MRC Sports Blogger Spouts Transphobia All Through Pride Month Topic: Media Research Center
We've noted how Media Research Center sports blogger John Simmons had a meltdown over sports teams and leagues refusing to hate gay people as much ashe does during Pride Month in June. Simmons also brought his transphobia to the month's proceedings as well. In a June 14 post, he hyped a poll claiming that many Americans oppose transgender women in sports:
In the midst of the Pride Month celebration of all things LGBT, it can be easy to think that most Americans are perfectly okay with how this ideology has affected every aspect of American life.
However, a new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll showed that a strong majority of Americans still have a strong measure of common sense on the issue of transgendered women playing sports alongside real women. As per the poll that sampled1,503 Americans across the country, 55 percent of respondents said they were opposed to transgendered females playing in the same sport in high school, with that number increasing to 58 percent for college and professional sports.
[...]
We can only hope that more Americans begin to see just how harmful this ideology is and do everything they can to stem the tide of its effects.
Simmons never explains why he calls being transgender an "ideology." Does he think his homophobia and transphobia is an "ideology" too?
Lia Thomas’ dream of swimming in the Olympics was spectacularly dashed after a ruling from the Fédération Internationale de Natation (FINA, translated “International Swimming Federation”) that became effective today.
The ruling states that anyone who is born male must have their transition completed by the age of 12 to be able to compete in elite swimming competitions. Of the 152 members of FINA, a 71 percent majority passed the new legislation.
[...]
While we will not have to deal with a man swimming and taking away gold medals from females, it does not mean that transgendered females will be completely prevented from the Olympic stage ever again.
As best-selling children’s author Matt Walsh pointed out, it just meant that people will start transitioning their children at a younger age.
Simmons whined ina June 20 post that international women's soccer may consider allowing transgender athletes, while also taking a misogynistic shot (as he's wont to do) at women's soccer: "Not many people watch women’s soccer to begin with, but the few who do might end up seeing men pretending to be women in the sports soon." The next day, he cheered a women's rugby league for banning transgender women; when women's soccer legend Megan Rapinoe criticized the move, Simmons huffed in response:
Sorry Rapinoe, but it’s not disgusting to look at what Lia Thomas is doing in swimming and think that something needs to change. It’s not cruel to see Connecticut high school track star Chelsea Mitchell lose to transgender opponents and want something to be changed. And it certainly isn’t wrong for FINA and IRL decide that the future of women in their respective sports leans heavily on what they do in this pivotal moment.
Women belong competing with women, and men belong battling against men in sports. It’s that simple.
If your desire to ban transgender women is borne of irrational fear and hate, as it appears Simmons' desire is, then it can plausibly be labeled disgusting.
Meanwhile, Simmons found a new transgender athlete to spew hate at in a June 28 post:
Yet another transgendered "female" has seized opportunities for real women to succeed at elite levels within their respective sport.
Richard Batres, who started taking hormone treatments and who is now going by the name Ricci Tres, skated in the Boardr Open competition in New York City on Saturday. Bartes, who is 29 and at least 13 years older than four of the other top-six finishers at the event, won the $500 grand prize at the event.
Because of his delusions, Batres has told his three children from his failed marriage that they are starting to refer to him as “mother,” and he has taken hormone treatments so he can feel like a woman, even though he says he knows he will never be one.
“I’ve decided that I like being pretty and cute,” Batres said. "I know I will never be a woman, because women are miraculous, they have babies and create life and do all that awesome stuff. I’ll never have that ability but I feel like I am a woman. I would have wished to be born one so I’ll try to fill that image as much as I can for myself and that pretty much involves being as cute as can be.”
But trying to “fill that image” is going to have horrendous consequences, for Batres’ family and women’s skateboarding. First, three children will not only have to live without their real mother being a steady, everyday presence in their lives, but now they have to witness their father base his life on the idea that he can change his gender because he wants.
Additionally, Ricci will now likely keep robbing women from earning results that their hard work deserves, just because they have to compete against someone who’s biology gives him an inherent advantage.
Simmons' transphobia extended into the following month as well. In a July 7 post, he falsely portrayed Zambian soccer star Barbra Banda as transgender, misgendered her throught the piece, and whooped that she was banned from a championship tournament for allegedly having too high of a testosterone level:
Yes, you read that right. A woman can’t play women's soccer because she - actually, he - has too many male chemicals in his system.
Banda would have had to take hormone suppressors as prescribed by the Confederation of African Football (CAF), in order to be eligible for the roster but refused, rendering him unable to participate in the tournament.
[...]
[Zambia Football Association spokesperson Sydney] Mungala and her colleagues can cry all they want, but there is a much simpler solution for this problem: don’t let men join your soccer teams.
In fact, Banda is a biological woman as far as anyone knows but has naturally high testosterone, and she has had no problem playing in other tournaments.
The theme of WorldNetDaily's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine for July was "Elites finally reveal their #1 enemy: CHRISTIANS" -- which is largely about peddling homophobia and complaining that the hateful Christian nationalism peddled by WND and its right-wing allies was being called out. Managing editor David Kupelian opened his essay for the issue, published July 5 at WND, with a blast of homophobia and transphobia ranting about "sexual-gender anarchy" and the "wild celebration of transgenderism," then followed it with complaining that his homophobia and transphobia is less tolerated in polite society than it should be:
Suddenly, bandying about an arcane academic term virtually no one used until recently – “Christian nationalism” – big media and Democrats are falling over each other to blame all of America’s problems on “Christian nationalists” (or “White Christian nationalists” or “White nationalists” or “Christian fascists” or “Christian fundamentalists” or “the Religious Right”).
[...]
What is new right now, however, is: 1) the extreme and ubiquitous Sodom-and-Gomorrah level of moral depravity in America, 2) the absolutely shocking campaign to recruit the nation’s pre-pubescent children into deviant sexual and gender “identities” and lifestyles, and 3) the fact that all of this is not merely tolerated, but wildly celebrated and glorified, by almost all of America’s most powerful institutions, from its schools to its government to its news and entertainment media.
Parallel to all this is the rapidly increasing demonization of those Americans who hold to the traditional Judeo-Christian values that formed the very foundation of the “American experiment,” the biblical principles of morality and justice woven into the U.S. Constitution and legal system, and which, for over two centuries, have made America the greatest, freest and most prosperous nation in all of human history.
Indeed, biblical Christianity is what gave birth to the whole notion of “individual rights” in the first place, rooted as they are in the conviction that man is created in the image of God. Likewise, the biblical understanding that mankind is fallen and in need of redemption (prompting Lord Acton to famously observe that “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”) led to America’s unique and extraordinarily wise constitutional separation of powers. The biblical roots of the American system made this country the unique oasis of liberty and human rights it has long been in an otherwise mostly dark world.
That is why the current power-mad elites hate genuine Christianity, and why the ruling class is at war with, and daily attacking, America’s Christian foundations with increasing ferocity.
