MRC Latino Whines That Spanish-Language Disinfo Is Being Called Out, Soros Money Helping Buy Radio Stations Topic: Media Research Center
We've noted how the Media Research Center's MRC Latino project joined its parent's war on George Soros by whining about non-right-wing owners with a tangental link to Soros are buying several Spanish-language radio stations in Florida and elsewhere -- many of which are right-wing, pro-Trump peddlers of misinformation. As the deal moved closer to completion, the freakout continued -- coupled with whining about how that misinformation was being called out. Jorge Bonilla huffed in a Nov. 6 post:
You can tell we’re at the tail end of another election cycle where the GOP is doing well with Hispanics, because as a recent report from CBS Mornings shows, the media have gone back to their favorite trope: “Spanish-language disinformation”.
OK, maybe “interesting” isn’t exactly the right word. “Weird”, perhaps, is a more accurate descriptor for correspondent Enrique Acevedo’s report that aired on CBS Mornings and throughout the rest of CBS’ footprint.
Watch the hosts’ exchange at the end of this strange report on the sale of Radio Mambí and 17 other stations owned by Univision to the Soros-backed Latino Media Network, and feel their sheer panic at the idea that Hispanics would dare obtain information beyond designated approved sources[.]
[...]
As we noted when the “Radio Soros” transaction was first announced, the deal was a panic move aimed at shoring up lost narrative control over Hispanics. We’ve reported on the decreasing trust in Spanish-language media, and on data that shows that corporate Spanish-language media are the biggest disseminators of Spanish-language disinformation.
Actually, Bonilla's freakout over the sale shows he's the one who's panicking, and that "data that shows that corporate Spanish-language media are the biggest disseminators of Spanish-language disinformation" he refernced is actually nothing more than a poll conducted by the right-wing Latino group Bienvenido. He went on to whine:
In its one-sidedness, the report makes no note of the reasons why Hispanics are abandoning their designated media gatekeepers- only that they must be doing so due to "disinformation".
Acevedo positions Radio Mambí as a boogeyman, but fails to mention that the station's top talent left the station rather than work for a Soros-backed outlet, and landed at conservative Americano Media. So Radio Mambí as we knew it is essentially dead.
Given that Radio Mambi was filled with disinformation, that's not the bad thing Bonilla wants you to think it is, and perhaps those hosts quit to avoid being held accountable for their lies. Despite all that, Bonilla thought his post to be so important that it was translated into Spanish.
In a Nov. 13 post (also translated into Spanish), Bonilla complained that it was "obnoxious and bigoted" for former White House press secretary Jen Psaki to point out the "massive disinformation problem in Spanish language media" that fed a narrative of Hispanics shifting rightward that was dispelled by the results of the midterm elections, going on to huff:
This talking point was echoed half an hour later by Latino Media Network (“Radio Soros”) board member, former Univision anchor and current ABC contributor María Elena Salinas, who tried to reassure liberals by saying that the GOP’s Hispanic vote blowout in Florida is “not indicative of the national Latino vote. Florida is a very small fraction of the Latino vote on a national level, so, we have to be careful not to read too much into this. This is just Florida.”
The right-wing narrative is totally real, Bonilla insisted, actual election results notwithstanding:
No one said that the ongoing Hispanic shift to the right would happen in one or two cycles. The shift is rooted in things that have been happening over the course of several decades, separate from the current issue arrays. The effort to conflate the shift to the stillborn red wave is intended to be disinformation and suppressive.
Going forward, expect further attempted tamping down of the Hispanic shift, and expect a renewed interest in “Spanish-language disinformation” as a means to prevent conservatives from entering communications spaces in some of these hotly contested states throughout the Southwest- which is all the proof you need that the very thing the left says isn’t happening is, in fact, very real.
When the radio deal was cleared by federal officials, Bonilla went into another freakout in a Nov. 22 post (again, translated into Spanish):
As expected, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has cleared the way for the Soros-backed Latino Media Network’s (LMN) purchase of 18 Televisa Univision radio stations, among them Miami’s Radio Mambí.
[...]
There was nominal opposition to the deal, which the FCC promptly shot down. That is, in part, because the best time to kill this deal was in 2017- when the incoming Republican Congress had the power to do so under the Congressional Review Act. Recall that it was under cover of the Obama-Trump transition that the FCC approved a sweeping rule change that enabled Univision to increase its foreign ownership stake from 25 to 49 percent.
The Republican Congress -- caught sleeping -- failed to review and repeal the rule when it had a chance. This, in turn, created the precedent that eventually allowed Univision to become a wholly owned subsidiary of Televisa. The result of Congress' inaction is that a foreign-owned corporation is now in the position, by virtue of this sale of significant assets to a domestic partisan group, of exerting undue influence upon our elections.
You mean all those partisan right-wing disinformers in right-wing Hispanic radio weren't exerting undue influence upon our elections?Only liberals are capable of "exerting undue influence," apparently. Bonilla's whinefest continued:
With the last significant roadblock removed, the Soros-backed Latino Media Network can finalize its purchase of the Univision stations, neuter or kill anti-communist bastion Radio Mambí, and attempt to exert influence upon the 2024 election across the nation’s top Hispanic markets, which include such places as the Rio Grande Valley (McAllen, TX) and Las Vegas.
The establishment of “Radio Soros” as a trusted purveyor of information is critical to the next stage of The Great Spanish-Language Disinformation War we’ve seen unfold over the past few years. As conservative alternatives finally emerge, it remains to be seen whether *this* venture will be successful.
Bonilla ignores the fact that those right-wing disinfo-pumping stations were found not to be trusted purveyors of information -- portraying Radio Mambi as "anti-communist" doesn't give it exemption from facts.
Bonilla continued whining in a Nov. 26 post (yes, it's also in Spanish) complaining that PolitiFact is hiring a Spanish-language fact-checker:
The hunt for “Spanish-language disinformation” is proving to be America’s fastest-growing grift: so much so that Politifact is now itching to get into the game.
We have a pretty good notion of what a Spanish-language Politifact is going to look like, thanks to a recent MRC study showing that Politifact is 6 times more likely to defend Joe Bidenthan it is to fact-check him.
[...]
A core element of Politifact’s foray into Spanish-language fact-checking is the belief that Hispanics are unable to discern between fact and fiction without proper assistance from institutions designated by the enlightened elite as approved purveyors of information to the heretofore underserved community.
In reality, these moves are about power and control- and are no different from the reincarnation of the failed Univision America talk radio network as “Radio Soros”. Hispanics continue to move away from the left and its institutions, including Spanish-language news media. The left scrambles to hold a restive cohort in line via the buttressing of failed institutions and the creation of new ones. Thus “Politifact En Español” seeks to join Univision, Telemundo, and every other Tom, Dick, and José in an already-crowded “Spanish-language disinformation” market.
If calling out Spanish-language disinformation is a "grift," then defending that disinformation as Bonilla does has to be one too. But grifters won't tell you about the grift -- they simply accuse others of what they're doing.
Dr. Peter McCullough is among prominent cardiologists calling for a halt to the COVID-19 mRNA shots, contending there is a link between the vaccines and the apparent increase in reports of sudden deaths from cardiac arrest.
In a column on his Substack page, he pointed to an unusual study conducted in Germany of autopsies of 35 people who died within 20 days of COVID-19 vaccine injection.
A total of 25, or 71%, had a final diagnoses consistent with a vaccine injury, including myocardial infarction, worsening heart failure, vascular aneurysm, pulmonary embolism, fatal stroke and vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia.
Significantly, McCullough said, five cases had acute myocarditis as the cause. Biopsies of the heart muscle, he pointed out, showed "patchy inflammation very similar to what was seen in the deltoid muscle were the mRNA vaccine was injected."
"Inflammation in the heart was coincident with the same pattern of inflammation in the arm," McCullough explained. "Thus we can conclude death within a few days of vaccination is most likely due to the genetic product and that inflammation in the arm may be a surrogate for a similar process in the heart."
McCullough noted the public "is becoming increasingly disturbed with reports of death among the vaccinated."
"It is natural to ask 'was the death caused by vaccination?' The most definitive way of answering that question is with autopsy," he wrote.
But as in so many of the alleged anti-vaccine studies it hypes, this one didn't find what McCullough claimed. As PolitiFact reported:
According to the German study, the researchers identified “acute (epi-)myocarditis without detection of another significant disease or health constellation that may have caused an unexpected death” in four patients. But experts who reviewed the study told us there is not enough evidence to prove that the deaths were caused by the vaccine, nor can the study be used to infer how frequently vaccine-related myocarditis is fatal.
