MRC Cheers Montana's Unenforceable TikTok Ban Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center assumes that anyone who defends TikTok, as well as all of its millions of users, are stooges for "communist China" -- even though the MRC is acting like a stooge for Facebook, which paid a Republican PR firm to spread anti-TikTok talking points in right-wing media (much like the ones the MRC has been using). For instance, a March 23 post by Curtis Houck complained:
Ahead of Thursday’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing featuring TikTok CEO Shou Chew, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC had their flagship morning news shows spouting off tales of possible despair and financial ruin from TikTok influencers the Chinese-owned social media app paid to fly to Washington to appear as props.
Always game for the superficial, ABC’s Good Morning America was at the forefront of the pressure to keep the app that’s dumbing down the country alive. Co-host Robin Roberts teased that “creators lobb[ied] lawmakers, saying a ban would threaten their livelihoods.”
Houck showed no concern for those who make their living off TikTok -- they're just collateral damage. He also doesn't explain that companies flying in people to testify on their behalf in Congress is hardly a novel thing; activists on both sides do it.
So when Montana actually issued a ban on the use of TikTok in the entire state , the MRC was incredibly giddy. Gabriela Pariseau gushed in a May 18 post:
In a first-of-its kind ordeal, the state of Montana has sent the communist Chinese government-tied TikTok platform packing.
Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed SB 419 into law Wednesday, May 17, prohibiting TikTok from operating “within the territorial jurisdiction of Montana. “To protect Montananas’ personal and private data from the Chinese Communist Party, I have banned TikTok in Montana,” wrote the governor in a tweet Wednesday.
Montana banned the app from government devices in December, but it is the first state to ban the app outright on all devices.
Aside from the usual "national security" talking points, Pariseau went on to quote a right-wing activist claiming that one argument for banning TikTok is that "it pushes critical race theory." We thought the MRC opposed censorship of ideas.
And, really, censorship is what the Montana law is about -- and the MRC is effectively arguing that it's not censorship when right-wingers do it. It's also unconstitutional, as one observer noted:
First off, it’s a clear bill of attainder, which is explicitly barred by the Constitution.
Second, it violates the 1st Amendment rights of TikTok, in that it’s no different than the government banning a magazine from printing in the state, or seizing their printing press.
Third, it violates the 1st Amendment rights of app store operators, who have the right to determine what they do and don’t distribute.
Fourth, it violates the 1st Amendment rights of users of TikTok who want to use the app to communicate with others.
Fifth, it violates the the Dormant Commerce Clause in regulating interstate commerce.
And as another observer noted, the law is unenforceable because the internet can't be stopped at state borders: "The only way to enforce Montana’s ban is to build this system and begin massive surveillance of all U.S. internet-connected devices, reporting precise location and the contents of all phones to any law enforcement at will. Sound familiar? That’s because that is the surveillance state in China."
But because the MRC cares only about hating TikTok and not complications like constitutionality, it will ignore such messly little complications. Indeed, a May 19 post by Catherine Salgado complained that "Some users of the communist Chinese government-tied TikTok are suing the state of Montana for banning the app that poses a serious data security hazard" labored hard to play down that stuff:
The lawsuit claims the ban is beyond Montana’s legal authority, while the state attorney general’s office said it is “fully prepared to defend the law,” according to the [New York] Times.
The lawsuit attempts to make the TikTok ban a violation of the First Amendment, The Times noted. It claims Montana “can no more ban its residents from viewing or posting to TikTok than it could ban The Wall Street Journal because of who owns it or the ideas it publishes.” But it’s not a matter of “disliking” TikTok’s content or owners. Based on evidence the CCP can access detailed TikTok user data, many lawmakers and experts have labeled TikTok a national security risk.
Salgado did not explain how Montana can possibly enforce the law.
When TikTok filed its own lawsuit against the ban, Luis Cornelio ranted in a May 23 post:
The communist Chinese government-tied TikTok is hypocritically lashing out at Montana for protecting its citizens’ data security.
Days after Montana became the first state to ban the Chinese Communist Party-tied app, TikTok launched legal warfare against the state government in court in an effort to continue sweeping up Americans’ data for its communist overlords in Beijing.
TikTok dubbed the ban “unconstitutional” in a Monday tweet, claiming the lawsuit will “protect” their business and “the hundreds of thousands” of TikTok users in Montana. What a joke.
[...]
Media Research Center Founder and President Brent Bozell praised Montana in a May 18 tweet: “TikTok is a spy tool of the Chinese Communists. Kudos to Montana for banning it. More states need to follow suit,” said Bozell, who was echoed by MRC Free Speech America & MRC Business Director Michael Morris.
Cornelio did not bother to explain how the Montana is constutitional and can be enforced; instead, he did a lot of screaming about the CCP.
Salgado returned for a supposed gotcha in a June 28 post:
TikTok influencers just let the cat out of the bag with a lawsuit against Montana for banning the social media platform.
Multiple states have banned or restricted the popular app TikTok, which is tied to the Communist Chinese government, as concerns rise that the app is spyware. As Montana’s ban on TikTok from operating in the state is set to take effect Jan. 1, TikTok is seemingly growing desperate.
The Chinese-tied app not only filed its own lawsuit but also finally acknowledged that it was financing a lawsuit against Montana from five creators, according to The New York Times.
Five Montana TikTok influencers sued Montana last month, claiming the ban not only exceeded the state government’s authority, but even undermined their First Amendment rights. TikTok reportedly dodged questions about its potential involvement, opting instead to file its own lawsuit. But then two of the suing TikTok creators admitted to The Times that TikTok was financing their case.
TikTok spokeswoman Jodi Seth reportedly tried to justify TikTok’s backing as a free speech effort. “Many creators have expressed major concerns both privately and publicly about the potential impact of the Montana law on their livelihoods,” Seth claimed. “We support our creators in fighting for their constitutional rights.”
Seth did not, of course, address the issue of TikTok as potential spyware, as the social media platform has connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Salgado did not explain how TikTok is behaving any different from any other organization in defending its rights, nor did she bother to explain why the law is not constitutional or how it could possibly be enforced (jailing teenagers, perhaps?). And, like Houck, she offered no concern for the livelihoods of TikTok creators in Montana -- perhaps she too assumes they're nothing more than dumb CCP stooges (just like Facebook told her to think).
Newsmax's Reagan Rages At Garth Brooks For Not Hating Transgender People Who Drink Beer Topic: Newsmax
Michael Reagan ranted in his June 17 Newsmax column:
We don’t know if Garth Brooks personally drinks Bud Light, but we can assure you he’s an avid, two-fisted drinker of leftist Kool-Aid.
Brooks recently made the news when he announced his new bar, "Friends In Low Places Bar & Honky Tonk" — located in Nashville, Tennessee — will be proudly (no pun intended) serving Bud Light.
This after a Bud Light marketing campaign embraced female impersonator Dylan Mulvaney who is famous for his manic woman-face portrayals of real women.
The resulting boycott of Bud Light by normal beer drinkers has the marketing team wondering if sinking to the same market share as non-alcoholic beer would be a bad thing after all.
What’s surprising is a man who made his living in the music field can be so tone deaf in his own city. Brooks is cozying up to the same insane gender ideology that produced the Covenant Christian School shooter in the same city where the murders happened!
Reagan didn't explain why he and his fellow right-wingers are such snowflakes that they can't emotionally handle a transgender person drinking bear. Instead, he raged at Brooks for refusing to hate transgender people as much as he does:
Brooks gives all the sanctimonious leftist-approved excuses for embracing the culture’s slide into perversion. Yahoo News has the quote, "I get it, everybody's got their opinions. But inclusiveness is always going to be me. I think diversity is the answer to the problems that are here and the answer to the problems that are coming. So I love diversity."
And if "diversity" means inclusivity for sexual miscreants, well, the more the merrier!
What Brooks has evidently missed is that "diversity" is an ideological Procrustean bed that forces all to conform to one ideology. And that ideology is not one that Country Music fans support. In other words, Brooks, unlike colleague Alan Jackson (of "Gone Country" fame) chose to go beyond crazy left.
