MRC's Hunter Biden Plea Deal Derangement, Day 2 Topic: Media Research Center
We've shown how the Media Research Center cranked up its Hunter Biden Derangement the day news of a plea deal was released. On the following day, June 21, the derangement continued. Kevin Tober complained that someone defended him:
Failed former Senator and MSNBC political analyst Claire McCaskill took the the airwaves on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House to tearfully lash out at Republicans for wanting to see equal justice under the law and see President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden prosecuted for all the crimes he has been credibly accused of. Instead of arguing for Hunter’s innocence based on the merits, she lashed out in an emotional rant about how mean Republicans are. Despite Hunter receiving a sweetheart plea deal from his father’s Justice Department, McCaskill still wasn’t happy.
“I don't know what America they live in. And I don't know how they sleep at night,” McCaskill proclaimed. “You know, alcoholism and addiction are probably the most pervasive diseases in America. I don't know of one family that hasn't been touched by the pain of these diseases. And it's particularly painful when you have someone you love unconditionally that is suffering from these diseases.”
[...]
It’s clear that McCaskill doesn’t follow the news. If she did, she would know that there’s plenty of evidence to file charges against Hunter Biden and eventually his father for their role in the Biden bribery scandal (among other crimes).
Tober actually called McCaskill a "failed senator" twice, presumably referring to her losing re-election. He would never call Donald Trump a "failed president" because he lost re-election.
Nicholas Fondacaro again called the plea deal "cushy" without offering evidence to back it up:
ABC’s Good Morning America was up in arms Wednesday morning over Republicans calling out what they understand was a two-tier justice system, one where President Biden’s son continued to benefit from the family name by getting a cushy plea deal on tax crimes and a felony gun charge. Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce whined Republicans didn’t care how “painful” this was for President Biden and chief legal analyst Dan Abrams absurdly suggested the Biden name led to harsher treatment.
When Abrams pointed out that the gun-related charge Biden faced is almost never charged by itself without an accompanying related crime, Fondacaro got defensive:
In reality, it’s a hard charge to prove in court. But Hunter had been very open about being using and being addicted to crack at the time he bought and owned his firearm, something rarely present in such cases.
And it’s a lie Hunter had to consciously make. The ATF’s Form 4473, which every gun buyer in America has to read and fill out before the background check and purchase can be completed, makes it known that lying on the form is a felony.
When MSNBC host Joe Scarborough pointed out how Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley said that "We aren't interested in whether or not the accusations against Vice President Biden are accurate or not" and that the right-wing Wall Street Journal effectively said there was, in Scarborough's words, "a lot of smoke butno fire" regarding Republican efforts to target Biden -- making it clear that the real "witch hunt" was targeting Biden,not Trump, Mark Finkelstein went into defense mode:
In other words, far from Scarborough's misrepresentation that Grassley said that there's no evidence of wrongdoing, but that Republicans will go after Hunter regardless, Grassley's point was the document he was demanding that FBI Director Chris Wray make public does contain accusations, but that Grassley would not prejudge it. That's precisely the opposite of a witch hunt!
And Scarborough's misrepresentation of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board column was even more egregious. Scarborough depicted it as concluding: smoke but no fire.
To the contrary, the editorial indicated that there was a ton of evidence pointing to illicit influence peddling by the Bidens. The headline set the tone: "The Biden Family Business—House report shows how Hunter and relatives profited while Joe was Vice President."
[...]
This was nothing less than a fraudulent misrepresentation of the facts by Scarborough. It reveals just how deep he was willing to sink in defense of Democrat political prospects.
Alex Christy grumbled that CNN did something the MRC does -- word counts:
Senior political analyst John Avlon killed all irony on Tuesday’s CNN Tonight as he used some sketchy research to accuse Fox News of being obsessed with Hunter Biden. At the same time, Avlon sought to fact-check Republican claims that a legal double standard exists, but didn’t actually address the main point of the GOP’s allegations.
Avlon kicked off his “reality check” by declaring that “there's a lot of doubling down on this idea of a legal double standard, especially in the wake of Donald Trump's 37-count indictment. But does that stack up to the facts? Well, the investigation first was conducted by a Trump appointee, U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware, specifically to reduce concern about politicized results.”
The man who works for the network that spent nearly 97 percent of Trump Indictment Day talking about Trump and mentioned him 191 times on May 25 alone accused Fox of being obsessed with Hunter, “But of course, Hunter Biden has been demonized by the right pretty thoroughly. To use just one measure? Get this, a LexisNexis search found that he was mentioned more than 2,200 times on Fox News between 2020 and 2022. For those doing the math at home, that's well over once a day.”
From January 1, 2020, through December 31, 2022 is a time span of 1,095 days which means that Avlon’s definition of obsessive is two mentions per day. Two! Even worse, NewsBusters tried to reverse engineer CNN’s research and could not duplicate the results. A NewsBusters search of Nexus for Fox News transcripts yielded 2,045 mentions of “Hunter Biden” with each transcript providing for several mentions of Hunter.
At the same, NewsBusters searched CNN transcripts for mentions of “January 6th committee” during the same time span and found 2,374 results. NewsBusters also searched for Trump Jr.", "Trump, Jr.", and "Trump Junior" and got 2,440 results despite Donald Trump Jr. never being charged with a crime.
Christy didn't explain why, exactly, Hunter should have been mentioned an average of twice a day every day for two years considering that, unlike Don Jr., he has not made himself a public figure. He also didn't mention that a few weeks earllier, the MRC published a post by Bill D'Agostino claiming that "Trump was mentioned by name a whopping 399 times" in a 10-hour period on CNN and MSNBC -- never mind that he's the frontrunning Republican presidential candidate who adores seeing his name in the media and is facing myriad legal challenges. Still, D'Agostino complained that "it’s hard not to agree that the liberal TV news outlets still see him as a ratings gold mine" -- something he will never say (out loud, anyway about Fox News' obsession with Hunter.
Cassandra DeVries made the usual complaint that Republican obsession with Hunter was called out, playing whataboutism to deflect from it:
CNN This Morning criticized Republicans for spending too much time discussing Hunter Biden’s laptop this Wednesday. Political commentator Errol Louis claimed Americans did not care about President Biden’s son and his alleged crimes and said Republicans did not know how to talk to the country.
[...]
Ironically, Louis’s criticism came amid extensive coverage of President Trump’s indictment by CNN, which also did not make this list of acceptable topics that interested voters. Yet, CNN still spent considerable time examining every possible angle of Trump’s case. Perhaps Louis forgot to add Trump’s legal problems to his list of relevant issues.
[...]
Throughout his commentary, Louis made broad sweeping claims and conclusions about voters, Republicans, discussion-worthy topics, and political elections. CNN aired these claims as factual news, just as they ran with the Trump-Russia collusion hoax for four years, which was another topic the American people didn’t care about.
Previously, a Democratic president’s son charged with tax fraud and illegal firearm possession might negatively affect that president in the upcoming election. However, according to CNN, Hunter Biden’s charges instead demonstrate that Republicans are incompetent and out-of-touch. Thankfully, Errol Louis helped CNN viewers avoid that assumption.
Fondacaro and bill D'Agostino summarized all this in that day's NewsBusters podcast:
As loud Italians, we sound off on Hunter getting away with a felony gun charge average Americans would be locked up for given the evidence, and call out CNN for their lazy research into Fox News coverage of Hunter’s scandals.
The weak punishment on the felony gun charge had me particularly hot under the collar as NewsBusters’ resident gun guy. I, along with other law-abiding gun owners take filling out the form and gun safety very seriously, so to see the federal government failing to throw the book at the President’s son tells us what the federal government thinks of its own laws.
We also call out ABC for doing the heavy lifting in terms of protecting the Biden administration and making the Biden family look like the victims. I point specifically to the work of chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce and chief Washington correspondent Jon Karl for downplaying the allegations against the Bidens, while tacitly (sometimes overtly) admitting to dubious behavior.
