MRC's DeSantis Defense Brigade Watch, Non-History Edition Topic: Media Research Center
While it was busydefending Ron DeSantis over his revisionist black history curriculum in Florida schools, the Media Research Center's DeSantisDefenseBrigade studiously ignored other controversies involving the Florida governor:
The puppet board DeSantis installed to govern the land where Disney World is located voted to defund the police, slashing $8 million from the district's law enforcement budget.
DeSantis campaign workers created inflammatory pro-DeSantis videos intended to hype his campaign which were then laundered through anonymous accounts that would post the videos. One video featured a version of the Sonnenrad, a symbol of Nazi Germany.
The MRC didn't tell its readers about any of this, of course -- the DeSantis Defense Brigade had other things to complain about, like trying to shoot down another negative story, about how DeSantis loves to travel via private planes rather than flying commercial. Asa Schau was the designated defender (and whataboutism-hurler) in a July 25 post:
Monday morning’s CNN News Central featured an interview with Daily Beast columnist Matt Lewis, who co-host John Berman somehow labeled as a “conservative writer.” In promoting Lewis's new book Filthy Rich Politicians, Berman did not discuss the Biden Burisma bribes.
Instead, they decried Governor Ron DeSantis's preference for “private planes” to travel on the campaign trail as proof of a “lifestyle” that DeSantis has led as a result of his “high-profile political platform.”
Berman introduced the subject by quoting a New York Times article about the DeSantis campaign’s recent financial troubles, and how these may be related to DeSantis’s preference “to travel by private planes” instead of commercially:
[...]
This criticism of modern American politicians and their financial habits is not unmerited, but CNN doesn't use this as a general principle, but as an anti-Republican argument.
To illustrate how he thought DeSantis should try to rectify his allegedly sticky financial situation, Lewis brought up liberal media favorite John McCain, who “was flying commercial” to make campaign stops and go to fundraising events, and thus was apparently “able to turn it around” with his then-failing primary campaign in 2007.
A July 27 post by Clay Waters complained that the New York Times reported on the less-than-stellar record on COVID in Florida:
Sunday’s lead New York Times story by Sharon LaFraniere, Patricia Mazzei, and Albert Sun, “ was a retrospective hit piece for the 2024 presidential race. The trio of reporters reached back before current culture war controversies to focus on Florida’s Republican governor-presidential candidate and the alleged deadly medical malpractice he performed by discouraging vaccinations (not true) during Covid’s 2021 “Delta Wave.”
Digging into the numbers reveals Florida did perfectly well against Covid, while ensuring freedom of action and movements for its citizens. Interestingly, “masks,” which were once supposed to be our ticket out, are only mentioned once in this 3,200-word story.
[...]
The accompanying charts were staggeringly unconvincing: “Vaccination Rates From January to July 2021” showed the percentage of over-65 Americans “fully vaccinated” topping off at just over 80%, with Florida tracking with the national average after previously leading the pack. But there was always going to be a hard-core group of “never-vaxxers” in America, Florida residents or not. The chart shows Florida seniors…at the national average for vaccination in July 2021. Scandalous!
Waters didn't mention that among the "hard-core group of 'never-vaxxers'" is DSAntis' own state surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo.
When the article noted that 80,000 Florida residents have died of COVID, Waters went into spin mode: "The pandemic left more than 108,000 Californians and more than 80,000 New York state residents dead. Where are the 3,000-word condemnations of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo? Oh right, they’re Democrats." By focusing on raw numbers, Waters obscured the fact that the per capita death rate in Florida is higher than in California and New York.
Alex Christy spent a July 28 post complaining that an awkward exchange between DeSantis and child on the campaign trail got attention:
There is something about political figures and food that CNN Inside Politics host Dana Bash finds intensely fascinating and worthy of deep discussion. On Friday, the subject of discussion was Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis’s interaction on the campaign trail with a child about his Icee and what the impact it will have on his campaign.
During a larger discussion of the state of the DeSantis Campaign and its attempt to reboot itself, Bash introduced a clip of DeSantis, “There was a clip that I think probably is fair to say went sort of viral yesterday... In our world, which is the world that matters on Inside Politics. Ron DeSantis on the campaign trail was on that bus tour that Jessica was talking about interacting with a child about an Icee.”
[...]
After the video, senior political analyst Nia-Malika Henderson declared that “I don't know what's more awkward there. The ‘good to see you’ part to a child or the, you know, comments about the calorie count of an Icee. The problem that Ron DeSantis has, and we've been talking about it endlessly, doesn't have a lot of charisma, he's very awkward on the trail.”
She also insisted that, “sometimes he comes across as a humorless robot. And in a place like Iowa, in a place like New Hampshire where you're going to be greeting all sorts of people from kids with Icees to grandmas with Icees, he's got some work to do. Listen, I think the average small town mayor is probably better at sort of the nitty-gritty of politics than Ron DeSantis is. And we're sort of seeing that over and over in clips like this.”
Henderson never explained what is so awkward about telling a child that it is “good to see you.” While Henderson may be suggesting that DeSantis sugar shamed a child for eating a cold desert in the middle of the summer, other possible explanations include that DeSantis, as a father of young children, is used to keeping an eye on his kids’ sugar intake. Another possibility is that this whole thing is no big deal and CNN needs to make mountains out of molehills in order to fill time.
And Christy filled time at work by writing about this time-filler.
Waters returned for a July 28 post whining htat Christiane Amanpour's show "brought on left-wing New York magazine journalist Rebecca Traister and Democratic strategist Joe Trippi for a long conversation harping on the evils of the racist, misogynistic presidential candidate, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis (almost as bad as Trump!) and reelecting Joe Biden, without the slightest of journalistic nods toward balance," moving swiftly to whataboutism:
Strangely, there was no mention of Vice President Kamala Harris, perhaps indicating that even the press realizes the American people have low confidence regarding her as a prospective president. There was also nothing about Hunter Biden’s expanding list of scandals, many of which touch his father the president himself.
IN a July 31 post, Nicholas Fondacaro was still whining about criticism of Florida's black history standards as he also whined that it was pointed out that DeSantis was floundering in the polls:
A week ago, ABC’s pushed Vice President Kamala Harris’s BIG LIE that Florida schools were going to teach students that slavery was a good thing. On Monday, Disney’s attack dogs on the show took things to a disgusting and hypocritical low as faux-conservative Ana Navarro minimized the brutality of slavery when she suggested Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) was getting a “beating” like a slave in the polls.
In a segment where they touted Republican presidential candidate Will Hurd attacking a Republican crowd in Iowa, Navarro was irate that former President Trump was still doing well in the polls. “[H]e's got over 50 percent. He's at 54 percent, and there's 200 other Republicans running, and you've got Trump at 54 percent,” she huffed.
She then turned her ire to DeSantis and mocked his poll numbers:
Ron DeSantis was supposed to be plan B, and he's ended up being plan bad. Very, very bad. He's at 17 percent. That's over 30 points under Donald Trump who's got two indictments and possibly a third and fourth before this month is over.
Navarro, a failed political strategist, suggested he should abandon updates to Florida’s black history curriculum by pushing the Vice President’s BIG LIE. She also used an analogy to compare the “beating” he was getting in the polls to that of the slaves and hoped he would “learn some skills” from it:
Again, the curridulum specifically states that slaves learned skills while enslaved that they used later in life -- which is arguably a take on saying that "slavery was a good thing," making it not a BIG LIE at all.
Newsmax's Morris Serves Up The Expected Biden-Bashing Topic: Newsmax
When he's not fluffing Donald Trump, perpetually wrong Newsmax pundit Dick Morris continues to feed the right-wing content machine with the usual complaints about President Biden and related subjects over the past few months:
Morris has also written the kind of Biden-bashing opinions that keep him employed at Newsmax. He used an Aug. 3 column to cheer how the right-wing attacks on Biden are hurting his favorability ratings, while Trump is allegedly unscathed:
Trump has acquired more antibodies against personal negatives than his opponent has ever had.
Neither man can claim to be unscathed by the charges against him. Whether they are aired in a courtroom or a hearing room makes little difference. They are both hurting.
But Trump and his supporters are more accustomed to the pain of hearing their candidate defamed and slandered. They read it every day in the media.
The charges against Biden, on the other hand, are new. Voters have always suspected that Trump would do anything to win and, if they vote for him anyway, largely forgive him his take-no-prisoners attitude. But the attacks on Biden and his family accusing him of bribery are relatively new.
Morris similarly complained in an Aug. 11 column: "Unless and until Biden is under actual impeachment by a vote of the U.S. House of Representatives, it will be impossible for the Biden scandals to get equal time."
Morris used a Sept. 5 column to tout a Biden-bashing poll that he doesn't disclose was conducted by Trump's election pollster:
In a McLaughlin survey of 1,000 likely voters, taken on July 25, 2023, 10% of those who voted for Biden in 2020 have now switched and would vote for Trump today.