Brooks urges customers — assuming there are any after this — "So, here's the deal, man …come in. But come in with love, come in with tolerance, patience. Come in with an open mind, and it's cool."
Which sounds like the governing motto of every PRIDE festival held this month.
Why must having an "open mind" include sane people associating with disturbed people and giving a big old hug to decadence?
Why does culturally imposed "diversity" force us to live in Sodom with electricity?
Why does Reagan think that failure to hate people who aren't like him is an "ideology"? And why doesn't he admit that, by the same argument, that kind vicious hatred is an "ideology" as well? We may never know.
WND's Haynes Spreads More Education Consipracy Theories Topic: WorldNetDaily
The last time we checked in on WorldNetDaily columnist Carole Hornsby Haynes, she was blaming the Nashville school massacre on sex education in Hungary (no, really). In her June 6 column, she had another conspiracy to peddle, blaming the United Nations for the current state of education:
Since the mid-1800s idealists have dreamed of a socialist world government while some envisioned a totalitarian world government. The movement by elitists culminated in the founding of the United Nations, with communist leaders holding the U.N.'s highest military post for decades. Knowing there would be resistance to abolishing national sovereignty and replacing it with a world government, the U.N. adopted a program of gradual change with monitoring of progress toward the ultimate goal.
Change would begin with young children who, elitists believed, were being infected with extreme nationalism by their parents. UNESCO was created as the education arm of the U.N. to guide schools in creating division between children and parents. Next came the World Health Organization (WHO), which would implement international mental health policies and guide nations in changing and monitoring citizens' worldviews.
And, yes, Hungary came up again:
The roots of radical sex education for children go back to a Marxist program implemented in Hungarian public schools nearly a century ago in a scheme to destroy Christianity in Western Europe and pave the way for a communist takedown. The curriculum included sex lectures and graphic instructional materials about free love and sexual intercourse. Students were encouraged to ridicule and reject Christian moral ethics, monogamy, and parental and church authority. Hate was turned toward parents, clergy and all dissenters.
With continued exposure to atheism, radical sex education and rebellion against authority, the Hungarian students turned into bullies, thieves, murderers, sex predators and sociopaths who disrespected authority.
Gradually, the Hungarian tactics have been introduced into American government schools with the same results.
But as we documented, the "Hungarian tactics" introduced by Georg Lukacs weren't that radical, and they weren't that long-lived.
By then, however, Haynes was ready to move on to other conspiracy theories:
This brings us to the recent public furor over Target, with calls for boycotting the store over its rainbow flag T-shirts, chest binders, "tuck-friendly" undergarments and products by U.K.-based Abprallen clothing line, which promotes satanism, drugs and violence.
Public rage exploded with news that Target has partnered for a decade with Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and donated more than $2.1 million. Target's vice president of brand marketing, Carlos Saavedra, serves as treasurer at GLSEN.
As we've also documented, "tuck-friendly" swimsuits were not marketed to children, Target sold nothing related to "satanism" (and the designer's "satanism" was satire). Haynes then ranted:
During a 2007 speech to Planned Parenthood, Barack Obama said he believed sex education should be provided to kindergarteners. Once in office, Obama brought in a gay founder of GLSEN, Kevin Jennings, to serve as his assistant deputy secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education. Jennings used his federal perch to implement pornography in public schools.
In fact, the "sex education" Obama advocated would be age-appropriate, which for kindergartners would involve discussing things like inappropriate touching. And Haynes offeres no proof that Jennings, who was Obama's safe-schools czar and a target of right-wingers, "used his federal perch to implement pornography in public schools."
Haynes then descended into further conspiracy-mongering:
Schools have become mental health clinics with psychologists, mental health clinicians, case managers, behavioral interventionists, social workers and others to analyze student behavior and provide treatment.
Social and Emotional Learning programs, federally mandated, indoctrinate children by embedding radical sex education and Critical Race Theory into lessons throughout the school day.
The result is mentally destabilized students, in need of counseling, who are encouraged to become political activists against supposed systemic racism. Some join Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Others rage through school halls or other low-security locations, heavily armed and looking for victims.
Using the purposely created mental health crisis and the need to provide "safe schools," leftists goad federal and state legislators to pass gun control with red flag laws and universal background checks for the unstated purpose of disarming the American people for a New World Order.
[...]
By destroying Western Christian and moral foundations, elitists are creating a Great Reset for a U.N.-driven New World Order. Americans have a window of opportunity to stop woke corporations and the Great Reset. Will we?
All of this makes Haynes an unreliable writer -- but an ideal WND columnist.
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC's DeSantis Defense Brigade: Pudding Patrol Topic: Media Research Center
There is apparently no accusation so minor that the Media Research Center won't defend Ron DeSantis against -- even a claim that he eats pudding with his fingers. Read more >>
MRC Plays The Clinton Equivocation Card To Distract From Trump's (Second) Indictment Topic: Media Research Center
In addition to general deflection tactics and hypocritically defending a Trump-appointed judge against bias accusations, the other main way the Media Research Center defended Donald Trump against his (second) indictment was to play the ol' ClintonEquivocation. Kevin Tober set up the equivocation in a June 11 post:
Two days after the unsealing of the 37-count indictment against former President Donald Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home, ABC's This Week co-moderator George Stephanopoulos was full of partisan sanctimony. After a highly-partisan opening monologue and subsequent panel discussion of Trump's legal woes, the former Clinton administration official turned to Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. It did not go well for him.
"Donald Trump has said repeatedly that he did nothing wrong," Stephanopoulos noted. Do you believe that?"
The Senator didn't take the bait and instead turned it around on the Democrat activist. "Well, here’s what I believe. We live in an America where if you’re the Democratic candidate for President, Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, you can set up a private server in your basement to conduct government business," Graham said before getting rudely cut off.
Graham angrily shot back: "No, let me finish!"
Shoving his leftist bias back in his face, Graham rebutted "I am trying to answer the question from a Republican point of view. That may not be acceptable on this show."
Tober went on to quote Graham saying that "Hillary Clinton did very similar things and nothing happened to her."
But Tober won't tell you that Graham is wrong -- Clinton's case and Trump's case are not remotely the same. As Dean Obedallah explained at CNN:
After an investigation lasting nearly a year, then-FBI Director James Comey announced that he would not recommend filing any criminal charges against Clinton, who was the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee at the time.
Comey stated that in looking at previous Department of Justice investigations concerning “mishandling or removal of classified information” there was always some combination of the following: “clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice.”
Comey concluded, “We do not see those things here,” although he criticized Clinton for being “extremely careless” in the handling of sensitive, classified information.
In contrast, allegations of repeated intentional conduct are at the heart of the case against Trump. For starters, 31 of the 37 felony counts that Trump faces are for willful retention of national defense information in violation of the Espionage Act.
The fact that the comparison has no basis in reality didn't keep the MRC from repeating it, of course. Nicholas Fondacaro huffed in a June 12 post:
In a grade-A example of CNN not caring about its credibility as a news organization during Monday’s Inside Politics, the network trotted on disgraced former deputy director of the FBI turn CNN analyst, Andrew McCabe, who was fired for leaking to the press lying to investigators about it. He was tapped to defend two-time failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for keeping classified information on her personal e-mail server.
[...]
McCabe proceeded to downplay the fact that Clinton had classified material on her server, arguing that they weren’t hard copies of documents but rather communications of sensitive topics:
In addition to those, we found thousands more emails that she exchanged with people, the total classified materials seized from that review, were essentially 55 email conversations, strings of emails in which eight were classified top secret, 37 secret, and 10 confidential.
Now, it's important to remember those weren't classified documents that was simply the content of email exchanges that was later deemed to be classified. These weren't documents with classified stampings on the tops and bottoms and cover sheets and all that kind of stuff.
“Should it would have happened? No. But what we didn't have was evidence that Hillary Clinton had intentionally exchanged or withheld classified information. And that's just what we could and could not prove at the end of the day,” he asserted, omitting the fact that Clinton’s hard drive and cellphone were not properly disposed of.
Fondacaro did not mention that the charges against trump center on his refusal to return classified documents and deceiving officials about having them.
