MRC Mad That Media Reminded People That MLK Was Liberal Topic: Media Research Center
The 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, which featured Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, drew media attention -- as well as complaints from the the Media Research Center because people were reminded that King was a liberal and that some of the issues he fought against still exist today. Alex Christy complained in an Aug. 26 post:
The Saturday editions of ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC’s Today, and CBS Saturday Morning all focused on the festivities 60th anniversary of the March on Washington not just by recounting Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech, but by assisting today’s organizers in portraying overcoming current progressive grievances as the next chapter in the fight for civil rights.
ABC’s Faith Abubéy was the worst offender. She recalled the events of 1963 and how “organizers say today this fight is in part about voter suppression, housing discrimination, police and racial violence, racial disparities when it comes to employment, education, and other basic civil rights.”
Adding in some commentary of her own, Abubéy took aim at the Supreme Court’s recent decisions, some of which had nothing to do with race, “The 60th anniversary of the March on Washington is, of course, happening in the wake of some controversial U.S. Supreme Court rulings in which affirmative action, student debt relief, and abortion rights were all gutted in recent terms.”
Apparently Abubéy really believes that not paying back your loans is a civil right or that the demise of affirmative action and abortion is in the same universe as the existence of segregation.
[...]
At no point did anyone on any of the three networks say contemporary voter suppression is a myth meant to scare people or wonder what any of the left’s contemporary culture wars have to do with 1963.
Christy's evidence that voter suppression is a "myth" is a link from Georgia election officials touting record election turnout after the passage of an "election integrity" law, but no evidence was presented to justify passage of the law in the first place given the almost complete lack of election fraud in the 2020 election.
Tim Graham used an Aug. 28 post to compain about a TV segment that reminded people that, yes, King was a liberal:
To mark the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King's March on Washington, the CBS program Sunday Morning aired a commentary by left-wing New York Times columnist Charles Blow, who started out celebrating the speech as "iconic," but then turned on its idealism, touting that King later hardened to the left, focusing on systemic racism. All the leftists prefer the more radical late-Sixties King to the Kumbaya 1963 version.
Blow wanted to sound positive about the early speech: “It is a beautiful speech. It doesn`t so much demand as it encourages. It is a great American speech, perfect for America`s limited appetite for addressing America`s inequities, both racial and economic...It focuses more on the interpersonal and less on the systemic and structural.” But he was happy to explain King saw the error of this approach:
[...]
What this approach doesn't do is make any acknowledgement of racial progress since King's death in 1968. The Left insists that systemic racism has never ended, and America remains a terribly racist country.
Graham made no effort to prove that racism was compeltely eradicated after the 1960s.
Curtis Houck whined that the march and speech anniversary was marked in a post later that day:
From Saturday night through Monday morning, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC got weak knees over the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech that, based on even a cursory view, was no more than a far-left political rally led in part by ethnic and racial arsonist, MSNBC host Al Sharpton.
Even teachers union head Randi Weingarten was there, shouting like a raging lunatic! How that fit in other than ideology was beyond us. Our Alex Christy set the table by looking at the similarly comical coverage on Saturday morning.
The post-march goo started flowing on ABC’s World News Tonight with senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott playing fill-in anchor and swooning in a tease:“The March on Washington turning 60. A new wave of support. Thousands gathering to walk in those same steps taken decades ago, and there were new demands for social, economic, and racial justice.”
[...]
CBS Weekend Newscame off as muted, painting the 2023 march was unobjectionable, led by “a new generation gathered to honor the call” of King.
Houck couldn't be bothered to explain what, exactly, was objectionable about this year's march.
In another Aug. 28 post, Brad Wilmouth groused that it was pointed out how Republicans are rewriting curriculam standards for black history were referenced in march anniversary coverage:
On Friday morning, CNN This Morning was again fearmongering about Republican changes to school curricula as the liberal news network gave attention to the 60th anniversary of the 1963 civil rights march in Washington, D.C. After a pre-recorded piece by reporter Jason Carroll, fill-in anchor Victor Blackwell declared that some are trying to "rob" American students of being taught about the Civil Rights Movement and black history.
Carroll's piece focused on veteran civil rights activists Courtland Cox and Edward Flanagan, both of whom took part in the historic 1963 march. Toward the end of the report, the CNN reporter cautioned: "Both agree while much was accomplished that day, the work is not over."
Graham returned to whine about all of this in his Aug. 28 podcast:
Leftists gathered to mark the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King's March on Washington. As usual, the "objective" media picked up the hot talk about the conservatives "gutting" abortion rights, "affirmative action," and "student debt relief." The organizers were leftists, but reporters touted a diverse "spectrum" of activists.
On ABC, reporter Faith Abubey never said anyone was "leftist," or "progressive," or even "liberal." There were no labels. "Organizers say today this fight is in part about voter suppression, housing discrimination, police and racial violence, racial disparitieswhen it comes to employment, education, and other basic civil rights. The 60th anniversary of the March on Washington is, of course, happening in the wake of some controversial U.S. Supreme Court rulings in which affirmative action, student debt relief, and abortion rights were all gutted in recent terms."
An Aug. 30 post by Wilmouth complained all of this was still being talked about:
The topic was the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King's March on Washington, but it became an unchallenged forum to lie about Governor Ron DeSantis over "banning books" and the teaching of black history in Florida.
Toward the end of the interview, Isaacson brought up the issue of the wealth gap between blacks and whites: "But 60 years later, wealth inequality in America is still as great -- the difference in wealth inequality between black and white. What does that say to you?"
Dyson ripped America for being a "hypocritical" nation and then took his first shot at DeSantis as he began his response:
[...]
"Memory," in their mind, is enacting a leftist agenda, to use the memory of slavery to spur reparation payments and other compensations. It was not mentioned that the anti-police activism supported by BLM and the liberal media led to a sharp increase in violent crime, which should undermine the moral halo networks like PBS always put around the leftist movement.
After this all-too-typical PBS interview concluded, host Christiane Amanpour appeared again and praised Dyson's commentary: "Such a powerful invocation against historical amnesia."
Wilmouth and his fellow MRCers, meanwhile, want us to have historical amnesia about how the (largely Southern) racists and segregationasts who refused to accept that the Democratic Party embraced the civil rights movement became Republicans.
MRCTV Writer Goes On Conspiratorial Rant Against FDA, COVID Vaccines Topic: Media Research Center
We typically don't do much with the Media Research Center's video=making operation MRCTV, but we were reminded that it's not just NewsBusters that peddles COVID and anti-vaxx conspiracy theories at the MRC. An Aug. 15 post by the floridly named P. Garner Goldsmith mixed those conspiracy theories with a bizarre hatred of the federal government, ranting that the FDA has no constitutional right to exist:
At one point in George Orwell’s “1984,” protagonist Winston Smith, who works in the truth-hiding “Ministry of Truth,” thinks, “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”
He wrote eternal words that befit most government agencies, politicians, and their media lackeys -- and they perfectly fit the behavior of that brazen insult to the Constitution known as the “Food and Drug Administration.”
If you have a memory, you might recall that the not-constitutionally-enumerated FDA granted also-unconstitutional “Emergency Use Authorization” to pharma-giant mRNA gene-transfection jabs that the corporations and politicians and media shills erroneously called “COVID vaccines” (but actually always were termed "countermeasures" behind the scenes in DC) and which, by pumping them upon us in this fashion (along with massive federal subsidies for the mRNA development, jab purchases, and military-led distribution) didn’t require “testing” that usually is required for real vaccines before they are “allowed” to be introduced into the market.
It’s important to reiterate that the feds have absolutely no moral or constitutional power to create an FDA in the first place, let alone to artfully craft their arbitrary so-called “rules” about when and how drugs can be sold or used. And it’s also important to note that the only way the mRNA jabs could be put out under that wondrous “Emergency Use Authorization” was if there were no therapeutic medications that patients could use to alleviate the symptoms of their politically over-blown threat, COVID-19.
Enter things like hydroxychloroquine, which, in early February of 2020, I already knew had been tested via funding from the NIH to show that it was a “potent inhibitor” of SARS CoV (1) – a fact that Anthony Fauci had to have known since the study was done in 2005, and which he never, ever mentioned in public.
Strange, that.
Well, not so strange -- as a legitimate news source reported (as opposed to whatever conspiracy site Goldsmith hangs out it), that study was conducted only on animals, the original SARS virus is not COVID-19, and the 2005 study examined chloroquine, which is a different drug than hydroxycloroquine. Also, there's still no solid evidence that hydroxycloroquine is effective in treating or preventing COVID. While on the subject of sketchy drugs, Goldsmith continued:
And enter Ivermectin, on which ignorant preach-meisters in pop media such as Jimmy Kimmel and CNN pounced, deriding it as “horse paste” and “horse dewormer” when the drug long ago was heralded as a breakthrough for humans in the fight against internal organ and skin parasites, elephantiasis, and even head lice, having been credited with saving millions of lives in Africa.
