MRC Hypes Alleged Hunter Biden Whistleblower, Downplays That He's A Criminal Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center loves to get mad when the non-right-wing media ignores whistleblowers who promote conservative narratives. (If you're a whistleblower who doesn't advance those narratives, however, the MRC will attack you.) And the MRC had another narrative-friendly whistleblower to tout over the summer. In a July 25 post hyping "FOUR New Biden Scandals on Burisma, Hunter’s Life of Corruption" (which puts the MRC's overheated total of such "scandals" to be well over 60), Curtis Houck hyped how "The Fox News Channel's flagship newscast Special Report led Monday with this development (as would numerous FNC shows after them)" while non-right-wing media ignored it. The hype about Archer's planned testimony continued:
Tim Graham touted it in his July 26 column, declaring that "New scoops are underlining this is a Joe Biden scandal."
Cassandra DeVries gushed in a post the same day: "According to New York Post article by former MRC Bulldog Award winner Miranda Devine, Hunter Biden’s close friend Devon Archer said Hunter used his father’s position as the Vice President to impress foreign executives and win their money. Hunter Biden frequently called his father when meeting with business partners and investors, introducing them to his father or asking his father for advice."
Houck cheered in his writeup of the July 26 White House press briefing that biased reporter Fred Lucas of the right-wing Daily Signal "was the lone reporter to ask former Hunter Biden business associate and friend Devon Archer being slated to testify next week behind closed doors to a House committee."
Houck used a July 28 post to promote that NBC "even made an allusion to next week’s potential bombshell testimony from former longtime Hunter business partner and confidante Devon Archer."
On the day of the planned testimony, July 31, Mark Finkelstein touted Fox News hyping it and bashed MSNBC's "Morning Joe" for not playing along with the approved right-wing narrative:
Meanwhile, over on Morning Joe, the panel trashed Trump for having alleged a corrupt Biden-Ukraine connection. Host Jonathan Lemire andPolitico's Sam Stein suggested that Trump didn't learn from the experience of having been impeached over similar allegations he made.
But incredibly, while dismissing Trump's assertions,they failed to even breathe the name of Devon Archer, and the testimony he was expected to offer.Lemire made a passing, innocuous-sounding mention, of Hunter Biden having "once served on the board" of Burisma. No reference to the fact that, as NBC News has reported, Hunter and his company raked in $11 million from Burisma.
Finkelstein then alluded to a little problem with their newest star whistleblower, but then tried to build a conspiracy theory around it:
Morning Joe also suppressed the news that the Biden Justice Department made a highly unusual Saturday request to the judge overseeing Archer's conviction in an unrelated case to expedite his sentencing and jailing; presumably a tactic intended to pressure Archer to curb his enthusiasm for anti-Biden testimony.
So, according to Finkelstein, the problem with Archer is not that ie's a convicted criminal, it's that he's going to be punished for being one.
Another post that day, by Bill D'Agostino, ranted that non0right-woing cable news channels mentioned Donald Trump too much and Archer not enough:
On the day that Devon Archer, a business associate and longtime friend of Hunter Biden, testified before the House Oversight committee, CNN and MSNBC instead flooded the airwaves with their favorite topic: Donald Trump. Between 6:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. eastern, CNN and MSNBC made a combined 759 mentions of Donald Trump, while at the same time mentioning Devon Archer just 48 times.
During the specified timespan, MSNBC featured 461 mentions of the former President, while CNN supplied the remaining 298. Meanwhile, CNN mentioned Devon Archer only 37 times during the same period, while MSNBC mentioned him just 11 times. That’s a more than 41-to-1 ratio of Trump mentions to Archer mentions for the latter network.
MSNBC’s Morning Joe during the 8:00 a.m. hour somehow managed to bring up the former President by name a jaw-dropping 70 times (212 times across the whole show). Meanwhile, Archer was not discussed at any point during that program’s four-hour runtime.
