. The best America's liberals might get from this mess is the chance to decry partisan politics in the state legislatures' pick of swing state electors following the invalidation of their elections, and avoiding a formal court ruling on the fraud itself.
SCOTUS completely ignored the fact that election fraud occurred in several states, wrongly tipping those states to Biden and hence the election, which disenfranchised voters in the other states that went for Trump. SCOTUS was the only remedy, since it decides controversies between the states and constitutional issues. The Electors Clause states that state legislatures shall make the laws conducting presidential elections. Those states violated it by allowing election officials to supersede the legislature with various orders and rules, making the election fraud easy. The Texas brief showed how SCOTUS had accepted similar cases in the past, and clearly laid out the fraud.
[...]
We may not be able to stop the election fraud in the future; this may be the end of our representative democracy and the beginning of rule by a handful of powerful oligarchs who control elections as they do in Third World countries, shifting the country to socialism. But we can't lie down and take it. There aren't any better countries to move to. Nor can we simply move to red states and segregate ourselves, because the left uses the federal government to control them, as well as moving into those states and transforming them, as we're watching take place in Arizona.
Right now, everyone knows Trump won the election in a landslide. They can't take that away. It's just a matter of outsmarting the left and figuring out how to deal with the election fraud when most of our institutions won't. The left controls the MSM, big tech, education, Hollywood, the judiciary and state bars. But there has to be a way to stop massive felony voter fraud. Maybe the civil unrest that is brewing will lead to changes. It is only going to get worse as Democrats reveal they are not going to stop the lockdowns any time soon even if Biden is in office.
Donald Trump's presidency and his campaign have ripped the mask off. Those desperately trying to hide behind the curtain lied, of course, to say it is only about Trump. Now, the insurgency has grown so strong that the deep state had to come out of the shadows and showed themselves in full view of the American people in order to counter Trump as the figurehead.
President Trump has fundamentally changed the entire political landscape because the hidden armies had to come out of the forest and engage in open warfare on the open plains in full view of the public. They lost their invisibility as the cost of attacking Trump. We must make sure they are not able to shrink back into the shadows, but keep fighting.
Note: The legal world will deceitfully try to argue that the word "corrupt" means accusing someone of taking an envelope of cash. That is not what we are talking about. "Corrupt" also means bent and distorted from a thing's intended purpose, as in the corruption from decay.
Currently in fashion is a lie associated with the adjective widespread. You will hear this accompanied by the word "fraud," as in, "There was no widespread fraud in the presidential election."
Purveyors of this adjectival prevarication are careful not to say, "There was no fraud." One would have to be afflicted with intellectual glaucoma, macular degeneration and cataracts not to see the fraud that took place on and after Nov. 3, 2020.
Indeed, it was not widespread fraud. It was localized fraud, concentrated fraud, focused fraud. The perpetrators of this electoral swindle knew they couldn't get away with their scheme in the heavily Republican cow counties, where voters instantly would smell the rat.
They knew as well that they needed just a few loci where the sheer volume of ballots would dilute and disguise their efforts. All they needed were a few counties containing such cities as Milwaukee and Detroit, Atlanta and Philadelphia. In other words, nothing widespread.
Members of the new 117th Congress should put the contested states on notice now that if they refuse to allow a full signature audit of their mail-in ballots, then their Electoral College votes will not be counted on Jan. 6. That is the day when the House and Senate will determine the validity of votes cast by the Electoral College on Dec. 14.
While the Supreme Court recently held that a state lacks legal standing to challenge a defective voting procedure used by another state, Congress has the responsibility not to accept Electoral College votes from a state which included fraudulent votes. Senators need to object to allowing states to include fraudulent votes with invalid signatures on mail-in ballots.
When students cheat on an exam, as occurred this year at West Point, the remedy includes disqualifying the entire exam, not merely a portion of it where the cheating can be proven. The counting of improperly signed mail-in ballots occurred in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and other key states, and on Jan. 6 Congress should disqualify all of their Electoral College votes.
