MRC's Double Standard On Deleted Tweets Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center looks for any excuse to attack non-right-wing media outlet -- even when they do the responsible thing and delete tweets that contain incorrect information. Curtis HOuck lashed out in a May 24 post:
On Monday night, The Washington Post posted a tweet asking its left-wing audience to share how the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 affected their lives and “what has — or hasn’t changed” in regards to policing, protests, and other far-left priorities. Besides the eye-roll-inducing premise, there was one problem with this part of the tweet: “George Floyd was shot and killed in police custody.”
The tweet remained up for a few minutes before being deleted and replaced with this esoteric and wimpy excuse: “We’ve deleted a previous tweet for this form that included language that was changed after publish.”
Misspellings, mistakes, and typos happen. We all make them. But it was quite the mistake considering the submission page had the same error in a short blurb before the blank space for readers to weigh in: “On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was shot and killed in police custody. His death sparked outrage, wide scale [sic] protests and calls to change policing. Two years later, what has — or hasn’t changed?”
If everyone makes errors, it makes no sense for Houck to lash out at the Post for making one -- unless the goal is to attack the existence of said outlet.
Kevin Tober did something similar in a June 30 post:
On Thursday afternoon, ABC's Good Morning America (GMA) tweeted a video of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson being sworn in to replace the now-retired Stephen Breyer with the obviously false caption claiming "Ketanji Brown Jackson is sworn in as the first Black Supreme Court justice in U.S. history." This is despite the fact that not only is she the third black justice (behind Thurgood Marshall & Clarence Thomas), but she is now serving alongside Justice Thomas.
The tweet remained up for almost five hours before the backlash and ridicule online became so much that GMA was forced to take it down.
GMA's apparent ignorance of basic Supreme Court history wasn't just relegated to Twitter. The same video and caption were also posted to GMA's YouTube page before changing the video title and caption shortly after they deleted the tweet.
To make matters worse, both the Twitter video and YouTube video were monetized meaning the network made money from it and there were companies who ran ads that viewers had to watch before playing the video (see the end of the blog for the list).
Tober gave the game away by then hyping how "GMA got absolutely roasted on Twitter for this epic failure of a tweet," then sneering that "maybe if Good Morning America spent less time being corporate whores for their parent company Disney constantly, they would pay more attention to these little details about the makeup of the Supreme Court." That's a reference to its hypocritical attacks on ABC for promoing Disney content despite the fact that the MRC uses its own "news" division, CNSNews.com, to promote MRC initiatives and narratives.
You will not be surprised to learn that, by contrast, the MRC won't highlight the deletion of erroneous tweets by its own employees and operations. For instance, MRC chief Brent Bozell issued aMay 10 tweet stating, "Agree with @elonmusk that the Trump ban "was morally wrong and flat-out stupid. Twitter knew that, but they did it anyway to interfere with the 2020 presidential election." As the Washingotn Post's David Weigel pointed out, Trump wasn't banned from Twitter until Jan. 9, 2021 -- more than two months after the election. Bozell quietly deleted the tweet and wrote a replacement one, and his employees censored any reference to it, let alone criticized him for spreading false information.
WND's Lively Is Still Putin's Propaganda Mouthpiece Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily columnist Scott Lively has been a bizarrelyvociferous defender of Russia's Vladimir Putin over his war on Ukraine, insisting that Russia is a more Christian country than the U.S. despite slaughtering thousands of Ukrainian troops and civilians foir no apparent good reason. He was at it again in his June 13 column, defending Putin as a fighter of "globalism" and embracing how he hates LGBT people as much as Lively does:
To my knowledge, I am the only culture war analyst in the world who contends that the current Russia/Ukraine war started not with President Putin's Feb. 24, 2022. "Empire of Lies" speech, nor with the Obama/Soros-orchestrated Maidan coup on Feb. 22, 2014, to replace pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych with their own stooge, but with Vladimir Putin's signature on June 30, 2013, making the LGBT propaganda ban the law of the land.
More than any other factor in the vast constellation of geopolitical rivalries and concerns, that single act declared the Russian Federation an enemy of globalism, and more importantly in the realpolitik sense, an enemy of the megalomaniac "closeted" homosexual Barack Obama who, even then, had done more to advance the global LGBT agenda than any other living man.
[...]
Regarding the Ukraine war, the conservative movement has been slowly awakening from the globalists' propaganda-driven hypnosis to realize that Russia is NOT the bad guy in this conflict, but was set up and used as a scapegoat by the very people who orchestrated the plandemic, stole our election and turned America's children into sexual anarchists and social-justice terrorists. Being forced to take preemptive military action to preserve legitimate and essential national security interests is not "unprovoked aggression." In fact, Russia's legal defense under international law to all of the globalist false accusations and propaganda is very sound.
[...]
However, if you are among the remnant of the remnant who appreciate just how close our nation has come to triggering the wrath of God, and that Russia is now actually far closer as a nation to honoring the biblical worldview than we are, you will recognize that IF the Lord tarries, and IF He intends humanity to have a reprieve from globalist tyranny, it just might be that Russia, not America, will be responsible to stop the evil elites from enslaving us all. Or perhaps (best case scenario), we MAGA millions might retake our country in 2022 and 2024 and partner with Russia against the globalists (as Trump strongly implied we would in his 2016 campaign)!
Frankly, I think it is much more likely that we have reached the end of the line and are watching the final scenes of prophecy unfold. Yet, that is all the more reason to speak the truth about all things. And the truth is that Russia is now a more Christian nation than we are, and the evil people ushering in the Antichrist kingdom are based here, not there.
