At Trump's Arraignment, MRC Complains That Mughots Were Taken, Trump's Fantasy Weight Was Mocked
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's aggressive defense of Donald Trump over his (fourth) indictment cointinued when he traveled to Georgia to be arraigned and have his mugshot taken. Bill D'Agostino whined in an Aug. 24 post that non-right-wing networks covered the story while purportedly obsessing over mugshots:

Over the past 24 hours, CNN and MSNBC have gleefully brandished the mugshots of Donald Trump’s co-defendants like grim trophies for their audiences to gawk at.

MRC analysts examined all coverage on CNN and MSNBC from 6:00 p.m. on August 23 to that same time the following day. During that 24-hour span, the two cable networks displayed mugshots of former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, former Trump administration Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and the other defendants a whopping 188 times, amounting to a combined 83 minutes of airtime.

MSNBC led the pair in both total on-screen displays and screen time; they showed the mugshots 122 times, for a total of 56 minutes and 23 seconds. CNN showed the images 66 times, which amounted to 27 minutes and 12 seconds of screen time.

[...]

If these journalists want to get offended when they’re accused of publicly enjoying this latest Trump indictment, then they should probably stop publicly enjoying it. For a start, they could quit waving around the latest mugshots like excited baseball card collectors.

Strangely, D'Agostino and his "MRC analysts" didn't offer a count for how many times the mugshots appeared on Fox News, even though its right-wing bias is the gold standard by which it measures all media coverage.

Serving up the complaetely opposite view, Kevin Tober complained that some argued that Trump would use his mugshot a a political tool:

During CNN’s live coverage of Trump’s motorcade to the Fulton County, Georgia jail for the former President’s booking on Erin Burnett OutFront, fill-in anchor Kaitlan Collins and correspondent Sara Murray fretted that Trump would use his new mugshot “to his political advantage” and fundraise off the photo to help his presidential campaign. 

“Trump himself has been not downplaying this. I mean, he is certainly seeing how he uses these exact moments to his political advantage,” Collins kvetched.

Murray then jumped in to agree that Trump “uses these for fundraising, he uses these to rally his base.” Due to this, she openly regretted the plan to release Trump’s mugshot.

Tober then insisted that refuisal of some channels not to air Trump's post-arraignment remarks was "election interference":

In a case of blatant election interference, both CNN & MSNBC refused to air Trump’s remarks live on the tarmac after his arrest in Fulton County, Georgia. In stark contrast, Fox News did air Trump’s comments live where he lashed out at being arrested for a fourth time in as many months. 

Just like earlier in the evening, both CNN & MSNBC aired wall-to-wall coverage of Trump’s every move to and from the Fulton County, Georgia jail where he was fingerprinted and got his mug shot taken, both networks had cameras rolling while Trump got out of his limousine and walked to the cameras. Despite this, they kept Trump’s volume down and continued with their panel discussions.

But Tober gave Fox News a cookie for helping the Trump campaign: "Fox News Channel’s Jesse Watters Primetime did broadcast the former President’s remarks in its entirety."

Nicholas Fondacaro spent an Aug. 25 post being mad that Trump's overly self-aggrandizing height at weight self-presented at his arraignment was justifiably mocked:

Never let anyone in the liberal media claim they’re not gleeful that former President Trump was booked and had his mugshot taken at a Fulton County jail. Nearly 40 minutes after concluding their opening segment about Trump surrendering to authorities in Georgia, the cast of CBS Mornings revisited the topic in their “What to Watch” segment so they could make fun of Trump’s “self-reported” height and weight, and say he’s fatter than he claimed. They even compared his build to NFL players.

Coming back from the commercial break, CBS led into the segment by broadcasting their intentions with the song Body by Megan Thee Stallion, which has these enlightened lyrics:

Body-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody/Ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody (mwah)/Body-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody (ah, ah, ah ah)/Ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody

“Body body body!” co-host Tony Dokoupil sang along. “Perfect song!” co-host Gayle King proclaimed, with Dokoupil agreeing it was a “Very perfect song!”

They immediately went to correspondent Omar Villafranca to mock Trump for claiming he was 6'3" and 215 pounds. They wanted to really have fun with it so they matched the former President up against young and muscular NFL players:

[...]

Was Trump exaggerating how light he was? More than likely. Did it require an entire segment with special graphics to mock it? Definitely not. Were there better things they could have used the time for? Yes, like the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into Biden family corruption.

We don't recall Fondacaro passing up the opportunity to mock a liberal he thought deserved it because there were "better things" that should be covered.

Fondacaro joined Tim Graham's podcast the same day to whine about this (and the mugshots) further:

The media's Trump-indictment obsessives engaged in all kinds of glee out of Fulton County mug shots of Donald Trump's "co-conspirators" in the Georgia election aftermath, and the glee only grew once Trump's mug shot was released...except CNN lamented Trump would use the image for his "political advantage." 

Associate Editor Nick Fondacaro joins the show to talk mug shots and debates.

[...]

Nick also reported CBS Mornings mocked Trump for reporting he was 6-foot-3 and weighed 215 pounds, which does not seem accurate. They compared him to professional NFL footballers at that height and weight. It's probably not a wise idea for Gayle King to mock someone else's size, but when you're the queen of CBS in the morning, no one tells you what you shouldn't say.

Graham didn't explain why he tried to insinuate a fat joke about King. See what we mean about the MRC never missing an opportunity to mock someone, no matter how mean or petty?

WND Tries To Fearmonger About COVID Vaccines Again
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Misleading about COVID and its vaccines is what WorldNetDaily does, and it took another stab at it in a Sept. 7 article by Bob Unruh:

The Food and Drug Administration is charged with making sure products, including medicines, delivered to American consumers have been tested for safety.

And a Pfizer booster shot that delivered in 2021 purportedly to help consumers fight off the COVID-19 pandemic was.

On 23 people.

That stunner comes from Judicial Watch, which reported on its access to 58 pages of records from the FDA.

They revealed "a Pfizer study surveyed 23 people in 2021 to gauge reactions to its COVID vaccine booster before asking the FDA to approve it."

 But as a credible meida outlet reported, this isn't that big of a deal:

The FDA's decision to consider Covid boosters without human data is in line with how it evaluates modified vaccines for influenza each year. Clinical studies in humans aren't required for the approval of seasonal influenza vaccines, even when they're reformulated for strain changes, said Dr. Jesse Goodman of Georgetown University, a former FDA vaccine chief.