As if Kupelian and WND aren't actively demonizing anyone who disagrees with them and points out their hatred and otherizing of anyone who isn't a heterosexual. He's dishonestly playing victim while using his employer's megaphone to do so.He concluded by ranting:
In truth, to the radical left, Christians are not merely racists, misogynists, homophobes and transphobes, but Nazis, fascists, violent extremists and terrorists. But this perfect inversion of reality is because – bottom line – the left has always been in a state of war with Almighty God and His laws and His ways. In other words, at war with Reality. They are in perpetual rebellion against the Creator of the Universe because Marxism, by its very nature, amounts to hatred and rejection of God so that human “saviors” (who are generally sociopaths) can create their make-believe paradise on earth – with them in charge, of course. That, in turn, always ends up as hell on earth, with the 20th century being the bloodiest century in all of human history, thanks to the very types of God-rejecting, power-addicted Marxist utopians who are currently obsessed with ruling America.
Does this sound like a loving Christian to anyone? Only in the hate-filled circles in which Kupelian dwells. He's so intent on demonizing the "other" that he won't recognize the damage he himself is causing. There's a reason WND is having to beg for money from readers, and it's not because there's a "big tech" conspiracy against it -- it's because the website he runs spews hate, lies and misinformation, all while falsely claiming to publish "truth" and delcaring itself a "Christian" organization.
Thge problem is not that "elites" have declared Christians their "enemy" -- it's that far-right Christians like Kupelian have constantly warred against anyone like them and have nothing but hate to offer, and he needs to peddle the victim narrative because he has nothing else.
P.S. Hey, David: You're invited to respond and try to prove us wrong.
Dick Morris' New Dubious Prognostication: Trump vs. Hillary In 2024 Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax pundit Dick Morris has a legacy of failed prognosications, a good portion of which involve Hillary Clinton -- for instance, he predicted she would runfor president in 2020, which didn't exactly work out. But Morris has a new book to promote, this one predicting that Donald Trump will run for president in 2024, which is a less risky prediction, given how aggressively Trump has been hinting at it. But the book is published by Humanix, Newsmax's book division, so it's all over Newsmax, including using it as an enticement to lure readers into subscribing to its magazine. And despite the fact that Morris' prediction is not exactly a stretch, he's been pushing it like it was, giving up his much more noble endeavor of calling out Tucker Carlson's pro-Russia leanings to revert to political hackery. Morris outlined Trump's alleged election strategy in a July 16 article:
Political consultant Dick Morris said President Donald Trump will focus heavily on getting the Hispanic vote in 2024 and work to secure early voting like Democrats did in 2020.
"One of the groups that we're particularly aiming at are Hispanics," Morris, the author of the new book, "The Return: Trump's Big 2024 Comeback," said Saturday during an appearance on Newsmax’s "American Agenda."
[...]
Getting voters to back Trump, he added, will be easy because of his experience as president.
"Donald Trump is a hybrid, like a Toyota car," Morris told Newsmax.
"He is half incumbent and half challenger. And in that role as a challenger, he'll go against Biden and the Democrats and explain all their failures.
"But then when they come back at him and say, 'How do we know you'll do any better?' he can come back as the half incumbent and say, ‘I did. I did better on all these things. The border was secure, crime was low, there was no inflation, and the Russians didn't invade Europe. They were intimidated. And that's how it'll be again.’ Trump is the only guy who can say that," he added.
A July 17 article by Eric Mack did much the same thing:
"The phrase is not 'likely,' the phrase is dead pipe certain: He's certain to run, and he is, I believe, certain to get the Republican nomination," Morris told Sunday's "Wake Up America." "I think he'll actually get it by acclamation. I don't think there'll be a primary fight."
All the talk of Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis being a viable challenger to Trump in the 2024 GOP primary, is just that, Morris added to host Katrina Szish.
"Well, there's a lot of Republicans who have sort of the 6-year itch," Morris added. "You've heard of the 7-year itch. It's been six years of Trump, but they're flirting with DeSantis and other candidates, but only Trump can win this election."
Morris also does more than a little sucking up to Trump on a personal level:
Morris noted his Trump relationship started when his father was "the best" real estate attorney Trump has ever had, and he spoke with the president every day during the 2020 presidential election.
"And I explain it all in this book, including anecdotes of discussions that we had that there were I think very significant," Morris concluded.
Unsurprisingly, Morris dragged Hillary into it again in his July 19 column:
It will be one of the great political re-matches of all time.
Hillary Clinton will run again for president in 2024 to stop Donald Trump.
[...]
Increasingly, Democrats and big media like The New York Times know that Biden can’t run again in 2024.
I share some of the backstories in my book about what his own supporters say about Biden behind his back. It’s pretty shocking.
These insiders know better than most that Biden’s quickly declining mental abilities, coupled with an economy spiraling out of control, means disaster for the Democrats in ’24.
Morris repeated the same series of events hereferenced in his failed 2020 prediction, which depended on every single potentially viable Democratic candidate flaming out, thus opening the door for Hillary:
It is clear to me that Hillary’s recent spate of media interviews, as well as opinion pieces penned by long-time Clinton cronies touting her as Joe Biden’s successor — are a prelude to her announcement she’s running.
When that happens, we will enter a new phase.
Trump is preparing for Hillary’s run – and knows he needs to create a new majority that will enable him to beat her and win in 2024.
As I explain in “The Return,” it’s Trump’s to lose and he won’t.
He repeated much of this in a Newsmax TV appearance the same day.
Even though the Media Research Center loves to attack the non-right-wing media for each and every mistake it makes, its "news" division, CNSNews.com, tries to bury its mistakes -- to the point that we notice only when we stumble across them in looking for something else. For instance, managing editor Michael W. Chapman wrote in an article from last November:
In a legal brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of a Mississippi law case that could upend Roe v. Wade, Jewish pro-life leaders argue that abortion “violates all Jewish ethics and laws,” constitutes “child sacrifice,” and has created a “silent Holocaust.”
The brief calls on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe, and two other pro-abortion decisions, Doe v. Bolton and Planned Parenthood v.Casey.
Quoting Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald in reference to abortion, the brief says, “There is a Holocaust taking place in America right now. We can’t hear it, because there are no barking dogs; we can’t see it, because there are no goose-stepping Nazi soldiers and no concentration camps; we can’t smell it because there are no gas chambers. But the net result is exactly the same. If we fail to act now . . . [t]he ‘silent Holocaust’ will have done its job, Hitler will have emerged victorious.”
[...]
Under the Nazis, who ruled for 12 years (1933-1945), an estimated 6 million Jews were killed. Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, more than 60 million babies have been killed by abortion in the U.S. alone. It is a “silent Holocaust” taking place in America, as Rabbi Buchwald said.
At some point after that -- CNS' search engine suggests that it happened on May 20 -- the Buchwald quote and reference was removed, as was a picture of Buchwald, and an editor's note placed at the top of the current version of the article:
CORRECTION: Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald was misquoted in the original version of this article. His quote has been removed, and CNS News apologizes for the error.