And enter the FDA bureaucrats, who seemingly can’t keep their probing, problematic hands to themselves, and which issued “official” statements to tell people that Ivermectin was NOT approved for parallel use as a therapeutic against the symptoms of COVID-19.
Goldsmith then ranted that American have the right to ingest whatever they want regardless of whether it actually works for the intended purpose:
To which doctors and everyone else should have said, long ago, “WE DO NOT NEED YOUR PERMISSION OR GRANTING OF AUTHORITY.”
This argument, concerning whether the FDA approved, or approves now, should be moot. We are supposed to be free to peacefully trade with others and to ingest what we want. Didn’t the FDA bureaucrats and Jimmy Kimmel learn from the experience and response of the colonials when the Brits imposed the Tea Act on them in 1773?
[...]
Of course, one ought to go deeper, and question the assumption that the FDA has any moral or constitutional authority to “approve” of “not approve” a drug, at all, but, on the level at which they are arguing, even at THAT, the FDA is on slippery legal footing, having explicitly expended tax cash to tell people not to take ivermectin.
It's bizarre that Goldsmith doesn't think anyone should inform Americans that a drug doesn't for a specific purpose, no matter how many right-wing anti-vaxxers say otherwise.
Goldsmith closed with another anti-FDA rant:
The quicker people see the roots of the FDA problem -- which go much deeper than whether it was “giving medical advice” or phrasing things this way or that – the more rapidly they will see what it means to be a free person.
And the sooner they will see that it is utterly imperative to eliminate the FDA.
When you're too crazy to get out of thte MRCTV ghetto at the MRC, you're pretty crazy.
MRC Whines 'Ahsoka' Too Female -- And Not The Right Kind Of Females Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Rsearch Center's Elise Ehrhard spent an Aug. 24 post complaining that the new "Star Wars" TV series "Ahsoka" is led by women she doesn't like, and that the men "don't really factor into the show":
For the past decade, Disney has taken a hatchet to the Star Wars franchise, creating only a few gems. Hopes were high that the new Disney+ series Ahsoka, about a former Jedi knight, could save what was left of the Lucasfilm magic.
Alas, in Disney's latest attempt to prove "the force is female," writers again forgot that characters should also be interesting and multi-layered, whether they're women or men.
The biggest problem in the first two episodes of the new series, titled "Master and Apprentice" and "Toil and Trouble" respectively, is the amount of screen time devoted to a former Padawan named Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo). Wren smirks a lot, rolls her eyes and is otherwise obnoxious and unlikeable. In Hollywood, this is code for "a strong, independent woman."
The audience is introduced to Wren after she has skipped out on a ceremony she was supposed to speak at, embarrassing everyone involved. No reason is given for not doing her duty except that she didn't feel like it. She's seen racing away on her speeder as she disobeys reasonable orders. It's hard to believe that she is actually an adult rather than a moody teenager.
Unlike Wren, the other female characters are bearable, but boring. They show little emotion and inner life, as if the only thing that matters about them is that they are in charge. Male characters don't really factor into the show except as villains, incompetents or irrelevancies.
The only acceptable female characters, Ehrhard insisted, are those with a man in her life and who have "maternal instincts":
Hollywood used to be able to create exciting female sci-fi heroes. The late 1970s and 80s produced Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy and other iconic female protagonists in films, like in Alien and Terminator 2. The women in these franchises were tough but interesting, because they could show moments of affection, warmth and vulnerability. Princess Leia was charmed by Han Solo. Maternal instincts drove Ellen Ripley in the Alien series and Terminator 2's Sarah Connor.
Unfortunately, in Hollywood today, maternal instincts are passé and the desire for love or romance is supposedly regressive. So, audiences instead are left with wooden women or smirking girl bosses.
The MRC has long hadissues with women who deviate from its rigid traditional ideological models (and may not even be heterosexual!), and it has attacked a new iteration of "Star Wars" character Obi-Wan Kenobi for supposedly being insufficiently manly.
WND Too Busy Drooling Over Trump To Care About First GOP Debate Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's initial reaction to the first Republican presidential debate was cheering that Donald Trump refused to take part. An Aug. 23 article by Joe Kovacs complained that Fox News allegedly wouldn't reference the interview that Trump was doing with disgraced ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson instead of the debate:
Even as 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls battle it out on Fox News in the first presidential primary debate Wednesday evening, the network is purportedly banning its talent from mentioning Tucker Carlson's interview with President Donald Trump that airs at the same time.
Chadwick Moore, the biographer of Carlson, tweeted: "A current Fox News employee tells me everyone on Fox, including guests, are explicitly banned from mentioning tonight's Tucker/Trump interview, even in the context of the debate."
"All shows are banned from even acknowledging that Trump will appear on this [Tucker Carlson Twitter] show," Moore told the Benny Show.
Carlson was booted by Fox News earlier this year despite dominating the cable-news ratings.
And rather than offer any original coverage of the debate -- the only debate-related piece it did was an Aug. 22 item by Kovacs that gave a platform for Larry Elder to complain he wasn't invited -- WND instead slobbered over Trump. It linked to his interview with Carlson, joined by outside article listing "6 highlights of Trump's debate-disrupting interview with Tucker Carlson." An Aug. 24 article by Bob Unruh served up more Trump rah-rah:
President Donald Trump's interview with Tucker Carlson, prerecorded and released Wednesday night just as the first GOP primary debate was airing, is being called a "blockbuster" and its traffic blew through the 200 million mark and was approaching a quarter of a billion at close of day Thursday.
It is the Daily Mail that pointed out Trump was celebrating the "blockbuster" event, and a little more than 15 hours after being released, the official Twitter count for views was at 194.1 million. Meanwhile, the GOP debate was assessed to have 12 million watchers.
Unruh surprisingly injected a little reality into the proceedings: "Trump's detractors immediately pointed out that the metrics on the social media program count those who watched only a little of the video, however." But it's not being a "detractor" to point out the fact that Twitter's view metrics are utterly meaningless and that, in reality, the number of people who watched the debate likely outnumbered those who watched the entirety of the Trump-Carlson interview.
WND's opinion writers stuck to the narrative as well. Joseph Farah proclaimed Trump the winner of the debate even though he refused to take part, repeating those bogus Twitter view numbers:
Who won the Republican debate Wednesday night?
President Donald J. Trump, hands down.
Trump's blockbuster interview with Tucker Carlson reached over 100 million views on X less than four hours after premiering on the platform.
That's more people than watched the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show when 73 million people gathered in front their TV sets to see the British band's first live performance on U.S. soil. The television rating was a record-setting 45.3, meaning that 45.3% of households with televisions were watching.
Trump's interview garnered more than 124,400 reposts and over 439,500 likes – completely overshadowing all of television programming.
And how many viewed the Republican debate on Fox News Network? We're not sure yet. But no Trump fans, that's for sure. Maybe Fox execs were forced to watch it.
As he is prone to do, however, Farah's Trump fanboyism quickly descended into election denialism:
You have to be a real dummy to believe Joe Biden actually won 81,284,666 votes, a statistic even Wikipedia is embarrassed to print, in the COVID-19 tainted 2020 election cheating debacle against Trump. Trump is credited with an astounding 74,224,319 votes and probably a lot more – which would make his total the highest ever achieved by any president in history. Why do you think the Democrats can never have him run again – preferring to indict him multiple times in an election year?
Farah concluded by ranting that "Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, Wednesday night sent out a fundraising appeal for the eight elves who debated. The list didn't include Trump – as I said, the only guy to break a sweat so far in the primary season. She must stop this charade. The race is over."
Mike Pottage similarly cheered Trump for purportedly destroying the debate format:
Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson Wednesday obliterated seven decades of "made for television" presidential debates. The next day the Tucker interview had 210 million views and counting, while a paltry few million folks witnessed the GOP presidential debate on Fox News.
The comparison, for those who watched both events from beginning to end, was substance verses fluff and zingers.
Future presidential candidates will have a different take on media driven and orchestrated televised debates versus individual interviews in which the candidate has time to develop an idea and advocate for it. The substantive discussions will be delivered via the internet.
These TV debates, since the 1950s, have been sold to the public as "must see" TV when in fact they are tightly controlled campaign events with the media making up the rules and controlling the content of the conversation. That is why American politics has drifted left of left for decades.
[...]
Clearly, Donald Trump made the correct decision to skip the media-orchestrated fray for a real conversation with America, thanks to Tucker Carlson. He presented himself. Conservatives were pleased. Marxists were aghast. What say you, Mr. and Mrs. Voter?
Wayne Allyn Root unsurprisingly declared Trump the winner as well (and, yes, he cited those bogus Twitter view numbers as well):
We learned several things from the GOP debate Wednesday night.
Former President Donald J. Trump was the biggest winner – by a mile.
First, he won by not showing up and having to lower himself to fight the entire gang of also-rans who want his old job.
econd, by not participating, Trump won by taking all the attention away from the competition – thereby depriving anyone on that stage of gaining ground on Trump's huge 40-point lead.