Alex Christy attacked those trying to set the record straight:
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle used Monday’s edition of The 11th Hour to deliver a solemn monologue “for fact’s sake” to attempt to discredit the “misinformation” being spread by Republicans that seeks to compare President Trump’s classified documents indictment to classified documents-related scandals that did not result in indictments. However, Ruhle left out several bits of information and rewrote the law in question when seeking to defend the decision not to charge Hillary Clinton for her e-mails server.
Beginning her pretentious fact-check, such as it was, Ruhle addressed the audience, “Okay, so, let's give you some facts. President Biden is currently under investigation for storing classified documents in his Wilmington, Delaware, garage. McCarthy and other Republicans are just deflecting here, and they're asking, why Hillary Clinton, why Mike Pence? And Biden, why aren't any of them charged?”
As for Pence and Biden, “Well, for fact's sake, here is why that argument is flat out wrong. In the cases of Joe Biden and Mike Pence, aides from both men found classified documents, immediately contacted authorities, turned them over, and allowed the searches of their properties. The Justice Department closed the Pence case without an indictment. The Biden investigation is still ongoing.”
Moving on to Clinton, Ruhle recalled, “Former FBI Director James Comey never brought a case about her emails because he said no reasonable prosecutor would. That is partially because they couldn't determine if there was any intent. As for Donald Trump, the federal government had to subpoena him because they suspected he had not turned over all of his classified documents.”
Ruhle omitted four things in that explanation. First, the law does not only mention intent, but also “gross negligence”. Second, she deliberately deleted all her e-mails under the justification that they were not work-related, but the FBI eventually recovered some e-mails that were work-related, including some that were related to the 2012 Benghazi attack. Third, e-mails are not tangible objects like boxes full of paper. Fourth, the Clinton camp used hammers and BleachBit on the server.
Christy concluded by huffing, "As the fact-checkers might say, this claim is 'missing context.'" But he omitted important context himself -- namely, that very few of the emails in Clinton's server that contained classified information were actually marked as classified, unlike with Trump.
A June 14 'flashback" post by Bill D'Agostino refreshing admitted he didn't know what he was talking about as he n evertheless tried to play the Clinton Equivocation:
This piece was not written by a lawyer, and it will contain no Venn diagram-style analysis comparing the mishandling of classified information by former President Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. At issue here is the media’s stubborn refusal even to try to frame either case fairly.
For Trump, the allegations in the indictment are themselves proof of his guilt. In fact, his guilt was assumed long before the indictment was even a twinkle in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s eye. For the media, the prosecutorial process is a spectacle to be enjoyed in the aftermath of the Justice Department finally “getting” the bad orange man.
Not so for Mrs. Clinton. It’s not just that viewers weren’t bombarded with long lists of Clinton’s many malfeasances — though, of course, they weren’t. But the media were so resistant to discussing Clinton’s emails that many refused even to admit that there was a scandal.
If you were watching TV news back at the height of the email saga in 2015 and 2016, you were subjected to daily lectures about why nobody actually cared about Hillary’s emails, and why you shouldn’t either.
[...]
So while the facts of Trump’s and Clinton’s cases were indeed different, they were far more similar than the media’s handling of them.
Tuesday’s edition of the tax-funded PBS NewsHour aired a segment on Trump’s latest indictment, over classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate, that was devoted to neutralizing Republican accusations of a double standard between the political parties over document-related prosecutions, using an unlabeled Democratic lawyer and operative as cover.
Republicans have counterattacked the Biden Justice Department by bringing up the case of Hillary Clinton’s term as secretary of state and the thousands of emails, dozens of which were classified, that she irresponsibly hosted on her private home server. She deleted thousands of e-mails using the justification that they weren’t work-related, but the FBI eventually recovered many that were. A hammer was used to destroy government phones that showed evidence of the private email service, and her server was wiped with a file cleaning program called BleachBit.
[...]
Then came the source to explain it all: A Democratic national security attorney! Mark Zaid is a familiar face on the, previously explaining why the mishandling of classified documents by former President Trump and current president Joe Biden (while serving as Barack Obama’s vice-president) were “incredibly different.” Now that the case against Trump has been elevated to felony stature, Zaid’s humming the same Democratic tune.
The guy singing the Republican tune stuck to the songbook by complaining about Zaid but not countering it -- not even the part where he pointed out that much the classified information on Hillary's server was deemed so after the fact.
Tober was back to spread the misleading talking point again in a June 18 post hyping Mike Pence's appearance on "Meet the Press":
Pence complained that Trump being indicted while Hillary Clinton is allowed to roam free is “one more example of a two-tier justice system that we've been living through for seven years.”
“I mean I have to tell you after seeing Hillary Clinton given a pass,” Pence noted before getting cut off by an irritated Todd.
“By your Justice Department. It was by a Republican,” Todd said frazzled. “Jeff Sessions had another U.S. Attorney look into everything with the Clinton Foundation and didn't bring charges.”
Pence correctly responded that “Hillary Clinton was given a pass and then, we went two and a half years through a Russia investigation, that we now know from the Durham Report should’ve never been begun.”
Tober was not about to admit that Todd is right, or to mention that Hillary's case is much different from Trump's -- he's paid to spread right-wing narratives, not tell the truth.
WND's Kupelian Adds New (Bogus) Grievances To Another Old Book Topic: WorldNetDaily
As he did with his 2005 book "The Marketing of Evil," WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian has put out a revised edition of his 2015 book "The Snapping of The American Mind." Both were originally published by WND's now-defunct book division, but the revised edition are being released by Republic, a publisher founded by longtime right-wing book publisher Alfred Regnery. Kupelian explained what the revised edition contains in a March 27 article:
Turbocharged by the presidency of Barack Obama – one of the most radical, destructive and utterly dishonest chief executives in American history – and continuing into our current time under the demented and epically corrupt Joe Biden, long-coalescing forces of the political, cultural and sexual Left have finally succeeded in bringing about their long-promised “fundamental transformation of America.”
But there’s more – much more.
The bigger story is, this revolution is also causing a “fundamental transformation” of Americans, as I explore in the new edition of my book, “The Snapping of the American Mind: Healing a Nation Broken by a Lawless Government and Godless Culture.” In this newly revised and expanded paperback edition, I reveal how the radical Left – which today dominates virtually all of America’s key institutions – is accomplishing far more than just enlarging government, redistributing wealth, de-Christianizing the culture and generally wrecking our country. With its wild celebration of sexual anarchy, its intimidating culture of “woke” political correctness, its perverse incomprehension of the fundamental sacredness of human life, and – as is increasingly evident – its blinding hatred of Almighty God, our leader class is not only negatively transforming the greatest nation in history. It is also actively promoting widespread dependency, debauchery, family breakdown, violent crime, corruption, suffering, addiction, mental illness, despair and suicide. This is what I explore in the new edition of "Snapping," which includes brand-new chapters illuminating the astonishing "1984"-style attacks on America taking place under the deranged presidency of Joe Biden.
In other words: He's trying to retool his animus toward Obama to make it fit as an attack against Biden, as well as rehash his pro-Trump activism by continuing to justify abandoning his sense of morality in order to support him. Indeed, a excerpt from the book published at WND on June 4 shows how much he is willing to lie and mislead in order to prop up Trump and attack Democrats:
Truth be told, the Democratic Party has long smiled on election fraud and abuse.
Democrats’ indefensible opposition to Voter ID laws, their expansion of Election Day into “Election Month,” their flat-out unconstitutional alteration of state election laws such as occurred in 2020, their promotion of universal vote-by-mail with the simultaneous abandonment of traditional safeguards, their advocacy of the fraud-plagued practice of “ballot harvesting,” their perverse opposition to cleaning voter rolls, their insistence that ballots mailed late be counted, and a multitude of other strategies all testify to their love affair with election fraud.
Meanwhile, conservatives who support the most basic, commonsense, universally accepted standards like Voter ID are gaslighted as racists and white supremacists, and, as Joe Biden repeatedly told the nation, rabid promoters of “Jim Crow 2.0.” This despite the fact that a large majority of black and Hispanic voters in the U.S. insist they favor Voter ID laws!
