MRC Cheerleads GOP Flirting With Disaster By Opposing Debt Ceiling Hike Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's messaging on raising the debt ceiling -- a big thing before a temporary increase was granted in October -- was that Republicans should oppose it because it will keep Democrats from spending more ... never mind that hitting the debt ceiling would keep the government from paying current bills and could damage the economy in the process. Lydia Switzer summed up the talking points in a Sept. 17 post:
The deadline is fast approaching for Congress to approve raising the debt ceiling, and the liberal media is astonished that Republicans will not simply go along with it. The increase, which needs Republican support to pass, is one requirement for the passage of the Biden administration’s exorbitant $3.5 trillion budget plan. Without increasing the debt ceiling, the US government cannot go into further (massive) debt.
On CNN Newsroom on Thursday afternoon, the anchors and guests agreed the Republicans’ lack of support for the Democrats’ excessive spending “could cause…irreparable damage to both the domestic economy but also the international economy.” In short, if Republicans don’t submit to the Democrats’ demands, the Republicans are somehow to blame for the consequences.
[...]
Of course, this patronizing interpretation of the facts suggests that it is the duty of members of Congress, no matter what, to pave the way for trillions of dollars of additional spending and usher in unsustainable debt.
Not only is this viewpoint misguided and fiscally irresponsible, but it also deeply misunderstands the purpose of opposing the debt ceiling increase in the first place: to slow down the juggernaut of national debt.
Switzer concluded by lecturing: "The Democrats and their supporters in the media have grown accustomed to a pattern of reckless spending. Perhaps this will be a wake-up call to the nature of debt and its consequences." This, of course, memory-holes the fact that the debt increased by $7.8 trillion under a Republican president and Republican-controlled Senate, which we don't recall Switzer or any other MRC employee being particularly upset about.
In a Sept. 21 post, Mark Finkelstein complained that warnings about the debt ceiling were "liberal fear-mongering" and that a CNN guest said that Republicans are "basically happy to let the world burn as long as Democrats take the fault."He then huffed that "Democrats don't actually need any Republican votes to raise the debt limit! They can do it on their own by tying it to their $3.5 trillion 'infrastructure' bill." Technically true, yes, but it means that Republicans are passing the buck instead of taking responsibility for governing (with no mention that Repubicans have their fingers all over that debt as well).
After unprecedented amounts of new federal spending, ostensibly to deal with the COVID crisis (though huge amounts of these emergency funds somehow found their way to congressional pet projects), the Biden administration is now asking Congress to raise the debt ceiling to prevent the calamity of a federal default.
While the media could use the occasion to slam dangerous unrestrained spending, we know from history that they will instead launch vicious attacks on Republicans who are insisting on reform as a condition for their vote for more debt.
We're all gonna die—and it's all the Republicans' fault! With some slight exaggeration, that was CNN's message this morning regarding Republican reluctance to raise the debt limit. Mugging a petrified look [see screencap] New Day co-host John Berman opened the show by predicting nothing short of "the potential collapse of the U.S. economy," because "Republicans have voted against paying U.S. debts."
Again, there was no mention of the fact that Republicans played a significant role in running up that debt.
On Sept. 30, Kyle Drennen gushed that "Republican Senator Pat Toomey repeatedly embarrassed leftist CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil by dismantling the anchor’s Democratic Party talking points about raising the nation’s debt limit. The GOP lawmaker called out Dokoupil for pushing 'a partisan political point of view that’s designed to provide cover for the Democrats’ spending.'"But Toomey wasthe one pushing a "partisan political point of view" in the form of MRC-approved talking points. Drennen even falsely declared that it was "disinformation" that raising the debt ceiling allows previously approved spending to be paid for.
The MRC largely shut up about the debt ceiling when the temporary deal was reached, though it weirdlyobsessed over the idea that the Treatury could mint a $1 trillion platiunum coin as a workaround. But look for its partisan virtue-signaling to resume when the ceiling approaches again later this year.
NEW ARTICLE: CNS' Afghan Withdrawal Strategy Topic: CNSNews.com
In reporting on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, CNSNews.com made sure to blame President Biden for everything that went wrong, bash him for his response to a suicide bombing, and deflect all blame from Donald Trump. Read more >>
MRC's Sports Blogger Whines That Anti-LGBT Christian Group Can't Benefit From Sports Anymore Topic: Media Research Center
Mysterious Media Research Center sports blogger Jay Maxson complained in a Sept. 15 post:
For the last 80 years, Young Life has been introducing adolescents to Jesus Christ and helping them grow in their faith. The Manhattan, Kansas chapter was slated to receive donations from Kansas State University’s Jordy Nelson Legends Classic charity softball game last weekend, but LGBT folks screeched about Young Life being “anti-gay” and that did not happen.
Nelson used to catch touchdown passes at Kansas State and, as a pro, from the Green Bay Packers’ Aaron Rodgers. Now retired from football, he’s allowed his past softball fundraisers in Wisconsin to give money to Young Life. However, now that LGBT activists have poisoned him against Young Life, the charity pipeline has been shut down. Youtube features a 2014 video verifying the past years of support.
The K-State Football Walk-On Scholarship received donations raised at Sunday’s softball and home run derby benefit. Young Life was cut out of the benefit’s take because it’s a Christian youth group that prohibits LGBT people from taking leadership positions — unless they are celibate. SB Nation Outsports reports Young Life’s biblical standards as if they were a dirty little secret that only leaked out last summer.
Actually, the policy that forbade LGBT people from holding leadership positions was a secret until it leaked out last summer.Maxson didn't explain why it had to be kept a secret that LGBT people weren't really welcome in Young Life; instead he (or she) played victim on the group's behaif: "Once the LGBT activists started raising a ruckus about Young Life, the public university ditched the Christian ministry and started virtue signaling for the LGBT folks." Why is it a bad thing for a university to support an blatantly anti-LGBT group? Maxson never explains.
Maxson followed that with a commercial for Young Life that reads like it was copied-and-pasted from the group's website or maybe Wikipedia:
Young Life is a Christ-centered ministry that presents the good news of the Gospel to kids, helping them grow in their faith so they can serve the Lord. Its volunteer leaders work in communities to provide adventurous, life-changing experiences.
Started in 1941 by a Presbyterian pastor, Young Life has more than 8,000 school chapters, an average weekly attendance of more than 300,000 students and more than 60,000 volunteers. Young Life regards homosexuality as a lifestyle that is "clearly not in accord with God's creation purposes".
Rodgers, Nelson and singer Stevie Nicks are among Young Life's most famous past participants.
Somehow, we suspect that Young Life (and Maxson) aren't actually that proud of Nicks' onetime participation in Young Life, given her rock 'n roll lifestyle.