Third, I predicted days before the debate that "Trump on Twitter" would destroy the GOP debate ratings. Trump did not disappoint. Over 240 million viewed Tucker interview Trump on Twitter – the most to ever watch an interview online. More people watched Trump than voted in the 2020 election.
Fourth, Trump won the biggest prize of all: He got revenge on Fox News. Trump on Twitter defeated the most powerful cable TV news network in America. Or at least it used to be. Now it's a shell of its former pro-Trump, pro-Tucker self.
Trump and Tucker together have destroyed Fox News. Stick a fork in Fox. This story will be studied in business school for decades to come: How two spoiled brats from Europe ran daddy's American dynasty into the ground in record time with "Trump Derangement Syndrome."
Of the candidates who actually took part in the debate, Root appeared to like Vivek Ramaswamy for being Trump-esque: "The GOP desperately needs an enthusiastic, MAGA, America First, conservative, capitalist version of Obama. That makes Ramaswamy 'our Obama.' So far, he appears to be on the right side of most every issue for conservatives and patriots. Although more vetting is required." He concluded: "The winner was Trump, Trump, Trump and Trump. With an assist to Vivek."
MRC Tried To Blame Biden For U.S. Credit Downgrade Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center haslongtried to blame President Biden for everything bad that's happening with the economy while talking down When the U.S. saw a credit downgrade amid Republican efforts to shut down the federal government, the MRC tried to blame that on Biden too. Kevin Tober huffed in an Aug. 1 post:
On Tuesday, the credit rating agency Fitch Ratings downgraded the United States' credit score for the first time since 2011 due to the mounting debt and federal government disfunction that has occurred during the first two years of the Biden administration. Of the "big three" evening news broadcasts, only NBC Nightly News bothered to cover the credit downgrade.
Instead, ABC's World News Tonight & CBS Evening News were more preoccupied with a group of pedestrians getting hit by a car in NYC (ABC), and the U.S. Women's soccer team playing their first World Cup with "equal pay" (CBS). This is in addition to their obsessive coverage of Tuesday's indictment of former President Donald Trump in which ABC spent 11 minutes and 56 seconds harping on the news.
Tober wouldn't admit that Republicans are playing a big role in creating that "disfunction" (or that he should have run a spell-check on his item before posting it).
In an Aug. 3 post, Alex Christy whined that one outlet did point out Republican blame:
During a discussion on former President Donald Trump’s latest indictment related to January 6, MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle went on a bit of a digression on Wednesday’s The 11th Hour to discuss Fitch downgrading the U.S.’s credit rating, which according to her was caused by “was the chaos created by the GOP” including January 6. Of course, Fitch’s own explanation was a little bit more complicated.
Ruhle was joined by former Reps. Tim Ryan and Charlie Dent, a progressive Democrat and moderate-to-liberal Republican respectively, and addressing Ryan she wondered:
The power of our democracy, the power of our economy, Tim, just yesterday, Fitch, the rating agency, downgraded U.S. credit. And one of the factors was what happened on January 6th, was the gridlock, was the chaos created by the GOP, by these falsehoods and the misinformation getting pushed. Do people realize this, and how fragile things are? And do they care enough?
[...]
With Ruhle nodding in agreement, Ryan continued, “but it's also, you know, huge tax cuts, and me and Charlie may have a conversation about, this but the huge tax cuts that blew a huge hole in the deficit after two wars and after the Bush tax cuts, yeah, of course, you know, we're running deficits that are huge.”
In their “rating action commentary”, Fitch does not use the word “wars” even once. While, it does mention tax cuts, it also mentions “new spending initiatives” and the lack of entitlement reform, “Additionally, there has been only limited progress in tackling medium-term challenges related to rising social security and Medicare costs due to an aging population.”
Fitch also mentions that a significant rise to deficit-to-GDP ratio and while citing debt-limit brinkmanship, laments that the deal that was reach was only “a modest improvement to the medium-term fiscal outlook.”
Christy censored the fact that theFitch commentary also referenced "erosion of governance ... that has manifested in repeated debt limit standoffs and last-minute resolutions" -- which is Republican-generated.
Thursday’s Morning Joe featured a defensive segment where host Joe Scarborough and President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass teamed up to shove blame on Republicans for the recent credit downgrade of the United States received from Fitch.
Seeking to promote the lie that national debt doesn’t matter and that “Bidenomics” was working, Haass and Scarborough sought out a way to blame the “dysfunctional” state of American politics and name Republicans for that dysfunction, while leaving out any mention of Democratic responsibility.
[...]
Haass thought he could just skirt over the fact that the US has an unprecedented, massive amount of debt that Biden and the Democrats recently added to with their infrastructure legislation and pandemic spending spree. Credit rating is an assessment of whether or not someone can pay back their debt, and the biggest factor into that was the size of the debt.
[...]
So even if political instability was the reason why the credit was downgraded, it was Democrats’ fault.
They spent the money. They forced the debt limit to be raised. They put America in a situation where it couldn’t pay its debts, then called it “Bidenomics” and gaslighted the country into thinking the economy was great. And now, America has begun to pay the price of their financial recklessness and irresponsibility. But you won’t hear that from the media, just finger-pointing and pandering to the far left.
Is that like how Kotara is finger-pointing and pandering to the far right?
Cassandra DeVries served up her own version of the approved partisan spin in another Aug. 3 post:
On Thursday, CNN News Central discussed President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings and the even lower approval rating of his management of the economy. They subsequently covered Fitch’s downgrade of the U.S.’s credit score from an AAA to an AA+ on Tuesday because of “deterioration in governance.” Instead of linking the troubling economic conditions to Biden’s policies, CNN quoted Biden’s administration and blamed the previous Trump administration.
[...]
Like most Americans, Fitch disapproved of how Biden handled the economy and the government’s constant increase in borrowing. They distinguished between the economy's condition and how the economy was handled and subsequently lowered the U.S.’s debt rating.
Nicholas Fondacaro brought the narrative to his hate-watching of "The View" in an Aug. 4 post:
In the same week that credit rating agency Fitch downgraded the United States’ credit from AAA to AA+, partially because President Biden refused to negotiate on the debt ceiling with Republicans until the 11th hour, multimillionaire and co-host of ABC’s The View, Joy Behar whined that Biden was not getting “credit” for a “booming” economy. She falsely suggested that “inflation is down” and that average Americans were “having an easier time putting bread on the table.”
Fondacaro offered no evidence that the previous shutdown threat was solely because of Democratic refusal to negoatiate. Hasn't he heard that one is not supposed to negotiate with terrorists (economic ones in this case)?
Newsmax Still Touting All (Well, Most) Things Rudy, Including The Defense Fund It Runs For Him Topic: Newsmax
We're reported that Newsmax has started, and is managing, a legal defense fund for frequent guest Rudy Giuliani, who is facing numerous legal actions in regard to his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. On Sept. 28, Newsmax sent out an email to subscribers containing "A Letter from Rudy Giuliani to You" thanking readers for their support -- and of course, begging for more money (boldface in original):
But the far left was not finished with President Trump or me.
Since President Trump left office, they have launched wide-ranging legal attacks against him with four indictments in four jurisdictions, including 91 counts!
At the same time he has faced multiple criminal and civil charges in New York State.
I have been indicted – along with President Trump and others -- in Georgia after simply exercising my constitutional right to challenge an election result.
I am facing other legal cases across the United States. The left uses this “lawfare” to stop conservatives like me from speaking out.
Well, I can assure you, they will never stop me from speaking out.
America is too important to give up.
I want to thank you for your support – it means so much to me and my family.
President Trump has also thanked Americans for supporting my Legal Defense Fund.
Just this past week, I was sued again.
This time by Hunter Biden!
He is actually claiming I misused his laptop. The very same laptop he denied owning.
Yes, the same laptop his father said was not his son’s, but a product of Russian disinformation.
As I said, I will continue to fight against the forces of darkness in this country.
But I need your help.
Consider again a donation to my Legal Defense Fund.
There was no disclosure of the fact that Newsmax is running the legal fund.
Newsmax did a basic article on Hunter Biden's lawsuit against Giuliani. It defoted more attention, however, to Giuliani suing President Biden over being called a "Russian pawn" during the 2020 campaign. First up was an Oct. 4 article by Nicole Wells:
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani sued President Joe Biden for defamation on Wednesday, taking aim at two comments from 2020 that branded Giuliani a "Russian pawn."
Filed in New Hampshire state court, the 16-page lawsuit names Biden, his campaign, and four fundraising committees as defendants. According to the complaint, Biden made the statements on Oct. 22, 2020, during the final presidential debate against former President Donald Trump.
Biden initially linked Giuliani to Russia while answering a question about foreign election interference, the lawsuit claims.
Then, of course, came the inevitable Newsmax TV hit, summarized in an Oct. 5 article by Sandy Fitzgerald:
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, calling President Joe Biden the "biggest liar we've ever had in the White House" insisted on Newsmax that he must pay damages for referring to him as a "Russian pawn" during remarks made in the final 2020 presidential debate against then-President Donald Trump.