Buyer’s remorse.
By contrast, only two percent of those who voted for Trump would now switch and back Biden instead.
The eight point differential between those who switch to Trump and those who switch to Biden accounts for all of Trump’s margin over Biden in the poll.
[...]
Biden's record as president is now set in history as an all-time failure and whatever hope he had that Trump’s vote would crater under the impact of four indictments now is clearly illusory.
Trump is on the road to victory. Biden is on track to oblivion.
Morris spent a Sept. 25 column claiming that a single bad poll means that Biden should drop out of thte race:
After working with him in the Clinton White House, if there is one Democrat I know inside out, it is my former colleague George Stephanopoulos. The recent ABC/Washington Post poll showing Trump 9 points ahead of Biden bears all of his fingerprints.
After years of seeing polls deliberately skewed against Trump to discourage people from backing or donating to him, we now have the spectacle of a poll biased for Trump, likely designed to force Biden out of the race.
Stephanopoulos would never have permitted ABC to go with a poll that shows Biden losing by 10 points unless he wanted to send a message to his party: Dump Biden.
Morris didn't mention that respected political analyst Larry Sabato called the poll a "laughable" outlier.
WND Joined Rest Of ConWeb In Pushing Bogus Biden 'No Comment' Claim Topic: WorldNetDaily
Like the Media Research Center and Newsmax, WorldNetDaily tried to manufacture right-wing outrage over President Biden purportedly saying "no comment" regarding the Maui wildfires -- while censoring the fact that nobody actually heard him say it and the biased reporter who first made the claim, who is employed by the right-wing anti-Biden British newspaper Daily Mail, has said his account was based on the opinion of lip-readers, not anyone hearing the words. James Zumwalt was first up in his Aug. 16 column complaining about the "twit parade" that supposedly appeared after thet wildfires:
While departing the beach in Delaware Sunday, Biden was asked by the media about the rising death toll in Maui. His response was, "No comment." This from presidential candidate Biden who in 2020 claimed, "Empathy matters. Compassion matters. We have to reach out to one another and heal this country – and that's what I'll do as president." Apparently, such empathy and compassion does not apply while one is lounging on the beach.
Of the three twit parade members, much more was to be expected of Biden. He supposedly is the leader we all should be looking up to in dark times.
Editor Joseph Farah weighed in as well in his Aug. 17 column:
A beautiful town in Hawaii left in ruins. At least 100 dead, but the toll will rise considerably as they search for more remains in the rubble and ash.
After three days, when asked about the tragedy, Joe Biden issued the terse and insensitive words: "No comment." He was laughing when he said it.
I thought of him looking at his watch on the day the last soldiers killed in the Afghanistan debacle were brought home. I also thought about the fact he never even went to comfort the people after the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
He's a class act, isn't he?
Farah added: "Say what you will about Trump, but he deeply loves all the good people of the USA. He put out that statement despite the fact he probably has no chance of winning the deep blue state of Hawaii – ever."
Barbara Simpson served up her own rant in an Aug. 18 column:
But for me, the reaction of the president to what has happened is a crime in itself. During one of Biden's contacts with reporters while he was in Delaware, his response to a reporter who asked if he was considering a trip to Maui to see the fire horror, was: "We're looking at it."
Gee, that's consoling. He's "looking at it." What does that mean? What warmth and concern for the losses.
Another reporter asked Biden a similar question, as he was on the beach in Delaware. His response: "No comment."
It also reported that when talking to another reporter about the situation, he seemed not to remember the name of the island and referred to it only as "the one where you see on television all of the time."
That should give no comfort to Americans who assume their president is kept up to date on what is happening in his country from national security people. Now they know that he gets his information (or lack of it) from television.
God help us.
None of these columnists mentioned the relevant fact that the right-wing reporter making the claim never heard him say those words.
WND also republished articles from elsewhere pushing the same bogus claim:
Farah whined further about the purported comment in his Aug. 22 column:
It took Joe Biden two weeks to make it to Hawaii after the devastating wildfires that likely will have killed upwards of 1,000 people as some 850 are still missing.
It was not a good day for him, after he compared the disaster to his own apocryphal kitchen fire in his Delaware home in 2004.
Biden was met with obscene catcalls as his motorcade passed rows of disgruntled residents who had received $700 checks after losing their homes.
You might recall clueless Joe issued only a "no comment" on the tragedy a week earlier. A week after that he forgot he had come to Maui, repeatedly referring the fires as occurring on "the Big Island."
WND also published an Aug. 23 syndicated column by Ben Shapiro asserting that Biden "is a narcissist, not an empath" that claimed "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." Neither mentioned that nobody actually heard the words they accuse Biden of saying.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Trump Indictment Distraction Game, Round 2 Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center repeated its distract-and-whataboutism playbook from Donald Trump's first indictment in the service of downplaying his second one, with added Clinton Equivocation. Read more >>
MRC Defends Right-Wing Exploitation Of Hunter Biden's Child For Political Purposes Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center obsesses over all things Hunter Biden if it thinks it can personally destroy him -- more importantly -- his father, since it so fervently believes in the politics of personal destruction. Thus, the MRC felt the need to mock Hunter over a child custody dispute. Tim Graham devoted his July 5 column to complaining how it was pointed out that he and his fellow right-wingers obsessed over it and -- more importantly -- that the controversy was driven by the mother's family trying to litigate the case in right-wing media:
In the July 2 New York Times, they suddenly decided to put the story of Hunter Biden’s controversial four-year-old daughter on the bottom of the front page of the Sunday paper.
The bizarre headline on a Katie Rogers piece: “Hunter Biden and the Politics of Paternity in the Media’s Glare.” There has been almost no media glare, at least on inside the Democrat media bubble. They lament the story’s “ubiquity” in conservative media.
The occasion for this sudden acknowledgment of reality was a child-support settlement after a “years-long court battle” – outside the media glare. Try finding any mention of the mother, Lunden Roberts, or the child, Navy Joan Roberts, in any “mainstream” media source. Searching for “Lunden Roberts” on the Times website gives you three results, two of them in the last few days. The name “Lunden Roberts” doesn’t appear until six paragraphs into the article, and only five paragraphs were on the front page.
[...]
It’s beyond ludicrous to assume that the Bidens aren’t “involved” in the politics of Hunter's messes. But of course, “Democratic groups dedicated to helping the Biden family have disseminated information about Mr. [Garrett] Ziegler and the Roberts family, seeking to highlight their Trump ties.”
Liberal journalists should acknowledge it’s natural that people wronged by the Bidens would be welcomed by the conservative media, just as Trump-haters (like angry niece Mary Trump) would be celebrated by the liberal media.
Graham laughably claimed that "there’s 'no evidence' this is being politicized" - even though he had just conceded that the mother's family was using political media to litigate it.
Graham concluded: "The Biden family is a sprawling reality show of misbehavior, like the Kennedys, and just like the Kennedys, the newspapers who boast they are the bold guardians of “truth” are exposed as hardened partisan operatives. The Trump family is too, yet he whined that Mary Trump talked to the media about it; the MRC previously tried to discredit a book she wrote about her family that showed Donald Trump to be something of a sociopath.
Kevin Tober complained that Republican attacks over a child were called out ina July 9 post:
On Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, moderator Chuck Todd took issue with Republicans criticizing Joe Biden for refusing to acknowledge his seventh grandchild who his son and well-known drug addict Hunter had with a stripper out of wedlock. To Todd, the issue was not that the Biden family have shunned the poor little girl Hunter and the stripper had together, it's Republicans who are the villains of the story in Todd's delusional mind.
"I think we all understand the personal challenge and concern and all of these things that the President has here, but his political foes see this and they're trying to exploit," Todd lashed out. "There’s no doubt, every day DeSantis or Trump tries to use Hunter to beat up Biden."
Todd or anyone else at NBC doesn't get to lecture or claim the moral high ground by talking about how the children of Presidents should be treated. Frequent NewsBusters readers will recall how NBC treated Ivanka Trump.
Tober seems to ahve forgotten that Ivanka worked as an adviser to her father, while Hunter plays no role in his father's administation.
In his daily hate-watch of "The View," Nicholas Fondacaro spent a July 10 post whining that it was pointed out how the mother was exploiting the situation:
While ignoring the cocaine found in the White House last week and the new Axios report exposing President Biden as someone who verbally abuses his staff, the cackling coven of ABC’s The View defended the President for “following” his son’s “cue” and shunning the 4-year-old granddaughter his son Hunter fathered with a stripper. Together, the cast attacked the mother and demanded that everyone ignore how the President was mistreating his granddaughter.
[...]
Racist co-host Sunny Hostin said she was “split on this” because the child was born into the “circumstance” but attacked the mother, Lunden Roberts for attempting to “wedge herself into the [Biden] family.”