WND Continues To Spread McCullough's COVID Misinfo Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has longpromoted wild claims about coronavirus and it vaccines by rogue doctor Peter McCullough, and it irresponsibly continues to do so. An anonymous WND writer stated in a Sept. 27 article:
Dr. Peter McCullough, who has become a leading critic of the experimental COVID-19 vaccines, explained in a thorough, nearly 90-minute presentation why he believes the vaccines should be pulled from the market.
As both a researcher and a practicing physician, McCullough has come to the conclusion that most deaths attributed to COVID-19 could be prevented with early treatments that have been suppressed by policymakers.
In a slide for his Aug. 20 presentation – which can be viewed below – he argued the "COVID-19 genetic vaccines have an unfavorable safety profile and are not clinically effective, thus they cannot be generally supported in clinical practice at this time."
McCullough, the editor-in-chief of two medical journals, is a practicing internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist and professor of medicine at the Baylor University School of Medicine in Dallas.
In fact, not only is McCullough no longer affiliated with Baylor -- his history of dubious COVID claims caused the school to fire him -- the school has gotten a restraining order against McCullough to get him to stop claiming that he is. McC ullough's alarmist claims about COVID vaccines have been repeatedlydiscredited, so there's no reason to trust him on this.
Nevertheless, Art Moore featured McCullough again in an Oct. 7 article:
Warning that the world is "in the middle of a major biological catastrophe," renowned physician and epidemiologist Dr. Peter McCullough charged in a recent address that fraudulent public health officials are pushing experimental "gene-transfer" COVID-19 vaccines that produce the "loaded weapon" of a toxic spike protein.
"I think the reason why everybody's here is we have a sense that something very bad is going on in the world. And I'm here to tell you, I think it is," he said Sept. 24 in a keynote address at the annual fundraiser of the non-profit Michigan for Vaccine Choice, LifeSiteNews reported.
"If you feel tension right now and you feel some emotional distress, and if you feel as if things aren't going right ... I think your perceptions are correct," McCullough said.
"And if your perceptions are correct, now's the time for action."
Moore gave McCullough space to whine about losing jobs in the medical field for spreading misinformation (admitting unlike his anonymous counterpart that McCullough has indeed been fired from Baylor) and frame him as an innocent victim:
Baylor University Medical Center fired him in February. And Texas A&M College of Medicine, Texas Christian University and University of North Texas Health Science Center School of Medicine have cut ties with McCullough, accusing him of spreading misinformation.
"I've been stripped of every title that I've ever had in that institution. I've received a threat letter from the American College of Physicians, [and] a threat letter from the American Board," he said.
All because of his "lawful" participation "in a topic of public importance."
"What we are doing is lawful," he said.
He predicted the eight professional acronyms behind his name "will be progressively erased."
It will happen "because there's powerful forces at work, far more powerful than we can possibly think of, that are influencing anybody who is in a position of authority."
But Moore doesn't detail the accusations of misinformation against McCullough, which makes him a lazy stenographer, not a reporter.A real reporter would have informed readers about the facts regarding McCullough's dangerous claims. Instead, Moore is McCullough's handmaid in spreading disinformation.
MRC Demands Coverage Of Va. School Assault Because It Boosts Narratives, Helps GOP Candidate Topic: Media Research Center
Let's stipulate from the beginning that the Media Research Center doesn't really care about the welfare of a female student who was allegedly sexually assaulted in a bathroom at a school in Loudoun County, Va. -- she's only a tool to be exploited for two reasons. First, the MRC hates transgender people, and the alleged assailant has been repeatedly described as "a boy in a skirt." Second, and more importantly, the MRC is trying to get Republican Glenn Youngkin elected governor of Virginia, and it believes this issue helps him -- after all, it has previously tried to agitate issues in the county schools regarding gender identity and critical race theory.
In a bombshell report from The Daily Wire on Tuesday, reporter Luke Rosiak exposed how the controversial Loudoun County School Board (located in the Virginia suburbs of Washington) allegedly covered up the rape of a 14-year-old girl in the girls’ bathroom at the hands of a boy in a skirt just so they could pass a transgender bathroom policy. It was a truly disturbing story that quickly rose to national attention, yet none of the broadcast networks or the liberal cable outlets gave in any airtime.
Fondacaro didn't explain why anyone outside Loudoun County is supposed to care about a very local incident. But he did make it clear how issue is being immediately exploited on the right, giving out gold stars for it in the process: "Fortunately, the Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson gave the story the airtime it deserved and interviewed Rosiak to get more details. And a few hours later, FNC host Laura Ingraham spoke with Scott Smith, the father of the victim. He was beaten and arrested at a school board meeting for trying to bring up what happened to his daughter."
Tim Graham touted the transphobic angle for his Oct. 13 podcast, making it clear that the MRC and other right-wingers want you to believe that all transgender people are sexual predators in training: "This story is a nightmare for the liberals, because it's a real-life allegation when conservatives often complain that letting "gender-fluid" men or "trans women" into bathrooms or locker rooms could make them unsafe for actual women. This is a story they want to cancel, censor, ignore, squelch, or bury six feet under." Fondacaro followed with whining about "day two of the liberal media’s total television blackout," ridiculously calling Faox News "a more serious new [sic] network" because it pounced on this story.
Fondacaro returned on Oct. 14 to complain that the Washington Post's coverage of the story wasn't as transphobic as he demanded:
Late Wednesday night, The Washington Post became the first liberal news outlet to report the disturbing high school rapes going on in Loudoun County, Virginia. Burying it in their “local” section, the paper ignored key aspects of the story that made it a major scandal for liberal policies: the school board tried to cover it up, had the father of a victim arrested for attempting to speaking out, the attacker was “gender-fluid,” and the school board was trying to get a trans bathroom policy passed.
[...]
But at no point in their article did the three journalists think it was important to note the detail that the attacker was a boy who was wearing a skirt and identified as so-called “gender-fluid.” And while they noted that the second attack happened in an “empty classroom,” they failed to inform readers that the first one happened in a girls’ bathroom.
All of these omitted details were laid out by The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak in his bombshell report that blew the lid off the story on Tuesday.
Of course, Fondacaro didn't mention taht the Daily Wire is as transphobic as the MRC is.
You know the MRC is under orders to exploit this issue when Brent Bozell weighs in on it, and he did so in a softball Oct. 14 appearance on Fox Business:
Appearing on Fox Business Network’s Varney & Company Thursday morning, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell denounced the leftist media for refusing to cover two alleged rapes in Loudoun County Virginia high schools directly attributable to the radical transgender bathroom policy pushed by the left-wing school board there. He went through the disturbing timeline that lead up to the shocking alleged crimes.
[...]
He then condemned the left-wing media for steadfastly censoring the story throughout the entire chain of events: “So far, no coverage, no coverage, no coverage by the media that had been all over this issue up until it happened....No coverage whatsoever.”
Bozell apparently didn't explain why this local story warranted national coverage outside of his transphobia and desire to get Youngkin elected.