"I can calculate, honestly, millions of dollars in damage," Giuliani told Newsmax's Greg Kelly on Wednesday night about the lawsuit he filed against the president earlier in the day.
[...]
"What he just said was that I was a Russian spy, a Russian operative, a dishonest person supplying dishonest information ... many, many things," Giuliani told Kelly. "You could go as far as to say a traitor, right? A Russian pawn."
And that, Giuliani claimed, "Did great damage to my law practice and my consulting business. My podcast was canceled in certain places. I can calculate millions of dollars in damage as a result of that."
Giuliani added that "roughly half the people" believed Biden, and "those half of the people turned out to be a lot of the corporate captains and leaders in the country. I was doing security work for many of them, and I had a beginning podcast that was up to a million people on YouTube. So it was not insubstantial, and I lost a lot of that."
Newsmax didn't ask why Giuliani filed his defamation lawsuit in New Hampshire though Biden's comments were made in Tennessee. (New Hampshire has a longer statute of limitations on defamation, it turns out.)
Surprisingly, Newsmax published an article on another of Giuliani's legal woes. An Aug. 30 wire article noted that Giuliani "is liable for defaming two Georgia election workers who were the target of vote-rigging conspiracy accusations following the 2020 U.S. presidential election," adding that the federal judge overseeing the trial "found Giuliani refused to comply with a process for producing records, known as discovery, and rejected the former New York mayor's argument that the election workers used the lawsuit to harass him. Giuliani will have to pay legal fees and interest of $89,172.50 and $43,684 for a total of $132,856.50." A few days later, Giuliani appeared on Newsmax to reframe the judgment as a desire to "to move on to the legal aspects of the case. I'm not stupid enough to think I'm going to get a fair trial in front of her in the District of Columbia."
In between all this, Newsmax continued to repeatedly host Giuliani and promote his other legal efforts:
Newsmax did publish a wire article on Giuliani pleading not guilty to the Georgia charges he faces, but it also published an article featuring sleazy Republican operative Roger Stone denouncing the charges -- not exactly the kind of character witness the guy needs. But it was silent about Giuliani's other legal foibles , among them a New York Times piece detailing his apparent drinking problem and a former lawyer suing him for $1.4 million in unpaid legal bills. It has also been silent about the judge in the defamation suit by the Georgia election workers ruling that jurors can be told that Giuliani intentionally hid his financial records (after lying about the two workers again).
WND Relies On Far-Right Writer To Dishonestly Defend Trump's Lawyers Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh leaned on right-wing "investigative reporter" Julie Kelly -- who has bizarrely claimed that the Capitol riot "was probably the biggest instance of police brutality that this country has seen since the Civil Rights movement" -- to defend Donald Trump's allegedly overworked attorneys in an Aug. 29 article:
Now Kelly is out with a new report about a hearing before Chutkan, and "it's worse than reported."
[Judge Tanya] Chutkan is trying to run Trump into a trial in record short time, only a few months, and she's now claiming that defense lawyers for Trump "should have begun going through the evidence … against him even before the indictment was handed down," the Post-Millennial reported.
Kelly reported, "Chutkan marveled at [prosecutor} Jack Smith's rapid 'discovery' production while downplaying fact DOJ could not name a single case in DC District that went from indictment to trial in 5 months."
Defense lawyers have proposed a 2026 start date, but prosecutors in the Joe Biden-supervised Department of Justice say they want it much earlier.
That's even though there are tens of millions of pages of evidence to review.
The report explained Chutkan told Trump's lawyer, John Lauro, he didn't need any time past March 4 to review the millions of pages.
She claimed Trump's "lawyers" had seen the material, even if Lauro hadn't.
"For a federal prosecutor to suggest that we could go to trial in four months is not only absurd, it’s a violation of the oath of justice," Lauro said, the New York Times reported.
"We cannot do this in the time frame the government has outlined."
Chutkan charged that defense counsel should have been reviewing documents for a year already.
In fact, Chutkan is not being unreasonable. As a pair of lawyers reported in The Atlantic:
Contemporary trials, civil and criminal, routinely involve the tsunami of data people create day in and day out, resulting in millions of pages of documents produced during discovery. As the government’s reply highlights, Trump’s argument, resting principally on the more than 11.5 million pages of evidence the government produced as an excuse for significant delay, is without merit. Based on our experience in this field, it is simply disingenuous to use 19th- and 20th-century standards for paper cases in the modern era. The chart that Trump’s lawyers produced in their brief—visualizing a tower of physical paper they would have to review in a six-month span—is misleading. We—attorneys both—would be laughed out of court if we suggested delays for our side because a page-by-page document review of all discovery would take three years. Under that approach, no major civil or criminal case would ever be tried for years and years—which may be the Trump team’s actual goal.
Unruh also censored the fact that many of those documents were already available to Trump's lawyers. As USA Today reported, Smith pointed out that "3 million pages of the documents came from Trump entities; a million pages were already publicly available from the House committee that investigated the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021; and hundreds of thousands of other pages came from the National Archives where they were already available. Prosecutors said they loaded electronic records, such as 3 million pages from the Secret Service, in easily searchable form." Additionally, Smith noted that "The Government provided these materials in load-ready files so that the defense can review them quickly in the same manner as the Government did — through targeted keyword searches and electronic sorting," so there's no need to individually review every single page.
In other words, there's no reason that, given that a competent defense team should not have already been reviewing those documents well before indictments were handed down. Then again, few people have accused Trump's legal team of competence.
The fact that Unruh chose to rely on such a wilidly dishonest and biased "investigative reporter" shows how desperate WND is to generate right-wing clickbait, no matter how dubious amd misleading.
MRC Continued To Hate Transgender People During Pride Month Topic: Media Research Center
When we last checked in, the Media Research Center was ringing in Pride Month with lots of nasty hatred of transgender people, and as the month continued, so did the hate. R. Emmett Tyrrell wrote a June 9 column with the headline "My Plan for the Transgenders" -- yes, he thinks "transgender" is a noun -- in which he demanded that there be "a third and, for that matter, a fourth category for the gender-revised athletes" and mocked transgender male athletes:
The guys may be bold enough to show up at a girls’ athletic events wearing a girls’ frilly competitive outfit. Think of the feminine frills worn by female tennis stars or the tattoos worn by women boxers. Yet even the toughest transgender guy has got to be shaken after one of the burly girls snickers at him/her or offers to hold his/her towel. There are dozens of ways to bully a transgender athlete, and no matter how aloof or calloused he or she might be, still every slight has its affect.
In a June 13 post, Kevin Tober was outraged that "a transgender TikTok influencer went completely topless" during a Pride Month event at the White House, which he claimed "sparked outrage at the lack of decorum at the White House." While he conceded that "Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemning the activist for stripping on White House grounds and informing them that they will not be allowed back," he whined that "big three evening news broadcasts continued ignoring the incident in order to minimize the embarrassment for the Biden administration" -- while of course crowing that Fox News gave the incident ample coverage -- going on to huff:
Regardless of who you are or what your sexual orientation is, it is thoroughly inappropriate to take off your clothes on White House property. It seems everyone from all sides of the political spectrum is in agreement except for the big three evening news broadcasts.
In another June 13 post, Alex Christy complained that PBS interviewed a woman "who compared giving hormones to 8-year olds to treatment for an earache," asserting that the claim "should earn a 'pants-on-fire' rating" (but without explaining why). Then again, Christy thinks that small breasts in teenage girls is a "birth defect" that must be fixed by plastic surgery, so he may not be the best person to ask for medical advice. (Or maybe he's just turned on by large-breasted teen girls.)
Christy complained that there wasn't unanimous hatred of the topless transgender person at the White House in a June 15 post:
Rolling Stone’s Jay Michaelson spoke for all of CNN Tonight’s Wednesday panel when asked if it was wrong of a transgender activist to go topless at the White House with “yes, but” as he and his fellow panelists would equivocate on the “inappropriate” “act of joy.” Taking the top spot for outrageousness was The Root’s Jessica Washington who lamented the “oppressed have to be perfect 24/7.”
[...]
Michaelson also lamented that this story is even a story at all, “I don't want this to distract from what is really happening, which is tragic war on trans people in this country. A new study just came out that said 41 percent of LGBTQ young people between the ages of 13 and 22 have seriously considered suicide in the last year. That number is even higher for transgender people. And so, while this was a misguided act of celebration, it was one in the context of a community that is under siege right now.”
Camerota then tossed the conversation to 2022 New York GOP Senate candidate Joe Pinion who butchered the conservative position, “I think most Republicans that I know would agree that trans people do have to live in fear. Most people who are Republican, who are conservative believe you should be able to love who you want to love, define yourself on your own terms. That is a thing that most people agree with.”
Legally being able to identify how you want and expecting to be taken seriously or demanding the law acknowledge it as true are two very different things, but Pinion continued, “Certainly, there are people who are bigoted, who have always used the urge to protect the children or to follow the faith, to justify some of the darkest chapters in American history.”
