More Bias, Shoddiness Found In MRC's Attack On Ad Fontes Topic: Media Research Center
We've already shown how the Media Research Center's attack on website-rating firm Ad Fontes is as loud, lame and partisan as its previous attacks on a similar firm, NewsGuard. But a deeper dive into the study shows just how shoddy and biased it is. There's nothing impartial about it at all; the MRC went into it with the goal of smearing Ad Fontes as biased, and its so-called evidence to make that narrative was just as biased. Luis Cornelio and Tim Kilcullen dubiously framed the fact that Ad Fontes rates right-wing websites lower than liberal-leaning websites as some sort of conspiracy:
With regard to its “reliability” scoring, Ad Fontes ranks media sources from a high of 64 to a low of zero. As Ad Fontes explains it, “Scores above 40 are “reliable” and “generally good;” scores below 24 are “unreliable” and “generally problematic.”
MRC Free Speech America staff analyzed the reliability scores of the 3,134 media entities rated by Ad Fontes between July 31 and Aug. 7. The disparity in scoring was readily apparent. Of the 2,032 media that Ad Fontes rated on the political “left,” 1,299 (64%) were given a score of 40 or above, solidifying their status as “reliable.”
Examples of left-leaning media awarded this highest rating include CNN, The New York Times,NPR, Associated Press, Vox, ABC, CBS and NBC. However, of the 975 media Ad Fontes rated on the “right,” only 313 (32%) were given a “reliable” score of 40 or above. (e.g. The Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, National Post, CATO Institute). Ad Fontes was exactly twice as likely to award its highest rating to media on the left.
[...]
The bias is even more extreme in terms of what media Ad Fontes considered to be “unreliable” and “generally problematic.” Ad Fontes rated only 59 of the 2,032 (2.9%) media on the political left as “unreliable” (scores below 24). Media in that group included MSNBC’s The ReidOut and The Daily Dot. By contrast, Ad Fontes rated a sizable 286 of the 975 (29%) media on the political right as “unreliable.” Included among that tier were: The Federalist; Fox News shows Jesse Watters Primetime, Hannity and The Ingraham Angle; The Epoch Times; PragerU; The Daily Signal; RedState; Turning Point USA; NewsmaxTV, Timcast IRL,OAN, and The Matt Walsh Show. This means that Ad Fontes is exactly 10 times more likely to rate right-leaning media as “unreliable” and “generally problematic.”
Comparing the overall scores of comparable media further emphasizes how relentlessly Ad Fontes’s reliability system favors big media entities on the left and punishes media it labels as on the political right:
Cornelio and Kilcullen are trying to impose false balance on Ad Fontes; there's no reason for it to give equivalent ratings to an equal number of left-leaning and right-leaning websites if the data doesn't support it, and they offer no actual evidence that it doesn't. Insetad, they cherry-pick stories from right-wing media they believe are rated lower than they desire:
Take, for example, a Breitbart article summarizing the testimony of a mother accusing Fairfax County’s school lockdown policies of exacerbating her autistic son’s fatal depression. Ad Fontes gave this story a rare single-digit rating (9.33), far beneath the score of 24 that marks something as “unreliable.” The article did not endorse the woman’s speech, but merely quoted and embedded the video of the mother’s public testimony and transcribed what she said.
Cornelio and Kilcullen are dishonestly portraying the story; in fact, the headline claimed the mother blamed "critical race theory" for her son's suicide. And their insistence that Breitbart "did not endorse the woman’s speech" is laughable since its decision to publish the story was an effective endorsement -- it would not have allowed this woman's testimony to stand without comment it didn't fit into right-wing narratives against CRT and COVID-era lockdowns.
Cornelio and Kilcullen further shows their hostility to Ad Fontes by arguing with its leader, Vanessa Otero, and laughably denying that right-wing media outlets have any sort of reach and are staffed with ideologues:
Otero’s willful disregard of facts contrary to her worldview is not limited to the subject of Biden bribery. When pressed about the left’s disproportionate representation in the media, Otero interjected: “I don't agree with your premise that … there are more left leaning folks in that field than right leaning folks.”
When it was pointed out to Otero that by her own site’s designations left-leaning sources more than double right-leaning ones (2,032 to 975), Otero still refused to acknowledge the disparity. “There's a lot of media out there and like, like Fox News, New York Post, you know, the Daily Mail, those are some of the biggest media organizations in the world,” she insisted. “And they're not populated by left-leaning journalists.”
Even if one takes at face value that these three organizations lack left-leaning journalists, it is ludicrous to claim that the market share of Fox News, the New York Post and Daily Mail approach the impact of legacy media. According to Nielsen ratings published by Variety in Dec. 2022, Fox News and its sister channel Fox Business had a combined 2.43 million total viewers in 2022. This is less than half of the 5.148 million viewers of NBC (NBC is owned by Comcast, which is actually one of “the biggest media organizations in the world”). The other two broadcast news channels—CBS at 5.144 million viewers and ABC (owned by Disney) at 3.867 million viewers—also dwarfed Fox News’s total viewership.
The case is the same for news site traffic. According to an August report by the Press Gazette, Fox News has 262.1 million monthly visitors; Daily Mail has 125.3 million. The two websites’ combined influence is significant, but it is only a fraction of the 441.6 million that The New York Times or of the 415.2 million that CNN — two far-left outlets that are pushed by Big Tech giants like Google — receive.
Note that Cornelio and Kilcullen apply the the "far-left" tag to the Times and CNN -- a tag they don't justify, showing just how marinated they are in right-wing ideology that portrays any media that not as far-right as they are as "far-left." (They do not similarly identify any outlet as "far-right.") They also engage in more dishonesty by comparing the ratings of Fox News, which runs programming 24/7 designed to promote right-wing politcal narratives 24/7, to networks like ABC, CBS and NBC, which run non-ideological entertainment programming for most of its day.
Cornelio and Kilcullen were even mad that Ad Fontes endorsed the American justice system:
Otero and Berens’s political agenda pervades the actions of Ad Fontes, right down to its marketing. After nineteen MAGA Republicans, including former President Trump, were indicted in Atlanta, Georgia, Ad Fontes sent out a celebratory email declaring: “[t]he process of bringing those at the center of a conspiracy to defraud the American people and misrepresent the good work of the officials responsible for mounting a free and fair election in Georgia had been identified by Georgia District Attorney, Fani Willis, and indicted for their alleged actions. The wheels of justice, however slow, had turned in the general direction that they are supposed to turn.”
Yes, supporting the prosecution of alleged criminals is now a "political agenda" -- though it used to be the one on the right.
Cornelio and Kilcullen's attack seems to have been motivated by its criticism of the MRC itself:
Ad Fontes often gives “unreliable” ratings to stories critical of the Biden agenda that legacy media does not cover, even when there is no doubt as to their veracity. MRC Free Speech America’s February 2022 study documenting over 800 cases of COVID-19-related censorship by Big Tech platforms was labeled “unreliable” (15.67) despite the platforms themselves they censor speech that disagrees with establishment guidelines.
As usual, the MRC is portraying correcting lles and misinformation about COVID as "censorship," or that prioritizing accurate information is somehow "establishment."
Cornelio and Kilcullen concluded:
While Ad Fontes claims to have a methodology for how it scores the articles it chooses, this framework is habitually abandoned so as to pursue Otero’s aggressive hard-left agenda. Concerningly, the brokenness of Ad Fontes’s methodology has not yet affected the firm’s effectiveness in pushing its product. Otero boasts that Ad Fontes has been imposed in schools across the country, removing the ability for students to access news sources skeptical of the left’s agenda. Ad Fontes also has partnered with Big Tech giants Meta and Microsoft, making it easier to pressure advertisers into blacklisting media Otero’s ratings system disapproves of.
Censorship tools like Ad Fontes have no place in a free country. Americans benefit from a diversity of viewpoints, not conformity to Otero’s warped worldview.
Again, they want you to think that not being hard-right like they are means being "hard-left." This is not "media research" -- it's a political hit job designed to dishonestly portray the pursuit of accurate, trustworthy information as a partisan enterprise. Cornelio and Kilcullen need to explain their ideological motivation behind wanting to let misinformation spread unchecked and attacking anyone who opposes that.
FAKE NEWS: WND Repeats False Story Claiming COVID Vaccines Cause 'VAIDS' Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily publishes so much misinformation about COVID vaccines that it occasionally has to outsource some of it. That's what it did with an Oct. 2 article it stole from something called the People's Voice:
Official data released by the Canadian government reveals that at least 74% of the vaccinated population across Canada now have full-blown Vaccine Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (VAIDS).