But that's not really accurate either. The brief from which Chapman cribbed the statement did quote him -- and continues to quote him -- saying that exact thing. But the brief lied about the context: Buchwald was talking about the assimilation of Jews into society who then may abandon their religion or simply obsess over the Holocaust, as well as a concern that Holocaust museums emphasize victimhood and not "communicate a joyous and positive message for Jewish life." The place where the ellipsis is in the quote makes that clear (deleted section in italics): "If we fail to act now, if we fail to share with our young Jews the beauty and meaningfulness of Jewish life and Jewish heritage, there will be few Jews left in the next generation who will even know that there ever was a Holocaust of European Jews."
Again: Buchwald wasn't misquoted -- Chapman accurately copied-and-pasted from the brief -- but the brief falsely portrayed the context of his quote and edited it to change its meaning. Weirdly, Chapman did not point out that the error was with the brief and not him, presumably to hide the fact that the brief got something wrong and highlighting it would harm the efficacy of the brief -- as if the brief hyperbolically attacking abortion as "child sacrifice" didn't also diminish the seriousness with which it should have been taken. Of course, as we know, the case in which the brief was filed did, in fact, overturn Roe v. Wade.
And there's something else Chapman was not going to point out: The false framing of Buchwald's quote appears to have originated with the Jewish Pro-Life Foundation, one of the parties behind the brief. A 2019 blog post displays Buchwald's words, dishonest ellipsis and all, under the headline "Why & How Jews Can Help Stop The Abortion Holocaust." The quote is repeated again at the end of the article, where readers are told "Keep in mind the prophetic words of Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald."
Perhaps we should instead keep in mind the dishonesty of this group, which feels that it must lie not only to its supporters but to the Supreme Court to push its agenda. Though Chapman gets a little blame as well for burying his cut-and-paste error.
MRC Slowly Backs Away From Musk After He Backs Out Of Twitter Deal Topic: Media Research Center
When last we checked in on the Media Research Center's hero worship of Elon Musk, it was still cheering his apparent all-but-done deal to buy Twitter and fawning over every pearl of alleged wisdom that tumbled out of his mouth. Cracks were beginning to show over the Twitter deal, though; a June 28 post by Autumn Johnson noted that "Tesla CEO Elon Musk reportedly told Twitter he needs more raw data from Twitter to determine the number of bot accounts on the platform." On July 6, though, Jeffrey Clark gushed that Musk "mocked Twitter’s out-of-control censorship in an American Revolution-themed post on Independence Day," before going on to complain that right-wing self-help guru Jordan Peterson for a transphobic tweet about actor Elliot Page (though, as per MRC style, he didn't explain why Twitter does not have the right to enforce its terms of service on its users).
When Musk pulled out of the deal to buy Twitter on July 8, Brian Bradley wrote what was effectively a press release for Musk:
Twitter refused to provide information on its fake or spam accounts, so Elon Musk is canceling his plan to buy the platform, according to a letter sent by Musk’s legal team to Twitter.
Musk asked Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to show evidence of Twitter’s claim that less than 5 percent of its accounts are fake or spam accounts before following through with purchasing the platform, according to a May 17 tweet. Musk said he believed that 20 percent of platform accounts were fake or spam.
Information on Twitter’s fake or spam accounts “is fundamental to Twitter’s business and financial performance and is necessary to consummate the transactions contemplated by the Merger Agreement because it is needed to ensure Twitter’s satisfaction of the conditions to closing, to facilitate Mr. Musk’s financing and financial planning for the transaction, and to engage in transition planning for the business,” the letter from Musk’s legal team says. “Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information.”
That's it -- Bradley made no effort to tell Twitter's side of the story and simply assumed that whatever Musk said was correct.
Meanwhile, Musk's life outside Twitter was getting messy: one of his children changed gender identity and sought a name change because “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form" (how terrible of a father do you have to be when you're among the world's richest people and one of your own children wants to sever ties with you?), and he got into a war with the MRC's beloved Donald Trump; Musk said it was time for Trump to “hang up his hat & sail into the sunset" and denied ever voting for him, to which Trump responded by calling him "another bullshit artist" who begged for government subsidies from him while he was president. He also didn't respond to his mother tweeting him happy birthday.
The MRC was silent on those things; when it was revealed that Musk has yet another baby mama -- fathering twins with an executive of one of the companies he owns -- it did grudgingly weigh in on that. Tierin-Rose Mandelburg complained in a July 11 post that "Former View Host Meghan McCain just low key put Elon Musk and Nick Cannon on blast in her op-ed for the Daily Mail, calling their baby making plans 'dystopian.'" (Cannon has eight children by five women.) The MRC used to look down on such immoral behavior; instead, Mandelburg cheered it by insisting that the situation "wasn't as creepy as McCain pointed out" and, hey, at least they didn't cause any abortions (that we know of): "People should get pregnant if and when they’re ready to, but you have to give Musk and Cannon credit too. In a world that has celebrated the slaughter of the unborn so publicly as of late, at least these celebrities support new birth!"
Meanwhile, things were percolating on the Twitter front as well. Twitter quickly assembled a legal team to decide how to respond to Musk's attempt to terminate the deal, and on July 13, the company sued Musk to force him to complete the deal. Oddly, that didn't draw a response from the MRC. It wasn't until Musk made plans to counter-sue -- and after it was reported that Musk had an affair with the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin -- that Catherine Salgado devoted a July 19 post to the legal aspect, which heavily relied on the right-wing New York Post for its information.
The MRC didn't address the issue again until a July 27 post by Johnson noting that "Twitter has scheduled a shareholder vote after Musk announced he wanted to pull out of his deal to buy the company," which copied-and-pasted from Bradley's earlier PR piece to fill it out.
It sure seems like Musk's luster has dimmed from the MRC now that he's trying to back out of his Twitter deal and his personal life becomes a mess in ways that the MRC's usual moral scolds can't quite tolerate.
Meanwhile, the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, appears to be keeping up its hero worship for now. A July 27 article by Patrick Goodenough touted how Musk, who also runs SpaceX (where he fired employees who criticized him, casting doubt on his purported support of free speech), "offered a two-word response" -- "bon voyage" -- "to Russia’s reported plans to exit the International Space Station."
WND Still Trying To Falsely Credit MyPillow For Retailer's Woes Topic: WorldNetDaily
Back in January 2021, we busted WorldNetDaily for falsely claiming that a drop in the stock of retailer Bed Bath & Beyond was directly tied to a right-wing boycott of the company after it stopped carrying MyPillow products when that company's leader, Mike Lindell, insisted on spreading lies about election fraud. The writer of that bogus article, Art Moore, is still trying to credit the decision not to stock MyPillow for the retailer's continued woes, writing in a June 29 article:
Bed Bath & Beyond – one of the first companies to stop selling Mike Lindell's MyPillow products because he challenged the result of the 2020 presidential election – now is curbing the air conditioning in its stores to compensate for slumping sales, according to a report from Bank of America.
The nationwide retailer's decision in January 2021 to quit selling Lindell's products was met with a boycott. Later that month, shares of Bed Bath & Beyond plunged 36.4%, the biggest one-day loss since going public in June 1992.
The company began 2022 with a plan to close 37 stores across 19 states.
