Gaslighting: MRC Pretends Dems Are The Real 'Extremists' On Abortion Topic: Media Research Center
Through this election season, theMedia Research Center has been trying to gaslight readers by pretending that Democrats are the real "extremists" on abortion, not those on the right -- even though the MRC wants to create an Orwellian surveillance scheme to monitor women lest they cross state lines to have an abortion. Kyle Drennen complained in a May 20 post:
NBC, ABC, and CBS were in full panic mode over Oklahoma passing “the most restrictive abortion law in this country.” ABC’s Good Morning America went so far as to wail that there was “a race among the states to pass the most extreme law restricting abortion.” However, none of network coverage examined some of extreme pro-abortion laws in leftist states across the country.
[...]
While the networks were eager to throw around words like “extreme” or phrases like “the most restrictive law in the country” when it came to regulating abortion in red states, the left-wing media never seem to show any concern for pro-abortion laws in blue states going too far.
When Colorado passed a radical law just last month that would allow abortions to be performed right up to the moment of birth, Politifact rushed to defend the measure from criticism and The Washington Postspent it’s time exclusively denouncing “extreme” pro-life laws.
The "abortion up to the moment of birth" claim right-wingers like the MRC love to tar pro-choice supporters with is little more than a canard. As Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler detailed, only 1.3 percent if abortions happen over 21 weeks of gestation, and many of those are done as a result of discovery of catastrophic birth defects other fetal anomaly. Drennen did not name a case in which an abortion of a viable fetus was done "at the moment of birth."
Scott Whitlock cheered a CNN anchor who bought into the right-wing narrative in an Aug. 29 post:
The networks are eagerly pushing the idea that support for abortion rights against an extreme GOP is powering a Democratic comeback in the midterms. What they aren’t telling you about is just how radical many of the Democratic Senate candidates are. For instance, Tim Ryan in Ohio supports abortion up to the day of birth. And yet this hasn’t been a story on the network newscasts. His name has only come up twice in the month of August.
Yet, shockingly, it was CNN and anchor Dana Bash who committed journalism and grilled the Democrat on Sunday. Interviewing the candidate on State of the Union, she demanded, “You’re criticizing your Republican opponent for not supporting abortion exceptions. So, I want to ask about your position. What restrictions, if any, do you believe there should be on abortion?”
[...]
Journalists have a responsibility to cover both ends of the abortion spectrum. If Republicans supporting most or all restrictions is extreme, so are opposing all restrictions.
Like Drennen, Whitlock did not cite any case in which a woman aborted a healthy fetus at "the time of birth."
CNN on Tuesday spent over seven minutes hyping Republicans trying to hide their allegedly extreme position when it comes to abortion. Reporter Kyung Lah spotlighted GOP senatorial candidates changing their website now that they have the nomination. But nowhere in the segment was there anything on the extreme stance of Democrats when it comes to abortion.
Host Brianna Keilar parroted the Democratic talking points about radical Republicans: “The Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade has energized voters and made abortion rights a flashpoint in the midterm elections. It's given Democrats a boost. Now, some Republican candidates who were strongly opposed to abortion are suddenly softening their stance.”
In the month of August, Joe Biden’s approval rating climbed back into the low 40s and the Democrat/Republican congressional preference poll closed to a statistical tie. The liberal network newscasts are eager to promote a new narrative: Democrats are making a comeback in the midterms and it’s all because Republicans are extreme on abortion.
CBS, CNN, and other outlets have pushed the idea of a “flashpoint” over supposedly rigid Republicans holding outrageously severe positions on abortion. But Democrats in Congress this summer supported legislation that would dismantle most, if not all, restrictions.
(According to CNSNews.com, the Susan B. Anthony List denounced a vote on the bill as the “Abortion on Demand Until Birth Act.”)
Additionally, Democratic senatorial and gubernatorial candidates hold radical views on the issue, supporting abortion right up until birth. Only 34 percent of Americans support abortion in the second trimester and just 19 percent in the third. So this position is the definition of extreme.
And the Orwellian surveillance state the MRC wants is not?
MRC executive Tim Graham pushed the narrative in a Sept. 12 TV hit: "On Monday's Spicer & Co. on Newsmax, NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham took on Chuck Todd's softball questions for Vice President Kamala Harris on NBC's Meet the Press. Todd lamely asked Harris if the border was secure, as if everyone doesn't know the answer, and didn't in any way find the Democrats were extreme on abortion." Graham made sure not to mention his employees' extreme advocacy of Orwellian surveillance.
Alex Christy spent a Sept. 22 post attacking Kessler's above-noted fact-check, and his further statement that "the GOP attacks are disingenuous at best. They imply that late-term abortions are common — and that they are routinely accepted by Democrats," huffing that "If Kessler wants to argue for radical and unpopular abortion positions, he should take it the opinion page, because that isn’t a fact-check." But like his co-workers, Christy cited no case of an abortion of a healthy, viable fetus "at the moment of birth," and he did not otherwise counter Kessler's facts.
Whitlock played whataboutism to distract from Herschel Walker's abortion stance in an Oct. 10 post:
The leftist partisans posing as political journalists at ABC want you to think that the candidate in Georgia with an extreme position on abortion is Herschel Walker. On Monday, Good Morning America allowed Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock to slam his opponent as the only ideologically rigid candidate. No mention of the fact that Warnock opposes ANY restrictions right up until birth.
Reporter Rachel Scott insisted, “Walker opposes abortion, no exceptions. His opponent, Senator Raphael Warnock making it clear he supports abortion rights.” She then played a clip of Warnock attacking, “I support reproductive choice. My opponent, on the other hand, is talking about a nationwide ban.”
ABC, yet again, failed to note just how radical Warnock is on abortion. Saying he “supports abortion rights” is an understatement. As noted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on June 30, the Democrat refused to mention ANY restrictions he supports:
Whitlock refused to address his hypocrisy in defending Walker's anti-abortion stance while also joining the MRC in shielding him from responsibility for the fact that he paid for a girlfriend's abortion. Instead, he whined that "the networks only want to focus only on the allegations that Walker paid for an abortion in 2009, devoting over 27 minutes by last Friday.
Tim Graham spent an Oct. 22 post complaining that "PolitiFact tried to claim that "codifying Roe" isn't the same abortion without limits. But Barnes was endorsed by NARAL Pro-Choice America and touted he supports the "Women's Health Protection Act." These people really need to absorb the no-limits text of that extreme bill." Like his minions, Graham named no case in which a woman aborted a healthy fetus "at the moment of birth."
In today’s episode of things that make no sense, people who want laws that permit the slaughter of innocent children are celebrated while those who support someone’s right to life are considered “extremists.”
The life-affirming group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America recently released a video regarding the left’s views on unrestricted abortions which furthered the point that the media celebrates pro-abortionists and their views yet likens pro-lifers as villains.
[...]
To help these candidates, the media spends time glorifying people who support unrestricted abortion rights. Whether it’s in their approval and promotion of the views of pro-abortionists or their negligence in asking about abortion limits, left leaning media aims to prop up candidates in favor of unlimited abortion.
Unrestricted abortion is barbaric and evil.
Picture this: a baby girl presently weighs 7 pounds, is roughly 19 inches long, is fully capable of breathing on her own, is due tomorrow and is presently just a few inches up the birth canal. People who support unrestricted abortions would have no problem injecting that innocent child with poison to kill her and then ripping out her remains.
That view is NOT considered “extreme” by todays thought police.
Like the rest, Mandelburg did not name a case in which that actually happened -- probably beause it's ridiculous and nonsensical to think that a woman who carried a healthy baby to term would suddenly decide to abort it because, well, who knows what bizarre reason Mandelburg would ascribe to this mythical person for purposes of hate and partisan gain. Instead, she continued to whine:
And then there’s the media that has a history of likening pro-lifers to “extremists.” ABC’s Good Morning America once said that there’s “a race among the states to pass the most extreme law restricting abortion.” The Washington Post titled a piece “Just how extreme are these new red-state abortion laws?” MSnBC’s “Deadline White House” claimed that pro-life laws are from “far-right extremists.”
It’s obvious that the media has conducted biased reporting. They want to push the narrative that abortion is good and widely accepted. They want abortion supporters to be promoted and glorified while at the same time falsely calling life supporters “extremists.”
Remember, Mandelburg thinks creating an Orwellian surveillance state for women isn't extreme at all, so maybe she's a tad biased and her opinion shouldn't be trusted.