The data reveal that the double vaccinated population across Canada have now lost on average 74% of their immune system capability, and the triple vaccinated population across Canada have now lost on average 73% of their immune system capability compared to the natural immune system of their unvaccinated counterparts.
Expose-news.com reports: So much damage has now been done that the figures show the double vaccinated population are on average 3.8 times more likely to be infected with Covid-19 and 3.3 times more likely to die of Covid-19 than the unvaccinated population.
As we've noted, Media Bias Fact Check calls The People's Voice, formerly known as NewsPunch, a "clickbait news website that promotes extreme right-wing conspiracy theories and pseudoscience misinformation," where "Headlines use loaded emotional language" and "story selection almost always favors the right through negative stories regarding liberal policy and politicians." It concluded: "This website has zero credibility due to the routine publishing of fake news." The People's Voice's solurce for this story, Expose News, has a similar lack of credibility.
You will not be surprised to learn that this story is completely false, as a real news organization (and Health Canada) reported:
The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) said October 10 that it "would not be possible for a Covid-19 vaccine to cause AIDS," as messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) shots do not use a live virus to trigger an immune response and viral vector jabs include "a harmless virus (in this case, an adenovirus) as a delivery system."
"To date, no reports of AIDS following Covid-19 vaccines have been submitted to PHAC," the agency said by email.
[...]
To support their claims, the articles analyzed government data< on the number of Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths in Canada in January and February 2022 -- when the Omicron variant was circulating widely.
What Canada's data actually shows is that the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines wanes over time and that the initial jabs were less effective against Omicron.
AFP also pointed out that "Independent experts say VAIDS is not a real condition":
"There is no VAIDS," said Rachel Roper, professor of microbiology and immunology at East Carolina University, in an October 5 email. "All data worldwide show that Covid vaccines save lives and do not increase deaths."
WND has not told its readers this story is discredited, nor has it told them the truth. That refusal to correct the record means WND is discredited as well.
MRC 'Study' Filled With Anti-LGBT Invective, False Framing Topic: Media Research Center
So many of the Media Research Center's so-called "studies" involve attacking non-right-wing media for not promoting right-wing narratives and for supposedly spending too much time not hating certain populations disfavored by the right. In that vein is an Oct. 4 "study" by Clay Waters that is much more of an anti-LGBT screed than any sort of legitimate "media research":
One of the most ignored passages in legislative history is this phrase in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967: Taxpayer-funded media outlets should observe "strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature."
Yet a new Media Research Center study finds PBS’s flagship NewsHour program aired nine times more coverage in favor of the left-wing "woke" position on so-called "LGBTQ" issues compared to more traditional positions. Over the seven-month period of March 1 through September 30, 2023, supportive coverage almost wholly dominated the "debate," if you could call it that: 172 minutes for the left vs. 19 minutes for the right. That's 90.2% supportive coverage for the side pushing “identity” issues.
It was even worse for in-studio guests: 19 to one -- and the one utterance that opposed the left-wing position came from gay tennis star Billie Jean King, who dared to suggest that men shouldn't compete in women's sports once it came to advanced competitions like the Olympics.
The findings prove that the PBS NewsHour has been wholly captured by left-wing “woke” ideology on a major cutting-edge social issue: sex-and-race related “identity” issues that come under the heading of “LGBTQ,” which stands for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer.”
Extreme “gender identity” positions shun the facts of male and female biological differences in favor of how an individual person identifies, a delusion that sometimes results in irreversible surgeries performed on teenagers, to match their self-diagnosed gender identity.
Dissent was instead limited to isolated soundbites, such as a clip from a legislator on a statehouse floor. Those statements were typically cued up for an in-studio journalist or trans-activist (sometimes it was hard to tell the difference) to either neutralize as somehow false or to condemn as a threat to trans children.
Note Waters' framing here -- merely showing basic respect to LGBT people is portrayed as "left-wing" and "woke" and "radical" and "extreme," while no such epithets are attached to right-wing anti-LGBT viewpoints aside from a single reference to those views being on the "right." Waters went on to rage that PBS wasn't sufficiently hateful toward a transgender state legislator:
On April 26, PBS leaped upon the causeof Montana legislator and transgender Democrat Zooey Zephyr, barred from the Montana House floor for violating rules of decorum during a debate on a bill that would have banned so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors wishing to surgically or chemically “transition.”
Medical institutions in Europe and now America are backing away from such “care,” which also includes puberty blockers and hormone therapy. But such concerns haven’t registered a blip in the brave new world of PBS’s wholly supportive news coverage.
(Ironically, the September 24 edition of PBS News Weekend did consider European health and safety regulations when it came to…tattoo ink. Host John Yang asked a doctor: “Then talk about the ink, because as I say, it’s not regulated in the United States, the EU, the European Union, has banned some ingredients.”)
The Montana vote came after a nasty speech by Zephyr, a biological male, accusing colleagues who oppose such care of encouraging youth suicide: “If you vote yes on this bill, I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.” Zephyr also claimed that failing to provide such care was “tantamount to torture.” But those inflammatory quotes, delivered on the Montana House floor, didn’t make PBS’s hagiography.
Host Amna Nawaz revealed how passionately she and her PBS colleagues work in defense of transgender ideology, marshalling dubious activist-provided statistics as plain truth: “You know, we looked up some statistics. This is something you have spoken about before, the link between some of the political rhetoric and real-world violence in particular…”
Waters did not explain why he is of the opinion that being transgender is an "ideology," nor did he offer evidence that right-wing anti-LGBT rhetoric doesn't inspire threats and violence -- indeed, it's been shown that harassment and threats of violence typically follow when an LGBT individual or institution is featured on the virulently anti-LGBT Libs of TikTok Twitter feed. Waters also failed to disclose that his employer has repeatedly hurled invective at Zephyr for standing up for LGBT rights.
Waters also complained that "When potential Republican presidential candidates dared appear on the NewsHour, there was a good chance they’d get hit with hostile questions on gender identity." But the examples he cited are not "hostile" at all, consisting of asking candidates or summarizing their anti-LGBT agenda, the accuracy of which Waters did not dispute. He also complained that the alleged transgender status of the Nashville school shooter wasn't emphasized more, and he offered no evidence that Hale's transgender status was of any relevance to the crime. Remember that the MRC obsessed over Hale's sexuality as a distraction from the gun aspect of a gun massacre.
Waters praised one segment "for actually achieving a rough balance of views, treating the gender debate as actually debatable, not a one-sided matter of tolerance versus hate." He didn't explain why someone's gender must be "debatable," or why "tolerance versus hate" isn't an accurate description of the sides involved. He further praised the segment for giving a voice to "opponents of pornographic books in school libraries," which falsely frames those opposed to library censorship as endorsing "pornographic books."
Despite putting out a wildly biased and slanted "study" like this, the MRC still thinks it should be treated as credible. It shouldn't.
NEW ARTICLE -- Trump Indictment Theater At WND: Act 3 Topic: WorldNetDaily
As Donald Trump faced his third indictment, his fanboys at WorldNetDaily cranked up the rage -- and the melodrama. Read more >>
MRC Launches Loud And Lame Attack On Another Media Ratings Servce Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's war against NewsGuard for pointing out the shoddiness of right-wing media has been loud, lame and partisan. Now it's running the same playbook against another website-ratings firm. Luis Cornelio and Tim Kilcullen began a Sept. 21 "original" report this way:
The left’s crusade against media critical of the Biden agenda has entered a new disturbing stage that should send chills down every American’s spine.
Meet Ad Fontes: a powerful media ratings firm positioning itself to be the arbiter of truth and facts. Founded in 2018, Ad Fontes has established close partnerships with the nation’s largest Big Tech platforms, advertising agencies and educational institutions. But Ad Fontes is just getting started.
Ad Fontes seeks to determine which media platforms are acceptable for Americans to use and which ought to be dismantled—all under the guise of non-partisanship and impartiality. However, an MRC Free Speech America investigation into Ad Fontes exposed the company’s claim of impartiality to be a mere facade. Our findings revealed that Ad Fontes’s entire methodology is designed to harm conservatives while championing liberal outlets. In addition, our investigation showed that its executives rigged its “Media Bias Chart” to hide the disturbing fact that Ad Fontes exists to promote the left’s political agenda.
