MRC Pushes More Dubious Attacks On NewsGuard Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's latest round of loud and lame attacks on website-rating firm NewsGuard continued in an Oct. 30 post by Autumn Johnson:
MRC Free Speech America has exposed NewsGuard for its rank bias in favor of the left, but a new lawsuit reveals more information about an alleged conspiracy between the flawed media ratings firm and the Pentagon to censor speech online.
Consortium News, an independent news site, filed a damning lawsuit against the federal government of the United States and NewsGuard Technologies, Inc, alleging First Amendment violations and defamation. As part of its lawsuit, Consortium News cited NewsGuard’s contract with the Department of Defense to “identify, report and abridge the speech of American media organizations that dissent from U.S. official positions on foreign policy.” The news website accused NewsGuard of “acting jointly or in concert with the United States to coerce news organizations to alter viewpoints” and thus “imposing a form of censorship and repression” of free speech.
Funny how Consortium News became an "independent news site" for the MRC's current purposes; in 2011, it dismissed the operation as being run by "wackier liberals." And the MRC has not "xposed NewsGuard for its rank bias in favor of the left" -- it has merelywhined that it exposed the shoddiness of right-wing websites. Also, as it usually does, it falsely portrays efforts to expose online falsehoods and misinformation as "censorship."
Tom Olohan unsurprisingly did the latter as he uncritically repeating the rantings of one of the MRC's favorite dishonest transphobes in a Nov. 9 post:
The Daily Wire host Matt Walsh tore into the anti-free speech firm NewsGuard after one of its employees reached out to him about so-called “misinformation.”
Walsh wrote in a Nov. 8 post that an employee of NewsGuard, a website ratings firm with a demonstrable bias against conservatives, had reached out to him. Walsh wrote, “Some hack with a ‘fact checking’ organization called NewsGuard emailed a lengthy list of questions after monitoring my podcast for ‘misinformation.’” During the Nov. 8 edition of The Matt Walsh Show, Walsh laid into NewsGuard as well, describing NewsGuard as “a core component of the left’s evolving censorship apparatus.”
Walsh described NewsGuard as, “a powerful and influential organization, one that you are funding with your tax dollars. They recently received a massive grant from Biden’s Department of Defense for nearly $750,000. As Michael Shellenberger testified before Congress earlier this year, ‘Both The Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard are U.S. government-funded entities who are working to drive advertisers’ revenue away from disfavored publications and towards the ones they favor.’”
[...]
Walsh noted that NewsGuard has targeted a number of organizations, including Breitbart, Revolver News, The Federalist, Fox News, Redstate, Life News, PragerU and The Daily Wire in “transparently partisan” fashion.
Olohan gave no evidence of these purportedly "transparently partisan" attacks on right-wing websites -- he simply parroted the complaint. Given Walsh's record of falsehoods, as exhibited in the lies he spread (and the MRC uncritically repeated) in attacking Target for not hating LGBT people as much as he does, there's little reason to take him seriously.
Catherine Salgado served up her anti-NewsGuard hate in a Nov. 20 post:
Twitter Files investigations uncovered biased ratings firm NewsGuard’s pitch bragging of government ties.
Journalist Lee Fang explained in collaboration with RealClearInvestigations Nov. 15 that the Twitter Files unearthed a pitch from NewsGuard CEO L. Gordon Crovitz to Twitter in 2021. In the pitch, Crovitz described NewsGuard as a “Vaccine Against Misinformation” that largely drew from government sources, particularly the very government agencies that contracted with NewsGuard! These disturbing findings come after MRC Free Speech America twice exposed NewsGuard’s anti-right bias.
Again, the MRC exposed nothing except its determination to turn NewsGuard into a political target. Salgado then played the TikTok card because it's apparently a customer of NewsGuard:
NewsGuard’s “nutrition labels” arbitrarily rating dozens of sites in multiple languages and its reports on specific regions have garnered praise from the likes of CNN and are moving into schools, libraries, and internet service providers. Crovitz markets “BrandGuard” for advertisers, too, Fang wrote. NewsGuard’s investors include the firm that represents pharma giant Pfizer and an individual tied to ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, in which the Chinese Communist Party government owns a board seat and maintains a financial stake.
Of course, the MRC is leaning into anti-vaxxerarguments by singling out Pfizer as another client.