Needless to say, Lively doesn't bother to explain how Putin slaughtering thousands of people who posed no military threat to Russia before his invasion of the country can be justified as "Christian."
Lively also touted as evidence of how "Christian" Russia supposedly is thatthe country's "national Duma (legislature) has just introduced legislation to expand its 2013 ban on LGBT propaganda to children to include ALL LGBT propaganda throughout the society." You'd think Russia might have more important things to deal with these days than censoring speech it doesn't like, but that just makes Lively love Putin all the more. Not only did Lively explain how censorship is "Christian," he also didn't mention that his source for this story got its information from Russia's own propaganda outlet, RT.com.
That means Lively is serving as a propaganda agent for Russia -- but we knew that already. Still, it's not a good look for an American citizen to be a foreign country's mouthpiece. Let's hope Russia is at least sending a few rubles his way for the effort.
MRC's DeSantis Defense League Assembles Over Purported CRT In Math Textbooks Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is eager to defend Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for prettymucheverything he does, so it was unsurprising that it rushed into defense mode over another conspiracy. An April 19 post by Alex Christy complained, as the MRC's "news" division CNSNews.com did, that DeSantis' government was called out for rejecting purported examples of critical race theory in elementary school math textbooks:
On his Monday show on CNN, Don Lemon suggested that Florida is trying to cancel math with its new anti-Critical Race Theory Law while Bakari Sellers suggested that these types of laws are “Putin-esque” and tantamount to book burning.
Lemon led Sellers by implying that the idea that CRT is in math is insulting:
[...]
Using math, it appears that Florida green lit 29% of textbooks, which means young Floridians will continue to be educated in math without any problems. Still, Sellers joked, “Wait until they find out some math is non-binary, right?”
Christy didn't mention the important fact that DeSantis cited no actual examples of purported critical race theory in the textbooks that were rejected.
Christy lashed out again at CNN in an April 23 post:
On his Friday CNN show, Don Lemon and correspondent Leyla Santiago condemned Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for banning math textbooks that contained Critical Race Theory. When giving examples, including a bar graph alleging conservatives are more racist than liberals, it was still DeSantis that was accused of culture warring.
Lemon introduced a video of Santiago by taking a Democrat’s word that CRT is not a real thing in Florida schools, “Florida education officials rejecting dozens of elementary school math textbooks, claiming that they contain objectionable material, including Critical Race Theory, which one Democratic lawmaker points out is not taught in elementary schools. Education officials now releasing four images from math books that they claim prove their point.”
At the beginning of her video, Santiago showed four examples released by the state to prove this isn’t a made up controversy, “One of the images, which the Department of Education says were sent to them by the public, shows a bar graph measuring racial prejudice by political identification.”
What Santiago didn’t say, but what the picture showed was a bar graph showing alleged racial bias in different political groups as measured by the Implicit Association Test with conservatives coming across as more racially biased than liberals and moderates.
But as we noted, those examples were released without context, and the graph Christy cited regarding the Implicit Association Test is from a high school textbook, not one for elementary students. Christy, however, didn't dispute that the test does, in fact, show that conservatives are "more racially biased than liberals and moderates," and he didn't that students are not required to take it as part of a math lesson. Instead, he attacked the test itself: "If CNN was a real news network, they would have got a differing perspective that would have informed them that the IAT is junk science that doesn’t measure bias so much as reflex times measured in milliseconds, meaning that if you take the test multiple times, you will get different results each time."
Christy then got into slippery definitions of CRT that have been encouraged by its chief right-wing critic, Christopher Rufo: "Maybe CRT is technically not the correct term for the IAT and other examples the state provided, but public schools should not be teaching that one of the two major political ideologies in this country is more racist than the other, especially in a math class. That is indoctrination and CNN never gave any compelling reason why it should be in public school math curriculum."
But like DeSantis and his minions, Christy never actually proved that those things were specifically being taught in those textbooks.
NEW ARTICLE: The Tulsi Gabbard Fan Club At CNS Topic: CNSNews.com
After trashing her during the 2020 presidential campaign, CNSNews.com now wants you to think that Gabbard is a real Democrat, even as it promotes her right-wing views and support for Russia in its war against Ukraine. Read more >>
MRC Loves McConaughey's Calls For Unity -- But Not If They Involve Guns Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center loved actor Matthew McConaughey when he at least didn't hate Donald Trump. In 2017, it cheered him as among a group of actors who "have urged accepting President Trump and moving forward. Gabriel Hays gushed in a May 2020 post:
Not all Hollywood stars are partisan hacks. Some, like Matthew McConaughey, want to see a brighter future for all Americans, regardless of their political affiliation.
The Hollywood A-lister appeared on a May 12 segment of the Fox News Channels Special Report with Bret Baier to urge political unity between Americans in order to defeat the virus. Through his charity foundation, Just Keep Livin, McConaughey has been sharing a message of unity amidst the pandemic and Fox News invited him to share that message with its viewers. He urged Americans to wake up and realize they’ve been losing their focus on the larger war with coronavirus because of nasty politics.
[...]
McConaughey expressed his opinion that these petty arguments have contributed to a “false divide.” Not only is there a war on coronavirus but a war with ourselves. “If we try to fight both those wars, we’re gonna lose both of them,” he affirmed.
The MRC never followed his advice, decided that politicizing COVID to fight culture wars and perpetuate dangerous misinformation was more important than national unity. Still, the MRC tried to pay lip service to this message; a December 2020 post by Hays touted how McConaughey, whom he again identified as a "Hollywood A-lister," "discussed how many people in the entertainment industry are 'illiberal,' that they 'condescend, patronize, and are arrogant,'" to the half of the country that’s conservative or that voted for Trump, which was followed the next month by Alexa Moutevelis claiming that he "is the latest to draw the ire of the left-wing Gestapo for thought crimes because he called out the 'illiberal left' for being arrogant towards 50 percent of the population and talked about the country getting "aggressively centrist" instead of divisively polarized.
