The MRC's Summer Of Defending Clarence Thomas, Continued Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's summer of defending Clarence Thomas continued witha July 1 post by Alex Christy complaining that someone said somthing mean about Thomas:
Joy Reid, the eponymous host of MSNBC's The ReidOut, welcomedThe Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal onto her Friday show to recap the week’s Supreme Court decisions and naturally, incendiary hot takes soon followed including that Justice Clarence Thomas is a “mutilated version of a black justice” who is his wife’s puppet.
[...]
Mystal then proceeded to make the evidence-free claim that Thomas has something personal against his colleague, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, “One of the other things you really realize when you read through his concurrence is just how angry he is at Ketanji Brown Jackson for having the temerity to be another black person on the Supreme Court. He apparently thought he got to be the only one. He thought that he had pulled up the ladder for everybody else, right?”
[...]
Clarence Thomas has been very vocal about how he views affirmative action and how it diminished his and other’s successes and perpetrates racial stereotypes, but Mystal ignored all that so he could get a few cheap laughs from Reid.
A July 31 column by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. repeated Tim Graham's earlier criticism of the Washington Post for pointing out how he and his fellow right-wingers, like Leonard Leo, are spending lts of money trying to turn Thomas into a conservative hero/martyr: "Leo gives money to his friends. They break no laws by spending money. There is nothing devious about what they do with the money. ... Nor is Thomas the only member of the court to be endowed by rich Americans."
When ProPublica published more reporting on Thomas -- this time, highlighting all the other right-wing billionaires with whom he has vacationed -- the MRC again flew into a rage ... at ProPublica. Nicholas Fondacaro ranted in an Aug. 10 post that ProPublica was perpetrating a "high-tech lynching" of Thomas:
The day after the House Oversight Committee released detailed financial documents that exposed how much foreign money was being funneled to the Biden family, leftist ProPublica dropped another hit piece to continue their high-tech lynching of Justice Clarence Thomas. The report was parroted by CNN News Central on Thursday. And despite giving the smear job oxygen, they reluctantly had to admit there was no evidence of wrongdoing.
Anchor John Berman led into the segment by clutching his pearls because Thomas had hung out with “billionaire friends,” something the liberal media permitted the Obamas to do.
CNN correspondent Tom Foreman rattled off ProPublica’s list of “extraordinary big gifts,” which included “38 destination vacations, 26 private jet flights, 12 VIP passes to pro and college events, two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica, one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club, and there was a voyage around the Bahamas by yacht, helicopters.”
Of course, Fondacaro played whataboutism:
Former advisor to Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), Steve Guest took to Twitter to call out how former liberal justices like the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg had taken “157 trips, 28 international trips,” and Stephen Breyer accepted “233 trips, 63 international trips.” That’s in contrast to the “109 reported trips, 5 international trips” taken by Thomas in a similar amount of time.
None of that was mentioned by Foreman, but that didn’t stop him from falsely suggesting that Thomas was the recipient of more trips than anyone in Washington D.C. “Even in a town in D.C. where a lot of people trade favors, this is an awful lot of favors worth, according to ProPublica, millions of dollars and they don’t think they’ve accounted for all of it yet,” he claimed.
Guest also called out ProPublica for taking gifts from liberal dark money organizations. “ProPublica is funded by folks including the Sandler Foundation to the tune of $40 MILLION & the George Soros backed Foundation To Promote Open Society to the tune of over $3 MILLION,” he wrote.
Fondacaro cited nothing inaccurate in ProPublica's reporting, which means that all of this rage is because it reported the truth about Thomas.
Curtis Houck complained the same day that "both CNN and MSNBC have been all over the latest smear campaign from far-left ProPublic targeting Justice Clarence Thomas for having wealthy friends as the latest piece aimed at having the conservative jurist removed from the court." He too failed to identify anything inaccurate in the article. That was followed by Kevin Tober whining:
Continuing their egregious behavior of ignoring the newly released records by House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-KY), detailing payments that the Biden family received from corrupt business associates in foreign countries like Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, ABC's World News Tonight decided to instead hype a non-story about United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas allegedly accepting gifts from donors. This is just one more glaring example of the liberal news networks deliberately ignoring scandals involving Democrats while going all in on every little perceived instance of a conservative controversy.
[...]
Yet, by ProPublica's own admission, they have "not identified any legal cases the benefactors had before the Supreme Court, but that Thomas may have violated the law and judicial norms by not disclosing the gifts." Davis didn't explain what those laws or judicial norms are that Thomas supposedly broke.
In yet another Aug. 10 post, Peter Kotara complained that another TV show noted how Thomas benefited from right-wing billionaires:
On Thursday’s Morning Joe on MSNBC, co-host Mika Brzezinski, Politico White House editor Sam Stein, and former Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) desperately peddled crazed claims about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. They claimed a new ProPublica report on Justice Thomas’s gifts received while in office was evidence he was being bribed in order to rule in favor of certain individuals, despite the fact that report noted the donors did not have cases before the Court.
In order to justify this conspiracy theory, they were forced to invent the existence of some shadow entity working behind the scenes to organize Thomas’s vacations and benefitting from his rulings on the Court.
[...]
To fill this massive plot hole, Stein had to make up a conspiracy theory. He asked “You know, someone clearly, or at least I would think, is organizing these types of outings and maybe even matching a donor with the event … who is doing the organization around this? And are they the ones who actually have a stake before the Justice?”
So they want people to believe that since the actual donors weren’t receiving favors from Thomas, there had to have been some secret organizer plotting in the shadows who conveniently no one knows the identity of who get favorable rulings from Thomas. Time for liberals to put on their tin foil thinking caps and try to figure that one out.
Clay Waters concluded the MRC's Aug. 10 blitz by grumbling that PBS' "NewsHour" "offered seven minutes and 20 seconds to the liberal sites ProPublica and Slate finding scandal in vacations offered to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Oh sure, some of the liberal justices had more vacations provided, but...they put those on their disclosure forms, so the liberal sites can explain that away."
Waters returned for an Aug. 14 post huffing that Thomas' predeliction for hanging around right-wing billionaires was pointed out:
The Thursday evening, PBS NewsHour showcased the latest attack on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with a two-pronged attack, hosting Joel Anderson of the Slate podcast "Slow Burn" and Brett Murphy from ProPublica to talk about that outlet’s latest glossy attack on the conservative Supreme Court justice.
Using ProPublica’s obsessive Thomas "scoops" as ammunition, PBS has been training fire on Justice Clarence Thomas while hosting several ProPublica reporters to talk about the supposed scandal of Thomas’s undisclosed vacations and trips sponsored by Republican donors, ever since ProPublica broke a story in April about Thomas’s vacations with real estate magnate Harlan Crow. (Liberal justices took vacations with rich friends too, but those were officially disclosed, which apparently gets them off the hook for any potential conflict of interest.)
[...]
The segment reached beyond Thomas’s undisclosed vacations into psychoanalysis. Thomas has been long loathed by the left for failing to knuckle under after the Anita Hill accusations during his confirmation hearings.
Jeffrey Lord's Sept. 2 column was a lame echo of Wall Street Journal writer James Taranto lashing out at ProPublica for writing about Thomas:
Again, James Taranto gets it exactly right when he says that “politically biased reporters routinely adulterate the news with tendentious language and prepackaged opinions.”
Exactly again. The problem in this case is that a far-left leaning media has had it in for Justice Thomas - and his conservative activist wife Virginia - right from the get go of his nomination by President Bush. It is telling that when it comes to media scrutinizing of liberals on the Supreme Court - there is none.
Lord and Taranto did not opine about how their rabid defense of Thomas shows that political reporting by right-wing media is even more adulterated by "tendentious language and prepackaged opinions."
WND Still Hypocritically Likening Biden To Hitler Topic: WorldNetDaily
Remember how WorldNetDaily complained about people likening Donald Trump to Hitler, then hypocritically made the same comparison about President Biden? Well, it can't stop doing it. Bob Unruh wrote in an Aug. 10 article:
A new poll shows that a majority of Iowa Republicans, based on the Biden administration's multiple legal attacks on President Donald Trump, believe Biden is turning America into a version of "Nazi Germany."
The polling was done by the Daily Mail.
It shows that majority thinks Biden's "pursuit of former President Donald Trump by the FBI. and the Department of Justice smacks of Nazi rule in 1930s Germany."
The report said 57% of respondents agreed with the statement: "The lawlessness of the persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Trump has described the multiple cases against him as a witch hunt and a political scheme to try to foil his bid for the presidency in 2024. He calls it election interference.
Of course, if America is becoming Nazi Germany, that means Biden is Hitler, even if Unruh won't explicitly say it.
Unruh didn't mention that the Daily Mail is a right-wing newspaper, and a British one at that. Rather than try to defend the poll or WND's hypocrisy, he tried to run defense for Trump by spouting right-wing narratives:
The government has brought a carload of charges against him for having documents from his presidency in his home. The DOJ and FBI, however, have ignored the fact that both Mike Pence and Joe Biden had similar documents in their homes, and no prosecutions have begun.