Newsmax's Morris Had Things To Say About House Speaker Fight Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax pundit Dick Morris says what he needs to to get on his employer's TV channel, and he had opinions about the House Republicans firing Kevin McCarthy as House speaker and squabbling over picking a new one. He surprisingly didn't endorse it, as an Oct. 4 Newsmax TV appearance showed:
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., with his actions against ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other activities in the chamber, is "destabilizing the Republican Party," and eventually could cost the party the presidency, political strategist and former presidential adviser Dick Morris tells Newsmax.
"I'm in line with what Newt Gingrich says, which is that Gaetz is a self-serving ambitious guy who did this simply to attract attention and that he's leading basically a group of people who were exercising their power trying to get on the news and destabilizing the Republican Party," Morris said Tuesday on Newsmax's "The Right Squad."
[...]
Morris pointed out that with the election coming up in 2024, the Republican Party is projecting "an image of being totally incapable of governing, and totally incapable of running Congress."
He was joined in this appearance by credibly accused sexual harasser Matt Schlapp (which Newsmax didn't mention):
American Conservative Union leader Matt Schlapp, also on Tuesday night's program, argued that Gingrich, like former Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, was a "failed speaker," and that there is a division in the conference because Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell believes that there should not be spending fights because they are lost.
Morris returned for an Oct. 13 appearance to press his point again:
Political analyst and author Dick Morris told Newsmax on Monday that a fractured House Republican conference might be losing something important while members bicker over who will be next to hold the speaker's gavel.
"The majority of the American people are absolutely appalled that in the middle of what's going on in the Middle East and the crises the world faces, the Republicans are squabbling of who is going to have that gavel," Morris, a former presidential adviser to Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, told "Rob Schmitt Tonight."
"What they can end up doing is blowing it. They'll end up losing all the chairmanships and the majority and the whole bit and, to boot, being seen by the country as incapable of governing.
"The stakes are so high and the big differences in ideology are minuscule. This is a battle of egos and personalities that can get out of hand and lead ... Democrats to taking power again."
When House Republicans did finbally pick a new speaker, Morris unsurprisingly tried to give Donald Trump credit for it in an Oct. 28 appearance:
Former President Donald Trump was the "decisive influence" in the House Republicans' choice of a new speaker, and it is "quite a recommendation" for him to choose and trust Speaker Mike Johnson, his advisor Dick Morris said Saturday on Newsmax.
"The important point is that Republicans in the House have learned their lesson," Morris said on Newsmax's"Saturday Report."
"I think they were excoriated throughout the country for the horrible ballot after ballot after ballot and they rejected candidate after candidate. They've learned their lesson and I think they'll follow him and back Johnson where he's going to lead."
Newsmax floated the idea of Trump as speaker on a temporary basis, if not longer, but it too signed off on Johnson as the new speaker.
WND Tries To Falsely Conflate Local Election Issue Into Its Discredited Election-Fraud Narrative Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh did what he could to overhype a minor election controversy, declaring in a Nov. 2 article that A judge in Connecticut has overturned a mayoral primary election because of a mail-in ballot stuffing fraud, setting a standard that holds serious implications for the entire nation." He cited the wildly unreliable Gateway Pundit as his main source for his story, which undercuts his credibility. Nevertheless, Unruh went on to try and tie this story to WND's dubious election-fraud narrative, repeating his old, discredited talking points:
The issue is the same that raised numerous complaints during the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden purportedly got 81 million votes – more than any presidential candidate ever and far more than the leftist but popular Barack Obama got during his elections.
There were a multitude of concerns about ballot harvesting, ballot box stuffing and worse. But the issue remained fogged because many jurisdictions actually changed their voting procedures and processes because of COVID-19, leaving the accountability for such behavior uncertain.
What is certain about the undue influences on the 2020 president was that Mark Zuckerberg handed out some $400-plus million that was used by the election officials often to recruit voters from Democrat districts in an agenda to help Joe Biden. That actually prompted many jurisdictions to ban the use of such outside money in that manner.
Further, the FBI decided to interfere in the election results by telling media and other corporations to suppress what turned out to be accurate reporting, based on evidence found in a laptop computer abandoned by Hunter Biden at a repair shop, about the scandals in which the Biden family was involved.
The FBI suggested it all was "Russian disinformation" even though the bureau at the time knew it was accurate reporting. A subsequent polling revealed that undue influence almost certainly took the election victory away from President Trump.
In fact, as a credible media outlet has reported, the incident is analomous and not connected to anything else, and the city in which the incident happened, Bridgeport, has long had voting issues. Former Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill was quoted as saying, "There are so many conspiracy theories out there and yet for years we’ve had study after study tell us that it doesn’t happen."