We'd believe Fondacaro's complaint about "weak punishment" more if he and his co-workers didn't labor so hard to defend Donald Trump every time he gets indicted.
WND Claims 'The Left' Is Waging 'Total War On Women' Topic: WorldNetDaily
The June issue of WorldNetDaily's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine carries the theme "The left's total war on women." It's driven by the lead essay from David Kupelian published on June 26, which reads like a far-right parody ofliberal views, in which anything even slightly to the left of Kupelian's far-right Christian nationalism is seen as far-left:
Americans – at least those who are neither hypnotized nor overly intimidated by insane “woke” religious ideology – know their beloved country is in serious trouble. They watch in horror and sadness as it rapidly morphs into a pagan playground for sexual revolutionaries masquerading as freedom fighters.
Thus, today all things corrupt and unholy are celebrated, with the entire month of June officially set aside as “Pride Month” to honor and publicly flaunt immoral, perverted sexual behaviors widely practiced in the ancient biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
At the same time, everything good, decent, wholesome and moral is, for some strange reason, now demonized. This is the reality Americans have been living with throughout the third term of Barack Obama, half-seriously masquerading as “the Biden administration.”
Quick review: Today, “straight white men” holding to conservative Christian values are routinely condemned by powerful leftist political leaders – utterly without evidence – as “white supremacists,” “violent extremists” and “domestic terrorists.” This is not entirely new, as “the patriarchy” has been vilified by large parts of the leftwing feminist movement for decades, an attack on men that continues into the present day.
Incredibly, even America’s children have become front-and-center targets of the revolutionary left’s transformational agenda. Early sexualization – considered a heinous crime in previous eras – is widespread in the increasingly toxic “public” (government) school system. Young people are also indoctrinated daily with toxic Marxist ideologies like “critical race theory” and taught to hate their own country – all while being scared to death about the imminent end of the world due to out-of-control “climate change.”
So much for the men and the children.
But what about America’s women?
Few are talking about what is, in truth, the ascendant radical left’s complete and total war against women.
Kupelian went on to rant:
Droves of male criminals are now, once convicted, suddenly “identifying as” women so they can be incarcerated with female inmates, resulting predictably in multiple reports of women being raped and sexually assaulted in prison while serving their sentences.
Even though this policy is obviously cruel, criminal and insane, the penal system blithely facilitates it. Why? To do otherwise would be to violate the sacred laws of modern life handed down from on high by the ever-expanding, shape-shifting, cultural god known as “LGBTQIA+.”
After all, as author and talk-host Dennis Prager has correctly observed, “The dominant force in America and many other Western countries today is fear of the left.”
Kupelian's evidence of this is a WND article hyping a claim by the sleazy, untrustworthy James O'Keefe. As far as "fear of the left" goes, isn't that the entire point of Kupelian's essay?
Kupelian went on to complain that women refuse to be subjugated by the Christian patriarchy on matters like abortion:
In reality, one of the cruelest tricks one can play on a woman is to convince her to kill her own child. For decades the abortion industry – staffed and promoted largely by liberal-leftists – has lied to women, telling them their unborn baby is equivalent to a clump of cells, a piece of worthless, disposable tissue like a tumor. If the client realizes it really is a baby – her baby – but cannot raise the child, the obvious solution is adoption. Yet adoption, one of the noblest acts a couple can embrace, is virtually never mentioned in abortion clinics, which are, after all, in the business of selling abortions.
In every previous epoch of Western Civilization, the crowning glory and happiness of a woman – or at least the biblical ideal embraced by most women – has centered around entering into a lifelong marriage partnership with an honorable man, becoming a mother, bringing children into the world, raising a good family and living a righteous, faithful and happy life. If the husband/father is the leader of the family, she is, as wife and mother, in many respects the center of the family.
Yet, her honored and central role in the traditional family, with its strong internal loyalties, religious ties, stability and independence, is hated by the revolutionary left. Even a century ago, when the first communist revolution unfolded in Russia, the Marxist goal of wrecking the family took center stage.
Kupelian concluded by hoping that far-right Christians will once again control society andput those women back in their place:
If there is any positive side to all of this, it is that America still – miraculously – is also filled with millions of good people who, though horrified by what they see happening all around them, and to them, manage to hang onto their sanity, dignity, morals and love of God and neighbor. They know they’re called to walk with God in all things. And they strive in whatever ways are open to them to fight back, to stand tall, to speak out in hopes of one day restoring the nation they love.
But they also remember that historically – long before today’s mass hysteria, wild paganism, growing satanism, government high corruption and rampant “mental illness” – there has always been cruelty, barbarism and madness of one sort or another in this world. They likewise realize, just as their forbears who lived through previous eras of persecution came to realize, that these tribulations, terrible as they are, can be – indeed, are intended by the Creator to serve as – the grist, the catalyst, the “refiner’s fire” that mysteriously serves to help noble souls grow, thrive and walk even closer with their God.
How much of that cruelty, barbarism and madness has been perpetrated by right-wing Christians like Kupelian? He doesn't say.
Newsmax Went Into Trump Defense Mode Yet Again Over His (Third) Indictment Topic: Newsmax
As Newsmax defended Donald Trump against an expanded second indictment, a third indictment was looming. It did a little foreshadowing and complaining early on Aug. 1:
When the indictment dropped later that day, an article by Eric Mack stated that "Special counsel Jack Smith's Washington, D.C., grand jury has delivered a four-count, 45-page indictment against former President Donald Trump and listed six unnamed co-conspirators," adding that "A detailed Trump campaign statement was posted to Truth Social," which Mack reprinted. That was followed by a more detailed wire article on the indictment. After that, Newsmax once again fully activated its Trump defense mode yet again:
Newsmax also published an Aug. 2 article it took from All Israel News highlighting a statement by Trump's campaign complaining that the indictment "is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes" -- though the article also featured the Anti-Defamation League criticizing the comparison.
That's at least 32 pro-Trump articles published by Newsmax in the first two days after the third indictment.
WND Censors Criticism Of 'Expert' Analysis Of Dominion Machines Topic: WorldNetDaily
Peter LaBarbera wrote in a June 19 WorldNetDaily article:
A newly released, 96-page report by a computer expert in election security has found that one model of Dominion voting machines widely used in the 2020 election "suffers from critical vulnerabilities that can be exploited to subvert all of its security mechanisms."
In the unsealed July 1, 2021 report, University of Michigan computer science professor Alex Halderman, with the help of Prof. Drew Springall, conducts a "security analysis" of Dominion Voting System's "ballot marking devices," or BMDs, in particular, the corporation's "ImageCast X (ICX) BMD."
The unsealing of the "Halderman Report" by a federal judge is part of a long-running case brought by citizens attempting to block Georgia from using the Dominion machines. Halderman's deep analysis has led many of the same media who belittled Donald Trump and conservatives who claimed vote fraud in 2020 to switch their attention back to the potential for hacking in Dominion Voting System's voting machines.
"Expert report fuels election doubts as Georgia waits to update voting software: A newly unsealed expert report arguing that Georgia’s Dominion voting machines are vulnerable to hacking is fueling election doubts in Georgia," reads a headline in an NBC News story published Friday.
Noting that Dominion – which recently reached a $787 million settlement with Fox News over what it said were erroneous claims by Fox hosts about its voting machines – has downplayed the potential for hacking into its devices, NBC reported: "But federal authorities have identified the same vulnerabilities, and more than 20 cybersecurity experts rushed to defend Halderman's report this week."
LaBarbera quoted heavily from the NBC article -- but not the part in which other experts pointed out the unlikelihood of those vulnerabilities being successfully exploited:
A second report, also unsealed by the judge, was authored by national security nonprofit MITRE. That group argued the hacks identified by Halderman were “operationally infeasible” based on normal voting practices, scale considerations, and adherence to strict security measures.