As before, Moore offered no evidence that any MyPillow-related activity has anything at all to do with issues at Bed Bath & Beyond. Indeed, he went on to note reports that "An easing of COVID restrictions means a lower demand for home goods and supply chain problems have led to a lack of inventory to attract customers."
But then, if Moore didn't insist on lying to his readers, he wouldn't have a story hook.
NEW ARTICLE: Newsmax Snipes At The Competition, Part 2 Topic: Newsmax
In pointing out Tucker Carlson's pro-Putin, anti-American attitudes over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Newsmax found an anti-Fox News narrative with some traction. Read more >>
MRC Fails In Defending YouTuber's Anti-Biden Tweet Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Jeffrey Clark declared in a June 13 post:
A 25-year-old YouTuber and boxer seems to have found a new political punching bag: President Joe Biden.
Jake Paul didn’t pull his punches when he listed five of Biden’s “accomplishments” in a June 11 tweet that went viral with over 130,000 likes and counting:
Highest gas prices
Worst inflation
Plummeting crypto prices
Highest rent prices ever
Created new incomprehensible language.
Paul told his over 4 million Twitter followers: “If you’re reading this and voted for Biden and you still don't regret it then you are the American problem."
A fact-checker might have a difficult time refuting Paul’s post. On an unadjusted basis, gas prices hit $5 on average nationwide for the first time ever on June 11, The Washington Times. Inflation also spiked to 8.6 percent for the steepest increase since December 1981, and average rent prices surged above $2,000 a month for the first time ever, according to NPR.
Actually, Paul's post is easily refuted, since neither he nor Clark provided any evidence that Biden is solely responsible for all of those things and identified no single policy that resulted in them.Paul andClark are merely invoking the correlation-equals-causation fallacy. But when those refuatations specifically targeted Paul blaming Biden for "plummeting crypto prices" -- after all, the main attraction of cryptocurrency for many people is that it's unregulated and largely beyond the reach of any governemnt -- Clark gamely attempted a retort:
Biden issued a March executive order to empower the government to regulate cryptocurrencies. Sens. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) have teased legislation for “ taxation of digital assets.” Former Twitter CEO and crypto proponent Jack Dorsey pushed back on the Biden administration’s attempts to control digital currency in a January 2021 letter: “Regulations that unnecessarily restrict the future of cryptocurrency are deeply concerning, specifically in the case of this Proposal which places undue burdens on consumers who seek to use it in their daily life.”
After Biden’s executive order and amid threat of more regulation, values of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum have continued to spiral downward in recent weeks, with Ethereum alone “losing almost 20% [of its value] in the last 24 hours alone,” according to a June 13 Forbes article.
First: Dorsey's letter was dated Jan. 4, 2021 -- 16 days before Biden became president -- so he could not possibly have been criticizing "the Biden administration’s attempts to control digital currency." Second: The Forbes article reporting on plummeting crypto prices did not mention Biden's executive order as a factor, though it did point out that one cryptocurrency provider effectively collapsed and halted withdrawals. Indeed, Clark provides no evidence whatsoever that Biden's executive order -- which simply called for the government to look further into crypto's risks and benefits and investigate the possibility of a digital dollar currency -- had any effect on crypto markets.
Clark impressively failed in his task of defending Paul. Not a good image for his employer.
MRC Pretends It Never Tried To Discredit Story Of 10-Year-Old's Rape Topic: Media Research Center
When reports surfaced of a 10-year-old girl in Ohio who had been raped but the extreme anti-abortion laws in the state proved to be so onerous that she was forced to go to Indiana to undergo the procedure, the Media Research Center -- particularly executive Tim Graham -- tried to throw shade at the claim. In a July 4 post, Graham complained that Republican Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, where abortion is similarly effectively illegal, "was harassed to support an abortion for a raped 10-year-old girl in Ohio." He cheered that Noem clung to approved anti-abortion narratives and that "Noem focused on the predator and then expressed the pro-life position that abortion after rape is adding a tragedy to a tragedy."
After President Biden referenced the story, Graham returned with a July 10 post that sought to portray it as a hoax and attacking Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler for not immediately calling Biden a liar after being unable to immediately substantiate the claim:
This story was "too good to check" for the liberal media -- a ten-year-old rape victim in Ohio having to travel to Indiana to get an abortion. On Saturday, Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler noticed it when Joe Biden used it. "This is the account of a one-source story that quickly went viral around the world — and into the talking points of the president."
[...]
Kessler underlined "There is no indication that the newspaper made other attempts to confirm her account. The story’s lead reporter, Shari Rudavsky, did not respond to a query asking whether additional sourcing was obtained." The Star put out a lame statement that "the facts and sources...are clear."
That's not transparency! That doesn't build confidence in newspapers! Kessler noted this one-source anecdote was treated as fact all over the globe, and he included CNN's Dana Bash.
[...]
If Donald Trump picked up a story like this, Kessler would assign Pinocchios. As usual, there were no Pinocchios for Biden, and his take on the "presidential imprimatur" on this possibly mythical event is so mild that you could interpret it as "Oh, it's a fact now."
We would remind Graham that he and his employer demanded that all media treat the Hunter Biden laptop story that surfaced before the 2020 presidential election as unimpeachable fact despite the fact that the laptop had not been independently verified by anyone outside of the pro-Trump activists who were pushing the story.
But the story was true after all -- a 10-year-old girl was raped. But because the alleged rapist is an undocumented immigrant, it suddenly became a story that could fit into the MRC's pile of stock right-wing narratives. So it changed the focus of the story on the perpetrator instead of the victim in a trio of posts on July 13 and 14:
In that second article, Curtis Houck complained that CBS reporter Eliaine Quijano wanted to talk about things other than the alleged perpetrator's legal status: "Quijano cited '[t]he Indiana doctor who said she performed the abortion,' but skipped over how both her name (Caitlin Bernard) when mentioning the fact that she could face legal trouble for failing to report the rape to law enforcement." Houck didn't explain how Bernard's name was relevant to that particular telling of the story. And his allegation that Bernard "could face legal trouble for failing to report the rape to law enforcement" because it was reported the same day that, in fact, she did.
When the mother of the girl went on TV to defend the alleged rapist, the MRC found that more interesting as well. Jorge Bonilla's eyes seemed to metaphorically light up at the prospect of more undocumented aliens he could disparage: "Based on that experience, I assess that: the mother's distressed defense of the rapist suggests she is also here illegally and fears deportation, the defendant is the family's sole source of income, there is a likelihood of other children in the home, and Mom is exposed to removal of the children under dependency proceedings (failure to protect). Kevin Tober followed with the usual MRC "non-right-wing media aren't covering angles beneficial to right-wing narratives" item, and Bonilla served up another post on the development.
Tober wrote up a post complaining that the girl being forced to go to another state to get an abortion was being held up as an example of post-Roe America: "Of course, this ignores the fact that Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost had previously stated the girl could’ve received an abortion under her unique circumstances." In fact, the Ohio law is so vaguely written that any doctor who performed an abortion could easily face criminal charges.