That lack of credible evidence to prove there was any widespread fraud in 2020 undercuts Unruh's talking points -- not that it will stop him from repeating them. Meanwhile, WND has given space to other right-wingers to do the same. A Nov. 8 column by Betsy McCaughey invoked the Connecticut election and other isolated cases to push her talking points:
Across the nation, Republicans are pressing state legislatures to eliminate drop boxes and bar third parties from collecting huge numbers of completed ballots – a practice called "harvesting." Republicans also want to use software to match the signature on the mail-in ballot to the signature on the voter registration form.
Democrats almost universally oppose these safeguards, calling them "voter suppression." "Cheating suppression" is more like it.
Perceptions of unfairness are corrosive. At a House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing in June, polls were cited showing 37% of Democratic-leaning voters and 71% of Republican-leaning voters doubt the honesty of elections.
Of course, right-wingers like McCaughey and Unruh are the ones most dedicated to manufacturing doubts about election integrity, despite insisting that they are "corrosive."
NEW ARTICLE -- Out There, Exhibit 88: The MRC's He-Man Woman-Hater's Club Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center isn't a big fan of women who play sports, and it's concerned that women's lingerie might not be slutty enough. Also, Tim Graham got ratioed for trying to slut-shame Monica Lewinsky. Read more >>
MRC's Hypocritical Double Standard On Anti-Semitism Topic: Media Research Center
After the Hamas attack on Israel in October, the Media Research Center rushed to attack anyone who dared voice anything even slightly critical of Israel as an endorsement of Hamas and liberally throwing around the "anti-Semitic" tag. For instance:
This is all utterly hypocritical, given that the MRC has never rushed to criticize actual anti-Semitism on its own side. It spent years praising Kanye West for spouting anti-abortion rhetoric and palling around with Donald Trum, but when he starting spouting virulently anti-Semitic remarks -- ironically, two days after the MRC's Tierin-Rose Mandelburg gushed, "BRB, adding Kanye West’s music to my daily mix," in a post that aged extremely poorly to say the least -- the MRC was still praising him, with Mandelburg cheering his "power moves only" and "mic freakin' drop" after his "White Lives Matter" stunt with Candace Owens. It took 10 full days for the MRC to address West's "death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE," and even then it was buried in an article cheering West for buying right-wing social media site Parler (a deal that fell through when West's anti-Semitism became too toxic). The MRC then tried to argue that the cancellation of West's social media accountssomehow proved he was correct about his hatred of Jews (though the MRC deleted that post a few days later). It wasn't until it was& argued that Ye's anti-Semitism is part of mainstream conservatism that the MRC was moved to forcefully criticize him.Still, when an MRC writer criticized Apple Music for deleting a West playlist, he couldn't be moved to accurately describe West's hateful remarks as anti-Semitic.
The MRC was similarly squishy about anti-Semitic remarks made by NBA player Kyrie Irving , then labored hard to distance Donald Trump from his role in having dinner with West and anti-Semitic white supremacist Nick Fuentes, despite Trump's history of invoking offensive Jewish stereotypes. All this, of course, didn't stop the MRC from rushing to frame Rep. Ilhan Omar's criticism of Israel as "anti-Semitic" though it mostly looked the other way when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene spouted weird things about Jewish space lasers.
Despite that, the MRC lashed out when non-right-wing media refused to play along with its narrative. Alex Christy whined in an Oct. 14 post that the Associated Press fact-checked a viral tweet portraying old content as new:
AP fact-checker Philip Marcelo beclowned himself on Friday as he rated a claim that Hamas sympathizers chanted anti-Semitic remarks “false,” not because they didn’t—he admits that they did—but because the clip “is more than two years old.”
Under the headline, "Old video of pro-Palestine supporters shouting antisemitic remarks is being misleadingly shared," Marcelo begins by laying out the “CLAIM: A video shows Hamas sympathizers driving through London shouting antisemitic remarks during Friday’s day of protests against Israel.”
He then responds, “AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The widely shared clip is more than two years old. London police at the time apprehended four men in connection with the incident.”
[...]
Marcello’s X-used-to-be-known-as-X blunder aside, nowhere in those quotations does anyone mention anything about a date. It is not as if the people who demonstrated in support of Hamas on Friday have suddenly changed their tune. Quite the opposite, in fact. This is who Hamas and their sympathizers are.
Of course, the implication was that the video was new, whether Christy wants to admit it or not, and it was dishonest to suggest otherwise.