All that unity talk, however, did not keep the MRC from going fiull Gestapo on McConaughey when he said things that deviated from right-wing orthdoxy, particularly when he unity talk turned to guns. Hays lashed out at him in 2018:
According to Matthew McConaughey, assault weapons are not “alright, alright, alright.” But banning them is.
The 48-year-old actor spoke at the Austin, Texas March for Our Lives, stating that he was there because he’s an American citizen, a proud Texan, a March for Our Lives believer, and, most importantly, because “I’m a father and I’m a husband.” Though he claimed that he wasn’t advocating for gun control, he asked that Second-Amendment supporters “take one for the team.”
McConaughey, a famous face at the gun-control rally, announced that he didn’t attend for the sake of subverting the Second Amendment, but that he wanted America to acknowledge that it is in the middle of an “epidemic.”
[...]
He concluded his speech by telling the audience to come together, and avoid the partisanship plaguing the issue: “This is an issue anchored in purpose for all of us. It’s not anchored in politics, it’s anchored in purpose.”
After all, maybe conservatives’ disagreement on the gun issue is just bitter partisanship, and not a valid point of view. And hey, with leading-man charm that intoxicating, how can any gun-owner say no to his list of demands? Nice propaganda there, Hollywood!
McConaughey's stance on guns was a reason Tierin-Rose Mandelburg dismissed talk of him running for Texas governor in a March 2021 post: "Oh, boy. Having a net worth of $140 million just isn’t enough for McConaughey. We may have another celebrity on the ballot in the coming future." We don't recall Mandelburg having any problem when TV celebrity Donald Trump ran for public office. Hays lashed out further at McConaughey's gun stance as a reason to oppose him as governor the following month:
Apparently Matthew McConaughey would be a popular contender against Governor Abbot (R-TX) in the upcoming gubernatorial race, but people who have a soft spot for the “nice guy” need to realize that McConaughey might not be so good for the freedom Texas prides itself on. ... Despite the nice guy appeal, Governor McConaughey would also fall right in line with Dems’ gun control ambitions.
Matt Philbin took a break from the attacks to praise McConaughey in a November 2021 post for declining to have his children vaccinated against COVID, though he did stay in attack mode long enough for bash him for opposing Texas' draconian anti-abortion law, sneering that "There is no right time or context in which to take a child’s life."
But when McConaughey spoke out about the gun massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas -- his hometown -- and argue for sensible gun regulations, the MRC went into full-blown Gestapo mode again.Wallace White ranted in a June 6 post:
After Uvalde, many Hollywood celebrities have taken it upon themselves to spout off platitudes on gun control and how everyone needs to be on board with the liberal cause. If you aren’t on board with gun-grabbing, then you are an evil person who wants children to die. Matthew McConaughey in his recent plea has taken these talking points and bubble-wrapped them under the guise of moderation.
According to Deadline, McConaughey is calling for “enacting background checks, Red Flag Laws and age upping the requirement on semi-automatic firearms to 21.” He says that he only supports “gun responsibility.” It doesn’t take an expert to realize that propositions such as Red Flag laws at the federal level are anything but moderate, but extremely radical.
Red Flag laws, in essence, allow the government to strip private citizens of their legally-purchased weapons because they’ve been deemed “at-risk”. The problem lies with who gets to deem who as “at-risk” and what criteria can constitute an “at-risk” individual. The untapped potential for tyranny is ripe with laws such as these. No wonder the radical left are champions of it.
McConaughey has been quite reasonable about issues in the past and has at least shown a willingness to talk with and debate with conservatives. That much is commendable. However, it is clear that he has a misunderstanding of the potentially catastrophic consequences of Red Flag laws for the 2nd amendment and freedom across the nation.
White didn't explain why gun rights are more important than saving a person's life from the threat of an unstabled armed individual.
When McConaughey appeared at a White House press briefing to make the same plea, Kevin Tober was the designated hater in a June 7 post:
On Tuesday, Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey took to the White House podium to plead for Congress to pass stricter gun control laws in the aftermath of the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde. As per their usual arrangement, the evening news broadcasts were more than happy to act as stenographers for the leftist agenda.
ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News all lead with the McConaughey rant and the ongoing negotiations on Capitol Hill over gun control.
With all the drooling over McConaughey's support for tougher background checks and other measures that the media supports, what's interesting is that they left out his call for restraint on "sensationalized media coverage."
Tober didn't explain why the murder of 21 people, 19 of them children, should not warrant sensational coverage or why the MRC's rabid abolutism in ranting about even the slightest regulation of guns -- which conflicts with its earlier praise of him in calling for unity and common ground -- was not sensationalizing the issue.
CNS' Bader Hypes Overpriced Gas In One Calif. Town To Bash Biden Topic: CNSNews.com
Hans Bader used a June 3 CNSNews.com column to hype how a gas station in Mendocino, Calif., hiked gas prices to $9.45 a gallon, far above the national average at the time and even well above the average price in California. He cited a local blogger to claim that the owner did it because her station and repair shop is "an independent business, not a franchise of Chevron. Her business does not sell food and drink, the goods that most often bring profit to gas stations across the United States."
