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Sunday, October 1, 2023
MRC Cheers Musk Threatening ADL For Noting Rise of Anti-Semitism On Twitter, Calls In Scott Adams (!) To Help Defend
Topic: Media Research Center

Elon Musk had a bit of an anti-Semtic meltdown, lashing out at the Anti-Defamation League for pointing out how anti-Semitism has increased on Twitter since he took it over (while, of course, insisting that he's "against anti-Semitism of any kind") -- even bizarrely claiming that the ADL promotes anti-Semitism -- and threatening to sue the ADL over it. This, of course, is not a surprise to anyone who has seen Musk similarly attack George Soros, portraying him as the Jew right-wingers are allowed to hate. Needless to say, the Media Research Center -- which also hates Soros and anyone who points out how hate has increased on Twitter since Musk's takeover, helped Musk attack Soros and also argued that anti-Semitism isn't hate speech -- absolutely loved this. Luis Cornelio gushed in a Sept. 5 post:

The Anti-Defamation League may be in deep trouble as social media platform owner Elon Musk has threatened to take legal action against the group’s latest anti-free speech activism.

Musk, the owner of X (formerly known as Twitter), announced on Monday his intent to slap ADL with a whopping “$22 billion” defamation lawsuit following the group’s dubious claims that X allows anti-Semitic content. Musk’s threats follow ADL Director Jonathan Greenblatt's dual tirade against podcast host Tucker Carlson and ad revenues on X.

According to Musk, ADL “has been trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic.” The X owner also drew attention to ADL's aggressive work to drive advertisers away from X. “Our US advertising revenue is still down 60%, primarily due to pressure on advertisers by @ADL (that’s what advertisers tell us), so they almost succeeded in killing X/Twitter!” Musk added, before admitting that a lawsuit could ensue.

Cornelio made sure not to mention that there is plenty of documentation to support the ADL's contention that anti-Semitism has increased on Twitter since Musk's takeover. He also failed to note that Musk has yet to prove evidence to the contrary, or that he was roundly mocked for his lawsuit threat. Instead, Corneilo pushed the idea that Tucker Carlson should join Musk's would-be lawsuit:

In a June 9 tweet, Greenblatt shared an op-ed he wrote for Forward in which he advocated for X to deplatform Carlson and called for more censorship of free speech. “Twitter should not give those who promote extremism and conspiracy theories a free platform to amplify their inflammatory views,” he claimed in the op-ed, before accusing Carlson of spreading alleged hate and “offline violence.” In a separate tweet, Greenblatt echoed his op-ed and took a jab at X’s ad revenues. “If @lindayacc wants to attract Fortune 500 advertisers and @elonmusk wants to create a genuine public square, it might be wise not to give this obvious antisemite such a huge megaphone. Let Tucker and his ilk push their hate somewhere else.”

Musk responded to those tweets, saying, “Tucker is welcome to join our suit.” Musk also hinted that if the lawsuit is successful, he will demand that the ADL drops the “anti” from its name. “If this continues, we will have no choice but to file a defamation suit against, ironically, the ‘Anti-Defamation’ League,” he alleged. “If they lose the defamation suit, we will insist that they drop the the ‘anti’ part of their name, since obviously ….”

Note that Cornelio avoided the details Greenblatt cited in his Forward op-ed, where he wrote:

If you happened to miss the first episode [of Carlson's Twitter videos], consider yourself lucky. The show was rife with antisemitism, conspiracy theories about 9/11 and UFOs, and truly revolting rhetoric sprinkled with antisemitic tropes about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Carlson referred to the Jewish head of state as “sweaty and rat-like” and a “persecutor of Christians.”

These remarks are antisemitic, vile lies. And they come at a time of rising antisemitic incidents and attitudes worldwide, making them all the more problematic and dangerous.

For years, Carlson slyly wove anti-Jewish conspiracy theories into his show on Fox News – attacking billionaire philanthropist George Soros, slandering Paul Singer, and promoting white supremacist ideas like the “great replacement theory.” ADL wrote to the network on numerous occasions calling for Carlson’s ouster for the offenses listed above and much more.

[...]