Of course, the fact that it rates right-wing websites lower than other ones is not, in itself, evidence of bias, however much Cornelio and Kilcullen want you to believe that advance their narrative -- they simply assume that anyone who doesn't push the same right-wing narratives are biased and evil and must be destroyed for such wrongthink. They went on to shoehorn their attacks on Ad Fontes into the MRC's existing narratives:
Ad Fontes achieves its ratings by having nameless, faceless analysts making subjective editorial decisions consistent with the views of its founder and CEO.
Ad Fontes claims to deploy teams of three unnamed individuals with different ideological leanings (allegedly right, center and left) to review and rate news stories. Ad Fontes CEO Vanessa Otero told MRC Free Speech America that this so-called diversity guards against biases in their ratings of media. Ad Fontes asks Americans to accept its anonymous analysis as objective, scientific and empirical. Regrettably, it’s not. Our findings reveal that Ad Fontes’s analysis is categorically plagued with leftist bias.
Otero claimed her ratings are meant to check bias but she consistently failed to see how her own biases and repeated contradictions are systemic in Ad Fontes’s work. From how stories are initially selected for review to how these stories are analyzed, Otero provided information in statements to MRC Free Speech America that contradicted her assertions.
Notably, Ad Fontes glosses over legacy media’s most effective political activism tool, bias by omission. These are the stories the media refuse to cover — such as the Biden family scandals (e.g. the legacy media blackout of information harmful to Joe Biden) to swing elections in favor of the left. MRC published a detailed report showing how the media and Big Tech defeated former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election utilizing this powerful tactic.
That "detailed report," as we've documented, is nothing but a conspiracy theory that ignores the fact there was no reason to trust the New York Post's reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop given its stattus as a pro-Trump lackey and based on findings the MRC paid biased right-wing pollsters to generate.
The lead attack was on Ad Fontes' media bias chart:
The Ad Fontes business model is built around the idea that it is “non-partisan,” “impartial” and fact-based. This is a facade. An investigation by MRC Free Speech America reveals that in both approach and application, Ad Fontes exists to amplify media on the political left while suppressing media that report facts inconsistent with Otero’s worldview.
"Ad Fontes is a for-profit company run by a left-winger purporting to objectively rank media outlets,” said Brent Bozell, founder and president of the Media Research Center. “But no honest American believes that PBS, CNN and The New York Times are objective media outlets. Their whole ranking system is a lie aimed at telling Americans to trust the leftist media and not to trust anyone on the right."
[...]
MRC Free Speech America staff analyzed the reliability scores of the 3,134 media entities rated by Ad Fontes between July 31 and Aug. 7. The disparity in scoring was readily apparent. Of the 2,032 media that Ad Fontes rated on the political “left,” 1,299 (64%) were given a score of 40 or above, solidifying their status as “reliable.”
Examples of left-leaning media awarded this highest rating include CNN, The New York Times, NPR, Associated Press, Vox, ABC, CBS and NBC. However, of the 975 media Ad Fontes rated on the “right,” only 313 (32%) were given a “reliable” score of 40 or above. (e.g. The Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, National Post, CATO Institute). Ad Fontes was exactly twice as likely to award its highest rating to media on the left.
“The left’s most powerful tool you’ve never heard of, Ad Fontes’s official ratings chart resembles a fairytale rainbow of vibrant colors, but the actual data is nightmare for people who want straight news,” said MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider. “This so-called media literacy firm seems to have worked overtime to make its rating system look benevolent, but when you look deeper into the real data, it’s not. The chart offered to students and advertisers is clearly deceptive and tailor-made to create a veneer of objectivity. I can see why advertisers would be induced to direct their advertising dollars to the left and why kids would be influenced not to read another article critical of liberal policies.”
As the head of NewsGuard occasionally did, Otero made the mistake of trying to cooperate with the MRC, which was interested only in bad-faith attacks and planning a hit job on her organization:
Ad Fontes’s leader, Otero, claimed her media ratings system is meant to check bias, but in an interview with MRC Free Speech America, she recited vague platitudes about her own biases but then consistently refused to acknowledge how her own prejudices are reflected in her company’s work.
Even if something as subjective as reliability could be quantified in a single number, Otero is ill-suited for such a task. This is because, despite her enthusiastic presentation, she has massive blindspots to the flaws in her methodology and is reflexively hostile to data that challenges her worldview.
MRC Free Speech America pressed Otero about the issue of bias by omission in an Aug. 8 interview. Bias by omission is the most insidious form of media manipulation: Instead of misrepresenting facts, outlets simply refuse to report news contrary to their own political agenda. Sometimes, legacy media will bury an entire story, such as legacy media’s refusal to cover the Hunter Biden laptop exposé until after the election. This well-researched story, published in October of 2020, included emails recovered from abandoned Biden family laptops that revealed Joe Biden participating in his son’s dealings with the shady Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings.
Speaking of bias by omission: Cornelio and Kilcullen touted how "MRC commissioned a detailed survey of 1,750 swing state voterst hat pulled the lever for then-candidate Joe Biden," finding that "82 percent of Biden voters were unaware of at least one of eight news stories that legacy media had buried" -- but didn't disclose that the poll was conducted by The Polling Company, which was founded by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, so its fairness and accuracy can reasonably be questioned. When Otero pointed out how biased the MRC "study" was, Cornelio and Kilcullen objected:
Ad Fontes gave the MRC study on the media coverup of the Biden family scandals an abysmal 11.33 reliability rating on a scale where anything below 24 is considered unreliable. Otero spared no words in assailing the piece: “It’s based on a supposition, a premise that you all—you advocate that the media doesn’t cover these things.”
When MRC Free Speech America researchers pointed out that the study revealed that a large portion of Biden voters had never heard of the Hunter Biden laptop story and that 9.4 percent of his voters would not have voted for him if they had known of it, Otero doubled down. “I don’t agree with that … there was so much attention on the Hunter Biden laptop thing,” she claimed. “Like, regardless of the fact that it was, like, suppressed on Twitter and Facebook. There is no lack of coverage of, like, Hunter Biden stories, right?”
[...]
Otero’s response highlights one of the fatal weaknesses with Ad Fontes’s methodology: In training analysts to adopt a uniform approach consistent with Otero’s vision, her opinions are used as the standard to determine the reliability of stories. Actual facts that contradict her opinions are therefore deemed misinformation. Thus, many of the 1,750 Biden voters who were scientifically polled but reported views that contradicted Otero’s alternative reality were once again erased.
Again, Cornelio and Kilcullen refused to disclose the logical reason the study should be dismissed: the bias of the pollsters on which the study relies (the other one being McLaughlin, who was the pollster for Trump's 2020 presidential campagin and, thus, is even more compromised).
We'll delve more into the MRC's attack on Ad Fontes soon.
Trump's Pollsters Serve Up Pro-Trump Rah-Rah (And Biased Polls) At Newsmax Topic: Newsmax
John and Jim McLaughlin are the pollsters for Donald Trump's presidential campaingn, and the things he does for Newsmax pretty closely reflect that (even if that connection to the Trump campaign is rarely disclosed). On Aug. 29, after the first Republican presidential debate -- which Trump avoided in favor of an interview with Tucker Carlson -- the McLaughlins had a raft of pro-Trump polling to peddle:
After the second Republican debate, the McLaughlins served up more pro-Trump propaganda in an Oct. 2 column:
Donald Trump is crushing the Republican primary field and he’s beating his political persecutor, Joe Biden.
Our recent national poll was completed right before the second Republican debate.
This national poll of 1,000 likely voters (+/-3.1% at the 95% confidence interval), was completed between Sept. 22 and 26.
[...]
In the general election among all voters, in spite of four indictments in five months, President Trump beats Joe Biden 47% to 43% with 10% undecided.
Trump wins among Republicans 87% to 10%; takes 12% of Democrats to Biden’s 79% and wins independents 41% to 39%.
Trump also exceeds his 2020 share of the minority vote receiving 13% among African Americans and 40% among Hispanics.
Of course, the fact that the McLaughlins are on Trump's payroll means these results should be seen has biased and less than reliable. They ended with more pro-Trump rah-rah:
As national Republican leaders, and former presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Scott Walker have said the primary is over. Trump has won.
It’s really time to end the RNC debates which are nothing more than anti-Trump infomercials that help Joe Biden.
It’s time to focus on beating Joe Biden and ending his reign of failure and corruption before Joe Biden puts his leading Republican opponent in jail — which will end the reason for the opposition Republican Party to exist.
The McLaughlins served up more slanted pro-Trump polling in an Oct. 30 column:
Since our last national poll, Donald Trump has gone to Iowa, New Hampshire and to court. The most attention Joe Biden received was when he flew back and forth to Israel, where he may be talking tough, while appeasing Hamas and Iran.