Christy didn't explain how, exactly, Pinion "butchered the conservative position" on transgender people -- which does, in fact, have as a key component spewing hate at them and denying their rights.
A June 15 post by chief MRC transphobe Tierin-Rose Mandelburg cheered a right-wing congressmasn for playing gotcha on a witness at a hearing about gender-affirming treatment:
Oh really? I wonder why?
During a House hearing Wednesday, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) debated witness Dr. Meredithe McNamara, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine. When Crenshaw asked McNamara about benefits of trans procedures for kids, she couldn’t name a single study that pointed them out.
Crenshaw recently proposed provisions that would remove federal funding from hospitals who provide transgender procedures for minors. Said procedures would include things like puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or surgeries.
As reported by the "Washington Examiner," Crenshaw’s resolution would “remove federal dollars from facilities that perform these controversial treatment therapies in a similar manner as the Hyde Amendment removes funding for abortion procedures.” Essentially, training hospitals who teach about how to treat trans kids would be denied funding from the federal government. Presently, 58 hospitals receive that funding but if Crenshaw's proposal is instated, its highly likely that number would go down.
As a matter of fact, 70 percent of taxpayers opposed the “barbaric treatment” on minors, as Crenshaw mentioned to assist his point that these treatments shouldn't receive federal funding.
[...]
Of course, McNamara couldn’t name any of the benefits of trans surgeries for kids because - well, there are none. There’s nothing positive about chemically or surgically castrating anyone, nevermind a child. There’s nothing beneficial about mutilating an innocent, God-designed body to fulfill a complete and utter delusion. There’s no perks of training doctors on how to provide life threatening and life changing procedures to kids that frankly, do not need said procedures at all.
Crenshaw’s argument pointed that out clearly while squashing McNamara’s, so-called "rebuttals."
But Mandelburg offered no evidence Crenshaw allowed McNamara to answer his questions; her excerpts of the exchange largely involved Crenshaw interrupting and talking over her.
Tober returend for a June 15 post whining that an actual medical professional criticized right-wing anti-transgender laws:
On Thursday’s edition of CBS Evening News, anchor Norah O’Donnell had a sitdown interview with Doctor Jesse Ehrenfeld, the president of the American Medical Association who grumbled that doctors and other medical professionals were struggling in their professions due to states banning chemical castration and other transgender surgeries.
After introducing Ehrenfeld, O’Donnell asked him what he thinks was “the top issue facing physicians today.” Ehrenfeld responded that the United States has a “twin-endemic, a pandemic of the disease, plus a pandemic of misinformation and bad information.”
Narrating to the audience, O’Donnell bemoaned that “Dr. Ehrenfeld is taking over at a difficult time. Doctors are facing burnout, soaring medical costs, medicare payment issues, and new legislation targeting the LGBTQ community and reproductive rights.”
“We have a healthcare system in crisis,” Ehrenfeld proclaimed. When asked to clarify, he said, “In at least six states now, if I practice evidence-based care, I can go to jail. It's frightening. When a patient shows up in my office, if I do the right thing from a scientific, from an ethical perspective, to know that that care is no longer legal, criminalized, and could wind me in prison.”
There was no scientific evidence to support chopping off the healthy body parts of a young boy or girl in order to make them look like the opposite sex. Yet, O’Donnell never corrected him or challenged him in any way.
Even worse, she accepted his anti-scientific narrative by referring to it as “criminalizing of doctor care.”
Christy didn't explain why a doctor's care must be criminalized.
Tim Graham spent a June 18 post huffing about a story on a pregnant transgender man :
On Saturday, NPR exploited Father's Day to push "pregnant dads" with our taxpayer subsidies. The headline was "Americans celebrate dads this weekend. Three tell us about being a father in 2023." They pushed the "he was pregnant" pronoun inanity hard in their celebration:
[...]
The only tiny hint of interesting opposition allowed in this propaganda is that allegedly a lot of people wanted this woman to abort. Then we had to be told "what people get wrong" with their opposition to upside-down gender-denying madness:
Graham didn't explain how adding right-wing anti-transgender hate to this story improved it any, given that we are all quite aware that right-wingers like him passionately despise the mere existence of transgender people.
A June 18 post by Tober assumed without evidene that children recieving gender-affirming care are being "abused" and, thus, create the need for right-wing transphobes to interfere in and override the opinion of parents, whom conservatives otherwise claim to believe know best for their chidlren:
On CBS Sunday Morning, correspondent Susan Spencer was once again wearing her leftist bias on her sleeve when she began arguing with American Principles Project president Terry Schilling over sex change procedures for children. The interview came during a segment on the growing fight between conservatives and leftists on whether children should be allowed to receive puberty blocking and cross sex hormones if they believe they’re the opposite sex.
Spencer kicked her biased questioning into high gear when she wailed at Schilling: "the parents of some of these children would look at you and say if you want to protect kids, leave us alone." This of course is absurd even for Spencer. Why would conservatives who believe children are being abused simply look the other way?
Schilling responded to her asinine question by noting "We are leaving your kids alone. We are the ones that are protecting them from getting sex change procedures and puberty blocking and cross sex hormones."
"I would tell them they don't," Schilling added. To which Spencer interrupted again: "who are you to say that?"
Schilling retorted by educating the Democrat CBS News activist: "I am an American citizen that gets to vote and organize people in politics. When we both disagree, then we go to the American people and make our cases to them and we see who can pass the most laws and right now we’re starting to win."
Tober then huffed, "Spencer would never grill a Democrat like this." It's telling that he has chosen to portray asking reasonable questions of a right-wing activist as "hostile" and an example of "leftist bias."
Newsmax Does Cleanup Over Trump Gun Goof Topic: Newsmax
Last month, Donald Trump went to South Carolina gun store and admired a gun with his face on it. Both a right-wing reporter and a member of Trump's staff reported that he bought the gun. Just one problem with that: As someone who has been indicted on a felony charge, he is not allowed to buy a gun, and it would violate the conditions of his release to do so. Cue the backpedaling by both the reporter and the campaign. Also cue the Trump-fluffers at Newsmax trying to play cleanup, and that's what Eric Mack did in a Sept. 26 article:
Former President Donald Trump admired a special edition Glock pistol Monday that featured his likeness, but he did not buy one, according to reports.
"I want to buy one," Trump said Monday in Summerville, South Carolina. "Isn't a Glock a great gun?"
Trump posed for pictures with the Glock, along with members of his campaign tour, which included Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.
While Cheung initially posted "President Trump buys a @GLOCKInc in South Carolina!" on social media platform X, according to multiple news outlets, that post was deleted.
"President Trump did not purchase or take possession of the firearm," the campaign later told USA Today in a statement. "He simply indicated that he wanted one."
Trump would not be barred from buying the Glock under 18 USC 922, but the sale of the firearm to him is illegal due to myriad indictments against him.
[...]
The gun store told The New York Times it did not sell a gun to the former president Monday.
While Mack noted Cheung's backpedaling, he failed to note that Brian Glenn of the right-wing Right Side Broadcasting Network asserted on-air that “We can confirm that President Trump got that gun today," only to furiously backpedal in an all-caps tweet: "PRESIDENT TRUMP DID NOT BUY A FIREARM. I WAS THERE. MOVE ALONG FAKE PRESS."
While Newsmax apparently did not promote the original claim that Trump bought the gun, doing a story emphasizing that he didn't looks like cleanup for a preferred candidate instead of "news."
MRC Launches More Partisan Attacks On Google Over Purportedly Biased Search Results Topic: Media Research Center
In the runup to last year's midterm elections and runoffs afterward, the Media Research Center tried to play gotcha with Google by accusing it of bias against Republians because a certain search term didn't put Republican candidates at the top -- even though it never explain why that particular search term should have returned the results it demanded. It's playing the same bogus search-result gambit again, this time framing it as so-called "election interference." Gabriela Pariseau and Michael Morris wrote in an Aug. 24 post:
Google’s election interference is just getting warmed up as we head into 2024.
MRC Free Speech America researchers searched Google for “presidential campaign websites,” but the search engine did not display a single Republican candidate on its first page of results the day before the first Republican Party presidential primary debate on Wednesday. President Joe Biden’s campaign website, of course, showed up as the second search result along with a Democratic Party challenger Marianne Williamson’s campaign website, which came up as the fifth result.
Google even displayed results for past failed Democratic Party presidential candidates who aren’t even running this cycle, including: Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) website, which showed up as the ninth result; Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) campaign website, which came in twelfth; and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign website, which appeared twenty-ninth in the results.
Notably, 2024 Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., did not appear in Google’s search results even though he is, at present, the biggest threat to President Joe Biden's nomination.
“Google has erased every threat to Joe Biden,” said MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider. “We know that Google pulled out all the stops to put Hillary Clinton in the White House, and it has continued to interfere in our elections ever since. Compared to other social media platforms, it is harder to document what Google does in secret, but we at MRC Free Speech America have caught them red-handed again.”