“And apparently, this was more of a one-night stand. It wasn’t like they had a relationship, he was in the throes of addiction when this woman became pregnant,” Hostin argued, decrying how the child was in a picture wearing “an Air Force One cap and at the Jefferson Memorial.”
Hostin went on to defend Biden’s shunning by saying he was “just following what his son has set in motion. And how do you fault any of that?”
Fondacaro absolutely would -- and does, since he can politically exploit it. (And, yes, he still thinks Hostin is "racist" because he doesn't understand how metaphors work.)
In a post the same day, Peter Kotara accused CNN of trying to deflect from the story:
On Monday’s episode of CNN’s Inside Politics with Dana Bash, the host and her panel discussed the surprisingly searing New York Times column that ripped into President Biden for denying the existence of Hunter Biden’s child. Despite CNN’s personality cult following of Biden, the panel found it extremely difficult to excuse his behavior.
Bash quoted from columnist Maureen Dowd: “According to the Times the President does not acknowledge the girl and he expects his staff to follow his lead. Quote, “In strategy meetings in recent years, aides have been told that the Bidens have six, not seven grandchildren, that’s according to two people familiar with the discussions.”
She continued, lamenting that “Republicans are using it and are going to take advantage of it in a way that is unfortunate inappropriate, but the reason they are doing it is because -and able to do that- is because of the brand and the kind of person that we all know and believe Joe Biden to be because it's who he says he is, and it's somebody who is a family man.”
Joe Biden was- not a family man? What a shock! It seemed the fact Biden denies the existence of his own grandchild was what it took to break through the liberal CNN bubble and get them to realize that he’s not some kind, gentle, family man. Republicans, of course, knew that from the beginning, and took the opportunity to support Lunden Roberts in her legal battles with Hunter. But the Democrats’ cult of personality support for the Bidens prevented them from seeing any possible flaw in them, until now.
Isn't also a cult of personality of sorts -- anti-personality, perhaps? -- that Republicans "took the opportunity to support Lunden Roberts" in order to make the Bidens look bad? Kotara was silent about that.
When President Biden did eventually acknowledge this grandchild, the MRC attacked that too. Fondacaro spent a July 28 post whining that it didn't lead every non-right-wing newscast:
President Joe Biden, who the liberal media told us was a man of decency fighting for the soul of America, finally admitted that he had seven and not six grandkids after he had to be (figuratively) dragged kicking and screaming to acknowledge his 4-year-old granddaughter Navy Joan Roberts, who his son Hunter Biden fathered out of wedlock. When it came to the broadcast networks covering this embarrassing Friday evening news dumb, ABC’s World News Tonight and CBS Evening News were still ignoring the child.
Biden’s reluctant acknowledgment of Navy came in the form of an exclusive statement to PEOPLE magazine.
Instead of covering Biden’s long-delayed admission of having seven grandkids, ABC hyped a crane collapse in Maryland despite no injuries. And over on CBS, they kept their airwaves clean for Biden by highlighting an elderly man trying to find a new home for his collection of antique and vintage washing machines.
Fondacaro then gave a cookie to the right-wing outlet that did follow his narrative: "Over on Fox News Channel’s Special Report, White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich noted that the Biden administration had, up until Friday, strict rules for staff when speaking about the President’s family.
Fondacaro whined again in a July 31 post that non-right-wing media coverage wasn't sufficiently hateful:
NBC News has parlayed being the first of the broadcast networks to report on President Joe Biden finally acknowledging his 4-year-old granddaughter into lionizing him Monday morning for taking that long and withstanding the criticism. Meanwhile, ABC and CBS didn’t want to stick their necks out that far as they spent barely over a minute (64 seconds) of combined time on the story over the weekend, taking 24 hours before they mentioned it.
After being the only broadcast network to cover how the Biden clan would finally acknowledge the little girl as one of their own, NBC only talked about it selectively on Saturday’s NBC Nightly News and Monday’s Today show. It was on the Today show that they really took up the task of trying to spin Biden’s long-time callousness against his granddaughter, Navy Joan Roberts, into him being thoughtful.
[...]
[Kelly] O’Donnell suggested that it took Biden almost five years to acknowledge his granddaughter (her birthday is in August) because of the legal and paternal battle between her mother, Lunden Roberts, and Hunter and not the bad polling the family was getting.
Fondacaro offered no evidence to back up his cynical accusation that the family recognized the child solely because of "bad polling." Still, he regurgitated all this whining in the July 31 NewsBusters podcast.
Newsmax Joined Right-Wing Effort To Turn Capitol Rioter Into A Martyr Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax participated to some extent in the right-wing effort to try and make a martyr out of Ashli Babbitt, the domestic terrorist who was shot and killed by Capitol police during the Capitol riot. Larry Bell lamented in a column five days after the riot that Babbitt, "an unarmed White 14-year U.S. Air Force veteran, was fatally shot by a U.S. Capitol Police employee when attempting to illegally enter the House Chamber," gushing that "Babbitt had served as an air base security guard during Afghanistan and Iraq deployments, and later in an Air National Guard unit known as the 'Capital Guardians.'" In April 2021, Newsmax gave a TV platform to Babbitt's widow to insist that "nothing, I don't think, she did that day warranted to be, you know, one shot, one kill, just executed" and helped him promote a memorial fund he set up.
An August 2021 column by Michael Dorstewitz demanded that police officer who shot Babbitt, Michael Byrd, should be put on trial, even though an internal investigation cleared him of wrongdoing:
“I know that day I saved countless lives,” Byrd said. “I know members of Congress, as well as my fellow officers and staff, were in jeopardy and in serious danger. And that’s my job.”
There’s no question but that he was frightened. Most people would be under those circumstances. But Babbitt clearly didn’t even know Byrd was there. Had she known a gun was trained on her, it’s doubtful that she would have taken another step.
[...]
Any other officer working for any other agency under similar circumstances would have been indicted by now, and have been given a public trial.
Dorstewitz concluded by huffing, "Byrd shouldn’t be given special treatment just because he works for Nancy Pelosi." In fact, Pelosi was never a part of the Capitol police governing board.
That month, Newsmax also hyped a wrongful-death lawsuit the Babbitt family was planning to file. In October 2021, Newsmax gave a TV platform to Babbitt's mother to insisted that her daughter was murdered and to compain that Ashli was denied full military burial honors because of her participation in a violent insurrection. Newsmax let her make the same complaint a couple days later.
Newsmax also hyped Donald Trump trying to exploit her death for political purposes:
More than two years after the fact, Newsmax was still focused on Babbitt's death -- and on Byrd. The apparently unironically named Charlie McCarthy complained in a Jan. 13 article:
The Capitol Police officer who shot and killed demonstrator Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6, 2021, was housed for six months in a suite at a military base, Air Force records show.
Documents obtained by Judicial Watch show that U.S. Capitol Police paid for a suite to house Lt. Michael Byrd and a "pet" for six months in the Presidential Inn at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland from July 2021 to January 2022.
The suite, which cost thousands of dollars, normally is reserved for top brass at the base, according to the records.
It was not until the second-to-last paragraph of his article that McCarthy alluded to why this might have been the case: "Byrd revealed that he had been threatened for his actions."
When Byrd received a promotion from the Capitol Police, Rodack complained in an Aug. 25 article that was made the lead story on the Newsmax website when it was first posted:
The Capitol Police officer, who shot and killed demonstrator Ashli Babbitt during the Jan. 6, 2021, protest, is set to be promoted from lieutenant to captain.
Roll Call reported that Michael Byrd's planned promotion was announced by police in an internal memo.
Babbitt, 35, was fatally shot while attempting to climb through the broken window of a barricaded door leading to the office lobby of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi inside the Capitol.
Roll Call noted that Babbitt, an Air Force veteran, was not armed.
Rodack then noted that "Some Republicans have characterized Babbitt's death differently," citing far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's demand that "civil rights abuses" be investigated.
How Is The MRC Hating Transgender People These Days? Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's unhinged rage against transgender people has unsurprisingly continued since we last checked, and it ramped up as Pride Month approached. Curtis Houck huffed in a May 30 post that a transgender person was on his TV:
On Tuesday, CBS Mornings gave three teases and a lengthy second-hour interview to “model and trans rights activist” Geena Rocero on the heels of Rocero’s memoir Horse Barbie that celebrated their decision to become transgender at 14 years old and how being trans in the United States is “nightmarish.”
Socialist co-host Tony Dokoupil boasted in the first tease: “We will speak with model and trans rights activist, Geena Rocero, who’s telling her powerful life story in a brand new memoir.” In the second, he said Rocero was secretly transgender “for nearly 10 years.”
Dokoupil later said “we’re very excited about our next guest” as Rocero’s an “award-winning producer, model, and transgender rights advocate” who “immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines” as a teenager, but “[f]or nine years, she kept her transgender identity a secret, however, not even her modeling agent knew she had been assigned male at birth” until a 2014 TED talk.