D'Agostino failed to provide a similar count for Fox News so there would be a point of comparison. On the other hand, his post was translated into Spanish the next day.
Another July 31 post, by Kevin Tober, whined that people on CNN didn't take Archer's testimony seriously:
On Monday afternoon, while Hunter Biden’s business partner Devon Archer was behind closed doors testifying before the House Oversight Committee regarding the Biden family’s corrupt business dealings, CNN host Dana Bash and congressional correspondent Manu Raju wore their profound ignorance on their sleeve with the pants-on-fire claim that Republicans have thus far put forward zero evidence showing Joe Biden’s involvement in his son Hunter’s business dealings.
During a panel discussion on the Archer testimony, Bash claimed that the Archer testimony is all about “whether or not Republicans can find any evidence, which they have yet to put forward, of their repeated accusation that the President, Joe Biden, had knowledge of, or a connection to Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine and China.”
Either Bash doesn’t follow the news, or she’s lying to her audience. Even before Monday’s revelations from Archer detailing how involved Joe Biden was with his son, it’s been heavily reported that Hunter gives his dad a cut of the money he shakes down from foreign governments. In one text message, he referred to the elder Biden as the “Big Guy” and admitted he gives him a ten percent cut.
On Monday, Hunter Biden’s business partner Devon Archer testified behind closed doors before the House Oversight Committee regarding the Biden family’s corrupt business dealings including a bombshell revelation that Hunter put his father Joe Biden on the phone with his business associates over twenty times. This at the very least proves President Biden’s repeated claims that he was unaware of his son’s business activities was a flat-out lie. Despite this, NBC Nightly News had no interest in this story. While ABC’s World News Tonight and CBS Evening News covered the Archer testimony, NBC pretended it never happened.
Instead, the network ran a nearly two-minute-long segment on the U.S. women’s soccer team and an interview with athlete Megan Rapinoe. Clearly, NBC’s priorities were in order.
You mean like it's Tober's priority to attack any non-right-wing outlet who doesn't uncritically parrot right-wing narratives?
In neither post did Tober mention that Archer has a criminal record.
Newsmax and its columnists were quick tostart promoting Robert Kennedy Jr.'s presidential campaign -- not because it actually wants him to win, of course, but out of the hope that it might hurt President Biden's re-election efforts. That promotion -- and amping up of his alleged victimhood over his anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories being fact-checked -- continued over the summer:
Newsmax even uncritically touted Kennedy insisting that Russia has been "acting in good faith" when it comes to ending invasion of Ukraine, even though Newsmax has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine.
Newsmax also played cleanup for Kennedy after he made the bizarre claim that the COVID-19 virus was "ethnically targeted" to spare Jews. After running a wire article critical of Kennedy, it gave him airtime on Newsmax TV to defend himself:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Newsmax on Thursday that he has never been antisemitic and a smear campaign against him is trying to censor him from speaking out about the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines and other topics.
"I said this under oath today because I'm so angry at those charges," Kennedy, who testified earlier in the day before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, told "The Record With Greta Van Susteren."
"In my entire life, I have never uttered a single antisemitic phrase, word or anything, or racist [phrase]. Because of my family, and because I've spent a lot of time in Israel, and I have an organization over there, my support for Israel is stronger than anybody on Capitol Hill.
[...]
During the hearing, Democrats grilled Kennedy over reported comments he made that the COVID-19 vaccine was ethnically targeted to affect whites and Blacks and spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese. He claimed he was referring to how the U.S. and other governments are developing ethnically targeted bioweapons and that a 2021 study of the coronavirus showed that COVID-19 appears to disproportionately affect certain races.
"I've been smeared using phrases that were taken completely out of context and attributing meanings to them that I never intended, and it's a way of censoring me," Kennedy said.
The study Kennedy cited, however, said nothing about the virus being "ethnically targeted."The Newsmax article did not explain what, exactly, was purportedly taken out of context. The article also did not mention that Kennedy previously claimed that opponents of vaccine mandates (like himself) had it worse than Anne Frank during the Holocaust; Kennedy eventually apologized for that.