Graham spent his July 15 column whining that the story made the front page of USA Today; he didn't tell his readers he previously tried to portray it as a hoax. The next day, he was whining that conservatives were called out for trying to prove the story was a hoax, rehashing his previous complaints:
On Friday's PBS NewsHour, anchor William Brangham twisted around the horrible child rape in Ohio as something the Republicans tried to "make hay" of, somehow not a story that Democrats and the liberal media were the first to exploit.
This began as a single-source story in the Indianapolis Star, and CNN's Dana Bash threw it in the face of Gov. Kristi Noem and tried to intimidate her about allowing the murder of a baby after rape. When Washington Post "Fact Checker" Glenn Kessler found the Star reporter and her abortionist source didn't want to talk, Republicans "made hay" of how the story might not be true. Then this controversy forced it to come out.
Graham did not apologize for doubting the story, nor did he admit he was one of the doubters. Alex Christy similarly whined in another July 16 post:
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle hypocritically weaponized the case of a 10-year old girl who traveled from Ohio to Indiana to seek an abortion by declaring that it was actually conservatives who were “weaponizing this story” by not initially believing its veracity.
During a panel discussion, Ruhle expressed to former colleague and current Washington Post Live anchor Leigh Ann Caldwell, “the truth matters but only if you hear it. We say it all the time and I want our audience to understand this week, many, many people heard this awful, awful story in Ohio, a ten year old girl was raped and she had to flee to another state to seek abortion services. Why did she do that? Well, we all know, because Roe v. Wade was overturned.”
[...]
To help Ruhle and Caldwell, it was the left and the media that originally weaponized this story by asking Republicans to comment on the case even though they would still be called extremists even if they embraced rape and incest exceptions. It should also not be considered right-wing hackery to except journalists to do a better job confirming single-source stories before turning them into high-profile national narrative drivers, even if they ultimately end up being true.
Again: The MRC demanded that the Hunter Biden laptop story be promoted as stated from partisan right-wing campaign operatives without any independent verification.
Meanwhile, Jeffrey Lord served up his own bizarre spin on the story in a July 16 column claiming that it proved Donald Trump right when he smeared Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists: "In the zeal of both President Biden and his liberal media allies to target the repeal of Roe with the story of the 10 year old girl being raped, they are suddenly confronted by the fact that they have accidentally confirmed Trump’s point about some illegals crossing the border and, their background un-vetted, committing rape. Which is exactly what appears to have happened to that 10 year old girl."
According to the quote Lord himself cited, Trump didn't say "some" immigrants were rapists; he portrayed nearly all immigrants as criminals and rapists befor adding that "some, I assume, are good people."
CNS Intern Touts Medical Misinformers Who Push Ivermectin Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has done its summer interns a disservice by letting them push fake news and partisan narratives instead of engaging in actual, fair-and-balanced joiurnalism. We saw this misuse again in a June 2 article by intern and "Investigative Journalism Fellow" Micky Wootten:
Attorney and former Ambassador C. Boyden Gray held a press briefing on the phone Wednesday to introduce a new lawsuit being filed against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over its claims that ivermectin is an ineffective treatment for COVID-19.
“Tomorrow we will be suing the FDA over its unlawful attempts to interfere with the practice of medicine, specifically, this crusade to halt the use of Ivermectin to treat COVID-19,” said Gray in a conference call with reporters. “This lawsuit is very important to preserve medical freedom and the doctor-patient relationship in the United States.”
[...]
Gray, former White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush and founding partner of Boyden Gray & Associates, is representing Drs. Mary Talley Bowden, Paul E. Marik, and Robert L. Apter, who have faced obstructions to their practice due to their promotion of Ivermectin as an effective COVID treatment.
The lawsuit was filed June 2 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, where one of the doctors being represented, Dr. Mary Bowden, resides.
Transcribing a conference call is hardly "investigative journalism," and that's all Wootten has done here -- he couldn't even be bothered to reach out to the FDA for a response to the lawsuit or even to explain or link to the FDA's stance against ivermectin. And he certainly wasn't going to tell readers that studies claiming that ivermectin works tend to get retracted for shoddy data.
Wootten also failed to examine the background of the plaintiffs for his readers -- presumably to hide how they're not really the most credible people when it comes to medicine. He noted that Bowden "was derided by Houston Methodist Hospital and forced to resign her privileges there as a result,” suggesting it was only due to her ivermectin advocacy; in fact, Bowden reportedly told patients that she had done research suggesting "the vaccine is not working," then falsely suggested and then walked back a claim that Methodist was not treating unvaccinated patients.
Marik, meanwhile, is an anti-vaxxer like Bowden and runs an organization that is dedicated to promoting non-approved COVID treatments like ivermectin -- which has shown itself to be something of a grift; according to STAT News, Marik's group charge $90 for an online appointment to get an ivermectin prescription and as much as $1,650 to meet with the group's founders. (The co-founder of Marik's group, Pierre Kory, got COVID despite following his own ivermectin-centric protocol.) Marik has also published research papers promoting ivermectin that have been retracted.
Wootten also made sure to inject his employer's partisan arratives into the "news" article:
CNS News asked the three doctors if they thought the mainstream media played any role in perpetuating the narrative against ivermectin.
According to Dr. Marik, “the mainstream media are responsible for perpetuating this misinformation and disinformation that has originated from the FDA,” which he attributes to the fact that the media “receive most of their advertising revenue from big pharma.”
Since Wootten made no effort to defend ivermectin as effective refused to debunk (let alone acknowledge) anything the FDA has published on it, there's no possible basis for Marik to attack accurate reporting on the ineffectiveness of ivermection as "misinformation and disinformation."
We've aready caught Wootten not living up to his title as "Investigative Journalism Fellow" when he uncritically repeated Tucker Carlson denying that the suicide deaths of law enforcement officers after the Capitol riot cannot be blamed on the riot when, in fact, the death of at least one officer has been ruled a line-of-duty death stemming from the injuries he received that day. Whatever CNS is teaching its interns to do, it ain't journalism.
MRC Plays Whataboutism With Badly Behaving GOP Senate Candidate Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is incapable of unequivocally criticizing a fellow conservative -- any criticism just be couched in whataboutism to push a narrative of equivalence with Democrats, no matter how foul the deed alleged. Case in point: Eric Greitens, former Missouri governor and current Republican candidate for a Senate seat in the state. We've already documented how Newsmax has tried to rehabilitate Greitens (with the help of columnist Bernard Kerik) despite the fact that he was forced to resign as governor over campaign finance improprieties and, more disturbing, an abusive sexual affair with shades of blackmail.
But in April, Greitens' ex-wife came forward with new accusations of domestic abuise -- something that caused even Newsmax to back off him. Meanwhile, Clay Waters rushed to play whataboutism in sn April 19 post:
New York Times political reporter Jonathan Weisman again singled out Republicans as solely to blame for some trait that is actually a bipartisan sin. Last month, Weisman singled out alleged support by GOP extremists for Russia against Ukraine.
In his Saturday report "As G.O.P. Candidates Face Accusations, Rivals Tread Carefully,” Weisman began with the sordid case of former Republican Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens and new allegations of domestic violence.
[...]