Rachel Alexander fretted in her Oct. 10 WorldNetDaily column:
It's becoming more and more apparent that grifters are hijacking the conservative movement, people more concerned with making money than helping the cause. They've figured out that inflammatory rhetoric disguised as news, combined with outrageous comments from famous figures on the right, gets clicks and opens wallets, so this now drives the right's agenda. Instead of measured, calculated steps being taken to accomplish a conservative agenda, those who scream the shrillest set the platform.
The grifters are fond of throwing around certain important words like the Constitution, patriot, MAGA, God, America First and RINO – our favorite words, so they sound like they're one of us. But they frequently misuse them. They'll declare that the Constitution requires whatever they say it does, even if they're not constitutional experts and haven't bothered analyzing years of case law.
It doesn't matter how lengthy your conservative credentials are, how much you've studied constitutional law, or how much your position aligns with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over theirs; if you don't go along with their determination of what the Constitution says, you're now a RINO who doesn't care about the Constitution.
These loudmouths do outrageous things to get attention, which leave the rest of us stuck defending them since we all realize there's a slippery slope; if we allow the left to make inroads into defeating them, it will make it easier for them to come after the rest of us. But it wastes valuable time; it puts us constantly on the defensive, treading water instead of making advances.
It's highly ironic that she's making this complaint at WND, which has been involved in a years-longgrift to stay alive. Remember that bogus cybercurrency giveaway scam it ran a few years back?
Alexander's unintentional irony continued:
One of the most damaging areas where this is happening is election integrity. Hysterical outlets on the right constantly run blaring headlines declaring there has been voter fraud and that people should go to prison – but a quick perusal of the law often finds that there wasn't any crime. Often there is a civil violation, or a body in charge of investigating such as the Arizona Senate decides not to take any action due to a single RINO legislator impeding the effort.
We saw this happen with COVID-19 vaccines. What started out as advocating for freedom of choice when it came to the vaccine got hijacked by loud, angry voices asserting what had traditionally been more of a fringy left position championed by Robert Kennedy Jr., anti-vaccine. This left people on the right in the strange position of disagreeing with Donald Trump on the vaccine, more evidence something was off. And the left happily went along with rewriting the debate for us.
An accountant for what's become known as "scam PACs'' went to prison for his role in raising $2.2 million using Ken Cucinelli's name. The PAC donated only $10,000 to Cucinelli's gubernatorial campaign in Virginia, according to Cucinelli. This Conservative StrikeForce PAC raised more than $2.8 million between January 2013 and June 2014, but only $82,000 of that went to candidates or campaign committees.
Grifters are taking over conservative media, too. Good journalism never was expected to make money – that's why the left has gotten away with PBS for so many years; people realize there's a disconnect. The leading conservative magazine of the 20th century (before it became much more moderate during this century), National Review, was the product of William F. Buckley Jr. who came from wealth. When it launched, everyone who was a part of the magazine was expected to either be supported financially by their family or have another job. It didn't turn a profit for years. In 2015, its editor at the time, Rich Lowry, converted the magazine into a nonprofit, stating, "[P]ublishing a serious opinion magazine has never been a profitable business, and never will be."
Of course, WND manages to lose money andhave terrible journalism. Alexander isn't going to mention that, of course -- she wants to keep WND as an outlet for her writing, after all. Instead, she unironically continued:
As the former Maricopa County Elections attorney (when it was under better leadership), who has written more about voter fraud than almost any other reporter, I can tell you there's a lot of fake news accompanying the valid evidence of wrongdoing. So when little happens in terms of consequences, patriots feel worse than they need to. Yes, our country is in a bad place, going downhill fast, but adding in fake news leads to unnecessary confusion, anxiety and makes our side look like the boy who cried wolf or ignorant when we get caught repeating the fake news. Look what happened to QAnon.
MRC Embraces Story Of Assaulted Campaign Worker (Who's Also A White Supremacist) Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Kevin Tober huffed in an Oct. 24 post:
A canvasser for Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) was reportedly assaulted and seriously injuredlate Sunday night while going door-to-door for Rubio’s reelection campaign, according to a statement put out by Rubio’s campaign. On Monday, all three evening newscasts ignored the vicious politically motivated attack on an innocent Republican volunteer.
Instead, ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News had plenty of time to report on local weather forecasts, the Powerball Jackpot numbers hitting $625 million, and a recall of various dry shampoo products.
“Last night one of our canvassers wearing my T-shirt and a DeSantis hat was brutally attacked by 4 animals who told him Republicans weren’t allowed in their neighborhood in Hialeah, Florida,” Rubio said in a tweet Monday morning.
“He suffered internal bleeding, a broken jaw &amOn Fox News’s Jesse Watters Primetime, host Jesse Watters and radio host Dana Loesch tore into the media for their failure to report on this horrific political attack.
According to The Daily Wire, “Hialeah Sgt. Jose Torres revealed that the victim was “an unidentified 27-year-old,” and was struck “multiple times in the face and the head causing the injuries.”
[...]
If this was a Democrat campaign volunteer who was assaulted like this by a Republican, the media would be howling over it nonstop, and it would be on the front page of every newspaper in the United States.
Tober noted that the victim was unidentifed, and it turned out there was a good reason for the victim being unidentified at this ppoint -- one that made Tober's anufactured outrage age very poorly very quickly. A few hours after Tober's post went live, it was revealed by the Miami New Times that the victim was identified as Christopher Monzon, who is well known in the area of Florida where he was canvassing as a white supremacist who was known as the "Cuban Confederate," and that he attended the 2017 far-right protest in Charlottesville, Va., that ended with a counterprotester being killed. (He has clamed to have expressed regret for some of his racist hate.) And contrary to Tober's parroting of Fox News types who portrayed Monzon's assault as politically motivated, no such motivation was mentioned in the police report on the incident.The New Times also reported that members of the far-right Proud Boys were guarding Monzon's hospital room.
This seems like something Tober would want to add to his post to avoid looking liike he's defending a white supremacist. But, no, his post remains live, uncorrected, and non-updated.
And after these unsavory revelations about the victim, you'd think the MRC would steer clear of the story -- but you'd be wrong. Kathleen Krumhansl doubled down in a post the next day, asserting reporting Monzon's white supremacist background amounted to victim-shaming (no, really):
A volunteer for Senator Marco Rubio (R) Fla., was in the hospital after being brutally attacked during a midterm campaign event, and just like Rubio predicted over a Univision interview following the incident, the very network ended up victim-shaming the Republican to the point of implying that perhaps he deserved to be beaten.
The assault, which happened in Hialeah over the past weekend, left canvasser Jesús López with a broken jaw and internal bleeding. Yet the viciousness of the attack, as Rubio anticipated, mattered little to anchor Satcha Pretto, who made sure to emphasize that “the victim had previously been involved in some protests and had publicly spoken out in favor of white nationalism.”
Watch as the main national Spanish-speaking network covers up political violence from the left - like Rubio warned would happen.
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Note how the anchor uses ´alleged´, ´appears to´ and ´allegedly´ when referring to the attacker, who in Pretto´s words, was apparently “upset that the victim was handing out Republican flyers in his neighborhood while wearing a Governor Ron DeSantis cap and a Senator Marco Rubio T-shirt.”
In contrast, when talking about the victim, Christopher Monzón, there is no ´alleged´, ´allegedly´, or apparently: instead, as per the anchor, it is a given fact that the Republican volunteer “had previously been involved in some protests and had publicly spoken out in favor of white nationalism.” No ifs, ands or buts.
Krumhansl offered no evidence that Monzon wasn't a white surpremacist -- the public record is pretty clear on that, to the point that no "allegedly" is required.And we thought that one of the few things people across the political spectrum could agree on is that white supremacists deserved to be shamed; Krumhansl didn't explain why she thought Monzon shouldn't be. Then again, she's clearly not someone who's into facts, given that she went on to push the unsupported narrative tha tMonzon was the victim of a political attack:
Like Rubio noted, “The difference that exists here today is that when there is political violence from someone who they say is a supporter of the right, they devote hours and hours of coverage to it. When it comes from the left, either it is not covered, or the victim is blamed, or it is not talked about anymore.” Rubio has a point, given Univision’s non-coverage of the Congressional baseball practice shooting once it became known that the shooter was a deranged Sandernista.