MRC's Anti-'Censorship' Operation Censors Us Topic: Media Research Center
Back in September, the Media Research Center set up something called "Free Speech America," which claims to be "designed to push back against Big Tech’s abuse of power." It includes a website called CensorTrack, which claims to be "an archive of incidents of bias, as well as a resource for people interested in the issue or writing about it." It's designed to work with the MRC's tech-monitoring operation that is largely responsible for pushing the increasingly bogus narrative that Twitter and Facebook are "censoring" conservative -- and only conservative -- websites and accounts by enforcing their terms of service against extremism.
It was a momentous enough occasion that the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, was called in to do an article on it. Managing editor Michael W. Chapman did his corporate duty, uncritically quoting his boss, Brent Bozell, dishonestly declaring that "Every platform coming out of Silicon Valley today is censoring conservatives. ... Our position is, if they can do it to the president of the United States, they can do it to anyone, and in fact that is exactly what’s happening. And it’s starting to happen worldwide to conservatives."
Interestingly, a guest on the Zoom call at which the initiative was annouced was Robert Epstein, whose dubious research pushing the narrative that Google uses its search results to push anti-conservative bias has been embraced by the MRC. So much for Epstein's defense that he's a Hillary Clinton supporter.
But we didn't see any evidence that CensorTrack has tracked the "censoring" of our Twitter feed -- even after we asked nicely to be put on it -- because we accurately quoted Rush Limbaugh's smear of Sandra Fluke. Of course, the mere existence of that blows a hole in the MRC's narrative.
Speaking of destroying a narrative: The Twitter page for the Free Speech America operation has, uh, censored us, as the above screenshot shows. How strange for a new operation to pre-block us, we thought -- but the page states that it was created in October 2010, which tells us it's simply a renamed page.
Still, it's a bad look for an operation that purports to be all about "free speech" that's trying to silence its critics.
CNS Gotcha-Question Time, Abortion Edition Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com already forced its interns this fall to pester members of Congress with an anti-transgender gotcha question. But it also tried to squeeze in one more gotcha question before the holidays. TYhe first victim was Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy in a Dec. 8 article:
Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who said he is “pro-choice” on abortion, also said that President-elect Joe Biden (D) “might be right” in his view that “life begins at conception.”
On several occasions, Biden has said that “life begins at conception” but he would not interfere with doctors who abort human lives in the womb.
At the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday,CNSNews.com asked Senator Murphy, “Do you agree with Joe Biden that life begins at conception?”
Sen. Murphy said, “I’m pro-choice, I think it should be up to, you know, every woman and every individual to make that choice on their own.”
CNS News then asked, “Well, but Joe Biden’s stated position is that life begins at conception.”
Murphy then replied, “Okay, I mean I don’t know. He might be right.”
Two days later, the CNS intern went after another Democratic senator:
When asked whether she agreed with Joe Biden’s position that “life begins at conception,” Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said, “I’m not going to answer the question.”
Biden has said in several interviews that he believes “life begins at conception,” and even expressed this view in the Oct. 11, 2012 vice presidential debate.
At the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 8, CNS News asked Senator Feinstein, “Do you agree with Joe Biden that life begins at conception?”
Feinstein initially said, “Oh, my god, I can’t believe you,” and her aide interjected, “That’s not an escalator question!”
She then said, “I’m not going to answer the question.”
“I don’t think it is necessary for what I do or part of it,” the senator added.
CNS News then said that Biden has “stated that he’s in favor of repealing the Hyde Amendment and using federal funds to pay for abortion services.”
Feinstein then replied, “Well, let me try and find out what’s going on.”
Of course, getting members of Congress, especially Democratic ones, perturbed by gotcha questions is pretty much the point of this exercise -- it's all about the clicks. After all, one CNS intern who made Nancy Pelosi mad managed to parlay it into a job at Fox News.
These were apparently the only two victims, though. It seems the interns ran out of time or the members of Congress have gotten better at avoiding reporters acting in bad faith.