The same day, Kathleen Krumhansl bizarrely attacked Spanish-language news networks for ignoring the story, even though she could identify no reason why a Spanish-language news network should, behond whining that "Univision goes out of its way to defend transsexuals and the use of non-binary nouns such as (widely rejected) Latinx for continental Latinos as part of its LGBTQ agenda.
Meanwhile, following orders from his boss, MRC executive Tim Graham devoted his Oct. 15 column to summing up the right-wing narrative:
This is a story that any liberal media outlet would want to spike, censor, ignore, squelch, and bury six feet underground. It’s a vivid illustration of what liberals consider a false stereotype. They assume automatically, ideologically, this could never happen -- that a sexual predator would proclaim himself gender-fluid and enter a bathroom or locker room to commit a sex crime.
It’s a right-wing “lie” that suddenly became real.
[...]
The national media are very selective in covering local crimes. Stories of police brutality can quickly become an enormous national cause, but brutality against police is not (unless it was January 6). A horrible abortionist’s malpractice is a local story, but restricting access to abortion anywhere goes national. This shocking assault doesn’t match the LGBTQ “narrative.” In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Bias by omission seems mandatory.
Graham is being disingenuous. The reason why the right-wing scare tactic that transgender people would routinely assault women in bathrooms was considered as "lie" was because no evidence was ever offered that this has happened. And given that all we know about this incident has come from highly biased, transphobic sources, there's a lot we don't know, including about the alleged assailant. But, remember, Graham wants you to believe that all transgender poeple are sexual predators, and they do all their predatory work in public bathrooms.
So important was this issue for the MRC to exploit that Bozell appeared on TV again -- this time on Fox News -- on Oct. 17 to spread the narrative with his buddy Mark Levin:
Appearing on Fox News Channel’s Life, Liberty and Levin Sunday night, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell hammered the leftist media for “aiding and abetting” in the “cover-up” of the devastating impact of radical left-wing policies. Specifically, Bozell detailed the horrific case of a 14-year-old girl being allegedly raped by a male student in a Loudoun County, Virginia high school following the far-left school board implementing a highly controversial transgender bathroom policy.
[...]
Moments later, Bozell denounced the stunning media silence on the story: “What’s the media coverage of the rape? Nothing. What’s the media coverage of the cover-up of the rape to the parents in Loudoun County? Nothing.” He demanded: “Where are the media asking the question, what happened? Does this man’s daughter – has she been raped in this school? Why isn’t anyone talking about this? Why is the school board denying this? No media coverage.”
Naming and shaming the news outlets that refused to cover the terrible consequences of a radical left-wing social agenda, Bozell proclaimed: “What’s the media coverage of this explosive story? Nothing on the networks. Not ABC, NBC, CBS, those 24-hour news network like MSNBC and CNN. Only Fox and The Washington Times and The Washington Post.”
But for all his "naming and shaming," Bozell never explained why media outlets must be forced to dance to the tune of right-wing activists like himself on this issue.He then absurdly claimed that the media are "so in the back pocket with the American Marxist movement." Huh? There's an "American Marxist movement" that is so organized that it has that name?
DFondacaro and Geoffrey Dickens brought in the Youngkin angle in an Oct. 21 post:
All across this country parents are rising up and fighting against leftist policies being forced on them from ultra-liberals in the public school system.
As radio talk show host Mark Levin recently put it, there is a “war against parents and taxpayers by the teachers unions, the educational bureaucracy, school boards, and the Biden administration.”
Well one of those policies (on transgender bathrooms) may have led to two sexual assaults in Loudoun County, Virginia schools, but you wouldn’t know that if you get your news from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN or MSNBC.
Despite it now being a key issue in the Virginia Governor’s race between Republican Glenn Youngkin and Democrat Terry McAuliffe, the national news media (outside of outlets like Fox News, OAN and Newsmax) have refused to cover the shocking story.
In short: The MRC wants this story covered because it helps advance right-wing narratives and boosts a certain candidate in Virginia -- not because it's inherently newsworthy outside of the place where it happened.
The Fall Intern Congressman-Pestering Season Has Arrived At CNS Topic: CNSNews.com
We've noted that CNSNews.com fall intern Megan Williams asking some congressmen with questions about refugees from Afghanistan, but that was just the her initiation into CNS' tradition of pester members of Congress with leading, biased questions designed to forward the "news" organization's right-wing agenda.
That beginning was followed with another leading question: “The federal deficit through the first 11 months of this fiscal year was $2.7 trillion and the federal debt is now $28 trillion. Will the Biden administration do anything to balance the budget?” That came with a follow-up: “Do you believe they will take any action to?” That's a setup designed to let Repubicans virtue-signal about the evils of deficit spending -- and it omits the fact that deficit spending has grown even under a Republican president. Those questions snared the following senators:
Not that all but three of the 12 senators queried are Republicans, which gave ample space for them to virtue-signal. However, both Booker and Casey made sure to point out in their answer how deficits increased under President Trump.
Williams' next round of gotcha was a reprise of a question asked over the summer: "“The ‘Build Back Better Act’ the House Budget Committee approved is 2,465 pages long, will you read the entire bill before you vote on it?” These members of Congress got ambushed with it:
Seth Moulton (D) (who smacked down Williams by pointing out that "your question shows some real naivete about politics--because that’s why we have teams to read and digest the bills. No one here ever reads an entire bill")
Tom Rice (R) (who pulled a Ted Cruz by showing his unwillingness to do his job by declaring “I don’t have to because I know the numbers, and I couldn’t possibly support it")
Yes, another biased, Republican-heavy lineup. The next round served up more virtue-signaling opportunities under the qestion "Should Facebook be allowed to restrict speech on its platform?" Here's who got stuck this time:
Williams' boilerplate claims in each article claimed that "Leading up to the 2020 elections, Facebook was placed in the spotlight for its apparent mishandling of information, specifically its push to censor conservative voices on its platform" -- a statement that advances CNS owner Media Research Center's fraudulent narrative about conservatives and only conservatives being "censored" on Facebook and ignores the fact that as a private business, Facebook has the right to run things as it pleases, a privilege conservatives normally grant to other private companies.
MRC Labors To Keep Va. GOP Governor Candidate Far (But Not Too Far) From Trump Topic: Media Research Center
In its campaigning for Republican Virginia governor candidate Glenn Youngkin, the Media Research Center has had a bit of a task on its hands: defend him from accusations he's a Trump clone -- for even the MRC understands there's a certain amount of radioactivity that comes from associating with a guy who still refuses to admit he lost the election -- but not not distance him from Trump completely (because despite his denial and derangement, Trump still controls the Republican Party).
Back in May, Kyle Drennen was setting up the frame that "reliable Democratic Party hack Chuck Todd" was "attacking the GOP candidate with talking points that perfectly matched DNC tactics. He spent the entire segment trying to tar Youngkin as a dangerous radical" who had to be "Trumpy" to win the GOP nomination, asserting that it was "hacky" to point that out. Drennen made no effort to debunk anything Todd said, though.