“The temporal association of lymphocytic myocarditis following vaccination suggests but does not prove causality,” Dr. Leslie T. Cooper Jr., a myocarditis expert and chair of the Department of Cardiology at the Mayo Clinic in Florida, told us in an email.
Cooper added that the background rate of myocarditis is around 1 to 10 in 100,000 people per year. “Because we do not know the denominator of patients vaccinated in their region during this time, we cannot calculate the expected number of cases if there were no vaccinations,” he said.
“I think that it is not possible to prove that vaccination is really the cause of death of these people,” Dr. Karin Klingel, head of cardiopathology at the University Hospital Tübingen in Germany, told us in an email.
The authors of the paper themselves state that their data is merely descriptive and “does not allow any epidemiological conclusions”. The authors also correctly state that the study does not prove a causal link between the COVID-19 vaccines and myocarditis.
There are numerous well-performed studies on an epidemiological level that clearly showed the protective effects of vaccines; even the number of COVID-associated myocarditis cases is higher compared to those induced by vaccines.
but Moore has no interest in providing accurate information. Instead, he repeated old misinformation from McCullough: "McCullough, in a video interview with WND, cited peer-reviewed literature indicating the vaccines cause myocarditis, including a U.K. study that found about 100 fatal cases of myocarditis linked to the shots." As we documented, that number was taken from a pool of 43 million people who had received at least one dose of the vaccine, and that the rate of fatal myocardits is 11 times greater among those who had COVID.
MRC Mad That Netanyahu Was Asked About Trump's Flirting With Anti-Semitism Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's severereluctance to criticize Donald Trump's dipping his toe into the fetid pool of anti-Semitism extended to criticizing NBC for daring to ask the once and future leader of Israel about it. Kevin Tober whined in a Dec. 4 post:
On Sunday’sMeet the Presson NBC, anchor Chuck Todd used his rare interview with incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to harass and bombard him with questions about former President Donald Trump and anti-Semitism.
Todd started this portion of the interview by noting how Netanyahu has “a unique relationship with former President Trump.” After establishing that fact, Todd pointed out that Trump “has consistently flirted with some really fringe characters that spout this anti-semitic behavior, that preach white supremacy and white nationalism.”
“Why does he have this difficulty, do you think?” Todd asked Netanyahu as if a foreign leader had been paying attention to this controversy at all or knew what Trump was thinking.
Netanyahu mostly ignored Todd’s question and listed all the great things former President Trump did for the state of Israel:
Someone who's comfortable with anti-Semitism and Trump's playing footsie with it would see anyone raising questions about it as "harassment."And why wouldn't the head of a country whose defining feature is that it was founded on Jewish culture be concerned that the former leader of a nation that sends it billions of dollars in foreign aid annually have an opinion on that? It would be surprising if Netanyahu didn't, and Tober gave him a pass by touting old pro-Trump talking points. Yet he was mad that Todd continued to question Netanyahu about it and pinpointed Netanyahu's double standard and ends-justifies-the-means attitude:
On the subject of Kanye West and white supremacist Nick Fuentes who Trump had dinner with almost two weeks ago, Netanyahu said “I think it is not merely unacceptable it’s just wrong. And I hope he sees his way to staying out of it and condemning it.”
Todd seemed miffed that Netanyahu wouldn’t completely renounce Trump and whined to him that it’s an “ends justify the means argument.”
He made the horrific hypothetical question that if Trump’s behavior creates “death threats to Jews, inspiring people like what happened at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, to shoot and kill Jews, doesn’t that wipe away anything good he did for Israel?”
Later on in the interview, Todd asked Netanyahu if he’s “concerned though that if your government gets what you want, you overlook whether it’s Vladimir Putin who’s also an anti-semite or Donald Trump? What is the line for you?”
Clearly offended by what Todd suggested, he responded that “I don't overlook anti-semitism. I have a clear position against it, which I voice and I expect others to voice as well.”
Todd continued with the absurd questioning. Next up, he claimed: “You have been more critical of some congressional Democrats, who are critical of the Israeli government, than you are of a Donald Trump who has been elevating people who praised Hitler.”
“Does that go to this sort of transactional nature? If they are helping Israel and if they are helping Israel that’s what gotta come first?,” Todd asked.
“Sorry, Chuck. I just nullified that argument. On this very program and on previous programs. When I came out very strongly against that meeting with those anti semitic rantings,” Netanyahu politely responded.
Todd asked again about former President Trump: “Would you like to see Donald Trump as president again?”
At his wits end, Netanyahu replied“oh God, I have had enough of my politics. I’ve just gone through four of our elections. You want me to get into your elections? Keep me out of it.”
Though Todd had to work to get it out of him, Netanyahu criticism of Trump's dinner with West and Fuentes was more forceful than anything that came out of the MRC. And amid all his whining, Tober himself couldn't be bothered to condemn the dinner even as he bashed Todd for asking Netanyahu to do so. Again, that's evidence of a certain level of comfort with anti-Semitism at the MRC.
CNS Censored Walker Abortion Scandal During Runoff -- While Bashing His Opponent's Abortion Stance Topic: CNSNews.com
We'vedocumented how CNSNews.com almost completely censored the abortion and domestic violence scandals of Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker. That censorship continued even as it attacked the abortion position of his Democratic opponent, Raphael Warnock.
An anonynously written Nov. 9 article noted that Walker and Warnock would be advancing to a runoff, while a Nov. 14 article by Melanie Arter quoted outgoing Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan saying that Donald Trump announcing his candidacy early for the 2024 presidential campaign could mean that Walker loses. An article the next day by Arter quoted a Republican senator arguing that the GOP should hold off on congressional leadership battles until after the runoff because "we don't want to do anything to hurt Herschel Walker." And a Nov. 19 article by Susan Jones quoted a different Republican senator attacking "the Democrats' soft-on-crime, left-wing ideology," adding, "This is a major issue in the Georgia senate race and this is why Georgians should get out and vote for Herschel Walker." No mention was made of Walker's positions on the issues, let alone his scandals.
Laruen Shank served up more aggressive promotion from the boss of editor Terry Jeffrey's daughter in a Nov. 29 article:
Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) recently repeated Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) question on Fox’s Hannity, “Why do the Democrats hate Herschel [Walker] so much?” His answer settled on, “Because he’s a black man who’s a conservative, who has the courage to speak out.”
Seated next to Walker and Graham at a Nov. 22 campaign rally in Georgia, Cruz said, “I want to say secondly, what Lindsey just said a minute ago is really important. Why do the Democrats hate Herschel so much? Because he's a black man who's a conservative, who has the courage to speak out.”
Again, no mention of Walker's scandals was made.
Then, on Dec. 6, the day of the runoff, Arter attacked Warnock's position on abortion:
Sen. Rafael Warnock (D-Ga.) told MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” on Monday that Jesus supports abortion.
MSNBC host Joy Reid asked Warnock, “Another issue that it really drove a lot of people to the polls was the issue of abortion, and a woman's right to have self-determination over our own bodies. This is a state that’s got one of the strictest abortion laws in the country. It’s one of the hardest states in the United States for a woman to exercise her rights, and this is also a state that's got Tyler Perry, and lots of industry and lots of folks coming from out of state to work here in the industry.
“Your opponent, Herschel walker was one of the few people that was running in this cycle to stand up and support Lindsey Graham's idea of a national ban on abortion, which is something Republicans would very much like to do. Do you think that that is going to be a fight that you're going to have to have? Are we looking at trying to fight a national abortion ban?” she asked.
Warnock, who is a pastor and is pro-abortion, suggested that Jesus would be okay with abortion.
Bizarrely, Arter made no mention of the fact that Walker has been credibly accused of paying for two abortions.
After Walker lost again to Warnock, Jones served up one last fluff job on Walker by praising his concession speech:
In a concession speech that even some of his critics applauded, U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker thanked his Savior Jesus Christ, his wife Julie, and his supporters, in that order.
Walker, Donald Trump's hand-picked candidate for Georgia's Senate seat, lost to Democrat incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, falling short by some 97,597 votes. Walker got 48.6 percent of the vote to Warnock's 51.4 percent.
[...]