In other words, the COVID vaccine itself has already been tested and found safe, so there's no need to do comprehensive testing of the vaccine's safety again when the only thing that has changed is the strains being targeted, which is how flu vaccines are run. But rather than tell readers this relevant fact, Unruh simply chose to serve up fearmongering stenography: "Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch chief, noted that the public "would do well to examine these troubling documents" because of the 'shotgun approach' to earlier boosters, in light of the Biden administration's new push for more shots."

Misleading stories like this do nothing to make anyone want to trust WND.

MRC Helps Praying Football Coach Play Victim
Topic: Media Research Center

We've previously highlighted the story of Joe Kennedy, an assistant football coach at a high school in Washington state who made a big show out of praying at midfield after the game. The school district asked him to stop, citing concerns about separation of church and state, and he was fired when he refused. He then decided to enter the right-wing victim portal, suing the school district and claiming his rights were violated. Despite reports that players felt pressured to take part in his prayers and fearing consequences if they didn't, as well as concerns over the Establishment Clause and his refusal to work with the school district to find a mutually acceptible accommodation, the Supreme Court sided with Kennedy and he was reinstated as a coach.

Kennedy returned to the football team this fall -- then quit after one game. The Media Research Center's John Simmons tried to make him a victim againin a Sept. 7 post:

Joe Kennedy’s second tenure as an assistant football coach at Bremerton High School (BHS) in Washington State was short lived, as he has offered his letter of resignation.

Last year, the Supreme Court had ruled that BHS wrongly terminated Kennedy from his position in 2015 after the school discovered he was praying on the football field after games. Kennedy won a settlement with the school in March and was reinstated to his position that same month, but things had taken a drastically negative turn since his return.

Kennedy said in his resignation letter that it became “apparent” that his “reinstatement ordered by the Supreme Court will not be fully followed after a series of actions meant to diminish my role and single me out in what I can only believe is retaliation by the school district.” He was able to help coach one game, but that seems to be all he will do for the immediate future.

Simmons made no attempt to find out exactly what Kennedy is accusing the school district of -- he chose totake Kennedy's word at face value and amp up his victimhood and baselessly accuse the school district of being "petty":

What those actions were specifically remains unclear, but it prompted a strong response from his legal team that helped him through his seven-year fight to have his First Amendment rights protected.

[...]

If you looked up the definition of “petty” in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of BHS right next to it. Unwilling to graciously accept the fact they were wrong, the school is actively ostracizing Kennedy even after the Supreme Court ruled in his favor.

Some people just don’t know when they’ve been beat. We don’t know if Kennedy will continue to pursue legal action against BHS, but if he does, hopefully justice can be served once again.

But Simmons is omitting other, more likely reasons Kennedy is quitting. As the Fox News article he cited noted (but he didn't), Kennedy currently lives in Florida, and it makes no sense to commute across the country for a low-paying seasonal part-time job.Plus, he's apparently making more money playing victim than he ever did coaching football; as another news outlet reported (but Simmons didnt), Kennedy is writing a book about his victimhood, and a movie is supposedly being made about it.As Wonkette commented:

What are the chances he purposely tanked the coaching job he allegedly yearned to get back in order to boost his book sales and his speaking fees, and giving himself a nice little new story of his martyrdom that he can spread to the faithful about how the godless heathens of Bremerton High School are still persecuting him for his faith?

We’ll say 100 percent, and take the over.

Simmons is certainly not going to intrude on Kennedy's grift, since it helps advance the right-wing narratives he gets well paid to promote.

NEW ARTICLE: WND's 'Charlottesville Lie' Lie Just Won't Die
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Years later, WorldNetDaily still can't stop falsely defending Donald Trump over his statement about a violent 2017 white supremacist protest over the removing of a statue of a Confederate general. Read more >>

MRC Whines That Interview Of Pro-Musk Book Author Wasn't Positive Enough
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's methods of defending Elon Musk have been a bit extreme lately -- for example, calling on racist cartoonist Scott Adams to defend Musk's attacks on the Anti-Defamation League for pointing out anti-Semitism on Twitter (well, X) and cheering death threats (that Musk helped incite) against former Twitter offical Yoel Roth for doing his pre-Musk job and  refusing to be a Musk toady. And it continues to lash out at anyone who won't uncritically repat the pro-Musk narrative. Clay Waters spent a Sept. 16 post complaining that PBS asked tough questions of Walter Isaacson, author of a new, largely favorable biography of Musk:

Two shows that air on tax-funded PBS, the NewsHour and Amanpour & Co. (which also airs on CNN) invited journalist and Amanpour regular co-host Walter Isaacson to discuss his new biography of entrepreneur Elon Musk, who now owns X (formerly Twitter).

This was not the usual journalist-to-journalist validation, with the reliably liberal Isaacson getting testy over some of the questions and feeling the need to defend his treatment of Musk, a figure loathed among journalists and the left -- or is that redundant? Over the two interviews, Musk was accused of racism, sexism, and even supporting Vladimir Putin.

On NewsHour, host Amna Nawaz unloaded on Musk:

Elon Musk is one of the most famous people on the planet, for the tech companies he's founded and acquired, and he's one of the wealthiest. But Musk is also among the most controversial public figures because of his behavior, including the spread of misinformation, racist and sexist remarks, and his political ideas….

After a squabble over Isaacson’s reporting about the details of Musk refusing to let Ukraine use his Starlink satellites to guide their submarine drones to attack Russian forces, Nawaz hurled a pro-Putin accusation at Musk.

[...]

Isaacson discussed Musk being bullied as a child and how it may have shaped him. Nawaz was merciless.

Nawaz: Walter, a lot of folks have traumatic childhoods, right? And they don't always turn into people who are abusive towards their staff, or, as he has done, tweeted racist, or sexist, or offensive things. He has a very huge platform. He's a very powerful man and a very, very wealthy man. And I wonder if you think he's also a potentially dangerous man because of those combinations.

Isaacson actually pushed back a bit: Well, I won't agree with all of the characterizations you put on some of the tweets….

Isaacson also appeared with Christiane Amanpour on Thursday. Amanpour called Musk “a villain to some and a genius to others,” and brought up criticism from lefties who found Isaacson’s book had insufficient” pushback” and didn’t “make judgments” against Musk.

By contrast, Luis Cornelio was in full stenography mode, spending a Sept. 21 post touting a Republlican congressmasn spouting right-wing pro-Musk narratives at aGOP-led House hearing:

A defiant Attorney General Merrick Garland stumbled over his words Wednesday when faced with tough questions about his alleged targeting of X owner Elon Musk.

In a contentious five-hour-long hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Garland endured scorching criticism related to the motives behind two investigations against Musk.