On Sept. 28, Drennen rehashed his attacks on Todd in once again framing the claim that liniking Yoiungkin and Trump is nothing but "Democratic spin" -- but, again, he fails to offer any counterargument that would debunk the claim. If you're spinning a fact as "spin," you're losing.
Kristine Marsh complained in a Sept. 30 post that Youngkin's Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, "has repeatedly accused Youngkin of being the next Trump and the CNN host was happy to bolster that claim," adding that CNN played a "montage of both Republicans speaking out against critical race theory, defunding the police, and the radical left. Wow, how uncanny! Two Republicans speaking on the same hot button issues that hit home with the Republican base!"
In an Oct. 15 post, Curtis Houck defended Youngkin against his clear links to the event beause "Youngkin wasn’t there and slammed the stunt as 'weird and wrong.'" The same day, Tim Graham helped to dig Youngkin out of a controversy in which participants at an event held in support of his campaign pledged allegiance to a flag that was allegedly flown during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot (which Graham himself is now trying to downplay), declaring that MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace was "false" in claiming that Youngkin "is somehow an 'insurrectionist' who 'wouldn’t say' whether he would have voted to certify the 2020 election."
First, Graham misleadingly described the event, calling only "a rally in Virginia featuring Donald Trump where Youngkin was not present" but omitting the fact the rally was for Youngkin's benefit. Second, Graham was forced to admit that Youngkin actually waffled on the question of whether he would have voted to certify the election, apparently hainging his "false" claim on the fact that Youngkin clarified his answer the next day -- which, of course, doesn't erase the original waffling.
In yet another Oct. 15 post -- yes, that makes three, which shows the urgency in which the MRC believed Youngkin's gaffe needed immediate cleanup -- Mark Finkelstein tried to rebut claims that Youngkin hold Trumpian "wlid" and "dangerous" views: "While the Democrats have aerobically tried to tie Youngkin to Trump, Youngkin has run a happy-warrior campaign with a lot of positive TV ads." He followed that a lengthy insistence that Youngkin is no Trumpy extremist:
So what were the "wild and dangerous" views that Geist claimed that Youngkin holds? Kaine exclusively cited Youngkin's focus on election integrity. The segment began with a clip from a Virginia rally in which people pledged allegiance to a flag reportedly used during the January 6th Capitol riot.
However, as Geist himself acknowledged, Youngkin "pretty clearly distanced himself" from the rally, and issued a statement calling it "weird, and wrong, to pledge allegiance to a flag connected to January 6th."
Kaine also tried to make the case that since Youngkin allegedly "promote[d] the big lie," by "questioning the results of November 2020," he is "responsible for the consequences of the big lie."
But even the Washington Post —which has endorsed McAuliffe—has acknowledged that Youngkin:
Has said there wasn't widespread fraud in Virginia.
Said he would have certified results of the presidential election.
Has acknowledged the legitimacy of Biden's election.
So who's lying now, Senator Kaine?
And in any case, is this really the standard that Kaine wants to set: that candidates are responsible for the statements and actions of all of their supporters? Would Kaine and other Dems really want to be held responsible for the actions of BLM, the defund-the-police crowd, the looters and rioters, etc?
But hasn't the MRC been spending the past year and a half portraying any liberal who supports the ideas of racial justice and police reform as official members of Antifa? Also: Like Graham, Finkelsteing censored the fact that Youngkin initially waffled on whether he would certify the election. Finally, Finkelstein conveniently omitted the fact that the Post article he so highly praised also noted that Youngkin has sounded largely like Trump on "election integrity" issues, including having "called for an audit of voting machines to help voters feel confident in elections."
Nicholas Fondacaro made his way back to the MRC's original narrative in an Oct. 24 post, complaining that "the networks adopted the talking points of the McAuliffe campaign as they railed against Youngkin as some kind of Donald Trump mini-me" -- though he, like Drennen before him, failed to explain exactly why Youngkin shouldn't be thought of that way, even after condeding that Trump has endorsed Youngkin.
For WND's Farah, The Big Lie Must Be Perpetuated Topic: WorldNetDaily
As I pointed out in my last column, the midterm elections are coming up soon – November of next year.
It's late September a year before, and the issue hasn't been touched: that is, the lack of election integrity.
Granted, there are powerful new media that have arisen, but it sure didn't help in California. Maybe that's because our candidate didn't believe in it – massive election fraud in 2020. That's unfortunate – in fact, it's a tragedy. Because no one is going to believe him now. So, I guess we'll have to write off 2022 in California. I can't say if the recall election was a steal or not. I can only say it was not what I expected – an apparent rout by Gavin Newsom, an apparent landslide.
[...]
How many illegal aliens voted in 2020? How many mail-in voters voted? The answer may be "just enough to put on a good show."
That's too many. What we don't know about 2020 can instantly turn us into a banana republic. And that is how we remain today!
We need to get back to a REAL VOTE – the American way.
You're going to be hearing a lot about the debt ceiling over the next few days. Don't believe anything you hear in the fake media. I have experience with them that goes back to 2011 days. They lie. And they have friends in Big Tech, don't you know? And it's even worse now since they helped STEAL THE 2020 ELECTION FROM DONALD TRUMP!
Guess what kind of lead Donald Trump has over Joe Biden in a second-chance election for president?
Less than a year after the 2020 election, he leads 51% to 41% in a recent poll. Think of it! Do you need more of a reason to think that Trump was cheated last November?
A Washington Examiner columnist calls it "a stunning turnaround." But even though some Biden voters are indeed horrified at his lies, incompetence and multiple betrayals as president, on a deeper level the polls don't reflect so much "a stunning turnaround" or "buyers' remorse," as the core reality that Americans preferred Trump then, and they prefer him today.
The election was stolen – and millions of Americans are outraged!
[...]
By the way, I'm getting sick of all these Fox News people pretending they just don't believe the election was rigged in 2020. They will look bad if they don't turn their hosts loose as this farce goes much further.
You can only pretend so long that Joe Biden got 80 million votes. No one in my space ever believed that.
MRC Labors To Keep Va. GOP Governor Candidate Far (But Not Too Far) From Trump Topic: Media Research Center
In its campaigning for Republican Virginia governor candidate Glenn Youngkin, the Media Research Center has had a bit of a task on its hands: defend him from accusations he's a Trump clone, but not not distance him from Trump completely.
Back in May, Kyle Drennen was setting up the frame that "reliable Democratic Party hack Chuck Todd" was "attacking the GOP candidate with talking points that perfectly matched DNC tactics. He spent the entire segment trying to tar Youngkin as a dangerous radical" who had to be "Trumpy" to win the GOP nomination, asserting that it was "hacky" to point that out. Drennen made no effort to debunk anything Todd said, though.