The key to understanding how Democrats can feel morally superior about encouraging and abetting election fraud – which is both a crime and a mortal assault on the most essential foundation of a civilized society – is recognizing that they tend to regard their opponents not just as wrong, but as evil. As legendary columnist Charles Krauthammer put it, “To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.”
That's a highly ironic claim given how Kupelian clearly believes that anyone who's not as far-right as he is is not just wrong but evil. Kupelian followed that with another hypocritical rant:
Or perhaps worse than evil, if such is possible: Indeed, for many decades, Democrats have likened Republican presidents to Adolf Hitler, arguably the most reviled human being in world history.
Columnist and talk host Larry Elder recounts a few highlights of this practice, leading off with Minnesota attorney general and former congressman, Rep. Keith Ellison, a Democrat and a Muslim, “compar[ing] then-President George W. Bush and 9/11 to Adolf Hitler and the destruction of the Reichstag, the German parliament building: ‘9/11 is the juggernaut in American history and it allows ... it’s almost like, you know, the Reichstag fire,’ Ellison said. ‘After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader of that country (Hitler) in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted.’”
Sound insane? Just wait. “Comparing Republicans to Nazis has long been a national pastime of the Democratic Party,” explains Elder:
[...]
Notwithstanding the Democratic Party’s long history of concocting outrageous Hitler parallels with Republicans, the U.S. president eliciting the most extreme and widespread Hitler comparisons – by far – has been Donald J. Trump.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn echoed the Hitler comparison, telling CNN, “This president and this attorney general seem to be doing everything they possibly can to impose Gestapo activities in local communities.” CNN’s Don Lemon compared Trump to Hitler on-air, as did Democratic presidential candidate Robert “Beto” O’Rourke. The truth is, throughout Trump’s presidency, Democrats and media personalities continually likened the 45th U.S. president to Hitler, demonized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers as Nazi guards, and border detention facilities as “concentration camps.”
Since the only moral response to the real Hitler was to try to assassinate him (there were 16 known plots to end Hitler’s life), merely lying, deceiving and cheating in elections would seem to be not just morally acceptable – but a moral imperative, according to this worldview.
Aswe'vedocumentedevery time Kupelian does this, likening President Obama to Hitler or other Nazis was practically astaple attackat WND. It had a columnist,Hilmar von Campe, who practically reveled in doing so. Kupelian's boss, Joseph Farah,demandedthat a minister not give the invocation at Obama's inauguration, citing Obama's "evil policies" and adding, "I'm sure you would not want to invoke God's blessing on the inauguration of a figure like Adolf Hitler, whose rise to power brought the destruction of millions of lives." Farah even worked an Obama-Hitler comparsion into his bogus birther crusade,declaringthat tyhey were similarly ineligible to hold their leadership positions.WND-published author Anita Dittman loved the comparison too, insisting that "Liberals’ blind idolization of Obama mirrored Germany’s hypnotic fascination with Hitler, Dittman said of the racist tyrant whose vitriolic rhetoric dehumanized the Jewish people as a prelude to his attempts at total annihilation." It even published acolumndefending the smear and insisting that those who complained about it "are out of ideas or have too much time on their hands." We don't recall Kupelian ever fretting about inciting violent attacks on Obama whenever he published these smears, which tells us he believed that the only moral response to Obama was to deceive and lie about him -- for instance, Kupelian and WND spread eight years of lies about where Obama was born.
Kupelian went on to assert again that Democrats are not just wrong but evil and demonic:
To understand what’s truly occurring on the deepest level in today’s America requires a shift away from the conventional political terminology of “left-right,” “liberal-conservative,” “Democrat-Republican.”
Indeed, everything being explored here ultimately boils down to matters of good and evil.
As mega-bestselling author of “American Marxism” and talk-host Mark Levin observed, Joe Biden has led the “most diabolical presidency and most diabolical Democratic Party, probably since slavery.”
“Diabolical,” of course, means “characteristic of the Devil, or so evil as to be suggestive of the Devil.” And in light of the Bible’s memorable characterization of the Devil as “the accuser of the brethren” (Revelation 12:10), it’s chilling to consider that good and decent Americans, the vast majority self-identifying as Christians, have never ever been falsely accused of so much evil by their own diabolical leader class as they are in the current era.
Kupelian didn't explain how this argument didn't run afoul of his own complaint that Democrats believe Republicans are not just wrong but evil.
Hypocrisy: MRC Tries To Find Ways Not To Criticize Chick-fil-A For Embracing DEI Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has gleefully attacked companies that violate right-wing narratives like not hating LGBT people (Bud Light, Target). But when those companies have a reputation for catering to conservatives, they get treated differently. A June 2 post by Tom Olohan started out with righteous anger:
After Chick-fil-A drew attention to its diversity, equity and inclusion program, prominent figures across Twitter reacted to the news while leftist media exaggerated criticism or missed the problem entirely.
On Tuesday, May 30th, many Twitter users noticed that Chick-fil-A had created a “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” page on its website and spread the word about Chick-fil-A promoting Erick McReynolds to Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the restaurant chain.
Following a quote by Erick McReynolds, the DEI page includes this line: “Chick-fil-A, Inc.'s commitment to being Better at Together means embedding Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in everything we do.” Twitter users from Michael Knowles, to Allie Beth Stuckey, to Jack Posobiec, Erick Erickson, and Charlie Kirk reacted to the hire, criticizing Chick-fil-A and DEI more broadly.
Olohan is misleading by claiming that Chick-fil-A wasn't the one that "drew attention" to its DEI program -- as he admits, it was "many Twitter users." But having done this, he seems to want to distract from it:
Leftist news sources like The Hill exaggerated this criticism, uplifting smaller accounts calling for a boycott, while others like The New York Times and CNN aggressively missed the point on what DEI is and why conservatives object to it.
This uproar also led to many accounts sharing a video from 2020 where Chick-fil-A owner, Dan Cathy, shines the shoes of rapper Lecrae Moore, while telling white people to do likewise with a “contrite heart, a sense of humility, a sense of shame, a sense of embarrassment, beget with an apologetic heart.”
But if DEI is so evil, how can The Hill (which, contrary to Olohan's assertion, is not a "leftist" publication) be exaggerating the issue? Olohan doesn't explain. Instead, he called on vicious transphobe Michael Knowles to try and absolve Chick-fil-A fiurther:
Daily Wire columnist, Michael Knowles, agreed with the idea that creating a DEI department is a problem in and of itself. On his show Wednesday, Knowles told his audience, “The exact verbiage does not exactly matter. It’s all pretty much just gobbledygook anyway. The disconcerting thing is not the exact wording. The disconcerting thing is that Chick-fil-A has embraced DEI at all, and now while some conservatives are calling for a boycott of the openly religious, generally relatively conservative company, as far as I’m concerned this story has almost nothing to do with Chick-fil-A.”
Knowles went on to add that this incident demonstrates the ubiquity of liberal ideology in our culture.
Most conservatives who mentioned a boycott, spoke in opposition to it. Radio host Erick Erickson opposed a boycott, suggesting that adding a boycott of Chick-fil-A would discredit conservatives with the general public and before noting by omission that Chick-fil-A’s DEI page does not promote gender theory.
Actually, Erickson didn't say that. Here's what he actually said: "Y’all really gonna boycott @ChickfilA? When you start boycotting every business as “woke” the average American will think you’re full of crap," adding that the company's stated mission is to "glorify God," later stating that conservatives need "discernment in your targets." In other words, he was pointing out that conservative anger in general was discrediting thenm. But wouldn't carving out an exception for Chick-fil-A also discredit them when it targets other companies for doing the same thing? (We caught WorldNetDaily doing this as well.)
And that attitude is why the MRC was completely silent when it was revealed that Cracker Barrel -- another restaurant chain beloved by right-wingers -- has embraced DEI and not hating LGBT people.
It seems that, despite Olohan's headline, the media did not miss the point, and Olohan is the one who nmeeds to explain why he's hyocritically giving certain "woke" companies a pass based on their past friendliness to conservative agendas.