On mark: So far at Univision, the violent beating of Monzón has been granted exactly 1:02 minutes of air time, and this during their morning kaffeeklatsch. Most probably, that will be all that Univision audiences will hear about the leftist political violence that left López seriously injured and in need of facial reconstruction surgery, simply for being a Republican.
The MRC was somehow so proud of Krumhansl giving a pass to white supremacism that her post was translated into Spanish.
Meanwhile, the Rubio narrative the MRC parroted continued to fall apart -- Florida Republicans had paid thousands to Monzon for get-out-the-vote efforts, and it turned out that Monzon started claiming the attack was politically motivated only after Rubio tweeted the claim, the alleged assiliant has nevervoted, and the assailant's mom said the attack had nothing to do with politics.
Not only has the MRC not told its readers about this, it hasn't addressed the story since. Even it can see no benefit in pushing this story further -- though, apparently, also no benefit in correcting the record.
CNS Continued To Promote Kanye West's Right-Wing, Pro-Trump Turn Topic: CNSNews.com
When last we left off, CNSNews.com had fully embraced Kanye West for his bromance with Donald Trump. It continued to crank out the Kanye praise and stenography later in 2018:
When CNN panelists in October 2018 criticized West's embrace of Trump as "what happens when Negroes don’t read," CNS was not only there to document the atrocity, it even called in Herschel Walker to criticize it (which, in retrospect, may not have been the best idea, though at the time Walker was being built up by right-wing media like CNS to be a political candidate). CNS columnist came out in force to defend West:
Allen West complained not only about this but also that "Even Saturday Night Live could not resist in making the Kanye West Oval Office visit the brunt of its jokes" and that any criticism of Kanye is just part of "the tyranny of collectivism."
David Limbaugh insisted that "Democrats have no solutions anymore and thus are reduced to crass, divisive identity politics ... This explains why they demonize Kanye West and any other black person who dares to stray from the prescribed liberal dogma."
By 2019, CNS was giving space to West's more esoteric ideas, like a July 2019 piece by Craig Bannister headlined "Kanye West Designing 'Star Wars'-Themed 'Living Spaces for the Homeless'." In September of that year, Michael Morris was touting West's then-wife, Kim Kardashian, saying that Kanye "had an amazing evolution of being born again and being saved by Christ." More pontification was given a platform in an October 2019 article: "Songwriter and record producer Kanye West said his parents fought for the right to express their opinion, not the right to vote for politicians the “white liberals” said blacks are “supposed to vote for.” West added that Democrats have pushed policies that compel blacks to abort their children."
In November 2019, managing editor Michael W. Chapman cheered how "Evangelical leader Franklin Graham praised singer/songwriter Kanye West for using his talent to 'point thousands of people to Jesus Christ,' especially young people, and urged Christians to pray for West, stressing that liberals will oppose him and the Devil will try to discourage and 'destroy him.'"A couple weeks later, Melanie Arter served up related pontification:
Rapper Kanye West joined Pastor Joel Osteen’s congregation on Sunday and gave his testimony on how God had a calling on his life that he had been ignoring for a long time, and that even in his lowest moments, God was sending him visions and inspiring him.
“I know that God’s been calling me for a long time, and the devil’s been distracting me for a long time. And when I was in one of my low points, God was there with me and sending me visions and inspiring me, and I remember sitting in the hospital at UCLA after having a mental breakdown, and there’s documentations of me drawing a church and saying—writing ‘start a church in the middle of Calabasas,’ and even after that, I went and made the Life of Pablo album,” he said.
In January 2020, Chapman returned to cheer that "During a press conference about the upcoming Super Bowl, Kansas City Chiefs defensive end Frank Clark wore a sweatshirt displaying a photograph of President Donald Trump and musician Kanye West. When asked about his sweatshirt at the Jan. 24 press conference, Clark said, 'Never forget man! Y'all know the moment when Donald Trump met Kanye, a very historical moment in our history!'"
In April 2020, CNS published a column by its favorite dishonest Catholic, Bill Donohue, headlined "Kanye's Christian Rebirth Really Does Seem Genuine":
He says he has given his life to Christ, crediting Jesus as his "anchor" and saying he is "definitely born again." He recognizes that there are those who have done things "with the word of Christ that were bad," but, he hastens to add, "that's not going to stop my love for Christ. I'm going to keep on expressing what God has done for my life."
Jesus, West says, has been a source of "healing," noting that his succumbing to alcohol—he wound up drinking Grey Goose in the morning—was the work of the devil. He began rebounding the day he said, "Devil, you're not going to beat me today." He says he hasn't had a drink since.
[...]
Perhaps the most surprisingly astute observation West made—it is shared by many devout Catholics and evangelicals—is his comment on surrender.
"Now all of that energy and that creativity that I have channeled and put on track comes from me surrendering to God and saying that everything is in God's will."
That is the voice of a mature Christian.
Kanye West is his own man. He is also a man at home with the Creator. He should be welcomed, not disparaged, for going against the grain of the dominant culture.
West continued saying more right-wing-friendly things for which CNS served as a dutiful stenographer in the runup to the 2020 presidential election:
These were joined by a November 2020 column by James Ensor parroting right-wing support for West's stated position on abortion:
Kanye West’s recent tearful call for the black community to reject abortion as child-killing gives us hope that a wave of black Americans will flood into the pro-life movement. If so, it means the end of abortion as a business!
West’s plea erupted from a contrite heart. It was public and loud. Recalling the pressure he put on his pregnant wife, he shouted, “I almost killed my daughter!” His own words hit him and he broke down weeping, “I almost killed my daughter.” The raucous crowd went silent.
When painful truths rise up on the tears of repentance like this, it tends to crash through all our defenses. In that silence, I suspect hearts and minds were undergoing radical transformation regarding abortion.
Ensor went on to repeat a right-wing myth about the locations of abortion clinics in black neighborhoods and falsely equated Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger's onetime support for eugenics to "white supremacy."
CNS didn't reference West again until last month. We'll get into that soon.
MRC Continued to Exploit Fetterman's Stroke For Oz's Gain Topic: Media Research Center
We've shown how the Media Research Center held off on attacking Democratic Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman until it decided that his stroke could be exploited as a partisan issue to help his Republican opponent, Mehmet Oz. Curtis Houck spent an Oct. 17 post, headlined "CLOWN SHOW," coimplaining that a Philadelphia newspaper endorsed Fetterman over Oz, despite the former being "mentally and physically incapacitated":
Major newspapers are prone to endorse Democrats. It’s almost as predictable as Joe Biden liking ice cream or Donald Trump posting on social media.
But one published Sunday in The Philadelphia Inquirer caught our eye, as while it wasn’t surprising that they endorsed the mentally and physically incapacitated Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) for Senate, but rather how they ironically claimed that it’s Fetterman’s opponent, Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz, who’s the “wholly unprepared” person to assume office.
The subhead was comical: “The Republican nominee, Mehmet Oz, is wholly unprepared to be the commonwealth’s U.S. senator.”
[...]
Only two paragraphs in the middle were spent on his stroke and, predictably, the paper dismissed concerns and argued it “should not be inherently disqualifying” as sitting Senate Democrats Ben Ray Lujan (NM) and Chris Van Hollen (MD) have recently suffered strokes.
“There is no reason Fetterman cannot serve effectively after his stroke. Fetterman said that one of the most significant challenges of his recovery involves auditory processing — a condition in which his comprehension of certain words and phrases is occasionally delayed,” they argued.
Adding that it only took him “a few seconds to ensure that he has understood a questioner correctly” and then a few “more to collect his thoughts and find the right words,” the left-wing rag insisted such a level of incapacity won’t keep him from “know[ing] what his values are and...communicating them.”
Houck huffed in an Oct. 20 post that one TV segment "wrapped on the Pennsylvania Senate race and ignored Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s (D-PA) mental incapacity."
Clay Waters played a bizarre round of whataboutism in an Oct. 21 post comparing Fetterman to ... Herschel Walker?
The New York Times drips with understanding when it comes to the health problems plaguing Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman, but their sympathy turns to snideness when it comes to the dissociative identity disorder diagnosis of Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s Friday edition story on Walker, a football legend, appeared under this snide headline: “Walker Says He Has ‘Overcome’ Mental Illness, but It’s Not So Simple, Experts Say.”
Stolberg seemed to hint that Walker was using his mental illness as a convenient excuse.
[...]
The problem is that when the impaired Democrat Fetterman faced questions, the media, including the Times, circled the wagons in his defense. Some outlets even went after mainstream media reporters who dared question Fetterman’s fitness for office.