But that's not the whole story. As an actual media source noted, the station's prices have been unrealistically high since thte current owners took it over -- the only gas station in town -- in the early 2000s, and that gas prices are much cheaper down the road
Dubious notoriety is growing for the only gas station in town, one that is earning scorn from locals in the tight-knit community and guffaws from out-of-state looky-loos. As gas prices across the country climb to near daily records and drivers are crushed by $100 fill-ups, Mendocino’s fuel depot has become a lightning rod for outraged drivers who say they have no clue if the local station is setting a fair price or gouging them for an essential good.
“I don’t give a diddle what the next guy down the streets thinks,” said Schlafer, the station’s 71-year-old proprietor who is fielding calls from fed-up drivers across the country. “I’ve gotten really hard.”
[...]
“Twenty years ago everyone used it. They were priced competitively. Then all of a sudden she jacked up the prices,” said Gary Poehlmann, a contractor living in Mendocino for four decades. “She’s obviously giving everybody the middle finger.”
Now the station caters almost exclusively to people in a pinch after long drives up the California coast and tourists unaware that they can cruise 15 minutes north to Fort Bragg where gas is nearly 40% cheaper.
Because Bader is more interested in delivering right-wing talking points than enlightening readers with relevant facts, Bader used this station's wildly overpriced fuel not to criticize the owner for gouging customers but, rather, to attack President Biden:
Gas prices continue to rise despite Joe Biden partially emptying the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. As the Daily Caller reported, gas prices rose every time Joe Biden released oil from the reserve, showing that it achieved nothing except leaving less in the reserve to deal with a future emergency.
Biden's release of oil from the reserve is just a political gimmick designed to make it look like he is trying to cut oil prices. Critics have argued that Biden's releases of oil were illegal, because they weren't in response to an emergency.
In a recent gaffe, Biden suggested he actually likes high gas prices, because they push people away from using fossil fuels.
Bader doesn't note that the Caller is engaging in the correlation-equals-causation fallacy by suggesting that releases from the SPR caused gas prices to rise.He also didn't explain why Biden should be treated as the sole cause of higher prices when there are undeniable contributing factor like the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Bader is engaged in a political attack, not a fact-based one. Unfortunately, we expect nothing less from him.
MRC Whines That Reporter Sought Out Creator Of Anti-Biden Meme Stickers Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center loves to attack reporters who expose the people behind the right's favorite narratives -- odd, since you'd think the MRC would want to make sure the right people got the public adulation they deserved for what they do. So, just as it lashed out at Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz for doing basic reporting to learn the identity of the homophobic "Libs of TikTok" Twitter account, P.J. Gladnick spent a June 7 post complaining that a reporter sought the identity of the person behind the Biden "I Did That" stickers that right-wingers use to vandalize gas pumps:
Nina Burleigh of Business Insider who is best known to the world for having "Offered Oral Sex to Bill Clinton to Keep Abortion Legal" found a new mission in life. This time it was focused away from presidential candle sticks to presidential stickers. Specifically, the highly popular "I Did That!" Joe Biden stickers that have appeared pointing at rising prices of gasoline on station pumps during the past year.
Those stickers have so irritated Burleigh that she went on a great meme hunt for the creator. Her Odyssey was described on Monday in "'I Did That!': Anti-Biden stickers are plastered on gas pumps nationwide. But who created them?"
Her meme hunt for the heinous creator was inspired by Burleigh's extreme rage at many for blaming poor Joe Biden for the rise in gasoline prices in particular and for inflation in general.
[...]
With self-righteous indignation, Burleigh then goes on to describe her great crusade to hunt down the "I Did That!" sticker creator who, in her eyes, unfairly blamed Biden for the sudden surge of gasoline prices which began almost from the moment he entered the White House in January 2021.
The MRC loves to blame Biden for high gas prices but has never named a specific policy that it could directly link to those higher prices. And, needless to say, Gladnick doesn't identify any either.
After Burleigh noted that as she zeroed in on the creator, that person called her, Gladnick whined further:
So now that Burleigh tracked down the sticker creator, who in reality contacted her, will she demand that his stickers be labeled as disinformation despite the fact that sticker version Joe Biden is more truthful by declaring "I Did That!" than the flesh and blood version who is constantly shifting blame for rising gasoline prices to others?
Again, Gladnick offered no "truth" that directly proved high gas prices are solely Biden's fault and that things like the Russian invasion of Ukraine had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Throughout the piece, Gladnick never explained why Burleigh is a bad person for doing basic reporting on a subject of public interest. Doesn't he want the sticker creator to get the credit he deserves for being a right-wing meme master?
Farah's Fantasy Of Sneaking Trump Back Into Presidency Continues Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah's favoritefantasy of late is that Republicans will take control of the House in the midtern elections, name Donald Trump speaker of the House, then impeach President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, which will then elevate Trump to the presidency. It's a fantasy he still clings to, and he rehashed it again in his March 28 column, with a massive dose of his usual Biden derangement:
When Joe Biden took the oath of office to become president – or, should we say, presidential pretender – I was morose.
It was not an easy rigged election to take. Come on, man! Do you really think Biden got an astonishing record 81,284,666 votes – more than Barack Obama did? I believe the last three numbers – but no way did he win legitimately. He probably got half that many. He didn't even campaign. He never left his house.
That was not easy to accept. I believe Donald Trump was the greatest president in the history of the United States. That's right! His achievements in four years exceeded that of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. I loved them all. Reagan changed my politics. But Trump was one of a kind – a Republican and a fighter for America and the Constitution, just like Washington, Jefferson and John Adams.
So, immediately I started calculating how to get him more time to complete the job. I knew the only way I could figure out a plan depended on getting him up to six years as president – two if he assumed the presidency after a brief time as speaker of the House, followed by another four-year term.
[...]