In January 2021, Carlson offered his viewers a full-throated defense of the antisemitic QAnon conspiracy theory. Just days after the mass shooting attack in August 2019 at an El Paso Walmart at the hands of an avowed white supremacist, Carlson suggested that white supremacy in America was “not a real problem.” In December 2018, Carlson suggested immigrants make the U.S. “dirtier.”

Since Cornelio censored this information, he was also silent about whether he endorses Carlson's views. The MRC has previously gone on record defending replacement theory and insisting it isn't racist or a conspiracy theory.

(In June, MRC intern Peter Kotara raged against the ADL as "a partisan organization dedicated to demonizing right-wingers and labeling them “anti-semites” based solely on their opposition to woke ideology." You wil not be surprised that no evidence was presented to support that hyperbolic description or why opposing anti-Semitism is apparently "woke ideology.")

Afterward, Musk retweeted an account that touted an old screed attacking the ADL from a publication put out by anti-Semiti-adjacent conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche; the MRC censored that, as well as white supremacist Nick Fuentes cheering Musk's anti-ADL campaign. Instead, a Sept. 8 post by Cornelio and Catherine Salgado touted "prominent Jewish voices" endorsing Musk's attack on the ADL:

Prominent authors are chiming in on the growing criticism embroiling the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) amid the group’s latest assault on free speech.

Mark Levin and Scott Adams, both pro-free speech authors and podcast hosts, minced no words when each responded to ADL’s accusation that Elon Musk’s promotion of free speech is antisemitic. “If the ADL takes down X, free speech is gone,” Adams said. Levin echoed Adams’s remarks, directly slamming a Los Angeles Times op-ed that dubiously claimed Musk was attacking Jews. “No, Musk did not blame the Jews, assh*le,” Levin added.

In recent months, Musk has accused ADL of attacking X for its promise to protect the First Amendment. But Musk had had enough. He announced earlier this week his intent to file a potentially “$22 billion” defamation lawsuit against the ADL. As expected, the news triggered the radical left into a frenzy, with ADL Director Jonathan Greenblatt taking to CNN to whitewash his reputation.

But Adams didn’t buy Greenblatt’s excuses. “A promoter of the Fine People Hoax tries to rehabilitate the most destructive organization in America,” Adams said about Greenblatt’s softball interview. “If the ADL takes down X, free speech is gone. You'd only have regime liars like CNN and the ADL. An end to free speech is an existential threat to civilization. We're treating it like a disagreement.”

Wait. Scott Adams? The guy who blew up his cartooning career earlier this year after going on a racist tirade? Yep -- that's who Cornelio and Salgado think is a good character witness for Musk. The MRC was a longtime fan of Adams' increasing right-wing tilt but has been silent about his racist tirade (though Musk effectively approved).

Salgado and Cornelio went on to cite more "prominent Jewish voices" who are at least less racist than Adams:

Another Jewish legal expert, America First Legal founder Stephen Miller, agreed that the ADL is in the wrong. “Speaking as a Jew: ADL is NOT a Jewish organization. It is an ultra-left activist org,” he posted. He added that ADL “pushes radical transgenderism, border erasure, police dismantlement, and the demolition of free speech—deploying rank slander, bullying and character assassination to achieve its aims.”

Rabbi Michael Barclay chimed in, “Thank you Stephen for making it clear that the ADL does not represent most Jews.”

Miller, of course, is the notoriously anti-immigrant former Trump adviser. Barclay is a right-wing pastor who fought against COVID-era restrictions on large gatherings. Salgado and Cornelio made no attempt to fact-check anything any of these people said.


Posted by Terry K. at 6:51 PM EDT
What's Mychal Massie Melting Down Over Now?
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Of the many things that disgust me about Democrats, the one thing I find most contemptible is the shameless sincerity with which they lie. It's as if they believe all they need do is tell one lie after another and the public will immediately suspend all common sense and remembrance of their dishonesty. With the able-bodied loyal-lapdog assistance of the apparatchiks in the media, it's easier to catch and hold greased pigs than any of them. Pun intended.

I argue that liberal Democrats are the most depraved forms of humanity. Personally, I would rather have the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) living next door to me than I would a Democrat. At least the KKK member would be honest. I would always know where I stood with him.