Specifically, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) pressed Garland over allegations that the Department of Justice is targeting Musk as a result of the politically damning evidence revealed in The Twitter Files. “These look like mafia tactics,” a fired-up Massie said.

“Elon Musk was a Democrat who admittedly supported Biden but then he became a critic of the administration and exposed the censorship regime,” Massie continued, likely referring to the Twitter Files, which exposed a disturbing web of censorship collusion between the social media company and the federal government. “Now, per public reports, the DOJ has opened, not one but two investigations of Elon Musk.”

The Kentucky lawmaker made reference to a Wall Street Journal report alleging that federal prosecutors in New York are scrutinizing perks Musk received during his tenure as the owner of electric car company Tesla. As reported by The Journal on Sept. 19, the DOJ probe, led by the U.S. District Attorney for the Southern District of New York, comes in addition to a Securities and Exchange Commission civil investigation into the same matter.

Cornelio did not note whether there is anything beyond mere coincidence to the conclusions Massie is leaping to -- perhaps because there is no substance to the attack. Cornelio's stenography continued:

Massie drew attention to the disparate treatment of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose financial involvement in the 2020 presidential action triggered the ire of Republican lawmakers and numerous governors. “Mark Zuckerberg, on the other hand, spent $400 million in 2020, tilting the elections secretly for Democrats—no investigations whatsoever,” Massie remarked.

Corneilo refused to fact-check Massie, so we will (with a little help). Money was made available by a Zuckerberg-funded noprofit to government election offices across the country to help them conduct the 2020 elections, affected by the COVID pandemic. Some of that money was used by governments for get-out-the-vote efforts,but there is no evidence of political favoritism in how the money was distributed or spent, and the giveaway did not violate election laws.

IN other words: Massie is basically lying byat Zuckergurg's money "titled" the election to Democrats, but Cornelio won't call out the lie because it serves pro-Musk narratives.

Agitprop Master Massie Rages Against 'Agitprop' He Doesn't Like
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Mychal Massie has long been a prolific spreader of hateful agitprop -- his entire right-wing media career, which has now mostly dwindled to a WorldNetDaily column, was built on it -- so it's highly ironic to see him complain about others doing the same in an Aug. 28 column headlined "Too many people succumb to Trump-hating agitprop." After approvingly quoting serial bomber Ted Kaczynski, of all people, ranting about "university intellectuals" who are supposedly "incapable of independent thought," Massie got to the Trump-as-victim narrative:

Those who control the flow information are only moderate threats. Those who decide what the information shall be are the true threats, and they're threats who go unchallenged. For decades they went sight unseen. That is, until Donald J. Trump ripped control from their hands with the help of you and me.

That they underestimated him and We the People the first time was "shame on them." But, they're determined to make sure that doesn't happen again.

Massie actually got something right bynoting that "Fox News isn't the friend of truth and/or factualism" and explaining why:

What is always missed is what I call the soap-opera addiction effect. That's a formula that has successfully glued watchers to soap operas since the very first one aired going back to 1937, if you count radio. People watch news and information programming for the same reason some watch soap operas; there's a formula in place that brings them back night after night. Just like soap-opera viewers, these viewers are addicted to the idea that they must hear what happened today. They must hear what so and so program host has to say about whatever event.

They fail to realize that they're being programmed to believe whatever they're told. They fail to realize that there are catch words and phrases used repeatedly that cause persons to receive and correlate certain information about a political candidate and/or a social issue.

But he then blew up that insight by lamenting that Fox News wasn't programming its viewers to believe Trump is a great guy:

Enter President Trump. It's a foregone conclusion that the leftists hate him. Much less apparent, however, is the extent that so-called right-wing conservatives hate him even more. You see, President Trump simply defeated the Democrats; but, in the mind of elite Republican, from their governing bodies to the elected to the shadowy wraiths micro-managing from the fog – Donald Trump is viewed as betraying them in the most unacceptable way possible. He actually puts us and America first.

The brainwashing of the voters is an alchemy of lies, innuendo and distortion. Repeated enough, people view the claims as words of wisdom by talking heads who are loathe to admit they've hidden agendas, not least of which is wealth and backslapping from their owners and handlers.

This is what the voters miss. Many think they get it, but in reality they are fallen prey to agitprop.

Of coruse, Massie's claim that Trump "actually puts us and America first" is agitprop as well -- in reality, there's little evidence that Trump cares about anyone but himself.Massie concluded with more agitprop:

There's a reason President Trump is hated by the powers on both sides of the aisle. It's because the same dark forces control both sides. This is missed by voters who after the past six years should realize it. He's the one who threatened the spigots of dollars the "owners of the order" feast upon.

Any candidate both sides are so determined to crush is someone worth supporting. If President Trump were the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan or head of some other subversive terrorist group, Democrats would love him. If he were a brown-nosed loser who talked tough and never accomplished a thing, Republicans would love him – as long as he helped them raise massive amounts of cash in so doing.

But, he's neither, which why we love him.

Spoken like a true agitprop master. Ironic, huh?

MRC's DeSantis Defense Brigade Watch, Debate Edition
Topic: Media Research Center
Where there are Republican presidential candidates, the Media Research Center's DeSantis Defense Brigade will be there too -- and it was active during the first debate, giving him treatment above and beyond the defnse it gave to the debate in general. A pre-debate post by Clay Waters complained that the New York Times pointed out that in previous debates, Ron DeSantis has been "known to bristle under criticism. His opponents will hope to score viral moments highlighting his defensiveness and casting him as awkward and robotic." Then came defense mode: "Reading the Times’ coverage of DeSantis, one could be amazed how this bumbler won two elections for governor of the third-largest state -- the last by almost 20 percentage points."

The MRC's first post-debate post was press release-style DeSantis stenography courtesy of Tom Olohan:

George Soros did not attend the Republican Presidential Primary, but that didn’t stop DeSantis from airing out the billionaire’s dirty laundry. 

Republican 2024 presidential candidates duked it out on the debate stage Wednesday, each trying to convince Americans that he or she has what it takes to resurrect the economy, fix the border crisis and can bring America forward. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis touted his record of going after George Soros for spending money to elect radical pro-crime district attorneys in Florida. "These hollowed out cities, this is a symptom of America’s decline. And one of the biggest reasons is because you have George Soros funding these radical left-wing district attorneys. They get into office and say they're not going to prosecute crimes they disagree with.”

Kevin Tober whined about more criticism of DeSantis in the second post-debate post:

Just minutes into MSNBC’s post-GOP debate analysis late Wednesday night co-hosts Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, and Alex Wagner declared Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis one of the night’s losers. 