Rocero insisted in the TED Talk that “I was assigned boy at birth, based on the appearance of my genitalia,” but Rocero knew by age five that “I’m a girl” and thus “knew...how to self-identify.”
CBS played all this as normal and uncontroversial, further bolstering their support for transgenderism and grooming children to play fast and loose with their gender and pronouns.
Houck also sneered that "Rocero [was] kvetching in eye-rolling fashion about 'attacks on...trans youth' as the 'most vulnerable' group of people 'in our country.'" Apparently Houck is quite comfortable with violent attacks on transgender people.Also, as we've noted, Houck's irrelevant tarring of Dokoupil as a "socialist" is based solely on his having done a single news report on income inequality three years ago.
Tim Graham kicked off Pride Month whining with a June 1 post whining about a newspaper article on transgender teens: "The most "woke" corporations are often media companies. USA Today started out "Pride Month" with some Pride-a-ganda at the top of the front page. The headline was all infomercial." The headline included the quote "But most of all, I'm human." How is that an "informercial"?Graham also complainiend that it was pointed out that right-wingers like him are targeting transgender people, huffing, "Conservatives oppose their 'existence' -- as in, they want them eliminated?" Graham didn't deny the accuracy of the statement or explain what his final solution for transgender people is.
Graham went on to rant that right-wing anti-transgender hate was not included in a different USA Today article that highlighted right-wing anti-trans legislation:
As you should suspect, there was not one discouraging or critical word anywhere in this piece from conservatives. Instead, readers are lectured that groups are need to "replace misinformed opinions." Does that sound like journalism that's objective? Or does "bothsidesism" need to be "replaced" in public speech?
The the article really need someone like Graham spewing transphobic hate and apparently denying that transgender people are human?
Ana Schau raged at the "trans agenda" and put "rights" for LGBTQ people in scare quotes -- as if she thinks they don't deserve any rights at all -- in a June 2 post:
Erica Hill, anchor of CNN This Morning, chose to celebrate “Pride Month” on Friday morning by “raising the alarm” regarding trans and LGBTQ “rights” alongside Montana State Representative Zooey Zephyr (D), who also happened to be transgender. Hill went so far as to falsely suggest they were “no facts out there” to support the notion that the trans agenda was being targeted at kids.
Hill and co-host, Rahel Solomon, engaged Zephyr in what was essentially a whining match over “the harassment” that the LGBTQ community had received from “restrictions” in recent legislation and “backlash” at companies, such as Kohl’s, that were trying to be “allies” to the LGBTQ community by “selling Pride merchandise.”
Schau played the social contagion card, accusing transgener people of "coming after children":
Hill also made a ludicrously false claim that “there are no facts” that trans people were “coming after children,” among other claims:
[...]
This claim was patently absurd because, as the Daily Wire aptly points out, trans and LGBTQ activists do target children—and they’re proud of it too. In a TedTalk on the matter of LGBTQ subjects in children’s media three years ago, LGBTQ rights activist, author, and creator of the series “Queer Stuff for Kids” Lindsey Amer says that “talking to kids about gay stuff is actually crucial” to their development. Amer, who also identifies as “non-binary,” claims that “exposure to diversity is an important part” of a child’s development.
One article from The New York Times and another from EducationWeek indicated that, according to studies, the number of transgender youth has shot up in recent years. Other articles from CNN indicate the importance of children transitioning early to be “consistent,” and& the heightened number of “gender-diverse” high schoolers.
It seems that, rather than not “coming after children” and “trying to change things,” these are the exact goals of that community.
Schau didn't texplain why children must instead be taught to be ashamed of who they are and be taught that LGBTQ people must be hated and feared.
A June 6 post by Craig Bannister, reprinted from the said right-wing blog that once was MRC "news" division CNSNews.com ranted that the Associated Press "doesn’t just aggressively promote transgender ideology, it even forbids calling it ideology." But he didn't explain how, exactly, it was an "ideology," preferring instead mindless repetition of right-wing terms like "liberal gender ideology."
A post the same day by Graham decided that because a New York Times podcast noted that activists wanted to bring transgender people into the mainstream, that means they started the "wars" over the issue, not right-wing transphobes desperate to keep such people marginalized:
The Left picked the "Rallying Cry" first. But the liberal media always want to warn its audience that the Republicans are always going too far -- even if their "anti-trans" positions are merely defensive. Let's not have boys compete in girls' sports. Let's not allow drastic life-changing "health care" for children that is not reversible.
[...]
The leftist media isn't really seeking to build trust with a mass audience. They have their eye on leftist Twitter and leftist advocacy groups. They're in no way the "mainstream media." As [right-wing media critic] Krakauer shows, the public is strongly against the Left on the "trans kid" issues, and the media is outside the mainstream. At least for now.
Note how Graham blames on this on a sinister and vaguely defined "Left," and that right-wing haters are merely being "defensive" -- though he never explains what, exactly, is the supposed threat to the world that not hating transgender people would bring.
Kevin Tober spent a June 7 post complaining that CNN's Dana Bash called out right-wing hypocrisy on parental rights by highlighting in an interview with Republican presidential candidate Mike Pence how his fellow right-wingerds are making gender-affirming treatment illegal in some states even with parental approval:
“I want to ask you about another issue related to this, and that is about what's going on in some legislatures,” Bash started off asking. “Some Republican-controlled states have banned transgender children from receiving gender-affirming care, even with the consent of their parents.”
“You talk a lot about parents' rights. You do it on the campaign trail,” Bash said in an attempt to make Pence look hypocritical. “So why do you believe it's the government's role to overrule what parents decide is best for their own children in this case?”
“I strongly support state legislation, including as we did in Indiana, that bans all gender transition chemical or surgical procedures for kids under the age of 18,” Pence responded.
Bash interjected to ask: “what if their parents support that?”
“There is a reason why you don't let kids get a tattoo before they're 18,” Pence correctly noted.
Attempting to be obnoxious and difficult, Bash huffed: “I don't think the government regulates tattoos.”
Pence immediately shut her down: “When you're talking about something that is absolutely transformational, and that we know from mental health experts more often than not has profound negative deleterious effects on people in the long-term."
[...]
Pence is far too kind to Bash in his answers. The proper response to her question is that it's not tolerant or helpful to children suffering from gender dysphoria to go agree with them that they are the opposite sex. They need proper psychological treatment to help them get through their issues.
Affirming a child who claims to be the opposite sex is no different than agreeing with an anorexic child when they tell you that they're fat.
Houck returned for a June 9 post declaring that you are "godless" if you don't hate transgender people like he does, though he cheered that right-wing transphobia is spreading:
The largely godless liberal media are in the tank for Pride Month, worshipping at the altar of the LGBTQ. On Thursday’s CBS Mornings, the crew teamed with an advocate for lesbians in IT (no, this wasn’t concocted by Babylon Bee) to lament trans voices aren’t being “center[ed]” in business and, more broadly, America’s “moving backwards” on LGBTQ “issues” due to a “backlash” from hateful, “anti-trans” mobs upset with Anheuser-Busch and Target.
Leane Pittsford of Lesbians Who Tech and Allies preceded the pity party by explaining her organization came about after seeing “it was a real struggle to get women, non-binary leaders to participate.”
Houck bizarrely potrayed this segment as "bullying" -- becuase it pointed out the haters, apparently.
Another June 9 post by Nicholas Fondacaro -- whose main job at the MRC is to hate-watch "the View" -- portraying co-host Whoopi Goldberg as crazed for standing in support of transgender rightws:
The most off-the-rails cast member was moderator Whoopi Goldberg, who would randomly spiral out of control in rage-fueled fits. “You are telling me that I don't know my family. You are telling me you know my kid.I’m telling you: you don't know my kid. You don’t know what I'm going through, you don’t know what I need, and you're not asking me,” she shrieked, condemning opposition to so-called “gender-affirming” surgeries that leave children mutilated and at risk for other health complications.
Addressing opponents directly, she accused them of “making them feel like they don't deserve to be here and that they don't deserve to live!” “This is on your hands! This is on your hands!” she screamed.
Goldberg’s tirade peaked as they went to a commercial break when she declared: “You are killing our children!”
Fondacaro didn't explain how right-wing transphobes supposedly know better about what's best for their children than their own parents.
WND Finally Puts A Ten Commandments Billboard Up (But Where Is Joseph Farah?) Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily started raising money for another Ten Commandments billboard campaign earlier this year, and editor Joseph Farah repeated his justification for doing so in his June 19 column:
More and more, it's a lawless time in America.
It's as if people never heard of God's Ten Commandments. We've reached a zenith when they are "calling evil good and good evil." If ever there were a time and place for reminding them of right and wrong, this would be it. After all, they have been taken down from schools, universities, government buildings, courtrooms, law schools, even churches and synagogues.
Instead, these precious words should be placed on billboards from coast to coast.