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, one of Walker's prominent critics, tweeted on Wednesday: "Given the incoherence of his campaign speeches, I was struck by Hershel’s moving concession speech. It was beautiful in its simplicity. No excuses. Walker showed grace and reaffirmed basic American values our politicians need to show in victory and defeat."
Jones followed this with another article lamenting Walker's loss because Democrats will more easily get their judicial nominees approved. In neither article was mention made of Walker's hypocrisy on abortion being a possible reason for his loss.
This aversion continued in a Dec. 14 syndicated post-mortem column by Star Parker, who complained that Warnock is "a boilerplate Democrat of the left, with an agenda of government spending as the answer to every problem, who is also the address to turn to keep the door open to abortion and the LGBTQ agenda." Like Jones, Parker did not consider Walker's abortion hypocrisy as a factor.
CNS also published a Nov. 21 commentary by Jenny Beth Martin attacking Warnock while praising Walker: "Our Constitution is our guarantee that our government will protect the rights that flow to us from our Creator. Herschel knows that. Warnock, based on his voting record, does not. The choice is clear." For unexplained reasons, CNS deleted her commentary, but as we all know, the Internet is forever.
MRC Keeps Up The Right-Wing Hate of Drag Queens Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center spent the first several months of the year spewinghate atdrag queens, and it kept up the hate through the fall. Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, the MRC chief hater of all things LGBTQ, lashed out at "drag brunch" in an Oct. 19 post while parroting Fox News' Tucker Carlson and a far-right website:
Just when I thought I’d seen it all, I stand corrected.
Ebb & Flow restaurant in Plano Texas held a “Garden of Eden Drag Brunch” and featured a drag queen that danced to a song about his — er, her? — pussy. Dollar bills, smiling faces, clapping, and children made an appearance in video footage of the event.
Blaze TV host, Sara Gonzales, God bless her, attended the drag brunch and witnessed the performance first hand. Thank you for your sacrifice Ms. Gonzales.
The advertisement did indicate that the event “may not be appropriate for all ages” and left it up to the parents prerogative on whether to bring children.
Even so, as the video shows, children were in attendance. The video featured a child that couldn’t have been much older than five years old staring directly at the drag queen’s performance.
On Tucker Carlson Tonight, Gonzales talked about the event and called it “child abuse” for parents to bring their kids to something of the sort and allow them to sit and watch something so sexual.
She went on to irresponsibly attack people she has never met and falsely and maliciously smear them as criminals (no, really):
Regardless of how the TX restaurant advertised, it had no qualms allowing children in. If you bring your kids to something like this, you are a child abuser and should be treated as one. Our degenerate society is promoting and encouraging things like this and kids are in the direct line of fire.
The Ebb & Flow restaurant received hate mail and death threats after right-wingers like Mandelburg attacked it. We presume Mandelburg is satisfied with this development, since demonization and ostrazation is the goal of the anti-drag queen hate narrative.
An Oct. 19 post by Kevin Tober, hyped how "Fox News’s Jessica Chasmar reported that the Biden State Department had awarded a $20,600 grant to an Ecuador cultural center to host sexually inappropriate “drag theater performances," then grumbled that "All three evening news broadcast networks, ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News each ignored the Biden administration sending taxpayer dollars overseas to fund degenerate sexual shows." Mandelburg ranted about the miniscule amount of money going toward this in an Oct. 20 post under the hateful headline "Global Degeneracy":
I love seeing my taxpayer money get put to good use. Here, on the other hand, is the opposite.
The U.S. Department of State awarded $20,600 to help fund a cultural center in Ecuador, Centro Ecuatoriano Norteamericano (CEN), Fox News reported. The center is most excited to host around 12 drag queen performances with the funding from the United States.
The spending plan reportedly began on Sep. 30 and is set to end around Aug. 31, 2022. According to usaspending.gov the funds will “promote diversity and inclusion” by hosting “3 workshops, 12 drag performances, and produce a 2 minute documentary.”
Fox news pointed out that the CEN grant “is part of the State Department’s public diplomacy program, which seeks to "support the achievement of U.S. foreign policy goals and objectives, advance national interests, and enhance national security by informing and influencing foreign publics and by expanding and strengthening the relationship between the people and government of the United States and citizens of the rest of the world.”
OK so if I read that correctly, the U.S. State Department thinks that sending money to Ecuador for drag shows is going to help enhance “national security” through “strengthening relationships?” Huh?
All this money is going to do is further normalize this kind of — er, well — strange behavior.
Last weekend there was a drag brunch at a Texas restaurant and parents literally brought their children because they thought dressing up with plastic boobs, wigs, and 3-inch thick fake eyelashes is “normal” behavior.
I can assure you, it is not.
[...]
Meanwhile in the U.S. we have gas prices up the wazoo, there’s STILL a formula shortage, the cost of living in general is astronomical and inflation is 8.2 percent, yet we apparently have excess money to send to freaking Ecuador for DRAG QUEENS!?
If this is our taxpayer dollars at work, I would like a refund.
Tim Graham spent a Nov. 1 post personally attacking an Associated Press reporter for calling out right-wing hate of drag queens:
You know the media outlet is liberal when they go rushing to the defense of the "rich history" of drag queens. This Associated Press story was supportively tweeted out by the PBS NewsHour(and ran on its website):
The headline on PBS is "Analysis: Political rhetoric, false claims obscure the history of drag performance." AP labeled this piece an "Explainer."
AP reporter/editor on the case is Jeff McMillan, whose Twitter bio proclaims he's a member of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (complete with rainbow flag emoji). McMillan's also part of the AP Stylebook team, insuring all terminology is LGBTQ-approved.
Graham accused McMillan of "editorializing from the start." But the only claims he highlighted in boldface were that "Lately, drag has been dragged through the mud," that "The art form has been cast in a false light in recent months by right-wing activists and politicians," and that "The objections are often religious in nature, with some opponents citing the devil at work" -- all objective facts. Graham went on to whine:
Are there any conservatives or Republicans quoted? No. Surely AP wouldn't "lower itself" to engaging with Christopher Rufo, who recently analyzed the "rich history" of drag and Drag Queen Story Hours at length at City Journal.
Given that Rufo's attacks on critical race theory have been proven to be dishonest and false, perhaps he's not the best example Graham could be citing.
Mandelburg's Nov. 9 "Woke of the Weak" podcast raged at a "junior drag queen," sneering, "Someone needs to call CPS on whoever the parents are of that kid, because that is literal child abuse." More false and potentially libelous accusations of a crime. Maybe Mandelburg should be calling her lawyer to see what defense she has against the inevitable libel and defamation lawsuit she'll be facing for spreading lies about people she can't possibly know.
Newsmax's Hirsen Gushed Over Kari Lake -- But Silent On Their Shared Love Of Election Denierism Topic: Newsmax
Before the midterm elections, Newsmax columnist James Hirsen churned out an embarrassingly gushy Oct. 18 profile of right-wing Arizona Republican Kari Lake. It started out this way:
Kari Lake has been garnering quite a bit of national attention of late.
As Arizona’s GOP gubernatorial nominee in the upcoming 2022 election, she has made a name for herself as a dynamic candidate, expert communicator and truly affable individual.
Illinois was her birthplace and Iowa was the state where she grew up, in a family with eight other siblings.
Fortuitous byproducts of her early life experiences were her solid mid-western roots and down-home values.
After a few more paragraphs of biography and resume recitation, Hirsen transitioned to how Lake won her Republican primary with the help of an endorsement from Donald Trump, then touted her shining prospects in the general election:
Mainstream news outlets recently reported that Democrats are becoming increasingly concerned about Kari. They evidently have good reason to be.
Axios featured a story, "Democrats fear Arizona Republican Kari Lake will be a big star."
The sub-headline of that piece is "Democratic Party Strategists are Watching Arizona's Kari Lake with Growing Alarm."
"Some of Katie Hobbs' supporters are concerned MAGA firebrand Kari Lake is outshining her low-key campaign," one NBC News blared.
[...]
Kari's ability to relate to people and clear delivery of her policy positions are strengths that her opponent seems to lack.
Democratic Party operatives appeared to panic when Kari’s opponent, who is Arizona’s former secretary of state, declined to debate Kari.
Instead her opponent arranged a one-on-one interview with a local PBS affiliate.
Hirsen censored Hobbs' rationale for refusing to debate Lake, that Lake is "much more interested in creating a spectacle and having the spotlight than actually having a substantive discussion about the issues." And, yes, that was a controversial strategy. But Hirsen is here to slobber over Lake, especially when he can inject religion into it:
Arizona’s GOP gubernatorial nominee actually has more going for her than the Democrats realize.