“Can I just say something? I think DeSantis was absolutely terrible,” Maddow proclaimed as if anyone on the Republican side of the aisle cared what she had to say. 

Wallace chimed in to pile on: “What’s happening is that he has lost the fancy donors who were like DeSantis is gonna answer our Trump coup plotter problem.” “No, he’s not! He didn't do anything tonight to change that,” Wallace added.

[...]

Wagner jumped in to agree with Maddow and Wallace and proclaimed DeSantis is “so bad at politics.” 

She said this despite presumably knowing that DeSantis won reelection in Florida by 20 percentage points.

When the New York Times dropped a story during the debate on DeSantis' college years at Yale, pointing out that he is "rail[ing] against his own Ivy League degrees while milking them for access and campaign cash," Waters returned to complain:

As the opening round of the 2024 presidential campaign kicked off Wednesday night with the first Republican debate, Tuesday’s lead New York Times story was a 7,500-word investigative epic by Nicholas Confessore, Times reporter and MSNBC political analyst, on the highest polling Republican on the lectern that night.

The mission was clear from the headline: 2024 presidential candidate, Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, was an elitist hypocrite. “How Ron DeSantis Joined the ‘Ruling Class’ -- and Turned Against It,” it read.

[...]

Confessore relayed some lurid details of the “hell week” held by DeSantis’s old fraternity which, if applied in nonpartisan fashion by the press, would surely embarrass a good number of sitting politicians. He uncovered a bogus insight into DeSantis’s psyche:

….Today, some of the former brothers and pledges regard Mr. DeSantis’s behavior as foreshadowing a comfort with power -- and with using it to bully others.

Waters didn't explain why that observation was "bogus," given DeSantis' clear bullying behavior toward Disney and the LGBTQ community in Florida.

WND Can't Stop Pushing Capitol Riot Conspiracy Theories
Topic: WorldNetDaily

As its revisionism and obsession with Ray Epps have demonstrated, WorldNetDaily has little interest in the actual facts surrounding the Capitol riot. It's also clining to the conspiracy theory that there were federal agents planted among the crowd who encouraged rioters; a version of that showed up in an anonymously written Aug. 22 article:

A new video has been uncovered by Revolver News that adds to the already-significant evidence that there were federal agents at the Jan. 6, 2021, protest-turned-riot at the U.S. Capitol egging on the unhappy crowd.

So far, about 1,000 people have been arrested and charged with offenses often including trespassing from that day.

There have been innumerable accusations that federal agents were in the crowd, egging people on, demanding they go into the Capitol, advocating violence against Capitol Police officers.

There has yet to be, however, documentation from the government on exactly who were its agents there that day and what was their assignment.

That's more than likely because such documentation doesn't exist because those those agents provocateur don't exist.But lack of evidence has never stopped conspiracy theorists before, so this anonymous writer obsesses over someone the conspiracy-mongers have dubbed "Fence Cutter Bulwark":

he report said, "Take a look at this man coolly and methodically cutting down and then rolling up 'restricted area' fencing around the Capitol lawn. He had no Trump gear on, and made sure to wear dark sunglasses on a cloudy day. He was not angry. He was dispassionate, calm, and professional, like he was just there to do a job."

The report explained the suspicious elements of the video.

[...]

The report pointed out, "By removing the barrier fencing before the massive crowds arrived at the Capitol, individuals like Fencecutterbulwark were effectively creating one of the nation’s largest legal booby traps in history, inviting thousands of people to unwittingly cross into the restricted zone whereupon they became vulnerable to indictments for 'trespassing.'"

The report explained the identity of the man remains unknown and he remains unindicted.

"In fact, the FBI does not even appear to even be looking for him. He is wholly absent from the FBI Capitol 'Most Wanted List.' There is no reward for information leading to his arrest," Revolver charged.

The report noted a significant factor is that the person was photographed "pre-positioned right at the initial decisive 'Ray Epps Breach Site'" long before the actual breach developed.

You knew Ray Epps was going to be worked in there somewhere.

Interestingly, a month later someone claiming to be Fence Cutter Bulwark did an interview with the right-wing Epoch Times in which he insisted he was not a government agent and said he cut the fence over safety concerns.

Despite Initial Criticsm, MRC Cheered Trump's Debate-Evading Interview With Carlson
Topic: Media Research Center

In the midst of defending Donald Trump over his (fourth) indictment as well as the Republican presidential debate, the Media Research Center also had to deal with Trump skipping the debate to do an interview with disgraced ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson. An Aug. 21 post by Nicholas Fondacaro was surprisingly critical of Trump for doing so, but it still criticized that the snubbing was covered in non-right-wing media:

Showing disrespect for Republican primary voters, former President Trump announced Sunday night that he would not be attending the first Republican primary debate later in the week with reports suggesting he was planning to counterprogram the event with an interview with Tucker Carlson. ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS Morningswelcomed the internal party drama on Monday as they hyped Trump’s attempt to upstage the GOP debate.

“Donald Trump has been back and forth on this. With just 48 hours to go, the former President clear he will not only skip the first Republican debate but even suggesting he might sit out future debates, too,” boasted senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott.

Fondacaro then tried to explain away a poll showing Trump with a huge lead over his Republican challengers:

In much the same way, CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil noted, “Donald Trump is saying he will not appear in the first Republican debate this week. And in fact, he may not appear in any of the debates during the Republican primary.”

Dokoupil proclaimed the findings of a new CBS News/YouGov poll “might help explain why” Trump decided to avoid facing his primary challengers. “Our survey found 62 percent of likely primary voters support Donald Trump. Governor Ron DeSantis is second, just 16 percent in his column. Others in single digits,” he claimed.

It’s worth noting that the margin of error was 5.7 percent. While the math might make it seem as though things were still pretty stable in terms of candidate positioning, the high MoE meant there was a fundamental problem in how the poll was conducted.

Given that the poll shows Trump ahead of his nearest challenger by 46 points, quibbing about the poll's margin of error being roughly one-teneth of that is irrelevant.

Later that day, Fondacaro whined again that CNN noted that Trump was skipping the debate, bizarrely blaming CNN for reporting it (not Trump for skipping it),sniping at the channel under the headline "Ankle Biter":

Chronically the third-place cable news outlet, CNN was the little goblin biting at the ankles of Fox News, the cable news giant. So, of course, it brought CNN great joy to see that former President Trump had chosen to avoid taking part in the first Republican presidential debate, which was hosted by their rival. Senior media correspondent Oliver Darcy beamed on Monday as he boasted about Trump’s absence possibly hurting Fox News’s ratings.