Schneider continued, “Google has consistently stood apart from all other search engines, and not in a good way. We have repeatedly seen Google and Big Tech social media platforms treat Republican candidates harshly compared to their Democrat [sic] opponents.”
Weirdly, Pariseau and Morris did not state how Republican candidates ranked in the search findings, even though this "study" was specifically done before the first GOP debate. As before, they also failed to explain why that particular search term should have delivered the results it demanded, or even what normal human would use that search term. And their fretting over Kennedy not appearing in the results is merely part of the MRC's ironicpromotion of his campaign -- not because they actually want him to win, but in the hope that it might hurt Biden's re-election chances.
Pariseau repeated the same trick for a Sept. 27 post, under the headline "More Election Interference!":
Is Google shilling for Biden? It appears so, as its search engine once again buried Republican “presidential campaign websites.”
Google's search engine failed to produce even-handed results in multiple searches performed by MRC Free Speech America over the course of a week prior to today's Republican presidential primary debate. Researchers broadly searched for “presidential campaign websites” as well as two additional searches specifying the party affiliation of the candidates. When MRC searched for “republican presidential campaign websites,” only two candidates’ websites appeared on the first page in the search results — a Democrat candidate and a Republican who is polling at less than half a percent.
Democratic Party candidate Marianne Williamson’s website somehow found its way onto the first page. So did Will Hurd, who has yet to garner enough support to make it to the debate stage. His website was the only Republican candidate’s website to appear in the search results. His website came up as the third result while the campaign websites of former President Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Strive Asset Management co-founder Vivek Ramaswamy, Former Vice President Mike Pence, Former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie were nowhere to be found on the first page of results.
The search did include a link to a Library of Congress page that referenced Trump’s 2020 campaign website but even the link referenced was dead.
“These results are so outrageous,” said MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider. “Google is either the most incompetent search engine on the planet, or it’s intentional. This is not a coincidence.”
But the MRC undermined itself by injecting partsan terminology into its "study." One of the terms used was "democrat presidential campaign websites"; right-wing activists like those at the MRC have spent years trying to rename the Democratic Party as the "Democrat Party" for the lulz. Speaking of ironic lulz, Pariseau added that "Biden’s most formidable challenger in the primary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ’s website was notably missing." In fact, Biden was ahead of Kennedy by about 50 points at the time Pariseau's item was posted, making her use of "formidable" at least as ironic as the MRC's support for Kennedy itself.
Pariseau went on to complain that factual information about Republican candidates was noted in the results:
Each of the liberal outlets made clear their bias against GOP front-runner and former President Donald Trump, primarily listing controversial flashpoints of his administration in their respective write-ups.
CNN, for example, characterized Trump’s criticisms of how the 2020 election was conducted as “conspiracy theories.” Meanwhile, Politico touted Trump’s alleged “numerous scandals,” while NBC and AP seemingly eagerly recounted recent criminal charges brought against the former president. CNN and Politico also touted Biden as the presumed Democrat nominee the GOP will face in 2024, not even acknowledging his two Democrat challengers.
Yes, Pariseau used "Democrat" instead of "Democratic" twice, further demonstrating teh partisanship that marks the MRC's so-called studies. She also didn't dispute the accuracy of the reporting she criticized, and she purported to read the mind of non-right-wing news organizations by claiming without evidence that they "seemingly eagerly recounted recent criminal charges" against Trump.
Parisau's injection of partianship into this so-called study shows the underlying bias in what she does -- it's clear that these search terms were chosen specifically to make Google look bad and, thus, to have clickbait talking points to spread throughout right-wing media. It's the way a partisan organization acts -- and certainly not one that purports to care about "media research."
WND's Constitutionalists Fret That Constitution Could Kick Trump Off Ballot Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily likes to portray itself as faithful constitutionalists, but when some invoked the Constitution as a reason to remove Donald Trump from 2024 presideintial ballots, WND started singing a different tune. Bob Unruh complained in a July 20 article:
Democrats have insisted since it happened on calling the riot in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, an "insurrection."
Setting aside the facts, which include that it was a riot by a few hundred people who vandalized parts of the building, and that President Trump had told his fans to protest "peacefully," there are other considerations.
An "insurrection" would require some sort of plan to actually take over the government, to implement new rules, orders, policies and such. And what about commanding the military? There have not even been suggestions there's evidence for this.
Nevertheless, Democrats insist it was an "insurrection" and now it's being explained why.
By convincing Americans, and especially judges, it was an "insurrection," Democrats want to use any conviction of President Trump to label him an "insurrectionist" and, under the 14th Amendment, keep him off the 2024 ballot. Or prevent him from taking office if elected.
That amendment was adopted after the Civil War and bars those who participated in an "insurrection" from holding federal office.
By manipulating the facts about Jan. 6, and redefining various words, leftists hope that they will be able to accomplish their goal.
Unruh didn't offer any evidence to refute the claim, instead quoting other right-wingers whining about it.
In a July 25 column -- the opening essay to a issue of the sparsely read Whistleblower magazine that bestowed martyrdom on Trump by declaring him the victim of "persecution" -- managing editor David Kupelian huffed that "the Democrats’ end-game appears to be a perverse attempt to constitutionally bar Trump from ever again seeking public office on the grounds that he violated the 14th Amendment, Section 3, which forbids any person from holding any elected office who 'shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against' the United States of America." He too failed to offer any evidence to refute the claim.
An Aug. 21 article by Unruh touted a pro-Trump attrorney bizarrely calling the Constitution an "urban legend" and likening enforcing the Constitution on Trump to authoritarian dictatorhips like Iran:
An increasing number of voices on the left are demanding that, like in countries like Iran, America's ballot be subjected to a "cleansing" in which the government officials now in power will determine who will be on the ballot to succeed them in their power.
But constitutional expert Jonathan Turley, who has testified before Congress and represented members in court, said the implications of that agenda are "chilling."
The issue is that infamous Jan. 6, 2021, protest-turned-riot at the Capitol. Leftists insist President Trump is to blame for everything that happened that day. And they have chosen to define it themselves as an "insurrection."
They say that means they can apply the Constitution's 14th Amendment, which was adopted after the Civil War and bars those who participate in a rebellion or insurrection to overturn the government from later being elected.
"Such ballot cleansing is common in countries like Iran where citizens wait to learn which opposition candidates will be allowed to run," he said.
Turley explained, "The popularity of urban legends is a testament to the will to believe. The desire of people to keep Elvis alive or prove that a Sasquatch could exist furtively in our backyards shows the resilience of fables.
"Constitutional urban legends often have an even more immediate appeal and tend to arise out of the desperation of divided times. One of the most popular today is that former President Donald Trump can be barred from office, even if he is not convicted in any of the four indictments he faces, under a long-dormant clause of the 14th Amendment."
As usual, this is a one-sided story in which Unruh refused to seek out anyone to respond to Turley's claims (and there are people who will).
Some voters in a leftist state with a strong anti-Trump agenda are taking the lead in pushing a "highly suspect constitutional theory" intended to keep him off the 2024 presidential ballot by simply declaring him unqualified.
"No adjudication. No judge. No jury. Just the Left declaring him 'disqualified' for office," explained a commentary from Jordan Sekulow at the American Center for Law and Justice.
The Center Square explains it is in Colorado where some voters have sued seeking a court order banning President Donald Trump from the Republican presidential primary ballot.
The report explains the 115-page complaint claims Trump can't be on the ballot because of the 14th Amendment, which "states anyone who took an oath to support the Constitution and then 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same,' … cannot hold a state or federal office."
It dates to the post-Civil War period when individuals who fought for the Confederacy were returning to be members of Congress.
But the premise conflating Trump's criticism of faults in the 2020 election and the Civil War seems extreme, critics say. Further, Trump never has even been charged with anything like insurrection.
But as others have pointed out, the Constitution does not require anyone to be charged with insurrection to run afoul of that provision. Unruh raged against the Colorado effort again in a Sept. 13 article:
Leftists in Colorado have filed a lawsuit trying to finagle a way to use the 14th Amendment to keep President Donald Trump off the 2024 presidential ballot.
"The Left is desperate to keep Donald Trump off the ballot in various key states by arguing that an obscure provision of the 14th Amendment disqualifies Donald Trump from even running from office," explained a report at the American Center for Law and Justice.
They're using a provision that was adopted after the Civil War that banned those who tried to overthrow the government from returning and being officers.
The ACLJ said the "brazen" attempt to eliminate the choice of Trump for voters reveals the "desperate" attitude of Democrats.
The Colorado case, by six voters and the leftist Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, named Donald Trump and Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a far-left activist who claims Trump is a "liar with no respect for the Constitution," as defendants.
But the plaintiffs left out the Colorado Republican Committee.
"This is where the ACLJ comes in. It is the state party, not the Colorado secretary of state, that decides who the Republican nominees are going to be in the presidential election. CREW is trying to circumvent the Republican Party and deny it the chance to defend its own ability to choose its candidates for president," the ACLJ reported.