NEW ARTICLE: CNS' Nitpicky War on Kamala Harris Topic: CNSNews.com
Just as it did to President Biden, CNSNews.com took the vice president's words out of context to make her look ridiculous, obsessed over the words she said -- and even lied about a claim she made. Read more >>
MRC -- Which Attacked Trump Prosecutor As 'Soros-Backed' -- Complained That It Was Pointed Out Trump Trial Judge Was Appointed By Him Topic: Media Research Center
After months of attacking Alvin Bragg, the district attorney who's behind Donald Trump's first indictment, as a "Soros-backed prosecutor," the Media Research Center is aghast that anyone who would point out that Aileen Cannon, who will oversee Trump's second indictment (which the MRC has been defending Trump against), was appointed to her position by Trump and might be biased toward him. Alex Christy whined in a June 9 post:
Gone are the days when questioning whether a judge in a Trump indictment case can be truly impartial is said to be unacceptable because the cast of MSNBC's Friday special coverage on the matter sounded the alarm whether Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon can truly be fair and neutral given some of her previous rulings.
Diaz-Balart presented the news to NBC senior executive editor for national security David Rohde and asked for his thoughts, “And now NBC can confirm indeed that Judge Aileen Cannon will be presiding over this case. Just thought, your reaction to that?”
Not thrilled with the news, Rohde declared that “I'm concerned and if she, you know, handles it through the trial she made some very unusual rulings in the course of the litigation surrounding the search warrant.”
Rohde is alluding to Cannon’s decision to appoint a special master back in September.
Christy didn't mention that legal experts questioned Cannon's movefor a special master, seen as a move designed to benefit Trump and which a federal appeals court later overruled.Christy pretended this wasn't evidence of bias: "Cannon was presented with an unprecedented and politically sensitive case involving a former president who is currently running again, she issued a ruling, it got reversed, that isn’t definitive proof of partiality.
P.J. Gladnick whined about the criticism in a June 11 post:
On Friday, MSNBC acted "concerned" over the news that Aileen Cannon was chosen as the judge to oversee the Trump documents case. However, the MSNBC reaction was mild compared to the sheer panic over Cannon in an article published by Slate magazine that same day. Mark Joseph Stern, Slate's senior writer on legal matters sounds like he will spend many sleepless nights over his extreme fear that "Judge Aileen Cannon Can Absolutely Sink the Federal Prosecution of Trump.
[...]
EEEK! And what gives Stern nightmares is that this case hasn't been assigned to a liberal judge who can be counted on to pressure the jury into the desirable outcome of convicting Trump.
[...]
GASP! She gave a decision favorable for Trump. Not permitted in a world where the federal government has largely been politically weaponized. You can't fight weaponizers! Stern notes Smith has the option of requesting a different judge, although "Trump would surely fight such a request, and it’s impossible to say where the 11th Circuit would come down."
It's not impossible to say where Mark Joseph Stern and his fellow media liberals would come down. And is there a Xanax bottle big enough to calm him down if Judge Cannon remains on the case?
Mark Finkelstein used a June 12 post to complain that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough questioned the odds that Cannon would end up with this case, but cheered that "both of Scarborough's expert guests—neither being in any way a Trump fan—shot down Joe's fevered fantasy."
Cassandra DeVries huffed the same day, with added Sonia Sotomayor whataboutism repeated for the MRCs defenses of Clarence Thomas:
During Monday’s CNN This Morning, host Erica Hill and senior legal analyst Elie Honig attempted to stigmatize and discredit Judge Aileen Cannon, who will preside over former President Trump’s indictment in the classified documents scandal. They doubted her ability to be impartial since Trump appointed her to the federal bench and discussed possible reasons for the Department of Justice to pressure her to recuse herself from the case.
[...]
While Honig concluded that there was not enough substance to recuse Cannon, Hill and Honig repeatedly highlighted her appointment by Trump, clerkship for a conservative judge, age, and previous rulings to undermine her credibility. They openly discussed reasons she might not be fit to preside and implied she should recuse herself because of her conservative ties. However, CNN did not have a problem with liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor refusing to recuse herself from a case directly involving the publisher of her book. Once again, CNN evaluated conservatives with hasher standards.
Peter Kotara spent a June 15 post whining that Scarborough criticized Cannon again:
Seething MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Thursday’s Morning Joediscovered that there was in fact, no limit to the depths he would dig to smear Judge Aileen Cannon, who will be presiding over former President Trump’s criminal trial. Putting aside how Trump had appointed her to the bench, the gist of Scarborough’s criticism was that she was too young and too dumb, thus she couldn’t be trusted to oversee the trial.
Scarborough’s vendetta against Judge Cannon, one that was shared by the rest of the liberal media, stemmed from the fact that she made a prior ruling in the case that favored Trump, and was overturned by the Federal 11th Circuit Court. This case was the media’s chance to “get Trump” before the election, and they couldn’t stand the fact Trump didn’t get a hostile, left-leaning judge.
[...]
Their absurd argument was that because she hasn’t been a judge as long as some other judges have, she cannot run the trial. Scarborough even admitted that Judge Cannon being selected for the case was “assigned randomly,” which was standard procedure in the courts. Her being on the case was just a normal part of the way the judiciary system works, an impartial process, but it wasn’t enough.
Kotara concluded: "For someone who claimed to support the justice system in America and that Trump’s guilt was certain, Scarborough should stop crying that the dice didn’t roll his way and let the trial play out." We don't recall anyone from the MRC saying that about Bragg.
Christy returned to complain some more in a June 16 post:
MSNBC spent 93 percent of Tuesday discussing former President Trump’s arraignment on Tuesday and it appears some at the network think that number is too low. One of those voices belongs to contributor, professor, and former Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who joined Thursday’s edition of The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle to demand that Judge Aileen Cannon work with Chief Justice John Roberts to televise the trial.
His remarks also come as the network tries its hardest to discredit Cannonby doubting her ability to be impartial, so not only is MSNBC demanding the judge rule certain ways, but also that she consider their programming demands, “To me, the most important order, Steph, that she should be issuing is a request to the Chief Justice of the United States to get this televised.”
Christy then demanded that the media not turn a Trump trial into a circus, even though Trump is the one who would likely be responsible for doing that:
Katyal isn’t wrong to say this case will be “one of the most important” in the nation’s history, which is why it must be taken seriously and not turned into a sports-like spectacle with networks mashing together montages of the most “dramatic” moments to recap the proceedings for viewers that don’t watch cable news all day, every day and that are more geared towards attracting viewers than legal education.
A post by Christy later that day cheered a Republican congressman complaining that Cannon's status as a Trump-appointed judge was called out:
Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett (R) joined CNN Primetime host Kailtan Collins on Thursday for a discussion that included a tense back and forth about whether CNN is creating “doubt in the mind of the public” by attacking Judge Aileen Cannon in the case of former President Trump’s second indictment with an exasperated Burchett telling Collins “I mean, come on, you're CNN, we know that, it’s just the game we all play.”
While lamenting that networks like CNN are attempting to try the case on air, Burchett also condemned the network for having “already started attacking the judge.”
Elaborating, Burchett claimed, “you’ve already started attacking the judge prior to this… if she'd have been a Biden appointee, you'd have been okay with it. So, I mean, you obviously, throwing doubt into the whole judicial system anyway.”
Collins pushed back, “I didn't attack the judge.” Burchett challenged her by pointing to segments earlier in the show and accusing her of throwing “doubt upon her by saying she was a Trump appointee. Why would you say that unless you had doubt about her and you’re creating the doubt in the mind of the public.”
[...]
Despite Collins’s claims to the contrary, Burchett is correct. By attacking the judge by bringing up rulings they don’t like, who appointed her, and her age, they are setting her up as a potential target for condemnation should Trump not be convicted.
Neither Christy nor any other MRC writer admitted that the did the exact same thing he accused CNN of doing when attacking Bragg. Nevertheless, Christy invokved this in crying hypocrisy in a June 22 post:
On June 15, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) accused CNN’s Kailtan Collins of referring to Judge Aileen Cannon as “Trump-appointed” in order to instill doubt in the Trump documents case and questioned whether she would do the same if the judge was appointed by Barack Obama. Collins defended herself by saying “We talk about who judges were appointed by all the time.” Now, less than one week later we have proof from two separate Wednesday stories: one involving a Republican-appointee and one involving a Democratic appointee that shows that isn’t true.