The result – President Trump destroys the Republican primary field and widens his lead over Joe Biden.
This national poll of 1,000 likely voters (+/-3.1% at the 95% confidence interval), was completed between October 19th and 25th.
The McLaughlins took shots at Ron DeSantis:
In a two-way ballot between President Trump and Ron DeSantis, Trump leads 73% to DeSantis 27%. No undecided.
Most distressing for Ron DeSantis is the serious rise of his negative ratings. In January, among all voters, DeSantis had a favorable to unfavorable rating of 40% favorable to 39% unfavorable. Now DeSantis’ favorable rating among all voters has declined to 34% while his unfavorable rating rose to 51%. This is a big net decrease, -18%.
Among Republican primary voters his favorable rating is only 57%, with a significant share being negative, 29% unfavorable. This makes it very, very hard for Ron DeSantis to prove that he can beat Joe Biden, while Donald Trump is leading.
They also polled on another pro-trump question that they pushed in their previous column:
When Republican primary voters were asked about the following statement: “Currently Donald Trump is leading in all the Republican primary polls nationally by very big margins of 30, 40 or more points and winning early states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina by big margins. Even more important President Trump leads Joe Biden in the national media polls like ABC/Washington Post, CBS, Harvard
Harris and others. It’s time to stop the RNC debates attacking Donald Trump, fight Biden’s political indictments, and rally Republicans behind President Trump so we can start the campaign of beating Joe Biden.”
76% of Republican primary voters agreed and only 16% disagreed.
They concluded by echoing that talking point (and their previous column):
As national Republican leaders like Newt Gingrich and Scott Walker have said, the primary is over.
Trump has won the GOP field.
Gingrich and others have called for the RNC to cancel future GOP debates to unify behind Trump to prepare early for 2024. That would be a smart move.
It’s too early to say Trump has won the 2024 election, but his prospects are looking very strong.
Donald Trump as President and a Republican majority in Congress. We have a year to go.
The McLaughlins don't seem to understand how they discredit themselves by sounding much more like Trump campaing operativfes than impartial pollsters.
WND's Alexander Whines That Bogus Election-Fraud Claims Are Being Ignored Topic: WorldNetDaily
Rachel Alexander is an election-fraud dead-ender -- continuing to push the idea despite a complete lack of credible evidence to back up the claim, while also serving as a defender of those who pushed those fraudulent claims who are now facing consequences for doing so (and attacking those who have given up the lie and now acknowledge reality). Alexander went the dead-ender route in her Sept. 25 column:
The left and its comrades in the MSM and judiciary have been dismissing all evidence of significant election fraud, coming up with excuse after excuse to justify every single anomaly, even though there are hundreds of them. Despite the fact the anomalies in 2020 and 2022 all went against Republicans, favoring Democrats, which violates the law of large numbers, they still threw out all kinds of unbelievable excuses.
Let's look at how these kinds of strange abberations would be treated in other illegal and criminal activity. Can't find tens of thousands of chain-of-custody records or deleted server logs? Let's compare that to the medical industry, which is somewhat similar since medical records are treated very securely, like elections. If you lose or delete medical records, it's considered medical negligence, and doctors have lost their licenses to practice medicine for doing so.
[...]
In contrast, we are seeing the opposite in elections. Runbeck Election Systems, the private contractor hired by Maricopa County to assist with processing ballots, is fighting tooth and nail in court to prevent its video surveillance of ballots being dropped off and sent back out from being released. During the motion to dismiss hearing last week, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer thought it was acceptable to argue with a straight face that it would take too many resources to fulfill public records requests like that. Runbeck lost chain-of-custody records on tens of thousands of ballots, and 22,000 ballots that showed up at Runbeck cannot be accounted for.
Alexander's disregard for facts begins with thefact that she can't be bothered to get her targeted company's name correct; it's Runbeck Election Services, not Systems. Further, actual fact-checkers have shown there was ballot chain of custody was maintained. She went on to complain:
The law of large numbers is violated when all the anomalies harm Republicans. A team of experts put together a report on the large vote dumps in states suspected of election fraud that occurred the night of the 2020 election, batches of 25,000 or more net votes for Joe Biden. There were 26 dumps in 14 states. Pennsylvania had four. I'm no statistician, but this seems next to impossible odds.
In fact, vote-count spikes are notproof of election fraud. More complaints followed:
Election fraud never gets prosecuted because the judges find technical excuses not to hear the cases. And even though prior to 2020, elections were often overturned due to merely a handful of lesser statutory violations, not fraud, the left and MSM have successfully convinced people that fraud must be proven. Fraud is extremely difficult to prove since the standard is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Since election officials thwart efforts to improve security measures, it's easy for the fraudsters to escape detection. In reality, hundreds of thousands of class 2 misdemeanors, which occurred in Kari Lake's 2022 gubernatorial race, were always sufficient to overturn an election … until now.
That's another reference to the bogus chain-of-custody claims. She concluded by whining that attorneys are being held accountable for their actions:
The patriotic attorneys who dare to file lawsuits challenging election corruption are targeted with bar complaints. The 65 Project was started to go after the attorneys who filed 65 lawsuits challenging the 2020 election results. John Eastman, arguably the top constitutional legal scholar in the country, is currently undergoing a disbarment trial for advising Trump that Vice President Mike Pence had the option of rejecting or delaying certification of electoral slates from states suspected of election fraud.
Can you imagine attorneys being targeted for trying to stop corruption in other areas of life? What if the #MeToo attorneys were disbarred? How about the prosecutors who are going after Hunter Biden and Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J.? Election corruption is often compared to racketeering; can you imagine if attorneys were disbarred for going after the cartels and Mafia for racketeering?
Next time you find yourself in a testy situation involving the law in one of these other areas, just point to how election corruption is treated as a precedent to get off the hook. Bet it doesn't work.
Alexander is merely complaining that attorneys aren't getting away with pushing bogus and partisan election fraud claims. And she needs to present credible evidence of election fraud -- not just partisan rants without substance -- before she can legitimately claim it's being ignored.
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC's DeSantis Defense Brigade: History Lessons Topic: Media Research Center
When Ron DeSantis changed black history lessons in Florida to teach that slaves benefited from the skills while enslaved, the Media Research Center rushed to defend the dubious teaching. Read more >>
MRC Deflects Criticism Of Musk A Year After Buying Twitter Topic: Media Research Center
The Elon Musk PR team at the Media Research Center continued to take it hard as people point out how Musk has mismanaged Twitter (well, X) as his purchase of the social media website approached its first anniversary. tim Graham had a major whinefest in an Oct. 28 post:
Liberal reporters really hate how Twitter isn't a reinforcement and censorship tool for them any more. The Washington Post published a "Crappy Anniversary" piece headlined "A year later, Musk’s X is tilting right. And sinking."
A team of four reporters -- Will Oremus, Elizabeth Dwoskin, Sarah Ellison, and Jeremy B. Merrill -- reporter Twitter is sinking, based on "interviews" and leaks:
The number of people actively tweeting has dropped by more than 30 percent, according to previously unreported data obtained byThe Washington Post,and the company — which the entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX has renamed X — is hemorrhaging advertisers and revenue, interviews show.
There are a bunch of people fired by Musk commenting in this story. But here's the part they really hate....displacing the so-called "mainstream media."
[...]
And who does the Post bring in to say Twitter is no longer trustworthy? An Obama Bro! Oh sure, trust him when he claims it wasn't a happy place for Democrats and the Left!
And who did Graham bring in to boost his whinefest? Christina Pushaw, longtime spokesperson for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for whom the MRC oeprates a DefenseBrigade.
Graham went on to add whataboutism to his whine: "There again the liberals who "nonpartisan" NewsGuard as the gold standard -- when we noticed the fake news on the 'Israeli airstrike' didn't dent any '100 percent' ratings for liberal outlets." The MRC's war on NewsGuard, meanwhile, is loud, lame and partisan.
When the New York Times offered up a similar critique of Musk-era Twitter, It was Clay Waters to serve up a whinefest in an Oct. 30 post:
First the Washington Post, then the New York Times went after the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, one year after techno-entrepreneur Elon Musk purchased it and shone a light on the previous regimes squelching of conservative voices in favor of liberal “blue checks” and other anointed ones, and possibly swinging the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden (see “Twitter Files”).
Reporters Steven Lee Myers, Stuart Thompson, and Tiffany Hsu collaborated on the “interactive” online project “The Consequences of Elon Musk’s Ownership of X.” (At least the Times only needed three reporters to conjure up fear and loathing against Musk and X; the Post required four.)