Further, Trump's been charged with business records violations that normally would have been misdemeanors. The prosecutors claim they now are felonies because they were used in furtherance of other, as yet unidentified, crimes.
And he's been charged over his statements regarding the 2020 election and the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a case which, critics say, is left void because of the protections affirmed by the First Amendment.
Surprisingly for WND, Unruh did insert a rare dissenting view:
Anti-Defamation League chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt objected to the comparison.
"Comparing this indictment to Nazi Germany in the 1930s is factually incorrect, completely inappropriate and flat out offensive. As we have said time and again, such comparisons have no place in politics and are shameful," he said.
Weird that Unruh doesn't similarly object, given how his employer objected to Trump-Hitler comparisons.
Newsmax Columnists Rant Against Trump's Growing Indictments Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax columnists continued to defend Donald Trump even as the most recent rounds of indictments continued, with a heavy dose of Biden whataboutism and a dash of conspiracy theorizing. Larry Bell complained in an Aug. 7 column:
A special hypocritical irony of the Biden Department of Justice's relentless attacks on Joe’s foremost opponent and threat, Donald Trump, are the latest indictment(s) which accuse him of exactly what the legacy media has been doing all along — namely, subverting trustworthy presidential elections.
This latest scheme to eliminate Trump as a lead 2024 White House contender follows two provably unwarranted impeachment attempts.
There were the sham Banana Republic-style Jan. 6 Capitol riot hearings. A proceeding omitting key statements and video records plus disallowed defense testimony.
There have also been two previous indictments that disregard and deflect from far more serious allegations against the present Oval Office occupant.
Knowledge is power. and sometimes the lack of knowledge is a different kind of power.
This comes to mind because of the indictment of former President Donald Trump.
He was indicted by a federal grand jury in Florida in a matter which began considerably farther north, in Washington, D.C., and New York City.
This is the latest part of a roughly seven-year crusade against Trump by a powerful alliance of "progressives" in the media and in government.
It includes the so-called "Russia collusion" case, a so-called "dossier" which alleged shockingly indiscreet behavior by Trump while on a trip to Russia, and hints of bribes paid to Trump and his colleagues, which were so nebulous that basically we never learned more than swirling fog banks of character assassination.
As it turned out, there was no substance to this evil campaign.
That is, there was no "Russia collusion" of any kind that could be discerned at law.
It's between the administrative elite-deep state who want to keep and aggrandize their power, and the people who want fairness and equal opportunity.
Trump has to be eliminated or destroyed, so contends the administrative, elite deep state.
Is the battle more vicious now because Biden and the deep state are cornered?
They know that if Trump wins re-election, he will have lawbreakers prosecuted, and turn over Washington’s money changing tables that provide kickbacks from Ukraine and from other U.S. foreign aid recipients.
[...]
The American people well-know the difference between Trump's actions, versus Biden's mere quickly evaporating words. They also know to wholly ignore media spins.
The real judge and jury adjudications on Donald Trump should not be made in biased courts by politically driven prosecutions, the media, and left hysterics, but by voting citizens who are fully capable of assessing comparative results on their own, absent "help" from the federal leviathan.
Jefferson Weaver attacked the indictments in his Aug. 11 column:
Given the widespread media attention lavished on these cases, some observers might believe that these indictments were truly brilliant examples of legal scholarship that could be displayed in museums to be enjoyed by future generations.
Unfortunately, closer examination offered by some of the nation’s most preeminent legal scholars suggests that these documents are little more than sludgy “lawfare” salvos being fired by Trump’s enemies to wound him in the eyes of the voting public.
The only examples Weaver cited of "preeminent legal scholars," however, were longtime Trump defenders Alan Dershowitz and Jonathan Turley.
Bell returned with an Aug. 18 column that started by painting Trump as a nice guy who is being victimized:
Having met Donald Trump on a couple of social occasions several years ago and found him to be very gracious and likable, plus gratefully agreeing with virtually all of his presidential domestic and global policies, I have nevertheless kept an open mind regarding my final 2024 GOP primary pick – until now.
Those previous uncertainties preceded subsequent exposure of a terrifyingly politicized and weaponized “justice system” and complicit legacy media that has relentlessly attacked Trump – and foundational American values – from the time he first announced his 2016 candidacy.
Bell then repeated false talking points about President Biden:
Undeterred, Trump’s enemies impeached him for asking incoming Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to look into former VP Biden’s suspicious ties to the corrupt business practices of Burisma, an energy company that was paying son Hunter $1 million a year as a board member.
This inquiry was obviously a legitimate national security matter given Biden's braggadocio about withholding $1 billion in U.S. military aid unless Ukraine fired its lead prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who at the time was investigating Burisma. The Senate acquitted.
In fact, Biden encouraged Ukraine to fire Shokin because he was not investigating corruption. Bell served up more misinformation:
Then came impeachment No. 2, in which Trump again was acquitted, and then a months-long Democrat kangaroo court hearings, that accused Trump of inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Those hearings included only two Republicans, both of which were adamantly anti-Trump, allowed no meaningful cross examination and entirely omitted his statement: "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
Nor is there any explanation why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused his offer of providing thousands of National Guard personnel to safeguard the Capitol on that day.
Another falsehood -- Pelosi could not have "refused" an offer of National Guard troops before the Capitol riot because she does not control it and there is no evidence Trump ever made such an offer. Bell concluded by whining:
Now, in a desperate attempt to get that elusive Trump mug shot to plaster on the front page of every global newspaper, another felony Trump indictment under mob RICO charges for attempting to interfere with Georgia’s 2020 election vote counts. This is in a state where Stacey Abrams challenged her “stolen election” for governor based upon “discriminatory” requirements that voters verify their true identities.
So perhaps it’s understandable if Trump is somewhat miffed over what he regards to be unfair treatment deserving of retribution.
And just maybe lots of the rest of us will give that long overdue payback a very big boost in November 2024 ballot boxes.
Bell didn't explain why he thinks criminal matters should be handled by popular vote.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Hunter Biden Derangement, Spring 2023 Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center continued to desperately try to make Hunter scandals a thing -- then melted down over news of a possible plea deal. Read more >>
The MRC's Summer Of Defending Clarence Thomas Topic: Media Research Center
Over the summer, the Media Research Center continued its aggressivedefense of right-wing Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas as ethical concerns continued to pile up. Alex Christy complained those ethical lapses were discussed in a June 7 post:
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell suggested on Tuesday’s edition of The Last Word that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should be impeached for “selling too much of himself” to billionaire friend Harlan Crow. Later, during an interview with President and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice, Michael Waldman, it was essentially admitted that their biggest problem with Thomas and the rest of the Court is that it rules in ways they do not like.
During a lengthy diatribe against Crow, O’Donnell reported that he has agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, but that his lawyer does not believe Congress has the authority to write an ethics policy for the Court. Towards the end of that rant, O’Donnell proclaimed, “The only disciplinary option that the Founders left us, in the Constitution, for dealing with a Supreme Court justice who gets caught selling too much of himself to a billionaire is impeachment in the House of Representatives, followed by trial, conviction, and removal from office by the United States Senate.”
[...]
Neither Harlan Crow nor any of the lawyers placed by Jane Roberts has never had business before the Court, but that didn’t stop Waldman from claiming, “In some ways, this is new. In some ways, there is not much precedent for the level of, frankly, corruption that we're seeing.”
Actually, Christy's claim that Crow "never had business before the Court" is not quite true.
Conservatives certainly remember the awful treatment Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas faced at his 1991 confirmation hearings, including the endless media coverage granted to utterly unproved charges of sexual harassment by a former employee, Anita Hill. At the time, Thomas referred to the televised hearings as a “high tech lynching” perpetrated by those who would torpedo the conservative jurist’s nomination.
But from the very moment President George H. W. Bush nominated Thomas to the Court on July 1, 1991 — exactly 32 years ago today — journalists employed nasty and often racist language to denigrate Thomas as unfit to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall, whose retirement had created the vacancy that needed to be filled.
[...]
Given the media mindset of the moment, it was no surprise news organizations leaped to elevate Anita Hill’s harassment allegations, which appeared only after the confirmation hearings had officially ended and Thomas’s nomination had been sent to the Senate floor for what seemed like certain approval. Joe Biden’s Judiciary Committee quickly scheduled new hearings — a last gasp for liberals to try and torpedo the nomination.
Kevin Tober attempted yet another round of Sotomayor whataboutism in a July 11 post:
The Associated Press committed a random act of journalism Tuesday when they ran a story exposing how left-wing radical Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s staff pushed public institutions where she went to visit to purchase her memoirs or other books. Given the heavy interest given by the “big three” news networks on so-called conflicts of interest surrounding constitutionalist justices like Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas, the fact that the networks refused to report on this during their evening newscasts shows they were hypocrites.
Instead, the evening newscasts ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News covered a disruptive passenger forcing a commercial plane to land (ABC), video of a volcano erupting in Iceland (CBS), and Leslie Van Houten’s release from prison (NBC).