Judge James Moody Jr. is an Obama appointee and he recently issued the radical ruling that Arkansas’s ban on transitioning minors violated the Constitution, but any reference to Obama or the Democratic Party was missing from any CNN report on the matter.
If the president who appointed a judge is irrelevant -- as the MRC is arguing when it comes to Cannon -- why make a big deal of who appointed the Arkansas judge?Christy offered no evidence why it was the Arkansas judge's ruling over turning the anti-transgender law was "radical" and not the actual law itself.
Newsmax Joins Right-Wing Transphobic Bandwagon To Attack Target Topic: Newsmax
Like others inthe ConWeb, Newsmax jumped on the transphobia bandwagon targeting Target for not hating LGBT people. It was in on the war early:
A May 11 article stating that "With Pride month right around the corner, Target is letting its rainbow flag fly with a new LGBTQ+ clothing line that includes breast binders and packing underwear," citing the virulently transphobic Matt Walsh.
A May 19 article by Wells repeated a right-wing Daily Mail report that "Target is offering a 'tuck-friendly" bathing suit in this year's LGBTQ Pride clothing collection, which is seemingly designed for children," again citing Walsh. In fact, the tuck-friendly swimsuits were never marketed for children.
A May 23 article by Eric Mack declared that "Target is partaking in campaigns to capitalize on LGBTQ messaging and merchandise and critics are lashing out on social media with calls for boycotts, leading to fears of a Bud Light-like public relations hit."
A May 24 article by Sandy Fitzgerald noted that Target was "removing some of its Pride Month collection items after this year's promotion led to threats to the safety of its workers."
A May 25 article by Theodore Bunker peddled a false attack that it had to eventually admit was false:
Conservative Political Action Coalition Chair Matt Schlapp on Thursday hit out at Target for partnering with artist Erik Carnell and accusing him of being a "satanist."
Schlapp, in an open letter to Target, claims that Carnell is "a self-declared 'satanist,'" who "openly flaunts his anti-Christian agenda posting that 'Satan respects pronouns,' selling items with phrases like, 'Trans Witches for Abortion,' and participating in a 'satanic flea market' in London called an 'anti-Christmas fayre.'"
Carnell, a British designer, created a collection for Target that included shirts, pins, and bags with pro-LGBTQ+ messages. Some contained references to Satan, such as a pin that reads, "Satan respects pronouns," which Carnell told the Daily Dot "I don't believe in Satan. I don't believe in the Bible … . It's a metaphor," he said.
While Bunker did admit that Carnell is not a Satanist, he failed to tell his readers that none of the merchandise created for Target carried any sort of "Satanic" theme.
Another article the same day, by Lee Barney, cheered that Target's market value dropped over the "backlash over its LGBTQ kids clothes," claiming that "the line included 'tuck friendly' swimsuits for transgender females to hide their private parts" while failing to tell the truth that those swimsuits were not marketed to children.
A May 26 article by the apparently unironically named Charlie McCarthy parroted another right-wing attack on Target: through an LGBT advocacy group:
Now, Target’s close ties with K-12 group GLSEN has come to light.
GLSEN is an organization that pressures school boards to allow children to secretly transition without their parents' consent and make sexually explicit books available in classrooms.
The group also instructs teachers about how they can alter classes to be "more inclusive of trans and non-binary identities," including the use of "they/them" pronouns, Fox News reported.
McCarthy offered no facts to back up his wildly biased, Fox News-approved description of GLSEN.
A paywalled May 26 article by Marisa Herman cheered that "Companies rolling out campaigns in support of June's Pride Awareness Month may take a more "nuanced" approach following consumer backlash to recent initiatives from Bud Light and Target, marketing and branding experts predict." An article by Charles Kim noted a bomb threat at a Target story. Another article by Michael Katz hyped that "A conservative investment fund reported it has sold its shares in Target and has slapped the retailer with a "refuse to buy" label over its Pride Month collection." (We thought right-wingers believed that investing shouldn't be based on ESG-style goals.) He repeated the false claim that "Target had transgender 'tuck-friendly' bathing suits seemingly designed for children."
Meanwhile, an article by Luca Cacciatore gave a platform to a right-wing senator to spew hate:
Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, criticized Target for its LGBTQ+ Pride Month collection on Friday, saying the company has "decided to wage war" on its loyal customers.
"Target could have decided to stay out of the culture wars, instead it decided to wage war on a large share of its customer base," Vance tweeted. "I no longer shop at Target, and it seems many families are doing the same."
The senator retweeted a post by journalist Benny Johnson stating, "Target stock has just COLLAPSED to its lowest trading value in a YEAR with no end in sight."
Newsmax did, however, publish a wire article noting that Carnell "has seen a surge in demand for his pins, prints, stickers and T-shirts after U.S. retailer Target Corp pulled his products amid a backlash by some customers to its Pride collection."
Newsmax then tried to pretend Target wasn't the victim of a hateful and partisan political campaign. A June 1 article by Barney claimed that Target's finances were hurt by "customers’ intense backlash against its Pride collection." In fact, it was only right-wing activists with media megaphones who disapproved, not "customers" as a whole.
WND Misleads About Yet Another COVID Vaccine Study Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh found another COVID vaccine-related study to mislead about in a May 31 WorldNetDaily article:
A study done during the COVID pandemic, preliminary at the time, charged that people actually were more likely to get COVID if they'd had multiple vaccine doses.
But it was dissed widely by political leaders and health industry officials because it had not been peer-reviewed.
Now it has. And it is delivered the same stunning verdict: "The risk of COVID-19 … varied by the number of COVID-19 vaccine doses previously received. The higher the number of vaccines previously received, the higher the risk of contracting COVID-19."
It was Joe Biden, among others, who tried to shame and coerce Americans into taking the experimental shots.
It wasn't until the 10th paragraph of his article that Unruh got around to quoting from the actual study:
The results documented by Open Forum Infectious Diseases said, "The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with higher numbers of prior vaccine doses was unexpected."
It suggested a "simplistic" explanation is that those who got more doses were more likely to be at higher risk.
But, it said, "the majority of subjects in this study were generally young individuals and all were eligible to have received at least 3 doses of vaccine by the study start date, and which they had every opportunity to do. Therefore, those who received fewer than 3 doses (46% of individuals in the study) were not those ineligible to receive the vaccine, but those who chose not to follow the CDC's recommendations on remaining updated with COVID-19 vaccination."
It continued, "One could reasonably expect these individuals to have been more likely to have exhibited higher risk-taking behavior. Despite this, their risk of acquiring COVID-19 was lower than those who received a larger number of prior vaccine doses."
Much of the rest of Unruh's article quoted from an unhinged commentary at the right-wing PJ Media, which insisted on calling vaccine supporters "COVIDians," whined about the "sponsored-by-Pfizer media" and ranted that "The pharmaceutical companies’ ill-gotten blanket immunity from damages caused by their products needs to be retroactively revoked because they were granted on fraudulent premises." Unruh couldn't be bothered to talk to one of the actual researchers about the significance of that finding, like a fact-checker did:
Incorrect claims about the paper have been circulating since before it was peer-reviewed and published. Recently, a widely viewed social media post jumped to the conclusion that the study shows that “a higher number of COVID-19 vaccine doses received increases the risk of infection with COVID-19.” Another widely viewed post sharing the study results incorrectly concluded that the vaccines were a “failed experiment.”
The original COVID-19 vaccine series was initially very effective against infection and without question “saved a lot of lives,” co-author Dr. Nabin Shrestha, an infectious disease physician at the Cleveland Clinic, told us. Determining whether getting more doses of the COVID-19 vaccines can later cause greater susceptibility to infections “wasn’t the point of the study,” he said.
Shrestha said he did not know the explanation for the findings. The paper mentions immunological mechanisms that “have been suggested as possible mechanisms whereby prior vaccine may provide less protection than expected.” But Shrestha said that the result could also be from a confounding factor — some characteristic of people who got more vaccines that led them to have a higher number of positive tests.
[...]
Observational studies like the Cleveland Clinic one can turn up associations between things, but it can be difficult to assess what caused these patterns.