It’s a view shared by Georgia officials, who included the MITRE report in a press release that criticized Halderman's report.
"The Halderman report was the result of a computer scientist having complete access to the Dominion equipment and software for three months in a laboratory environment. It identified risks that are theoretical and imaginary. Our security measures are real and mitigate all of them," Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger wrote in a letter to state lawmakers, which Raffensperger's office shared with NBC News.
He continued: "Is it possible for a team of bad actors to break into Georgia’s 2,700 voting precincts, install malware that changes election outcomes on 35,000 pieces of equipment, and sneak back out — all the while being undetected and leaving no trace? I’ll put it this way: It’s more likely that I could win the lottery without buying a ticket."
Mike Hassinger, a spokesman for Raffensperger's office, said Friday that responding to this report all day felt like he was "stuck in a Dumb and Dumber paradox," referencing a character's response to a one in a million likelihood: "So, you're telling me there's a chance?"
The NBC article also added: "There is no evidence that hackers have attempted to exploit any of the identified vulnerabilities, or that any such hack has occurred in previous elections." LaBarbera ignored that too; instead, he resorted to the usual WND dodge when promoting dubious claims -- hyping the person's claimed qualifications. Indeed, the last two paragraphs of LaBarbera's article is simply a copy-and-paste of Halderman stating his own qualificiations, as well as a link to his curriculum vitae.
With News Of Plea Deal, MRC's Hunter Biden Derangement Went Into Overdrive Topic: Media Research Center
June started out as a slow month of Hunter Biden derangement at the Media Research Center, spending much of the early part of the month complaining that his alleged scandals weren't being covered in the non-right-wing media as much as Donald Trump's latest indictment. But with news of a plea deal, the MRC went into Hunter Derangement overdrive. Alex Christy complained in a June 20 post:
MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough had a curious reaction to the Tuesday news that Hunter Biden will be pleading guilty to tax and gun-related charges: lash out at Republicans and their “conspiracy theories.” Way Too Early host and Politico White House bureau chief Jonathan Lemire managed to one up Scarborough by adding that developments are “good news” for President Joe Biden.
After legal analyst Joyce Vance ran through the charges, Scarborough focused on what Hunter wasn’t charged with, “Yeah, and Jonathan Lemire, so obviously Republicans-- Trump Republicans have been trying to stir up conspiracy theories left and right. One after another have been disproven. One after another, we found out as the Wall Street Journal editorial page himself said no fire here. A lot of smoke all over the place, no fire.”
In something never said about Robert Mueller and Russia Collusion, Scarborough claimed “Not only have they proven nothing, they have senior members of the Senate saying we don't care whether he's guilty or not, we don’t care whether he did this stuff or not, it's all been a show. Well, that show has just been exposed by Trump's own prosecutor, Trump-appointed prosecutor in Delaware. He's done a deal with him, a plea deal.”
As for Lemire, he also was focused on Republicans and what Hunter wasn’t charged with, “Certainly Republicans have for literally years now accused Hunter Biden of basically everything under the sun, including he's the mastermind behind the Biden Crime Family and corruption and all that, a charge we don’t need to get into now because they were never brought.”
Just because Hunter wasn’t charged with anything corruption-related doesn’t mean what he did wasn’t sleazy and, again, Morning Joe would never say “we don’t need to get into” Russian collusion storylines because no charges of collusion were ever brought.
As Mueller himself pointed out, collusion is not a legal term, meaning that it is impossible for someone to be charged with it, and the Mueller report documented numerous contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives that more than justified an investigation -- something even Senate Republicans admitted.
Nicholas Fondacaro grumbled it was pointed out that the plea deal would be partisan fodder for Republicans:
Hunter Biden got a cushy plea deal from his father’s Justice Department on Tuesday, including the possible drop of a felony gun charge no average America would be afforded. Despite securing the sweetheart deal, one of the immediate reactions from CNN News Central was to whine that congressional Republicans were “not going to let this go” as their investigations into possible corruption from the Biden family and interference in the DOJ’s investigation reported by whistleblowers heated up.
“The political dynamics of this … cannot be understated,” senior Justice correspondent Evan Perez said. He went on to warn that“The Republicans are not going to let this go” as they investigate “what they believe are still some unanswered questions about those financial dealings that Hunter Biden had, other members of the family had overseas, but also just how the Justice Department handled this investigation.”
Fondacaro failed to explain what was supposedly "cushy" about the plea deal.
Christy returned to make the same complaint a couple hours later:
As Republicans reacted to Hunter Biden’s Tuesday plea deal by declaring it to be a “slap on the wrist” and raised concerns about a two-tiered system of justice, the Washington Post’s Leigh Ann Caldwell joined CNN’s Inside Politicsto say that such allegations prove that the GOP tends to “leave out a lot of facts.” In an attempt to prove her point, Caldwell also insisted that the Durham Probe proved the FBI has not been politicized.
Host Dana Bash tried to make the argument that Republicans cannot complain because the prosecutor in the case was appointed by Donald Trump, “And as much as we understand the politics and we’re explaining and giving context around the politics, we also should talk about the facts which are it was a Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney in Delaware intentionally kept there by Joe Biden because he knew the investigation was going on, and that these cases are quite different.”
Caldwell naturally agreed, “Yeah, they're absolutely different and when Republicans talk about they leave out a lot of facts in each instance, that kind of walk around and dance around to make it seem like they are similar but these are obviously apple and oranges cases.”
Both Bash and Caldwell are arguing against a straw man. Republicans would agree that the Trump and Hunter cases are apple and oranges, but would say that is exactly the problem. Trump is facing serious accusations related to the retention of classified documents while Hunter avoids serious corruption charges, instead striking a deal on tax misdemeanor that will likely result in him avoiding jail, while the gun felony will likely be dropped as part of a pre-trial diversion agreement.
Like Fondacaro, Christy did not explain exactly how Hunter plea deal was so great.
It’s not just the cast of ABC’s The View that makes fools of themselves on the show, sometimes it’s their guests. Such was the case on Tuesday when ABC chief Washington correspondent Jon Karl joined the cast to report the breaking news that Hunter Biden had agreed to a cushy plea deal with his father’s Justice Department. Karl clownishly claimed “there’s no evidence” to back up GOP claims about the Biden family’s corruption, but he did admit to Hunter’s dubious employment by the Ukraine energy firm, Burisma and the fact he received lavish gifts from China.
Karl’s denial of reality came in an answer to Joy Behar, who wondered: “But doesn't this show, Karl, that Biden is not in the pocket of the DOJ?”
According to Karl, “it depends” on how you look at it. He argued Democrats would say “they prosecuted anyway. His son now has a criminal record.” He began to suggest the prosecution meant there was definitively no interference by the Biden administration but caught himself and hedged his bets. “Yes, that shows – it would seem to show there was no interference,” he said.
As if killing the investigation was the only President Biden could interfere, Karl proclaimed: “He didn't pull the plug on the investigation. He didn't order his attorney general to pull the plug on the investigation.” This didn’t take into account that Hunter would be getting out of a felony gun charge with a rehab program.
[...]
Karl’s hypocrisy didn’t stop him from decrying the “hypocrisy coming from the Republicans” and them “yelling and screaming about Hunter Biden.” “But that hypocrisy doesn't mean there isn't something fundamentally at issue here with Hunter Biden,” he reluctantly added.
Interns Cassandra DeVries and Ana Schau teamed up for their own complaint:
ABC and CBS both featured segments on Tuesday morning to break the news of Hunter Biden’s guilty plea to two federal charges of tax fraud in his current criminal investigation. Both shows then proceeded to praise his father, President Joe Biden, for his closeness to his son Hunter, and bemoaned the investigation’s negative effects on the President because of this close connection.