Tober didn't explain how Sotomayor is a "left-wing radical" or how this claim (which, appearances aside, is legal) eclipses Thomas' ethical lapses, or even how it makes those calling for the Supreme Court to follow an ethics code look "hypocritical."
A July 21 post by Tim Graham repeated an attack from another right-wing outlet on ProPublica, which exposed Thomas' ethical conflicts:
The investigative reporting group "ProPublica" boasts it is an “independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest," but the tilt of its targeting is hard to miss. Its most recent crusade has focused on the allegedly shabby ethics of conservative Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
Katelynn Richardson at the Daily Caller reported seven of the nine ethics experts cited in ProPublica’s stories on Thomas and Alito have collectively given over $100,000 to Democratic campaigns and left-wing causes, FEC records show. Several also work for organizations calling for Thomas’ resignation that are backed by donors that also fund ProPublica, the Caller previously reported.
As you might expert, the ProPublica stories did not disclose these ethics experts’ donations or the fact it shares donors with groups pushing for Thomas to resign.
Graham failed to disclose that the Daily Caller is a biased right-wing website -- ironic given how they attack the alleged bias of ProPublica. The next day, Graham complained that the right-wing obsession with turning Thomas into a hero and martyr was noticed (with lots of whatabouism, of course):
Friday's Washington Post included no story on the House Weaponization Subcommittee's hearing with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Breitbart's Emma-Jo Morris on Big Tech censorship. But the front page had an obligatory front-page story on a grand jury investigating Donald Trump and this amazing scandal piece: "Federalist Society figure uses his sway before and after naming of justices."
It's a scandal that Leonard Leo would organize positive publicity about a conservative Supreme Court justice. This is somehow.... unethical? Right under the "See more on A4" tag was a plug for the Senate Democrats passing a Supreme Court ethics bill.
In 2016, positive PR was organized around Justice Thomas serving 25 years on the court. But the year before, the Post was on the organized PR bandwagon celebrating the "Notorious RBG." They were apartof that, so apparently it wasn't scandalous. Maybe liberals don't have to raise money for that when media outlets will do it for free. CNN made a gushyRBG documentary.
[...]
A decent chunk of this article report on how Thomas friend Mark Paoletta was paid to attack anti-Thomas propaganda like the HBO film Confirmation, which celebrated Anita Hill. He worked with CRC Public Relations (disclosure: this is also the MRC's PR firm) to -- gasp! -- create a pro-Thomas Internet page and they -- gasp! -- "bought ads from Google to boost favorable internet content about Thomas."
Then the Thomas boosters organized a pro-Thomas documentary titled Created Equal, made by filmmaker Michael Pack. The Post acknowledges Leonard Leo's counterpoint that CNN made their RBG film, and that "Participant Media, founded by businessman Jeff Skoll, whose foundation donated millions to left-leaning groups, later acquired and distributed the film."
When conservative PR is a scandal and liberal PR is just PR, you get the distinct sense that the "Democracy Dies in Darkness" folks really don't like people organizing an opposing pile of publicity. They called this "a more aggressive approach that sought to sway public opinion through mass media."
The Washington Post never attempts this?
Note that Graham made no effort to defend the right-wing lionization of Thomas -- he sinply tries to distract from it. He did, however, make a rare disclosure of a conflict of interest in acknowledging that the MRC shares a PR firm with the Thomas promoters.
Nicholas Schau used a July 26 post to uncritically quotwe a Republican senator complaining that ProPublica reported things about Thomas that right-wingers didn't want people to know:
Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) went scorched earth on the massive George Soros-affiliated machine that went after Justice Clarence Thomas.
Lee exposed the hypocrisy of the Democrats who complained about dark money while benefiting from it and the hypocrisy of the Clarence Thomas hit pieces by ProPublica. Lee noted that many of the left-wing organizations connected to ProPublica–like the leftist Sandler Foundation and Soros’s Open Society Foundation–have used the outlet’s reporting to fund efforts to pack the Court and force Thomas to resign. He knocked ProPublica for “supporting this [court ethics] legislation; openly, actively, aggressively gunning for it” in its reporting. Soros’ Open Society Foundations funneled $1,625,008 into ProPublica between 2016 and 2021.
Hit pieces like those written by ProPublica come as Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), plot to advance an outrageous Supreme Court-related ethics bill that “would impose a code of conduct” for justices on the Court, despite the fact that there are “pre-existing ethics rules in places [sic] for the justices, governed by a separate body.”
Neither Schau nor Lee identified anything false or misleading in ProPublica's "hit pieces" on Thomas. Schau also failed to explain why it's so "outrageous" to make Supreme Court justices follow a code of ethics.
An anonymously written Aug. 10 WorldNetDaily article repeated old fake news smearing COVID vaccines:
A new report reveals that a secret Centers for Disease Control document confirms that nearly 120,000 children and young adults died "due to the COVID-19 vaccine's dangerous side effects."
That includes more than 78,000 excess deaths in that age group during 2021 after the shots were available, and governments started demanding people accept them, and the 39,000 plus in 2022.
t is Expose-News that said, "The CDC report should spark widespread outrage and be on the front page of every single major newspaper. But instead, it has been and will continue to be met with a deafening silence. Despite the staggering death toll the report will be buried and swept under the carpet."
The report elaborated, "Compared to other countries, the U.S. government has been terrible at publishing relevant and up-to-date data allowing us to analyze the consequences of rolling out the COVID-19 injections. However, we have finally managed to stumble upon it thanks to an institution known as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OEC)."
[...]
It said, "Excess deaths among children and young adults were significantly higher every single week in 2021 than they were in 2020 except for weeks 29 and 30."
The report said the number of excess deaths surged after the rollout of the COVID-19 shots.
"If we are to believe the official narrative that COVID-19 injections are safe and effective, then how can one explain the further increase in death among children and young adults in both 2021 and 2022?"
The fact the British website Expose should raise a red flag, because it has been repeatedly busted for spreading COVID misinformation -- and that's the case here as well. On top of that, this is old fake news, which first came out late year.; an actual, fact-based media outlet talked to actual experts who debunked the claim:
But Brian Tsai, a spokesperson for the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, told The Associated Press that the claim misrepresents CDC data.
Tsai said that from the start of 2021 to the 43rd week of 2022, there have been about 124,000 excess deaths in the U.S. among 0- to 44-year-olds compared to the 2015-2019 average. However, he said, there’s no indication this was vaccine related.
This number is higher than the numbers published by OECD because the CDC’s data is now more complete, according to Tsai.
The 124,000 excess deaths break down to about 80,000 excess deaths in 2021 and about 44,000 excess deaths in 2022. Tsai also noted that excess deaths for 2022 are similar to those in 2020, when there were about 46,000.
Confirmed reports of deaths caused by vaccination are extremely rare, even with millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses having been administered in the U.S.
Scott Pauley, a spokesperson for the CDC, told the AP that outside of nine deaths confirmed to be associated with rare blood clots following the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the agency has “not detected any unusual or unexpected patterns for deaths following immunization that would indicate that COVID vaccines are causing or contributing to deaths.”
Instead, Tsai wrote in an email to the AP, likely reasons for excess deaths in this age group since 2020 include “increases in accidental deaths (mainly drug overdoses), suicides, homicides, heart diseases, liver disease, and diabetes.” He said a substantial number of the excess deaths are the result of COVID-19 itself.
A surge in excess deaths among children and young adults in the summer of 2021, for example, corresponded with the delta variant of the coronavirus hitting the U.S., which affected younger people more than previous variants of the virus, Tsai explained.
WND didn't tell its readers about any of this, let alone that it's an old story. It doesn't seem to understand that this insistence on publishing fake news is what is making readers flee in droves and pushing it to the brink of extinction.
MRC's Graham Cheers That Wash. Post Is Losing Money (Like Right-Wing Papers Always Have) Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center executive Tim Graham was overly gleeful in a July 24 post:
The New York Times buried the lede in a story about Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos owning The Washington Post. It isn't quite profitable, you learn in the eighth paragraph: "The Post is on a pace to lose about $100 million in 2023, according to two people with knowledge of the company’s finances."
The headline doesn't include that eye-grabbing detail. It's just this:
A Decade Ago, Jeff Bezos Bought a Newspaper. Now He’s Paying Attention to It Again.
The Amazon founder, who purchasedThe Washington Post for $250 million in 2013, has taken a more active role in the paper’s operations this year.
Yes, you can imagine he'd take a "more active role" with this nagging problem. Post employees were delighted a liberal billionaire bought the paper, so they didn't have to be too worried about profits. "Prestige journalism" for the liberals isn't working out right now, even as the paper extends its Trump obsession forward.