Take the Clintons. There are few greater examples of duplicitous double standards as it pertains to criminality on a global scale than the Clintons. And yet they still walk free amongst us, lauded as worthy of honor.

[...]

The Obama woman is indefensibly uncouth and hideously unattractive, but her reported to be backseat-limousine-and-Chicago-bathhouse homosexual husband is responsible for the murder of more of his so-called own people than late Ugandan sociopath president Idi Amin Dada, aka the "Butcher of Uganda."

It's believed that Amin was responsible for killing of some 300,000 of his people during his presidency, which office he held from 1971-1979. Obama bests that record by supporting, funding and even invoking God's praise and worthiness upon Planned Parenthood – the organization responsible for industrialized extermination of some 20 million babies who are referenced as "black." In fact, Obama more than doubled the number of his own people slaughtered in a two-year period over the number Amin slaughtered in eight years.

[...]

But then, this has been the way of Democrats since their inception. Truly, they are the quintessential proof that Satan exists and has children.

-- Mychal Massie, June 5 WorldNetDaily column

This is my objection with the idea of skin color. It's a lie from the pit of hell. Any doctor who is truthful and honest will admit that skin color doesn't exist. They will admit that melanin is neither a color nor a race.

The deceptively Satanic dishonesty of crayon skin colors allows, encourages and rewards acrimony and promotes inferiority as a damning psychological condition that's viewed as normality for the so-called blacks. Those who are the so-called whites are inundated with example after example of anti-social, abnormal and heathen behavior.

Those who practice said aberrant behavior as a lifestyle argue their behavior to be cultural – as if boorishness and reducing oneself to the lowest level of behavior is an acceptable cultural norm. Those who are miscast as "white people" are often accused of being racist ad nauseam because they challenge the normalcy of aberrant social behavior.

Both groups are wrong on every quantifiable level starting with perceptions, unless one is a cultural Marxist, in which case they're gleefully celebrative of the perceptions. It reinforces the Cloward-Piven Strategy and institutionalizes systematic Hegelian Dialectics.

-- Mychal Massie, June 12 WND column

For all of those who have been in an informational blackout that surpasses the blackness of carbon nanotubes, June is the co-opted month of sexual perversion and societal deconstruction. Sexual perversion has – not surprisingly, based upon demonology – seized ownership of the month, with those possessed by blind allegiance to a demonically conceived lie of supposed skin color following in hot pursuit.

As a born-again Christian, ordained minister and Bible teacher as well as student of Scripture, I can tell you without fear of doing injustice to the Word of God, they're both demonic from the pit of hell and both groups are driven and committed to accomplish the same purposes: the destruction of the Bride of Christ (i.e., the Church) and the death of mankind.

Advocates and those who embrace sexual perversion aren't interested in simply not being institutionalized in wards for the emotional and psychologically unbalanced. They insist upon mandated acceptance of their perversion, specifically in the Church, home and school. Those people who are possessed with the manic predisposition to embrace the fallacious heterodoxy that ascribes value, substance and self-worth to melanin demand all dysfunction and anti-social behavior be ignored based solely upon their argument that not to do same is to deny their culture and is racist.

The one group has chosen the month of June to celebrate the rankest forms of sexual deviancy as normal, and reinforce penalties upon those who refuse to embrace that which God condemns. The other group places material, social and spiritual value on melanin as if it were a theology and holy Eucharist.

However, they fail to answer the questions: When did not subscribing to what heretofore has historically been identified as mental illness become a criminal act? When did refusing to disobey the tenets of one's personal faith/religion become a criminal act? When did it become normal to persuade preschool little boys and little girls that they are something other than they were born?

-- Mychal Massie, June 19 WND column

Shame is the industrial counterpart of probable cause. It's brought about by the self-awareness that some aspect of guilt or crime exists in one's life. Shame is a boundary fencing that sets limits on inappropriate behavior in normal people. True sociopaths, however, suffer from no such limits regarding the godless lengths they will exceed in the blink of an eye as mercenary for themselves. This is the dictionary definition of "politician" and specifically a cognitively impaired, slobbering, dead-from-the-neck-up stuttering and stammering embarrassment like Joe Biden.

[...]