[...]
Instead of dwelling on Hunter Biden’s illegal actions, which likely would negatively impact Biden’s campaign, ABC and CBS ran a pair of fluff portraying the President as a supportive father, helping his son through a difficult time. Perhaps ABC and CBS should consider a future in political ads.
When one commentator likened the accusations of corruption against Hunter to Trump in-law Jared Kushner getting a $2 billion payoff from Saudi Arabia, Christy lashed out:
Forget about Hunter Biden and any of the corruption or crimes he has been involved in, what really mattered was Jared Kushner. The problem with that whataboutism is that Hunter Biden was given a lucrative position at Burisma while he had no experience or qualifications for it, aside from being close to his father President Biden. Jared Kushner, however, does have significant qualifications from being, as The Times of Israel puts it, “instrumental in negotiating the Abraham Accords.”
Christy has previously insisted that Kushner deserved that Saudi payoff. And if the "Abraham Accords" -- which involved three minor Muslim countries normalizing relations with Israel -- were a factor, shouldn't the money have come from Israel?
And this was all on June 20, the day the plea deal was announced. The MRC continued to whine further over the next couple days -- more soon.
Jack Cashill spent his June 21 WorldNetDaily column complaining about the recent frequency of what he called "Perversely Improbable Events." You will not be surprised to learn that many of them involve things that involve right-wing narratives, such as complaining about crime in San Francisco and the Jussie Smollett crime hoax (though he failed to mention another crime hoax involving a Republican campaign worker). He whined about the idea that LGBT people have rights:
Not even the precociously woke would have predicted 10 years ago that the trans crowd and their media allies would insist that biological men be allowed to compete against women in sports – and get their way.
Nor, 10 years ago, could the most progressive Californian have expected the Los Angeles Dodgers to offer public honor to a crew of blasphemous transvestites parading as nuns.
But Cashill was particularly incensed about COVID -- not the actual pandemic, mind you (which he falsely dismissed as a "flu") , but that government officials tried to slow its spread:
In 2013, even 2019, who'd a thunk that "progressive" officials at all levels of government would conspire to shut down beaches, parks and schools, and compel their lemming-like residents to remain indoors to avoid a flu?
In a particularly perverse move, California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered a "hard close" of state beaches in July 2021, a year after even most equally insane states had opened theirs.
What made this Orwellian lock down so perverse is the residents of California could see that the beachgoers in, say, Florida, were living free, open, American lives and risking no more than sunburn.
The increasingly progressive media had scared their audiences into complying. A year after COVID's onset, for instance, some 41 percent of surveyed Democrats believed that those who caught COVID had a 50 percent chance or better of being hospitalized. The right answer was 1 percent to 5 percent.
Despite the fear in the air, in the early summer of 2020 the medical community gave a temporary COVID dispensation so the mindless could muster in crowds and burn down their cities to honor the memory of a chronic felon.
After a little rioting, the crowds morphed from sheep into Stasi. Now they demanded that their saner fellow citizens vaxx up. As former freedom-loving California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger memorably warned us, "Screw your freedom."
That "chronic felon" is George Floyd, and Cashill has repeatedly defended the police officer who killed him, though he didn't explain why Floyd's alleged criminal status made it perfectly OK to kill him. He also whined about election stuff:
Bizarre as California was, the truly improbable stuff was unfolding in Washington. In 2016, the intelligence community conspired with the Clinton campaign to subvert the presidential ambitions of Donald Trump.
Failing the first time, in 2020 at least 51 members of the unchastened intel community conspired with the Biden campaign to stop Trump, and this time they succeeded. In both cases, the media chose not to notice.
He concluded with this bizarre complaint:
As to the most perversely improbable event in the last 10 years: A man in a Las Vegas hotel room shot nearly 500 concert goers, killing 60, and you don't even know his name.
What happens in Vegas apparently stays in Vegas – at least when the media want it to.
In fact, most news organizations have largely backed away from naming the perpetrators to deny them the notoriety most are seeking in committing their heinous acts. Why does Cashill want to give the man who committed this atrocity the honor of spreading his name?
MRC Melts Down Over Juneteenth Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Kevin Tober complained in a June 19 post:
On MSNBC’s The ReidOut, liberal Republican Charlie Sykes used the occasion of Juneteenth to smear Republicans for declaring America not racist. The insinuation here is that America is still racist and divisive concepts like Critical Race Theory are necessary because America hasn’t changed at all since the days of slavery and segregation.
“What you have from Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley and even Tim Scott is the necessity of checking the box that there is no racism, that we solved that problem, that we had the Civil War and everything is fine,” Sykes claimed.
Sykes insisted it’s ironic that Juneteenth Day is a day "where America remembers this part of history and celebrates it, at the very same time the Republican Party seems very deeply invested in not remembering that history, not going back, taking it out of the schools or downplaying it.”
Tober then bizarrely seemed to insist that the historical ignorance of Americans justified not making it a holiday: "What Sykes failed to mention is that first of all, Juneteenth is a day that many people never heard of until it was made a federal holiday by a bipartisan vote in Congress." Having done that, though, Tober tried to put a Republican spin in Juneteenth:
Sykes then got triggered by Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk who took to Twitter to criticize many employees getting the day off: “I was watching Charlie Kirk, who’s a big Trumpist, on social media all day, just melting down how everybody should be at work. This is a CRT inspired holiday.”
The rationale for Juneteenth becoming a big deal out of nowhere (at least at the federal level) is because of the modern day Democratic Party’s obsession with America being a racist country and that America still hasn’t been punished for the evils of slavery. The basis for the holiday is important, especially since it was Republican President Abraham Lincoln being the one who abolished slavery and the Democrats fought him tooth and nail.
That's not quite the full story, though. As actual historians point out, Lincoln was not an explicit abolitionist at the start of his presidency, and part of his motivation for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation (which applied only to Confederate states) was to encourage freed slaves to flee the South and move to the North and fight for the Union. When it came time to pass the 13th Amendment that blocked slavery nationwide, the main argument Democrats put forward against it involved states' rights -- the kind of argument today's Republicans would make. Tober wants you to forget that Republicans and Democrats essentially traded ideologies in the 1960s in the wake of the civil rights movement.
Tober's argument here seems to be that Juneteenth doesn't deserve to be a holiday, but if it's going to be one, Republicans must get credit.
NEW ARTICLE: CNS' Double Standard On Violations Topic: CNSNews.com
It was a big deal at CNSNews.com when Democrats were accused of violating the Logan Act or the Hatch Act -- but when Republicans were accused of violating the the laws, it downplayed them and even questioned their constitutionality. Read more >>
MRC Misleads About FTC Monitoring Of Twitter (And Fluffs Musk Even More) Topic: Media Research Center
Despite his being a multibillionaire, the Media Research Center must always portray Elon Musk as a victim because he advances right-wing narratives. Catherine Salgado did this again in a July 13 post:
Is the Federal Trade Commission retaliating against Elon Musk following his pledge to support free speech on Twitter?
During a July 13 hearing, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) slammed the Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan for her apparent “harassment” and “shakedown” against Twitter after Elon Musk purchased the platform and tried to break up its censorship regime. According to Jordan, Kahn tried to rig a disfavorable audit of Twitter's Trust and Safety operations conducted by private assessor Ernst and Young. Jordan called the situation “even worse than we could have imagined.”
Jordan noted that “The FTC…as is common practice pursuant to the consent order, required Twitter to hire an independent assessor,” whose role is supposed to be objective. Instead, the FTC tried to pressure assessor Ernst and Young into a negative report regardless of reality, Jordan explained.