Unruh didn't dispute the claim that Trump is a "liar with no respect for the Constitution."
An anonymously written Sept. 24 article freaked out about a similar effort in another state:
One of the schemes that Democrats are rallying around right now in their attempt to keep President Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot is by claiming he is ineligible.
They have, on their own, charged and convicted him of "insurrection," and they then claim that the 14th Amendment prevents him from being a candidate.
Their actions come irrespective of the fact that Trump has not, in fact, been charged with insurrection, much less convicted.
Nevertheless, they are suing various states to try to eliminate him as a possible opponent to the octogenarian Joe Biden, whose verbal and mental stumbles appear to multiple each day.
The latest fight has erupted in Oklahoma, where the American Center for Law and Justice says it has asked a court to be allowed to represent the state GOP, which was left out of the case by Democrats.
Unruh rehashed it again in a Sept. 29 article touting how Newt Gingrich claims that Trump will be the Republican nominee:
Democrats are claiming that the 14th Amendment, which bans those guilty of "insurrection" from taking office again, and came in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Leftists charge that Trump should not be on the ballot because of the protest-turned-riot on Jan. 8, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol.
Key problems with that argument are that the law can be read to exclude presidents, and Trump never has been charged, much less convicted, of insurrection.
Gingrich said that movement typifies "how terrified" the left is of a Trump candidacy – and presidency.
WND also republished a couple outside articles making similar arguements against invoking the amendment:
WND also published a Sept. 6 column by Betsy McCaughey complaining about the effort:
Innocent until proven guilty. That's a fundamental right in America, at least until now.
Anti-Trump groups determined to disqualify the leading Republican candidate for president are urging state election officials across the U.S. to remove Donald Trump from the ballot, claiming he's an "insurrectionist." They're citing an arcane clause in the 14th Amendment, written after the Civil War, that disqualifies anyone who "engaged in insurrection" against the United States from holding public office.
Here's the hitch. Trump has never been convicted of insurrection, and none of his prosecutors – not Jack Smith nor Fani Willis – is charging him with insurrection. The House of Representatives impeached him, accusing him of insurrection, but he was acquitted. So, zero convictions, one acquittal.
Even so, left-wing group Free Speech For People has sent letters to state election officials, including the co-chairs of the New York State Board of Elections, labeling Trump an insurrectionist and telling these officials they have a duty to remove Trump from the ballot, just as they would be obligated to remove any presidential aspirant who had not reached the age of 35 or was not a natural born citizen.
Under this scheme, if Trump wants to be on the ballot, he'll have to go to court and prove his innocence.
In short, guilty until proven innocent. That's as un-American as it gets. Whether you like Trump or loathe him, you should be concerned.
Again, the Constitution does not require that a person be convicted of insurrection to be barred from office.
MRC's DeSantis Defense Brigade Watch, Immigrant Cred Edition Topic: Media Research Center
How has the Media Research Center's DeSantis Defense Brigade been doing its PR duty since the last time we checked in? Let's take a look. Nicholas fondacaro had a massive meltdown in an Aug. 1 post when co-hosts on "The View" questioned his immigrant credentials, which he screeched was "anti-Italian HATE" in the headline despite the fact that DeSantis' ethnic heritage wasn't even mentioned:
Since it’s a day that ends in “y” (Tuesday), Disney’s attack dogs on ABC’s The View were trying to savage Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. Of course, they were still pushing Vice President Kamala Harris’s BIG LIE about Florida schools teaching that slavery was a good thing, but moderator Whoopi Goldberg took a disgusting swing at the Governor by disparaging this Italian family’s immigration to the United States.
Goldberg’s anti-Italian HATE flared when she tried to engage in a bit of one-upmanship and suggest her family’s history as slaves and generations on American soil were better than his.
“And just so we're clear, we're not going anywhere! We've been here, Mr. DeSantis!” falsely suggesting he was trying to get rid of black people in America. “Many of us have been here for generations. Can you say the same?” she scoffed. She and co-host Joy Behar agreed that he couldn’t:
BEHAR: I don't think he can.
GOLDBERG: No, I don't think he can.
While Goldberg was busy becoming the nativist caricature the left paints Republicans as the fact of the matter was that DeSantis’s family has been here for generations.
According to a 2018 Tampa Bay Times hit piece trying to portray him as a hypocrite on the issue of legal and illegal immigration, DeSantis’s great-great-grandmother Luigia Colucci immigrated from Italy during the first Italian diaspora in 1917 and his great-great-grandfather “had been in the United States since 1904.”
Clearly, Goldberg’s assertion was false, his family had been in the United States for generations. It was a very anti-immigrant attack from Goldberg, but then again it was her trying to go up against someone in the left’s Grievance Olympics.
Actually, it appears Fondacaro is the one going for the gold in the Grievance Olympics with this contribution to the DeSantis Defense League that falsely accused Goldberg of besmirching his ethnicity.
Curtis Houck defended DeSantis' anti-abortion policies in an Aug. 7 post:
Possibly out for redemption in the eyes of her fellow liberal journalists after her infamous October 2022 interview with now-Senator John Fetterman (D-PA), NBC correspondent Dasha Burns interrupted, lied, and smeared her way through the first portion of her sit-down with 2024 GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis (FL) on Monday’s Today.
Burns not only insisted January 6 would be the central focus of the 2024 general election, but lied about abortion and brushed aside approximately 12,000 late-term abortions.
[...]
Invoking Florida’s six-week limit on abortion, she asked him whether he’d “veto any sort of federal bill that would try to put a nationwide ban in place.”
DeSantis argued he would “be a pro-life president and” back “pro-life policies,” but he “would not allow what a lot of the left wants to do, which is to override pro-life protections throughout the country all the way up really until the moment of birth, in some instances, which I think is infanticide.”
If Burns had consulted his July 18 CNN interview, she’d know the answer that, while he supports such policies, he’s seemed doubtful a divided Congress would have the appetite to go that far.
Instead, Burns looked down at her talking points to hurl lies: “Well, actually, I got to push back on you on that because that’s a misrepresentation of what’s happening. I mean, that 1.3 percent of abortions happen at 21 weeks or higher.”
The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute’s latest year of data was 2020, in which they put the number of abortions at 930,160, meaning Burns was scoffing at 12,093 babies being murdered.
Earth to Burns: Would that be an acceptable train of thought if applied to hate crimes and racially-motivated murders? Of course not.
If Houck really believes that abortion is murder, he should be demanding that all 12,093 of this women be arrested and jailed, if not executed, for committing murder. But he won't take that step-- even though it's the logical endpoint of right-wing anti-abortion activism -- because it makes the movement look bad.
Houck attacked the second part of Burns' interview with DeSantis the next day for pointing out how badly DeSantis is doing in the polls:
This second part followed a segment on the liberal media’s most beloved topic in the third indictment of former President Trump with anchor Lester Holt boasting DeSantis was “still trying to make a dent in Mr. Trump’s lead” in the polls.
For her part, Burns reveled in DeSantis “predicting success despite struggling to gain traction against the Republican front-runner.”
Burns was then showed telling DeSantis he’s probably out-of-touch with the Republican Party: “Trump’s lead has only grown since you began campaigning in earnest. Like, is it possible that you’re potentially just out of step with what GOP voters are looking for right now?”
“So, if I had a nickel for every naysayer I’ve had in my life, I’d be a very, very wealthy man,” DeSantis replied.
The next part was a largely a replay of a portion from Today in which Burns fixated on having DeSantis state that Joe Biden won the 2020 election (which he did, but she didn’t like the way he said it).
Houck spent an Aug. 9 post whining that it was reported that DeSantis was trying to fix his failing campaign:
The major broadcast networks have made no secret that, above actual issues such as crime and the economy, they want voters to have Donald Trump’s criminal indictments and January 6 top of mind as they consider what matters for 2024. As such, they’ve spent roughly 335 minutes on the third indictment alone. On Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, ABC and NBC cheered the changes to Governor Ron DeSantis’s (R-FL) “floundering” and “struggl[ing]” campaign.
ABC’s newscasts — World News Tonight and then Good Morning America (GMA) — used chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl to spin the change in campaign manager as if it were another sign of his campaign’s immediate death.
Importantly, Karl has a financial incentive for DeSantis and Trump’s opponents to lose given his need to hawk an upcoming anti-Trump book (on top of the two he’s already published).
“Trump’s legal troubles don’t seem to be hurting his campaign at all. In fact, his tactics seem to be working. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, once seen as the most formidable Republican challenger to Trump, is now trying to revive his floundering campaign. He replaced his campaign manager today, his third staff shakeup in a month,” Karl bragged on World News Tonight.
Houck didn't dispute the accuracy of Karl's reporting, nor did he evaluate coverage of the Republican primary on Fox News, where it might do more good beyond creating right-wing clickbait. And if the MRC doesn't want Trump to be the nominee, why does it continually defend Trump every time he gets indicted? Houck was silent on that question.