The money poured into the mainstream media, and the mainstream media laundered it through their banks and sent it bank to Democrats, specifically the Bidens, in the form of campaign donations, donations to Biden foundations and causes he and his crime family support. It's as close to a perfect crime as one can get. And it works every time.

The only thing required is that the person in charge be a sociopath, i.e., that is be completely without care, concern or remorse for everyone you crap on and destroy in the pursuit of your gain. That renders one free of the capacity for shame or embarrassment.

[...]

It's not that these people, specifically Biden and his family, aren't guilty as sin for everything they're accused and in many instances flagrantly guilty. It's a question of who dares bring them to justice? This is another reason they hate President Trump as they do. They know: 1) He will drain the swamp, and 2) There's nothing on him, or they wouldn't be inventing mickey-mouse crimes.

-- Mychal Massie, June 26 WND column


Posted by Terry K. at 10:21 AM EDT
Saturday, September 30, 2023
MRC Miffed Again That Trump Described As Acting Like A Mafia Boss
Topic: Media Research Center

We've highlighted how the Media Research Center just hates it when it's pointed out that Donald Trump acts and talks like a mafia boss. Mark Finkelstein grumbled about this again in an Aug. 3 post:

The liberal media has been having a field day accusing Donald Trump of acting like a Mafia boss in connection with allegations that he ordered aides to delete Mar-a-Lago surveillance tapes. We& caught Morning Joedoing just that last week.

Appearing on CNN's State of the UnionSunday morning, Chris Christie piled on. Christie claimed that Trump's team that, allegedly, helped him hide documents and was ordered to delete surveillance tape were "the Corleones without experience." Adding insult to injury, Christie called Trump aide Walter Nauta the "Fredo" of the gang. 

Hey, we thought "Fredo" was a moniker reserved for one of CNN's former own: Chris Cuomo And as you'll see, guest host Kasi Hunt couldn't stifle a snorting laugh, and fought for several ensuing seconds not to smile again!

Finkelstein didn't dispute the accuracy of the claim, which means he's whining about it being said.And it's highly ironic given the MRC's own predeliction for making mafia references.As Finkelstein alluded to, his employer loves mocking Cuomo with the "Fredo" smear, and you will find many descriptions of LGBT activists as the "rainbow mafia" despite the fact that they do nothing remotely like any actual mafia member.

The real problem, it appears, is that the MRC doesn't like it when anyone else uses their tactics.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:22 AM EDT
WND's Cashill Plays Victim Over Canceled Book Talk
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Jack Cashill spent his Aug. 9 WorldNetDaily column complaining that a local library in New York state scheduled, then canceled, a presentation on his new book:

On Aug. 8, I received an email from the library, the very length of which sounded alarm bells. Fredonia is a small, friendly town. They buffer the bad news there with pleasantries.

"I hope this letter finds you well," the email from library director Graham Tedesco-Blair began. My distrust of guys with hyphenated names was about to be confirmed.

Tedesco-Blair, of course, appreciated my "willingness to engage," but, you know, "after careful consideration and consultation with our stakeholders, we regret to inform you that we must disinvite you from the scheduled library appearance on September 9th."

"Doublethink," wrote George Orwell, "means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."

Tedesco-Blair's explanation of why I was being canceled is a doublethink classic. "We believe that the diversity of perspectives is crucial in creating a rich and informative dialogue at our library events," he begins.

"Recent developments have led us to re-evaluate the suitability of your views and opinions for our diverse audience," he continues, "as well as the potential impact they might have on the inclusive and welcoming atmosphere we strive to foster within our library community."

Tedesco-Blair champions "diversity" by enforcing homogeneity and "inclusivity" by excluding genuinely diverse opinions. Is he aware how mad this sounds?

As best I can interpret Tedesco-Blair's jabberwocky, diverse "perspectives" may be suitable for a general audience but not somehow for a "diverse audience."

Or it could be that someone actually read his book. As we've noted, "Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America's Cities" appears to be all about absolving white people of racism for fleeing cities during the 1960s -- a viewpoint enthusiastically endorsed by the white nationalists at VDARE, who cheered that the book "tells the story of white flight from the white perspective." Rather than discuss that dubious endorsement, Cashill tried to insist his book wasn't offensive at all:

Since my book makes no reference at all to things gay or trans or Muslim, and speaks only positively of women and immigrants, the only "diverse" people that I might offend are African Americans.