On Sept. 28, Drennen rehashed his attacks on Todd in once again framing the claim that liniking Yoiungkin and Trump is nothing but "Democratic spin" -- but, again, he fails to offer any counterargument that would debunk the claim. If you're spinning a fact as "spin," you're losing.
Kristine Marsh complained in a Sept. 30 post that Youngkin's Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, "has repeatedly accused Youngkin of being the next Trump and the CNN host was happy to bolster that claim," adding that CNN p[layed a "montage of both Republicans speaking out against critical race theory, defunding the police, and the radical left. Wow, how uncanny! Two Republicans speaking on the same hot button issues that hit home with the Republican base!"
In an Oct. 15 post, Curtis Houck defended Youngkin against his clear links to the event beause "Youngkin wasn’t there and slammed the stunt as 'weird and wrong.'" The same day, Tim Graham helped to dig Youngkin out of a controversy in which participants at an event held in support of his campaign pledged allegiance to a flag that was allegedly flown during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot (which Graham himself is now trying to downplay), declaring that MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace was "false" in claiming that Youngkin "is somehow an 'insurrectionist' who 'wouldn’t say' whether he would have voted to certify the 2020 election."
First, Graham misleadingly described the event, calling only "a rally in Virginia featuring Donald Trump where Youngkin was not present" but omitting the fact the rally was for Youngkin's benefit. Second, Graham was forced to admit that Youngkin actually waffled on the question of whether he would have voted to certify the election, apparently hainging his "false" claim on the fact that Youngkin clarified his answer the next day -- which, of course, doesn't erase the original waffling.
In yet another Oct. 15 post -- yes, that makes three, which shows the urgency in which the MRC believed Youngkin's gaffe needed immediate cleanup -- Mark Finkelstein used an Oct. 15 post to rebut claims that Youngkin hold Trumpian "wlid" and "dangerous" views: "While the Democrats have aerobically tried to tie Youngkin to Trump, Youngkin has run a happy-warrior campaign with a lot of positive TV ads." He followed that a lengthy insistence that Youngkin is no Trumpy extremist:
So what were the "wild and dangerous" views that Geist claimed that Youngkin holds? Kaine exclusively cited Youngkin's focus on election integrity. The segment began with a clip from a Virginia rally in which people pledged allegiance to a flag reportedly used during the January 6th Capitol riot.
However, as Geist himself acknowledged, Youngkin "pretty clearly distanced himself" from the rally, and issued a statement calling it "weird, and wrong, to pledge allegiance to a flag connected to January 6th."
Kaine also tried to make the case that since Youngkin allegedly "promote[d] the big lie," by "questioning the results of November 2020," he is "responsible for the consequences of the big lie."
But even the Washington Post —which has endorsed McAuliffe—has acknowledged that Youngkin:
Has said there wasn't widespread fraud in Virginia.
Said he would have certified results of the presidential election.
Has acknowledged the legitimacy of Biden's election.
So who's lying now, Senator Kaine?
And in any case, is this really the standard that Kaine wants to set: that candidates are responsible for the statements and actions of all of their supporters? Would Kaine and other Dems really want to be held responsible for the actions of BLM, the defund-the-police crowd, the looters and rioters, etc?
But hasn't the MRC been spending the past year and a half portraying any liberal who supports the ideas of racial justice and police reform as official members of Antifa? Also: Finkelstein conveniently omitted the fact that the Post article he so highly praised also noted that Youngkin has sounded largely Trump on "election integrity" issues, including having "called for an audit of voting machines to help voters feel confident in elections."
Nicholas Fondacaro made his way back to the MRC's original narrative in an Oct. 24 post, complaining that "the networks adopted the talking points of the McAuliffe campaign as they railed against Youngkin as some kind of Donald Trump mini-me" -- though he, like Drennen before him, failed to explain exactly why Youngkin shouldn't be thought of that way, even after condeding that Trump has endorsed Youngkin.
MRC Psaki-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch, Pinch Hitter Edition Topic: Media Research Center
Spewing hate pays off when you're a Media Research Center employee. Curtis Houck got promoted to a day shift in the wake of the retirement of the MRC's Rich Noyes. Between that and taking vacation the first week of October, his hateful tirades against White House press secretary Jen Psaki -- and his man-crushing over Fox News reporter Peter Doocy -- were largely MIA in the first couple weeks in October. So it was up to Tim Graham to fill in on the man-crushing front in writing up the Oct. 4 briefing:
In Monday's White House briefing, Fox reporter Peter Doocy prompted White House press secretary Jen Psaki to restate that the massive "progressive" spending package being debated costs "zero."
Doocy asked this: "You said the president's gonna have a virtual meeting with House Progressives to talk about how this 'Build Back Better' package is now gonna be smaller than $3.5 trillion. You had been saying that it cost zero, so are you now admitting that the plan does not cost zero or is it less than zero?"
"Let's not dumb this down for the American public here," Psaki replied.
[...]
It's too easy to mock this argument that if it's paid for, it costs zero. If I go get a haircut and pay for it, it costs....zero? It didn't cost me a dollar?
"Just to not dumb it down then," Doocy continued, "does the plan cost nothing, or is the plan free?"
Graham then found someone else to man-crush over: "Minutes later on Fox News Channel, former Bush strategist Karl Rove pulled out his whiteboard to mock Psaki and her defense of the Biden plan."
But Houck was back to Psaki-bash and Doocy-crush for the Oct. 8 briefing:
The Psaki Show went into the weekend on Friday with a bang as Fox’s Peter Doocy and a cadre of liberal White House reporters blasted away at Press Secretary Jen Psaki with questions over the disappointing September jobs report and continued concerns over gas prices, inflation, job openings, and even shipping lanes affecting the supply chain.
Of course, there were still a few eye rollers with questions about the U.S. axing Columbus Day and even a surprise with none other than Brian Karem interjecting to question President Biden’s health.
But first, Doocy time.
Houck continued to fluff Doocy some more:
The Fox reporter’s final exchange was most interesting as he honed in on Biden having claimed on Thursday that he, in Doocy’s retelling, “cold-called a Pennsylvania hospital to ask the desk-receiving nurse why it was taking so long for a good friend's wife to be seen.”
Psaki insisted there was nothing untoward since Biden told the story to highlight the pressure medical workers are feeling with Covid cases and especially among the unvaccinated.
Doocy kept pushing: “But setting aside the privacy of the individual, how often does President Biden call around trying to help his friends cut the line?”
Psaki counted with “that was certainly not his intention” and rather him being concerned about “a friend.”
Her condescending side came out as Doocy closed by wanting to know whether staffing issues at the hospital stemmed from a vaccine mandate: “I would love for you to account for me where that is the issue over — more so than number of unvaccinated who are filling emergency rooms, filling ICU beds. That is the problem in hospitals across the country.”