The introduction featured three blocks of text interspersed among graphics, demonstrating this was less a technology news story than an anti-Musk rant:
[...]
The Times also cited a Harvard journal, The Misinformation Review:
Even worse, the article argued, Mr. Musk’s changes appear to be boosting the engagements of the most contentious users.
By “contentious,” read “conservative.”
Waters didn't dispute that Musk was boosting and amplifying right-wingers.
Luis Cornelio served up an Oct. 30 press release for his employer with a letter asking Musk to fight "censorship":
MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider joined other free speech advocates in signing an open letter to X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk, calling on him to stand against government censorship.
The letter, led by the Alliance Defending Freedom and signed by over 50 pro-free speech advocates, called on Musk to expand his promise to protect the First Amendment on X by allocating legal funds to protect individuals affected by state-sponsored censorship. Specifically, the letter cited growing concerns about laws aimed to prosecute individuals who go against the government-approved narrative on numerous fronts.
“Free speech is broadly protected by every major human rights treaty; however, in the West, speech increasingly is targeted by ‘hate speech’ laws,” read the letter. “In other regions, blasphemy laws target minority groups, sometimes with the sentence of death. These repressive laws are two sides of the same coin—both punish those who speak out against state-approved views.”
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, The Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon, Fox News Contributor & Host Sara Carter, Human Events Senior Editor Jack Posobiec and prominent Spanish-language political scientist Agustín Laje also signed the letter.
The idea that any of these people are "pro-free speech advocates" is ludicrous. These are all right-wing advocates who care only about their own "free speech"; most of them actively oppose the free speech of anyone who dares to disagree with them.They also don't explain why it's "censorship" to correct hate and misinformation online.
From there, it was Musk PR mode to counter all that criticism. It took both Autumn Johnson and Tom Olohan to write a Nov. 1 bit of stenography about Musk attacking George Soros again, this time asserting that Soros "fundamentally hates humanity" during an interview with Joe Rogan. A separate post by Johnson and Olohan the same day, also taken from Rogan's interview with Musk, cheered Musk for having "slammed the 'death cult' in charge of social media platforms" and having "accused leftist elitists of going 'too far' in the hatred of mankind." Johnson and Olohan couldn't find room, however, to notate the part of the interview where Musk broke into song after several seconds of awkward silence rather than answer a question about the Taliban having a presence on Twitter.
Meanwhile, the MRC's freakout over Twitter's Community Notes continued with a Nov. 3 post by Catherine Salgado declaring Twitter demonetizing posts with Community notes attacks to be among the worst "censorhip" of October:
X owner Elon Musk announced on Oct. 29: “Making a slight change to creator monetization: Any posts that are corrected by @CommunityNotes become ineligible for revenue share. The idea is to maximize the incentive for accuracy over sensationalism.” While Community Notes can at times add helpful information to posts that are inaccurate, Community Note fact checks have also asserted inaccurate or incomplete information. In addition to the initial censorship that Community Notes created, Musk’s latest announcement adds a new form of financial censorship on X.
Yes, Salgado bizarrely thinks fact-checking is "censorship."
WND's Brown Invokes Children To Justify His Anti-LGBTQ Hate Topic: WorldNetDaily
Michael Brown, it seems, can't stop fearmongering about LGBTQ people and portraying his fellow haters as victims (even if he continues to peddle faux compassion on the issue). He ranted in his Sept. 1 WorldNetDaily column:
It's true that most Americans want to be tolerant and open-minded. But there is a point where they draw the line, saying enough is enough. We've been seeing that happen more and more in recent days, as the radical left continues to go off the deep end and as viewpoints that were once considered fringe try to make their way into the mainstream.
The latest to join this list of those pushing back is rock icon Alice Cooper. He was dropped by a cosmetic company for daring to say that "a woman is a woman and a man is a man."
How narrow-minded and extreme! (Carlos Santana made a similar comment before apologizing for his "insensitive" remarks.)
Be assured that common-sense statements like this are the tip of the iceberg of the pushback toward social sanity. Or do you really think that most Americans will embrace the "gender revolution," as expressed in headlines like this: "'Children Identifying as "Minotaurs" Are Part of Gender Revolution' Says Feminist Professor"?
Then came more of that faux compassion, which he quickly tempered with his usual (and genuine) hate and cheered his fellow haters:
To be clear, I do not ridicule children who grow up with deep internal conflicts. God forbid. To the contrary, I advocate for us devoting our efforts to helping them find wholeness from the inside out. As for children and adults who are intersex, having biological or chromosomal abnormalities, that is an entirely different (and very difficult, sensitive) issue.
At the same time, I will not refrain from decrying the cultural madness, since that's exactly what it is: madness.
[...]
Be assured that the more the left swerves out of control, the more society will turn back in the right direction. But to get things right, it is crucial that biblically based, clear-thinking believers help lead the way.
Brown began her Sept. 8 column cheering a freakout over a isolated case of a preschool in Britain that had an inappropriate book:
I'm going to omit a few words from the opening sentence of an article posted by the U.K.'s Christian Voice in order to drill home a point. The first sentence reads, "Parents in Hull have withdrawn their … daughter from … school over inappropriate content in Relationships and Sex Education." And what, exactly, did these parents find "inappropriate"?
The next paragraph explains, "The decision follows their discovery that the school was using a book entitled 'Grandad's Pride.' The pro-gay propaganda book carries illustrations of homosexual men wearing next to nothing and women posing as men who have undergone surgical mutilation."
It is for good reason that these parents pulled their kid out of school. Of course content like this is inappropriate for children.
Brown claimed offense that the book was initally defended:
Eventually, the school withdrew the book, apologizing to the parents, but only after defending it initially. As for the publisher, Anderson Press, Christian Voice reports that they are standing strong behind the book and its award-winning gay author, Harry Woodgate: "The publisher described critics' concerns of 'hidden messages' in the book depicting a grandad wearing leathers for 'Pride' as 'baseless, deeply offensive and homophobic.'"
Yes, this was one of the images in the book, that of an older man (a grandad, no less) dressed up in a bondage outfit, all for "Pride." Concerns about the appropriateness of this for little children were "baseless, deeply offensive and homophobic."
Once again, this is a classic case of calling evil good and good evil.
Unsurprisingly, Brown injected his transphobia here, quickly expanding his attack to any gender-affirmation procedure, citing alleged statistics (from a right-wing outlet, so there's presumed bias ther) on the number being done:
How can you not feel a righteous indignation along with a deep stab of pain after reading these words? How does one describe medical malpractice on this scale? Hundreds of minors have had their perfectly healthy, fully functioning genitals removed because they were experiencing emotional confusion? But it gets worse.
O'Neil writes, "The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study Wednesday estimating that 48,019 Americans underwent 'gender-affirming surgeries' from 2016 to 2020, and 3,678 of them underwent surgery between ages 12 and 18.
"In the study, Columbia University researchers estimated that 3,215 of those minors underwent 'breast/chest surgery' and 405 of them underwent 'genital surgery.' Meanwhile, 350 underwent 'other cosmetic procedures.'"
So, 3,215 girls – minors! – had their breasts removed, along with the 405 who underwent "genital surgery."
This is surgical barbarism, and no amount of special pleading or intellectual sophistry can justify these procedures.
Brown went on to quote "the heralded Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Dr. Paul McHugh" in an anti-transgender rant, censoring the fact that, as we've noted, McHugh left Johns Hopkins years ago and that his anti-transgender views are outside the medical mainstream. Brown concluded by invoking the Bible to justyify his hate:
But as this assault on our children continues apace, all of us must continue to raise our voices in protest – be it at the school level or in our vigilance as parents or in the courts of law or in the halls of Congress. It's the least we can do for these little ones.
As Jesus said, "If anyone causes one of these little ones – those who believe in me – to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea" (Matthew 18:6).
As for the tiny percentage of children who suffer from gender dysphoria, the best science, along with common sense, tells us not to sterilize or mutilate them as minors. There is a better way.
Brown's link on "the best science" goes to the American College of Pediatricians, a fringe-right group that is virulently anti-LGBT. That doesn't seem like the thing to do if you're trying to project at least the illusion of compassion.
MRC Freaks Out Over Cartoon Dog Not Being Heterosexual Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's chief transphobe, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg -- who we last saw having a series of meltdowns over the continued existence of transgender people -- had another one over a cartoon character being insufficiently heterosexual in as Sept. 21 post:
In today's episode of the left’s latest attempt to come for your kids: Word just broke that creators of a "Paw Patrol" children's show spinoff, “Rubble & Crew,” will feature non-binary characters.