The name “Bill Clinton” somehow was unmentioned, a Democrat president who notoriously escaped allegations of sexual harassment and rape thanks to a compliant press that willingly smeared and disappeared his accusers.
Waters further harped on Clinton: "Again, Bill Clinton was credibly accused of rape by Juanita Broaddrick, and of sexual harassment by Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey." In fact, Broaddrick lacks credibility because she spent 17 years denying a rape occurred -- even testifying under oath to that effect -- before flip-flopping as part of Republican wars against Clinton.
When Greitens released an ad in June that effectively advocated violence against RINOs -- Republicans in name only, in far-right parlance -- most Republicans criticized him. The MRC did too ... but also played whataboutism.A June 21 post by Mark Finkelstein spent much more time criticizing a former far-right Republican for not being a Trump toady like him than he did criticizing Greitens:
Joe Walsh is a washed-up Illinois politician and a chameleon. He's gone from being a liberal Republican to a hardcore Tea Partier and ardent Trump supporter, to becoming so fiercely anti-Trump that in addition to voting for Joe Biden in 2020, Walsh even announced, as our Tim Graham has noted, that he would vote for a "socialist" over Trump.
Walsh lasted just one term in Congress. And his 2020 "campaign" for the GOP presidential nomination didn't even last half as long as Kamala Harris' fleeting, failed effort on the Dem side.
So why does CNN regularly invite this loudmouth non-entity onto its air? Because he can be counted on to trash Republicans. On this morning's New Day, co-host Brianna Keilar interviewed Walsh regarding a controversial TV ad from Eric Greitens, who is seeking the Republican nomination for US senator from Missouri.
The ad depicts an armed Greitens saying that he's going "RINO hunting," and calling on voters to "join the MAGA crew. Get a RINO hunting permit. There's no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn't expire until we save our country."
It's an appalling take after several years of political violence. But Walsh exploited Greitens' misdeed to smear Republicans as a whole.
[...]
Note: as you'll see in the chyron, presumably to give him some credibility, CNN disingenuously still touts Walsh as an "(R)" and a "Former Presidential Candidate." Walsh quit the Republican party more than two years ago. And someone who dropped out after getting about 300 votes in the caucuses in his neighboring state of Iowa, and whose campaign lasted about as long as the half-life of a gnat, can rightly be called a PCINO: Presidential Candidate In Name Only!
That's a highly unbalanced take. Nicholas Fondacaro served up a similarly unbalanced on the same day:
The leading “hot topic” for ABC’sThe Viewon Tuesday, was the disgusting campaign ad put out by Republican Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Eric Greitens where he and a group of gun-toting cosplay soldiers wanted to “hunt” RINOs. This naturally, led the cast to ignore the widespread condemnation from the right and insist the right thought it was “funny” and had become “the party of violence!”
Completely ignoring the assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh just two weeks ago by a leftist extremist, co-host Joy Behar began the discussion by declaring “the Republican Party has become the party of insurrection, revolt, and violence. And they don't make any bones about it anymore.”
And noting that the Democrats had their “DINOs” in the form of Senators Joe Manchin (WV) and Kristen Sinema (AZ), Behar outrageously suggested they’ve never had threats made against them from the left.“You don't see us threatening their lives, the Democrats are not the party of violence. [Republicans] have become the party of violence!” she shrieked.
In reality, was part of the uncivil media machine that encouraged the kind of activity that opened Kavanaugh to the attack. And Manchin and Sinema have indeed been the target of hostile confrontations.
Fondacaro eventually conceded that "Republican Lindsey Granger was in hand to school Behar on the fact that there has been widespread condemnation of Greitens, including long before this current run at elected office. Behar couldn’t believe the facts." But it's clear that thte MRC cares much more abouty playing whataboutism than serving up a substantive criticism of Greitens.
Indeed, the MRC's aim here is to pretend that Greitens' extremism isn't a substantial part of the conservative movement. Emma Schultz did just that in another June 21 post:
With the January 6 hearings well underway, the media and Democrats want to keep the focus on bashing the Republican Party and portraying them as an extremist party ahead of the midterm elections. So for Monday’s Don Lemon Tonight on CNN, Lemon and former Defense Secretary and Senator William Cohen added to the mix stating outright, that these people rely on violence and “write laws which advantage them to the great detriment of health, welfare, and safety of the American people.”
Referring to the Republicans supposedly “not condemning” a recent ad put out by Eric Greiten’s US Senate campaign encouraging voters to join in the fight for hunting RINOs (Republican in name only.)
Cohen went on to state that “candidates like these do not represent the best of this country,” for they “promote violence… promote lies, and dishonesty and dishonorable activity.” Completely ignoring the plethora of Republicans and Conservatives that have condemned Greitens.
[...]
Lemon himself has encouraged political violence himself, justifying the Black Lives Matter riots that took place over the summer of 2020, and promoting the Antifa terrorist group. Excusing the extreme violence at the time, Lemon described it as the “mechanism for a restructure of our country or for some sort of change.”
By that same definition, Schultz's boss, Brent Bozell, encoraged political violence by justifying the Capitol riot.
Meanwhile, Margaret Buckley couldn't even muster any criticism of Greitens' ad in her whataboutism take in a June 22 post:
The Democrat midterm gambit known as the House January 6 Committee held hearings Tuesday, spurring the host of MSNBC's Morning Joe to trash all Republicans on Tuesday morning. They used the desperate grab for attention by Republican Senate candidate Eric Greitens in Missouri as a way of trashing all Republicans and touting Democrats as the defenders of democracy.
For context, Greitens thought that it would be a good idea to promote his candidacy by depicting himself going into a house armed with a gun and other men in tactical armor. You see, he was “RINO hunting.” You can make your own conclusion about whether that tactic is going to work. But it works for MSNBC.
As always, co-host Joe Scarborough led the conversations by using their favorite F-word for Republicans: "Every Republican needs to call this out unless they want fascism to continue to rise in their party." Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson took it up a level higher by stating: “Yeah, Benito Mussolini would be proud. ” He even added that “this is not a legitimate political discourse, as the Republican Party might call it.”
[...]
However, the MSNBC show still missed the mark when critiquing the ad, especially when Scarborough stated that “Republicans don’t call it out.” These people are clearly failing to take a look at the bigger picture. The majority of people on the right do not condone ads like Greitens, and it has been criticized. And they are certainly not fascists.
The way Scarborough and friends described it made it sound like that every Republican is like Greitens and hates democracy. And on a more hypocritical note, it seems like Scarborough has forgotten about all the violence committed by the oh-so peaceful left such as the assassination attempt on Justice Kavanaugh, and numerous attacks on churches and pro-life pregnancy centers. So, branding everyone on the right as violent is downright wrong and absurd.