“In two days, Republican presidential hopefuls are set to take the stage in the first primary debate. This one's in Milwaukee. But the front-runner, former President Trump, he will not be there,” announced co-host Victor Blackwell.

Blackwell also noted that Trump would be attempting to do some counter-programming. “Sources tell CNN the former President plans to sit down for an interview with former Fox host, Tucker Carlson instead. The interview is set to air on X, formerly known as Twitter, around the same time as the debate,” he added.

Being CNN’s toy-sized attack dog, Darcy yipped about how much Trump’s absence was supposedly going to hurt the first-place network:

The MRC irrationally hates Darcy because he escaped the right-wing media bubble and started doing actual journalism.

All was forgiven, though, when Trump spouted the MRC's pet narratives during the Carlson interview, as Tim Kilcullen crowed in an after-interview post:

Former President Donald Trump touted an MRC poll that exposed Big Tech’s nefarious role in stealing the 2020 election through relentless censorship.

Trump didn't mince words when talking with independent journalist Tucker Carlson about the Biden family laptop scandal, rampant Big Tech censorship and the infamous 2020 election Wednesday night. “By the way, you’re talking about cheating on the election?” Trump asked Carlson. “McLaughlin & Fabrizio—great pollsters—they said a thing like that, plus other things, meant anywhere from 10 to 17% of the vote would change.”

Commissioned by the MRC, the poll revealed that one in six voters (17%) for then-candidate Joe Biden would not have voted for the scandal-plagued career politician had they been made aware of his misconduct and Trump’s successes. 9.4 percent of those surveyed would have changed their vote based on the laptop scandal alone. The study surveyed 1,750 Biden voters in seven swing states which would have gone for then-President Trump had Big Tech not censored these crucial stories.

Kilcullen didn't mention that the MRC bought these polls from Trump's own election pollster, McLaughlin & Associates, and a polling firm founded by former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, the Polling Company, to manufacture thesepolls, raising questions about their accuracy and bias.(And, yes, he called Carlson an "independent journalist" with a straight face.)

Kevin Tober followed that with a post promoting the "wildest moments" from the interview:

In the only newsworthy counterprogramming of the first GOP presidential debate Wednesday night, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson interviewed former President Donald Trump on his show "Tucker on X." While the sitdown lasted over 46 minutes, there were a few wild moments that are sure to grab headlines. 

"Why aren’t you at the Fox News debate tonight in Milwaukee?" Carlson asked Trump in his first question of the interview. In response, Trump explained that "a lot of people have been asking me that, and many people said you shouldn’t do them. But you see the polls that have come out and I’m leading by 50 and 60 points, and some of them are at one and zero, and two. And I’m saying do I sit there for an hour or two hours?"

"Whatever it’s going to be and get harassed by people that shouldn’t even be running for President? Should I be doing that? And a network that isn’t particularly friendly to me, frankly they were backing Ron Desanctimonious like crazy and now they’ve given up on him. It’s a lost cause," Trump explained.

The MRC's DeSantis Defense Brigade was curiously absent, refusing to call out Trump for mocking their favorite candidate.

In an Aug. 24 post, Tober talked up the MRC's favorite deadbeat dad defending his boss:

During a special edition of Meet the Press on NBC News Now, anchor Chuck Todd decided to ask Trump campaign senior advisor Jason Miller if former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump were embracing the idea of violent conflict during a sitdown chat between the two on Twitter. Miller didn't take Todd's biased questioning lying down and told Todd he was "framing it incorrectly" and that it was "an idiotic question."

"I want to ask you about this questioning from Tucker Carlson. I guess sort of—talking up the idea of a violent—some sort of violent conflict over this campaign," Todd proclaimed. "Is that something the former President is embracing?"

Miller told Todd the answer was no and that "I think you are framing it incorrectly." 

"Respectfully that's an idiotic question to even go in," Miller added.

Tober concluded by hyping that "As of publication, the video has over 107 million views" on Twitter -- but censored the fact that Twitter's view counter is utterly meaningless.

Tom Olohan served up his own post gushing over Trump spouting conservatively correct narratives during the interview:

Former President Donald Trump went after the reduced quality of life and narrowed choices that accompany environmentalist proposals hard last night.

Trump skipped the Republican primary debate Wednesday and sat down with podcast host Tucker Carlson on X to discuss the state of the race, election interference by Big Tech, and whether or not Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. During this discussion, Trump pointed out the threat environmentalists pose to the American way of life and how he dealt with that during his presidency. After making clear that the left wants to limit our choices, Trump said, “The new thing is your heating systems in the house. They don't want you to have a modern day heating system. They want you to use a heating system that will cost you at least $10,000 to buy and won't work very well. You know, none of this stuff works as well.”

[...]

Finally, Trump broke down how he confronted the Environmental Protection Agency over regulations negatively affecting Americans' way of life. In particular, Trump referenced restrictions on water usage for showers, washing machines, sinks, and dishwashers, saying that “and I voided all of that,” while discussing the damage done by the regulation.

Olohan didn't say how much Trump paid him for this campaign ad.

Matt Taibbi Went On Newsmax To Defend A False RFK Jr. Tweet
Topic: Newsmax

Matt Taibbi threw away a lot of the credibility he had as a journalist by acting as  Elon Musk's stenographer for his selectively edited "Twitter files." He has thrown away even more by appearing on Newsmax to defending Robert Kennedy Jr.'s anti-vaxxer conspiracies -- just one more part of Newsmax's summer of defending Kennedy amid his presidential run. Jeremy Frankel summed up one appearance in a July 20 article:

Democrats who insist on censoring "disinformation" do not seem to understand the First Amendment or what free speech is, journalist Matt Taibbi told Newsmax on Thursday.

Taibbi, having testified before the U.S. House's Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government earlier this year about the Twitter Files, censorship, and the First Amendment, told "Eric Bolling The Balance" that it felt like "dejà vu" watching Democrat presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. testify at Thursday's hearing before that same subcommittee.

"I had dejà vu watching the video because I obviously sat in that very same chair and testified in front of that same committee and met a lot of the same hostility from the same members who, similarly, didn't want to hear anything about censorship, didn't engage in the topic at all," Taibbi said.

[...]

"Judges over the years have specifically made the bar for intervention, government intervention in speech extremely high ... the standard is incitement to imminent lawless violence, which Robert F. Kennedy is nowhere near that, he hasn't even gotten anything wrong," Taibbi said. "As he points out, he's being criticized for something called 'malinformation,' which the Department of Homeland Security talks about, which is true information, but has a message they don't like very much.