To make matters worse, the writer of the spinoff, Lindz Amer, is an extreme LGBTQ activist and hosts a Youtube channel called “Queer Kid Stuff.”
Normally when there are predators like this, we try to keep them away from kids. Nickelodeon pays them to indoctrinate children.
Robby Starbuck, a father, first reported the news on his Instagram and& Twitter. The episode “The Crew Builds an Observatory,” was released on August 22. It features a new character, River, who is a non-binary character. In the episode, River was skateboarding around trying to get a photo of a shooting star. River was wearing purple, pink, blue and white colors as a nod to the transgender flag.
Keep in mind, this show is geared towards pre-kindergarteners. Children who shouldn’t even know about the delusion of transgenderism.
One of the big issues here is that the creator was subtle. Adding the trans socks and using nonbinary pronouns for a character isn’t obviously LGBTQ. But it makes you think, if they’re starting here, what more can and will they do to push this progressive crap into kids minds?
Yeah, Mandelburg is not into subtle, as her unhinged transphobia amply demonstrates. (Also, she's trying to hide the fact that Starbuck is a right-wing activist by merely describing him as a "father.") And note her vicious smear of Amer as a "predator" for simply being LGBTQ. Given that young children are not obsessively concerned about the sexuality of cartoon dogs the way Mandelburg is -- indeed, they don't even care at all aout it -- it's irrelevant whether or not River is binary.
Interestingly, throughout all her ranting, Mandelburg didn't cite a single line of River-related dialogue from the episode in question that was even remotely offensive or even concerning. Instead, she concluded with a wild rant:
I’m getting awfully sick of seeing shows like this explicitly targeting and attempt to brainwash young, impressionable kids. This is an intentional effort by the left to subtly divide families and groom children, one concept at a time.
Hide your kids, hide your wife, hide your husbands and toss your TV’s!
Nope, subtlety is not a skill Mandelburg can claim. Same with tolerance of anyone who doesn't hate LGBTQ people as viciously as she does.
WND's Root Fearmongers About Things That Might Happen If Trump Doesn't Win Topic: WorldNetDaily
It took two entire WorldNetDaily columns for Wayne Allyn Root to properly fearmonger about what he wants you to think might possibly happen if Donald Trump doesn't become president in 2024. First up was a Sept. 9 rant:
I don't think enough Americans understand the gravity of the situation we're in.
We are facing the end of the GOP. We are facing the reality that if former President Donald Trump doesn't win in 2024, there will never be another Republican president. That's not a possibility, it's a certainty.
But it's much worse than that. With Democrats in full control of power, there will never be a Republican again. PERIOD.
With one-party rule … and the weaponization of government in full force … and censorship of dissent by media and social media in full force; with free speech being criminalized (as it is now versus Trump) against all Americans … with no opposition to communist Big Brother government … being Republican, or conservative, or patriotic will almost certainly be criminalized out of existence.
That's the end of America, American exceptionalism, the American dream, capitalism and Judeo-Christian values.
Forever.
That's it. It's all over. The whole kit and caboodle. The whole kitchen sink. The whole enchilada. Everything you know and love will be gone forever. Including your children's future. And their freedom.
And once America goes, so goes the entire world. We are the last holdout. The last bastion of freedom, and free speech, and capitalism. The shining city on the hill. Without America leading the way, the rest of the world falls.
It's Trump in 2024, or it's over. It's darkness. It's Big Brother. It's slavery. It's the end.
Think I'm exaggerating?
Yes, we do. Indeed, Root is arguing that it's a bad thing that trump is being held legally accountable for his actions:
We've allowed a country where the strongest candidate who has a chance of beating Democrats is raided by the FBI, framed, indicted and sent to prison, or removed from the ballot.
You honestly think we're EVER electing another Republican again after we've allowed that?
So, it really is Trump, or one-party-rule … and the end of the GOP … and the last Republican president ever.
And after that: full-blown censorship, full-blown silencing of any criticism or alternative viewpoints, full-blown criminalization of all dissent, at the threat of FBI raids and imprisonment.
Therefore, no more Republicans – PERIOD.
Being a Republican will be outlawed as a threat to America; as being "domestic terrorism"; as being racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, transphobic and a spreader of misinformation.
There's that exaggeration again. He has a right-wing audience to rile up, after all, so exaggeration is the coin of the realm.
Root's Sept. 16 column -- headlined as "Part 2" of the subject -- was pretty much a rehash of the first:
Last week I warned that 2024 is literally the pivotal year in the history of the United States of America. Because if former President Donald Trump doesn't win, we are facing one-party rule, the end of the Republican Party, the end of capitalism, the end of America as we know it.
If Trump doesn't win in 2024, there will never be another Republican president. Anyone who doesn't understand this is blind, deaf and very dumb.
But the real contention of this commentary is: If Trump loses in 2024, I strongly believe he will be the last Republican – period.
Root added even more exaggerations, if not outright lies, about "what Democrats have been able to do to America":
– They have rigged and stolen elections – including the presidency – with mail-in ballots, no voter ID, ballot harvesting (a crime everywhere else in the world) and ballot drop boxes. Pure voter fraud has been legalized.
[...]
– Democrats have poisoned the military with purges of conservatives and white Americans; forced vaccines; critical race theory; along with transgender brainwashing and troops flying rainbow flags.
– Our schools have been destroyed by the same nonstop communist brainwashing, white hate ... and convincing our children to change genders without informing parents.
– All over America, woke companies will not hire whites for executive training programs.
– Elite medical schools have eliminated test scores. Now you get into medical school based only on race. Insanity.
He also claimed that "Democrats have added 86,000 new IRS agents. This is their personal Gestapo to target and attack conservatives" -- which very much is an outright lie. But he wasn't done fearmongering:
I have no doubt they will outlaw all Republicans as "domestic terrorists." PTA parents will be arrested. Free speech will be criminalized. All opinions counter to government will be canceled and banned.
Green energy will leave you with $2,000 electric bills and $12-per-gallon gas. Social Credit Scores and Central Bank Digital Currency will be installed; conservatives will be de-banked and left in financial shambles. If the banks don't leave conservatives penniless, 86,000 IRS agents will finish the job.
Mass arrests will be carried out. Americans will be sent to re-education camps. Everyone will be locked down indefinitely, businesses closed, masks will be worn 24/7 – in your car, outdoors, in your own home. We will all be force-vaccinated with a dangerous, deadly, poison vaccine.
Until we are all compliant, intimidated, brainwashed, in prison or dead.
This is the America you can expect if Democrats take full power in 2024.
We will be the last Republicans – EVER.
Root didn't ask his readers if they thought he was exaggerating -- perhaps because it's abundantly clear that he is.
MRC's DeSantis Defense Brigade Watch, September Edition Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's DeSantis Defense Brigade stayed on sentinel duty to defend its favorite Republican presidential candidate (who isn't named Donald Trump) as September rolled around. You didn't hear about his campaign harassing a 15-year-old boy for asking substantive questions of the candidate, or that this campaign is kind of a mess financially, or that Florida law enforcement officials dispute a talking point about reduced crime in the stat the DeSantis has been spouting on the campaign trail. Instead, Clay Waters complained in a Sept. 11 post:
The New York Times ran its latest anti-DeSantis political hit job Saturday, “As His State Reels, DeSantis Shrugs Off Climate Threat,” by Nicholas Nehamas and Patricia Mazzei. Both have strong anti-DeSantis credentials borne out by their previous reporting. One could ask "News story or Democrat advertisement?"
The Times tried to discredit DeSantis from another angle, this time his handling of environmental issues, accusing him of shedding a green mantle that he never really put on in the first place:
[...]
This newspaper always paints its own ideological opinion as Science -- "decades of scientific research" and "what climate scientists say" vs. the Republicans.
Waters didn't prove how DeSantis or any other Republican has the correct "ideological opinion" on climate change.
Kevin Tober spent a Sept. 13 post defending an interivew DeSantis did with a non-right-wing outlet:
On Wednesday night, CBS Evening News aired part two of anchor Norah O’Donnell’s sit-down interview with Florida Republican governor and 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. The interview went so poorly for O’Donnell that she was forced to leave most of it on the cutting room floor and hide it on CBS’s website where most people would never see it.
The part of the interview that did make it to air was O’Donnell pestering and nagging DeSantis about his state’s 15-week abortion law. “There is new data out that the number of abortions in Florida has actually increased, and increased since Dobbs,” O’Donnell touted. “For those who oppose abortion rights, is it time to enact a national ban on abortion?”