MRC Vice President Dan Schneider chimed in to criticize Khan’s alleged conduct. “As the FTC Inspector General and others have shown, Lina Khan has corrupted that agency and turned it into a nuclear-armed guided missile against the Biden administration’s political opponents,” Schneider said. “She has engaged in an extortion scheme against the independent auditor and has cooked up the evidence against Twitter to punish Elon Musk for not adhering to a left-wing agenda. She should be added to the growing list of Biden officials who should be impeached.”
But Salgado and Schneider, as well as Jordan, censored the full story. As a fair and balanced news outlet reported, the FTC is trying to hold Twitter to acount for agreements made with the government by the pre-Musk ownership over the company's data security practices -- obligations that didn't stop because Musk bought the company. The private assessor, Ernst & Young, reported that it had trouble confirming compliance because Musk continually fired people put in charge of it, Twitter refused to allow on-site visits, and Twitter owes Ernst & Young $500,000 that it has refused to pay. Salgado and Schneider also failed to mention that Jordan's hectoring of Khan was highly criticized as attempting to advance right-wing narratives instead of genuinely seeking information from her.
Salgado defended Musk again in a July 17 post complaining that a magazine dared to criticize how he runs Twitter:
Foreign Policy magazine screeched Saturday that Twitter’s recent pro-free speech changes made the platform “inimical to democracy.” The outlet alleged, without specific evidence, that disinformation and “extremist” content have sharply increased on the platform under Musk’s ownership in an article headlined: “Elon Musk’s Twitter Is Becoming a Sewer of Disinformation.”
It self-righteously lectured about restrictions removed from dictatorships’ state-sponsored content. The outlet’s primary complaint about Twitter, however, simply masked fury at free speech for those with whom it disagrees.
It particularly objected to the disintegration of Twitter’s previous blue check aristocracy through Musk’s making verification attainable by all users.
Salgado went on to lash out at another Twitter critic the magazine cited:
“[H]ate and harassment” on Twitter have increased, Foreign Policy claimed. But it cited the Washington- and London-based radical leftist, anti-free speech group The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
The group found, according to Foreign Policy, that “Twitter failed to act on 99 percent of tweets by Twitter Blue subscribers reported to Twitter the [sic] using the platform’s own tools for flagging hateful conduct.” The activist organization, however, is more of a constant censorship campaign than a credible research organization. MRC President and Founder Brent Bozell called CCDH “digital brownshirts.”
Salgado didn't explain why CCDH deserves to be smeared as Nazis for pointing out hate on Twitter (which, despite her insisting that doing so is not "credible research," she makes no effort to disprove).
Salgado had to concede that "The outlet noted accurately that Twitter removed state-affiliated labels from state propaganda sources connected to authoritarian governments in China, Iran, and Russia, and that these accounts had restrictions removed." But she didn't mention that this was fallout from Musk's failed own-the-libs gotcha in which he arbitrarily labeled NPR's Twitter account as "state-affiliated media" before amending it to "government funded media" -- and then, after NPR quit using Twitter rather than be subject to Musk's whims, dropped the label entirely, but for obvious propaganda outlets from other foreign governments as well as NPR.
Salgado then tried to play whataboutism over Musk playing footsie with China:
While Foreign Policy brought up legitimate concerns such as Musk’s endorsement of China taking over the independent nation of Taiwan, it also exaggerated the influence of supposed Russian “disinformation.” The Twitter Files previously revealedthat Americans were wrongly censored under the former overly zealous anti-Russian censorship effort.
Indeed, Foreign Policy seemed to have contradictory views. On the one hand, it condemned Musk for rejecting European Union regulations dangerous to free speech, while noting Musk’s history of admiring statements about the Chinese Communist Party. The outlet appears simply to pick and choose which censorship laws it demands Musk should follow.
Salgado failed to mention her employer's own contradictory views on the subject. It had previously attacked Musk for cozying up to China, but forgot all that when he became interested in Twitter.Also note thatSalgado would not criticize Musk's love for China, even as her employer continually attacks Twitter rival TikTok for allegedly being too close to the CCP. Regarding her claim that "Americans were wrongly censored under the former overly zealous anti-Russian censorship effort," she linked to a post that we've noted was largely a rehash of previously discredited attacks on a group called Hamilton 68, which pointed out that it wasn't exclusive tracking Russian bots in the effort and that it worked with right-wing outlets like the Daily Caller.
The same day, Luis Cornelio hyped a Republican defense of a pair of writers hand-picked by Musk to spread Musk-approved narratives:
The left has declared war on Twitter Files journalists—but some congressional leaders are having none of it.
Firebrand Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) got candid in an interview with Fox News guest host Piers Morgan about the Democratic Party’s latest assault against Twitter Files journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger. Donalds slammed the left and “Big Media” for turning a blind eye to the scandal-ridden White House and directing their anger to individuals who have exposed damning evidence of a Censorship Industrial Complex involving Big Tech platforms and the federal government.
“We have Democrat members of congress who are berating reporters to reveal their sources, berating reporters who by the way are not conservative columnists from The Federalist or from the Washington Times,” Donalds told Morgan on the Friday edition of Fox News Tonight. “These are what you would consider liberal-leaning journalists and berating them for being a part of Elon Musk's [supposed] scheme to defame the FBI.’”
Cornelio, weirdly, never mentioned what "the left" said about Taibbi and Shellenberger or why, exactly, it amounted to "war."He also failed to mention that both Taibbi and Shellenberger are no longer attached to the "Twitter files" project, with Taibbi departing acrimoniously after Musk blocked links to Substack -- Taibbi's main writing venue -- from Twitter posts.
WND's Brown Insists There's A 'Radical Dominionist Takeover From The Left' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Michael Brown began his June 17 WorldNetDaily column this way:
I do not for a moment downplay the danger of the radical, rightwing ideologies of white supremacists in America. Nor do I deny the existence of a dominionist, takeover mentality in some Christian circles, the most extreme of which were put on display in the days leading up to Jan. 6, 2021.
In reality, Brown was a massive booster of Donald Trump, pushing his fellow evangelicals to support him despite his personal amorality because he advanced their narratives and agendas -- something that, one could argue, help to give oxygen to the "radical, rightwing ideologies of white supremacists" he now claims to decry. And Brown did, in fact, push that "dominionist, takeover mentality" immediately after the 2020 election, declaring in one column that "I personally hope that the seemingly impossible happens, that Trump is proven to be the rightfully reelected president and that the prophecies about him prove true." Brown tried to play both sides of the post-election controversies until the Capitol riot, and it wasn't until the time around the riot that he started questioning the evangelical obsession with Trump (which he helped to create).
But Brown is not here to further criticize those people. He followed the above sentence by declaring, "But the real danger, the ever-present danger, the more pressing danger, is that of a radical dominionist takeover from the left. The evidence is all around us." Indeed, he spent the rest of his column doing exactly that, since criticizing his fellow right-wingers is not why he has a WND column, ranting that is "the left" that his "currently asserting its power over others in an intimidating, even life-threatening way." While Brow echoed right-wing talking points about ESG and George Soros, his main target was LGBTQ people -- as it usually is -- so this gave him license to spew anti-LGBTQ hate and fearmongering:
More ominously, a June 11 headline on Daily Mail announced, "The new face of extremism unmasked: The UN and Republicans are watching 'Trantifa' – the hard-left transgender activists who flirt with violence to promote their radical agenda."
Trantifa! Enough said. Even the UN is on the alert.
In reality, the "trantifa" is little more than a inside joke among transgender people that right-wing activists like Brown have latched onto for the purposes of fearmongering. He continued:
In California, legislation is advancing that would remove children from parental care if the parents refused to affirm their child's perceived gender identity. Talk about an Orwellian nightmare.
Deeply alarmed after the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 8-1 to advance the legislation (Assembly Bill 957), Republican Senator Scott Wilk said, "In the past, when we've had these discussions, and I've seen parental rights atrophy, I've encouraged people to keep fighting. I've changed my mind on that – if you love your children, you need to flee California. You need to flee."