And that's exactly what we are ready to do again – WND, a Christian, conservative news service. Why? Because America needs an urgent reminder of who we once were. We were once a Christian nation. Remember? A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. No one could have imagined what would transpire in America so rapidly and relentlessly.
The last time WND began such an endeavor was in 2013. But America had not been pushed so hopelessly off its moorings, its bearings. Think how America's character has changed since then. I don't have to tell this audience. Crime has skyrocketed in every way – especially in major cities. And even the government, which once held the line on it, now seems to embrace it – does its level best to ignore and inflame it.
In other words, Farah feels the need to force a religious view on people only when there's a Democrat in the White House he can fearmonger about to raise money.
In his July 14 column, Farah declared that "We have our first Ten Commandments project almost ready to be unveiled. I'll be ready to announce the spectacular new design and location soon. To say it's timely would be an understatement. Keep watching for our announcement. We welcome your participation in this campaign to resurrect the most renowned statement of God on the His law at a times such as this." We went on to do some all-purpose money begs amid playing victim, declaring that "We have been "canceled," attacked, mocked, lied about, suppressed, demonetized and blacklisted by Big Tech and other entities, threatened with extinction because we try to follow God's ways as a Christian news source." We're pretty sure spreading fake news -- something WND lovestodo -- violates the commandment about bearing false witness and is in contradiction to following "God's ways as a Christian news source."
In between, Farah used a July 18 column to complain about an effort to remove a Ten Commandments monumente from the grounds of the state capitol in Arkansas: "A successful challenge to the Ten Commandments monument in Arkansas would represent a tidal blow to the nation and the historic heritage of its Judeo-Christian ideals. They want to REMOVE that heritage and all historical memory of God and His connection to our history." Unsurprisingly, he took the opportunity to shill for his billboard campaign:
Some people have already responded to our appeals. And we're now ready to begin with the billboards as promised. We have a new design – easier to see from a distance. We're hoping that others will join with us. We need the help of like-minded and like-spirited partners – to erect Ten Commandments billboards across this nation, hopefully a great many of them. Can you imagine the effect that would have?
America has never needed a campaign like this as badly as it does right now.
It's time to roll them out again – on highways and byways, in big cities and small towns, so that no one is without excuse as to the moral code God has given His children, and to bring this nation to repentance and, hopefully, to genuine revival and renewal.
WND finally put up a single billboard, and Farah gushed about it in his Aug. 14 column:
They are finally here! WND's Ten Commandment campaign is up and running in Dallas!
That's right. Take a look above – a gorgeous location. We just put that one up. And, if you'd like to see these billboards in America again, help make more possible with donations of any kind – large and small.
Farah did not explain why the billboard uses the British spelling of "neighbor" in the ninth commandment when the billboard is located in America (nor did he mention that his organization regularly violates that commandment). He did, however, provide his partisan reasoning for putting it up:
It's not the first time we've put up these kinds of billboards. The last time WND began such an endeavor was in 2013 – when Barack Obama was president. We thought that was a bad time in America. The nation had not been pushed so hopelessly off its moorings, its bearings. Think how America's character has changed since then. In 2020, many people believed we had an election STOLEN. Today that same president who supposedly won is daring to run again. President Donald Trump has been indicted four times now – for nothing! To keep him from running and winning.
In other words, Farah cares more about politics than religion, and with this billboard campaign, he's using religion as an excuse to advance a partisan political agenda.
Farah's wife, Elizabeth, made an appearance on far-right channel Real America's voice to plug the campaign; the video of it is apparently no longer available.
Farah's Aug. 30 column reopeated a lot of his earlier promotion ofthe campaign (and related self-victimization). His column was reprinted on Sept. 6 without explanation.There has been no update on the billboard campaign since then.
Indeed, Farah's archive indicates the Aug. 30 column was the last original column he wrote; there have been a few other reprints since then, and no explanation has been given for his absence. Remember that WND hid Farah's stroke in 2019 until it was forced to disclose it (and then use it to play victim) when the Washington Post published an article exposing WND's shady financial shenanigans (though WND to this day has never refuted anything in the article). It appears likely that Farah may have had another stroke (he has said he had a series of them in 2019, so that's a likely possibility) or some other medical issue that WND will not inform readers about until he either gets better or gets worse -- and even then, it's likely such an announcement about his condition will be timed to achieve maximum political and business benefit.
MRC Heavily Defended Controversial Jason Aldean Song Topic: Media Research Center
For right-wingers, the song of the summer was Jason Aldean's "Try That In A Small Town," which critics argued is a right-wing revenge fantasy in which city folk are dared to come to a small town so they can get what they deserve. Naturally, the MRC got upset what that subtext was pointed out, as NIcholas Fondacaro whined in a July 20 post:
The liberal media put a target on country music star Jason Aldean this week as they smeared him and his hit song Try That in a Small Town as racist. Despite the lack of evidence and no attempt to show any, the cast of ABC’s The View engaged in their vapid and contemptible hatemongering. In addition to baselessly smearing Aldean with accusations of embracing racially charged mob justice, they attacked small towns as beneath big cities.
Moderator Whoopi Goldberg couldn’t even get the name of the song correct as she introduced the segment at the top of the show. “So, country singer Jason Aldean is getting backlash for the video of his song ‘not in a small town’ [sic], which critics are saying is racist. It’s got lyrics, racist lyrics, and images,” she proclaimed while having something in her mouth.
While the song made no direct mention of Black Lives Matter (lyrics here) and the music video used images from news reports, Goldberg insisted Aldean was exclusively “talking about black people” and outrageously defended the BLM riots as them “taking care of the people in their town” (click “expand”):
[...]
Faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin continued to show how absolutely useless she was as she too baselessly accused Aldean of encouraging racist white mob justice. “What I thought of when I read that was Ahmaud Arbery. I think of a black man in a small town in the South who literally got shot for doing nothing wrong,” she proclaimed.
She also whined that his music wasn’t inclusive enough. “So, what I think becomes problematic is that there is a lack of recognition of what this means to about 50 percent of the country whose experience isn't Jason Aldean's,” she whined.
Fondacaro insisted that "Their conversation and hatemongering said more about them and where their heads were at than it did about Aldean, small towns, and the people who like the song," even though he refused to address of the specific concerns they had with the song.
A July 25 post by Tim Graham was a reprint of a rant by Charlie Daniels Jr. that was "sent to Charlie Daniels Band fans to spread the word against the woke mob," which Graham introduced as defending the song's "fierce pushback against woke-ism" and complaining that "people find racism in lyrics that never mention race." Of coruse, one does not have to us explicitly racist language to be racist. Daniels went on to repeat right-wing talking points against Black Lives Matter, since footage of racial justice riots was used in the song's video:
I know there have been problems with police brutality, and I would never say that all cops are good, but I would also stand up to anyone who says all members of the law enforcement community are bad, but here’s what BLM doesn’t want you to know. BLM is Antifa and Occupy Wall Street, etc... They are the militant wing of the leftists which began with radical groups like the Weather Underground from the 1960s.
In fact, BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors says she and co-founder Alicia Garza are “trained Marxists,” and decried the “nuclear family structure” and aimed to “dismantle the patriarchal practice,” which was later scrubbed from the BLM website.
Not to say that all who have followed the BLM protests and riots are in it to promote the organization's agenda, but the agenda is there whether they realize it or not.
The bottom line is this, neither song mentions race, and both songs are anti-lawlessness, and anti-violent crime, and it’s as simple as that.
Unmentioned by Fondacaro, Graham and Daniels was the fact that the small-town courthouse in front of which Aldean performed in the vdeo was the site of the lynching of a black teenager in 1927 -- suggesting, unintentionally or otherwise, that assertion of one's rights isn't something one should try in a small town. That finally did get mentioned in a July 25 post by Alex Christy, who complained that MSNBC's Andrea MItchell brought it up in a segment discussing the establishment of memorials to Emmett Till, another lynched black teenager:
Mitchell then one-upped herself, “And the second biggest song in the country right now is Try That In a Small Town sung by Jason Aldean whose music video was filmed outside a Tennessee courthouse where a black teenager was lynched 1927 and a race riot took place in 1946. And remember, it was all during Aldean’s Las Vegas performance that a gunman opened fire, killing 60 people in 2017.”
What the 2017 shooting has to do with Aldean other than the unfortunate coincidence he happened to being performing at the time it happened was never said. Finally, Mitchell asked a question, “So, how important is it to designate these monuments against this backdrop?”
Clay Waters complained in a July 27 post that people keep finding implicit racism in the song, insisting that anyone who does is "easily-offended":
Amanda Marie Martinez, a country-music focused contributor to National Public Radio issued a print piece in response to a media-manufactured controversy Saturday, “Jason Aldean's 'Small Town' is part of a long legacy with a very dark side.”
Martinez’s ideological alarmism about Aldean’s song, which survived industry cancellation and debuted at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, an amazing accomplishment for a country artist, was couched behind a façade of scholarly research.