Taibbi elaborated further in another Newsmax appearance, summed up in a July 24 article by Nicole Wells:

Independent journalist Matt Taibbi told Newsmax on Monday that the governmental entities that pushed censorship through Twitter prior to Elon Musk's ownership had to come up with a new category of misinformation to flag things like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s tweet about suspicious deaths that were potentially linked to COVID-19 vaccines.

"They had to create a new genre of misinformation to cover things like RFK's tweet," Taibbi said during an appearance on Newsmax's "The Record with Greta Van Susteren." "They call it mal information, which is really, basically, true information that has what they think is an adverse political outcome, that might result in people not getting vaccinated. But there's no wrong fact in there, necessarily, which I think is a particularly dangerous form of censorship."

A new batch of Twitter Files released on Friday reveals that Twitter processed a request to review Kennedy's tweet in 2021 at the request of a law firm acting on behalf of Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii.

The message included a screenshot of RFK Jr.'s tweet and said, "Hi team can you take a look at this tweet against our covid policy please?"

Note that Wells did not repeat the content of the Kennedy tweet in question -- in which he blamed the death of baseball great Hank Aaron on a COVID vaccine. And contrary to her assertion, Aaron's death was never "suspicious"; he died of natural causes at age 86. Taibbi lied as well by describing Kennedy's tweet as "basically, true information that has what they think is an adverse political outcome, that might result in people not getting vaccinated." It was never true that Aaron died of COVID, and Kennedy was deliberately misinforming people by suggesting otherwise.

(A few days earlier, Newsmax uncritically repeated Republican Rep. Jim Jordan's bogus claim that Kennedy's tweet was just 'pointing out facts.")

Wells also called Taibbi a "Twitter files journalist" -- in fact, he left the project months earlier amid an acrimonious falling-out with Elon Musk -- and an "independent journalist," even though there was nothing indepdendent about his doing Musk's bidding.

WND Republishes Gateway Pundit Screed Exploiting Death Of Capitol Rioter
Topic: WorldNetDaily

For its coverage of the ongoing aftermath of the Capitol riot -- specifically, how its participants are faring in the legal system -- WorldNetDaily has recently taken to reprinting articles by the notoriously unreliable Gateway Pundit, who is currently being sued for defamation by two Georgia election workers whom the website falsely accused of adding election ballots from a suitcase. This happened again with a republishsed Sept. 2 article by the Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft:

22-year-old Nejourde Meacham died on August 28, 2021, two weeks after the Biden regime charged him with four misdemeanor crimes for walking inside the open doors on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The Marxists arrested Jorde for this display

Jourde was just 22.

Another day of celebration on the left.

Jourde died on August 28th.

This will be another death ignored by Republican lawmakers.

In addition to getting the year of Meacham's death wrong -- it was 2023, not 2021 -- and offering no evidence whatsoever that anyone on "the left" is celebrating Meacham's death, Hoft undermined his manufactured outrage by embedding a tweet by author Ryan J. Reilly pointing out that Meacham was arrested for "four basic misdemeanors that often result in plea deals and probationary sentences."In other words, the legal peril Meacham faced was not all that great; he was simply facing the consequences of his actions, and we thought right-wingers like Hoft supported criminals facing justice.

While Meacham's suicide is tragic, most people don't commit suicide over misdemeanor charges, suggesting that there may have been other mental health issues involved that haven't been disclosed. Hoft and WND, meanwhile, are perfectly happy to exploit Meacham's death to further the lie of election fraud in 2020 and falsely portray criminals as "political prisoners" -- which may be the greater, and more avoidable, tragedy.

NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC's Childish War On CNN: The Chris Licht Saga, Part 2
Topic: Media Research Center
After a profile in The Atlantic blew the lid off Chris Licht's mismanagement of CNN and sealed his fate, the Media Research Center was somewhat sad to see him go -- then it relapsed into Jeff Zucker Derangement Syndrome. Read more >>

MRC Defends First Trump-Free GOP Presidential Debate
Topic: Media Research Center

The first Republican presidential debate received its fair share of defense from the Media Research Center, even though Donald Trump refused to take part. Nicholas Fondacaro served up some pre-debate defense (and a touch of Brian Stelter Derangement Syndrome) in an Aug. 23 post:

Fox News Channel has long been the cable news king that blows MSNBC and CNN out of the water in terms of ratings most hours of the day. And when a TV news outlet hosts a major political event like the Republican primary debate on Wednesday night, they’re set to rake in millions of more views than they normally do. With that as the backdrop, MSNBC’s Alex Wagner ended the Tuesday night edition of her eponymous show by literally begging her viewers not to change the channel to watch the debate.

The discussion of debate ratings was delved into by her guest, former CNN media janitor Brian Stelter when he clownishly predicted that Fox News (his favorite hate object) was only going to get a small bump in viewership because former President Trump was skipping the debate:

Trump is going to cut the debate ratings in half. That's the virtual guarantee. The ratings were 24 million back in 2015 when Trump was on stage – center stage – as you point out last week insulting Megyn Kelly. 24 million. Fox will be lucky to have four to five million viewers watch this debate. And so, Trump's absence is going to be felt.

Thinking he was being insightful, Stelter noted that “most people will just skip it” as what happens with debate no matter who hosts it.

After the debate, Bill D'Agostino whined about how MSNBC talked about the debate and criticized not only Ron DeSantis but Vivek Ramaswamy as well:

Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki hosted MSNBC’s midnight hour of post-debate coverage, and she invited a predictably dullard-ridden panel to join in the festivities. Among them was Vanity Fair writer Molly Jong-Fast, who laid into not just the candidates themselves, but the Republican voter base as well.

[...]

MSNBC analyst Anthony Coley hammered the candidates for supposedly lying about abortion — though he neglected to provide any specifics: “There were a lot of lies tonight, a lot of extreme positions, lies particularly on abortion.”

Jong-Fast then chimed in with her take on the debate: “It was just a mess. I mean, it was a dumpster fire.”

She smeared the voters in the audience while attempting to make sense of Vivek Ramaswamy’s performance:

My theory about Vivek is that he is on Earth 2. He will say the crazy, populist, Q-anon stuff that the base loves. But these other people are too genteel, and maybe they’re too interested in winning a general, so they won’t say that stuff. But Vivek said stuff that was completely insane, and from another planet. And that’s the stuff Trump says. And so I think they got excited, because they were like, “This is a guy like our guy.”

Later, Psaki wheeled in MSNBC Republican David Jolly to trash Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s performance: “David, you’ve actually been at candidate forums with Ron DeSantis… what did you think of his performance, and was anything about it surprising to you?”

“No, nothing surprising,” Jolly replied, adding, “He’s a weird dude. I mean, that’s the bottom line. He’s just a weird guy, and America saw that tonight.”