Of course Houck thinks Psaki is being "condescencing" to Doocy -- he's incapabnle of admitting that Psaki might be right and Doocy's being the jerk.Meanwhile, a more honest, less scyophantic reporter noted that the White house had just released a report "showing the effectiveness of vaccine requirements, which also showed very few people refusing to comply."
Doocy wan't in the house for the Oct. 12 briefing, but Houck found some other right-wing reporters to suck up to:
Tuesday saw a return of The Psaki Show and, without Fox’s Peter Doocy< and questions from Real Clear Politics’s Philip Wegmann<, someone had to bring the heat to Press Secretary Jen Psaki and that came thanks to the New York Post’s Steven Nelson, who brought questions about the ever-corrupt Hunter Biden and allegations that President Biden owes back taxes.
Nelson began by bringing up one of the Post’s latest pieces of excellent reporting which“said on Friday that the First Son had sold five prints of his artworks for $75,000 each and that a team of lawyers is reviewing the prospective buyers who are going to be allowed into an upcoming New York show.”
Houck is fluffing other reporters while his man-crush is away! What would happen if Doocy found out about this?
Houck went on to gush that Nelson asked "an extremely long question about the President and back taxes," but buried Psaki's response that the story is "debunked" and that Biden has released "many years of his tax returns so people can check them out" in a collapsed transcript excerpt that fewer people will read. That's how Houck does it when he knows Psaki is right but is afraid to admit it.
He picked a different reporter to fawn over for pushing partisan talking points during the Oct. 14 briefing:
With Thursday’s White House press briefing continuing to focus on the supply chain crisis amid rapid gains in inflation triggering price increases on basic necessities affecting all Americans, Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich blasted Press Secretary Jen Psaki over Chief of Staff Ron Klain’s “tone deaf” tweets from Wednesday agreeing with a statement that such problems are “high class issues.”
Heinrich began the first of two Klain questions by noting that Klain tweeted over “a message yesterday, not once but twice, that inflation and supply chain issues are ‘high class issues’” despite the fact that“some of the sharpest price increases...included products that every American buys: beef products, chicken, eggs, regular, unleaded gasoline, laundry equipment, furniture, clothing, the list goes on.”
“Why would Ron Klain tweet that and would you agree that’s a little bit tone deaf,” Heinrich added.
Psaki made clear that she was going to go the condescending route: “Do you think two tweets means more? Just curious. So, just for context, what — what Ron Klain retweeted was a tweet from the former Chairman of Economic Advisers, Jason Furman[.]”
She continued to defend Klain by informing Heinrich she instead needed to report the“full context which, I think, is important” in that things would be “much worse” “if the unemployment rate was still 10 percent”
After Psaki argued things were more expensive because the economy was such in great shape, Heinrich hit back and wondered if there were any plans for Klain to cut back on his Twitter use[.]
Houck and his MRC used to hate it when White House reporters obsessed over tweets during Trump's presidency. Wonder what changed...
WND Misleads, Censors Story On Purported 'Child Porn' School Assignment Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh wrote in a Sept. 15 WorldNetDaily article:
Members of a school board in Ohio have been told to resign after they utilized an allegedly obscene instruction guide that told students to write about an "X-rated Disney scenario."
Or "ten euphemisms for sex," or "a roomful of people who want to sleep together," or "a sex scene you wouldn't show your mom" or "the first time I killed a man" or "your favorite part of a man's body using only verbs."
The controversy has developed in Hudson, Ohio, where Cleveland.com said Hudson Mayor Craig Shubert and parents of students in the district are demanding the school board and teachers leave because of the book used in Liberal Arts II writing.
The book involved is called "642 Things to Write About."
"It has come to my attention that your educators are distributing essentially what is child pornography in the classroom. I’ve spoken to a judge this evening and she’s already confirmed that. So I’m going to give you a simple choice: either choose to resign from this board of education or you will be charged," Shubert warned.
But Unruh is hiding two important facts. First, he waited until the eighth paragraph to note that "The book is used in a class that supports a college credit, and is offered by association with Hiram College." In other words, this was not a garden-variety high school class -- it was designed for upper-level students around age 18 who could presumably handle such things, as a course for college credit would indicate.
Second, and more importantly, as an actual journalist found out, none of those supposedly offensive things were ever assigned to students to write about -- which put the lie to Unruh's headline that "kids" were "told to write 'child porn.'" Seems important to mention, no? Unruh didn't think so.
In other words, there's no actual story here. But Unruh and WND would rather create outrage instead of perform journalism, so this story remains on its website live and uncorrected. And WND thinks you should pay for the privilege of such biased, misleading and shoddy journalism.
AIM Goes On Anti-'Woke' Tirade Against General Topic: Accuracy in Media
John Ransom goes off the rails quickly in a Sept. 28 Accuracy in Media column:
As the military’s top general, Mark Milley, prepares to testify in front of a Senate committee tomorrow about the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, it’s important that we remember the media’s complicity in the disaster.
Too often the media has been willing to let incompetence slide, if that incompetent someone is ideologically safe, as is U.S. Gen. Mark Milley.
It’s especially alarming now given the cognitive decline in the White House.
That escalated quickly! But the only evidence of "cognitive decline" is an anti-Biden op-ed at Forbes that doesn't even reference "cognitive decline" until the third-to-last paragraph. Not exactly the proof that one would need to live up to the whole accuracy-in-media thing.
Ransom's osensible real point here is to attack Milley for acknowledging thing like systemic racism, citing another flawed item -- a Fox News article that quoted only anonymous people -- claiming that Milley andhis staff "spend time each week meeting about 'culture war' issues while never meeting about U.S. military readiness." He continued:
And in these activities, much of the media cheered them on.
For example, they reported on the partisan aspects of teaching Critical Race Theory in the military under Milley and other woke-enabled group-think, especially when Milley illogically tied them to events like the January 6 riots or the riots in Lafayette Park to discredit conservatives.
The media hurrahed the creation of Milley’s new military, a political military that could help progressives defeat conservatives.
Never mind that these activities had nothing to do with successfully advancing the actual mission of the military to protect the country, the citizens and ultimately the military itself.
“Until recently, critical race theory was anything but a household phrase,” NPR told readers as a cover for Milley when he defended the force-feeding of the radical CRT to U.S. troops, while pretending he didn’t understand what the fuss was about — even as he apparently ignored Afghanistan.
Ransom didn't explain why cracking down on extremism in the military ranks is a bad thing. And Milley specifically said he wanted to understand "white rage" -- which we assume Ransom is exhibiting here -- to figure what drove "thousands of people to assault this building [the Capitol] and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America." Doesn't Ransom think that's worth figuring out?
Ransom then weirdly listed Rep. Liz Cheney as among those receiving "the get-out-of-jail-free card issued by the liberal press to anyone smart and brave enough to regularly denounce conservatives, as Milley does." What crime is Ransom accusing Cheney of committing? Last time we checked, it was not a crime to hold Donald Trump accountable for his behavior.