In his happiness that the Post is losing money, Graham is not going to mention that losing money has long been the norm for right-wing print journalism. As we've documented, the Washington Times, the Post's perennial also-ran competitor in the city, received more than $2 billion in subsidies from the Unification Church to keep it alive since its founding in 1982, a flow disrupted only when the family of Rev. Sun Myung Moon cut off the spigot in 2010. The paper survives in a highly stripped-down form after being sold to a Unification Church front company a couple years later, and finally, in 2015, claimed to have its first-ever month of not losing money (though one can assume that was likely a blip and it has returned to its money-losing ways). Similarly, the right-wing New York Post has pretty much never made money -- it exists due to subsidies from Rupert Murdoch's other operations simply because he wants to be able to say he has a newspaper in New York (though it claimed to have made a profit, its first in modern history, in 2020).
It's ironic that Graham is bashing the Washington Post for being dependent on a deep-pocketed owner who can absorb losses, when right-wing newspapers would have gone out of business years ago if they had to work within a free market and not rely on benevolent moneybags.
Still, Graham insisted on whining that "the Times still wants to imply that this financial problem isn't a media-bias problem." Of course, Graham offered no evidence that the Post's alleged bias is solely responsible for the financial loss, and he completely ignored that newspapers across the country are losing money. He was again silent on the fact that the newspapers with the most pronounced right-wing bias have pretty much never made money. There is a "media-bias problem" -- just not the one Graham wants you to think.
Graham is quite happy with newspapers dying, because their destruction has been an MRC agenda item for decades over their purported liberal bias, and he's more than happy to see them be replaced with low-quality right-wing websites (even as the MRC rages against ratings firmslikeNewsGuard for pointing out that inconvenient fact).
WND's LaBarbera Snoops Through Stolen Property In Ashley Biden's Diary Topic: WorldNetDaily
In March 2022, Jack Cashill spent a WorldNetDaily column complaining that Project Veritas got busted handling stolen property in the form of Ashley Biden's diary, piously touting how the right-wing group decided not to publish it because it would be "characterized as a cheap shot." Joseph Farah spent a June 2022 column complaining that the FBI got involved in its theft, repeating Tucker Carlson's claim that "Joe Biden was effectively using the feds as his secret police force," then hyping salacious claims in the diary that he chose to read as Joe Biden molesting his daughter.
If WND had any qualms about salaciously snooping through stolen property, they have disappeared -- in an apparent desperate to have a scoop of some kind -- because reporter Peter LaBarbera spent three articles snooping through Ashley's diary. In an Aug. 1 article, LaBarbera touted how Project Veritias abandoned those purported scruples as well and release excerpts from the diary:
Project Veritas, a conservative undercover journalism organization, has released phone-conversation audio from President Joe Biden's daughter, Ashley, confirming a diary that has drawn worldwide attention – most notably, for its revelations about her famous father "inappropriately" joining her in the shower when she was a girl – is indeed hers.
PV released an eight-minute video about the diary in which audio is played of a conversation between Ashley Biden and a PV journalist confirming the diary and other items left behind at a Florida home were hers.
In the diary – reported copies of which are available on Scribd and whose pages have been published on Twitter – the author (now confirmed to be Ashley Biden) describes how she was "hyper-sexualized [at] a young age. What is this due to? Was I molested? I think so," she writes. "I remember having sex with friends [at] a young age, showers [with] my dad (probably not appropriate), being turned on when I wasn't supposed to be."
A post published Monday by Project Veritas, headlined "NEVER-BEFORE -SEEN: Ashley Biden Confirms Famed Diary Is Hers & the Full Story Behind the FBI Raids on American Journalists," states: "Today, Project Veritas published the real story behind the Ashley Biden diary and personal items, when and how it came into our possession, and the subsequent unconstitutional FBI raids of three Veritas journalists. Hear, for the first time, the fateful voicemail left on our tip line, as well as the call, in which Ashley herself confirmed the authenticity of the diary, and the rest of the full story."
LaBarbera didn't explain why he thought rummaging through Ashley Biden's diary was any of his business beyond prurient interest and malicious partisan intent.
LaBarbera did more snooping for an Aug. 14 article:
Ashley Biden, the only child of Joe and Jill Biden’s marriage, was a cocaine addict who struggled to overcome her drug habit throughout 2019 in the run-up to her father’s presidential bid, she writes in her diary, now confirmed as authentic.
In the 112-page handwritten diary, Biden describes over and over again how she yearned to get "sober" from cocaine, only to have a relapse and start "using" again. She was being treated at the Caron Oceanside luxury rehab facility in Delray Beach, Florida, which caters to affluent clientele, and attended Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings at a local addiction-help center in the same town south of Palm Beach.
[...]
This article, the first of two parts, focuses on Ashley Biden’s struggles with cocaine addiction. Part Two will focus on her deeply troubling sexual and family revelations, including her recorded belief that she was likely sexually molested as a child.
Again, LaBarbera failed to explain why he's sniffing around stolen property, but he seemed to justify it by claiming the diary was "leaked":
Curiously, when O’Keefe was still running Project Veritas, which he founded, he chose not to publish the contents of the (then-alleged) Ashley Biden diary, saying that PV could not verify its authenticity. The document was later leaked, however, and is currently available online on Scribd and other sites.
Despite the phone call from Ashley Biden herself confirming the diary was hers, the left-biased "fact-checking" website Snopes still classifies the Ashley Biden diary story as "Unproven," under the headline, "Did Ashley Biden Accuse Joe Biden of Inappropriate Behavior in a 'Leaked Diary'?"
He did concede the diary was stolen, however:
According to the DOJ, the first daughter’s diary was acquired by two Floridians, Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander, who discovered it and other personal items left behind in a house rented by Ashley Biden, possibly following her time at Caron. The couple allegedly sold the diary and other material to Project Veritas for $40,000.
In August 2022, Harris and Kurlander each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property, which carries a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison.
LaBarbera served up even more salacious stuff the next day:
In her personal diary – now confirmed as authentic – first daughter Ashley Biden describes memories of “sexual trauma” in her childhood that are “absolutely red flags” in terms of revealing potential child sexual abuse, according to an attorney who spent 10 years as a court-appointed guardian professionally trained to recognize signs of such abuse.
LaBarbera again conceded the diary was stolen:
The diary was found at a Florida rental home in 2020 by two people who reportedly sold it to Project Veritas and were later prosecuted by the DOJ for selling stolen property following an over-the-top FBI raid on the home of James O’Keefe, then president of Project Veritas. The diary was leaked to a conservative website, Alex Jones’ National File, but recently was confirmed as authentic by Ashley Biden herself, in a recorded phone conversation Sept. 3, 2020 with a Project Veritas staffer, and released to the public by the undercover journalism outfit July 31.
In none of these articles did he explain why he's snooping through stolen property, and what sort of fringe journalistic ethics he's relying on to justify it.
MRC Melts Down Over Soros' Son Taking Over His Empire, Tried (And Failed) To Portray Him As 'Radical' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center will be transferring its dirty waragainstGeorgeSoros to the next generation. The meltdown started with a June 12 post by Joseph Vazquez:
George Soros’ self-proclaimed “‘more political’” heir to his radical empire has his own track record of political activism that reeks of a potentially worse Soros sequel.
The Wall Street Journalreleased its latest interview with the recently crowned Open Society Foundations Chairman Alexander Soros headlined: “George Soros Hands Control to His 37-Year-Old Son: ‘I’m More Political.’”
According to The Journal’s summary, Alexander is focused on “broadening his father’s liberal aims—‘We think alike,’ the elder Soros said—while embracing some different causes. Those include voting and abortion rights, as well as gender equity.” In addition, “[Alexander] plans to continue using the family’s deep pockets to back left-leaning U.S. politicians.”
If Alexander's mission is to generate a steroids-injected version of his father’s agenda defined by anti-Americanism, Marxist economics, climate change extremism, abortion-on-demand and racial strife, then America is in for a scary ride.
“George Soros wouldn’t have made this move if he didn’t believe Alexander wasn’t just as radical and committed as to making the distorted open society worldview a reality as he is,” said MRC Free Speech America & MRC Business Vice President Dan Schneider. “Soros has finally crowned his heir, and Americans should be wary of the enormous left-wing political power that has been dumped into Alexander’s lap.”
It’s not like Alexander has been an innocent observer on the sidelines waiting for his opportunity to make his mark. His leftist bona fides have already been established. His foundation, the Alexander Soros Foundation, has given bulky sums of cash to a litany of leftist causes.
[...]
Attacking former President Donald Trump and the GOP fits directly with Alexander Soros’ brand. After all, he tweeted in 2022 that “the end of democracy and civil war are real possibilities,” if Trump ends up being reelected to the White House again.
Vazquez failed to identify what is purportedly "anti-American" about Soros' political efforts, nor did he disprove Alex Soros' tweet about Trump to be in any way false. Nevertheless, narratives are more important than facts at the MRC, so its target was firmly placed on Soros to smear him like they do his father. Tom Olohan ranted in a July 11 post:
The radical heir to the Soros fortune and Chairman of the Open Society Foundations has found a ready ear at the White House.