Mark Finkelstein similarly complained that "Morning Joe" "was very tough on Vivek Ramaswamy" after the debate:

With perhaps the nastiest line of the morning, in a double swipe at Vivek and the GOP, Charlie Sykes of The Bulwark said:

"The reality is, he is a shallow, shameless, facile demagogue. Which means he's probably going to get a bump in the polls, in the Republican polls."

Making a boxing analogy, Al Sharpton piled on Vivek, saying that Vivek had good early rounds, but that he couldn't take a punch, and that Nikki Haley scored a TKO on him. That was a reference to Haley hitting Vivek with this line during the debate: "you have no foreign policy experience, and it shows." Ouch.

Nicholas Fondacaro grumbled that ABC's George Stepanopoulos called out Nikki Haley making a crack about Biden's purportedly mental deterioration:

Possibly because of the strong showing from most of the GOP field during their first debate the previous evening, ABC Good Morning America co-anchor George Stephanopoulos was in a sour mood on Thursday and took his rage out on candidate and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. Her crime? Bringing attention to President Biden’s advanced age, how it’s obvious that he’s slipping mentally, and how that’s not good for America to have a leader like that.

Getting way over his skis with the fate of former President Trump, Stephanopoulos pressed her on, “Why would you vote for a convicted felon to be president of the United States?” Haley responded that she was “not comfortable with a President Kamala Harris becoming president. I think we would be in a far worse situation.” She also told Stephanopoulos that he was getting ahead of himself.

Alex Christy groused that non-right-wing outlets found the debate to be rather meainingless since Trump didn't take part:

When it comes to elections, the media should be pro-debate, especially when no votes have officially been cast, but the post-non Trump debate coverage on Thursday’s Good Morning America on ABC and CBS Mornings dismissed the whole thing as a “fantasy land” that resembled a “job interview” in which the candidate has already been selected.

On GMA, chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl summarized the previous evening’s festivities, “we got to see a world, maybe it's a fantasy land. We got to see a world where Donald Trump was not a candidate, for a moment, for about 90 minutes in that debate you saw eight other Republicans debating. His name was not mentioned.”

[...]

Wednesday’s debate does not have to be a “fantasy land” or sham job interview. The media could have substantive discussions on domestic and foreign policy or give the non-Trump candidates more air time, but they choose not to.

Tim Graham spent his Aug. 25 column complaining that the non-right-wing media pointed out how much the debate sucked:

The first Republican presidential debate was feisty and substantive, because Fox News overwhelmingly focused on policy issues that voters care about. A debate was seriously overdue, because the television networks have shut out coverage of policy issues like they were protecting the public from a deadly plague.

Even so, the same journalists who uncork grand proclamations about how democracy is precious seem to suggest this debate was a waste of time. Donald Trump is so far ahead in very premature polling, why bother? This neatly lines up with Team Trump’s talking points.

[...]

If journalists really cared about democracy and voting, they wouldn’t be so mercilessly quick to declare everyone except Trump is toast. If they all think Trump is “dangerous to democracy,” as CBS morning co-host Tony Dokoupil insisted to Nikki Haley, why do they sound like debates (with or without Trump) are beside the point?

Christy returned to huff that it was pointed out that the candidates didn't want to talk about the one who wasn't there:

MSNBC The 11th Hour guest host Ali Velshi, Washington Postcolumnist Jennifer Rubin, and presidential historian Michael Beschloss were all greatly distressed on Thursday as they reacted to the “weird” GOP primary debate from the night before that focused on policy differences between the candidates instead of obsession over Donald Trump and “the anti-democratic tendencies that have taken over the party.”

Beginning with Rubin, Velshi proclaimed “it was weird that they were starting to have sort of what sounded like some policy discussion when, actually, the split screen here is that while you were all debating, becoming president of the United States, the guy who is trouncing you all is indicted and going to be arrested again.”

A group of Republicans who want to replace Trump talking about why voters should choose them instead of Trump was not weird in any way, but that didn’t stop Rubin from claiming: “It is and I found the coverage of the debate terribly concerning and unserious. It doesn't matter whether one candidate got a little bit more time or one guy, maybe will go up in the polls.”

Jeffrey Lord's Aug. 26 column tried to protect Trump from both the media and the other republican candidates:

Taken all together, the media coverage is all over the lot.  Which, in fact, says something about the state of the GOP race in the media. History records that when there is an overwhelming verdict from a debate or an election, the media, left or right, is quick to react. Celebrating for the victors, complaining for the losers.

And, of course, there is the curious fact that the more legal troubles Trump has, the more his poll numbers go up.  It is safe to say that there are Americans aplenty who see the arrest and charging of Trump as a serious assault on the Constitution and their own freedoms. The media become angry when Trump's challengers join Trump in decrying Democrats weaponizing the legal system in a blatant campaign to get Biden re-elected. They want the challengers to join them in cheering on the indictments.

But it’s August of 2023. A full year-plus from the 2024 election. Presidential elections no matter who is involved or in which election cycle they appear are challenging, to say the least. It is far more challenging in this year of mixing primary dates with court dates.

Lord seemed to be frustrated that there was "no media consensus" that he could reliably peg a right-wing column on.

WND Freaks Out Over (Theoretical) Lower Alcohol Guidelines
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily doesn't need actual reasons to peddle hatred of President Biden -- mere rumors are enough. An anonymous WND writer complained in an Aug. 24 article:

For many Americans, this might be the final straw: There's a report that the Joe Biden administration wants to start setting drinks limits for everyone.

He's already deciding what kind of car you need to drive, what kind of appliances you must buy, what ideology you must provide for your children through their public schools, for whom you can vote, who (taxpayers) must pay for abortions and mutilating, sex-change surgeries, and more.

Now it is the Daily Mail that is reporting there are expected to come "strict new alcohol guidelines" that will urge people "to drink no more than two beers a week."

It is George Koob, "Biden's health czar," who told the publication he's looking at new restrictions being implemented in Canada – with interest.

"If there's health benefits, I think people will start to re-evaluate where we're at [in the U.S.],' he told DailyMail.com.

The government's present guidelines suggest up to one bottle of beer, a small glass of wine or a shot of spirit per day. Two for men.

But, the report said, "Those guidelines are up for review in 2025."

The anonymous WND writer provided no evidence this is actually happening -- nothing is offered by copy-and-pasted speculation from a right-wing content mill. The writer also failed to dispute claims that there is no health benefit to drinking alcohol, nojr was anyone from any government agency contacted for a reaction (probably the writer knows that there is nothing actually happening here).Nevertheless, Barbara Simpson spent her Aug., 25 WND column ranting about it:

Who would have thunk it?!