WND Columnist Thinks Pandemic Planning Is Evidence Biden Is A Power-Mad Dictator Topic: WorldNetDaily
In the midst of warning about vaguely defined things in "unknown territory" that night happen in the future in her June 24 WorldNetDaily column, Patride Lewis declared:
But ever since 2020 when governments across the entire globe united to forcibly lock down their populations, we've been veering into unknown territory. Or is it so unknown? Vaccine passports ("You're papers, please"), supply-chain disruptions, shortages of everything from fertilizer to baby formula, war in Europe, horrific weather extremes, electrical grid issues, civil tensions, riots, crop failures, avian flu, inflation, domestic terrorism from abortion radicals, diesel shortages … the list goes on, but you get the idea. People can handle one or two of these issues at a time, but all of them at once? Does that put us in unknown territory?
And these issues, let me remind you, are being presided over by one of the most incompetent administrations ever to darken the door of the White House. In fact, Biden is actually planning for the next pandemic as an excuse to seize more power.
Yes, apparently planning for the next pandemic -- which will happen eventually and is not a controversial thing to plan for -- by applying the lessons of the current one is apparently a bad thing, according to Lewis.
Her source for this was a post from something that used to be known as the Conservative Treehouse -- a peddler of far-right misinformation that was actually kicked off the WordPress blog platform for doing so -- but is not apparently now calling itself The Last Refuge featuring video clips of Biden saying he's requesting money to plan for response to the next pandemic. But the psudonymically-written post twisted the intent. It's introduced with this statement: "Earlier today, touting vaccines for babies and children 6months through 5 years of age, Joe Biden explained they needed more taxpayer money to give to pharmaceutical lobbyists to pay for vaccines and organize the next pandemic." We haven't watched the video, but we're pretty sure Biden said nothig about needing "more taxpayer money to give to pharmaceutical lobbyists."
A second video in the post was introduced by stating, "We The People are in an abusive relationship with Joe Biden’s government." Note that neither statement calls Biden president, presumably because they don't believe he was legally elected and are still in thrall to Donald Trump's lies about purported elecction fraud.
The rest of her column is paranoid prepper stuff like this: "All is NOT right in America and in many other places in the world. Something bad IS heading our way. In other words, it IS happening here. That's why people need to be ready to meet these challenges – physically, financially, and spiritually." About what you'd expect from someone who thinks Biden is sabotaging food manufacturing plants to turn Americans into socialists.
MRC's Jean-Pierre-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's hatefulnarrative on new White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is that she's an incompetent diversity hire, and Curtis Houck made sure to push it again in his biased writeup for the July 5 briefing, while again slobbering over Fox News' Peter Doocy for pushing right-wing talking points:
Holding her first press briefing since June 22, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre showed Tuesday that she hadn’t improved since her cringeworthy opening months in the top post. As part of that, she flailed when grilled by Fox’s Peter Doocy and Real Clear Politics’ Philip Wegmann over a 2018 voicemail from Hunter Biden’s laptop allegedly showing Joe Biden discussed business ventures with his son.
The now-President has repeatedly claimed he “never” discussed anything business-related with his son, so Doocy made sure to frame his question as one seeking comment not only about the voicemail, but the President having now been caught in a lie: “Why is there a voicemail of the President talking to his son about his overseas business dealings if the President has said he’s never spoken to his son about his overseas business dealings?”
As NewsBusters has reported, the liberal broadcast networks have completely ignored this bombshell.
Jean-Pierre replied that Biden’s position “stands,” but Doocy wasn’t having it. In turn, Jean-Pierre shut down and insisted she wouldn’t “talk about alleged materials from the laptop” in any capacity[.]
For the July 7 briefing, Houck had a meltdown over a non-right-wing reporter asking a reasonable question about diversity in hiring in the Biden administration -- which he screamed was "INSANE" in the headline -- before he got to the Doocy-fluffing:
During Thursday’s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre found herself facing a mountain of questions about WNBA star Brittney Griner’s unjustified detainment in Russia, but she saw plenty of others with some coming from the left on abortion and diversity and, of course, a helping of Peter Doocy.
Prior to Doocy Time, The Grio’s April Ryan fired off this insanity of a question concerning the vacancy at the top of the Secret Service:
Last question on the Secret Service director. Is equity and inclusion still a part of the President’s hiring practices when he looks at that spot because you have never had a Black man or someone — another color, I guess, be the head of that organization?
Jean-Pierre surprisingly didn’t bite, telling Ryan she won’t “get ahead of the process” even though “this is a President that prides on making sure that we have equity, that we have inclusion” and “an administration that looks like America.”
A few minutes later, Doocy began with gargantuan result out of the new Monmouth University poll:“Why do you think it is that 88 percent of people in this country polled by Monmouth think that the country is on the wrong track?” Jean-Pierre stuck to her cringeworthy talking points, insisting President Biden “understands what the American people are going through,” including the fact that “gas prices are high because of Putin's tax hike.”
After she insisted the White House has “a plan” while Republicans would rather “take away rights from the American people,” Doocy hit her with a reality check:“But do you think it's possible that your plans just is not popular with the American people right now?”
Jean-Pierre not only denied that’s the case, but went down the path of tone-deafness when she tried to simultaneously claim“[w]e understand what” “are feeling” even though “we are stronger economically than we have been in history.”
That anyone at the MRC thinks Griner's detention in Russia on dubious drug charges is "unjustified" is news to us. Houck might want to have a chat with the sports blogger he supervises, Jay Maxson, who is cheering how Griner is rotting in a disgusting Russian prison.
Scott Whitlock did the Doocy-fluffing honors in his writeup of the July 8 briefing:
Fox News journalist Peter Doocy and Karine Jean-Pierre went round and round on Friday as the White House Press Secretary repeatedly refused to condemn harassing Supreme Court justices, like Brett Kavanaugh, eating out at restaurants. At one point she just dismissed, “That is what a democracy is.”
Doocy started off with a fairly straight forward question: “Does the President think it’s appropriate for abortion-rights protesters to intimidate Supreme Court justices when they are out to eat? Like Brett Kavanaugh who had to sneak out of a steakhouse last night.”
Jean-Pierre insisted that the White House is against “violence” and “intimidation.” She didn’t explain how hounding a justice out of a restaurant isn’t intimidation.
Houck didn't explain how Kavanaugh could have been "intimidated" by the protesters given that he never saw or heard them or that they did not threaten violence.
WND Pushes 'Semi-Fictionalized' Claim That Jerusalem Mosque Is 'Temple of the Antichrist' Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily hates Muslims, and that hatred came to the fore again in a July 4 article by Joe Kovacs:
An author and reporter for a popular news site in Israel says "the Temple of the antichrist" already exists, and is standing right now amid Muslim structures on Jerusalem's Temple Mount.
The stunning claim comes from Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, senior reporter for Israel365 News, who has just released a semi-fictionalized book titled "The Master of Return and the Eleventh Light," providing a "personal look inside the world of the ultra-Orthodox settlers and how they are doing intense personal spiritual work to bring the final redemption – and how the Arabs are murdering us for precisely that reason."
In an interview for the book, Berkowitz took direct aim at the end-times view many Christians hold.
"I hear the Christians talk about the antichrist and the fake Temple that will arise in the end of days," Berkowitz said.
"Christians used to believe this was the Vatican, which I can understand. Rome stole all the Temple vessels and the Vatican is patterned after the Temple. The Vatican and the Jewish Temple cannot coexist because the Vatican came to replace the Temple."