According to White House visitor logs, Alex Soros, son and heir of leftist mega donor George Soros, has visited the White House fifteen times and with Biden administration officials twenty times since Biden took office. Alex became chairman of his dad’s Open Society Foundations last year and was recently named as the heir apparent to the elder Soros’ $25 billion leftist organization. Alex had little difficulty in arranging meetings with prominent leaders in the Biden White House as the son of the billionaire activist who has sunk at least $21 billion into leftist causes across the world since 2000. He clearly isn’t wasting time establishing contacts to showcase the enormous influence he wields.
Breitbart News, which reported on Alex Soros’ visits to the White House, provided a breakdown on the specifics of his meetings in descending chronological order:
In other words, Soros is doing what every other wealthy, well-connected person does who wants to have some political influence.Olohan did not explain what, if anything, Soros is doing any different from wealthy conservatives who meet with poiticians when Republicans are in power.
All this culminated in a July 13 report by Vazquez and Olohan trying to tar Soros as "even more radically leftist than his father":
George Soros — one of the world’s most powerful and influential leftist billionaires — finally found an heir to his massive empire. Alex Soros was named the new leader of his father’s $25-billion Open Society Foundations. That gives him the resources to be, in his own words, even “more political.”
Alex has shown himself to be even more radically leftist than his father, on issues ranging from supporting abortion and climate change activism to outright anti-American propaganda. He considers the overturning of Roe v. Wade as one of the “worst” days in U.S. history and even sees the Republican Party as “the Confederacy.” Now, he’s been given the keys to a philanthropic giant that funnels hundreds of millions of dollars into organizations promoting extremist causes in the United States and abroad since at least 1984. Alex just took over and already laid off at least 40% of OSF’s staff supposedly for the purpose of launching “‘significant changes to the foundation's operating model.’”
MRC Business extensively researched Alex Soros’s previous radical statements on everything from politics to climate change and social issues for clues about the kind of leader he will become in his father’s place. His own words indicate he will be much worse.
Actually, all Vazquez and Olohan found is that Alex Soros is pro-choice, supports efforts to fight climate change and has criticized conservatives -- all pretty standard (and not "radical") liberal positions. But the duo tried their best to pretend otherwise:
Hates the Right: Alex tweeted that the GOP was “the Confederacy” for pushing the repeal of the pro-abortion Roe ruling. He hates both recent Republican presidents. Alex smeared former President George W. Bush by claiming he was a “criminal deserving of impeachment.” He prophesied the possible “end of democracy” and “civil war” should former President Donald Trump get reelected.
Obsessed with Abortion The younger Soros argued that the Dobbs ruling was “one of the worst days in American history.” In Alex’s view, reversing Roe “would rob women of their right to life, to health, and to equality.” He even promoted the idea that, "‘Gender equality isn’t possible without abortion and contraception’” and offered up his admiration for former Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards.
Fixated on Climate Change Extremism: Alex is dedicated to climate change radicalism. He called for teachers to inject climate propaganda into lessons “if you teach history, global affairs or science.” He’s also considered global redistribution of wealth as a “compelling solution” to climate change.
Weaponizing Race to Smear Opponents: “There are white supremacists in the White House,” cried Alex Soros in a July 31, 2020, tweet. In another racially charged tweet, he said “Trump is putting Jews in danger to stir up his white nationalist base.” Alex also saluted the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, urging them to “rip structural racism out by its roots” in the American justice system.
Vazquez and Olohan conlcuded: "George Soros boasted to The Times in 2019 that he was actively engaged in trying to bend “the arc of history” in “the right direction.” However, it looks like it will be the more radical Alex who will be doing the bending in his stead."
Meanwhile, MRC boss Brent Bozell ran to Fox Business the same day to parrot this misleading narrative:
“George Soros has always been crafty and canny and evil — my personal opinion on this. His son is saying, ‘I’m not going to be crafty. I’m not going to be canny. I’m going to throw bombs,’” Bozell told Fox Business guest host Ashley Webster during the July 13 edition of Varney & Co. MRC Business extensively researched Alex’s previous radical statements on social media and other places on topics ranging from politics and climate change to social issues, looking for clues about the kind of leader he will become in his father’s place. His own words indicate he will be much worse.
[...]
“[Alex has] been throwing bombs with the Tweets he’s been putting out. You’re seeing where his priorities are,” Bozell analyzed. “I would say to anybody who loves freedom; anyone who supports the right to life; anyone who believes in a civil society; all these things are suddenly in danger because this man has the power to turn over the apple cart.”
The MRC also got Fox News to write a article for its website, by media reporter Brian Flood, uncriticially repeating the attacks and bogus framing. Flood made no attempt to offer balance by referencing anything that didn't appear in Vazquez's and Olohan's hit job.
Vazquez went on TIm Graham's July 17 podcast to promote the overheated report:
Radical-left billionaire George Soros has been plowing many millions of dollars into the American political system for decades now. When conservatives object to it, the liberal media -- which he subsidizes heavily -- denounces the attention as anti-Semitic. Soros has confessed he has a "God complex," so he stunned the world when he announced his son Alex would be taking control over his "Open Society Foundations."
Our Soros expert Joseph Vazquez of MRC Business and Free Speech America explains why that makes things worse for capitalism and free speech. Alex boasts he's "more political" than his father, and where his father has been relatively reclusive, Alex can be found in pictures with Biden and Harris and Schumer and so on.
His statements are sometimes wild. Alex warned the U.S. might be headed to “civil war” if former President Donald Trump were to be reelected, bizarrely compared the GOP to ”the Confederacy," and called the decision to overturn the pro-abortion Roe v. Wade ruling “one of the worst days in American history.”
Of course, the MRC sees any political position even slightly to its left as extreme and "wild." so its judgment on Soros' views probably shouldn't be taken at face value.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:03 PM EDT
Updated: Thursday, September 28, 2023 11:35 AM EDT
Dick Morris Continues To Suck Up To Trump, Bash His GOP Opponents Topic: Newsmax
How has Newsmax's chief Trump sycophant, Donald Trump, been sucking up to the big guy since the last time we checked? We've already highlighted how Morris fawned over Trump skipping the first Republican presidential debate, but there's so much more. Let's look:
Morris used his June 24 column to gush over how Trmp is a coverage magnet compared with the other Republican candidates:
American politics have stopped, frozen by the indictment of Trump for no good reason and the deterioration of Joe Biden.
In theory, this week should have been when the nominating process in each party heated up as candidates took to the runway to launch their campaigns.
But there was zero energy for them.
Trump took away all the air Gov. DeSantis, R-Fla., MikePence, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, and the others needed.
Right now, in the Republican Party there is room for only two viewpoints: That Trump is guilty or that he is innocent.
DeSantis et al can’t split the difference and say "Trump is the innocent victim of the deep state and is being persecuted by the Democrats but I’m running against him anyway."
This means there is no place for Trump’s GOP opponents to stand.
[...]
Trump is en route to winning the nomination and Biden is en route to losing the election.
Translation?
None needed.
Donald Trump will win.
Morris tried a little rah-rah in a July 20 column, telling readers to demand that Republicans in Congress shut down the tovernment until charges against Trump are dropped (and then weaponize the government against the Biden family):
We cannot tolerate the continued election interference of the Biden administration and its Justice Department in the 2024 elections.
The shocking targeting of former President Donald Trump, now the Republican front-runner for the 2024 election, challenges the very basis of our justice system.
It is vital to our nation's democracy that we act now and stop this dangerous weaponization of the FBI and the Department of Justice.
I am urging citizens to call Congress today — demand their House representatives and Senators pass no bills, authorize no money, approve no more Biden nominations, do nothing, and block everything — until the Biden administration stops their politicization of justice.
We must also demand the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate the overwhelming and clear evidence of President Joe Biden's family corruption.
[...]
Demand the DOJ do a real investigation of Biden's family and the tens of millions of dollars they received from foreign governments and powers!
Our country is too important to surrender to the far left. Fight back!
Morris also took more shots at Trump's Republican opponents. He again bashed Ron DeSantis in an Aug. 5 TV appearance:
If Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis doesn't develop a message to run on, he'll soon fail to attract other megadonors to his presidential campaign, political author Dick Morris told Newsmax.
When DeSantis announced his candidacy, Morris told "Saturday Report," he "just naturally assumed that his record in Florida would carry him, and it hasn't. And when a donor begins to leave, this is not the rat leaving the sinking ship; this is, you know, the crew leaving the sinking ship. And it's very, very hard to reverse that. I think the key element ... is that the DeSantis has to attract other major donors, which basically means: 'I'm out.'"
Following up on a previous attack on Vivek Ramaswamy -- made around the time that Ramaswamy alleged a pay-for-play scheme in which Newsmax claimed he would get more favorable coverage on the channel if he bought more advertising, a la Perry Johnson -- Morris was quoted in a Aug. 30 article by Marisa Herman:
“He’s running as a pro-Trump candidate, so voters are asking if he’s so pro-Trump why doesn’t he just endorse the former president and drop out the race,” Dick Morris, a presidential strategist who advises President Trump, told Newsmax.