MRC Defends The Honor Of Pandemic-Defying Bar Owner (Who Ran Over A Police Officer) Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Gabriel Hays ranted in a Dec. 7 post:
Pete Davidson is at it again, mocking freedom-loving, everyday Americans from the comfort of his cushy “SNL” gig.
A year or so after Pete Davidson landed in hot water for mocking then-U.S. Congressional candidate Dan Crenshaw’s (R-TX) war injuries on an episode of SNL, that actor/comedian made insensitive remarks about average Americans protesting strict lockdown orders, as if they were selfish dummies rather than Americans desperate to earn a paycheck.
Talk about smug elitism.
On the December 5 segment of the NBC series’ sketch “Weekend Update,” Davidson gave his flippant and disrespectful opinion on New Yorkers protesting the closing of local bars and restaurants due to the state’s strict China plague lockdown orders. Last week, one defiant Staten Island pub owner of Mac’s Public House re-opened his restaurant despite Governor Andrew Cuomo’s latest lockdown orders.
The bar’s open defiance, which has drawn the attention of NY’s Governor, mayor and law enforcement, has inspired many like-minded New Yorkers and Staten Island residents fed up with NY’s lockdowns to come up in crowds and protest the government’s COVID overreach.
But for a smug elitist like Davidson, who hasn’t had the misfortune of losing his livelihood, the Staten Island protests have become a topic of derision. The star of The King of Staten Island mocked the protestors as “babies” and indirectly called them the worst people of Staten Island, by deriding himself as no longer the “worst thing about Staten Island.”
Though that’s ironic because these protestors are demonstrating against the very idea of being coddled by the mommy state, which has convinced the real idiots -- like Davidson -- that the virus requires Americans to cancel their entire lives for as long as they’re told.
Davidson was "flippant and disrespectful"? Hays must be jealous, because that what the MRC pays him to be and he probably doesn't like anyone horning in on his territory.
But Hays somehow forgot to mention in the middle of his tirade that the day before his item was posted, owner of the bar, Danny Presti, was arrested for running down a sheriff's deputy while trying to avoid arrest for his bar violating the mask mandate. Seems a bit flippant and disrespectful on Presti's part, but that's just us. We don't recall Davidson ever doing anything like that, no matter how much Hays loathes him for failing to be a kneejerk right-winger like himself.
This is the guy Hays thinks we should admire and emulate. And we thought the MRC was a "Blue Lives Matter" kind of place ... but apparently the police too can be thrown under the (metaphorical) bus if they don't fit in with the narrative du jour.
Smug elitism indeed.
UPDATE: The MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, also attacked Davidson for criticizing Presti and Staten Island bars -- and also failed to note that Presti was arrested for running over a sheriff's deputy.
Newsmax Downplays Another Legal Entanglement Topic: Newsmax
While Newsmax has gotten increased attention as a Trump loyalist, it's also received attention of the negative kind as well: lawsuits and threats of lawsuits over its content. But Newsmax is largely hiding that from its readers.
On the Nov. 30 edition of right-winger Howie Carr's radio show, which Newsmax TV simulcasts, right-wing lawyer Joe DiGenova went on a tirade against Christoper Krebs, the former head of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agencywhom Trump fired after he stated that the presidential election was secure. "That guy is a class A moron," diGenova said. "He should be drawn and quartered, taken out at dawn and shot."
That's a pretty clear threat -- so much so, that Krebs quickly filed a lawsuit against DiGenova and Newsmax for defamation. Newsmax responded in a CNBC article with an attempt to distance itself from diGenova:
Newsmax said: “Newsmax TV airs the The Howie Carr Show, a Boston-based syndicated radio program it licenses, as a simulcast for one hour each weekday. Mr. diGenova appeared by phone on that simulcast as a guest and made comments that were inappropriate. Mr. diGenova is not a paid contributor to Newsmax and has no official ties to him.”
“Mr. diGenova has appeared on Newsmax since then on two occasions stating he made the comment ‘facetiously’ and apologized,” the right-wing media outlet said.