She has re-discovered the faith that makes for strength.
In an interview with The Arizona Sun Times in June 2021, Kari recounted the manner in which her faith was re-ignited, which led to a renewed connection with God.
It was in the summer of 2019 that she was confronted with the sheer anger of the woke mob. "Two years ago, I got canceled — as they say — now I laugh at it.
"It was painful at the time and really frightening. At the time, it was horrible," she said.
"Something had been recorded at work, and somehow [was] put out in the world and became a really big story and I immediately was attacked for it and was canceled for it."
Hirsen won't tell you the details, but this is apparently a reference to an incident in which she slagged a local alternative paper in Phoenix as "a rag for selling marijuana ads" (adding, "fuck them") after her TV station's managment feared the paper writing up Lake tweeting a reference to far-right social media site Parler. The incident got her taken off the air for a week, which apparently counts for being "canceled" in the world of Lake and Hirsen.
And "suffering" too! Her "suffering" as a result of being held accountable for her own behavior is apparently the thing that made her embrace far-right politics:
As is often the case, suffering brought blessing.
"It really brought me to my knees. I was praying to God to just get me through this," Kari revealed.
During the pandemic lockdowns, while working from home she had the opportunity to embrace the Scriptures once again.
"I don’t know how people didn’t return to their faith during COVID," she remarked. “I started reading the Bible. I hadn’t been reading the Bible for decades – since I was a kid!"
After immersing herself in The Word, Kari yearned for regular church attendance. Some friends invited her to come and worship with them.
She went and it changed her life.
"I had the most beautiful church epiphany, and found a church that just stirred my soul. I’ve never missed a week, except when I’m out of town," she said.
"It just brought me so much closer to where I have an intimate, good relationship with Jesus. I feel as if I have a connection with Jesus."
This is the kind of connection that makes for success in any direction the road may lead.
Even a political one.
Since Hirsen's gauzy profile was all about vagueness, he didn't mention that Lake is an election denier who believes Trump actually won in 2020 -- which you'd think he would mention since he too is a Trump election denier (who still won't apologize for the denier lies he spread). And despite her (and Hirsen's) confidence that she would win, Lake lost -- ironically, in part because she became a Trump clone who obsessed about nonexistent voting fraud. And like Trump, she's mentally incapable of handling her loss and has become a denier who files lawsuits that get tossed out of court for lack of credible evidence.
Hirsen hasn't written about Lake since -- perhaps because he doesn't want to deal with the truth about his own election denier activism.
CNS Replaces Attacks on Pelosi With Attacks On Jeffries Topic: CNSNews.com
As it ramps down petty attacks on Nancy Pelosi as she steps down from Democratic House leadership, CNSNews.com is ramping up petty attacks on her apparent replacement, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.
A Nov. 16 article by Susan Jones was a Republican attack on Jeffries for calling out MAGA extremism:
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says MAGA Republicans are not the greatest threat facing the nation, as Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) opined on Tuesday.
Jeffries, leader of the House Democratic Caucus, said, "The threat right now in this country to the American people are extreme MAGA Republicans. That's the threat. That's the problem. That's the crisis that we confront."
Gingrich scoffed:
"Well, look, I mean, first of all, for any Democrat from the party that represents big cities to talk about threats without talking about the murders, the rapes, the carjackings, the robberies that their big cities actually have encouraged by releasing people back on the street is nonsense.
"Second, I would argue the greatest threat to America's future is the collapse of our public schools under the domination of the teachers’ unions so that we're not going to be able to compete with China or India or anyplace else if we continue to produce children who can't do math, can't read, can't write, and are propagandized into worrying about their gender in the third grade. I think it's really a crisis.
"So I would be glad to talk to him some day about the real threats and crises."
Jones did not give Jeffries an opportunity to reply to Gingrich.
A Nov. 21 article by Jones complained that Jeffries, "next in line to be House Minority Leader," said that Democrats "will fiercely and vigorously oppose any attempts at Republican overreach and any Republican extremism. And I'm hopeful that the Republican leadership will take lessons away from the rejection of extremism by the American people all across the land, and not double and triple down on it in the next Congress." Unlike with the uncritical stenography does of Republican politicians, added comments from Republican Rep. James Comer, "the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee," bragging about all the partisan investigations he has planned.
For a Nov. 28 article, Peyton Holliday followed the RNC script -- literally; most of her Twitter embeds are from the RNC oppo-research account -- and attacked Jeffries for previously criticizing election results:
Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who reportedly is running to lead the House Democrats in the next Congress, was an outspoken "election denier" in 2016, claiming that Donald Trump was "artificially" placed in the presidency by Russia. He also claimed the election was "illegitimate."
In February 2018, Jeffries, who is chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, tweeted, “The more we learn about the 2016 election the more ILLEGITIMATE it becomes. America deserves to know whether we have a FAKE President in the Oval Office.”
In May 2019 he said in Congress, “Russia interfered with our election, attacked our democracy for the sole purpose of artificially placing someone at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. They were successful.”
[...]
Fox News further reported, “Democrats have criticized Trump for nearly two years now for his rejection of the 2020 election results. But when asked this week if Jeffries still believes Russia stole the 2016 election for Trump, Jeffries' office indicated that is still the case and told Fox News Digital his "observations about the twice-impeached Florida man speak for themselves."
Holliday gave Jeffries no opportunity to respond. And even though he has responded to similarright-wing attacks by pointing out that "I supported the certification of Donald Trump’s election. I attended his inauguration ... and found ways to work with the Trump administration," CNS has never published any response by Jeffries to this partisan attack line.
Indeed, CNS continued with those partisan attacks with a Dec. 1 article by Craig Bannister transcribing how Fox News' Sean Hannity "list[ed] some of newly-elected House Democrat Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-N.Y.) most radical comments and policies" and claimed that "Jeffries' record is filled with really extreme forms of far-left lunacy." Again, no balance was offered.
Jones again seemed annoyed that Jeffires pushed back on upcoming partisan Republican House probes in a Dec. 5 article:
"What's your mission in the new Congress?" ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked incoming House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Sunday.
"Well, our mission is to find ways to work with Republicans whenever possible to get things done for the American people -- to work on issues related to the economy and inflation and lowering costs, fighting for better paying jobs and safer communities," Jeffries said.
"And I hope that Republicans will look for common ground with us, but we will also oppose them when we must, particularly as it relates to any effort to go down this rabbit hole of unnecessary, unconscionable, unacceptable investigations of the administration."
House Republicans have promised to launch a number of investigations, including one into Hunter Biden's alleged influence peddling -- getting rich on his family connections. They also want to know how deeply involved former Vice President Joe Biden may have been in his son's business dealings.
CNS' mission statement claims that it "endeavors to fairly present all legitimate sides of a story." But it rarely offers fairness to people who aren't conservative, and it's failing to do so with Jeffries.
WND's Latest Round Of Obama Derangement Syndrome Set Off Over ... Braids! Topic: WorldNetDaily
Just as with the Media Research Center, Michelle Obama's revelation in her new book that she chose not to wear braids in the White House because Americans (well, right-wing white Americans) weren't ready for it set off a new round of Obama Derangement Syndrome at WorldNetDaily. Bob Unruh complained in a Nov. 18 article:
There were some serious things that happened in the Obama White House. There was planning for the moves that would have the government essentially take over health care decision making for Americans.
There also apparently was some of the scheming and manipulating that allowed the "Russia collusion" hoax to develop, and to be used against then-candidate Donald Trump.
But now on a tour hawking her new book, which already is being described as "insulting" and "full of clichés," Michelle Obama is recalling how she altered her hair style because she didn't think America was ready for her "braids."
The New York Post noted Obama said Americans still were "getting adjusted" to "having a black first family in the White House."
She said she decided, "Let me keep my hair straight."
"Let’s get health care passed [first]. They tripped out when Barack wore a tan suit," she claimed. "The great indignity, the scandal of the Obama administration. The code of ethics at a workplace, as black women we deal with it, the whole thing about, 'Do you show up with your natural hair?'"
The attacks on on Obama's book come from a single review in the right-wing UK Daily Mail, which would not be considered a representative sample.