“And they also ask themselves why pick a 38-year-old amateur who often takes extremist views over Donald Trump, a seasoned pro who has been vetted and can govern from day one,” Morris added.
Herman (and, we presume, Morris) did not mention Ramaswamy's pay-for-play allegations.
Morris declared that Ramaswamy would not be Trump's vice presidential candidate should he win the nomination in a Sept. 2 TV appearance:
GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy may be full of compliments about former President Donald Trump, but running against him for the nomination isn't the way to get to his heart or win a place in his administration, Dick Morris, a former adviser of Trump's, told Newsmax on Saturday.
Morris, speaking on Newsmax's "Saturday Report," told host Rita Cosby that there may be a place for the Ohio entrepreneur in Trump's cabinet, should the former president return to the White House, but he doesn't think Trump would pick Ramaswamy as a running mate.
"Those who believe that the correct way to appeal to Donald Trump's heart is to run against him in the primary are wrong," Morris said. "He has no love for his opponents and whether they say good things or bad things about him."
[...]
"Ramaswamy is the only one that seems to be getting any traction, [by] running on a platform of being just like Trump. From the words of the song, 'there ain't nothing like the real thing.'"
Again, there was no mention of Ramaswamy's pay-for-play allegations.
Interestingly, in the midst of all this, Morris did let a non-sycophantic opinion about Trump slip through. In an Aug. 14 TV appearance, Morris ssaid that Trump will be "convicted" on charges and is "gonna go to prison," though he was quick to blame "a biased jury pool" -- never mind that none of the indictments has advanced to a trial phase and, thus, there is no jury yet -- and insisted that "It will not make any difference at all. He is going to be able to win this election no matter what they throw at him." Newsmax didn't promote that claim, of course.
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:16 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, September 27, 2023 6:27 PM EDT
WND's Opinion Writers Defend Trump After (Third) Indictment Topic: WorldNetDaily
As WorldNetDaily "news' side raged over Donald Trump's (third) indictment, its opinion side did so even more. We've already noted how editor Joseph Farah cheered Trump for having disgustingly "compared the federal indictments he's facing to the lawlessness reminiscent of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union." Michael Master used his Aug. 3 column to invent a conspiracy that Trump's indictments are a distraction from alleged wrongdoing by President Biden and his "crime family":
Special counsel Jack Smith has now indicted Trump on three occasions. Each of those occasions were one day after horribly negative news broke about Joe Biden. The indictment on Aug. 1 came the day after Devon Archer testified before a congressional committee about his experience with the Biden Crime Family.
Coincidence? Three separate times? Not likely. Those three occasions were more likely meant to take attention away from Biden acts of treason, bribery and lies. According to Fox, mainstream media outlets CNN and MSNBC are spending 20 times more time on the Trump indictments than on the testimonies about Biden crimes. 20 times. 20 minutes on Trump for every one minute on Biden. Three minutes on Biden for every one hour on Trump.
Since Democrats, the deep state and RINOs could not stop Trump with their false impeachments, they are now using the legal system under the Justice Department controlled by Democrats to try to stop President Trump from being elected in 2024. The legal system is now a political weapon of the Democrats.
In his column the same day, David Harsanyi insisted that the indictments are an attack on "political speech":
Feel free to campaign and vote against Donald Trump if you like. I'm certainly no fan. If Trump wins in 2024, Congress can impeach and remove him if they choose. But just as there was no special set of rules that could keep Trump in the White House in 2020, there shouldn't be an exclusive set of rules to keep him out, either.
Yet Special Counsel Jack Smith's indictments over Jan. 6 read like a political oppo document cobbled together by some partisan House staffers who perfunctorily tacked on the last-minute novel legal reasoning.
[...]
In this case, the precedent would criminalize and chill political speech. People keep assuring me the indictments aren't really about the expression but rather about defrauding the government. Sorry, the entire case is predicated on the things Trump said or believed or didn't say or didn't believe. All of it should be protected under the First Amendment. "Spreading lies" – prosecutors leaned on the thesaurus hard, finding about two dozen ways of repeating this fact – or entertaining theories offered by crackpot lawyers, or trying to convince faithless electors to do things that people have been trying to convince faithless electors to do for a long time, are all unethical, not criminal.
Mike Pottage put his spin on the indictments in his Aug. 4 column, in which he declared grand juries to be "un-American":
So, with Russia-Russia-Russia, impeachments I and II, and four politically engineered indictments choreographed to appear in the midst of the next presidential campaign, what does the Democratic Party do if they finally get to circulate a jailhouse mugshot of Donald Trump? What does the Democratic Party do if their nemesis wins presidency anyway on Nov. 5, 2024? Suffering succotash, say it isn't so!
Every time a new attack hits Trump, his support grows. With a 37% advantage in the GOP primary and a split among Democrats over Joe Biden, the Dems are desperate to imprison and destroy Donald by any means.
[...]
PBS Wednesday evening ran an interview in which the anchor used the Smith indictment as evidence of Trump's guilt, knowing the indictment is not evidence of a crime, but only an allegation of a crime made by a single attorney. A grand jury is perhaps the most un-American event in our justice system. It's product is orchestrated by a single person.
No one actually believes the formerly most powerful man in the world, who had the top attorneys and advisers surrounding him, would blatantly commit felonies. Everyone knows it's a fishing expedition by politically motivated prosecutors to exploit the left-leaning justice system and take lawfare to a new level – prosecution.
In the latest indictment, regarding J6, Trump has been charged with four felony counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy against rights and witness tampering. It essentially repeats the DNC talking points the establishment media repeat ad nauseam: that he stoked violence and pretended the election was stolen. The indictment uses language that ignores the fact the country is still incredibly divided over whether election fraud influenced the race – "Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to stay in power."
The prosecution isn't even bothering to assess whether there was fraud or not in the 2020 election, as Trump's senior adviser Stephen Miller pointed out. Nor do they care that Rasmussen Reports, one of the most accurate pollsters, found that most voters believe cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential race.
In fact, no legitimate evidence of widespread election fraud has been found, and public opinion is not justice.
Daniel McCarthy demanded in his Aug. 7 column that President Biden pardon Trump, then drop out of the race for re-election:
President Joe Biden has a chance to do the right thing for all Americans – a brave and unpopular thing that will spare the country excruciating pain next year.
He can pardon Donald Trump and announce he's not seeking reelection.
Without having to worry about reelection, Biden can spare the Justice Department a humiliating and corrupt plea bargain, too, by simply pardoning his son Hunter.
[...]
If Biden pardons Trump, the Republican contest will have to be fought on different, better terms – not whether or not the charges against Trump are valid.
Trump might still win such a contest, politically embarrassing though it would be to accept clemency from Biden.
Master opined in his Aug. 8 column that all charges against Trump will be consolidated then dropped, following that with more right-wing conspiracy-mongering:
Jack Smith, Democrats and RINOs understand all of this and that these cases will go well beyond the November 2024 election to get through the Supreme Court. Their real intention is to make Trump defend so many cases (fight on so many fronts) that he cannot wage an adequate campaign.
[...]
It is all part of the plan to stop Trump and the Make America Great Again movement. If Trump were not running, none of these indictments would happen.
The worst part of all of this is that so many Democrats and media and RINOs do not see how this weaponization of the legal system is bad for America. Their objective is to stop Trump and the MAGA movement by any means, such as with false accusations and misuse of laws, as with the Steele Dossier and the two impeachments and now these indictments. To them, the end justifies the means … any means. And they just don't see how that is bad for America, how using the justice system as a political weapon is no different than what tyrants do to political opponents in other countries.
WND's "news" side continued to opibne as well, with Bob Unruh writing in an Aug. 8 article:
The Department of Justice has been accused of using "extortion" in its agenda to indict and even jail President Trump – in what apparently is a scheme to hinder his campaign for president in 2024.
According to a report in Fox News, the accusation comes from a former federal prosecutor.
James Trusty, a former chief of the DOJ's organized crime unit, said it was an incident that developed in special counsel Jack Smith's attack on Trump regarding presidential papers, including classified documents, that President Trump had at his Florida home, is concerning.
Unruh didn't mention that Trusty is a former Trump attorney, so of course he would defend a client.
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC's DeSantis Defense Brigade: Failure to Launch Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center labored hard to spin away the botched Twitter-hosted beginning of Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign, as well as defending him after the NAACP issued a travel warning for Florida. Read more >>
MRC's DeSantis Defense Brigade Watch, Black History Edition (Continued) Topic: Media Research Center
As the Media Research Center's DeSantis Defense Brigage rode to the defense of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over state standards for teaching black history that claimed slaves learned skills while enslaved that they used later in life, Curtis Houck cheered fellow right-wing outlets for helping it defend DeSantis in a July 24 post that also included a coverage count:
Starting Friday morning and running through Monday morning, the major broadcast networks spend nearly 20 minutes (19:43) on their flagship morning and evening newscasts cheering lies peddled by Vice President Kamala Harris over the “controversial” new Florida Department of Education standards on African-American history that they insist “rewrite[s] history” and slavery as a good thing.