The same paper that pushes “Long COVID” and demands surgery for “transgender” teens to cure gender dysphoria has suddenly recovered its skepticism about medical disorders.
Waters didn't mention how his employer, along woith the rest of the right-wing media, circled their wagons around Walker after he was credibily accused of paying for an abortion.
(Bill D'Agostino similarly complained that "the media eagerly flooded the airwaves with the latest tidbits about Walker’s scandal, they have been incredibly protective of another embattled Senate candidate: John Fetterman, who’s running as a Democrat in Pennsylvania.")
Rich Noyes spent an Oct. 21 post noting that "Alone among the three broadcast morning shows, only ABC’s Good Morning America covered President Biden’s campaign appearance with Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman in Pennsylvania on Thursday, and correspondent Rachel Scott admitted the President is unpopular with voters and unwanted by most Democratic candidates," grumbling that "while ABC at least talked about the President’s problems, Scott neglected to mention Fetterman’s ongoing health problems which have put the race in peril for Democrats, and showed no clips of Fetterman speaking."
Houck returned to claim in an Oct. 25 post that CBS is trying to "pull Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) across the finish line" (you know, like how the MRC is trying to pull Walker across the finish line):
Just as the liberal broadcast networks tried to keep former Gov. Charlie Crist’s (D-FL) campaign afloat, CBS Mornings did its best to pull Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) across the finish line in his close race against Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz. Thanks to chief campaign and election correspondent Robert Costa, CBS had one simple message for voters weighing Fetterman’s health in their vote: let it go.
Costa spent the second half of his piece on Fetterman’s health, leading with a clip of the mentally and physically limited Fetterman stammering his way through one of his rare stump speeches.
[...]
Costa added that “Fetterman’s use of a captioning device will be on display during the debate” and posed the question to passerby’s in State College, Pennsylvania this past weekend.
After one person said no one “should be shamed for using things that makes things more accessible” and another seemed indifferent, Costa brought in an expert from the left-wing Poynter and cited a CBS News poll to argue alleged talk about issues with Fetterman’s health need to end[.]
This was all setup before a debate between Fetterman and Oz, which the MRC exploited too. More on that soon.
Newsmax's Favorite Right-Wing Pollsters Push Narrative Of Red Wave Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax loves right-wing pollsters John and Jim McLaughlin so much -- they also served as pollsters for Donald Trump's 2020 re-election campsign -- that they have their own column at Newsmax. And they're so biased that they offer advice to Republicans on how to message so they poll better. In their Aug. 29 column, for example, they huffed:
Shouldn’t the Republicans be challenging the Democrats on the future of America? Do we really want to allow the Joe Biden big government socialists to continue to transform America?
[...]
Why did the Republicans allow President Biden a vacation from the campaign?
Why are they allowing the Democrats in Congress who voted for his failed agenda to hide those votes? September needs to be the month where Republicans aggressively challenge the Biden big government socialists on inflation and higher prices.
[...]
If the Republicans want to regain majorities in Congress, it’s time to follow President Trump’s example and play offense against the Biden Democrats.
The McLaughlins' Sept. 28 column hyped their own midterm polling that "Republicans seem to have an edge, but — the trends are mixed." They then displayed their bias -- and, thus, their lack of credibility -- for all to see by openly rooting for Republicans and offering them advice on how to win:
GOP opposition leaders need to make a more effective case, that the U.S. is on the wrong track and that it's President Joseph Robinette Biden’s fault!
Biden needs to be on the ballot — not Trump as the Democrats would like project.
Biden is the president. Biden is on the ballot, and our nation's condition is Biden’s fault.
There’s still plenty of public sentiment that Republicans can make that case.
[...]
The 2022 midterm madness is upon us.
Everyday counts.
The Biden big government socialists are fighting for their majorities. The Republicans must fight to take them away and restore America to the right direction. 41 days.
Should anyone who's not a rabid right-winger trust anything the McLaughlins do as being credible or trustworhy after that rant? Probably not. On the other hand, the Media Research Center bought a McLaughlin to try and prove its own version of Trump's Big Lie about election fraud.
The McLaughlins, unsurprisingly, also receive airtime on Newsmax TV and on the Newsmax website to promote the narrative that Republicans are trouncing Democrats in the runup to the midterm elections. Here's a sampling of the promotion the McLaughlins have gotten just in the past month or so:
OIthers have noted this sort of right-wing pol-hyping, done in an attempt to flood the zone and create the perception of a "red wave" for the midterms. Democratic adviser Simon Rosenburg has noted this flood-the-zone strategy, which obscures that there are polls that show Democratic candidates doing well, as has MSNBC host Joy Reid.Newsmax didn't like that story, and neither did the McLaughlins. Thus, Jim McLaughlin made a Nov. 2 Newsmax TV appearance to lamely play whataboutism:
Pollster Jim McLaughlin, pushing back at a report from MSNBC host Joy Reid that Republican pollsters are inflating polls in favor of GOP candidates, said Wednesday on Newsmax that left-leaning media organizations and universities are the ones who are skewing the polls by including fewer Republicans.
"This is the typical example of the left, accusing Republicans of what the left is doing," McLaughlin said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "You are still seeing a lot of these national polls right now done by the media and these colleges and universities where Republicans are only represented in their surveys by about a quarter of the vote."
Earlier this week, Reid said on her program, "The ReidOut," that polls suggesting GOP candidates are surging ahead were part of an "insidious and seemingly intentional campaign from Republican-backed polling firms to flood the zone and tip the balance of polling averages in favor of their candidates, to create a narrative that Republicans are surging and that a red wave is imminent and inevitable."
But McLaughlin noted, for example, that an Emerson College poll scored Rep. Lee Zeldin, the GOP nominee in the New York governor's race, down by 8 percentage points against Democrat incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul.
"The problem is with the survey again," said McLaughlin. "They oversampled Democrats at about 53% and undersampled Republicans at only about 23% or 24%."
Not only did writer Sandy Fitzgterald not disclose the McLaughlins' right-wing bias, she gave McLaughlin a platform to display that bias again:
McLaughlin also commented on President Joe Biden's speech in Florida, where he referred to Republicans as extremists.
"The truth of the matter is, it's the Democrats who are the extremists," said McLaughlin. "They've spent $6 trillion we didn't have that cause this crazy inflation. They're not even getting hit on all these tax increases in the Inflation Reduction Act. These are the same folks that have given us open borders."
Again: Not the guy anyone who's not a right-wing ideologue should trust with their polling.
WND Spreads COVID Vaccine Misinfo, Florida Man Division Topic: WorldNetDaily
Art Moore, WorldNetDaily's leader in spreading falsehoodsandmisinformation about COVID treatments and vaccines, gets some help from a Florida man in an Oct. 10 article:
Breaking ranks with the CDC, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo is urging men aged 18 to 39 not to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
In a tweet censored by Twitter, Ladapo cited a Florida Department of Health analysis that found the mRNA jabs raise the risk of cardiac-related death by 84% in young males.
[...]
In March, Ladapo announced the state had become the first to recommend against vaccinating healthy children for COVID-19. The announcement came at the end of an 85-minute roundtable of epidemiologists and other medical scientists hosted by DeSantis titled "The Curtain Close on COVID Theater." The governor posed questions regarding the effectiveness of the vaccines in reducing infection and transmission as well as the crucial issue of safety. Among the participants were Drs. Robert Malone, Harvey Risch of Yale, Jay Battacharya of Stanford, Sunetra Gupta of Oxford and Martin Kulldorf, formerly of Harvard.
The new Florida Department of Health analysis analysis was criticized by some scientists, but Ladapo countered Monday on Twitter with a point-by-point rebuttal.
The surgeon general said he welcomed the debate.
"Isn't it great when we discuss science transparently instead of trying to cancel one another?" he wrote on Twitter.
Except that few of the "rebuttal" points Ladapo issued, as copy-and-pasted by Moore, addressed the many issues legitimate medical professionals have identified with the study -- starting with the fact that it was anonymously written, unlike virtually every other research study in exixtence. As a media outlet that cares about honest reporting detailed:
More than a dozen experts interviewed by The Washington Post — including specialists in vaccines, patient safety and study design — listed concerns with Florida’s analysis, saying it relies on information gleaned from frequently inaccurate death certificates rather than medical records, skews the results by trying to exclude anyone with covid-19 or a covid-related death, and draws conclusions from a total of 20 cardiac-related deaths in men 18 to 39 that occurred within four weeks of vaccination. Experts noted the deaths might have been caused by other factors, including underlying illnesses or undetected covid.