Newsmax did more cleanup for Kennedy after his July 20 congressional appearance, in an article by Solange Reyner:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s 2021 tweet about the death of baseball legend Hank Aaron after he received a COVID-19 vaccine was just "pointing out facts," Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, argued Thursday during a GOP-led hearing on government censorship by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
"When you look at Mr. Kennedy's tweet, there was nothing there that was factually inaccurate. Hank Aaron, real person, great American, passed away after he got the vaccine. Pointing out, just pointing out facts," Jordan said in opening remarks while discussing an email the White House sent to Twitter to request Kennedy's tweet be taken down.
In fact, Aaron died of natural causes, not the vaccine, which means Kennedy was lying by suggesting otherwise.
Newsmax also gave Kennedy space to whine on July 28 that he was not being given Secret Service protection, which is given only to "major" candidates -- something he has not yet proven himself to be. A paywalled Aug. 1 article, though, seemed to admit that Kennedy was pushing this claim "is likely a bid to try to win over voters as he seeks to topple the sitting president in his party's primary, political strategists say."
There were a few instances in which Newsmax treated Kennedy like the Democrat he claims to be. A July 12 article by Nicole Wells repeated an Axios report that Kennedy "is flouting established party customby selling merchandise that is not made in America or by union workers." An Aug. 15 article by Jeffrey Rodack noted confusion over Kennedy's position on abortion after saying he supported government restrictions on it (which warranted a second article as well); his campaign later had to issue a clarification of his stance. An Aug. 30 article by Nick Koutsobinas, however, highlighted one of the few views on which Kennedy is actually like a Democrat, calling for government-subsidized home loans.
MRC Rages At Scientific Study Showing Right-Wing Media To Be Untrustworthy Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Bill D'Agostino grumbled in a July 31 post:
According to NBC News, a “landmark study” by 27 “academic researchers” has concluded that conservatives in America are far more likely than their left-wing counterparts to consume news from untrustworthy sources. We’re all supposed to take this immensely seriously, but even a cursory look at the study reveals a host of embarrassing problems with the methodology.
The fact that the first thing D'Agostino did is attack the NBC article for a small error miscounting the number of researchers involved tells you that he will be doing a lot of partisan ranting and not much serious questioning of the study, which he called "garbage" in his headline. Indeed, his attack on the study's definition of untrustworthy sources is all about partisan narratives:
According to the “overview” section, untrustworthy news sources were defined as those which published two or more articles rated “false” by Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program (3PFC) before February 16, 2021:
[...]
In other words, if Meta’s fact-checkers disagreed with two articles published on any given news site between January 1, 2020 and February 15, 2021, then the researchers condemned that entire site to the “untrustworthy” bin. So strong was their faith in the 3PFC partners’ judgement that they let the validity of their entire dataset hinge upon it.
Meta lists the following organizations as members of its 3PFC program for the U.S.: AFP, Check Your Fact, Factcheck.org, Lead Stories, PolitiFact, Science Feedback, Reuters Fact Check, Televisa Univision, The Associated Press, The Dispatch, and USA TODAY. Of these eleven, only Check Your Fact could be considered reliably right-of-center. One could also make an argument for The Dispatch, though honestly not a very strong one.
It should be obvious just how flimsy this categorization method is. Because only two articles needed to be flagged by any of these organizations in order for an entire news source to be “untrustworthy,” even a couple of biased or misinformed fact checkers had the potential to dramatically skew the data. That’s a bad sign, considering how preposterous the slant is at some of these fact checking organizations. As NewsBusters has documented extensively, PolitiFact alone is more than stilted enough to wreck the dataset.