“He stated that he intended no harm to Mr. Krebs. Newsmax believes that claims made by Mr. Krebs in his suit of a ‘conspiracy’ and defamation against him are a threat to free speech and his legal action endangers all media organizations that seek an open discourse of ideas and news.”
You won't read that at Newsmax, however -- it has censored news of the lawsuit. The only reference you'll find to the controversy is a Dec. 5 article by Eric Mack in which DiGenova appeared on a different Newsmax TV show to walk back his threat against Krebs, insisting that it was "made in complete jest" and "a poor attempt at humor. They were hyperbole during a political discussion," adding, "I meant no suggestion of harm or intention to harm Mr. Krebs or his family, and I apologize for any misunderstanding of my intentions."
Actually, diGenova's intentions were all too clear -- and that's why Krebs is suing him and Newsmax.
CNS Does Stenography For White House Press Secretary Topic: CNSNews.com
Melanie Arter wrote in a Nov. 30 CNSNews.com article:
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany accused the Washington Post of pushing “blinding” propaganda by reporting that former Vice President Joe Biden has selected an “all-female senior White House press team.”
McEnany pointed out that the Trump administration already has an all-female senior communications staff.
McEnany tweeted Monday “President @realDonaldTrump already has an ALL FEMALE Senior White House Press Team.
So does @VP
So does @Flotus
So does @SecondLady
The completely DISCREDITED @washingtonpost once again reveals their blinding propagandist Fake News proclivities”
As we pointed out when CNS' corporate bretheren at the Media Research Center similarly uncritically repeated this narrative, McEnany is wrong -- two press secretaries in Trump's office are actually men. Indeed, as the hated Washington Post noted, this is all a picayune argument over the definition of a "senior" comms job, which obscures the fact that three comms jobs currently held by men under Trump will be held by women under Biden.
That's not the only worship of McEnany CNS has done. On Dec. 1, Arter was in full stenography mode in uncritically repeating another McEnany claim, that "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democrats have been trying to undermine the U.S. election system for years by allowing illegals on the voting rolls and fighting against signature matching." She also repeated McEnany's bogus complaint about Biden getting credit for an all-female comms team.
In a Dec. 3 post, Craig Bannister gushed that McEnany used a White House press briefing for "subjecting" attending reporters "to a video montage of prominent Democrats violating the very COVID-19 restrictions they’ve imposed on others."
On Dec. 8, Arter uncritically repeated how "McEnany is disputing reports that the Trump administration turned down a chance to buy additional coronavirus vaccine from Pfizer beyond the 100 million doses that was contracted and now has to wait until the summer to get more." In fact, Scott Gottlieb, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner and current Pfizer board member, confirmed that the Trump administration turned down an offer from Pfizer last summer to obtain an additional 100 million doses of its vaccine.
NEW ARTICLE: Conspiracy-Mongering For Trump Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center constructs its own elaborate conspiracy theory to prove President Trump should have won re-election -- through hiring Trump's own pollsters and bizarrely claiming that pre-election media polls showing Trump losing big were faked. Read more >>
Joe Biden’s policies would certainly be devastating to our constitutional republic but so would his illegitimate rise to power should he be elected president.
Fair and honest elections have been the bedrock of our constitutional republic.
The power of the government derives from the consent of the governed.
Biden has refused to accept the irregularities in the 2020 Election.
[...]
Biden’s refusal to acknowledge the profound questions of the 2020 election is evidence of his radicalization. Only a radical leftist who has joined communist revolutionaries like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., wouldn’t be alarmed by all of this.
Democrats spent $40 million taxpayer dollars and over 2 years investigating the 2016 election. Why isn’t Biden demanding an investigation in the 2020 election?
The entire Democratic Party was up in arms about election interference and they now have widespread proof of it and they’re silent.
The American people are entitled to an honest and transparent election.
Any legitimately elected American president would want a good-faith effort to verify and validate the results. Only a socialist, like Hugo Chavez, for example, would assume power through widespread voter fraud.
One month after the still-unresolved Nov. 3 presidential election, the proverbial elephant in the living room of ongoing election challenges in six states is the pre-meditated attempt to corrupt the election process through unprecedented, inherently corrupt mail-in ballots.