“We’re talking about a very small number of deaths. An extra death or two would potentially change these results,” said Robert Wachter, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and co-author of a patient-safety textbook used in many medical schools. “I’m hesitant to even call it a paper; it isn’t published anywhere. The idea that [the analysis] … is being used to change policy — it does not have the scientific chops to do that.”
“If you submitted that to a peer-reviewed journal, unless you were paying them to publish it, it would get rejected,” added Daniel Salmon, who leads the Institute of Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Putting out half-baked reports from a department of health is a dangerous thing to do.”
By contrast, Moore talked to no experts and merely regurgitated Ladapo's claims about the study without bothering to fact-check anything he said. He did, however, admit the study has not been peer-reviewed, so he gets a brownie point for that. He also added a video of an interview Ladapo did on Steve Bannon's far-right webcast "War Room: Pandemic," which also does not inspire confidence in anything Ladapo has to say. Not that Moore will tell you any of that, of course; his job is to fearmonger and misinform, not report honestly.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Double Standard on Political Donations Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center doesn't like it when people's financial contributions to right-wing causes are exposed -- even though it regularly exposes the donations liberals (and not just George Soros) make to their favorite causes. Read more >>
MRC Obsesses Over Biden Gaffe Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center M.O. is to cherry-pick an issue (or follow orders to cherry-pick one), flood the zone with outraged posts about it, with the goal of forcing the story up the right-wing media food chain -- a ploy that usually works, given how slavishly devoted people in the right-wing bubble are to regurgitating established narratives.
And so it is with President Biden's gaffe of calling on a congresswoman for recognition who had died a few months before. We've noted the MRC's Curtis Houck berating White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for doing her job in taking questions "after President Joe Biden called out to Congresswoman Jackie Walorski (R-IN) at a global hunger event despite the fact that Walorski died nearly two months ago" and being mad that she wasn't furthering the right-wing narrative that the gaffe was "a sign of cognitive decline."
Because the MRC (or whatever shady Right-Wing Narrative Production Office that dictates what the MRC must cover) decided this was a story that could be exploited by pushing the narrative that he's mentally incapacitated, this was just the beginning. A Sept. 28 item by Kevin Tober pushed the usual the-non-right-wing-media-aren't covering-this-story-that-advances-our-narrative angle (but praising Fox News, of course, for sticking to the narrative):
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden proved once again he's not mentally with us anymore when he called out for Congresswoman Jackie Walorski (R-IN) during a speech on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health despite the fact that Walorski died in a car crash in August. While Biden may not be capable of remembering events that far back, we know he was notified of her death since he and the First Lady both put out a statement and lowered the American flag in her honor when she passed along with two staffers.
All three evening newscasts ignored the latest gaffe from our apparently senile President and instead focused on a reported Methane spill in the Baltic Sea (CBS Evening News), and Katie Couric's cancer diagnosis (ABC's World News Tonight). meanwhile, NBC spent the entire half hour of NBC Nightly News covering Hurricane Ian.
During Fox News Channel'sSpecial Report White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich covered Biden's latest gaffe and the subsequent firestorm at the White House press briefing on whether Biden even remembered that Walorski died.
[...]
The terrible combination of Joe Biden's almost daily gaffes and Karine Jean-Pierre's stunning inability to put together a coherent sentence makes it obvious why the leftist news networks have no interest in covering the administration's never-ending list of incompetence and failures.
That was followed by Alex Christy praising Trevor Noah of "The Daily Show" for noting "Biden’s latest moment of indignity" and whacking other late-night hosts for not doing so.Scott Whitlock quickly followed that with another lack-of-coverage-of-our-narrative post headlined "Biden Gaffe Watch Day #2":
As we noted on Wednesday night, the networks avoided the cringe-inducing moment when the President asked where a recently deceased Congresswoman was, wondering of Jackie Walorski: “Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie?” All three evening newscasts censored the President’s latest awkward moment.
How about Thursday? Despite an available six hours of air time, ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Mornings and NBC’s Today all avoided it as well. But what about Hurricane Ian threatening Florida, you might ask? Would there be time? The networks rightly offered detailed coverage on this dangerous storm and all who were impacted by it.
But there was still time to cover Biden’s latest example of being confused in public. For instance, ABC’s Good Morning America managed to devote five minutes and six seconds to Hocus Pocus 2. Sounding like a commercial for his Disney overlords, co-host George Stephanopoulos enthused that the original has “come to define Halloween for a generation of kids and their parents.” Shilling for his corporate parent, he reminded, “[Hocus Pocus 2] starts streaming tomorrow on Disney+!”
At least Whitlock managed to restrain himself from (hypocritically) calling ABC "whores" for promoting Disney content.
Curtis Houck tried to mix in another narrative to Biden's "mental flatulence" regarding Vice P{resident Kamala Harris misspeaking, whining that "Naturally, the broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC all ignored this story despite the fact that all three had at least three segments of other stories not related to the devastation caused in Florida by Hurricane Ian."
Nicholas Fondacaro lashed out at "The View," as he is wont to do, for calling out the MRC-pushed anti-Biden narrative:
President Biden’s cognitive decline was catapulted into the spotlight on Wednesday after he called out for a member of Congress that had been dead for nearly two months, with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre getting grilled by the liberal likes of the Washington Post and ABC. But ABC’s The View was in full gaslight mode Thursday as they suggested the questions were attacks launched by the “right-wing” media trying to “weaponize” Biden’s “brain fart” because America was evil and “ageist.”
[...]
Co-host Sara Haines also spoke out in Biden’s defense claiming he had a “brain fart” or “mommy brain” moment and tried to blame Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for how badly it went over:
I think her explanation made it worse though because in that moment, I probably would have just said, “Okay, guys. He had a moment. Who in this room hasn't?” And then just move on. The fact she kept kind of repeating the same words –
Behar interjected to defend Jean-Pierre, suggesting she was dealing with hostile media that “has weaponized his gaffes!” “I mean, they have weaponized the gaffes, They’ve said that he’s senile,” she raged.
[...]
According to [Alyssa] Farah Griffin, Biden’s constant mental slips weren’t a cause for concern but they were instead “endearing.” And she too thought Jean-Pierre was the problem:“The cover-up was worse than the crime.”
Farah Griffin also used the incident to pose the question to the table: “Do you think Joe Biden is the strongest candidate to beat Donald Trump in 2024?” “If this is any indication, I do,” Goldberg proclaimed.
Tim Graham devoted a Sept. 30 post to complaining that a non-right-wing writer wasn't parroting the MRC's right-wing spin by parrotingh a fellow member of his right-wing bubble:
John Sexton at Hot Air identified some terrible spin trying to defend Biden forgetting Rep. Jackie Walorski is dead. USA Today columnist Jill Lawrence, a longtime political reporter and a former editor of the paper's Commentary section, suggested the memory lapse demonstrated Biden's decency, unlike Trump.
[...]
The headline in Friday's paper is "President's lapse says volumes about his generosity: Biden recognizes his 'duty to care' for all." Barf.
Yes, Graham's slavish devotion to his narratives is quite barf-worthy. Indeed, later that day, he devoted his podcast to rehashing the MRC's narrative thus far as "a week of Biden-Harris gaffes -- and the media energetically ignoring Biden-Harris gaffes."
Tober returned for an Oct. 2 post of more whining that right-wing narratives weren't being parroted in non-right-wing media:
On Sunday’s NBC Meet the Press, anchor Chuck Todd excused the latest example of President Biden’s mental incapacity when this week he called out for Congresswoman Jackie Walorski (R-IN) at an event, despite the fact that she died in a car accident a month prior. According to Todd, it wasn’t a big deal because “people make mistakes.”
[...]
Illustrating that she’s nothing but a Biden apologist, [Symone] Sanders-Townsend advised everyone “just acknowledge he had a slip of the tongue, move on, it's unfortunate, again, life is here. He understands, and empathizes,” adding “that's what’s most important here.”
Instead of pushing back and saying this shows Biden has serious cognitive issues, Todd agreed with Sanders-Townsend that “people make mistakes and you try to go from there.”
A mistake would be forgetting someone’s name for a split second or something similar. Forgetting that a member of Congress died in a well publicized car crash isn’t a mistake. It is yet another long list of evidence of Biden’s rapidly declining brain function.