Yep, lots of accuracy missing in Ransom's media missive.
CNS Editor Takes Lazy Shot At California Over Unemployment Rates Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor Terry Jeffrey intoned in a Sept. 30 article:
Nine of the sixteen U.S. metropolitan statistical areas with the highest August unemployment rates, as ranked this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, were in California.
The El Centro metropolitan area, which sits in Imperial County, California, just north of Mexicali, Mexico, led the nation’s 389 metropolitan areas in August with an unemployment rate of 19.4 percent, according to BLS.
That compared to a national unemployment rate for August of just 5.3 percent.
It's unclear why Jeffrey wrote this article, beyond a quick and dirty shot at California -- all he does is recite BLS statistics. An intern could have done that.He made no effort to investigate why these areas have high unemployment; perhaps his goal is to suggest that Californians are lazy bums. So he's not going to tell you that the El Centro region had a poor economy before the pandemic (and under President Trump). An actual news outlet reported in 2019:
While the United States is enjoying the healthiest job market in half a century, the metropolitan El Centro area has what the U.S. Labor Department says is an unemployment rate of 16.2%, the highest in the nation. By comparison, the rate for the country as a whole is 3.6%.
[...]
Many of the jobs here are agricultural: The Imperial Valley is home to thousands of acres of farms that grow cauliflower, potatoes and spinach and require a large seasonal workforce. Some of the farmworkers live here; many others cross the border from Mexico a few miles away to work every day.
Once they become too old to work in the fields, however, few jobs are available other than retail and fast food.
[...]
"Our economy is not diversified. It's a very narrow economy. It's either farm or government or teaching or low-income, with a few other exceptions," says Sara Griffen, executive director of the Imperial Valley Food Bank.
Jeffrey went on to wrote that "The Yuma metro area, which sits on the Mexican border in southwest Arizona, had the nation’s second-highest unemployment rate this August. It was 18.2 percent." Again, Jeffrey couldn't be bothered to explain why. but as it turns out, Yuma's economy is much like El Centro's -- impoverished, undiversified, overly dependent on farming, and has been that way for years.
But telling readers that would have required doing actual research and reporting. Jeffrey just wanted to perform stenography for a lazy, partisan shot. It doesn't inspire much confidence in CNS' brand of journalism.
MRC's 9/11 Meltdown: Mad When It's Pointed Out That Real Extremism Is On The Right Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center spent the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks whining that it was pointed out that the biggest terrorist threat today comes from the American right. Clay Waters huffed in a Sept. 10 post:
Respected economist turned partisan Democratic hack Paul Krugman marked the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks in his own inimitable fashion in his column Friday by playing his usual despicable partisan games: “Foreign Terrorists Have Never Been Our Biggest Threat.” The text box: “Before 9/11, domestic fanaticism was already on the rise.”
Instead of trying to rebut Krugman's arguments -- even as he insisted that Krugman "offensively suggested the real enemy to American democracy was within" -- Waters simply rants: "Krugman is the last person on earth with the moral authority to lecture anyone on 9-11, given how shamelessly he’s abused the tragic anniversary in the past."
Alex Christy had a meltdown over a similar point in a Sept. 11 post:
Never let the marking of a dark historical day go to waste, right? On Friday's edition of The 11th Hour, MSNBC's resident partisan hack historian Michael Beschloss declared that we should remember the heroes of 9/11 and honor their memory by fighting back against GOP efforts to suppress the vote and possible attempts to steal congressional seats.
It all began with guest host Chris Jansing asking an appropriate enough question, "What’s the importance, Michael, of marking these moments of history, of preserving these stories? And frankly, bringing people together around them?"
Instead of giving the appropriate answer of never forgetting or hailing the values of selfless sacrifice, Beschloss went political, "Because all of us should be able to unite around the idea that we're saving our democracy. That's what those people were doing, those heroes were doing on Flight 93 and elsewhere 20 years ago tomorrow. Our democracy tonight is as much in danger, I think, as it was in 1860 before the Civil War and in 1940 before Pearl Harbor."
Rather than any coherent response, Christy simply huffed: "The right to vote is not being taken away and Beschloss is among those undermining the legitimacy of elections by saying that it is."
Tim Graham, meanwhile, used the 9/11 anniversary to downplay the violence at the Jan. 6 pro-Trump Capitol riot:
On the night before the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the PBS NewsHour pundit team agreed on the proposition that Trump's backers are a bigger terrorist threat than ISIS. Jonathan Capehart proclaimed "I think MAGA and the domestic terror threat is much more worrisome than any foreign threat we could face," and David Brooks nodded in assent.
The liberal elites (including Brooks) love to commingle 9/11 and 1/6, and even sometimes insist 1/6 was worse. They can't imagine beyond the horror of the riot at the Capitol that factually it's not comparable to 3,000 Americans dying with jets being used as weapons. You can look at the people pleading guilty to charges that aren't murder, but for the offense of taking videos for social media inside the Capitol:
[...]
That's not a violent offense. One man pleaded guilty after texting he wanted to put a bullet in Nancy Pelosi's head. That's at least an actual threat. But they're all "domestic terrorists" in Capehart's telling.
Apparently, it's not a big deal to Graham that Americans looted and destroyed the seat of American government in an atempt to overturn an election. That's not what he believed immediately after the riot; he's apparently adopting the view of his boss, Brent Bozell, that the riot was justified.
Being offended that other things were compared to 9/11 (and downplaying Jan. 6) was a thing at the MRC. A Sept. 10 post by Gabriel Hays whined:
September 11, 2001 is the single worst day in U.S. history -- other than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor perhaps. That day saw 2996 innocent Americans killed on U.S. soil by a foreign enemy. Serious people know and respect this. But many in corporate media aren't serious people. They cheapen it with ridiculous comparisons meant to smear people and political movements they don’t like, i.e. President Donald Trump. Media have embraced the dismal trend of selling every new threat to their dominance as worse than the worst day in our history.
That should get Americans concerned.
[...]
In order to get Americans to do the ruling class’ bidding on climate change, gun control, white supremacists and of course the bogeyman, Donald Trump himself, commentators for far left rags and for idiotic cable news talk shows have claimed that each one has presented as bad or worse a threat than 9/11.
Can you believe that? Climate change, white supremacist terrorists, and a duly elected American president are worse than that terrible day the towers fell and we lost 3000 Americans? Well if you love CNN, MSNBC or Huffington Post, maybe you do believe it.
Of course, Hays simply wants to shut down debate over the behavior of Trump and right-wing activists.He also discounted what happened on Jan. 6: "Sure, only one person, (a Trump supporter) died at the scene at the Capitol, not to mention that the FBI found scant evidence that the riot was organized by antigovernment groups, but according some, the 6th deserves to go down in history on par with 9/11." The riot sure caused a lot of damage for being "unorganized," eh, Gabe? Imagine what an "organized" right-wing attack on the Capitol would have accomplished.