Then came a Nov. 21 column by Mychal Massie, who has long had a terminal case of Obama Derangement Syndrome that's so severe and unhinged that he will refer to her only as "the Obama woman" (though it's arguably an upgrade from "Buttzilla"), resulting in a lie-filled rant that's at the far end of unhinged even for him:
It has been said: "When presidents leave office they should also leave the country, less they haunt the new president like a ghost." I submit that goes for their wives as well – especially if they are named Hillary or Obama.
Heaven knows Hillary is bad enough, but the Obama woman is in a league of her own.
The Obama woman is a dimorphic harridan who fancies herself a beauty and a queen. That said, she's a "beauty," as in repulsive not the kind you send flowers.
I am beyond sickened with her kind endlessly complaining how bad America is and how bad it's been for them. We should all have it as bad as that behemoth-butt, bigoted, hate-mongering contumacious shrew and her ilk. Her kind has no clue what it is to have difficult times.
With the money and influence she and her debaucherous husband have and command – if America is so bad, get out! Move to Cuba or Venezuela.
As I have noted before, whenever the Obama woman needs attention she laments how (sniff, sniff) difficult it has been for her as the first crayon color woman to run roughshod over the White House. (She cannot be called a "lady" even in jest.)
One example of such a pathetic exhibition of same was back in 2015 when she shamelessly fabricated a teary perspective of how bad her life was and how unfair the media were to her, going so far as to tell students at Tuskegee University in Alabama, remarks from political pundits kept her up at night. I submit the only thing that keeps that woman up at night are frequent bathroom trips from the amount of vodka she is alleged to consume daily.
Her latest Negress pity-me party comes as she is hawking her 300-page fantasy book of clichés deal, for which she is supposedly splitting $65 million with her husband.
The Obama woman laments how hard it was for her, because she had to show a modicum of propriety in the White House. She hated the fact that she couldn't go full-out ghetto-queen. She and her staff supposedly obsessed over whether or not she should wear pantyhose or get braids for her hair. I guess the debate was whether or not the Whoopi Goldberg look would work for her. One can only imagine how strenuous that skull session was.
You know she is lying through teeth when she is spinning these sob stories, but lying about America and We the People of same is all her kind know to do. It's their chief means of sympathy collecting – and as long as it works, why change the routine?
Somehow racist hebephrenic harridans like the Obama woman, Oprah, Joy Reid, Whoopi Goldberg, Stacey Abrams et al. are never asked what other superpower nation has had a president that's recognized as a crayon color.
The "300-page fantasy book of clichés" claim links back to Unruh's article.
Massie weirdly concludes: "In reality the only problem the Obama woman has is finding a place to shed her skin in the Northeast this time of year."
MRC Roots For Book Bans While Complaining About Being Called Censors Topic: Media Research Center
Earlier this year, we noted how the Media Research Center played the "it's not book banning when we do it" approach to book bans, because they're playing the protecting-children card when supporting book bans and censoring subjects they have decided they don't want people to know about. That enthusiasm for and defense of book bans and censorship, as well as effectively demanding the censorship of books it doesn't like -- ironic given how the MRC loves to rage about purported "censorship" by social media -- continued thoughout the year.
An April 18 post by Curtis Houck complained that musician Janelle Monae -- dismissed in the headline as a "lefty singer" -- criticized GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for signing "a law that bans us talking about the LGBTQIA+ communities in books, bans critical race theory," huffing in response: "Of course, the laws in states like Texas aim to and do nothing of the sort. This is unless Monáe meant teaching sex education to preschoolers and teaching white kindergartners that, by existing, they’re oppressors toward their black classmates." Houck offered no evidence that any of that was happening in Texas. On April 28, Alex Christy huffed that a CNN correspondent, "with the help of an anonymous teenager, accused adults of throwing temper tantrums as they seek to attack 'non-binary' youth when they seek to remove books about left-wing gender ideology from schools." He didn't explain what "left-wing gender ideology" is, let alone why it must be censored.
Wallace White screamed for censorship in a July 12 post by using the old tool of the wannabe censor, taking things out of context:
If there isn’t a surge in homeschooling in Oregon’s Salem Keizer School District, something is very wrong with the water in that part of the world. As reported by Libs of TikTok July 12, a school district committee has voted to keep Gender Queer available for children. It’s an extremely pornographic LGBT book.
The school formed a “special committee to determine if the book should be removed,” per Libs of TikTok. The head of the committee, Suzzane West, has a job description that reads, “Crafting and developing strategies that support the district’s movement to become a more anti-racist and anti-oppressive school system.” In other words, normal parents didn’t stand a chance.
The book contains graphic sexual imagery and nudity, as well as panels about binders for transgender people and sex toys. Also featured is an image of gay sex. I wish I was joking. If you don’t believe me, look for yourself (at your own risk).
White then got mad that people brought up pesky things like context in opposition to his plucking random images from the book out for shock value:
West desperately tried to justify her decision to lots of righteously angry parents in emails sent in reply to complaints. One reads, “The book will be necessary to keep in schools, to help be more inclusive and allow all students from the LGBTQ+ community to have a resource to refer to. In addition, the pages taken out of context do not represent the intention of the book and only served as an illustration to help provide understanding of what the author was trying to portray in their book.”
Yeah, I don’t think context is going to fix the fact there is graphic depictions of gay sex in a book children can read.
In fact, there is a thing called the Miller test, which is the Supreme Court's measurement of whether a work is obscene -- and one of those requirements is to judge the work as a whole. Indeed, a couple weeks after White's manufactured-outrage post, a court refused to ban "Gender Queer" as obscene. And author Maia Kobabe, who wrote the book based on personal growing-up experiences, implored readers to "please read the whole book and judge it based on the entire contents, not just a tiny snippet" -- something White clearly did not do.
Tierin-Rose Mandelburg cheered official censorhip in a July 21 post, which, again, was based on cherry-picked out-=of-context images and not the entire work:
Well this is shocking! A school board just rejected wokeism ... for now.
The Miami-Dade County School Board just reversed a previously made decision to approve sex-ed books for students. The vote was 5-to-4 against using the textbooks! Thank goodness.
[...]
According to the scanned pages, books provided information about “pulling out” and even explained the difference between sex and gender. Ah! Indoctrination at its finest. One page talked about what people do with unplanned pregnancies. It said that some “choose to place the child for adoption, or in some cases, end the pregnancy.” As a cherry on top, one book also presented questions for kids to ask doctors like “Will you tell my parents or others the information I tell you?” and “If I want to, can I talk to you without my parents in the room?”
Mandelburg got petulant when a parent pointed out the censorship stuff:
A different parent, Marika Lynch claimed that the vote against the books “is an attack by right-wing extremists,” who are “trying to censor books all across the country.”
Oh so if you don't want your kid indoctrinated, you're a "right-wing extremist." Got it.
The book does have inappropriate content in it and shouldn't be distributed. That's the bottom line.
The school board will be going through new material before the school-year starts. Hopefully stuff that kids should actually learn about and not this woke crap.
Kevin Tober played the "indoctrination" card in an Aug. 18 post:
On Wednesday night’s The 11th Hour on MSNBC, host Stephanie Ruhle proved that she hates conservatives who want to prevent the ideological and sexual indoctrination of children so much that she allowed one of her guests to compare their efforts to that of book burnings in Nazi Germany.
After smearing Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis for preventing Critical Race Theory and LGBTQ indoctrination from being taught in schools, which she suggested is making the teacher shortage worse, she cried to Texas Democrat Senator Roland Gutierrez: "Texas is also facing a teacher shortage. It’s not a surprise. Teachers are woefully overworked, underpaid, and now under attack. How do you get more qualified teachers in Texas classrooms?"
Of course, neither Mandelburg nor Tober are actually opposed to indoctrinating children in schools -- they simply want their favored right-wing indoctrination.
Mandelburg was back to demanding censorship of inconvenient things in an Aug. 31 post, raging against a high school health book that "listed the following for types of gender identities: agender, androgynous, bigender, cisgender, gender fluid, gender nonconforming, gender questioning, nonbinary and transgender," going on to huff:
Kids, high school students included, are easy targets. They are in developing years and are extremely impressionable and easily influenced. Targeting them at this stage is a perfect way to groom and, as the mother said, exploit them and their innocence.
Parents can supposedly choose to “opt-out” of certain lessons, but if the school was even willing to order these books, there’s no telling what other sort of indoctrinating, explicit and grooming conduct goes on behind closed school doors.
Teaching young adults about gender identity isn't "grooming," no matter how mad Mandelburg gets over it.