"What I find a little strange is that no Christian has ever suggested that the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa, which were built directly on top of the ruins of the Temple Jesus walked in, are the Temple of the antichrist. Judaism does not have a concept of the Temple of the antichrist, but to me, it seems pretty obvious that the Muslim structures are the Temple of the antichrist."
If you've been inculcated to hate Muslims in general and Arabs in particular, then yes, you will be likely to find a way to beliefe that a Muslim mosque is the "Temple of the antichrist."
Kovacs did not cite Berkowitz offering any factual information to back up his claim. Instead, he gave Berkowitz a platform to insist that, despite all the evidence presented, he's not "anti-Arab":
Asked if his book is anti-Arab, Berkowitz said: "Absolutely not. I don't think I wrote a single anti-Arab thing. They do murder Jews but I don't see Arabs as inherently evil or the source of Israel's troubles. People who are on the outside think that 'settlers' (I use that term grudgingly) hate Arabs and live where they do in order to have a constant supply of fresh Arab children to eat for breakfast.
"I lived in Gush Etzion for 15 years and I can assure you that every single Jew who lives there does so at great personal expense for one reason; they love the God of Israel. That is the message of the book and I think that is the aspect of Israel that the media refuse to present. People who support Palestinians don't care how much suffering they bring to the Palestinians. But they absolutely oppose the Bible and the possibility that God is keeping his covenant with the children of Jacob."
Kovacs also let Berkowitz whine that "other authors are having their works dismissed by publishers if they mention Jews suffering from Arab terrorism, not going along with the narrative of Palestinians suffering under the 'occupation.'"
At no point did Kovacs talk to anyone else to offer a more realistic and less Islamophobic view of events in Israel or Berkowitz's hateful worldview.
CNS Miffed That Pelosi Met With The Pope Topic: CNSNews.com
In May, the uber-Catholics at CNSNews.com cheered when a bishop denied her Communion over her refusal to impose her Catholic faith on the entire country by outlawing abortion. Whwen Pelosi went to the Vatican and met with Pope Francis, they had a little meltdown.
It was foreshadowed in a June 16 article in which intern Janey Olohan was dispatched to Pelosi's weekly press confrenece to ask her a well-rehearsed right-wing gotcha question: "St. John Paul II said in Evangelium Vitae that abortion is murder. Pope Francis told the Pontifical Academy for Life that abortion is 'truly murder.' Do you agree with St. John Paul II and Pope Francis that abortion is murder?" Pelosi knew better than to play along with a clearly biased reporter:
Pelosi replied: "What I agree on is that whatever I believe or agree with the popes on is not necessarily what public policy should be in the United States, as people make their own judgments, honor their own responsibilities, and tend to the needs of their families."
An anonymously written June 29 article reported on the visit and its purported hypocrisy:
Pope Francis met today at the Vatican with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) and her husband Paul Pelosi, just two days after the speaker had publicly declared her commitment to pushing Congress to enact legislation “to enshrine Roe v. Wade into the law of the land.”
The Supreme Court last Friday released its opinion in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health, which declared that there is no federal constitutional right to abortion and that it is, therefore, up to the states to determine their own abortion laws.
On Monday, Pelosi released a “dear colleague” letter she had sent to other Democrats in the House of Representatives that day. The letter expressed her views on how the House should respond to the Dobbs decision.
“Our Caucus has been exploring avenues to protect the health and freedom of American women,” said Pelosi.
“Among them,” she said, “is legislation that: …Once again passes the Women’s Health Protection Act: landmark legislation to enshrine Roe v. Wade into the law of the land.”
Dishonest Catholic and right-wing ragebot Bill Donohue vented his spleen in a column the same day, pretending to be aghast that Pelosi receive Communion at the Vatican:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who rejects the Catholic Church's teachings on abortion, marriage, and sexuality, received Holy Communion on June 29 at a papal Mass in St. Peter's Basilica. The pope was in attendance, but did not give out Communion.
Pelosi's stunt was done to undercut her bishop, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone: he has told her not to present herself for Communion, citing her lust for abortion rights.
Some will blame the Vatican for what happened; others will blame Pelosi; still others will blame Cordileone. There is only one person to blame — Pelosi.
[...]
Pelosi waiting in line to receive Communion is akin to a murderer waiting in line to pay his respects to his victim at a Catholic wake. The analogy is poignant in more ways than one.
Donohue didn't mention that a single bishop's denial of communion is not binding on other dioceses -- or that Pope Francis himself specifically said not to deny Communion to or excommunicate anyone solely on the issue of abortion.
Another anonymously written article, on July 1, seemed miffed that Pelosi got even more quality time with the pope:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday visited the “Christian community” of Sant’Egidio in Rome after visiting the Vatican and told the people there that she had “had the pleasure of attending Mass this morning with His Holiness.”
“We had the pleasure of attending Mass this morning with His Holiness and many, many, many leaders of the Church,” said Pelosi.
“And [Pope] Francis’ name always reminds me of St. Francis saying: ‘We preach the Gospel; sometimes, use words.’ We also pray that—ask God in his anthem, in his song of St. Francis, to make us all instruments of God’s peace,” she said.
So in the spirit of St. Francis, which is the name of His Holiness and my city of San Francisco, I thank you for preaching the Gospel, sometimes using words,” she said.
The article somehow managed to avoid shoehorning in Pelosi's stance on abortion.
We've noted how Media Research Center sports blogger John Simmons had a meltdown over sports teams and leagues refusing to hate gay people as much ashe does during Pride Month in June. Simmons also brought his transphobia to the month's proceedings as well. In a June 14 post, he hyped a poll claiming that many Americans oppose transgender women in sports:
The theme of WorldNetDaily's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine for July was "
Newsmax pundit Dick Morris has a legacy of failed prognosications, a good portion of which involve Hillary Clinton -- for instance, he 
Even though the Media Research Center loves to attack the non-right-wing media for each and every mistake it makes, its "news" division, CNSNews.com, tries to bury its mistakes -- to the point that we notice only when we stumble across them in looking for something else. For instance, managing editor Michael W. Chapman wrote in an 
When 
Back in January 2021, 
The Media Research Center's Jeffrey Clark declared in a June 13 
When reports surfaced of a 10-year-old girl in Ohio who had been raped but the extreme anti-abortion laws in the state proved to be so onerous that she was forced to go to Indiana to undergo the procedure, the Media Research Center -- particularly executive Tim Graham -- tried to throw shade at the claim. In a July 4 
CNSNews.com has done its summer interns a disservice by letting them push 
The Media Research Center is incapable of unequivocally criticizing a fellow conservative -- any criticism just be couched in whataboutism to push a narrative of equivalence with Democrats, no matter how foul the deed alleged. Case in point: Eric Greitens, former Missouri governor and current Republican candidate for a Senate seat in the state. We've already documented how Newsmax has 
In the midst of warning about vaguely defined things in "unknown territory" that night happen in the future in her June 24 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center's 
WorldNetDaily hates Muslims, and that hatred came to the fore again in a July 4 