Biden is sullen, his voice hurts my ears, he's cognitively challenged, he's incoherent, he falls a lot – and, worst of all, he's mean. He lies on a grand scale, and he's hopelessly immoral.
The worst thing he has ever done was to commit a high crime against America by perpetuating election fraud against the greatest country the world as ever known.
[...]
[T]he latest to join the campaign is Ed Martin, president of Phyllis Schlafly Eagles.
Martin told "Secrets": "I'm serious. We need the Trump voters. With the possibility of having Donald Trump as speaker, conservative voter turnout would be through the roof nationwide."
Let's make it a real big "red wave." Ride the wave. This might be a magic MAGA moment!
All I want for my role in this is a "thank you" note from Trump, and to be a semi-regular attendee at his White House press conferences.
In his June 21 column, Farah referenced a column a few days earlier by fellow Trump fanboy Wayne Allyn Root, who interviewed Trump yet again and decuced from his criticism of Mich McConnell and refusal to endorse him that "I drew the conclusion Trump is considering running for House speaker and leaving his options open. B-I-G news!" He ranted:
Do you agree with Root and me that we can't wait for January 2025?
I've been waiting for a long time to get President Trump back in office.
It seems possible now. It seems necessary now. It seems VITAL now.
There is a way under the laws of our land. There always is.
It won't be easy.
It will take much planning under our constitutional system.
There will be much opposition.
And, we mustn't take anything for granted.
[...]
We must win big! Very big! We have to take on the RINOs and the Democrats. We must deliver the House and the Senate – which doesn't seem plausible with the mathematics of it. But here's how we must do it. We have to win so big that we scare the RINOs into backing the "Speaker Trump" plan as the only one that can SAVE THE COUNTRY – because it is!
Beginning in January, Speaker of the House Trump then would preside over the impeachment of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
[...]
"I told Trump that I don't know if America will exist in 2024," Root noted. "Trump responded with pure honesty, 'That's actually the much bigger question ... will the country (exist). There's been more damage done in the past year and a half ... than in the worst 25 years in America's history (combined).'"
The worst thing Biden has ever done was to commit a high crime against America by perpetuating election fraud against the greatest country the world has ever known.
I know this country continues to be strong, but we dare not test its limits. The plan to save it I've outlined here must go forward.
Are you with me?
The fact that the only folks buying into Farah's fantasy are extremists like Root and Steve Bannon tells you all you need to know about this attempted coup by another name.
MRC Continues To Attack Jean-Pierre For Giving Interviews Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's hatred of new White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is so virulent that it even lashes out at her for doing interviews. Kevin Tober worked in his employer's obsession with excessively hyping a threat to Justice Brett Kavanaugh in a June 12 post:
On Wednesday, a deranged pro-abortion leftist went to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house to attempt to assassinate him, thankfully he got cold feet and called the police on himself. Regardless it is a huge news story that many in the leftist media refused to cover
Such was the case on Sunday when ABC’s This Week spent the entire hour without even a mention of the attempted assassination of a Supreme Court Justice. Instead, co-anchor Martha Raddatz spent time swooning over the Democrats January 6 committee hearings, followed by an interview with the survivors of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shootings.
In the last full segment of the show, Raddatz introduced a fawning interview between White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and correspondent Gio Benitez for “Pride Month.”
“At her first press conference back in May, newly appointed White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre marked the many firsts she brings to her role” Raddatz announced before previewing the interview.
“In a new ABC News special ‘Pride: to be Seen,’ correspondent Gio Benitez sat down with Jean-Pierre at the White House to discuss how her LGBTQ+ identity has shaped her and the unique position she's now in” Raddatz gushed.
Parroting the Democrat Party line, Benitez asked Pierre: “We are seeing so many laws across the country that many see as anti-LGBTQ+. I wonder for you as a mother what do you think?”
Jean-Pierre responded to the softball question by noting how she is “always concerned as a mom because you're trying to raise a little person that's going to be the best of themselves. I see those laws and I feel for young people who are in school, right, who are trying to just be who they are.”
She added that’s “why I'm here, to continue to fight and to make sure that we hopefully deliver and change things and make people's lives better.”
As we've noted before, the complaint over Jean-Pierre being given a "softball" interview rings hollow given the softballs the MRC's Tim Graham and Curtis Houck lobbed at former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany in an April podcast interview, refusing to even bring up the fact that McEnany notoriously abandoned her job after the Capitol riot, absolutely refusing to hold any press briefings at all during the last two weeks of Trump's presidency.
Emma Schultz repeated much of the same whining about a separate interview in a June 15 post, with added leaning into the MRC's narrative that Jean-Pierre is an incompetent diversity hire:
“[We’re] in a place where we can actually put us in a place where the American people feel -- can actually -- we can take on inflation,” stated White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a train wreck interview on Monday’s CNN Don Lemon Tonight. Welcomed by Lemon Jean-Pierre struggled to defend President Biden in his work for the country, placing blame for the economy on other outside factors and even explicitly stating that the country needs to be “in a good historic economic place, which is where we are right now.”
[...]
Surprisingly, Lemon actually called her out by noting we have rising inflation and gas prices “before the war.” “They also say that last year's stimulus package, which you mentioned, contributed to inflation,” he added.
Fumbling for words to convince Lemon about the President’s win for gun legislation, the Press Secretary stated the following: “So, the President has – has done everything that he --he can from – from -- from the White House to take -- to call - to call on Congress to act. So, this is one step forward, right? We haven't seen anything like this, a bipartisanship agreement on gun reform in decades, in a generation even.”
Convincing, right?
We don't recall the MRC ever snarking about whether McEnany's mindless defenses of Trump were "convincing."