D'Agostino is effectively whining that fact-checkers fact-check conservatives, a longtime MRC complaint. He also clearly believes in the right-wing canard that any news source or fact-checker that is not explicitly right-wing is "liberal" or "left-wing" because they do not unquestioningly parrot right-wing narratives the way the MRC does. Also, the Dispatch is indisputably a conservative publication, but D'Agostino is basically insisting that it's not right-wing enough because it criticizes Donald Trump.
D'Agostino then moved to whataboutism:
But the issues run deeper than that. Unfortunately for the authors of this study, fact checkers and the corporate media in 2020 were wedded to quite a few narratives that have since proven to be utterly false.
For example, if you’d asked anyone working at a 3PFC member organization in December of 2020, they’d have told you that lab-originated COVID-19 was a conspiracy theory, cloth masks were effective at preventing coronavirus transmission, and Hunter Biden’s laptop was unauthenticated Russian disinformation. A few of them might even suspect that then-President Trump was a puppet of Vladimir Putin.
How many articles discussing these topics did the fact checkers incorrectly flag as false in 2020? And how many of those erroneous flaggings caused researchers to improperly banish entire news sites to the naughty corner? The study did not address these issues, and in fact there is no indication that the researchers even considered them.
As we've noted before, the New York Post -- the right-wing, pro-Trump propaganda outlet that broke the Hunter laptop story -- failed to offer at the time its story was published independent verification of the laptop that would have countered reasonable questions about it being "unauthenticated Russian disinformation" and it being sourced to a such a partisan publication. There also continues to be a lack of direct evidence that the COVID virus was "lab-originated" as D'Agostino insists, and masks do, in fact, slow COVID transmission.
Having effectively proven the study correct by spreading right-wing misinformation, D'Agostino moved on to building a conspiracy theory:
Furthermore, it’s impossible to check which news sources were incorrectly labeled, because the study did not name any of the news sites researchers examined. Instead the authors provided a link to a satellite website run by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) containing replication code, along with a note which stated: “ICPSR will receive and vet all applications for data access.
A jaded cynic might suspect that this secret list of “untrustworthy” news sources was little more than a directory of every right-leaning website with a Facebook account. Such a jaded cynic might further suspect the authors were afraid to make their secret list public because doing so would give the game away.
D'Agostino concluded by ranting that there's no objective definition of truth and that anyone who studies media misinformation is automatically on "the left":
This study represents the left’s latest childish attempt to prove with data that the American right is misinformed, and that therefore some authority must police what information they can access. But the researchers’ efforts are undone in an instant by the same fundamental question which every proponent of censoring misinformation inevitably fails to answer: who gets to decide what’s true and what’s not?
Many academics on the left who claim to study so-called misinformation do it in the hopes of convincing the rest of us that they deserve that power. The reality is that fact checkers funded by the Poynter Institute are no more qualified to be arbiters of the truth than anyone else is, and no amount of politically-motivated research will change that.
So yes, 27 activists are pretending they’ve proven once and for all that the people who disagree with them politically are a bunch of dupes who read fake news. That tells us next to nothing about America’s “news ecosystem,” but it does speak volumes about how thoroughly the social sciences have been infested by overt political actors.
A jaded cynic may also suspect that D'Agostino is attacking this study so fiercely because he knows that right-wing media is, in fact, unreliable and must try to smear anyone who points out that inconvenient fact as untrustworthy and partisan (like him). The MRC has used this same tactic in itsrepeatedattacks on website-ratings service NewsGuard. And it's quite rich for D'Agostino to accuse researchers of being "overt political actors" when he gets paid quite well by the MRC to be an overt political actor parroting a defined narrative. Meanwhile, D'Agostino and the MRC never discuss the one thing that would keep right-wing media from being dismissed as low-quality: improving the quality of right-wing media. Remember, the MRC killed its "news" division CNSNews.com rather than try to improve it, slapping the nameplate on a right-wing blog thatfollow even fewer journalistic standards than CNS did.