DeSantis explained that “the issue with Florida is that the southeastern states have very, very strong pro-life laws. Florida is litigating under a 15-week, and so we have become, against our wishes, a destination.”
[...]
Before the governor could finish answering her question, O’Donnell rudely interrupted like a petulant child.
“Why won't you answer that question? She asked.
DeSantis responded: “What do you mean?”
“About why you would support a federal ban,” O’Donnell shot back.
DeSantis responded: “I support pro-life policies. I will be a pro-life President. But at the same time, I got to chart the course and be honest with people about, okay, how do you advance the ball like we did in Florida. And the way you do that is really bottom-up.”
When DeSantis felt the need to set up a debate with Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the MRC defended that too, with Alex Christy doing his duty in a Sept. 26 post:
CNN Primetime host Abby Phillip assembled a group of nominal and former Republicans on Monday’s show to discuss the state of the Republican primary and the news that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and California Gov. Gavin Newsom have agreed to debate each other on November 30. That the nation’s foremost conservative and liberal governors will debate each other is hilarious to CNN and speaks badly of DeSantis.
Phillip simply asked, “Ron DeSantis is going to debate Gavin Newsom. Why?”
Amid laughter from the panel, Sophia Nelson, formerly of the Lincoln Project, could be heard exclaiming, “Yeah, ew.”
The DeSantis-Newsom debate isn’t exactly groundbreaking. Sens. Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders once debated each other on CNN.
Christy went on to insist that DeSantis' floundering presidential campaign has no effect on his record in Florida:
[Commentator Shermichael] Singleton then went on to claim DeSantis has a tough time connecting with voters, but before he could talk about DeSantis’s actual policies, Navarro interrupted to add, “Mickey Mouse and my drag queen friends persevered and his candidacy is dead on arrival.”
Whether DeSantis's presidential campaign ends with success or not, the fact is he won re-election by almost 20 points by taking on various liberal culture war issues from gender ideology to sexual orientation lessons for elementary students.
Christy returned for a Sept. 30 post on an interview DeSantis did with Bill Maher, which he pretended wasn't as friendly as it actually was:
With the writers’ strike over, the late night comedy shows are back and first out of the gate on Friday was HBO Real Time host Bill Maher, who chose Florida Governor and GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis to be his first guest. The interview was typical Maher as the two teamed up to mock the New York Times, but Maher’s liberal atheism still came through as the two also battled on election integrity laws and abortion.
Maher recalled how “I saw the New York Times did such a despicable hit piece on you, that I saw, because I forget what the lead headline was but it was basically, ‘Ron DeSantis fucked up the pandemic.’ And then, like, at the very end it says 'Florida's death rate, overall, was better than the national average.' Now, if you're going to do an article-- if you're going to do an article about Florida and the pandemic, shouldn't that be the lead? Shouldn’t that be the-- talk about burying the lead.”
Of course, it should be the lead. As for DeSantis, he took the opportunity to tout his record:
[...]
Shortly after, Maher changed topics to some of DeSantis’s election reforms and was not sure the amount of effort put into passing the laws line up with the scale of the problem which make it look “like you’re just trying to stop black people from voting.”
After DeSantis called such framing “nonsense,” Maher continued, “I don't think it's nonsense. Black folks don't vote for the Republican Party and very big numbers.”
[...]
DeSantis would explain that politics is also about the art of the possible, “Well, no, I mean, it’s a legislative issue, so they have to figure out what they think, and so the legislature identified the moment where there's a detectable heartbeat as the time where there's legal protections. Now, they did provide exceptions for all of the difficult cases that you hear about, but basically once there is a heartbeat, it shouldn't be used as a form of birth control.”
Maher was correct about the New York Times’ depiction of DeSantis’s COVID record. Now, if only he could stop relying on their depictions of other aspects of the Republican agenda.
MRC Just Can't Stop Having Meltdowns Over Dylan Mulvaney Topic: Media Research Center
How deep is the transphobia at the Media Research Center? It continues to be triggered that a transgender person was allowed to drink beer.
We've documented the MRC's freakout over Bud Light doing a promotion with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, taking part in right-wing attacks designed to punish the beer for not hating transgender people like they do and to punish Mulvaney for simply existing. Even though that wave of hate has long since crested, the MRC just can't stop attacking Mulvaney. Chief transphobe Tierin-Rose Mandelburg spent a July 13 post mocking CNN for mistakenly misgendering Mulvaney (though Mandelburg intenitonally does the same thing without shame):
Uh-oh! CNN was in deep doo-doo on Wednesday after calling transgender TikToker, Dylan Mulvaney, a boy. Don’t forget, if you DON’T deny science, you’re a bigot.
CNN correspondent Ryan Young used male pronouns to talk about Mulvaney when discussing the controversy over Bud Light's brief promotion of Mulvaney's "lifestyle."
“One bar was telling us,” Young began, “basically [that] they’re not going to serve it because they didn’t like the way Dylan Mulvaney was treated after this whole controversy started. He of course is the transgender person they were gonna sponsor and go along with, with Bud Light. They [trans activists] didn’t like how Bud Light didn’t stand by him after all this.”
Following the segment where he was not corrected immediately by himself or the other anchors, CNN released an apology.
[...]
What’s kinda funny and makes this whole thing all the more ironic is that CNN didn’t mess up by calling Mulvaney a “he.” Mulvaney is and always will be a boy. Where CNN really messed up was in sending an apology indicating that the network cared more about identity politics than actual facts. Go figure!
Of course, Mandelburg's freakout over Mulvaney and her deliberate misgendering is "identity politics" as well, something she'll never concede.
Tom Olohan cheered attacks on Bud Light for not hating transgender people in a July 31 post:
Fox News host Sean Hannity took a blowtorch to the management at Bud Light’s embattled parent company for letting their obsession with woke politics cost workers their jobs.
Hannity slammed Anheuser-Busch, which owns the ailing brand Bud Light during the July 27 edition of his show, after its financial downturn for genuflecting to the rainbow mafia led to the company laying off around 360 employees. These layoffs follow the national backlash to Bud Light’s disastrous decision to partner with “transgender” actor Dylan Mulvaney earlier this year. Hannity didn’t mince words: “This is the very thing that I feared and the reason I said ‘I hope it doesn’t go on long because some idiot in management made a dumb decision.’ We now have innocent hard-working people getting hurt because of incompetent dumb management.'"
Yes, trying to expand brand appeal and not hating people is seen as "incompetent" in the right-wing bubble. When Mulvaney pointed out right-wing transphobia directed at her, Mandelburg had another meltdown in an Aug. 28 post:
Days since hearing Dylan Mulvaney’s name: 0.
Mulvaney, who gained his fame by parading around as a six-year-old and documenting his “days of girlhood” on TikTok, won the Breakthrough Creator award at Sunday night’s Streamy Awards where, naturally, he used the occasion to call out transphobia.
Mulvaney wore a red satin minidress for the awards event, which recognizes social media content creators. Luckily, he tucked well enough that the straight-on camera angle didn’t display his male genitalia. He also wore matching heels - which I guess they make in men's sizes too, these days.
If you watch closely, you can also see Mulvaney pulling up his strapless dress, likely because he doesn't have the boobs to hold it up for him. Actually, toward the end of the video, his dress ends up slipping a bit and exposing what looks like prosthetic, stick-on boobs - though I can't confirm that, nor do I wanna get close enough to double-check.
“My life has been changed for the better but also there's been an extreme amount of transphobia and hate and I know that my community is feeling it and I know that even our allies are feeling it," Mulvaney said during his acceptance speech.
Oh here we go with the dramatics!
Mandelburg then cheered how the right-wing hate dcampaign damaged Bud Light:
If you don’t remember, or somehow got it erased from your brain, Mulvaney is referring to the backlash he received after he partnered up with Bud Light for a marketing campaign to sell beer, which immediately sparked wild nationwide protests. I mean, the typical demographic for Bud Light drinkers is America-loving, country music-singing men...not men who frolic in dresses and wear lipstick.
The Bud Light ad ended up costing the company $27 billion and stripped it of its title of America's favorite beer - though frankly, it wasn’t Mulvaney in particular that people hated - it was the fact that numerous companies chose to promote him and his delusions over actual women or people who’d actually be relatable to consumers.
Mandelburg really thinks hate is "relatable to consumers."
When Mulvaney appeared with other women whom the MRC has targeted over the years, Mandelburg had an even bigger meltdown in an Aug. 31 post:
If you asked me to think of a worse group of people to all be in one room together, I couldn’t do it.