Good old Joe has in mind stricter regulations as to how much alcohol American citizens can drink.

I thought that went out with Prohibition! But then, what do I know?

So pardon me, on this 100 degree day, while I put down my chilled beer and think about what is going on in Washington.

It's thanks to the U.K.'s Daily Mail that Americans find out that there are "official alcohol guidelines" for us in Washington.

Who knew?!

And who knew that President Biden has an "alcohol czar" – Dr. George Koob, who told the media that the U.S. has alcohol guidelines that are soon to change, to match those of Canada. In that country, people are advised to have just two drinks per week. Koob said that because there are health issues involving alcohol consumption, he thinks "people will start to reevaluate where we're at in the U.S."

As with the anonymous WND writer, Simpson -- who cited the same right-wing content mill -- offered no evidence this is actually happening, and she didn't prove her claim that Biden would somehow force people to drink less or do anything beyond issuing guidelines and recommendations.

Sunny Hostin Talks About Race, So MRC's Fondacaro Smears Her As A 'Racist'
Topic: Media Research Center

A while back, Media Research Center "media researcher" Nick Fondacaro got tired of us pointing out that his main evidence that "The View" co-host Sunny Hostin is a "racist" -- a label he sticks on her every time he hate-watches "The View -- involves his failure to understand how metaphors work, so he directed us to a tweet in which he claimed to list all the ways that Hostin is "racist." As one would imagine, it's much more about whining that Hostin talked about race in a way right-wingers like Fondacaro disapprove than her actually being "racist." Let's go through his list, shall we?

Indeed, his first example, "Says white women are like roaches,"is the thing we've ridiculed him over. What Hostin actually said is that "white Republican suburban women are now going to vote Republican," which she said is "almost like roaches voting for Raid." Again; it's a metaphor; Hostin is simply arguing that women are voting against their own interests -- she specifically referenced health care issues -- by voting for Republicans who don't really care about such things. Fondacaro did not dispute Hostin's argument -- he simply close to be deliberately obtuse (and throw out some right-wing clickbait) by dishoenstly portraying an obvious metaphor as Hostin being "racist."

Example No. 2: "Says white women are subservient." Here's what Hostin actually said, which is just a variation on her earlier argument that white women vote against their best interests by support Republicans:

I think that women, white women in particular, want to protect the patriarchy here, because it's to their benefit. They want to make sure that their husbands do well. They want to make sure that their sons do well. They want to make sure that their children do well. And they want to make sure that they do well. Most of the women in some of these studies are married white women and they do fall in line with what their husbands are doing, what their husbands are voting.

[...]

I think with white female Republicans, you have a Republican Party that is taking away your health right to decide for yourself. You have all of these things that are against women.

Again, Fondacaro didn't attempt dispute her argument, though he noted that co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin -- whom he dismissed as a "self-proclaimed conservative," an allusion to all the Heathering he and the rest of the MRC have done to her -- "pushed back" on it.

Example No. 3: "Says the problem with American gun owners is that they're white." ;In his hate-watching write-up, Fondacaro asserted that Hostin "spewed her toxic racism again when she suggested the problem with gun owners in America was that they had white skin and were 'radicalized' by Fox News, thus a danger to the country." What Hostin actually said was that of gun owners, "largely they're men and they're largely white men." In fact, statistics show that white men own guns in a greater proportion than men of other races. Fondacaro did respond that "during the pandemic there was a surge of minorities who became first-time gun buyers, including black and Asian Americans, and they oppose gun control. And they’ve been welcomed into the gun rights community." He didn't mention that one motivating factor may have been the increase in anti-Asian hate crimes, driven in part by right-wingers like Fondacaro and Donald Trump branding COVID as a "China virus."

Example No. 4: "Say white people are still benefitting from slavery." Hostin did indeed say that "white people really benefitted the most and continue to do so today," adding that "it's so upsetting when people say, 'But I didn't have anything to do with it. I didn't own slaves.' No, but you continue to reap the benefits of it!" Again, Fondacaro made no attempt to dispute the accuracy of Hostin's statement, choosing instead to maliciously smear her as a "racist" for saying it. In fact, as writer Andre Henry points out, there remains a massive asset gap between white America and black America, made possible in part by wealth generated by slavery.

Example No. 5: " Falsely claims Nikki Haley is using a fake name to seem white and calls her a racial 'chameleon.'" In fact, Hostin never claimed Haley used a "fake" name -- that's Fondacaro's word -- but she simply noted that Haley is not using her "real name," which can reasonably interpreted as not using her given first name (which is Nimarata; Nikki is her middle name), and that "if she leaned into being someone of color it would be different" for her in Republican politics. Fondacaro went on to play an attempted gotcha:

Haines stepped up and shot back: “Sunny! You go by a different name!”

That’s right! Sunny’s real name is Asunción Cummings Hostin. And according to her, she doesn’t use that name because Americans are too stupid to pronounce it correctly. “Because most Americans can't pronounce Asunción because of the under-education in our country,” she sneered.

This conversation didn’t sit well with Whoopi Goldberg, whose real name is Caryn Elaine Johnson, and she put an end to it.

Fondacaro then touted how Haley responded by claiming that "It's racist of you to judge my name." He obviously doesn't see himself as a racist for judging Hostin's name -- he has clearly exempted himself from the standards he uses to judge others.

Example No. 6: "Says white GOPers only vote for women and minorities to control them." Again, "control" is Fondacaro's word, not Hostin's. The context of the discussion is the twice-failed Georgia Senate campaign of Herschel Walker, whom the MRC enthusiastically supported despite the fact that he was a walking scandal factory; Hostin said that "these white guys" in the Republican party were "using him. I think he knew it and he looked relieved almost" when he lost, adding that Republicans "made that race about identity politics. They tried to find a black man because there was another black man running," Democrat Raphael Warnock. Yet again, Fondacaro made no effort to refute anything Hostin said, just play the "racism" card to shut down discussion.

Example No. 7: "Suggests black/Latino Republicans are race traitors." Fondacaro put words in Hostin's mouth again; at no point did she say the words "race traitors." What Hostin actually said is "I feel like that's an oxymoron, a black Republican," adding that "I don’t understand black Republicans and I don't understand Latino Republicans."

The fact that Fondacaro has to put words in Hostin's mouth to portray her as "racist" -- and to insist that merely bringing up the subject of race is a "racist act -- shows what an utterly dishonest, amoral and cravenly partisan person he is. Then again, if he wasn't all those things, the MRC wouldn't be employing him.