In Pennsylvania during election week last month, I officially observed manifestations of this deliberate attempt to corrupt the election process, which former Speaker of the U.S. House Newt Gingrich has declared, "an open invitation to theft."
I also observed widespread election fraud.
[...]
The direct and circumstantial evidence already presented publicly by the Trump litigation team on Nov. 19, 2020, is enough to rebut any presumption of government regularity.
In this light and considering the inherent nature of mail-in ballots, the U.S. Supreme Court should direct the State legislatures at issue to: (a) disregard all mail-in ballots; or (b) if feasible, hold new elections without mail-in ballots.
Is there sufficient evidence of fraud for courts to overturn the results that one or more states reported for the 2020 presidential election?
While that may be the question the law requires President Trump's legal team to address, it's the wrong question for America.
Those of us able to apply common sense and logic untethered to legal presumptions and requirements can ask a more basic question: Is our electoral system structured to provide free and fair elections? Anyone willing to take an honest look at the process understands that the answer is "no." The American election system is riddled with invitations for fraud.
[...]
In other words, the entire American electoral system lacks structural credibility.
The question America should be asking itself is not why many people believe that the 2020 election was stolen. The question is how anyone could believe that a system structured to invite fraud at every turn nevertheless yielded an honest and accurate result.
Think of it as a bank heist, one in which armed robbers crash through the front doors and hightail it to different sections of the building.
One approaches a teller and shoves a gun in his face.
One sneaks over to the main computer and hacks away. Another goes into the vault and locks it behind him, so he can swap out real hundies with counterfeit ones when no one is looking.
That pretty much sums up what the Democrats did, election-style.
The 2020 presidential election was stolen out from under the American people.
And the crooks used a number of means to bring their devious plan to fruition.
Evidence of fraud is there for anyone to see, but the corporate media seem to be engaging in one of three strategies: stating that none exists; ignoring it altogether; or subjecting it to a "fact-checking" process.
Should Lawyers For Smartmatic, Dominion Contact WND Next? Topic: WorldNetDaily
Now that Fox News and Newsmax have acceded to Smartmatic's lawsuit threat and walked back the false smears it published about the company as part of the pro-Trump election fraud conspiracy theories it has promoted, perhaps it's time for Smartmatic to work its way down the right-wing media food chain. After all, WorldNetDaily has joined those outlets in uncritically reporting false claims about Smartmatic. Let's take a look:
"We have sworn witness testimony of why the software was designed. It was designed to rig elections," [Sidney] Powell said of the Smartmatic software in Dominion voting machines.
"They did this on purpose, it was calculated, they've done it before. We have evidence from 2016 in California, we have so much evidence I feel like it's coming in through a fire hose," Powell continued.
[Rudy] Giuliani explained that “Dominion has a software that it gets from a company called SmartMatic. SmartMatic is a Delaware company, but it’s owned by Venezuelans, Venezuelans who are close to Chavez and Maduro. They actually count the vote. They count the vote in Barcelona, Spain. So the vote goes from here to Barcelona, Spain. They count it and then they give it back to us.”
“Can their software change the vote?” Giuliani asks rhetorically. “Any way they want. Absolutely.”
Giuliani provided some background on SmartMatic. The company “was actually established by Chavez. And the whole purpose of it was to steal elections. That's their expertise: stealing elections.”
“As far as we can tell, SmartMatic owns Dominion. There’s a company in between called Indra. So, we’re basically having our votes counted by Venezuelans who are close to our enemy Maduro.”
Attorney Sidney Powell says that her battle over the Nov. 3 election is far from over, saying that the evidence she is gathering could turn into a major racketeering case under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
Powell appeared Thursday on Lou Dobbs' Fox Business News program and explained what she has found.
Four names, she said, were central to her investigation: Jorge Rodriguez, a former minister for communications for Venezuela; Khalil Majid Mazzoub, whom Powell identified as a link to the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hezbollah; Gustavo Reyes-Zumeta, a computer programmer; and Antonio Mugica, CEO of the elections technology company Smartmatic, which has been linked in some accounts to Dominion Voting Systems.
