MRC Repeats Bogus Biden 'No Comment' Claim On Maui Wildfires Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Kevin Tober was in full manufactured-outrage mode in an Aug. 14 post:
On Sunday, President Joe Biden spent another weekend on vacation on the beach in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware while the country literally and figuratively burned. While Biden was getting into his presidential limo, he was asked by two reporters for his thoughts on the rapidly rising death toll due to the out-of-control wildfires in Hawaii. Biden’s callous response of “no comment” led to outrage on Twitter and elsewhere throughout the country. Despite the newsworthiness of Biden’s dismissal response to the death and destruction, all three evening news broadcasts ignored it.
[...]
Meanwhile, on Fox News Channel’s Special Report, anchor Bret Baier spoke to White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich about the latest Biden controversy.
“The President spent several hours on the beach at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware yesterday,” Baier said. “And when he was leaving, after that, reporters asked him about the rising death toll in Hawaii, specifically Maui, those wildfires.”
After airing Biden’s dismissive comments toward those killed or injured, Baier responded: “He said 'no, no comment.' And that got a lot of criticism online and elsewhere.”
From there, Heinrich confirmed that “It did get a lot of criticism.”
“He ran for office on his own empathy. The White House was asked today in the briefing if he had been instructed, you know, not to comment on this or if he planned to comment about it in the future,” Heinrich noted.
But Tober -- and, apparently, Fox News -- censored one important fact: Nobody actually heard Biden say that. As we documented, the claim that Biden said "no comment" comes from a White House press corps pool report by Rob Crilly of the right-wing, anti-Biden British newspaper Daily Mail, who admitted he never actually heard those words but claimed that "lip readers in the pool" claimed he said it. Tober's fake outrage came as he hypocritically criticized network news for "bias by omission."
Then again, facts don't matter much at the MRC but advancing right-wing narratives do -- which is why Tober spent so much space praising Fox News for repeating this unsubstantiated attack. So the MRC continued to push this bogus narrative. It published an Aug. 25 column by Ben Shapiro citing the alleged incident to declare Biden to be an "narcissist":
This week, Biden visited Maui. He did so nearly two weeks after the worst wildfire in modern American history killed hundreds of Americans. Meanwhile, Biden vacationed in Delaware on the beach, telling reporters he had "no comment" on the situation; he then jet-set off to Lake Tahoe before finally heading to Lahaina.
Rich Noyes dutifully pushed the narrative again in an Aug. 26 post, quoting Tober in doing so:
The August 8 firestorm on the Hawaiian island of Maui took at least 115 lives, with another 388 officially listed as missing more than two weeks later. Five days after the devastation, a vacationing President Biden was asked about the horrifying death toll. “No comment,” he said.
[...]
Instead of pouncing on Biden’s blunders, the media politely hid them from viewers. After Biden’s inexplicable “no comment,” MRC’s Kevin Tober found none of the three evening newscasts mentioned it amid their otherwise heavy coverage of the Maui disaster.
Nicholas Fondacaro uncritically repeated the claim in an Aug. 31 post:
While communities in Maui were being incinerated and the list of the dead continued to grow (surpassing 100 as of the writing of this piece), President Biden was publicly flaunting his storied callousness as he continued his vacation and gave a firm “no comment” when asked about the wildfires. It being election season, CNN News Center knew they needed to do something to distract people. So, on Thursday morning, they took White House talking points and claimed it was Republicans who didn’t care about the people. But at no point did they provide any evidence.
Fondacaro didn't explain how Biden's alleged comment could be "firm" when nobody actually heard him say it.
WND's Root Still Fearmongering About COVID Vaccines Topic: WorldNetDaily
Wayne Allyn Root just can'tstopspreading falsehoods and misinformation about COVID and its vaccines (or COVID itself). He went on another fearmongering bender in his Aug. 13 WorldNetDaily column:
There is a silent tragedy of epic proportions going on in our country. It's silent because the media refuse to connect the dots.
Have you noticed the tsunami of recent headlines about high-profile Americans who "died suddenly" or suffered heart attacks, strokes or blood clots at young ages. Celebrities, athletes, entertainers and CEOs are dropping dead or having heart attacks.
Still, the media whistle past the graveyard.
There are always a thousand excuses. Anything and everything, EXCEPT blaming the COVID-19 vaccine. It can never be the vaccine.
Strange thing though: Virtually every one of these dead, crippled, disabled or seriously ill people have one thing in common: they were vaccinated. What a wild coincidence!
He then started spreading stories:
I'll soon write a column about 65 friends, acquaintances and business associates of mine, people I personally know, who have died or suffered serious illness since being vaccinated. The numbers are piling up. These are not coincidences. It's a pattern. Studying a pattern like this used to be called "science."
In the meantime, I have one up-close and personal story that every American needs to hear. Last week I went out to dinner with one of my best friends (let's call him Mike). He told me the story of his own sister, who was badly injured and disabled by the COVID-19 vaccine. He then informed me she's a big fan of mine and watches my Real America's Voice TV show every Saturday. He said she'd like to talk to me and share her story.
We spoke yesterday. Here's her story.
Let's call her Jane. She is an accomplished female CEO. Jane runs a medical organization that helps children. She wanted to stress to me how healthy she'd been before getting the vaccine. She traveled the world on business and lugged her own luggage everywhere. She biked 15 miles a day. She took one-hour spin classes. She ate healthy. She was on no medications.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Jane never got COVID-19. She continued biking 15 miles several times per week. She walked 3 miles a day.