Jason Aldean's "Try That in a Small Town," which ignited controversy this week over claims that the song and its new video promote white supremacy and violence, is far from the first country song to attack cities using racist dog whistles….But Aldean's latest release invokes and builds on a lineage of anti-city songs in country music that place the rural and urban along not only a moral versus immoral binary, but an implicitly racialized one as well. Cities are painted as spaces where crime, sexual promiscuity and personal and financial ruin occur, while the "country" is meanwhile framed as a peaceful space where happiness reigns.
“Implicit” apparently means that race isn’t part of the song, but the easily-offended will imagine it anyway.
Waters did concede that "A couple of National Review writers have found fault with Aldean’s blunt lyrics and video," then quickly switched to rap whataboutism: "But NPR's accusations look biased, given that NPR and its supporters have been fine with the decades-strong genre of 'gangsta rap,' which unlike Aldean's blunt paean to protecting one’s neighborhood against anarchic violence, truly does celebrate killing those who cross into your 'hood."
Graham returned to play his own version of whataboutism in an Aug. 7 post:
The New York Times looked ridiculous in several articles on alleged racism and "vigilantism." Jason Aldean's song "Try That In a Small Town" never mentioned race, but was somehow a call to racist violence. But a South African leader chanted "Kill the Boer!" -- an explicit call to violence against white South African farmers -- and the Times pooh-poohed it as a "far right" conspiracy theory.
Graham also defended Aldean's lyrics: "It's amazing that leftists can hear a protest against violent crimes like "carjack an old lady" and automatically assume blacks are associated with it."
Waters returned for more defense in an Aug. 12 post:
National Public Radio’s pop-culture show “It’s Been a Minute” bravely tackled the made-up problem of racist country music, in the wake of the failed censorship of singer Jason Aldrean’s hit Try That in a Small Town. Tax-funded NPR blurbed the August 1 radio segment under this heading: “How racism became a marketing tool for country music.”
After establishing her bona fides as a country music lover, Luse pondered the fact of three country songs at the top of the Billboard Hot 100: “But then you press play.”
Singer Jason Aldean: (Singing) Cuss out a cop, spit in his face, stomp on the flag and light it up. Yeah, you think you're tough?
Luse: ….Now, I don't know about you, but, for me, when I heard those lyrics for the first time, I had a feeling Aldean was referring to the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprisings. Turns out I wasn't just imagining it.
Now why would Luse, who is black, automatically think of BLM upon hearing Aldean's lyrics about violent acts, disrespecting cops, and burning flags? Isn’t that a bit “racist” in itself?
She also conveniently left out the preceding lyrics "Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk/Carjack an old lady at a red light/Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store/Ya think it's cool, well, act a fool if ya like." Definitely not the most political of messages.
Waters again played rap whataboutism: "It's a good thing no rap songs have racial slurs or misogynistic content, right? But NPR doesn’t run aggrieved stories about those offensive lyrics. Only things that anger the left were newsworthy."
Christian Toto's Aug. 26 column got an assist from right-wing sports guy Clay Travis to cheer that the controversy over the song made it a hit:
Travis has another secret against Cancel Culture. He doesn’t care what anyone says about him online. In fact, his “haters” often provide the best advertising for his work.
And he’s far from alone.
He points to Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town,” a battle cry against “mostly peaceful” protests that ravaged cities nationwide.
The media aligned with the far-Left (again) to shred the song as bigoted and hateful. That gave it tremendous exposure, allowing consumers to make up their minds about the track and its meaning.
“It’s legitimately the biggest radio hit … of his entire career,” Travis said. “Even [Aldean] would say, ‘this is nowhere near the best song I’ve ever written’ … but the negative attention from the Cancel Culture community is so powerful … a ton of people who would have never heard that song heard it.”
Toto and Travis didn't explain how criticizing the song automatically makes one "far-Left."
WND Fears Michelle Obama Becoming President Topic: WorldNetDaily
As Obama Derangement Syndrome flares upagain at WorldNetDaily, that means Michelle Obama is a target as well -- particularly as the 2024 presidential election starts to heat up. Obama obsessive Jack Cashill has already weighed in, but other WND writers are as well. Larry Tomczak is particularly obssessed with her; in his May 2 column, misleadingly headlined "White House race: Michelle O. and Biden declare their plans," Tomczak had to admit that she explicitly and emphatically denied wanting to run for president, but then argued that she shouldn't be believed:
Do we believe her? She checks all the boxes: attractive female, super famous; black; could be the first woman president; is a media and Hollywood darling; has mega donors and Dems salivating at the once-in-a-generation opportunity.
Okey-dokey, done deal, question settled (for now). Time to complete her promotional book tour and return to one of the epic properties in her $30 million portfolio of properties in Martha's Vineyard, Hawaii and Washington, D.C.
Tomczak followed in his Aug. 29 column, though starting with a Rush Limbaugh insult of her shows the hatred in his heart for her:
Before Rush Limbaugh left this planet for his heavenly home, he warned us that the Democratic Party wants "Michelle My Belle" in the White House.
Years ago, I wrote a commentary saying the same thing.
The day of reckoning is fast approaching for Mr. Biden and his son, Hunter. If you're OK with letting him tell you how you're to raise your children, shouldn't you first consider how Hunter turned out? And how about the way America has turned out after two and a half years of his terrible track record?
[...]
The Democrats' bench is as thin as a stale taco shell. That's why all eyes will soon turn to someone whose name rhymes with that shell.
The Democrats are desperate not to relinquish control of the country they've resolved to refurbish as a progressive, big-government state. Barack Obama spoke of it when he started his reign, and now he can coach his wife to complete what he called the "fundamental transformation of America."
Ironically, Tomczak went on to list several perfectly logical reasons she could be president -- she's popular, well-liked, "charismatic and articulate," and "If Trump gets the nomination, she'd be an attractive and formidable opponent contrasted with his tough guy, sometimes bullying personality." nBut he closed with fearmongering anyway because that's what he does:
Here's the deal: The United States is at a crossroads and time of frightening, accelerating moral decline. If Michelle Obama gets the nomination for the presidency, discernment will be critical because behind the person, personality and popularity is a Democratic platform with unreserved support for multitudes of issues contrary to Scripture and undermining the Judeo-Christian values upon which America was founded.
Apparently, Tomczak thinks it's a "Judeo-Christian value" for Republcians to support a credibly accused criminal like Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, an anonympously written Aug. 11 "news" article cited anonymous sources in a foreign newspaper to claim that Michelle Obama will be the next president:
A columnist in the Telegraph is predicting that "establishment stooge" Michelle Obama could be the next president.
"A source says that in conversation with a foreign politician, it emerged that their government assumes Joe Biden will not be the Democratic nominee in 2024. Joe will pull out before the first primaries; it will be too late for a grassroots candidate to enter the fray; an establishment stooge will be crowned at the convention. And the name of that lucky winner? Michelle Obama," explained columnist Tim Stanley.
He explained he's heard from U.K. sources that when governments engage with Joe Biden "they feel they are dealing with the face of an administration but not always the person in charge."
The columnist explained a "coup" to replace Biden with the next Obama available, "far from being revolutionary, would reinforce the line of political continuity that stretches from 2008-2024, with only Trump’s election as a temporary aberration (Michelle has revealed that his amusing inauguration caused her to 'sob uncontrollably')."
He said, "Mrs Obama has always polled well. She has published two best-selling books of biography and womanly wisdom. She has served in the White House. She is known by everyone but, unlike Trump, has retained some of the enigma of privacy. She has denied that she has any intention of running for the presidency, but that’s usually a sure-fire sign that someone is interested."
The anonymous writer went on to note that "The concept of a candidacy by Michelle Obama also has been explored in Joel Gilbert's 'Michelle Obama 2024: Her Real Life Story and Plan for Power.'" It wasn't mentioned that Gilbert is a charlatan who has previously pushed numerous false claims about Barack Obama, and therefore should not be trusted.
After Failed Right-Wing Radio Stint, Jorge Bonilla Returns To MRC Topic: Media Research Center
Last year, the Media Research Center's Jorge Bonilla -- head of its MRC Latino project -- made a big deal out of how an investment group funded in part by George Soros bought a group of Hispanic radio stations, calling the new combine "Radio Soros" despite offering no evidence that Soros would have any say whatsoever in the stations' content. One of the stations purchased was a Miami outlet known as Radio Mambi -- notorious for its spreading of far-right hate conspiracy theories -- and he touted how "the station's top talent left the station rather than work for a Soros-backed outlet, and landed at conservative Americano Media." Bonilla didn't explain it, but Americano Media was a media group that effectively wanted to be the Spanish-language Fox News and did a lot of the same right-wing conspiracy-mongering and narrative-pushing that Radio Mambi did.