Chuck Todd is only fooling himself.
Graham whined the next day: "On Sunday'sMediaBuzz on Fox News, host Howard Kurtz discussed President Biden's Jackie gaffe with Brian Kilmeade and Democrat strategist Laura Fink. Kurtz underlined CNN and MSNBC completely ignored the gaffe, but Fink claimed ABC, CBS, and NBC all covered it. That is false." Mark Finkelstein took his shot at advancing the narrative in an Oct. 4 post complaining that "Morning Joe" didn't advance his preferred narrative.
That makes 11 posts over a seven-day period, with at least one post every day but one -- and the MRC still wasn't done. Graham devoted his Oct. 7 column to complaining that his anti-Biden nbarrative wasn't followed, and then oddly played Trump whataboutism:
By now, everyone who follows politics should recognize that the liberal media will deliberately ignore embarrassing gaffes by Joe Biden, especially if they suggest he’s not mentally sharp enough to be the president. Biden asking “Where’s Jackie?” about a congresswoman killed in a car crash two months ago was a TV black hole: nothing on the morning and evening newscasts on ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS, and nothing on CNN or MSNBC.
This week offered a tidy contrast, and an inevitable reminder that these same networks can never stop obsessing over Trump tweets – even after he was banned by Twitter.
The taxpayer-funded PBS NewsHour took after Trump on Monday in a segment with two liberal political pundits – NPR’s Hillary-coddling reporter Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report.
PBS White House reporter Laura Barron Lopez read from a Trump post on “Truth Social,” his Twitter imitation, where he said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “has a death wish and must immediately seek help and advice from his China-loving wife, Coco Chow.” This mysterious outburst is referring to Elaine Chao, who Trump named his Secretary of Transportation.
Lopez added: “Today, Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney said that rhetoric like that could cause violence. She also called it racist. But the vast majority of Republicans have not condemned this. So, Tamara, what does this silence among the GOP say about the party today?”
Rather than admit the simple fact that Trump is being kinda racist -- and, thus, have to explain why he and the rest of the MRC still remains a devoted supporter of such a vile man -- Graham attacked PBS for bringing it up, huffing that "PBS is always making sure Trump’s trash talk is in the news, and Biden babbling like he’s lost a marble or two is spiked." Of course, Graham would never have mentioned Trump's sleazy remark at all if he couldn't play whataboutism with it. But he's also making a hollow and hypocritical criticism, given that the MRC runs a highly biased "news" division, CNSNews.com, that completely censored the "Coco Chow" story and any other story that reflects badly on Republicans, such as the Herschel Walker abortion scandal.
WND's Farah: Atonement For Thee, But Not For Me Topic: WorldNetDaily
As he occasionallydoes, WorldNetDaily editor Jioseph Farah has called for a day of atonement -- and, as usual, Farah doesn't include himself among those who need to atone. Farah called for it again in his Oct. 4 column, though with a less partisan bent than previous attempts:
They call it a Jewish holiday – Yom Kippur.
It's the Day of Atonement, all right, but it's not just for practicing Jews. As Leviticus 23 makes clear, today is not a Jewish holiday, it's one of the feasts of the LORD.
In other words, it's for everyone who believes the Bible and in the One True God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – and Jesus.
Christians should especially find it appealing, since they believe in the forgiveness of sins by the one they consider to be the "Jewish Messiah."
[...]
My family will fast and pray just like Jews around the world and more and more Christians who are rediscovering the Hebrew roots of their faith.
As in previous years, we're pretty certain he will never atone for all the lies and misinformation his WND has published over the past 25 years, and which he continuestospread.There's also the atoning for the rift he created with his daughter, Alyssa Farah Griffin, because she escaped the Trump cult and he refuses to. You'd think that would have shaken a man who wants us to believe family is important to him, but he's apparently content with -- and utterly unrepentant for -- tearing his family apart over politics.
This much rank dishonesty and bah behavior would take much more than a day to atone for, but Farah is silent on those sins, instead offering lip service to how, supposedly, his family "will fast and pray just like Jews around the world." Instead, he lectured (well, copied-and-pasted from his 2021 column):
We are a nation in moral free fall.
We've lost our ability to discern right from wrong.
We don't even accept that there is such a thing as sin anymore. Sinners, we're told, are just those practicing alternate lifestyles.
But this can't go on forever – just as it couldn't go on forever in ancient Israel when the nation went adrift.
God is longsuffering because He loves us. But like any good parent, He will not enable His children forever. He will discipline them in an attempt to bring them back to His authority – not wishing any should perish.
Yet it appears Farah will never offer any genuine atonement for his behavior until he nears, or passes, the point of no return (and maybe not even then). But if becoming estranged from his own daughter and WND living perpetually on the brink of extinction hasn't caused him to reach that point, what will?
Newsmax's Kessler Bolsters Conspiracy Theory That Mar-a-Lago Was Bugged Topic: Newsmax
The fact that there's no evidence whatsoever that federal agents planted bugs at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago compound hasn't kept right-wingers from floating that possibility (with help from Newsmax, of course). And loyal Trump-fluffer Ronald Kessler -- he's one of the folks who planted the idea of Trump running for president way back in 2011 -- is more than happy to play along to help further Trump's victim narrative. Kessler's Sept. 29 Newsmax column doesn't actually accuse the feds of bugging Mar-a-Lago; instead, he explains how it could be done if they did it:
Despite the corruption that occurred at the top levels of the bureau under FBI Director James Comey, the FBI has gotten incredibly good at outsmarting its criminal and foreign intelligence targets.
A prime example is the FBI’s Tactical Surveillance (TacOps) unit that plants bugging devices and surveillance cameras in the homes, offices, yachts, or airplanes of Mafia targets, corrupt politicians, foreign and domestic terrorists, foreign intelligence officers, and white collar criminals as well as in foreign embassies in the U.S.
In any given year, TacOps conducts as many as 400 of what the FBI calls covert entries, each authorized by court order and each requiring meticulous planning and ingenious cover stories.
Former President Trump’s team has claimed that FBI may have planted listening devices when conducting a search of Mar-a-Lago. But the truth is TacOps’ techniques are so sophisticated that no one would know if the FBI bugged Mar-a-Lago.
The rest of Kessler's column ins a painstaking explanation of how TacOps works. He wouldn't admit, however, that there's no actual evidence that Mar-a-Lago was bugged by the feds, nor did he disclose his closeness to Trump.
As a loyally biased right-wing media outlet, CNSNews.com typically adheres to the accepted narrative aggressively defending Israel -- witness its hearty embrace of a group of far-right, replacement theory-believing rabbis. But an odd (for right-wing media) thing has happened over the past few months: CNS has published articles critical of Israel and far-right Jewish extremists. And thje source is even more surprising: managing editor Michael W. Chapman. He has written the usual pro-Israel like these, particularly regarding the killing of American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was likely killed by Israeli soldiers:
But Chapman has written other articles surprisingly critical of far-right Jewish extremists. A July 25 article noted:
During his trip to Israel last week, President Joe Biden met with Theophilos III, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, who alerted him to "unprecedented attacks by Israeli radical groups" against Christians in the Holy City, which is all designed "to create an environment that repels Christians from their own city of Jerusalem," reported the office of the patriarch.
"Patriarch Theophilos III stressed the need for an active American intervention to protect the Christian heritage and presence in the Holy Land, especially in the city of Jerusalem, which is witnessing unprecedented attacks by Israeli radical groups, that conduct their offenses without accountability in order to create an environment that repels Christians from their own city of Jerusalem," stated the patriarch's office.
Chapman wrote an Aug. 4 article highlighting an attack on a non-Jewish woman by ultra-orthodox Jews:
Ultra-Orthodox Jews verbally and physically assaulted a gentile woman for sitting at the front of a public bus in Jerusalem on July 31, apparently in an attempt to enforce a modesty dress code that they follow in the Haredi community, reported Haaretz and Ynet, two major news outlets in Israel.
The woman told Ynet that she regularly rides the bus (Kavim company) between Jerusalem and the ultra-Orthodox city of Elad. "On the way home, a group of 20 guys got on the bus, and decided that it didn't suit them that I was sitting in the front,” she said.
She added that she gets nauseous and sometimes vomits if she sits in the back of the bus.
"When she declined to move, the men began verbally berating her, using a pejorative term for a gentile woman, and when she still refused to leave her seat began physically assaulting her," reported Haaretz.
[...]