Desoite his history of partisanship, D'Agostino wants you to believe he's no less qualified to be an "arbiter of the truth" than someone who has academic training in research, and that anyone who does have such training is presumed to be an "activist" on "the left" and an "overt political actor." Who's pushing embarassing garbage now?
WorldNetDaily has been resorting to ridiculously biased and omission-laden stories from the notoriously unreliable Gateway Pundit to try and manufacture sympathy for participants in the Capitol riot, and it happened again with a republished Aug. 17 article written by Gateway Pundit chief Jim Hoft:
January 6 political prisoner Ryan Samsel has been held in prison without trial now since January 2021.
During his two-and-a-half years without trial Ryan has been moved around to 17 different facilities. Ryan has been beaten, abused, tortured, and neglected since his arrest in January 2021.
Earlier this week The Gateway Pundit received exclusive photos from Ryan Samsel’s prison cell at the FDC in Philadelphia. The cell was a size of a closet with a light on all of the time. The cell had a thin blue mattress, no sheets or blankets, no clothing, and he was kept here for five months straight.
The photos are just shocking. This is taking place in America today. This is who we are.
[...]
Ryan believes the government tortured him for months so he would rat out the Proud Boys. They even beat Ryan numerous times and kept him locked down so he couldn’t communicate with anyone.
This torture is taking place in America today.
Where is the Republican Party?
Where is the ACLU, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch?
Missing from Hoft's manufactured pity piece is any substantiation of the claims he makes about Samsel, as well as any mention of what Samsel did. The latter was summarized by the Department of Justice when he was indicted:
According to court documents, Samsel was captured in publicly available video taken of a crowd pushing and pulling on barricades on the west side of the Capitol. In the process of pushing the barricades to the ground, Samsel and others knocked over a U.S. Capitol Police officer, causing a head injury as the officer’s head hit the ground. In another confrontation, according to court documents, Samsel attempted to pull a riot shield from a uniformed U.S. Capitol Police officer.
We thought right-wingers didn't like it when police officers were assaulted. But that's not all; he had quite the criminal record even before the Capitol riot. As a more fact-based news outlet reported, Samsel has been accused of attacking other people, usually women, at least six times, and he had at least four prior convictions for crimes that sometimes left his victims fearing for their lives. At the time of the riot, he had an open warrant regarding accusations that he broke into a woman’s house to attack her and was on parole for brutally assaulting his pregnant girlfriend.
And we're still not done. Last year, Samsel reportedly wrote a letter talking about getting rid of politicians with a woodchipper, and he has previoiusly made several statements about stabbing or punching FBI agents.
Samsel claims to have been beaten by jail guards after an argument over toilet paper escalated. But it does appear that he's getting back what he did to other people.
There's a reason Hoft censored that information -- he wants to falsely portray Samsel as a martyr when he's really nothing more than a thug who apparently can't take what he's been dishing out for years. And it raises even more question sabout WND's desire to remain in business that it considers Hoft and the Gateway Pundit -- who, again, are being sued for defamation for falsely accusing a pair of Georgia election workers of fraud -- to be a reliable news source worth republishing without question.
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.
The Media Research Center loves to get mad when the non-right-wing media ignores whistleblowers who promote conservative narratives. (If you're a whistleblower who doesn't advance those narratives, however, the MRC will attack you.) And the MRC had another narrative-friendly whistleblower to tout over the summer. In a July 25 post hyping "FOUR New Biden Scandals on Burisma, Hunter’s Life of Corruption" (which puts the MRC's overheated total of such "scandals" to be well over 60), Curtis Houck hyped how "The Fox News Channel's flagship newscast Special Report led Monday with this development (as would numerous FNC shows after them)" while non-right-wing media ignored it. The hype about Archer's planned testimony continued:
Newsmax and its columnists were 
The Media Research Center's Bill D'Agostino grumbled in a July 31 
WorldNetDaily has been resorting to 
The Media Research Center's Kevin Tober was in full manufactured-outrage mode in an Aug. 14 
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 