Flee! This is how extreme the radical left is becoming. This is the dominionist takeover that should be feared.
For those who would argue that the right is doing this very thing by passing legislation outlawing the chemical castration and genital mutilation of trans-identified children, the comparison breaks down immediately.
California would remove children from parental care if the parents refuse to affirm the non-verifiable, often quite malleable, totally subjective feelings of a child. (In point of fact, upwards of 80 percent of such children will outgrow those feelings after puberty.)
The laws being passed in conservative states outlaw performing lifelong, irreversible treatments on vulnerable children, drugs which have not been fully tested regarding the long-term negative effects (in particular, the long-term, negative effects of puberty blocking hormones and the like; we already know about the long-term effects of genital mutilation; that is self-evident).
The California law would punish parents for being good parents; the other laws would prohibit doctors from being bad doctors.
Brown went on to rage about an anti-trans gamer who took offense to a fellow gamer who innocuously wrote that "Americans are in a sad place right now. Let people love who they love and live your own life" and ended up getting banned from the game:
That's because, for more than two decades now, radical LGBTQ+ activists who came out of the closet have been determined to put those who oppose their agenda into the closet. You shall not dissent!
In that same spirit, Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Anthony Bass was dropped by his organization, in part because of an Instagram post "that called for anti-LGBTQ boycotts of Target and Bud Light over their support for the LGBTQ community and referred to the support as 'evil' and 'demonic.'"
Although he deleted the post and apologized for any hurt he had caused, he did say he stood by his personal beliefs.
That, of course, was unacceptable. Conform or be gone is often the rule, as the legendary pitcher Curt Schilling can tell you (he was fired by ESPN in 2016 for his "transphobic" posts).
Brown never explains why LGBTQ people must be hated and must be denounced and why anyone who doeesn't hate them as he does must be reepeatedly attacked. He continued to bizarrely insist that not hating LGBTQ people is a "dominionist takeover" that is "coming from the radical left." (Also, Brown misleadingly claimed that the gamer story was "reported on MSN.com"; in fact, MSN merely reprinted an article from the right-wing Washington Examiner.")
MRC Still Lashing Out At Facebook Whistleblower For Not Supporting Right-Wing Narratives Topic: NewsBusters
The Media Research Center loved Frances Haugen when the former Facebook official's whistleblowing revelations about the company were anonymously reported by the Wall Street Journal in 2021 -- but when she went public and it turned out she wasn't a conservative and wouldn't boot right-wing victimhood narratives, the MRC turned against her and used talking points issued by Facebook itself in an attempt to discredit her. Nearly two years later, it's still attacking Haugen. Gabriela Pariseau lashed out at her again in a June 16 post, putting a description of Haugen as a "whistleblower" in scare quotes in the headline:
CNN host Jake Tapper and Facebook “whistleblower” Frances Haugen lamented that Facebook has lessened its assault on free speech.
Haugen, a data scientist and former Facebook employee, went on The Lead with Jake Tapperto express concerns that Facebook has not announced its plans to censor users, or in her words, ensure the “safety” of the 2024 elections. Tapper escalated the conversation to a whole new level. “These companies are worth billions … trillions of dollars,” he said. “ They can hire more people to weed out the Nazis and take down misinformation and all that. Why don’t they?” Haugen claimed that Facebook doesn’t because it doesn’t have to, ignoring the fact that Facebook has cut back on many of its unpopular censorship rules.
Remember that what Pariseau considers an "assault on free speech" are actually efforts to stem hate, falsehoods and misinformation. Pariseau continued to dishonest frame content moderation as "censorship":
Haugen also whined about the fact that Facebook cut much of its safety researchers. “I’m deeply concerned that going into 2024 we face much larger risks than we did, say, four years ago or three years ago at this point because Facebook dissolved the team that was responsible for making sure the 2020 election was safe.”
She noted that Twitter owner Elon Musk “fired 75% of the employees” and “fired 75% of the employees” and that shortly after Facebook had layoffs. “[H]e fired over 20,000 employees. Many of my favorite safety researchers are no longer at the company, and not voluntarily. Going into the … 2024 elections, I worry that many of the people who would have kept our elections safe were cut in the name of efficiency.”
Haugen ignores the possibility that Meta is rolling back on unpopular censorship and not simply censorship related to elections. Today the platform scaled back its restrictions against certain content related to COVID-19. “We will take a more tailored approach to our COVID-19 misinformation rules consistent with the Board’s guidance and our existing policies," Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg wrote in an updated Meta blog.
Of course, the spreaders of false or hateful content would think that being moderated is "unpopular," so it's strange Pariseau would insist on making that argument (twice).
Pariseau concluded with more attacks on Haugen: "Haugen’s complaints should come as no surprise. In her whistleblowing days back in 2021, she over the safety of users who she claimed are harmed by misinformation." Aside from links to old attacks that proved nothing, Pariseau offered no evidence that Haugen was wrong about anything.
WND's Blakley Lashes Out At Republican For Criticizing Trump Topic: WorldNetDaily
Richard Blakley is an election fraud dead-ender, so it's unsurprising that he would rush to defend Donald Trump against any alleged slight. Which explains his June 15 WorldNetDaily column, in which he attacked another Republican for daring to criticize Trump:
Responding to the latest attempt to derail reelection of President Trump, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson accused Donald Trump of "willful disregard for the Constitution," "disrespect for the rule of law" and further stated that the former president should "respect the office and end his campaign."
This idiocy was repeated on "conservative" news broadcasts. Every time I heard it, I laughed, because the statements are so absolutely ridiculous and absurd. Maybe his cat named "Snowflake" should call Hutchinson by that name, as he has less than a snowflake's chance in hell of winning the presidency. Hutchinson's anti-Trump presidential campaign has recent poll numbers between zero and 1%. Is his candidacy a long shot? It is best described, as the shot that is not going to be heard "'round the world," for it's not even loaded.
Looking at Hutchinson's ludicrous statements, let's begin with "willful disregard for the Constitution." When did President Trump disregard the Constitution? President Trump secured our borders from invasion, fueled an economy with high rates of employment across all racial groups and then led the country through China's bio-weapon attack on the world. The country was poised for a comeback, but Biden derailed everything.
That "attempt to derail reelection of President Trump" is better known as getting indicted (again). He then played dubious whataboutim to distract from Trump's crimes:
Then Hutchinson says Trump has "disrespect for the rule of law." What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"? Prosecutors take a charge, repeat the same charge 30-something times, and then all you hear is 30-something felonies committed by Trump, when in fact they are all the same thing repeated over and over again – kind of like how Democrats get votes from a copy machine.
Remember presidents have the right to declassify all documents. In contrast, Sen. Biden and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, when they hid all their Top Secret documents in unsecure places, did not have that right. But they were not prosecuted because of corrupt law enforcement officials. How is it that law enforcement officers get to decide when the law is applied and when it is not? While James Comey, fired head of the FBI, said that Hillary and her colleagues "were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information," he continued by saying, in his "judgment" no prosecutor would pursue charges against Hillary. So, law enforcement officer Comey became the judge and jury and acquitted Hillary, even though he admitted she was guilty. I think it is time to lock up corrupt law enforcement officers.
The really laughable statement Mr. Hutchinson made is when he stated that Trump should end his campaign out of "respect [for] the office." The reason there are so many attacks on Trump is that he cannot be bought, so the only way to attack him is to mar his name with allegations. Everyone hears "Trump was impeached twice." While the flaming liberal Nancy Pelosi led House of Representatives did impeach President Trump twice over nothing, the truth is that Trump was also acquitted twice. For liberals who are confused, this means he is "not guilty." Realize that liberals weren't out to impeach President Trump, they were out to smear his name. Bald-faced lying liberals keep shouting President Trump was impeached twice, yet forget that he was found "not guilty" – twice. They have no "respect for the office."