According to Harretz, "such incidents are not uncommon, especially in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods."
In June, a 13-year-old girl was stopped from riding a bus in northern Israel "because of how she was dressed," said Haaretz.
In another case from 2020, a woman was awarded $44,000 "in damages after a bus driver refused to let her board at a bus stop in a religious West Bank settlement because she was wearing shorts."
A Sept. 30 article by Chapman noted Israel's lack of support for Ukraine following its invasion by Russia:
In a recent interview, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky complained that the Israeli government had given his country no real military aid, such as missile defense systems, in its ongoing battle against Russia.
“Israel gave us nothing. Nothing, zero,” Zelensky told France’s TV5Monde, as reported in The Times of Israel. “I understand they are in a difficult situation with Syria, with Russia.”
Israel has provided Ukraine with at least 2,000 helmets and 500 flak jackets, as well as tons of humanitarian aid, but has not provided defensive weapons.
Given that Israel is a Jewish state and Zelensky himself is Jewish, the Ukrainian president expressed surprise over the situation in the interview.
[...]
The refusal by Israel to provide weapons to Ukraine, according to The Times of Israel, "is seen as an attempt by Jerusalem to maintain working ties with Moscow, due to Russia’s control of Syrian air space, where Israel’s air force has carried out hundreds of sorties against alleged Iranian arms shipments and in order to keep groups backed by Tehran from establishing a foothold."
An Oct. 12 article by Chapman is the kind of article that gives people like Bill Donohue nightmares:
A new report out of Israel shows that the rate of sexual abuse is higher among students who attend schools in the national religious education system.
"Children who attend religious schools in Israel are more than twice as likely to experience sexual abuse, according to a stunning new report from a liberal Orthodox organisation published on Sunday [Oct. 2]," reported The Jewish Chronicle.
Data on the abuse were collected from Israel's Welfare Ministry and the Central Bureau of Statistics, and were analyzed by the Ne’emanei Torah Va’Avodah Movement, a nonprofit educational research group in Jerusalem.
The numbers show that in Israel's national education system, the rate of sexual abuse is 1.04 per 1,000 students. In the haredi (strictly Orthodox) system, the rate was 1.98 per 1,000 students, nearly double the national rate. And in the national-religious educational system the rate was 2.39.
Again, one does not normally find this kind of content on a right-wing "news" site. Is Chapman doing an experiment to see if CNS can transition into a (gasp!) fair and balanced media operation? We shall see.
MRC Defends Right-Wing Radio Host For Crude, Cynical Defense of Walker's Abortion Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's aggressivedefense of Herschel Walker over his abortion scandal even extended to defending a right-wing radio host's crude, cynical defense of him.
When the co-hosts of "The View' called out the hypocrisy of right-wing radio host Dana Loesch in claiming that "I don't care if Herschel walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate," smearing the woman Walker paid to have an abortion as a "skank," and smearing all women who have an abortion as "skanks," Nicholas Fondacaro used an Oct. 5 post to generously frame her cynical, hateful remarks as "reject[ing] liberal attempts to suppress Republican turnout/support for Walker with the scandal," hitting all the usual deflection points like trying to baselessly dismiss the story as somehow not true because it came from the Daily Beast, which he described without evidence as "left-wing":
Wednesday was day two of ABC’sThe View obsessing over the salacious claims made by the left-wing Daily Beast against Georgia Senate nominee Herschel Walker (R) that he paid for a woman’s abortion back in 2009. On this second day, the cackling coven hyperventilated about conservative radio host Dana Loesch and how she rejected liberal attempts to suppress Republican turnout/support for Walker with the scandal. Loesch herself responded to NewsBusters reporting and blasted the ladies who were attacking her with vile suggestions.
[...]
“First of all, ma'am, there's a lot of women who find themselves in a position of having to have an abortion. How dare you call them ‘skanks,’ first of all,” Goldberg (who has had an abortion and tried to pressure her daughter into one too) sneered. “I'm keeping calling you a name out of my mouth ‘cause it's not the right thing to do.”
Loesch responded to Goldberg on Twitter (throwing her own words back at her), saying, “FIRST OF ALL, @WhoopiGoldberg -- I refuse to coddle or celebrate irresponsible women who use abortion as birth control. I'm right, so get over it. That you're angrier over that than murder speaks volumes about your character.”
As is de rigeur for Fondacaro, he lashed out at co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin for not agreeing with Loesch that women who have an abortion are "skanks":
Up next was faux Republican Alyssa Farah Griffin to bloviate about what was happening to “my party” and suggested Loesch was a manifestation of “the moral rot that’s taking over.”
“I can't defend that for a second. As a pro-life woman to hear someone else like Dana who is pro-life call women who get into situations where they need abortions ‘skanks’ is just shameful,” she proclaimed.
Loesch had something to say to Farah Griffin too:
That "something was a rant calling aboriton "murder" and defending her sleazy insult of woman "an honest description of females who use abortion as birth control ."
Later that day, Tim Graham devoted his podcast to rehashing "The View" vs. Loesch, with help from Fondacaro, who laughably described Loesch's crude insult of women as "blunt, inartful language" -- which, of course, neither Graham nor Fondacaro criticized; Graham instead defended her as "trying to get some attention." Fondacaro then sounded like a Walker flack in baselessly arguing that he deserves a pass because the abortion Walker paid for happened in 2009 and "people's hearts change. I know stories of women who have had abortion and then they've been wracked with guilt over it and become pro-life." Fondacaro offered no evidence that Walker himself feels that way.
Both Graham and Fondacaro predictably trashed Farah Griffin as purportedly being a "liberal Democrat" for leaving the Trump cult and not being a dogmatic conservative -- then, without any sense of irony, attacked "The View" co-hosts for doing the same exact thing: "Anybody who doesn't match, you know, Joy Behar's ideal, like Hillary Clinton -- if you're not full Hillary Clinton, you're a woman-traitor."
Graham was still defending Loesch in an Oct. 9 post, insisting that she was being misquoted by the Washingotn Post's Jonathan Capehart in a TV appearance, even though the transcript clearly shows (and Graham boldfaced) Capehart saying he was "paraphrasing":
The PBS NewsHour caught up on the Hunter Biden scoop on Friday night, but that wasn't the subject when it came to reviewing the news of the week. The taxpayer-funded crew all assumed Herschel Walker was guilty of paying for an abortion, as the Daily Beast is asserting, and there was zero mention of Walker's denials!
Jonathan Capehart was so eager to smear all the Republicans, he asserted that conservative radio host Dana Loesch doesn't care about children -- which is always a weird allegation against pro-lifers.
[...]
Loesch provoked liberals by asserting "If the Daily Beast story is true, you’re telling me Walker used his money to reportedly pay some skank for an abortion and Warnock wants to use all of our monies to pay a whole bunch of skanks for abortions.” She added "I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles — I want control of the Senate.” Like many conservatives, she sees the Daily Beast as using an anonymous woman's claims to keep Sen. Raphael Warnock in power.
Graham then jumped to an earlier PBS segment on Hunter Biden, with whom the MRC remainsbizarrelyobsessed.
WND's Kupelian Demonizes Dems To Try And Scare Voters Into Supporting Republicans Topic: WorldNetDaily
The September issue of WorldNetDaily's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine is called "Stopping the Madness: A Midterm Election Guide for Voters who Love America." As expected, the magazine is short on actual guidance and very long on fearmongering about anyone who's not as far-right as they are. This is further enforced by managing editor David Kupelian's introductory essay, which starts out by adding another freakout to the ones WND has already published about President Biden's speech calling out the extremism of MAGA Republicans:
Horrified by what has been called the Sovietization of the Biden administration – including the shocking criminalization of dissent and the weaponization of the FBI, whose agents daily arrest, intimidate and persecute the regime's political opponents – tens of millions of Americans anxiously wonder whether November's midterm elections will bring any positive change of direction for a once-great nation now careening toward total destruction.
Although many voices are weighing in on "what's at stake" in the midterms, ironically no one has expressed it more clearly or forcefully than Joe Biden himself, in his astonishingly dark Sept. 1 "Soul of the Nation" speech, delivered while bathed in ominous red lights and flanked by Marine guards.
Of course, the key to de-coding Biden's dire warnings about the "greatest threats to America" is to understand that he was engaging in a mirror-perfect case of political projection: Every single evil that Biden ascribed to "MAGA Republicans" – the Left's new name for America's vast center-right middle class, literally the nation's backbone – is actually true of today's Democratic Party and its unhinged supporters.