ABC, CBS, and NBC were shameless in their childish, fact-free partisanship and swooning over Florida facing “growing outrage,” “sharp criticism,” and being “slammed,” “under fire,” and “under scrutiny.” But an actual inspection of the standards in the 216-page document (which National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke did masterfully) reveals Harris and the liberal media willingly peddled an odious lie.
Cooke wrote that Harris’s claims that Florida was promoting slavery “is an astonishing,” “brazen,” and “evil lie” that’s “so deliberately and cynically misleading — that, in a sensible political culture, Harris would be obligated to issue an apology.”
[...]
Townhall’s Guy Benson even pointed out the sentence about “skills” was not only “a minuscule fraction of what the curriculum calls for,” but “factually true” with the line in question mirroring “an encyclopedia published with the impriumatur of Oxford and Columbia universities' scholarship.”
None of these writers apparently disputed that the standard exists -- they simply tried to explain it away. And Houck didn't disclose the right0wing ideology of Cooke and Benson ; the MRC regularly lectures that claims in the "liberal media" shouldn't be taken at face value, and one can assume that the same applies here as well.
ABC chief White House correspondent and Biden apple polisher Mary Bruce leveled an scurrilous insinuation and lie during Tuesday’s Good Morning America as, not only did she mention Governor Ron DeSantis’s (R-FL) Florida Board of Education in the same breath as the horrific lynching of Emmett Till, but she suggested President Biden declaring three Till sites a national monument would ensure accurate teachings of black history (unlike in the Sunshine State).
The segment started off innocently with co-host Robin Roberts declaring before she tossed to Bruce: “We’re going to go now to President Biden set to sign a proclamation this afternoon that will establish a national monument honoring Emmett Till and his mother Mamie Till Mobley.”
And after Bruce’s hitjob of a report, Roberts didn’t engage and kept the focus on the Tills, saying his mother was “so courageous...to have an open casket” at his funeral.
[...]
After pointing out Biden “is roughly the same age that Till would have been,” Bruce made the insanely partisan turn by insisting this announcement “comes as we are seeing this controversial and very polarizing debate in this country over the teaching of black history.”
“That move by the Florida Board of Education to teach some slaves may have benefitted from the skills they developed is sparking a firestorm,” Bruce added.
She concluded with more spin from her friends in the White House: “But, Robin, this White House says monuments like this to Till will help teach the complete story of our nation's history[.]”
First, the phrase “it comes as” was a classic trope used to tie two things together, whether or not they’re actually related. Second, it’s only “controversial and very polarizing” because some academics and much of the media had outsourced their history education to a blatant fraud.
That "blatant fraud" is the 1619 Project, which in fact largely holds up. Houck cited Cooke's ideologicalclaims again, then helped DeSantis play victim by asserting that "the linkage was no accident given the liberal media’s purposeful attempt to bury DeSantis and smear Florida."
A post by Alex Christy once again made a point of context when it works for right-wing narratives, attacking PolitiFact for finding that Vice President Kamala Harris' criticism of the standards is correct:
PolitiFact waded into the controversy surrounding Florida’s new history standards by rating Vice President Kamala Harris “mostly true” for her statement that the state is teaching “enslaved people benefited from slavery.” To reach such a conclusion the trio of Sofia Bliss-Carrascosa, Louis Jacobson, and Amy Sherman had to tie themselves into a giant pretzel by simply downplaying evidence contrary to Harris’s allegation.
After summarizing the positions of Harris on one hand and Governor and potential 2024 rival Ron DeSantis and Republicans on the other, the authors write, “Although the new standards include many conventional lesson points about the history of slavery, they also include a sentence that enslaved people developed skills that ‘could be applied for their personal benefit’ — and this has drawn heated rebuttals from historians, who consider it factually misleading and offensive for seeming to find a silver lining in slavery.”
Later in the article, they add “The rest of the document includes specific standards about slavery, including the development of slavery and the conditions for Africans as they were brought to America. It also covers how slave codes resulted in enslaved people becoming property without rights, abolitionist movements, state and federal laws, revolts by slaves, and the Civil War.” (emphasis added)
Further still, the trio quote two members of the working group, who are both black, that came up with the standards as correctly stating “the criticism took ‘a few isolated expressions without context.’”
[...]
PolitiFact can’t have it both ways. Either Florida teaches that slavery was awful because it deprived people of their rights or it teaches that slavery was benevolent. As the authors admit, the part about skill acquisition is just one of many parts of the new standards, meaning the “mostly true” rating for Harris is way too generous.
Christy defended DeSantis and the standards again in a July 27 post:
Late Wednesday night saw people close to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis defend the state’s new history guidelines on slavery by pointing out that the Advanced Placement course that the media demanded the state adopt has very similar standards. However, Thursday’s viewers of CNN News Central were not informed of these latest developments as host Jim Sciutto conducted a softball interview with Alpha Phi Alpha General President Willis Lonzer III where he accused DeSantis of trying to “soften the brutality” of slavery.
Lonzer was on to discuss his fraternity’s decision to pull its convention out of Florida over the state’s allegedly “racist” policies when Sciutto asked him, “can you help folks understand exactly what the change is in how aspects of slavery will now be taught in Florida schools? Just so folks who may not have followed this closely understand exactly what the change in language was.”
According to Lonzer’s summation of the changes, Florida is trying “to suggest that those who were enslaved benefited from being in slavery, as if they came into this chattel slavery system, without any skills or any type of labor perception. And that's quite the opposite.”
Jeffrey Lord spent his July 29 column playing whataboutism to defend DeSantis and attack Democrats in lashing out at criticism of the standards:
The irony here? The volumes of irony? Nowhere in this Post editorial, nor in Bouie’s column or from MSNBC - nowhere - does it mention exactly which American political party came into being supporting the idea - made into policy - that slaves should be owned as “chattel by other human beings who stole their freedom, labor and bodily autonomy.”
[...]
Who, exactly, was benefitting from slavery - and how?
Answer: The Democratic Party was benefitting politically from slavery. Supporting slavery - and after that segregation and Jim Crow laws - is what won Democrats elections.
[...]
On and on - and on and on - goes The Post and Times and MSNBC silence on the real history of the Democratic Party. Instead, when it comes to analyzing the Florida Board of Education’s rules as supported by Governor DeSantis, they simply fall silent on the serious, indisputable history of race in America.
Lord did seem to concede that no Democratic Party platform since 1860 endorsed slavery, but he seems to be unaware that not only has the party evolved significantly since then, it effectively traded places with the Republican Party on racial matters, as Democrats who supported segregation migrated to the Republican Party in the 1960s. He then attacked Democrats for trying to counter racism:
Just as slavery supporters and segregationists gained election-winning political support for the Democrats, so now are their political descendants in the Democratic Party and the broader American Left still profiting from dividing Americans by race. That would be done by using the race-dividing grandson of slavery and the son of segregation known today as “identity politics.”
Lord concluded by claiming that the Democrdatic Party "needs to whitewash history to pretend it is something it has decidedly never been. And still isn’t." But Lord is whitewashing how Republicans are the ones currently more likely to act in a racist manner.
Newsmax Columnist Whitewashes Co-Host Of Allegedly Racist Party Topic: Newsmax
Dennis Kneale wrote in his Aug. 29 Newsmax column:
In the blood sport of social media, when a headline-grabbing lawyer or a self-trumpeting politician throws down the race card, the accused "racist" gets into even more trouble denying the charge.
The media salivate over the slaughter.
A dentist in Rochester, N.Y. became collateral damage in one such kerfuffle, and on Aug. 8, 2023 he filed a lawsuit in state court against two of his tormentors, alleging defamation and tortious interference in his business due to "the hate crime hoax perpetrated against him."
Nicholas (Ned) Nicosia has served thousands of patients in Rochester since 1987, when he joined the family practice started by his father in 1956.
His name came up in a lawsuit filed against the city on behalf of a Black firefighter, alleging 15 years of racial harassment on the job.
Although Nicosia wasn’t a defendant in the suit, he was cited as hosting a supposedly racist party in July 2022, which the fireman was "forced" to attend.
Instantly he received an avalanche of hate messages and threats by text, email and social media.
One helpful heckler suggested he should kill himself.
Four of his employees quit under the strain.
[...]
Nicosia is a moderate Democrat whose wife is a staunch Republican.
They hosted a party for 10 people on July 7, 2022.
The party theme was to make fun of local Democrats; the decorations included a large picture of President Trump.
Guests dined on pasta salad, pizza, fried chicken, and macaroni and cheese.
A local fire captain and three on-duty firemen visited the party, stayed a while and left without incident. Weeks later, a staffer returned from her lunch hour one day to tell Nicosia: "Doctor, you’re on television!"
"And that’s how I found out about it," he says.
"And that’s part of it, to catch me off guard, which is why it’s called 'firehosing,' because you don’t have any time to react. And then you’re just backpedaling."
[...]