Then her doctor pressured her to take the COVID-19 vaccine. She was worried and skeptical, but eventually she relented. She took one Pfizer jab. One. No second jab. No booster. Just one.
That's all it took to ruin her life. Jane will never be the same.
Within four hours she felt extreme nerve pain. Pain the likes of which she'd never felt in her life. Mind-numbing pain.
Then came the racing heart. Heart palpitations. Severe muscle twitching. Severe muscle weakness. Shortness of breath. Horrible fatigue. Brain fog so bad she could no longer focus, or deal with even basic tasks.
Next came blurred vision. Sensitivity to light and sound. Dry eyes and dry mouth. Dizziness. Ringing in her ears so loud she couldn't think. Hair loss in clumps. Severe heartburn. Circulation problems: Her feet turned purple. She could barely walk. Internal tremors so bad, it felt like a cellphone was vibrating inside her body. She is in so much pain at night that she can't sleep.
Jane also suffered from menstrual problems after getting the vaccine. She hemorrhaged so severely this past February that she was hospitalized and eventually required emergency surgery.
By March it was a new issue requiring hospitalization. Her heart was beating so fast it felt like it was going to explode. It went from 60 beats per minute to 165 within seconds. Her heart condition is so serious that she fears she could "die suddenly" at any time.
This is Jane's new normal. She was perfectly healthy all her life. Then she took the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Her life instantly changed after that one vaccine. Now it's difficult to walk to the bathroom.
You will not be surprised that no documentation was provided for any of this. His misinformation continued:
The facts are out. The CDC's own internal report shows over 117,000 excess deaths among American children since the vaccine. CHILDREN. That's more excess dead children in two years than all the U.S. soldiers killed in the Vietnam War in a decade.
Life insurance companies report more excess deaths among working-age Americans since 2021 (the year the COVID-19 vaccine began) than at any time in history. What do working-age Americans have in common? The Biden administration forced them to take the vaccine or lose their jobs.
Ed Dowd, the former Blackrock money manager, who analyzes numbers for a living, says the disability rolls have grown by millions since the vaccine. MILLIONS. That's why there is such a severe shortage of employees.
We've previously debunked claims about using insurance information to claim people are being killed by COVID vaccines, and his claim about "CDC's own internal report" showing that the vaccine has killed children has also been discredited. He closed with more fearmongering:
We know this is happening. The next victim could be you, your spouse, your children.
To do nothing now; to make believe this isn't happening; to hope it goes away; to try to cover it up; is no longer about ignorance, or delusion, or even greed.
At this point, to do nothing, to refuse to act, is a combination of pure evil, mass murder and crimes against humanity.
Actually, the evil one here is Root, who believes he must continsally spread proven lies to stay relevant in the righ-wing media bubble.
The son of a prominent conservative activist has been convicted of charges that he stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan, 6, 2021, bashed in a window, chased a police officer, invaded the Senate floor and helped a mob disrupt the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential election victory.
Leo Brent Bozell IV, 44, of Palmyra, Pennsylvania, was found guilty Friday of 10 charges, including five felony offenses, after a trial decided by a federal judge, according to the Justice Department.
Bozell’s father is Brent Bozell III, who founded the Media Research Center, Parents Television Council and other conservative media organizations.
[...]
Prosecutors said that before the riot, Bozell helped plan and coordinate events in Washington in support of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement. They said that after Trump’s rally near the White House on Jan. 6, Bozell marched to the Capitol and joined a mob in breaking through a police line. He smashed a window next to the Senate Wing Door, creating an entry point for hundreds of rioters, according to prosecutors.
After climbing through the smashed window, Bozell joined other rioters in chasing a Capitol Police officer, Eugene Goodman, up a staircase to an area where other officers confronted the group.
Later, Bozell was captured on video entering office of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. He appeared to have something in his hand when he left, prosecutors said.
Entering the Senate gallery, Bozell moved a C-SPAN camera to face the ground so it could not record rioters ransacking the chamber on a live video feed. He also spent several minutes on the Senate floor.
Bozell roamed thorough the Capitol for nearly an hour, reaching more than a dozen different parts of the building and passing through at least seven police lines before police escorted him out, prosecutors said.
Where won't you find news about Bozell's conviction? On any website controlled by his father. The Media Research Center's two main sites -- NewsBusters and MRCTV -- censored all mention of it, as they have eversince his arrest.
Bozell pere, however, did make a euphemistic statement on his Twitter account: "We're terribly disappointed in the decision. This isn't the time to say all I want to say. We love our son and thank you for your prayers." Sounds a bitlike President Biden talking about his son, doesn't it? Ironically, Bozell's employees routinelymock Joe for standing by his son. Since those employees appear to be sufficiently afraid of their boss to tell the truth, don't expect them to provide consistency here.
NEW ARTICLE: Trump Indictment Theater At WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily followed the rest of the ConWeb on Donald Trump's first indictment in playing the George Soros card on prosecutor Alvin Bragg and serving up Trump stenography. But editor Joseph Farah also accused Bragg of "shucking and jiving." Read more >>
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 roundlymocked 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 retweetedan 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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).
The Media Research Center's Kevin Tober was in full manufactured-outrage mode in an Aug. 14 post:
Wayne Allyn Root just 
Actual news outlets 
Elon Musk had a bit of an 
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.
We've highlighted
Jack Cashill spent his Aug. 9 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center's 
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 