On Wednesday, a daymare occurred when transgender TikToker who ruined Bud Light, Dylan Mulvaney and decapitated Donald Trump head holder Kathy Griffin -- among other professional narcissists -- gathered at Griffin’s house for a luncheon. Other than looking like a skit out of a clown show, the ladies (and a dude) boosted each others egos and displayed their blatant hypocrisy first hand.
Supposedly, Griffin gathered pop singer Sia, comedians Margaret Cho, Ryan Asher and Julia Sweeney, actresses Rosie O’Donnell, Pamela Aldon and Laraine Newman, writers Mosha Lundström Halbert and Meredith Lynch, man who looks like a man and dresses like a little girl Mulvaney and none other than professional victim, stalker, dramatizer and liar, Taylor Lorenz.
This was a clusterf**k of women who think they’re top s**t. Spoiler: THEY AREN’T!
Oh, here we go with the dramatics!
Mandelburg was triggered by Mulvaney again in an Oct. 10 video, ranting that "fake girl Dylan Mulvaney talked about his first kiss as a 'woman.”' The video was cringe and made a mockery of real women." Two days later, Mandelburg lost it even further after Mulvaney won an award:
Nope. Unfortunately this isn’t satire.
Of all the women in the world, the queer publication 'Attitude' selected for their awards ceremony a biological male who paraded around as a little girl to earn the “Woman of the Year” title. This is offensive for actual women.
Powered by Jaguar, Virgin Atlantic, Richard Branson's airline company, marked their 12th annual "Attitude" awards and attempted to highlight and support the LGBTQ community. I can’t say I’m too shocked that Mulvaney won the award, given the fact that he’s garnered a slew of support from delusional people who also like to pretend he’s a she.
Mulvaney accepted the award on Wednesday in London and was as melodramatic as you can imagine. He gave a more-than-four-minute speech and it, as you could have guessed, was chock full of woke crap.
Mandelburg then whined that non-right-wing media weren't spewing the kind of hate that she was over Mulvaney:
While there was undoubtedly some backlash regarding Mulvaney ruining Bud Light, legacy media has been nothing but supportive for Mulvaney and the rest of the alphabet mob. But playing the victim card is easier for Mulvaney than to accept reality. I mean, we all know he’s no good at believing fact over fiction.
[...]
Overall, it’s a huge slap in the face for a literal man to be awarded something meant for a woman. But then again, it's become commonplace for our society to put anyone who’s part of the LGBTQILMNOP mafia above anybody normal.
As if there's anything "normal" about spewing such unhinged hatred toward someone else merely for existing.
WND's Cashill Tries Race-Baiting To Falsely Attack Newspaper Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jack Cashill began his Sept. 20 WorldNetDaily column by complaining:
As half of America now knows, last month two teenagers in a stolen Hyundai consciously targeted an innocent Las Vegas cyclist and ran him over, killing him in the process.
The other half of America does not know about this incident because their media have chosen not to tell them.
The Poynter institute, a nonprofit that "provides fact-checking, media literacy and journalism ethics training to citizens and journalists in service to democracy," weighed in on this issue Tuesday.
Instead of holding the media to account for their silence about the murder, Poynter scolded Elon Musk for daring to talk about it.
But the issue is not that Musk was "daring to talk about it"; it was that he was falsely accusing a newspaper of suppressing the story, which resulted in death threats to the newspaper. As befits somone who wrote a VDARE-endorsed book seeking to absolve white people for fleeing cities in the 1960s, Cashill obsessed over racial issues here, pointing out that the victim was white and that at least one assailant was black, and baselessly assumed that the media was trying to hide that:
Some have assumed that both of the perps are black.
It is this assumption that has likely kept the media silent. The video surfaced on Aug. 29. As of this writing the New York Times has yet to say word one about the murder of Andreas Probst.
Cashill didn't explain why the Times should have rpeorted on this story. His goal was to justify Musk's attacking on the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the threats that followed:
The video of the Probst murder surfaced on social media this past Saturday, Aug. 16. Poynter took exception to an Aug. 17 tweet by Musk.
"An innocent man was murdered in cold blood while riding his bicycle," Musk tweeted. "The killers joked about it on social media Yet, where is the media outrage? Now you begin to understand the lie."
By the following day the post had been viewed more than 68 million times. And still the major media remained mum.
Once the video surfaced, many citizens apparently focused their anger on the Review-Journal and its crime reporter, Sabrina Schnur.
According to Poynter, an unnamed "they" made "anti-Semitic comments" about Schnur and "accused her of being anti-white."
To its humble credit, the Review-Journal did report on the murder and acknowledged the video, but as with the Las Vegas TV media, bicycle safety was the theme of much of the reporting.
Cashill omitted the fact that Poynter reported that the reporter who originally reported the story "received 700 notifications on X and an onslaught of angry emails and voicemails," that poeple were doxxing her and digging up posts the reporter made as a teenager, and that other staffers and the paper itself also received numerous hate messages and threats. (Also, Twitter video view counts are virtually meaningless.)
Rather than actually try to prove that the Review-Journal was trying to hide somsething, he complained that Poynter pointed out that a reporter for the newspaper was murdered last year by a local politician, so the place is a little on edge over threats to its reporters. Even though Poynter specifically noted that the politician "had made angry social media posts referencing the journalist and his work" before killing him, Cashill counterfactually claimed that "social media had nothing to do with [the reporter's] murder" and that bringing it up "is gratuitous and misleading."
Cashill concluded by making his race-bating more explicit and misrepresenting Poynter some more (and plugging his VDARE-endorsed book):
As I report in my new book, "Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America's Cities," the media have been sweeping away black-on-white crime for the last 60 years.
This would be bad enough, but the media make the situation much worse by amplifying the relatively rare instances of white-on-black crime.
This is the "lie" to which Musk alludes. In this instance, Poynter does not labor "in service to democracy." Poynter labors in service to the lie.
But the real liar here is Cashill, who is trying (with an assist from Elon Musk) to smear a reporter and a newspaper as reverse racists based on nothing but circumstantial evidence he (and Musk) can't be bothered to prove is true, and he's seeking to justify threats and potential violence based on those specious assumptions. He's sounding more and more like ColinFlaherty, whose more overt brand of race-baiting was a WND staple several years back.
We've already shown how the Media Research Center's attack on website-rating firm Ad Fontes is as loud, lame and partisan as its previous attacks on a similar firm, NewsGuard. But a deeper dive into the study shows just how shoddy and biased it is. There's nothing impartial about it at all; the MRC went into it with the goal of smearing Ad Fontes as biased, and its so-called evidence to make that narrative was just as biased. Luis Cornelio and Tim Kilcullen dubiously framed the fact that Ad Fontes rates right-wing websites lower than liberal-leaning websites as some sort of conspiracy:
WorldNetDaily publishes so much misinformation about COVID vaccines that it occasionally has to outsource some of it. That's what it did with an Oct. 2 
So many of the Media Research Center's so-called "studies" involve attacking non-right-wing media for not promoting right-wing narratives and for supposedly spending too much time not hating certain populations disfavored by the right. In that vein is an Oct. 4 "
The Media Research Center's war against NewsGuard for pointing out the shoddiness of right-wing media has been 
John and Jim McLaughlin are the pollsters for Donald Trump's presidential campaingn, and the things he does for Newsmax pretty closely reflect that (even if that connection to the Trump campaign is rarely disclosed). On Aug. 29, after the first Republican presidential debate -- which Trump avoided in favor of an interview with Tucker Carlson -- the McLaughlins had a raft of pro-Trump polling to peddle:
Rachel Alexander is an 
The Elon Musk PR team at the Media Research Center 
Michael Brown, it seems, can't stop fearmongering about LGBTQ people and portraying his fellow haters as victims (even if he continues to peddle faux compassion on the issue). He ranted in his Sept. 1 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center's chief transphobe, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg -- who we last saw having a 
It took two entire WorldNetDaily columns for Wayne Allyn Root to properly fearmonger about what he wants you to think might possibly happen if Donald Trump doesn't become president in 2024. First up was a Sept. 9 
The Media Research Center's DeSantis Defense Brigade stayed on sentinel duty to defend its favorite Republican presidential candidate (who isn't named Donald Trump) as September rolled around. You didn't hear about his campaign 
How deep is the transphobia at the Media Research Center? It continues to be triggered that a transgender person was allowed to drink beer.
Jack Cashill began his Sept. 20 WorldNetDaily 