Shrestha said the finding in his study on prior doses and infection risk “should certainly give us some pause.” But he also said that “a study like this, one study, is not going to prove any cause-effect relationship.” The goal in presenting the findings, he said, was to prompt other researchers to also look at the relationship between past doses and infection risk.
In other words: The study didn't prove what Unruh claimed it did, nor was it designed to -- it was an observation that calls for additional research. Of course, misleading and fearmongering about COVID vaccines is what WND does.
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC Flips Over Elon Musk, Part 12: NPR Derangement Syndrome Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center despises public broadcasting, so it was wildly giddy when Elon Musk arbitrarily labeled the Twitter accounts of NPR and PBS as "state-affiliated media," even though it violated Twitter's own labeling standards. Read more >>
MRC Again Came To Trump's Defense Over His (Second) Indictment Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center labored hard to distract from Donald Trump's first indictment, and it did the same thing for his second one. Nicholas Fondacaro found a formerly hated TV host joining forces with a right-wing journalist to complain about it in a June 8 post:
Former President Trump dropped a bombshell on the race for president Thursday night, an announcement that he had been indicted for willfully holding onto classified documents. But while many of his detractors in the liberal media were doing their happy dance, Chris Cuomo was on his eponymous NewsNation show with independent journalist Matt Taibbi, where both men cast doubt on the charges and had some pretty intense criticisms, including a comparison to a third-world country.
Towards the end of the show, which was entirely dedicated to the Trump Indictment, Cuomo introduced his guest and had some critical words for investigators. He chided that he wasn’t sure if they were “intentionally or unintentionally helping” Trump “because every time there's a swing, it seems to expose the fact they go after him with what seems to be at or below a level of anything that would be impressive to people reviewing the documents.”
Taibbi agreed and reminded viewers that he was “not a fan” of Trump but he had a simple test that any charges directed at a person in Trump’s position needed to pass. Taibbi felt the charges against Trump failed:
Given that Taibbi was Elon Musk's lapdog for the early part of the "Twitter files" saga, calling him an "independent journalist" is highly inaccurate.
Mark Finkelstein whined about schadenfreude in a June 9 post:
On Friday's Morning Joe, they were wallowing in more proof of their constant foresight that the "walls are closing in on Trump." Joe Scarborough cried crocodile tears, breaking out a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger shtick. Scarborough proclaimed this to be a "bleak, dark day for America," and "something I feared for a long time." Riiight.
Scarborough was clearly aware that many wouldn't buy his crocodile tears, andhe thus insisted that: "if anybody thinks I'm being glib or or not completely straightforward in saying that, they don't understand." Sure.
Scarborough quickly enough recovered from his sadness, and proceeded to speculate with Chuck Rosenberg, a former US Attorney and aide to FBI Director James Comey, about the long prison term Trump could be facing. Scarborough even imagined Trump spending "the rest of his life in jail." That prospect surely helped dry Joe's tears.
Alex Christy spent a post being mad that a historian claimed that Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon over his Watergate crimes set the stage for Trump's lawlessness (with a dose of Clinton Equivocation):
Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley appeared on Friday’s CNN News Central to discuss former President Trump’s latest indictment and blamed it on a curious suspect: Gerald Ford. Brinkley and host Sara Sidner also acted as if nothing has happened between Watergate and present day when wondering why Republicans do not urge Trump to step aside like they did with Richard Nixon.
Sidner claimed that Watergate represents the best comparison to Trump’s current situation, “but there is a key difference which you just mentioned now, which is that back then Republicans turned on their president because of the enormity of all of the evidence that was coming out about Nixon. That is not happening today. What's the difference? Why?”
That CNN could ask that question in a history segment without going through the history of Clinton family, whether it be Bill’s impeachment for perjuring himself or obstructing justice or Hillary’s e-mail server, and the lack of criminal charges and of Democrats urging them to step aside is remarkable.
Curtis Houck was aghast that someone would complain that Republicans insisted on standing by a repeatedly criminally indicted presidential candidate:
CBS News chief political analyst and longtime liberal journalist John Dickerson surfaced on Friday’s CBS Mornings to opine on the second Trump indictment and, interestingly, it sounded like what he said after the first indictment as it consisted of a pious lecture trashing Republicans for denouncing the charges before documents are unsealed and preferring Trump (if he were to become the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominee) over President Biden.
Dickerson also reveled in how Trump was “being charged with something that...Hillary Clinton, was — was accused of doing” and led to his 2016 victory. Co-host Tony Dokoupil also went aboard the wayback machine, reading an 2016 quote of Trump ironically promising to “enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information” and “[n]o one will be above the law.”
Dickerson then huffed the GOP “is largely rallying behind him” even though “we don’t know the facts of the case yet” and thus not only are speaking too soon, but not being proper “stewards of our system” of government.
Peter Kotara complained that one TV show promoted "a wild and baseless conspiracy theory that Trump tried to sell classified documents to Saudi Arabia." Christy return to grouse that more folks pointed out that Republicans won't reject Trump despite his criminality:
New York Times columnist and the supposedly conservative half of PBS NewsHour’s weekly Friday Brooks and Capehart panel was dismayed that even “supposedly mature and moderate” Republicans were decrying President Trump’s latest indictment as “selective prosecution.” Washington Post columnist and pinch hitter Ruth Marcus went even further, labelling it “sickening.”
Host Geoff Bennett led Brooks with an unrelated question about the trial being held in Florida which would mean the jury pool will be far less liberal than in New York City, “it's harder for him to make a convincing argument that he's being railroaded when it's happening in — on his home turf, as I said?”
Brooks pleaded ignorant, citing is lack of law school experience and turned the conversation back to the political reaction, “If you're running against Donald Trump for president, your job is to take this day and say, ‘see, that guy's not qualified to be president.’ That's like, simple.”
Unfortunately for Brooks that has not happened, “Does Ron DeSantis do that? No. Does Tim Scott do that? No. They're all — they're all jumping on the, it's prosecutive — it's weaponizing the justice system. They're jumping on that, Mike Lee in the Senate. Glenn Youngkin, the supposedly mature and moderate governor of Virginia, he was like ‘selective prosecution.’
Kevin Tober cheered a Republican presidential candidate whose campaign the MRC helped to launch: "During the obsessive coverage of the recently unsealed indictment of President Donald Trump by Biden's Department of Justice over his alleged mishandling of classified documents, CNN's State of the Union host Dana Bash Sunday was schooled by Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Bash walked right into a buzz saw when she, as usual, acted like a Democrat [sic] hack instead of a journalist." Tober later showed he's more interested in being a Republican hack than a "media researcher":
During the panel discussion on CBS’s Face the Nation, fill-in anchor John Dickerson said the quiet part out loud Sunday when discussing the recent indictment of former President Donald Trump when he expressed his concern that Trump and his allies in the Republican Party could frame the indictment in a way that makes there more of an appetite for Trump.
“Some people say, well the Republicans have rallied around Donald Trump, he's under threat,” Dickerson observed. “But what if the way this is being framed by Republicans, which is this is all partisan, this is all a manipulation of the system, creates an appetite for Donald Trump,” he worried.
“In other words if it's all rigged we want the best rigger in the game on our side,” he added.
CBS White House correspondent Ed O’Keefe put Dickerson’s nerves at ease by noting “if that's the case, then I think the polling continues to show us they can nominate him but he may be set up to lose again.”
Given that a solid majority of Republicans continue to support Trump as the nominee despite his criminality, Tober can't plausibly claim that the non-right-wing media is making that happen.
The complaining continued:
A June 13 post touted how "NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck hopped on Newsmax Monday night during Eric Bolling: The Balance alongside New York Post columnist and 2023 MRC Bulldog Award winner Karol Markowicz to sound off on the ebullient liberal media’s coverage of the second Trump indictment and their continued penchant for hurling venom at Trump supporters." It was not explained why the panel was not fair and balanced by adding a non-conservative to the discussion, or why people who support Trump even after multiple indictments shouldn't be criticized.
Fondacaro grumbled that a co-host of "The View" pointed out that Republicans have shown by their continued support ofTrump that their "moral compasses" are broken, but did not rebut the argument.