Bonilla decided he wanted to get in on that sweet action. In a June 2 tweet, he announced that "I am thrilled to announce the launch of The Jorge Bonilla Show, weekdays noon-2/E on @AmericanoMedia radio starting on Monday, June 5th," and that he would be leaving the MRC, adding in a later tweet, "After years of advocating for balance in Spanish-language media, I am proud to be part of the solution." Bonilla didn't explain how helping to spread bogus conspiracy theories and mindlessly repeating right-wing talking points was any sort of "solution."
Unfortunately for Bonilla, it turned out he was leaving the MRC for a sinking ship. A couple months later, it was reported that Americano Media had run out money, with the chief culprits allegedly being overspending and mismanagement -- tough one has to presume that the audience for right-wing Spanish-language content was not as big or profitable as activists had assumed -- and employees (Bonilla presumably among them) were not getting paid. As those employees refused to work without getting paid, Americano Media was effectively shut down.
Bonilla and the MRC said nothing about all this drama, of course. And as Americano Media shut down, Bonilla quietly returned to the MRC at the end of August, once again cranking out posts for MRC Latino. Among his recent contributions are a Sept. 27 post ranting that Spanish-language TV network Univision doesn't "represent the Hispanic community" and that it "has no mandate from Heaven with which to speak on behalf of the Hispanic community" because it purporedly is nothing more than "a Democrat talking points regurgitator" -- never mind that he and Americano Media were and are little more than regurgitators of Republican talking points.
NEW ARTICLE: WND Whitewashes Capitol Rioters Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily believes that it has to mislead about -- and outright censor -- what participants in the Capitol riot did in order to create a narrative that they are victims and "political prisoners." Read more >>
MRC Tries To Spin Twitter Working With Other Countries To Stop Hate Speech Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is so giddy at the prospect of Elon Musk suing the Anti-Defamation League for pointing out anti-Semitism on Twitter (well, X) -- so much so that it called in racist cartoonist Scott Adams to defend Musk -- that it failed to tell its readers that around the same time, Twitter CEO :Linda Yaccarino rushed to post a policy on anti-Semitism that 1) had to be edited several times and 2) was posted late on a Friday night, when many Jews are observing the Sabbath. No mention either of how Twitter is contining to place ads from major advertisers next to anti-Semitic content. It also won't tell readers how Musk has said not only that he will continue to cozy up to China -- which the MRC once criticized -- but hat he thinks there are two sides to China's ongoing repression and alleged genocide of the country's ethnic Uyghur population.
Instead, the MRC is a Musk fanboy and will excuse pretty much anything he does. Gabriela Pariseau hyped another "Twitter files" thing in a Sept. 11 post, claiming that "Twitter employees worked with a Saudi Arabian social media “spy ring” to “unmask” accounts critical of the government. When the DOJ exposed the operation, Twitter executives helped cover up the platform’s role." Pariseau also claimed that the writer of it, Lee Fang, is an "independent investigative reporter" despite the fact that given Fang is writing what Muak told him to write -- like all the other "Twitter files" reporters -- he cannot possibly be "independent."
The MRC's tunnel vision over Twitter holding right-wingers accountable for their hate and misinformation -- which the MRC likes to dishonestly portray as "censorship" -- kicked in again as Pariseau whined in a Sept. 13 post:
Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) has once again embraced silent suppression and has begun placing sensitive content filters on nearly every original media post from a government watchdog organization.
The American Accountability Foundation reported on Substack Monday that Twitter has begun censoring much of its content. The group has worked to expose the President of the American Library Association Emily Drabinski as a leftist activist dimissing parental concerns and pushing wild LGBT ideologies in libraries.
AAF says they immediately saw apparent backlash via X censorship. “[A]fter we posted images of the LGBTQ books they are pushing on our children, X (Twitter) hit our account with a ‘sensitive content’ warning on ALL OUR MEDIA POSTS, and shadowbanned our account so that you won’t find us in a search on X.”
A content warning is not "censorship," however much Pariseau wants you to believe otherwise. By contrast, the MRC refused to call Musk adding a needless delay when a user clicks on a link in a tweet that went to certain websites Musk hates was somehow not "censorship."
The next day, Catherine Salgado was back to Musk PR mode:
X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk says the platform should be for moderate Americans, not just leftists.
The All In Podcast, which is hosted by David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, and David Friedberg, posted an interview they did with Elon Musk at the All In Summit. During the interview, Musk noted that, in the past, social media has all been “very left-leaning to far left-leaning,” suspending Republicans far more than leftists. He also expressed his goal of changing that online monopoly. The X owner and billionaire said that “The suspensions of several Republican candidates, interests, or voices were at least ten times the rate of—suppression of left-wing voices.” He also expressed his goal of changing that online monopoly and allowing free speech for people of all political stripes. His comments, however, come amidst new censorship policies on X, including an increased emphasis on freedom of speech, not reach.
Musk specifically addressed the accusation that he is somehow making Twitter a right-wing conspiracy morass. “[Our goal with] the X platform is really meant to be a level playing field, a public square that is supportive of…most of the country, the middle 80%,” he said. Musk noted that before he bought the platform “Social media ha[d been] very left-leaning to far left-leaning, and really Twitter was far-left leaning.”
He continued: “The suspensions of several Republican candidates, interests, or voices were at least ten times the rate of—suppression of left-wing voices on, you know, [the] old Twitter.”
Musk offered no proof to back up this claim, and Salgado apparently made no effort to ask for any. She also did not disclose that Sacks is a pro-Musk loyalist who helped run Twitter after Musk bought it, so there was never going to be any tough questioning here. Instead, she huffed that right-wing hate was still being moderated as she groused that Musk "did not address the fact that anti-woke individuals are still censored on Twitter."
When the Washington Post reported how Twitter is cooperating with German authorities in providing information on accounts linked to hate crimes -- whihc tracks with reports that Twitter has regularly complied with similar data reports from other countries, even more so than it did prior to Musk's ownership -- Tom Olohan ran to Musk's defense in a Sept. 19 post, again repeating the MRC dishonest mantra that trying to address hate and lies on Twitter is "censorship":
X owner Elon Musk gave a warning to any X (formerly Twitter) employees who bow to outside pressure and censor free speech.
Musk responded harshly to a Washington Post article that claimed his social media platform was cooperating with German censorship requests. In a Sept. 17 X post, Musk wrote, “At the risk of stating the obvious, I don’t know what’s going on with every part of this platform all the time, but our policy worldwide is to fight for maximum freedom of speech under the law.”
While this statement left room for X to censor content that is violative of local laws, Musk warned his employees not to go farther. “Anyone working for X Corp who does not operate according to this principle will be invited to further their career at any one of the other social media companies who sell their soul for a buck,” Musk added.
Musk’s statements coincide with many of his previous commitments to free speech. However, since Musk purchased the social media platform back in 2022, his choice to reinstate prominent accounts such as Christian satire website The Babylon Bee and Canadian professor Dr. Jordan Peterson and his allowance of honest discussion on social issues have apparently been met with internal resistance.
Olohan whined that Twitter cooperating with Germany was somehow Germany's fault because it does not have "freedom of speech":
But Musk’s commitment to allowing legal speech, although heartening news for those who live in the free world, may provide little relief for those in Germany and countries with similar laws. The Post claimed that X “is complying with requests to turn over more information about its users to prosecutors in online hate-crime investigations.”
The liberal rag added that Germany “has strict hate-speech laws forbidding certain defamation of politicians and promotion of white supremacy, and the company under Musk has turned over reams of user data to prosecutors to help identify those who break the law, according to three prosecutor offices who spoke with The Washington Post.”
German “citizens” do not have freedom of speech or the right to make choices about their child’s education. The Post article even mentioned a case against a man for being rude to a politician. Absurdly, this article ended with a quote attempting to distinguish Germany from authoritarian governments.
Olohan didn't expalin why hateful white supremaicsm and Nazism should be allowed to spread unchecked, or why it's "censorship" to try and stop something so obvoiusly sickening and evil.
What's Mychal Massie Melting Down Over Now? Topic: WorldNetDaily
Homosexual pride month is now over. But, what exactly did those celebrating debauchery accomplish to ingratiate themselves with the public? How many parents go to bed at night, after viewing the crude morally depraved behavior exhibited from the White House to the television screen to the streets in the most decadent displays of grotesque amoral behavior masquerading as parades, and think how wonderful such abominating behavioral practices are?
After hearing and seeing these people on the news dressed in outfits that screamed horrific depravity, how many parents voiced to their children: "That's what I want you to be when you grow up"? How many parents were convinced to take their children to the nearest clinic and start getting the child puberty blockers?
How many parents were thrilled to hear these people boast: "We're coming for your children"? Or is the real question parents were asking: "What can we do to protect our children?"
The indisputable fact is that these people are coming after our children and they're being aided and abetted by the Biden administration and the public schools.
[...]
I believe a great guilt of responsibility must be laid at the feet of Christendom. True Christians have the Sword of Truth, i.e., God's Word. However, many, if not most, not only ignore it, but they are contributors to this cesspool.