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is ripping into The Washington Post and the "legacy media" after a report that his press secretary registered as a foreign agent for her previous work under a former president of Georgia.
"I am not deterred by any smear piece from these legacy media outlets," DeSantis said, according to WFLA-TV. "The only reason they're attacking her is because she does a great job, and she's effective at calling out their lies and their phony narratives.
"I would be much more concerned with my secretary if the Washington Post was writing puff pieces about her. Then I would think something is wrong."
However, Rodack and DeSantis never identify what, exactly, the "smear" is. They do not dispute the facts of the story; indeed, Rodack went on to describe Pushaw's offense further:
A Post report on Wednesday said DeSantis' press secretary, Christina Pushaw, registered this week as a foreign agent of former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili. The newspaper reported she belatedly detailed work she performed for him between 2018 and 2020.
She disclosed her work for the politician following contact from the Justice Department, her attorney Michael Sherwin said. She reportedly received $25,000 for her work.
"Her efforts included writing op-eds, reaching out to supporters and officials, and advocating on his behalf in Georgia and in the United States," Sherwin said. "The work ended in 2020. Ms. Pushaw was notified recently by the DOJ that her work on behalf of Mr. Saakashvili likely required FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] registration. Ms. Pushaw filed for the registration retroactively as soon as she was made aware."
If the facts are undisputed, it can't possibly be a "smear," and facts are an absolute defense.
Yet Pushaw herself pushed that narrative in a statement to a Florida newspaper: "The governor said it better than I could. It is an attempt at a smear. It’s non-news." Even she doesn't dispute the facts and is instead complaining that the facts were reported -- which, again, is not a "smear."
A pathologist who heads one of America's leading labs is finding unusually long blood clots, as long as one foot, in the bodies of deceased people who received COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr. Ryan Cole of Cole Diagnostics in Boise, Idaho, said his lab is "seeing mushy organs, we're seeing incredibly inflamed organs."
"We know the spike protein causes all the ... bad outcomes that the virus did in 2020," he said in an interview with Greg Hunter for USAWatchdog reported by Just the News.
Cole said that in people with comorbidities – serious chronic diseases – the synthetic spike protein in the mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna are "causing inflammation in the lung, the brain, the liver, the kidneys, the heart; it's causing the same damage that the virus was causing."
Neither Moore nor the Just the News article from which he cribbed his article offered indepdently verifiable proof of Ryan's claims; indeed, both are servile stennographers for Cole despite his dubious medical history.
Moore also referenced an earlier WND story dentered on COVID misinformer Steve Kirsch in which "a veteran embalmer told Kirsch he and more than a dozen colleagues in the industry had been noticing strange blood clots in most of their cases." As we noted at the time, that story is highly dubious because embalmers typcailly don't know the vaccination status of the person they're enbalming.
There's no reason to trust WND if it continues to publish unverified information -- especially from someone who has been repeatedly been discredited.
NEW ARTICLE: Hunter Biden Derangement Syndrome At The MRC Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center slavishly stuck to right-wing narratives in order to personally destroy President Biden's son and try to derail the father's election and presidency. Read more >>
MRC Sports Blogger Keeps Spewing Hate At Those Who Don't Hate LGBT Athletes As Much As Him Topic: Media Research Center
It's apparently a requirement that Media Research Center sports bloggers hate LGBT people, and John Simmons fits that bill -- he's been regularly lashing out at any sports figure or league that refuses to hate LGBT people as much as he does. (We already know he hates women.) He whined in an April 25 post:
For every bill that's passed to protect women’s sports from being infiltrated by transgendered women, it seems like there is a sports team that will use its influence to promote the LGTBQIA+ agenda.
The Syracuse Crunch, the American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate of the Tampa Bay Lightning, hosted their annual pride night this past weekend in which the team wore rainbow-themed jerseys for the game while also selling a variety of pride-themed merchandise.
Furthermore, a young man by the name of Tyler Johnson, who came out as gay in 2019 and currently works “to ensure the LGBTQ+ community has equal opportunities and feels comfortable and accepted in any environment,” performed the ceremonial puck drop before the game started (the Crunch beat the Laval Rocket 5-1).
Simmons then makes his homophobia and hate all too clear, demanding that only LGBT people effectively banned from public society:
Members of the LGTBQIA+ community consistently say that all they want is to be accepted for who they are and be given chances to operate as equal members of society. But oftentimes, that’s not really the end goal of a majority of people in this demographic.
Frequently, the end goal is to make people completely bow down to their ideology and to ridicule people who dare to disagree with it even at a basic level. “Feeling comfortable and accepted in any environment” usually means having complete power over the thoughts and attitudes of those around them, almost to the point where anyone who does not identify with as LGTBQIA+ is viewed as a person whose heart and mind are filled with hatred and bigotry. Just look at our educational system for another example of how this plays out!
Why are we using our sports teams to promote his ideology?
In reality, we shouldn’t be, not at the minor league hockey level or anywhere else in sports.
Simmons won't admit that he wants everyone to bow down to his right-wing ideology that looks down on anyone who's not exactly like him as an inferior "other."
Two days later, Simmons attacked an NFL drraftee for committing the offense of having two moms:
It would appear that we can’t even joyfully anticipate the NFL Draft without making it a platform to celebrate the LGTBQIA+ agenda.
Colorado State University tight end Trey McBride won the Mackey Award for being the best tight end in college football after amassing 90 passes for 1,121 yards and a touchdown this past season, and he is likely to be the first tight end off the board once the draft starts on Friday.
But his prowess as an athlete will likely not be the main story come this weekend. No, there is a much more important aspect of this athlete that everyone should be focusing on (insert wink emoji).