Finkelstein came back to whine that co-hosts on "Morning Joe" made an argument he decided to frame this way: "Are you a Republican congressman or senator who doesn't agree with the liberal media about the seriousness of the charges against Donald Trump regarding his handling of classified documents? Well then, your own security clearance should be stripped!"
Kotara complained that a commentator argued that "Republicans were following a script and had stopped caring about national security," and he served up a Republican script in response:
Republican commentator Scott Jennings countered Jones and stopped him from painting all Republicans as irrational and insensitive. He explained Republicans’ distrust of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice, and how this affected their views of the indictment:
[...]
While many believed the verdict to be clear-cut, including several Republicans, many others did not and were waiting to hear Trump’s defense. The purpose of a trial was to sift through both sides and hopefully arrive at an objective verdict. However, CNN already reached its verdict and even wanted to ensure prosecutors could impanel a jury that would find Trump guilty.
Just because many Republicans disagreed with CNN’s predetermined conclusion does not imply an invasion of bodysnatchers or a deep-rooted indifference to national security.
We can assume that Kotara is not interested in giving this same benefit of the doubt to, say, Hunter Biden.
We've shown how WorldNetDaily has backed off going scorched-earth on companies who don't hate gay people enough (Bud Light, Target) when that company is typically considered in the right-wing camp (the makers of "The Chosen"). Another example came in a June 1 column by someone named Joy O'Curran, who purports to be "a voracious Christian, adoring homeschooling mom, and avid writer homesteading on a sub-rural two acre Embassy for Christ" who loves reading "the Bible, Christian fiction (especially the old stuff), and conservative news from WND" -- though her column image is a sultry silhouette that doesn't seem like something a "voracious Christian" would do. We could find no evidence of her existence outside of WND archives, which combined with the non-representational image if it's a pseudonym for someone who is either a more prominent writer who wanted a fake name to hide behind or merely someone who really is the described person but wants to remain anonymous outside the column.
O'Curran's column began by repeating falsehoods about Target, claiming that was "marketing satanic products in their 'Pride' month collection" and that it offered "a T-shirt for sale claiming, "Satan respects pronouns." False on bothcounts. She touted how Target was getting "the Bud Light treatment Anheuser-Busch is currently reeling from after the deeply offensive, misogynistic Dylan Mulvaney ad fiasco: a squeeze from both sides." She didn't explain what, exactly, was "offensive" or "misogynistic" about a transgender person drinking beer. She then offered a lesson from the past:
When will our corporate community learn to stay out of politics? Better yet, take a lesson from Chick-Fil-A from the past and choose biblical morals as your guide for business behavior.
Back around 2012, then-CEO of Chick-Fil-A, Dan Cathey, made some remarks that clearly marked him as against same-sex marriage. There was an alphabet community outcry with calls for boycotts and "kiss-ins." Within the following weeks, though, what happened was a call from the conservative community to counter that action with extra trips through the restaurant's drive-thru and dining room. The result was a clear and complete statement that there is more than ample support for those corporations who choose biblical moral values and peacefully stick to it. Chick-Fil-A revenues went through the roof.
In fact, there are a number of retailers that have gotten the memo that sticking to conservative values and speaking up against the woke mob will actually win you customers. One shining example is Mike Lindell and his MyPillow corporation.
O'Curran seems to be confusing being anti-"woke" with being a dishonest liar. Ah, but all is not well in the fast-food chicken world:
It's a shame that the big corporations that run their businesses on borrowed money and short-term loans are now in such a pickle. So many of the banking institutions have been coerced or even willingly implemented ESG criteria for eligibility to get those needed loans. However, conservatives are smelling blood in the water with the effective Bud Light pinch and are also seeing Target clearly suffer. What is a corporate executive to do? They must do leftist craziness to get their ESG scores up so they can get the bank loans needed, but when they do, their customer base vanishes. Go woke, go broke! My hope is that this will result in fewer mammoth corporations drunk on short-term loans and result in lots more mom-and-pop operations, which helps keep our money local. After all, that is really better for our environment, in more ways than one.
Sadly, this week, Chick-Fil-A has also succumbed to the woke DEI madness that meets ESG banking requirements. No doubt, if the founder, S. Truett Cathey, were still in the driver's seat, instead of his Gen X grandson, Andrew Cathey, who took over in late 2021, things might be very different. Andrew is in his mid 40s, making him officially Gen X, but he is on the cusp, and no doubt identifies more closely with millennials who have been brainwashed from birth on alphabet community talking points. This could very possibly be the origins of his recent leadership decisions.
The actual words "diversity, "equity" and "inclusion" are not utterly divergent from biblical moral values because true Christians believe in fairness, justice for all and color-blindness. However, DEI is a standard cudgel used by the alphabet community to make excuses to implement racial discrimination, advance reparations for the purported great great grandchildren of former slaves and encourage employment advancement based on the way a person looks versus his or her capabilities. None of these ideas is positive in the long term for our society. It is truly unfortunate that Chick-Fil-A has chosen to go this route even if just to check a box and get on with business as usual. Andrew may find that business may not be so usual now.
But O'Curran is not demanding a boycott of Chick-fil-A for this egregious violation of right-wing sensibilities. Instead, she lectured Target some more:
So, I ask you, Target execs, do you want the Bud Light treatment or the original Chick-Fil-A treatment? Choose the right, not because there are more of us than them, but because it's the right thing to do! One of the results of embracing those biblical values would be reworking your business so you require those loans less often, if ever. Problem solved.
I also ask you, Christian conservatives, how many of you signed the Target boycott years ago and then gave up because you selfishly wanted something frivolous you could only get at Target? Repent and see the strength of God's goodness working through you too! Let's stand together, not for hate but for love, saying to the alphabet community: Loved one, this sin is hurting you. Please stop!
It appears that O'Curran is saying to Target that it will get a Chick-fil-A-style pass if it starts hating LGBT people the way right-wing Christians do.
By the way, WND as a whole largely ignored the Chick-fil-A DEI story, serving up only a republished story from the far-right Western Journal.
MRC Again Defends DeSantis' Purported Comedy Chops Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's resident comedycop, Alex Christy, has brought his policing skills to the DeSantis Defense Brigade. We've already noted his insistence that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' claim that he wanted to build a prison next to Disney World was a joke, despite offering no evidence that it was, and he returned to defend DeSantis' purported comedy chops again in a May 23 post:
As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis prepares to launch his presidential campaign, NBC is pulling out all the stops to derail his bid before it gets going. On Monday, Henry Gomez wrote an article under the headline Ron DeSantis is learning that not every state wants to be Florida.Not only did Gomez not mention any anti-Florida states, he apparently can’t tell the difference between DeSantis’s criticisms of other states and jokes.
Gomez recounts a recent DeSantis speech:
In Georgia, a compliment quickly gave way to grievance. ‘One thing we’re no longer No. 1 in is college football,’ DeSantis told an audience during a visit to a gun store in March. ‘So I just have a little bit of a plea … just stop taking so many of our high school football recruits. Can you give us a little bit of a chance?’
It’s a joke about college football and how the University of Georgia has won two consecutive national championships while Florida schools have gone the opposite direction.
Gomez’s inability to comprehend a joke was also a fitting summary for the rest of his article. Gomez contends “a funny thing has happened as DeSantis travels the country with a ‘Make America Florida’ message that underpins the Republican’s soon-to-launch presidential campaign.”
[...]
NBC has claimed to discover some truly earth-shattering news: Republican governors do Republican things and all they had to do to turn that basic fact of life into an anti-DeSantis hit piece was lose anything resembling a sense of humor.
Of course, if you feel you have to explain the joke, that means the joke has failed. And remember, this is a guy who thinks any joke on late-night TV that makes fun of a Republican cannot possibly be funny, so maybe he's the one who does not have anything resembling a sense of humor.
The Media Research Center assumes that anyone who defends TikTok, as well as all of its millions of users, are stooges for "communist China" -- even though the MRC is acting like a stooge for Facebook, which paid a Republican PR firm to spread anti-TikTok talking points in right-wing media (much like the ones the MRC has been using). For instance, a March 23 post by Curtis Houck complained:
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