But Trump was, m fact, impeached twice. The fact that Senate Republicans acted in a partisan way in refusing to vote to convict him doesn't mean that Trump was never impeached.Blakley went on to rant:
It should be noted here that Joseph Robinette Biden when serving as vice president told the then-president of Ukraine that he was going to withhold a billion dollars in U.S. aid, if the Ukrainian government did not fire the prosecutor that was investigating the corrupt dealings of Hunter Biden in Ukrainian businesses and politics, and this is on tape.
In fact, the prosecutor wasn't investigating Hunter Biden and in fact wasn't really investigating any corruption, which is why Biden called for his firing. Blakley then tried to whatewash the Capitol riot:
Then who can forget January 6th, the day flaming liberals say was worse than 9/11. How many times have we had to hear over and over again that President Trump "incited an insurrection" at the Capitol when he expressed his constitutionally protected right to declare that the 2020 election was not free and fair and should be investigated, and then told the people to let their "voices be known" in "peaceful protest." Now of course this portion of President Trump's speech was omitted by the Pelosi-selected, leftist-skewed January 6th committee, since it did not fit their narrative – and this is even confirmed by the "fact checkers." So, the fact checkers got one right.
Blakley omitted that Trump also told the crowd to "fight like hell." He concluded by serving up more election conspiracy theories with an added dose of going Godwin:
After tallying all the votes of the 2020 election, President Trump obtained more than 10 million votes beyond that which he obtained in 2016, which he used to win the electoral vote and defeated and demoralize Hillary Clinton. This total of 74 million votes in 2020 was more votes that any incumbent president has ever won in history. However, Joe Biden went on to defeat Trump by winning 7 million more votes than the president, and Joe Biden actually won more votes than any president in U.S. history.
Trying to determine how many people were registered to vote in the 2020 election is just about as hard as trying to determine how much money we have sent to Ukraine. One of the "fact checkers" actually said, "While we may not know the exact number of registered voters on Election Day, we know it was far more than 133 million in 2020." Wow! With that fact check, I felt so reassured that the 2020 election was "the most secure election in history," as the socialists have told us over and over and over again, following the Nazi (National Socialist Party) Hitler manifesto: "Tell a lie, tell a big enough lie, tell it over and over again, and people will believe it." Of course this is independent of the thousands of sworn affidavits stating voting irregularities, no signature verification, no voter ID, unfolded mail-in ballots that all look the same, etc.
Of course, it's Blakley who's acting in the spirit of Hitler by repeating lies.
MRC's Jean-Pierre-Bashing, Spanning The World Edition Topic: Media Research Center
Curtis Houck metaphorically traveled abroad to tout biased questions from right-wing reporters aimed at the Biden White House in a July 11 post:
During a Tuesday morning press briefing on the sidelines of the NATO conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, the New York Post’s Steven Nelson broke from the press corps’s focus on NATO and the war in Ukraine to question National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on a new twist in the Biden family’s business dealings with a Chinese state-affiliated energy company and a report alleging collusion between the FBI, Ukrainian intelligence, and Big Tech.
Houck did make sure to get in a shot at the White House press secretary he despises so much:
Later in the briefing, one reporter tried to ask Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre if there was any update in the probe for who brought cocaine into the White House. Unfortunately, Jean-Pierre did what she usually does, which was deflect (and specifically to Secret Service).
Back home several days later, Houck returned to his usual rage at Jean-Pierre and hying biased right-wing questions in his writeup of the July 18 White House press briefing:
On Tuesday afternoon, the White House press briefing with the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had it all with some tense exchanges (Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich over anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party), softballs (the AP and USA Today on alleged treatment of illegal immigrants), and the delusional (a far-left blogger asking about potential violence from Trump supporters).
Heinrich began with a simple question in much the same manner her colleague Peter Doocy would do. This one touched on far-left Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) saying recent Israel was “a racist state”:“Did the President address at all Congresswoman Jayapal’s comments in his meeting with Herzog?”
Jean-Pierre played dumb before dancing around the subject and instead talking about President Biden’s view of the U.S. and Israel[.]
[...]
Heinrich tried again, but Jean-Pierre wouldn’t budge beyond stating, “It’s important that the congresswoman did indeed apologize for her comments, and we’re glad to see it.”
The Fox reporter called out the lack of a yes or no before pivoting to another simple question Jean-Pierre couldn’t muster an answer on, which was whether the administration supported a House resolution “saying that Israel is not a racist state or an apartheid state."
Since Jean-Pierre couldn’t even muster that, the sparring was on with Heinrich calling out what’s – at a minimum – a perception that Democrats were reluctant to punish their own for controversial comments[.]
Houck hyped how non-right-wing reporters helped forward right-wing narratives in his writeup of the July 26 briefing:
On Wednesday after the shocking collapse of Hunter Biden’s plea deal, there were a few White House reporters who grilled Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in her abbreviated turn at the podium (due to her use of John Kirby as her crutch for nearly 35 of the almost 58-minute briefing) on the events in Delaware as well as ongoing questions about Biden family corruption.
Along with usual suspects in Real Clear Politics’s Philip Wegmann and CBS’s Weijia Jiang, ABC’s Ike Ejiochi also had a real question (with process questions from the AP’s Darlene Superville and CNN’s Jeremy Diamond). In contrast, theGrio’s April Ryan, USA Today’s Fran Chambers, and another report lobbed softballs at Kirby.
[...]
Also on Tuesday, Daily Signal correspondent Fred Lucas made a rare Briefing Room appearance amid concerns he could soon lose his credentials. He was the lone reporter to ask former Hunter Biden business associate and friend Devon Archer being slated to testify next week behind closed doors to a House committee. Naturally, Jean-Pierre declined to comment.
A more frequent flier, Newsmax’s James Rosen asked pointed questions about the President’s views of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and whether he believes the U.S. is a racist country[.]
As usual, Houck failed to identify the right-wing political affiliations of Wegmann, Lucas and Rosen.
Newsmax Also Attacked ProPublica For Factual Reporting On Alito Topic: Newsmax
The Media Research Center isn't the only ConWeb outlet attacking ProPublica for factual reporting on ethical issues involving right-wing Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito. A June 21 article by the apparently unironically named Charlie McCarthy touted how "Alito used an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal to respond to ProPublica, which lodged the allegations against the justice."
Eric Mack parroted right-wing attacks on the Alito story in a June 22 article tagged as "news" but is clearly an opinion piece:
As Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito rejects ProPublica's latest conservative justice attack as it's becoming increasing clear to many observers the attacks under the guise of "ethics concerns" are coordinated against the conservative majority, while ignoring the liberal minority.
ProPublica, as reviewed by AllSides, does not treat Democrat-appointed Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, or Ketanji Brown Jackson with the same discerned scrutiny. The late Ruth Bader Ginsburg and now-retired Democrat-appointed Justice Stephen Breyer were also handled most softly.
"ProPublica's stories alleging 'corruption' by Supreme Court justices have been the work of one-sided activists trying to make hay out of insignificant or irrelevant matters," RealClearInvestigation's Mark Hemmingway tweeted. "It's not respectable journalism."
[...]
The Wall Street Journal, the same publication that published Alito's preemptive defense against the leftist ProPublica attack, has an editorial features editor James Taranto who called ProPublica's investigative efforts against conservatives "propaganda, not journalism."
"The objective isn't to further public understanding but, in Alinskyite fashion, to incite animus against a political target," the Journal's James Taranto wrote May 4, referencing leftist activist and author Saul Alinsky, who infamously wrote "Rules for Radicals."
"The clearest proof of this is the absence of investigations from ProPublica and other so-called mainstream news outlets into the 'ethics' of liberal justices," Taranto added.