Meanwhile, Eric Coomer, security director at Dominion Voting Systems -- a company falsely linked with Smartmatic and regularly named in election-fraud conspiracy theories -- has sued Newsmax, One America News Network and others because he has been falsely named in those conspiracy theories, leading to death threats and forcing him into hiding. Coomer might want to include WND on his lawsuit list because of a Dec. 2 column by James Zumwalt:
As Antifa raised its ugly head, a founder of the Faith Education Commerce United, Joe Oltman, infiltrated the group. He heard a conversation involving Antifa members and "Eric from Dominion" in September 2020. In that conversation, Eric encouraged Antifa to "keep up the pressure." When a member asked, "What are we gonna do if f****** Trump wins," Oltman said Eric responded: "Don't worry about the election. Trump's not gonna win. I made f****** sure of that!"
Oltman researched Dominion to find out who Eric was. He discovered an Eric Coomer joined Dominion as its vice president of U.S. engineering and was later promoted to voting systems officer of strategy and security. He served as a director, as well, although that information was later scrubbed.
Coomer was no casual Antifa acquaintance. In fact, he posted the entire Antifa manifesto on his Facebook page, which included endless disturbing anti-Trump rants. Additionally, he had installed updated software on more than 30,000 Georgia voting machines just before the election.
When criticized for failing to conduct adequate security testing on the software upgrade or obtain certification from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Coomer responded the change was minor and did not require recertification. (Meanwhile, a Dominion machine involved in Georgia's third recount effort has crashed, resulting in Dominion personnel rushing to repair it, at best, or remove evidence, at worst.)
Coomer's outrageous anti-Trump bias should have left him nowhere near those voting machines.
Oltmann -- who, according to Snopes, has refused to offer proof of his claims or a copy of the sworn court affidavit he claims to have filed regarding Coomer -- is another person Coomer is suing; Coomer he has denied any connection with Antifa.
Seems like Zumwalt and WND had better be chatting with their attorneys soon.
UPDATE: WND has published an article on the Coomer lawsuit -- but it's from the Daily Caller, not the product of WND. Therefore, there's no mention of Zumwalt using a WND column to repeat Oltmann's false attacks on Coomer.
MRC Whines That Falsehood-Filled Far-Right Conspiracy Site Is Being 'Censored' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Alexander Hall wrote in a Dec. 8 post:
Censoring the New York Post’s Biden bombshell was just the beginning. Now National File's Editor-in-Chief said Facebook is censoring its outlet.
National File said that Facebook has used a treacherous new tactic to censor him and his outlet. Rather than simply censoring National File, Pappert stated that Facebook has removed him, the page’s administrator, preventing him from being able to manage the page. “Facebook demoted me to a moderator of the National File Facebook page,” Pappert tweeted Dec 2. He later added that Facebook “removed me as the owner of the Flyover Media LLC business account that owns National File.” Pappert summarized: “Facebook has locked a news outlet out of its own Facebook page with no recourse.”
“These two moves combined effectively ban the National File Facebook page without our readers even knowing what happened,” Pappert explained in an email. He surmised that, now, users may get the false impression that “we simply stopped using Facebook,” or that “we've stopped publishing entirely, despite the fact that we have broken critical stories relating to the Arizona and Georgia presidential election.”
What Hall didn't tell you: National File is a right-wing conspiracy site. Midia Bias/Fact Check lists the website as pushing "tin foil hat" levels of conspiracies and pseudoscience. It's curently beingsued by Arizona Sen.-elect Mark Kelly after it published photos it falselyclaimed were of Kelly dressed in a Hitler costume.
In other woreds: There are good reasons Facebook is "censoring" the National File -- it's an operation that publishes lies, lacks credibility and shouldn't be taken seriously by anyone. But Hall wants you to think it's a mainstream conservcarive website being unfairly punished by "big tech."