I drove by many churches during June that had rainbow flags and signboards on the church property. I saw one just last week bearing the words "Love is welcome and practiced here," with the rainbow as its background. Apparently, the Bibles they use omit Leviticus 20 (KJV). What they support isn't love; it is sin.
The easiest way to identify a hopelessly lost cause is to listen to the gurgitation of idiocy coming from those advancing and/or sponsoring said cause. A prime example of same is the outrageous claim written in a dissenting opinion by associate justice of the Supreme Court Ketanji Brown Jackson in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.
In what appeared to be a last ditch effort to give a single-digit salute to the six SCOTUS justices whose decision effectively ended melanin-coded affirmative action as consideration for college admission, Jackson threw everything at the wall hoping something would stick.
[...]
Jackson and those like her would have us forget and/or ignore the fact that the greatest cause of death and harm to so-called black infants is not a shortage of melanin-visible doctors; rather it's the unlimited number of crayon-colored doctors responsible for the murder of 25 million or more unborn crayon-color children.
At the Family Leadership Summit forum held Friday, July 14, 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa, [Asa] Hutchinson was pressed during his interview with [Tucker] Carlson for being soft on the issue of children's sex changes. In response to Tucker's question, Hutchinson opined: "Tucker, I hope that we'll be able to talk about some [real] issues."
That was an incredible statement! Apparently, it was no less so to Tucker who pointed out: "This is one of the biggest issues in the country … it is a central issue."
[Mike] Pence was seething during his forum interview with Carlson. He was beyond angry because Tucker dared ask real, substantive questions. After a ponderous response to a question, Pence made a statement that could be taken two different ways. His response could have been taken as his meaning he "wasn't concerned" with Ukraine's military arsenal, or it could be taken as I and most everyone else understood it, that he is in fact "not concerned" with the most significant of domestic issues rank-and-file Americans are confronted with every day.
The point is that by observing these two politicians, the depth of their counterfeit is unambiguous. They're phonies who paint on false smiles and respond with canned answers to the applause of a handful of plants in the audience and, typically, a sycophant interviewer lobbing balloon-size softball questions.
And yet, the topic that has dominated the "it's racist” drumbeat has been Jason Aldean's monster hit "Try That in a Small Town." What else would we expect from Biden instigators?
It's a conundrum to sane persons how contradictory and conflicted the reasoning of hebephrenic minstrels and racism agitators can be. These people are truly demonically influenced. Jason Aldean's song is music about the security and social construct of the small-town South, perhaps even a reminder of the melancholic and slow life of his childhood in Macon, Georgia.
Not everyone growing up in the South is or was a racist. Regardless of what we see represented by Trotskyites like Stacy Abrams, Bernice King et al. The purveyors of immiseration have nothing else to offer but lies and misrepresentation. They're truly evil, wicked people whose single agenda in life is to mislead and foment antipathy based upon the fallacious construct of skin color. They would call a ham sandwich racist, because it was served on white bread.
[...]
I look forward to seeing Jason Aldean in concert, where I'll applaud and say amen for him writing such a wonderful song about the small-town America I love.
There are none more stenotopic when it comes to the pursuit of rejecting modernity from cradle to grave than hate-filled Negro women who behaviorally redefine "harridan." That's not ipse dixit. It's a fact verifiable on every quantifiable level.
In fact, so much so, that I'm beginning to wonder if there's a pill the pimps and harlots responsible for the prostitution of skin pigmentation and the discord sown by same take each morning that enables them to slither through life spawning and sowing lies and the rejection of modernity for self promotion.
The latest elapid to enter the metaphorical societal garden is called an NBC reporter going by the name of Char Adams. I thought Jam-mu (sic) Greene, Stacy Abrams, Joy(less) Reid, Maxine 'drip-drip' Waters, who is as mad as a hatter, the Obama woman et al. were among the most spiritually and emotionally diminished of their species, but apparently, Adams has decided to make the contest for same a horse race.
Each of the women I reference above has tried to elevate herself to the top of the pile of stuff Mrs. Truman spent 25 years trying to get President Truman to call fertilizer.
[...]
Adams and her kind are the progeny of the marriage of agitprop and socialist alchemy in higher education. Her kind goes into the educational community and falls prey to the lies and Marxian propaganda. As William F. Buckley noted: "We see how a number of energetic social innovators, plugging their grand designs, succeeded over the years in capturing the liberal intellectual imagination. And since ideas rule the world, the ideologues, having won over the intellectual class, simply walked in and started to run things."
Suffice it to say, that no group of people has been more disaffected than the contentious, mean-spirited women coming out of colleges and universities today, who base even their oxygen intake on being a crayon color.
These people are a shameful display of wasted opportunity. They should be concerned about teaching women to be more than sperm repositories for men who have no intention of making a life with them. They should view themselves as more than cash machines for Planned Parenthood.
MRC's Graham Melts Down Over 'Girl Dinner' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Rsearch Center has a bit of a misogynist streak, and that popped up again in an Aug. 12 post by Tim Graham (bolding in original):
The Washington Post is so "progressive" that even the Food section has to channel a feminist message. Social media sites have spotlighted something they call "Girl Dinner," which is more like "girl snacks," pictures of grapes and cheese and bread, something you eat when no one else is around. There's nothing wrong with a woman enjoying solitude with whatever she wants to munch.
But writer Emily Heil went out and located experts to shift the narrative into abortion and male chauvinism. The headline was "Is Girl Dinner a simple nosh or the end of the patriarchy?"
Emily Contois, a media studies professor at the University of Tulsa who studies food and gender, likes the pure idea of Girl Dinner — that women can befreed by the expectation of society to nurture and provide for others, that they can enjoy the kind of self-indulgent “you do you” eating that men have long felt entitled to. “Especially in the early videos, there’s this lovely connection among women, this sort of like happy, open-mouthed grin of recognition and understanding a sort of camaraderie,” she says.
But the term might not be as innocent as it seems, she says — after all, we’re not living in the utopia of Greta Gerwig’s Barbieland. “Outside the patriarchy, ‘girl’ isn’t diminutive or derisive or condescending — ‘girl’ is complete and wonderful and fulfilled on her own terms,” Contois says. “But we are not in that place, right? Like, we are in a moment where in the United States women have fewer rights over their bodies than they’ve had for a really long time.”
Does everything have to be "gendered"? Can't a plate of grapes and cheese be gender-neutral?
Graham grumbling about things being gendered is hilarious given the rampanttransphobia he and the rest of the MRC display, in which they loudly insist that there are only two possible genders and never the twain shall meet. The same day, a post by subordinate Alex Christy ranted that a CNN article "now seeks to turn words like 'leaf,' 'sun,' and 'star' into pronouns. This is not satire." When a person in the articleis quoted as sahing that "Refusing to let people self-identify is a way of excluding them," Christy retorted: No, refusing to identify a human being as a leaf is not 'a way of excluding them.' That is simply incorrect."
Neither Graham nor Christy explain why their narrow gendering and pronoun rules should be imposed on everyone or why people they don't like are not permitted to identify themselves as they see fit. Instead, Graham spent the rest of his post petulantly sniping at Contois for having written a book about food and gender.
While it was busy defending Ron DeSantis over his revisionist black history curriculum in Florida schools, the Media Research Center's DeSantis Defense Brigade studiously ignored other controversies involving the Florida governor:
When he's not 
Like the 
The Media Research Center obsesses over all things Hunter Biden if it thinks it can personally destroy him -- more importantly -- his father, since it so fervently believes in the politics of personal destruction. Thus, the MRC felt the need to mock Hunter over a child custody dispute. Tim Graham devoted his July 5 
Newsmax participated to some extent in the right-wing effort to try and make a martyr out of Ashli Babbitt, the domestic terrorist who was shot and killed by Capitol police during the Capitol riot. Larry Bell lamented in a 
The Media Research Center's unhinged rage against transgender people has unsurprisingly continued 
WorldNetDaily started raising money for another Ten Commandments billboard campaign 
For right-wingers, the song of the summer was Jason Aldean's "Try That In A Small Town," which critics 
As Obama Derangement Syndrome 
Last year, the Media Research Center's Jorge Bonilla -- head of its MRC Latino project -- 
The Media Research Center is so giddy at the prospect of Elon Musk suing the Anti-Defamation League for pointing out anti-Semitism on Twitter (well, X) -- so much so that it 
Homosexual pride month is now over. But, what exactly did those celebrating debauchery accomplish to ingratiate themselves with the public? How many parents go to bed at night, after viewing the crude morally depraved behavior exhibited from the White House to the television screen to the streets in the most decadent displays of grotesque amoral behavior masquerading as parades, and think how wonderful such abominating behavioral practices are?
The Media Rsearch Center has a bit of a misogynist streak, and that popped up again in an Aug. 12 