Nicholas Fondacaro made it clear that he will make sure America never unites the way it did after 9/11 until another right-wing Republican is elected president, and that America must remain divided because his feelings were hurt about the best ways stop stop the spread of COVID:
The day after the country marked the 20th anniversary of 9/11, NBC’s Sunday Today was brazen and callous enough to complain that the fight against the coronavirus wasn’t as unifying as that tragic day was; disingenuously ignoring how they weaponized COVID coverage to attack former President Trump. They also suggested that opposition to the Biden administration’s mask and vaccine mandates were akin to opposing the Civil Rights movement and not fighting the Nazis.
[...]
[Host Chuck Todd] lamented that the “arc of American history” would show that opposition to COVID regulations and mandates would prove to be less like when we unified to fight the Nazis and more like when people (Democrats) tried to oppose the Civil Rights movement:
And, you know, Willie, thinking about this all week, when you actually – sadly you look at the arc of American history, polarization in some ways is more common than us coming together. We came together to beat the Nazis, we came together at times during the Cold War, we came together after 9/11. But we also spent a lot of time fighting each other whether it’s dealing with race in America, or invisible fights.
He then issued an ominous warning about what such opposition would mean for fighting climate change. “Right now it is COVID, just wait until we try to deal with climate mitigation,” he said. “If you think COVID has been polarizing on the country, wait till some of the tough decisions that are going to have to be made regarding water and things like this.”
Again, no attempt was made to rebut the argument -- just a lot of juvenile name-calling, which is apparently what Fondacaro believes qualifies as "media research."
In the classic 1944 film “Gaslight,” an extraordinarily evil criminal, who has recently gotten married, psychologically manipulates his perfectly sane wife into believing she’s going insane as a means of distracting her from uncovering his horrendous crime spree.
From the movie emerged the modern psychological term “gaslighting,” which means, “to cause (a person) to doubt his or her sanity through the use of psychological manipulation.”
News flash: America’s current ruling elites – including not only the Biden-Harris administration, but most of the Democratic Party, Big Tech, Big Media, the “Deep State,” academia, and even an increasing number of major “woke” corporations – are literally gaslighting the rest of America every single day, from morning until night, in a dizzying and ever-expanding variety of ways.
Truly, gaslighting has become the No. 1 psychological-spiritual warfare principle of America’s ruling class.
The most obvious example of Biden administration gaslighting is its ongoing campaign to not only demonize but induce paralyzing doubt, guilt, fear and self-loathing in tens of millions of thoroughly decent, patriotic, law-abiding, conservative Americans by continually denouncing them as “racists,” “white supremacists,” “violent extremists” and “domestic terrorists.”
In fact, in every area of life, culture and government policy in today’s America – from the COVID-19 pandemic, to election fraud, to the January 6 "insurrection," to Biden’s exit from Afghanistan, to illegal immigration, to abortion, to transgender madness, to the Second Amendment – those currently in power continually portray large segments of the American population as essentially immoral, deplorable and irredeemable, indeed almost subhuman.
As with all gaslighting, the intended purpose is to confuse, confound, distress, dispirit, intimidate and bewilder people to the point they doubt obvious truths they once knew and instead live in fear and anxiety, thus disabling them from being effective in the ongoing war for America’s future.
Of course, the real gaslighters here are Joseph Farah, David Kupelian and the rest of their (remaining) WND crew.
WND has spread documented lies to portray the eleciton as "stolen" from Trump and shamelssly insist they're true -- that's gaslighting.
WND wants you to believe that unproven medications will cure COVID while approved vaccines will kill you -- that's gaslighting.
WND wants you to believe its financial problems are caused by "big tech" conspiring against it, while staying silent about readers staying away in droves because of its years of false information and conspiracy theories -- that's gaslighting.
WND wants you to believe that the right-wing extremists who run it and (barely) still read it are normal and right about everything, while anyone whose political view is even slighting to their left are the real "extremists" -- that's gaslighting.
But WND is desperate to avoid self-reflection. So it must project:
And just as the villain in “Gaslight” was superficially charming, intelligent, apparently thoughtful, caring, knowledgeable and supposedly looking out for the interest of his wife, in today’s America the power elite pretend to care about the people they rule, but their true motivations are entirely selfish, narcissistic, and revolve around their desperate addiction to power, wealth, glory, privilege and worship.
In a word, they want to be gods. And to perpetuate this desperate pretense, they must gaslight.
As must WND -- their conspiratorial, extremist world is shrinking, yet they still believe they should be gods within it. It will never admit what it's done (unless there's a court order). It will never rebut us because they know we're right and that engaging with us will give away their game. A gaslighter does anything to avoid being held accountable.
The Media Research Center's messaging on raising the debt ceiling -- a big thing before a temporary increase was granted in October -- was that Republicans should oppose it because it will keep Democrats from spending more ... never mind that hitting the debt ceiling would keep the government from paying current bills and could damage the economy in the process. Lydia Switzer summed up the talking points in a Sept. 17 post:
Mysterious Media Research Center sports blogger Jay Maxson complained in a Sept. 15 
WorldNetDaily has 
Let's stipulate from the beginning that the Media Research Center doesn't really care about the welfare of a female student who was allegedly sexually assaulted in a bathroom at a school in Loudoun County, Va. -- she's only a tool to be exploited for two reasons. First, the MRC hates transgender people, and the alleged assailant has been repeatedly described as "a boy in a skirt." Second, and more importantly, the MRC is 
We've 
In its campaigning for Republican Virginia governor candidate Glenn Youngkin, the Media Research Center has had a bit of a task on its hands: defend him from accusations he's a Trump clone -- for even the MRC understands there's a certain amount of radioactivity that comes from associating with a guy who still refuses to admit he lost the election -- but not not distance him from Trump completely (because despite his denial and derangement, Trump still controls the Republican Party).
As I pointed out in my last column, the midterm elections are coming up soon – November of next year.
Spewing hate pays off when you're a Media Research Center employee. Curtis Houck got promoted to a day shift in the wake of the retirement of the MRC's Rich Noyes. Between that and taking vacation the first week of October, his hateful tirades against White House press secretary Jen Psaki -- and his man-crushing over Fox News reporter Peter Doocy -- were largely MIA in the first couple weeks in October. So it was up to Tim Graham to fill in on the man-crushing front in writing up the Oct. 4 
Bob Unruh wrote in a Sept. 15 WorldNetDaily 
John Ransom goes off the rails quickly in a Sept. 28 Accuracy in Media 
CNSNews.com editor Terry Jeffrey intoned in a Sept. 30 
The Media Research Center spent the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks whining that it was pointed out that the biggest terrorist threat today comes from the American right. Clay Waters huffed in a Sept. 10 
WND 