Except I don't. In fact, several black people attended my presentation for C-SPAN's Book-TV (to air Sunday, Aug. 13, check listings), and none took the slightest offense.

I cannot imagine that in a town with a black population of less than 2%, there would be angry mobs besieging the library doors even if I had written a book extolling Democrat heroes like Andrew Jackson or Woodrow Wilson.

"Given the nature of our audience and the current discourse surrounding certain aspects of your work," Tedesco-Blair blathered on, "we believe it is in the best interest of the library and its patrons to make this difficult decision."

"The nature of our audience"? Trump carried Chautauqua County by 20 points. The people with a right to be concerned are area conservatives.

A public servant whose salary they pay has just subjected them to flagrant "viewpoint discrimination," which is prohibited under the First Amendment.

Nowhere did Cashill offer excerpts from his own book to prove how supposedly inoffensive it is, or why we shouldn't read anything into VDARE's enthusiastic endorsement. Cashill has spent years judging others (like Barack Obama) by the company they keep, but he doesn't seem to want to be judged by the company his book keeps.

Cashill was still playing victim in his  Aug. 16 column -- but he did find a more agreeable group to which he cold make his book presentation:

In the week since, my speculation has been confirmed. The president of the library board emailed my wife, "So, very soon after our website posting which announced Jack's appearance at the Barker we began to receive numerous correspondence ranging from general disbelief to adverse protestations from with in the local community."

He then added, as though this detail were necessary, "Oddly, all of this response came from women." I should clarify here. All Karens may be women, but not all women are Karens.

Upon hearing of my disinvite, one women, whose actual name is "Karen," invited me to speak at the Chautauqua County TEA – Totally Engaged Americans – Party at their upcoming meeting. "And," she added wryly, "you will not be disinvited."

Once the word got out other local women emailed their sentiments – ranging from general disbelief to adverse protestations – letting Mr. Tedesco-Blair know what they thought of the library's decision.

Cashill failed to elaborate that the TEA group is presumed to be a right-wing one that would be more receptive to his whitewashing message. Cashill went on to praise a story about the brouhaha in the local paper as "more than fair" -- probably because the reporter did little investigating into the subject of the book or the conspriacy theory-obsessed past of its author and simply copy-and-pasted Cashill's version of his history.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:36 AM EDT
Updated: Saturday, September 30, 2023 1:49 AM EDT
Friday, September 29, 2023
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, welcomed The 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.

It wouldn't be the MRC if it couldn't sneak in a little sniping at Anita Hill.

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."


Posted by Terry K. at 9:46 PM EDT
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.


Posted by Terry K. at 3:10 PM EDT
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.

Ben Stein ranted the same day:

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.

In fact, it's been proven that the 2016 Trump campaign met with Russian operatives dozens of times, then-campaign manager Paul Manafort gave internal polling data to another Russian operative, and that Russia rooted for Trump to win in 2016.

Scott Powell huffed in an Aug. 9 column:

Yes, this a legal battle.

But it's more.

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.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:30 PM EDT
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 >>

Posted by Terry K. at 1:21 AM EDT
Thursday, September 28, 2023
The MRC's Summer Of Defending Clarence Thomas
Topic: Media Research Center

Over the summer, the Media Research Center continued its aggressive defense 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.

Rich Noyes helped Thomas play victim (and took yet another shot at Anita Hill)  in a July 1 "flashback" post:

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 a part of 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 gushy RBG 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.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:43 PM EDT
Updated: Thursday, September 28, 2023 9:48 PM EDT
WND Repeats Old, Discredited Fake News Attacking COVID Vaccines
Topic: WorldNetDaily

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.


Posted by Terry K. at 8:02 PM EDT
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 purchased The 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 firms like NewsGuard for pointing out that inconvenient fact).


Posted by Terry K. at 1:07 PM EDT
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.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:21 AM EDT
Wednesday, September 27, 2023
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 war against George Soros 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.

Rachel Alexander complained in her Aug. 7 column:

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.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:07 PM EDT

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