Because the MRC's conservative victimization narrative must be maintained even as it proves increasingly false, Hall and his fellow anti-"big tech" writers will continue to push it, no matter how extreme the supposed victims are and how much they actually deserve to be "censored."
WND Columnist Invents 'Constitutional Receivership' For States Topic: WorldNetDaily
If a WorldNetDaily columnist can empanel a grand jury in his own brain to "indict" Dr. Anthony Fauci, why can't one invent a constitutional concept for the partial purpose of helping President Trump stay in the White House. Thus, we have Craige McMillan devoting his Nov. 20 WND column to inventing "constitutional receivership" for states:
One of the hallmarks of failed states is that they have elections, but the votes of citizens are meaningless. The current regime is always reelected. This happens either because there is no meaningful (or long-lived) opposition candidate, no real discussion of the issues (media control), and the ruling political party runs the machinery that counts the votes.
Do I have your attention yet? Did you think it would never happen here?
Would it surprise you that America's Constitution actually has a clause that deals with failed states? They weren't talking about Venezuela. What they were thinking about was states that might want to be a part of the United States, but with a form of government that was different than republican.
[...]
That's what makes Article IV, Section 4, of our Constitution so interesting: It doesn't say who guarantees a republican form of government; only that each state shall have one. The U.S. Supreme Court had two opportunities to become involved in having a say in this, but it declined both times. The court said it was a matter either for the Congress or the president.
[...]
But if you live in a failed state, just what are you requesting? I've called it "Constitutional Receivership." It's a term from the business world, not as severe as bankruptcy (although it can lead there).
A state placed into Constitutional Receivership by the president would have someone assigned to run the state's affairs and clean things up until new leadership could be elected by the citizens.
If there were riots, the Receiver would call for the National Guard to restore order. If there were corrupt elections, the Receiver would launch an investigation, probably in conjunction with the U.S. attorney for that state. The guilty would face trial and be sent to prison for their crimes. There are a lot of federal assets a Receiver would have immediate access to, and without the say-so of state officials.
Corrupt or incompetent businesses aren't allowed to go on forever. They are either turned around by a Receiver, or their assets are disposed of in bankruptcy and given to their creditors. Article IV, Section 4, can be used this way.
[...]
So-called battleground states now control the national elections through corrupt election practices in just their states. Secret voting agreements with one political party, vote-switching machines entrusted with providing honest totals that are pre-programed for the desired election outcome, and counting rooms with the opposition party's monitors placed at impossible observation distances or completely removed during the vote counting process. The level of corruption in the media, big tech and most blue states election efforts indicates there will never be another chance to change this. Their corruption threatens the very existence of the American republic.
As President Trump has said on numerous occasions, "This can never be allowed to happen to another president, ever again!" I would add, "This can never be allowed to happen to another citizen, ever again," as well.
Whether it does happen again depends on what we do to stop it now. Forget social media for now. Talk to your friends and neighbors. Find the influencers in your community. Meet with your public officials. Get the ball rolling, today. We owe it to our posterity. We owe it to those who sacrificed so much to give us a republic, not a monarchy or a dictatorship. Will you call for Constitutional Receivership now? There won't be another chance.
In The Tank: CNS Promoted Frivolous Pro-Trump Texas Election Lawsuit Topic: CNSNews.com
The fact that all of President Trump's legal efforts to overturn an election he lost have failed in court has not stopped CNSNews.com from uncritically promoting them. The attempt by the state of Texas to interfere in the elections of other states through a lawsuit it brought straight to the Supreme Court was no exception.
A Dec. 9 article by Susan Jones uncritically repeated Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton touting the lawsuit on Fox News. Two days later, another article by Jones admitted that Paxton faced "blistering criticism" for filing the lawsuit and actually detailed the responses from the states being sued -- but led off with Paxton delcaring (on Fox News, of course) that "we ought to have the chance to be heard at least once."