Tim Graham complained about right-wingers being (accurately) called censors in his Sept. 21 column with the usual out-of-context content:
The cultural left never stops trying to drag America into their supposedly glorious “tolerant” future where we have an ever-expanding array of gender identities and grade-school children know as much about masturbation as they do about multiplication.
Unsurprisingly, CNN is promoting left-wing “anti-censorship” groups raging against conservative parents who object to precocious pornographic indoctrination. On The Lead with Jake Tapper, the CNN host interviewed Jonathan Friedman, the “director of free expression and education programs” at PEN America, pitched merely as a “nonprofit literary advocacy organization.” They advocate for literature, not for a cultural revolution.
Their latest report boils over at alleged racism and homophobia in parental objections in education. They assert most “book bans” are about “works with LGBTQ+ characters, protagonists of color, about race and racism, or with sexual content.”
[...]
As usual, Tapper didn't challenge the “free expression” champion on the actual contents of controversial books, like Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, the most challenged “literary” work. The New York Times gently notes this comic book (“graphic novel”) includes depictions of sexual experiences, masturbation, and menstrual blood. Put that on TV!
The Times explained how this book entered libraries across America. In 2020, Gender Queer won an Alex Award, a prize given by the American Library Association (ALA) to books written for adults that hold “special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18.” Librarians across the country look to awards like this when ordering new books, so high schools and some middle school libraries around the country began stocking it.
So the ALA promotes the book, and then goes on a “free speech” crusade when it’s challenged. Jonathan Friedman is quoted in the Times alleging “There’s definitely an element of anti LGBTQ+ backlash.” You can’t object without being the bigoted “backlash,” and not a part of “free expression.”
Graham concluded by whining:
The “anti-censorship” groups promoted by the liberal media have the same ideological sensibilities as their friends in the “news” business and the Big Tech sector. They all claim they’re saviors of “democracy,” but they don’t act like it. Their “free expression” credentials are just as easily questioned. They all tend to “censor” the specifics of what makes books objectionable. They aren’t good at debate. They’re good at squelching debate.
Actually, Graham and his MRC subordinates are are the ones who are trying to squelch debate by pulling allegedly offensive snippets of books out of context -- in defiance of the Miller test -- and demanding they be censored because they're "protecting" children from "indoctrination," while labeling anyone who opposes this approach as "groomers."
WND's Cashill Ignores Facts To Further Ray Epps Conspiracy Theory Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has continuedto cling to the Omar Epps conspiracy theory, and it's clearly not going to stop anytime soon. This time, it's Jack Cashill trying to further it in his Nov. 16 column:
"Understanding what it means if the facts and the evidence are there, and they decide not to prosecute – how do we then call ourselves a nation of laws?" Rep. Liz Cheney said of the Department of Justice on CNN in August.
Cheney was directing her fire at Donald Trump, and she wasn't through. "The question for us is, are we a nation of laws?" she continued. "Are we a country where no one is above the law?"
At a University of Chicago forum last week, student Daniel Schmidt asked Cheney a variety of that same question. From his perspective, the person who showed himself above the law on Jan. 6, 2021, was not Donald Trump.
That person was the one Jan. 6 protestor the left has been ordered to love. "Do you demand the prosecution of Ray Epps?" Schmidt asked. "He's an actual insurrectionist on tape. Do you demand his prosecution?"
After a lengthy recitation of Epps' purported offenses and bashing of Cheney for pointing out that the committee she was on can't order any prosecution, Cashill took us back into conspiracy theory territory:
Despite the millions who had seen it, Cheney carried on as though the video did not exist, trying desperately to memory-hole Epps before he was even a memory.
"As far as what I've seen Mr. Epps, there are conspiracies around the role he was playing that day." There probably was a conspiracy. "Conspiracy theorists" simply want to know how the conspiracy unfolded and who was behind it.
"People are pushing [Epps] was doing what he was doing," Cheney continued, "because the federal government was telling him to. That's not true. There's no evidence of that. And Justice Department and the committee have both said that clearly."
Lacking even a shred of self-awareness, Cheney tried to convince a knowing student of recent history that he should put the word of the DOJ and Cheney's kangaroo committee above logic and hard evidence to the contrary.
It was only fitting. As Orwell reminded us: "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
Yes, speaker-elect, we have reached that point. Do something about it!
Cashill doesn't want Epps prosecuted, of course -- at least, not as a member of a violent mob. Like his fellow conspiracists, he believes that Epps was a deep-state plant and FBI informant who egged on his fellow protesters. But as others have noted, there are good reasons why Epps -- who, by the way, is very much a conservative, not an FBI plant -- has not been prosecuted: he did nothing beyond being unlawfully present on the Capitol grounds, and very few rioters have been prosecuted solely for presence on restricted grounds.
But Cashill doesn't care about facts -- he has a conspiracy theory to foment. Indeed, he whined, "Epps seemed so much an agent provocateur, in fact, that on one occasion the protestors in his vicinity chanted 'no, no, no' and 'fed, fed, fed' after he encouraged them to breach the Capitol."
Cashill has to ignore a whole lot of inconvenient facts to keep this conspiracy theory alive. That, of course, puts him in good standing as a WND columnist.
As you'd expect from the pro-Trump sycophants at Newsmax, Donald Trump's announcement of his 2024 presidential campaign got all the pomp it could muster up -- indeed, it was dutifully reporting Trump's teases way back in October. A Nov. 4 article by Nicole Wells teased that Trump "is tentatively planning to announce the launch of a 2024 presidential campaign on Nov. 14." Eric Mack dutifully reported another tease on Nov. 6.
A Nov. 7 article by Mack teased the announcement of the annoucement at a Trump rally that was ostensibly for Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance, noting that Trump "also announced a Nov. 15 Mar-a-Lago announcement on his hotly anticipated plans to run for the presidency once more in 2024." That was followed by a Nov. 10 article by Michsel Katz noting that a "senior Trump adviser" confirmed the announcement, followed by Nov. 11 wire service article teasing the announcement, while a paywalled article that day claimed to list the pros and cons of the announcment.There was even a Nov. 11 article by Theodore Bunker noting that Trump's "longtime adviser Jason Miller" said Trump would announce.
For the actual announcement on Nov. 15, Mack again served as stenographer (while also making sure to point out that the announcement "aired live on Newsmax"):
Former President Donald Trump, turning a deaf ear to establishment calls to hold off and Democrat efforts to stop him, officially declared his 2024 presidential campaign Tuesday night.
"In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States," Trump told his crowd at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida, at 9:22 p.m. ET. The address, heavily touted for days, aired live on Newsmax.
"This will not be my campaign. This will be our campaign all together, because the only force strong enough to defeat the massive corruption we are up against is you the American people. It's true. The American people, the greatest people on Earth. We love them all. And we love both sides. We're going to bring people together. We're going to unify. ..."
It wasn't until several more paragraphs of stenography that Mack got around to mentioning concerns over his announcement:
Trump had been beating back recent calls for him to hold off his declaration, calling out establishment efforts to prop up primary challenges, including by longtime ally Gov. Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis, who won reelection by a huge margin in the midterms, is being hailed by some political observers as a leading candidate for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, with some recent polling now showing him ahead of Trump. Other polls continue to characterize Trump as the Republican to beat.
Meanwhile, Trump is still facing Democrat resistance, including continued attempts to frame him for the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. He is also facing the investigation under the Presidential Records Act that led to the raid on his private residence at Mar-a-Lago in August.
Despite "some reservations" about former President Donald Trump making his official declaration Tuesday night, former Arkansas GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee said this "pitch perfect speech" can make Trump once again "unbeatable."
"I think he's going to be unbeatable, if he stays in this message," Huckabee told Newsmax host Rob Schmitt moments after the speech concluded.
[...]
Huckabee did admit Trump has a "bedside manner" that does not sit well with everyone.
"One thing I always want to say about Donald Trump: Look, if this is a hospital, and there are a lot of doctors in it, he's got the worst bedside matter of anybody in the entire hospital — no doubt about that — but he's the best surgeon in that hospital," Huckabee concluded.
"Nobody can do the operation better than he can."
Newsmax had previously reported on Huckabee's desire for Trump to wait on his announcement.
A Nov. 16 article by Luca Cacciatore grumbled that "Minutes after former President Donald Trump revealed his intentions to run for office again in 2024, Democrats from Sen. Raphael Warnock's campaign to the White House jumped at the opportunity to raise cash." He went on to huff that "The move comes despite Biden being more unpopular than both Donald Trump and Barack Obama were at this stage of their presidencies — even with a less-than-devastating midterm performance."