Clay Waters whined in an Aug. 14 post that PBS "Washington Week" host Jeffrey Goldberg called out DeSantis for ranting about the "Deep State," a far-right bogeyman, and that guest Laura Barron-Lopez argued that such extreme talk is causing government officials to fear for their safety and that it's "a classic tactic used by authoritarian figures, autocratic figures, to try to rally their base around them and they know exactly who they’re speaking to." Waters, of course, insisted that DeSantis was merely speaking metaphorically, then played whataboutism:
This extreme response to DeSantis’s blunt, metaphorical rhetoric, which wasn’t directed at anyone in particular, is a bit much given the way Democrats have traditionally felt free to talk about and even attack Republicans.
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul has been physically attacked twice in recent years, to liberal amusement and little condemnation from the mainstream press. Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters “a basket of deplorables.”
[...]
A Bernie Sanders supporter shot up a ball field of Republican congressmen in 2017. Obnoxious protests have been held outside the homes of Republicans including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Lindsay Graham, not to mention conservative justices of the Supreme Court. Would Goldberg like to discuss the man arrested on his way to assassinating Justice Kavanaugh?
Kevin Tober found the idea of context useful in defending DeSantis in an Aug. 20 post:
Former Virginia Attorney General and founder of the DeSantis-aligned Super PAC Never Back Down, Ken Cuccinelli confronted CNN's State of the Union fill-in anchor for deceptively editing comments made by Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis during an interview with the Florida Standard to make it seem like he called Trump supporters "listless vessels." Regardless of whom you support for the Republican nomination, everyone should be outraged at the media lying about one of the Republican candidates.
Setting up the dishonest clip, Hunt insisted "There was a pretty interesting moment in a recent interview where Governor DeSantis talked about Trump supporters. He used the words listless vessels."
Cuccinelli jumped in to correct her: "He wasn’t talking about Trump supporters!"
Tober was in full DeSantis PR mode, touting "the full transcript from this portion of the DeSantis interview which was sent to members of the media through a press release from the DeSantis campaign," then concluding: "Luckily readers don't have to go find the transcript online since it was provided here at NewsBusters! Share this article with your friends and family so they aren't tricked by liberal media hacks like CNN's Kasie Hunt!" Tober didn't mention how much the DeSantis campaign paid him for this PR job.
WND's LaBarbera Doesn't Understand How Juries Work Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Peter LaBarbera complained in a Sept. 6 article:
A new poll of Washington, D.C. residents finds than an overwhelming majority, 64%, would vote to find Trump guilty in his upcoming March trial over subverting the 2020 election, while only 8% would find him innocent.
Twenty-eight percent of the 500 people polled were unsure, according to the Emerson College Polling survey conducted Aug. 29-Sept. 2.
Ominous as it is for Trump's chances of getting a fair trial, the Emerson poll understates the extreme pro-Democrat political bias in the district, with Joe Biden getting 93% of the 2020 vote.
We find it hard to believe that LaBarbera is this dumb, but surely even he knows that an entire city doesn't judge a defendant -- only 12 jurors do. And in the jury selection process, both the prosecution and defense lawyers, as well as the judge, will screen jurors and try to eliminate those who they believe cannot be impartial. Merely living in a particular city is not evidence that a prospective juror cannot be partial.
LaBarbera concluded with the sentiments of a right-wing historian:
Conservative author and retired historian Larry Schweikart echoed a sentiment of many conservatives when he cited the implications of DC's uber-biased demographics for defendants in the J6 trials in D.C., in his own X post Wednesday: "Yeah, fair trials for all those Patriot Day J6 people."
Yes, a guy who thinks a violent attempted insurrection is "Patriot Day" and all those who took part are automatically innocent -- and who apparently also doesn't understand how juries work -- is someone who LaBarbera thinks is a trusted source.
MRC Promotes Roseanne Barr As 'Anti-Woke,' Censors She's A Holocaust Denier Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has long had a sweet spot for Roseanne Barr. In 2018, for example, it cheered her false smear of George Soros as a Nazi sympathizer during World War II (in fact, he was a Jewish teenager trying to evade capture). That same year, even the MRC couldn't defend her racist smear of former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, but it did play whataboutism to try and distract from it.
Still, the MRC's soft spot for Barr has persisted. In a June 2022 column, Christian Toto complained that Barr hasn't been welcomed back into Hollywood yet, defending her by uncritically repeating her excuse that she was on Ambien when she smeared Jarrett:
Barr shared a gross, racially-charged Tweet in May of 2018 connected to former President Barack Obama official Valerie Jarrett, who is black. Barr immediately apologized for the message, saying she had been taking Ambien at the time and didn’t realize the light-skinned Jarrett was black.
True? False? It didn’t matter.
ABC fired Barr from her own show, costing her millions in the process. The network didn’t stop there. It killed off her character and continued the series without her, rebranding it as The Conners.
Barr hasn’t had a mainstream gig since. She appeared briefly alongside Andrew “Dice” Clay in 2019, but otherwise she’s been off the Hollywood radar.
She may never work in that town again.
Toto then claimed that Jussie Smollett, he of the racial attack hoax, made a film that got attention, whining that "he’ll be working again faster than Barr, a feminist pioneer who changed the face of TV but got punished for a Tweet that injured no one."
In June of this year, however, Barr went in a bizarre tirade claiming that "nobody died in theHolocaust" but that "It should happen — 6 million Jews should die right now because they cause all the problems in the world." She later claimed that this was humor and sarcasm, but didn't explain where, exactly the humor was supposed to be.
Desite that dubious and offensive track records, the MRC is still cheering Barr, this time as an "anti-woke" comedian, whatever that's supposed to mean. Catherine Salgado gushed in an Sept. 15 post:
Anti-woke comedian Roseanne Barr slammed censorship-heavy YouTube as she announced increasing interest in video platform Rumble.
Barr posted on X (formerly Twitter) Sept. 12 that she is increasingly focusing on The Roseanne Barr Podcast (which has 376,000 YouTube ubscribers) on the more pro-free speech Rumble as Google’s YouTube continues its biased and oppressive censorship. “[T]this is the start of something better!” she celebrated, before adding, “Free speech is great again.”
In the same tweet, Barr shared a link to her Rumble channel. “Starting to build up my Rumble- If you want to, follow this page to stay up on the podcast and any and all videos going forward,” she posted. “I’ll keep the YouTube going until they go full Gulag.” Barr already stated in a post on X she was considering leaving YouTube on Sept. 6, 2023.
Salgado made no mention of the offensive smears and attacks Barr has engaged in, of course -- not even her Holocaust denial of a few months earlier -- let alone how all that hate is supposed to make her "anti-woke."
Salgado also repeated the MRC's earlier complaint that a court ruled YouTube had the right to ban quack doctor Joseph Mercola over what she euphemistically called his "COVID-19 content" -- which actually involved spreading falsehoods and misinformation -- going on to huff, "It’s no wonder free speech advocates are looking for alternatives to YouTube." Yes, liars and extremists would want to seek out places where their lies and extremism isn't called out for what it is, and Rumble clearly isn't picky.And, yes, Salgado clearly believes that hate and lies are "free speech" that must never be questioned or exposed.
Barr is just the latest extremist the MRC has chosen to embrace because she spouts conservatively correct things.
NEW ARTICLE: WND's Politician-Nazi Double Standard, Biden Edition Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's David Kupelian can't stop complaining that people have likened Donald Trump to Hitler -- but he was silent when his boss, Joseph Farah, went Godwin on President Biden by declaring, "There's a Nazi living in the White House." Read more >>
The 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, which featured Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, drew media attention -- as well as complaints from the the Media Research Center because people were reminded that King was a liberal and that some of the issues he fought against still exist today. Alex Christy complained in an Aug. 26 post:
We typically don't do much with the Media Research Center's video=making operation MRCTV, but we were reminded that it's not just NewsBusters that peddles COVID and anti-vaxx conspiracy theories at the MRC. An Aug. 15 
The Media Rsearch Center's Elise Ehrhard spent an Aug. 24 
WorldNetDaily's initial reaction to the first Republican presidential debate was cheering that Donald Trump refused to take part. An Aug. 23 
The Media Research Center 
We're 
WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh leaned on right-wing "investigative reporter" Julie Kelly -- who has 
When we 
Last month, Donald Trump went to South Carolina gun store and admired a gun with his face on it. Both a right-wing reporter and a member of Trump's staff reported that he bought the gun. Just one problem with that: As someone who has been indicted on a felony charge, he is 
In the runup to last year's midterm elections and runoffs afterward, the Media Research Center 
WorldNetDaily likes to portray itself as faithful constitutionalists, but when some invoked the Constitution as a reason to remove Donald Trump from 2024 presideintial ballots, WND started singing a different tune. Bob Unruh complained in a July 20 
How has the Media Research Center's DeSantis Defense Brigade been doing its PR duty since 
WorldNetDaily's Peter LaBarbera complained in a Sept. 6 
The Media Research Center has long had a sweet spot for Roseanne Barr. In 2018, for example, it 