McBride is set to become the first NFL Draft selectee that has two moms, something NBC’s “Today” was all too glad to highlight.
[...]
For once, it would be nice to see the NFL not focus on something woke and just focus on the excitement of adding new athletes to the league. But that’s as likely to happen as it is that Aaron Rodgers will stop being a drama queen.
In a May 6 post, Simmons assumed all LGBT athletes care only about sex and insisted that their heterosexual counterparts should be afraid of them:
Of all the topics that Outsports chooses to discuss when focusing on gay athletes, a piece they published on Friday might be the weirdest.
Patrice Evra, a French former professional soccer player who played for West Ham in 2018, said that some of his teammates said aloud they would refuse to shower with any gay teammates, to which he took exception.
[...]
Now, the article actually builds a logical argument in all the ways you’d need: first person sources, points supported by logical explanation, etc. But the tone of the article does something that should never be done in an argument, which is to tear down your opponent for their stance.
Some male athletes have reservations about showering with teammates that are gay, which makes sense. But the article ridicules heterosexual males for having an uneasy feeling about a potentially awkward situation.
“We’ve heard this idiotic trope for decades, that somehow gay men might pose a threat to straight men in the showers,”the article states. “The idea is that if you’re left alone with a gay man and a bar of soap, he may... physically assault you? Stare at you longingly with his eyes? Be left unable to resist your naked body?”
For a community that wants to be accepted, they’re not really doing a great job at respecting the people they want to accept them.
Simmons clearly does not respect LGBT athletes by invoking hoary old tropes to smear them. And then he blamed them for being hated by him: "Gay people tend to shame others for being put off by a lifestyle that is contrary to human nature, and basically force them into accepting them out of fear." Note that he invokes another bogus trope, that being LGBT is a "lifestyle."
Simmons spent a May 17 post whining that the NHL also doesn't hate LGBT people like he does:
For most people, today is just another Tuesday in our lives. But for the NHL (and a tiny portion of the population that care), today marks the 19th anniversary of the “International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.”
In fact, the league released an ad on its Twitter page about fighting “hate” displayed toward the LGBT community that had all the hallmarks of a similar promotion the NFL released last year.
[...]
While it looked for a long time like the NHL was the last largely non-woke sports league, it would appear it’s just as ideologically rotten as the rest of them now.
Only in the mind of a twisted, hateful person like Simmons is it "rotten" to not hate someone.
A female skateboarder has vehemently criticized her sponsor company for forcing her to compete against a transgender woman in the Red Stone Cornerstone event.
Taylor Silverman called out Red Bull for allowing Lilian Gallagher (a biological male) to compete in the same division as her. Gallagher took home a grand total of $5,000 dollars in prize money in the qualifying, finals, and best trick categories. Silverman, who finished second in the first two categories, took home $2,750 in total prize money -- which would have been more had Gallagher not been allowed to compete.
[...]
While Silverman might not be getting the chance to talk to Red Bull, it is an encouraging sign that she sees that something is fundamentally wrong with what is happening in her sport and is doing something to try and change that.
And we havent' even made it to Pride Month yet, when Simmons gets really angry.
WND Tries To Keep Bogus '2000 Mules' Film Alive Topic: WorldNetDaily
Even as the Dinesh D'Souza election conspiracy film "2000 Mules" continues to be discredited on little things (the geolocation data map is of Moscow, not anywhere in the U.S.) and big (D'Souza himself has been forced to concede that the film "does not show evidence to prove his claims about ballots being collected and submitted") -- so bad that even right-wing grifter extraordinaire Ann Coulter dismissed the "stupid movie" as a grift -- WorldNetDaily remains firmly in its roleas PRagent for the film.
A May 13 article by Art Moore uncritically forwarded a claim by Gregg Philips, "lead investigator" for the film, that "he and his witnesses have become the target of Georgia state officials instead of the people he believes delivered fraudulent votes to help Joe Biden win the White House." Moore made no apparent effort to fact-check Phillips. Moore devoted a May 26 article to attempting to debunk a fact-check that the film's depiction of geolocation doesn't match reality by citing a "wireless expert":
The CEO of a wireless company says fact checkers for PolitiFact and the Associated Press who question the accuracy of cellphone geolocation data presented by True the Vote as evidence of an alleged vote-fraud scheme in the battleground states in 2020 don't know what they're talking about.
An AP fact check said "experts say cellphone location data, even at its most advanced, can only reliably track a smartphone within a few meters — not close enough to know whether someone actually dropped off a ballot or just walked or drove nearby."
However, Volta Wireless founder David Sinclair told the Gateway Pundit the fact-checkers "don't have the technical foundation for the comments that they are making."
[...]
Sinclair said he's seen "2000 Mules," read the rebuttals and spoken with Phillips "to better understand the details of the data and the methodology they used."
He explained that location technology has "dramatically improved" and GPS and tower "triangulation" can pinpoint a person's location within a few feet.
In fact, Sinclar's LinkedIn profile suggests his expertise is in sales and management, not the technical end of cell phone communications, so he can't be much of an "expert" here. By contrast, actual experts at the Elecctronic Frontier Foundation point out that cell-phone geolocation data is only accurate to about 15 feet, adding that "Relying on commercial location data alone to allege ballot box stuffing is folly." (Also, the fact that Sinclair did an interview with Gateway Pundit, who's currently being sued for defamation for spreading lies about Georgia election workers, hows he has poor judgment.)
Desperate for anything to cling to to deny the film's lack of accuracy, Moore wrote a June 2 article touting the arrest of an Arizona woman "in an alleged ballot-trafficking scheme in the 2020 election that was featured in the film '2000 Mules.'" Moore didn't report that the sheriff in Yuma County, Ariz., where this took place, denied that any election investigation was launched as a result of the movie.