The complaint, 41 paragraphs in, describes the party as a racist gathering spoofing Juneteenth. A bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken served at the party was a "racist trope to ridicule Black Americans."
The lawsuit claims the Black fireman "experienced immediate unease upon arriving at the location. His discomfort intensified as he proceeded up the driveway and saw a sizable cutout of former President Donald Trump, a figure known for race baiting and divisiveness."
So, a firefighter who runs into burning buildings was unnerved by a Trump photo? As for photos of local Democrats held up by sticks planted in Nicosia’s yard, the lawsuit says: "They literally had Democrats’ heads on stakes."
Sad story, right? Well, not so much. Kneale left out the part where Nicosia's wife did confess to being kind of a racist. As one local news outlet reported:
Mary Znidarsic-Nicosia and her husband, Nicholas Nicosia, wanted to clear their names after being accused of throwing a racist party. So, they made a plan and held a press conference this week.
Step one: The wealthy, white couple from Rochester, N.Y., adamantly defended themselves against what Znidarsic-Nicosia called "false claims of racism."
Step two: Znidarsic-Nicosia confessed to a room full of reporters that she also happens to run a racist, anonymous Twitter account.
"In full disclosure, I do have a Twitter parody account that operates under a veil of a persona — and I have made blatantly racist comments under that persona," she admitted.
"The culture of Twitter operates that way. It gives you an opportunity to be someone you're not," she explained.
[...]
While the real estate agent did not disclose her anonymous Twitter handle, the now-defunct @HoHoHomeboyROC account used the image of a bust of a Black mammy that she admitted she owns. Screengrabs of previous posts include other anti-Black imagery, reposts of other accounts trolling Black people – often in an offensive interpretation of Black vernacular – and several fake ads for KFC.
[Attorney Corey] Hogan also indicated that Znidarsic-Nicosia runs additional Twitter accounts. "I think she has a number of different handles," he said.
Local columnist Casey Seiler added that "the @HoHoHomeboyROC account was not racist in some sort of relatively genteel #BLM-are-all-communists manner. It engaged in absolute gutter-level hate, featuring messages and memes that wouldn't look out of place in Der Sturmer."
Kneale then offered a benign description of the party:
Nicosia is a moderate Democrat whose wife is a staunch Republican.
They hosted a party for 10 people on July 7, 2022.
The party theme was to make fun of local Democrats; the decorations included a large picture of President Trump.
Guests dined on pasta salad, pizza, fried chicken, and macaroni and cheese.
By contrast, others described the gathering as having "brazenly ridiculed Juneteenth, the holiday celebrating the end of slavery in the United States, by perpetuating racist stereotypes of Black people. The menu consisted of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Hennessy cognac," and that "The party was also said to feature a woman dressed as County Legislator Rachel Barnhart dancing in a mocking and sexual manner for attendees."
Kneale then touted Nicosia's lawsuit against Barnhart and "tort attorney" Nathan McMurray for defamation for publicizing what happened, but he didn't mention that Barnhart was mocked in an apparently cruel fashion at the party. He also didn't mention that it's hard to claim defamation when you've revealed that you run a secret racist Twitter feed.
MRC Gushes Over Ben Shapiro Using Its Talking Points To Smear NewsGuard Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has been on a NewsGuard-bashingbender for a while now, using increasingly lame "media research" to whine that the website-rating service points out how shoddy right-wing media is. But all this shoddy work got a boost when right-wing columnist Ben Shapiro regurgitated it in his Aug. 2 column:
NewsGuard is an organization that formulates ratings for American media. They rank news sites on a 0-to-100 scale based on nine supposedly apolitical criteria. These criteria are anything but apolitical. They often align with left-wing positions.
[...]
The Media Research Center, a free-speech nonprofit, studied NewsGuards’ ratings. The study found glaring examples of biasby NewsGuard.
The Left’s BuzzFeed managed a 100 out of 100 perfect score, despite its reporting on the Steele dossier and alleging collusion between former President Donald Trump and Russia.
The study found that The Global Times, a Chinese propaganda government outlet, scored a 39.5 -- that is 27 points higher than the U.S.-based conservative outlet The Federalist. Despite a scandal at USA Today revealing the publication of multiple fabricated sources in their stories and their own fact-checking operation misleading readers on the history of the Democratic Party and the KKK, USA Today maintained the 100 out of 100 rating by NewsGuard.
As we noted when the MRC previously attacked USA Today over the "fabricated soources" scandal, it identified the problem and corrected the situation while explaining to readers what happened. And that fact-check was correcting a false claim that the Democratic Party created the KKK, which even the MRC sorta conceded (while still trying to blame all Democrats for the KKK). Also, Shapiro's description of the MRC as a "free-speech nonprofit" is laughable considering how it works to censor speech that doesn't advance right-wing narratives.
A post later that day by Catherine Salgado gushed over how Shapiro did even more work to boost the MRC's dishonest anti-NewsGuard narrative:
The Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro championed research against leftist ratings firm NewsGuard during a July 29 segment exposing globalist organizations that try to control online narratives and ad money.
Shapiro noted in the first episode of new series “Facts” that there’s clear bias when one compares NewsGuard’s ratings of right-leaning versus left-leaning outlets. He cited exclusive research from the Media Research Center’s MRC Free Speech America, published January 6, 2023. MRC Free Speech America found that the average score for left-leaning outlets was 91/100, versus 66/100 for right-leaning outlets. That’s a 25-point difference. This comes over a year after MRC originally exposed NewsGuard’s bias, and the ratings firm claimed to have corrected mistakes in downgrading 21 outlets during the COVID-19 pandemic.
[...]
“[NewsGuard] help[s] ensure that ad-buyers and users looking for news can be in safe and suitable places,” Shapiro said sarcastically. As MRC Free Speech America exposed, NewsGuard is politically biased, not an objective arbiter.
“The [MRC] study found glaring examples of bias by NewsGuard,” Shapiro said. “The left’s BuzzFeed managed a 100/100 perfect score, despite its reporting on the Steele Dossier and alleging collusion between Trump and Russia.” These stories were not substantiated and ultimately proved false.
As we've pointed out, while BuzzFeed published the Steele dossier, it never vouched for its accuracy, stating that it "includes specific, unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations" and that it published the full document so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government."
The MRC and Shapiro teamed up again a couple weeks later when Shapiro's video was briefly demonetized by YouTube for pushing conspiracy theories. Luis Cornelio huffed in an Aug. 11 post:
YouTube is working overtime to punish individuals who dare to expose groups that seek to suppress conservatives.
Ben Shapiro, the editor emeritus of the Daily Wire and popular podcast host, decried YouTube on August 11 for reportedly demonitizing the first episode of his new series called “Facts.” Citing an MRC Free Speech America exposé on NewsGuard, the video blasted organizations like NewsGuard for unleashing rating systems aimed at discouraging readers and advertisers from right-leaning outlets. When MRC Free Speech America reached out to YouTube for an explanation the platform admitted no wrong but claimed the video is now monetizable.
It can't possibly be that the MRC's "exposé" is so shoddy that we were able to easily debunk it. The issue was resolved a few days later, so Cornelio cheered in an Aug. 16 post:
MRC Free Speech America successfully confronted YouTube after the platform targeted a bombshell video by Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro, exposing entities aiming to manipulate Americans.
Shapiro praised MRC Free Speech America on Tuesday for successfully challenging YouTube’s demonetization of his video, which led to the platform reversing its arbitrary punishment. Researchers at the Media Research Center confronted the platform over dubious claims that the video, which blasts leftist internet traffic cop NewsGuard, violated YouTube’s policies on conspiracy theories.
“Media Research Center pressed YouTube about why monetization was suppressed,” Shapiro said. “Apparently, YouTube effectively refused to acknowledge the platform had limited the video in the first place. A YouTube spokesperson said. ‘In order for a video to monetize on YouTube, it must comply with our advertiser-friendly guidelines, which are publicly accessible and apply to all creators. Upon review the video in question is currently monetizing.’”
In other words: the MRC's lame and dishonest attacks on NewsGuard continue, albeit with a somewhat larger megaphone.
The Media Research Center's summer of defending Clarence Thomas continued witha July 1 post by Alex Christy complaining that someone said somthing mean about Thomas:
Remember how WorldNetDaily complained about people likening Donald Trump to Hitler, then 
Newsmax columnists continued to defend Donald Trump even as the most recent rounds of indictments continued, with a heavy dose of Biden whataboutism and a dash of conspiracy theorizing. Larry Bell complained in an Aug. 7 
Over the summer, the Media Research Center continued its 
An anonymously written Aug. 10 WorldNetDaily 
Media Research Center executive Tim Graham was overly gleeful in a July 24 
In March 2022, Jack Cashill spent a WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center will be transferring its 
How has Newsmax's chief Trump sycophant, Donald Trump, been sucking up to the big guy since the
As WorldNetDaily "news' side 
As the Media Research Center's DeSantis Defense Brigage 
Dennis Kneale wrote in his Aug. 29 Newsmax 
The Media Research Center has been on a 