[...]
Again, by just substituting "Radical Democrats" for "MAGA Republicans," one gains a vivid and stunningly accurate description of the ever-growing neo-communist threat to America.
We're not aware of anyone who has referred to "the Sovietization of the Biden administration" other than Kupelian himself, so it's weird that he's trying to make it a thing. But Kupelian was nowhere near done ranting:
But delving deeper still, all of this is rooted in the fact that today's Democratic Party is, in a very real sense, "possessed" – that is, its political and thought leaders have been completelytaken over by the kind of dark psychological and spiritual forces that readily capture the minds of corrupted human beings who have turned their backs on God and His laws of life. These exact same forces have animated history's most destructive, cult-like political movements, most obviously communism/Marxism/socialism, which has been metastasizing around the world for the past century – and now has its sights set on America.
et even such controversial ideological labels are, themselves, essentially lies intended to create a moral façade that either covers up or justifies deeply inhuman and criminal behavior. That is, the ideological labels are just an attempt to sell the notion that, whether or not one agrees with their ideology, "communists," "socialists" and "Marxists" – and "Antifa" (short for "anti-fascist"), "Black Lives Matter" and today's "Democratic Party" – still somehow have the interests of others at heart.
It's a lie. We're talking about sociopaths, people without a functioning conscience. Deeply corrupt people like Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff and their ilk do not possess the capacity to actually care about anyone else, any more than a drug addict has the capacity to unselfishly care about others. And these ruling elites are addicted to the most powerful and addictive drug of all: POWER.
[...]
What's being described here is a deeply compromised and corrupt class of people, possessed and controlled by dark spiritual "powers and principalities" about which they know nothing, and care less. Whatever their professed religion, they are mockers of God, the same sort of people who self-righteously expanded communism over so much of the world and made the 20th century the bloodiest and deadliest in all of human history. Today, they're laser-focused on the biggest prize of all: The United States of America.
That's what's at stake.
Of course, one could just as easily say that Kupelian, Joseph Farah and other WND employees are addicted to the alleged power that comes with being an unquestioning simp for Donald Trump. Indeed, by his own definition, Kupelian cold be described as a sociopath for selling out the Christian principles he claims to have to throw his support behind a profounding immoral, hate-filled man in pursuit of power in the form of having said immoral man reshape the country to his own far-right liking -- and then, four years later, publish lieafterlie about how the election was purported "stolen" from the immoral man. That behavior in and of itself shows what a profoundly hypocritial Christian Kupelian is.
Kupelian then moved to invoke another profoundly imm oral man -- and a criminal toboot -- to scare his fellow right-wing Christians into voting:
But good Americans, as former Trump adviser Steve Bannon passionately argues, simply must outvote whatever fraud occurs.
Therefore, one final word to Christians, who still constitute the vast majority of Americans and potential voters:
Every election cycle, tens of millionsof American Christians do not vote!
How is that even possible, one wonders, considering that so much of what Democrats are pushing right now – from congressionally "codifying Roe" so that throughout America abortion will again be legal up to the moment of birth – i.e., straight-up infanticide – to expanding the satanic craze of amputating body parts of multitudes of children tricked into believing they're "transgender" – amounts to a grotesque frontal attack on everything Christians, indeed all decent people, consider sacred?
If Kupelian was the "decent person" he claims to be, he would stop publishing lies and profoundly apologize for the lies he is responsible for spreading (which would be all of them, given that he's the managing editor of WND).
Finally, if Kupelian was the genuine Christian he wants us to be, he would not be spreading lies, hate and misinformation in the name of Chrstianity to get people to vote, and he would give both sides a reasonable opportunity to argue their views. But Kupelian is not that man -- which is just one reason why WND continues to teeter on the brink of extinction.
A Black Woman Plays A Flute, And The MRC Is Outraged Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has a thing about making fatjokes about the musician known as Lizzo. So when she was given the opportunity by the Library of Congress to play a 200-year-old crystal flute once belonging to James Madison, the MRC did not take it well. Jason Cohen wrote in a Sept. 28 post headlined "Plus Size Pop Icon Lizzo Lauded for Historically Inappropriate Moves" -- the "move" in question, preumably, being a non-skinny black woman playing a historic flute:
In a crazy clash of classiness and trashiness, popular singer Lizzo played James Madison’s 200- year-old crystal flute at her concert in DC while scantily clad and twerking.
In typical narcissistic fashion, she tweeted:
“NOBODY HAS EVER HEARD THIS FAMOUS CRYSTAL FLUTE BEFORE
NOW YOU HAVE
IM THE FIRST & ONLY PERSON TO EVER PLAY THIS PRESIDENTIAL 200-YEAR-OLD CRYSTAL FLUTE— THANK YOU @librarycongress
As referenced in Lizzo’s tweet, the flute is owned by the Library of Congress. Lizzo is mainly known for being a singer and “body positivity” icon, but she has also been a flutist since grade school.
Despite the distasteful display, Lizzo’s actions were largely glorified by the media.
Adding to the obscenity, Lizzo exclaimed, “B***h, I just twerked and played James Madison’s crystal flute from the 1800s. We just made history tonight!”
Ideas of history, along with those of beauty and class, just ain’t what they used to be.
When the co-hosts of "The View" called out right-wing outrage over this "move," Nicholas Fondacaro raged in a Sept. 30 post:
In a publicity stunt, some argue was designed to generate outrage this week, the Library of Congress allowed degenerate singer Lizzo to parade around half naked on stage while twerking and playing former President James Madison’s crystal flute. On Friday, the cackling coven of ABC’s The View looked on with glee as they mocked some conservatives for getting upset and argued that the disgusting display was retribution against Madison because he owned slaves.
Getting into the segment, co-host Joy Behar suggested conservatives were more interested in the flute than helping people recover from Hurricane Ian and stemming inflation. “While the country deals with hurricanes, inflation, and fight for abortion rights, some conservatives are focusing their rage on Lizzo. Why? They're annoyed that she's playing a crystal flute, a flute,” she chided (failing to mention President Biden was at a fundraiser while the storm killed people).
“These Trumpers need to have the same reverence for the Constitution as they do for the flute,”she whined following a video of Lizzo’s performance.
The hypocrisy in that statement was so thick that it ran like syrup. The View didn’t care about revering the Constitution when they gave a platform to leftist extremist Elie Mystal to call it “trash” and cheer. They also defended 2016 election denialism and decried the Electoral College. And they’ve also called for packing the Supreme Court.
[...]
Hostin went on to suggest Lizzo’s performance was justice, 200 years in the making. “Well, James Madison owned a hundred slaves. That's a degradation of history, right? And he still became the president. So, I think this is kind of a full-circle moment for American history,” she snarked.
Fondacaro never explained what, exactly, is "degenerate" about Lizzo -- leaving us to speculate that his main gripe is that a non-skinny black woman was allowed to play a historic flute, --and he did not explain why that act was supposedly "designed to generate outrage." Then again, that "outrage" purportedly engendered by Lizzo's act was pretty much limited to perpetually outraged right-wingers like Fondacaro who are prone to see anything that makes them mad as a "liberal" provocation rather than a sign that they should lighten up a bit and stop being perpetual rage-bots.
Through this election season, theMedia Research Center has been trying to gaslight readers by pretending that Democrats are the real "extremists" on abortion, not those on the right -- even though the MRC wants to create an Orwellian surveillance scheme to monitor women lest they cross state lines to have an abortion. Kyle Drennen complained in a May 20 post:
Rachel Alexander fretted in her Oct. 10 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center's Kevin Tober huffed in an Oct. 24 
When 
We've shown
Newsmax loves 
Art Moore, WorldNetDaily's leader in spreading 
The Media Research Center M.O. is to cherry-pick an issue (or follow orders to cherry-pick one), flood the zone with outraged posts about it, with the goal of forcing the story up the right-wing media food chain -- a ploy that usually works, given how slavishly devoted people in the right-wing bubble are to regurgitating established narratives.
As he 
The fact that there's no evidence whatsoever that federal agents planted bugs at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago compound hasn't kept right-wingers from floating that possibility (
As a loyally biased right-wing media outlet, CNSNews.com typically adheres to the accepted narrative aggressively defending Israel -- witness its 
The Media Research Center's 
The September issue of WorldNetDaily's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine is called "
The Media Research Center has a thing about making 