A June 5 article by Joe Kovacs touted a biased Rasmussen poll claiming that "77% of likely U.S. voters who have viewed the documentary by Dinesh D'Souza say the film strengthened their conviction of systematic and widespread election fraud in the 2020 election, possibly leading to a 'stolen election,' as former President Donald Trump has maintained." Kovacs does not mention whether the poll respondents were presented with the mountain of evidence discrediting the film; instead he whined that "The movie has received little, if any, mention on major broadcast networks including the Fox News Channel, which appears to be going out of its way to avoid any on-air mention."
Moore helped D'Souza have a little temper tantrum in a June 14 article:
After watching Bill Barr laugh about the vote-fraud probe featured in "2000 Mules," the film's producer, Dinesh D'Souza, has challenged the former attorney general to a debate.
Barr's reaction came in a video deposition featured in a hearing Monday by the House Select Committee on Jan. 6.
"My opinion then, and my opinion now, is that the election was not stolen by fraud," Barr said.
"And I haven't seen anything since the election that changes my mind, including the '2000 Mules' movie," he added before laughing.
D'Souza reacted on Twitter: "I'd like to invite Bill Barr to a public debate on election fraud. Given his blithe chuckling dismissal of #2000Mules this should be easy for him. What do you say, Barr? Do you dare to back up your belly laughs with arguments that can withstand rebuttal and cross-examination?"
Moore didn't mention that D'Souza himself conceded that the film doesn't present actual evidence of election fraud.
Trying to keep the flagging, bogus film alive, Moore spent a June 27 article claiming that "Allegations arising from the True the Vote investigation featured in the documentary '2000 Mules' have prompted a call by Michigan Republican lawmakers for a new investigation into the 2020 election." Moore censored all evidence that the film nas been discredited.
Meanwhile, Joseph Farah and Jack Cashill weren't the only WND columnist hyping the film. Jim Darlington complained in a May 26 column hyperbolically headlined "Was censoring of '2000 Mules' the sign of America's death?"
No one, anywhere, did not see the stolen election. One candidate was up by so much, and then counting stopped at 2 a.m. everywhere it mattered, only to bring us a new, absurdly improbable president the next morning. How sad that so many acquiesced to the drumbeat of lies and finally nodded in frightful agreement to what their hearts knew was false.
Well before the election we had allowed that maybe only a little censorship was in store. InfoWars' large following was effectively decimated and any mention of the others quickly following … was censored. We saw this coming long before the election. The lie, that challenges to a stolen election were really an effort to steal the election, filled the streets till there was no room to walk anywhere else. Years of passivity in the face of an ever-growing symphony of lies proved that the Big Lie could easily succeed.
[...]
Greg Phillips and Catherine Engelbrecht, from True the Vote, applied this same technology and similar sourcing, virtually mapping the paths of thousands of "mules" making numerous trips between ballot drop boxes and various left-wing NGO's nearby, repeatedly inserting 10 or 20 ballots at a time, their activities being confirmed, quite plainly, by video evidence.
The authorities gladly boasted of the technique used to round up the "insurrectionists." But they want to bury the undeniable proofs, offered in "2000 Mules," as deeply as inhumanly possible. The roster of those willing to turn a blind eye to this treachery must never be forgotten.
So, what do we do next? We should go inside the church and thank the Lord for our freedom, while we still can.
Like the rest of the WND bogus brigade, he too was sure to censor any mention of how the film has been discredited.
Newsmax Tries To Disown Columnist's Endorsement Of Paladino Topic: Newsmax
Carl Paladino is a Republican candidate for a congressional seat in New York, has managed to be even more controversial than Eric Greitens. In just the past couple months alone, he got busted for lauding Hitler as an "inspirational" leader and posted a Facebook rant calling the recent massacres in Buffalo and Uvalde false flags, and bizarrely accused Democrats of wanting to keep black people "dumb and hungry." Oh, and he has a convicted sex offender on his campaign staff. He's radioactive enough that even the right-wing New York Post wants him to lose.
Which made it interesting that Newsmax published a June 22 column by Gavin Wax offering a lengthy and full-throated endorsement of Paladino, desperately trying to spin his radioactivity as some kind of positive:
Some in the media have launched into overdrive, in an attempt to keep Palladino from winning. Some have purportedly pushed the narrative that Paladino supports Adolf Hitler.
They are also using Paladino's joking comments about former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle, in an attempt to paint him as extremist or unelectable.
In his district, it's not likely that such smears against Paladino will stick, considering his decades of credibility among his constituents.
Additionally, his history as a strong conservative, and a private sector record helps him.
[...]
Paladino is the opposite of these newcomers who see MAGA as a meal ticket, or as a way to ease their way into political prominence.
Paladino has been holding down staunchly conservative positions for years, taking flak from the liberal media and RINOs.
He could have changed his stripes for plaudits, or to avoid scrutiny, but he's never wavered.
Paladino doesn't cave.
Throughout all the flak, Paladino has only doubled down on his positions.
And with the advent and presidency of Trump, he's been vindicated.
[...]
Putting Carl Paladino in Congress, during a red wave would shift the GOP caucus significantly rightward, causing a realignment, one to generate momentum for bigger victories in 2024, thus shutting the door on leftist and RINO supremacy.
Newsmax did do its best to disown Wax's column, though, sticking an editor's note at the beginning that states, "The following op-ed does not reflect an endorsement of any kind, of any political candidate, by Newsmax." Too late, Newsmax -- you published it, you own it.