After the Supreme Court swiftly rejected the lawsuit, CNS didn't do a story on it. instead, two days later, Jones rehashed a Fox Business appearance by Paxton lamenting that "I don't know what else we could have done, other than ask the court to at least hear our arguments." Details on what the Supreme Court said in rejecting the lawsuit were buried in an unbylined article that cited Nancy Pelosi describing the lawsuit as an example of how "Republicans are engaged in an election subversion that imperils our democracy." That was followed by an stenography piece by Melanie Arter in which she detailed Trump's ranting that "it's not over" despite the court's swift rejection of the Texas lawsuit.
CNS also published a Dec. 14 op-ed by Zack Smith of the right-wing Heritage Foundation claiming the Texas lawsuit raised "serious issues regarding election integrity and constitutional law that ought to be addressed going forward."
CNS was pushing Trump's narrative elsewhere as well. In a Dec. 14 article, Jones touted how Republican Rep. Jim Jordan demanded that Congress debate the presidential vote on Jan. 6, the day when it is supposed to sign off on the election. But even Jones conceded the Republicans' effort at obstruction would be doomed: "A simple majority vote in both the Senate and the House is required for any objection to a state’s electoral results to stand. Because the House is controlled by Democrats, that certainly would not happen."
Even the Electoral College officially declaring Biden the winner couldn't be reported straight. Jones dismissed Biden's speech after the Electoral College vote as "an attempt to bolster his legitimacy as the next president," then complained: "Biden repeated that he will be president 'for all Americans,' many of whom remain bitter about the expansion of ripe-for-fraud mail-in voting; affidavits alleging vote fraud; changes in voting laws made not by state legislatures but by election officials; and vote tallying that was shielded from view -- or conducted in the absence -- of election observers." (The article was originally headlined "Biden, Voice Hoarse, Praises 'Honest,’ ‘Free’ & ‘Fair' Election, 'Integrity' of Election Workers.")
An anonymously written article was devoted to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell lamely conceding that "the Electoral College has spoken." Craig Bannister huffed: "Hillary Clinton, who lost the 2016 presidential election despite winning the popular vote, cast an electoral vote for Joe Biden on Tuesday – then, called for abolition of the Electoral College, which cost her the presidency."
Melanie Arter uncritically wrote about how Ken Blackwell, initially identifed only as "former Ohio Secretary of State," insisted that "the clock didn't stop" with the Electoral College vote; it wasn't until the fourth paragraph that she noted that Blackwell is "a Trump elector."She didn't mention at all that Blackwell was a Trump campaign surrogate who also served in Trump White House posts, which meshes with CNS' overall lack of disclosure when it publishes Blackwell's pro-Trump columns.
We documented how the Media Research Center -- led by chief fanboy Curtis Houck -- spent the summer swooning over the alleged awesomeness of White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany's supposedly sick burns of the media for not being total suck-ups to President Trump. Well, Houck has continued to fanboy all over himself every time McEnany does a press briefing. here's a few headlines to how the swooning has gone since the last time we checked in in the run-up to the election, with more sycophantic odes to her petulant "mic drop" moments:
CNSNews.com reporter Patrick Goodenough is very much a pro-Trump and pro-Israel reporter, as evidence by his 
The Media Research Center and its president, Brent Bozell, are close friends of right-wing radio host Mark Levin -- to the point that its "news" division, CNSNews.com, is essentially 
Trump's numbers, 5 million more than 2016, are inconsistent with the expected "voter suppression" practiced by all the major polls that gave Biden double-digit leads until the end to discourage Republican turnout.
Back in September, the Media Research Center 
CNSNews.com already forced its interns this fall to pester members of Congress with an 
The Media Research Center's Gabriel Hays ranted in a Dec. 7 
While Newsmax has gotten increased attention as a Trump loyalist, it's also received attention of the negative kind as well: lawsuits and threats of lawsuits over its content. But Newsmax is largely hiding that from its readers.
Melanie Arter wrote in a Nov. 30 CNSNews.com 
Now that 
The Media Research Center's Alexander Hall wrote in a Dec. 8 
If a WorldNetDaily columnist can 
The fact that all of President Trump's legal efforts to overturn an election he lost have failed in court has not stopped CNSNews.com from 