Mack compiled a list of even more Trump sycophants for a Nov. 17 article:
Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, former White House doctor for President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump, has officially endorsed Trump for the 2024 presidential election.
"President Trump is the greatest president I've ever seen," Jackson posted on Truth Social, as hailed by Trump in a recent Save America PAC statement. "I'm on his side 100%! President Trump has my complete and total endorsement!!!"
Jackson's endorsement was among a number of the earliest endorsers for Trump's 2024 campaign, which he made official in a Tuesday night Mar-a-Lago address, which aired live on Newsmax.
Reps. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., and Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., made their endorsements before Trump even officially declared his intention to run.
Trump endorsed hundreds of midterms candidates who he now will call on to return the favor sooner than later as he gets ahead of what could become a growing 2024 GOP presidential primary field.
A Nov. 17 article by the apparently uniroinically named Charlie McCarthy complained that "Rupert Murdoch-owned media outlets, including Fox News, have ramped up attacks on Donald Trump after the former president declared his run to reclaim the nation's top office." Newsmax's biggest Trump sycophant, Dick Morris, joined in taking a shot at the competition in a Nov. 17 TV appearance by critizing Rupert Murdoch's empire for not being a Trump cheerleader like him and favoring Ron DeSantis instead:
Dick Morris, a bestselling author, TV host, and former adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, said he doesn't buy the notion of "many" supposedly fair-minded media outlets bashing Trump's Tuesday announcement of seeking the White House again in 2024.
Morris said it's one guy largely pulling the messaging strings on the anti-Trump rhetoric: Media mogul and billionaire Rupert Murdoch, who owns the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Fox News.
Murdoch still "resents that Trump wouldn't let him run the White House" from 2017-21, Morris told Newsmax Thursday afternoon, while appearing on " American Agenda" with hosts Bob Sellers and Katrina Szish.
[...]
Fox News is "working with the RINO anti-Trump establishment" on a daily basis. In that event, the coverage would be skewed, added Morris.
"It's not particularly significant [to hindering Trump's reelection campaign]," said Morris. "It's just another example of media manipulation."
Morris went on to hype that while, in the words of article writer Jay Clemons, "DeSantis might be faring well in one-on-one polls against Trump ... Trump still owns a significant advantage of 14 percentage points over all comers" with registered voters.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Hypocritical Herschel Embrace, Part 2 Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center stuck by Republican Herschel Walker as the scandals and abortion allegations piled up. And when he ended up in a runoff for the Georgia Senate seat, it had to do so all over again. Read more >>
MRC Leaps To Hang Democratic Tag On Racist LA Council Member Topic: Media Research Center
As further evidence that it's a partisan attack organization than any sort of legitimate "media research" outfit, the Media Research Center loves to link random bad people to Democrats (even as it vociferously denies that bad behavior -- i.e., flirting withanti-Semitism -- by the leader of the Republican Party is an accurate reflection of the party itself).Scott Whitlock seized on another such case in an Oct. 11 post:
Kudos to CBS and reporter Mark Strassmann for fairness. Strassmann, on the CBS Evening News and CBS Mornings shows, was the only journalist to repeatedly note that the powerful Los Angeles politician who went on a racist rant is a Democrat. ABC barely noticed it. NBC briefly covered the story on Monday and Tuesday mornings, but made no mention of party affiliation.
Nury Martinez, who just resigned as the President of the Los Angeles City Council, in a secretly recorded audio tape from 2021, complained abut “the blacks,” the “dark” Koreans and sneered at the child of one council member as a “monkey.”
Journalist love to generalize all Republicans as guilty when there is a comparable scandal. When it’s a Democrat, the party affiliation is often hidden.
Nicholas Fondacaro similarly seized on the situation while also exposing a hole in the MRC's attack:
Twenty four hours after suggesting that only white people could be racist because of “a power dynamic,” ABC’s The View suddenly decided “minorities can be racist against each other, too” on Tuesday. This hypocritical flip-flop came after the Latina Democratic president of the Los Angeles City Council, Nury Martinez made racist remarks, captured on a secret recording, against “the blacks,” “dark Koreans,” and a black child who she called a “monkey” in Spanish.
Of course, the fact Martinez is a Democrat wasn’t mentioned on the show but Sunny Hostin opined about the incident “as Afro-Latina” and how she “grew up” experiencing “anti-blackness, anti-black hatred in the Latino community.” “And that's always been a painful thing I have dealt with, the anti-blackness in the Latino community, and it has to stop. It has to stop with this,” she declared.
After Hostin noted her mother is a “white Puerto Rican” and her father is “a black man,” self-described Republican Ana Navarro sympathized with her saying that kind of racism “exists” and that “minorities can be racist against each other, too.” “Yes. Yes,” Hostin agreed.
While the "View" ladies were quick to call out Martinez's racism, the MRC was much more reluctant to directly criticize Donald Trump's dipping his toe into the fetid pool of anti-Semitism -- again, they're more mad that people made logical conclusions that if the leader of the Republican Party is cool with that, the Republicans who don't or won't criticize it are cool with it as well. Fondacaro will never admit that difference. Instead, he repeated the MRC falsehood that Vice President Kamala Harris said, in his words, "hurricane relief funds should be given out based on race."
How can you say that a Democrat is in trouble without saying that a Democrat is in trouble? Just skip the word ´Democrat´.
This is exactly what the national Spanish-language newscasts did, not in one report, but in report after report – a solid 39 minutes of airtime in a little over 24-hours - about the scandal involving four “Latino politicians” from Los Angeles. The public officials, considered to be the apex of Democrat Hispanic power, were caught red-handed on a recorded conversation where they made racist and disparaging remarks about other Latinos, and about the Black son of a fellow white Democrat council member who is also gay. Telemundo, Univision and CNN En Español, all skipped mentioning their political affiliation, a fact that raised many red flags.
[...]
It’s amazing how little is said on air when a controversy involves elected DEMOCRAT public officials. Were they Republicans, can you imagine the uproar? From MAGA ultra-right-wingers, to fascists, to you name it; the coverage would contain the word Republican every other second.
It's hard to take Krumhansl seriously as an authoritative voice when she's using the right-wing pejorative of describing someone as "Democrat" instead of the grammatically correct "Democratic."
Clay Waters also hyped "the notorious leaked audio of Democratic Latino members of the Los Angeles city council making offensive remarks about blacks and Jews" in an Oct. 16 post, followed by Larry Elder emphasizing in an Oct. 21 column that Martinez was part of an "all-Democrat (plus one independent) Los Angeles City Council."
None of these posts mentioned that nobody is defending Martinez -- even as they continue to defend Trump no matter what he does.
Biased CNS Article Touts Right-Wing Lawsuit Against Abortion Drug Topic: CNSNews.com
Peyton Holliday wrote in a Nov. 22 CNSNews.com article:
The Alliance Defending Freedom has filed a lawsuit against the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), arguing that the agency failed to abide by its legal obligations “to protect the health, safety, and welfare of women and girls” when it authorized the use of chemical abortion drugs in the U.S. and “eliminated necessary safeguards for pregnant women and girls who undergo this dangerous drug regimen.”
The chemical abortion drugs specifically are mifepristone and misoprostol. According to doctors, they usually must be taken prior to the 11th week of pregnancy to ensure an abortion. Mifepristone is taken first and then, 24 hours later, 4 misoprostol pills are taken. Several hours later cramping and bleeding starts and the tiny baby is expelled from the uterus.
Currently, these abortion drugs can be delivered through the mail – as ordered by the Biden administration during the COVID pandemic – but this is a violation of federal law, according to the plaintiffs, who also charge that the FDA “never had the authority to approve these drugs for sale” in the first place.
The lawsuit was filed Nov. 18 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division. The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American College of Pediatricians and several other doctors are suing the FDA commissioner, other FDA officials, and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine is a nonprofit membership organization that represents nearly 30,000 health-care professionals. The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) represents the plaintiffs.
Missing from all of this is explicit labeling of the right-wing anti-abortion bias of all these groups. Contrary to Holliday's benign description of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, it is in fact an anti-abortion group that attacks the procedure as "the intentional destruction of human life through barbaric methods." The American College of Pediatricians is also a right-winggroup that is not only anti-abortion but also deeply homophobic.