What Mack and the people he quoted fail to do, however, is offer any evidence that any claim ProPublica made against Alito is false in any way. That's why they attack the outlet's purported "leftist" bias and the alleged irrelevance of the allegations. One can also argue that Newsmax and other right-wing outlets have used Alinsky tactics in targeting the Biden administration in general and Hunter Biden in particular. Also, Taranto's complaint that "ProPublica and other so-called mainstream news outlets" have not sufficient looked into alleged ethics issues involving liberal justices rings hollow, since clearly those issues have already been reported. ProPublica's work on Alito and Clarence Thomas involved issues not previously known -- and if Mack and Taranto had their way, they would remain secret.
Indeed, Mack continued to attack ProPublica for the offense of reporting something right-winger didn't want people to know, hyping "the big left dollars flowing into the ProPublica coffers to attack conservatives" while failing to mention the right-wing dollars that pay the salaries of Taranto and himself.
This was followed by an article the same day by Luca Cacciatore claiming that "The Sandler Foundation, a left-leaning group that launched the ProPublica media outlet, has a history of giving millions to organizations attacking conservative Supreme Court justices." Cacciatore didn't mention that his employer was founded by money from right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife.
WND's Root Rages Over Trump's (Second) Indictment Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily may have freakedout over Donald Trump's (second) indictment, but columnist Wayne Allyn Root is in a category all his own when it comes to Trump sycophancy, and he responded prestty much as you'd expect. He ranted in his June 9 column:
Are you getting the subtle impression that Democrats don't want former President Donald Trump to win in 2024; that they're scared to death of Trump; that they're so desperate to stop him from winning again, they want him to rot in a prison cell for life?
Congratulations. You're not a complete moron.
The feds just indicted Trump on fake, lame, trumped-up charges. But didn't Democrats just try this trick in New York? It didn't work then. It won't work now. And it won't work next week when Trump appears in court in Miami. And it won't work next month when a Georgia grand jury indicts Trump. This is Groundhog Day.
[...]
So, why is this insanity happening?
First, Trump Derangement Syndrome. Democrats are clearly mentally ill. Their irrational hatred of Trump has driven them to emulate the worst tyrants in world history, willing to do anything to destroy their opposition. Democrats are so mentally ill with TDS, they need a straitjacket, rubber room and a kiss from mommy.
Second, "I told you so." I've argued for two and a half years now that we are experiencing a communist takeover of America. This isn't "socialism." This is pure communism thug tactics. Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez would be proud of this Biden regime.
The hallmarks of communism are rigged elections; bans on free speech; silencing all dissent; censorship; propaganda; the weaponization of government; forced experimental vaccinations; police state raids on your critics; and arresting your political opponents. Look around. We are there.
Third, this is the Saul Alinsky playbook. Alinsky taught his communist disciples (which included Obama and Hillary), "the ends justify the means." He also taught his students to "look in the mirror; whatever you see in that mirror, blame the other guy." This indictment of Trump is classic Alinsky. Democrats look in the mirror and they see radical communist criminals, thugs and traitors. So, they indict Trump to cover-up their own crimes.
Classified documents in a former president's home? Really? Versus President Joe Biden's $10 million Burisma bribe in Ukraine? That's like putting Trump in prison for 20 years for jaywalking while letting Democrats skate for crimes against humanity.
Fourth, this is Democrats using WMDs ("weapons of mass distraction"). The skeletons of Biden are pouring out of the closet as we speak. Biden is a world-class criminal and conman. The extortion of countries like Ukraine and China by the Biden crime family makes the Gambino crime family look like amateur pickpockets.
Root then effectively declared war and went well beyond going Godwin:
Lastly, God is great. God always wins. This is God's plan. The Democrats in power and the people who run our government are evil. Demonic. Satanic. This isn't normal. The things they're doing are Nazi Gestapo-like, Soviet KGB-like, East German Stasi-like. God has done us a favor: He's revealed what Democrats are really like.
This is war. This is life or death. This is the end of America if we don't fight fire with fire.
But Democrats have picked a fight with the wrong crowd. America beat Hitler. America defeated the Soviet Empire. You think we're going to let a brain-dead old man with dementia and diapers trample our rights and freedoms? You're going down.
Root continued the ranting in his June 16 column, hyping how Trump's polling is up since the indictment and insisting that "he faces life in prison for an offense that no one understands, no one cares about, and everyone knows is a bunch of bogus BS and legal mumbo-jumbo." He then rattled off reasons why "the average American voter will never care" about Trump's indictment and why it purpotedly "doesn't pass the smell test":
First, it doesn't affect any of us. Trump didn't hurt one American by "mishandling" a bunch of papers. How does that hurt me? How does that affect my life? It doesn't.
Second, I believe Trump himself didn't benefit, didn't sell the papers and didn't show them to foreign enemies. They were left in boxes in his basement, and bathroom shower (according to the fake news media). So, who cares?
Third, everyone does it. Former President Barack Obama allegedly has millions of pages of classified documents in his Obama Presidential Library that he never returned. We've all seen the classified docs on the floor of President Joe Biden's garage. Even Mike Pence had classified docs. I'll bet every single U.S. senator does too. This is a ridiculous waste of time.
Root is simply parroting Trump regarding Obama's classified documents. In fact, unlike Trump, Obama worked with the National Archives to move those documents to Chicago, and Obama's foundation is paying the National Archives to digitize the documents. Root's list of reasons continued as attacks on Democrats:
Fourth, everyone can see the new Democrat motto is, "If you can't beat 'em, jail 'em." This is about one thing: stopping Trump from running for president, because Democrats are scared to death he will beat them – even with rigged elections.
Fifth, I believe Biden has committed TREASON. He sold out the American people. He sold us all down the river. He extorted tens of millions (maybe hundreds of millions) of dollars in bribes from foreign countries and companies as vice president. Compared to that, who cares about a bunch of papers in a box at Trump's home? No one. Indicting Trump is a "weapon of mass distraction" to hide Biden's serious crimes from the headlines.
Root concluded:
All of these ridiculous, bogus, hyped-up-by-the-media indictments will push more and more average working Joes and Janes into Trump's camp. You're making Trump a martyr.
Because common sense tells them if this man Trump is so hated by the whole government; the whole D.C. swamp; the whole deep state; the whole legal system; the whole DOJ and FBI; the whole mainstream media; the whole Ivy League elite … if he's such a threat to these control-freak tyrants and fascists who want to kill free speech and rule our lives …
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If these creeps and criminals and scumbags are desperate enough to turn jaywalking into a serious crime … and try to put Trump in prison for life …
Then Trump must be doing something right. He must really have the goods on these creeps. He must be the guy wearing the white hat. He must be on our side. He must be our hero.
Root appears to have a strangely warped sense of heroism.
We've shown how the Media Research Center cranked up its Hunter Biden Derangement the day news of a plea deal was released. On the following day, June 21, the derangement continued. Kevin Tober complained that someone defended him:
The 
As Newsmax defended Donald Trump against an 
Peter LaBarbera wrote in a June 19 WorldNetDaily 
June started out as a slow month of Hunter Biden derangement at the Media Research Center, spending much of the early part of the month 
Jack Cashill spent his June 21 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center's Kevin Tober complained in a June 19 
Despite his being a multibillionaire, the Media Research Center must always portray Elon Musk as a victim because he advances right-wing narratives. Catherine Salgado did this again in a July 13 
Michael Brown began his June 17 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center loved Frances Haugen when the former Facebook official's whistleblowing revelations about the company were anonymously reported by the Wall Street Journal in 2021 -- but when she went public and it turned out she wasn't a conservative and wouldn't boot right-wing victimhood narratives, the MRC 
Richard Blakley is an 
Curtis Houck metaphorically traveled abroad to tout biased questions from right-wing reporters aimed at the Biden White House in a July 11 
The 
WorldNetDaily may have 