Holliday also gave voice to another anti-abortion group that she failed to label a such attacking the drug's safety:
Commenting on the case, SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said, “First authorized in 2000 and expanded via mail-order under the pro-abortion Biden administration, abortion pills are swiftly becoming a leading health risk to mothers and babies. The FDA’s reckless lack of meaningful oversight has led to serious complications and a surge in emergency room visits for women using this drug regimen.” “Pregnancy is not an ‘illness’ as the FDA described in their creative justification to broadly distribute this dangerous pill.”
SBA Pro-Life America further said in a statement, “Multiple peer-reviewed studies confirm that women are at risk of severe side effects after taking chemical abortion pills, including hemorrhaging, the need for follow-up surgery, and even death. New Lozier Institute peer-reviewed research has found women are also twice as likely to be admitted for surgery if their abortion pill-related complications are miscoded by emergency room personnel as a natural miscarriage.”
Holliday gave no space to anyone to argue for the safety of the drugs. As Wonkette summarized:
The fact is, Mifepristone is extremely safe. It is safer than Tylenol, it is safer than Viagra, it is safer than penicillin. It is safer than a lot of drugs that have historically been prescribed or sold over the counter. It is, in fact, far safer than being pregnant. Since 2000, 26 patients have died from complications related to Mifepristone, while 700 have died from pregnancy ... per year.
Of Holliday's 14-paragraph article, only two were given to non-right-wing activists -- not to get an actual comment about the lawsuit, mind you, but for a simple (and lazy) copy-and-paste:
Planned Parenthood praises the use of chemical abortion drugs. “Medication abortion is extremely effective in ending an early pregnancy, working approximately 95-99% of the time, and gives patients the option to end their pregnancy at home or in another setting in which they feel comfortable, while still providing them with the medical support and information they need,” said Planned Parenthood on its website.
“A growing number of patients in the United States are choosing to end their pregnancy with medication abortion,” said the nation’s largest abortion provider. “In fact, in 2014, nearly one in three people seeking abortion outside of a hospital used medication abortion.”
Like other CNS interns before her, Holliday appears to have spent her time there being taught to spread partisan talking points, not how to practice journalism.
MRC Excuses Trump Trading In Anti-Semitic Tropes, Denies He's Anti-Semitic Topic: Media Research Center
In the month before Donald Trump had a dinner with anti-Semites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, the Media Research Center labored to protect Trump from allegations of being anti-Semitic over his criticism of non-right-wing American Jews for allegedly not being sufficiently supportive of Israel. When he first made the claim in October, Mark Finkelstein launched quickly into Trump Defense Mode in an Oct. 17 post:
Monday's Morning Joelaunched quickly into Trump Attack Mode, bizarrely claiming Donald Trump put out a "dangerous" and "anti-Semitic screed" on his Truth Social account about American Jews and Israel.
Today's Morning Joe deceptively cast this Trump "tweet" as suggesting that American Jews better get their act together before it's too late—for them!
That sounded ominous--until you read what Trump had actually written.
[...]
In other words, far from making a threat against American Jews, Trump's tweet was actually a plea for greater support for Israel! That Israel was endangered, from neighboring anti-Semites like the Iranians.
But Morning Joe repeatedly insisted that Trump's tweet was "anti-Semitic." And not merely a "dog whistle," but "screaming it out loud."
In a dramatic display of twisting these remarks out of context, Jonathan Lemire claimed that Trump's tweet "could be interpreted by his followers as a moment to potentially commit violence against Jews." And Joe Scarborough said the tweet was akin to a previous one by Trump in which he said that Mitch McConnell had a "death wish."
Trump was saying no such thing. But Morning Joe was sending a false message to potentially deranged people out there that Trump was in fact calling for violence against Jews. So if there's any violence that emerges, they can point their fingers.
Finkelstein followed up with more defense the next day:
This would be funny if it weren't so outrageous.
On his MSNBC show on Sunday, Mehdi Hasan, formerly of Al Jazeera, teed up notorious antisemite Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar to falsely accuse Donald Trump of making an antisemitic post, and to wring her hands of the rise of antisemitism in America.
As Eli Lake, tongue firmly in cheek, tweeted: "Up next, Vladimir Putin will talk to Mehdi about the importance of international law in a nuclear world."
Hasan introduced the subject by abjectly mischaracterizing Trump's tweet as having "threatened American Jews." To the contrary, as we noted yesterday, "far from making a threat against American Jews, Trump's tweet was actually a plea for greater support for Israel!"
Ilhan proceeded to wring her hands over Trump's alleged use of antisemitic "tropes." In particular, she condemned Trump's supposed charge of "dual loyalty" against Jews. This from the woman who said, in a reference to American Jewish supporters of Israel, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says that it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”
Omar has a long history of anti-Israel/antisemitic statements. There was that notorious tweet in which she wrote: "Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel."
Her most infamous bit of classic antisemitism came when, directly pointing the finger at AIPAC, Omar claimed US support for Israel is "all about the Benjamins baby."
Finkelstein didn't explain any criticism of Israel is automatically anti-Semitic.
When Trump said pretty much the same thing a month laters, it was Jason Cohen's turn to be the designated defender in a Nov. 22 post:
In the left’s latest effort to frame Donald Trump as an antisemite, HuffPost tried to spin his recent remarks at the Republican Jewish Coalition in a piece with the headline “Donald Trump Scolds Jews, Praises Evangelicals In Geopolitical Swipe.” Sounds terrible, right? But in reality, it was not at all. Huff Left out details about the speech and the response to it.
For starters, in the clip it used from Mediaite, Trump began: “I just grew up with a great fondness and a great feeling for Jewish people and for Israel.”
HuffPost ignored that and started with this quote: “Some people in the United States — Jewish people — don’t appreciate Israel the way they should.”
Funnily enough, this line received loud applause from the crowd at the RJC, but HuffPost neglected to note that. Is the audience at the Republican Jewish Coalition anti-Semitic too?
[...]
Trump continued, “But I appreciate Israel, and it’s an honor to have, I think, done far more for Israel than any other president.”
Trump is particularly proud of his accomplishments in Israel, his favorite child is Jewish, and he has a lifelong record of being a friend to the Jewish people.
Worst anti-Semite ever.
Actually, Trump has a record of invoking offensive Jewish stereotypes such as calling them good with money and shrewd negotiators, as well as telling Jews that Israel is "their country," which invokes another anti-Semitic trope, that of dual loyalty. Cohen's claim that Trump "has a lifelong record of being a friend to the Jewish people" linked to an article written by a pro-Trump organization called Jews Choose Trump -- hardly an objective source.
Cohen concluded by huffing: "When will the left ever learn to judge people by their actions, not words and tonality?" Weird how Cohen thinks words and tone don't matter when it's a right-winger spouting the offensive ones.
A few days later, Trump had his dinner with Ye and Fuentes. Cohen was among those MRCers who were mad -- not at Trump, of course, but that reasonable observers viewed this dinner as evidence Republicans have a certain comfort level with anti-Semitism.
We've noted how the Media Research Center's MRC Latino project joined its parent's war on George Soros by whining about non-right-wing owners with a tangental link to Soros are buying several Spanish-language radio stations in Florida and elsewhere -- many of which are right-wing, pro-Trump peddlers of misinformation. As the deal moved closer to completion, the freakout continued -- coupled with whining about how that misinformation was being called out. Jorge Bonilla huffed in a Nov. 6 post:
WorldNetDaily's Art Moore once again called on 
The Media Research Center's 
We've
The Media Research Center spent the first several months of the year 
Before the midterm elections, Newsmax columnist James Hirsen churned out an embarrassingly gushy Oct. 18 
As it ramps down 
Just as with the 
Earlier this year, 
WorldNetDaily has 
As you'd expect from the pro-Trump sycophants at Newsmax, Donald Trump's announcement of his 2024 presidential campaign got all the pomp it could muster up -- indeed, it was dutifully reporting Trump's teases 
As further evidence that it's a partisan attack organization than any sort of legitimate "media research" outfit, the Media Research Center 
Peyton Holliday wrote in a Nov. 22 CNSNews.com 
In the month before Donald Trump had a dinner with anti-Semites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, the Media Research Center labored to protect Trump from allegations of being anti-Semitic over his criticism of non-right-wing American Jews for allegedly not being sufficiently supportive of Israel. When he first made the claim in October, Mark Finkelstein launched quickly into Trump Defense Mode in an Oct. 17 