An Oct. 16 post by Luis Cornelio cheered the removal of an "anti-Semitic" video from YouTube:
YouTube, infamously known for its quick censorship of speech critical of the left, inexplicably dragged its feet to take down a sickening video from Hamas terrorist leaders calling for Islamists to rise up against Israel. It did so only after MRC Free Speech America pressed the company over its policies.
MRC Free Speech America reached out to YouTube on Oct. 12 to question whether the company allowed content that “actively calls for the mass murder of Israeli citizens?” MRC researchers launched an investigation after Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh helped to ignite what became infamously known as the “Day of Jihad.” Haniyeh’s anti-Semitic call to action against Israel was uttered during an interview with Qatari state-owned Al Jazeera, which the outlet — notorious for its historically pro-Hamas bent — then promoted on YouTube.
By contrast, Cornelio and the rest of the MRC have been silent about the plethora of anti-Semitic content at right-wing video site Rumble and how it helps the creators of that content make money off it.
An Oct. 28 column by Jeffrey Lord, headlined "The Rise of Anti-Semitism In America, Again: What The Media Elite Forgets," which is largely a tangent about the Nazi-linked German-American Bund in the 1930s, which unsurprisingly had an anti-Semitic component. Lord declared that "history records the American people of the day were seriously appalled by all of this. They were informed by the media of the day." What Lord forgets is that anti-Semitism in America didn't begin or end with the German-American Bund -- no less than Henry Ford was virulently anti-Semitic to the point that he published newspapers to spread that hate -- meaning that the Bund had a ready audience for that part of its agenda.
As all this was going on, there was more hypocrisy: The MRC desperately tried to ignore that Elon Musk endorsed an anti-Semitic tweet and even tried to insist that it wasn't a reflection of how Musk actually feels. No liberal would get such a wide benefit of the doubt from the MRC, and it has denounced non-conservatives as "anti-Semitic" for less.
Newsmax Touts Dean Phillips As RFK Jr. Replacement For Biden Spoiler Topic: Newsmax
While it was hyping Robert Kennedy Jr.'s would-be Democratic presidential campaign, Newsmax was also touting another Democrat with the same goal of disrupting President Biden's re-election. It actually began with a July 2022 article by Jeffrey Rodack repeating how Dean "said he doesn’t want President Joe Biden to run again in 2024," then picked more steam over the past summer. Charles Kim wrote in a July 29 article:
Democratic donors are urging a moderate congressman from Minnesota to challenge President Joe Biden in the 2024 primary.
Politico reported Friday that third-term Rep. Dean Phillips, who represents a suburban district of Minneapolis, is being urged by donors to enter the Democratic primary field for 2024.
The report said that Phillips, 54, is scheduled to meet with donors in New York City next week to explore the possibility of entering the 2024 race.
[...]
But despite Phillips' scheduled meeting and his donors' interest, he "is highly unlikely to mount a primary challenge unless Biden's health worsens or his political standing drops precipitously," Politico reported.
The apparently unironically named Charlie McCarthy touted Phillips' would-be campaign in an Aug. 13 article:
A Democrat [sic] lawmaker says President Joe Biden should not run for reelection.
Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., appeared Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" and said he wants Biden to end his campaign for the 2024 Democrat [sic] presidential nomination.
He says his opinion is based on "how people feel" and not based on the 80-year-old president's age.
"I would like to see Joe Biden, a wonderful and remarkable man, pass the torch — cement this extraordinary legacy," Phillips said.
"And by the way, this is not how everybody thinks, but I do believe the majority wants to move on."
Phillips previously called on other Democrats to challenge Biden. He has not committed to running himself.
As Phillips did, in fact, prepare to run himself, Newsmax touted that too:
As Newsmax wound down its promotion of Kennedy after he moved from running a Democrat to an independent, Phillips conveniently replaced him in that spoiler-wannabe space. It published two wire articles on his Oct. 27 candidacy declaration, and it continued to run a mix of mostly original articles on him:
There was also a Nov. 23 article by Theodore Bunker noting that Phillips "issued an apology this week after he repeated criticisms of Vice President Kamala Harris while attempting to defend her."
Missing from all this, however, is any reference to an appearance by Dean on Newsmax TV -- it seems that Phillips is not putting a lot of time into catering to right-wing media in order to boost his campaign, presumably because he understands he's only being used by them as a proxy to attack Biden an d they will never support him in the general election should he actually win the nomination. Kennedy, by contrast, did numerous interviews with Newsmax and was even featured in a cover story in its magazne despite that being the case.
WND's Alexander Still Mad That Election Deniers Face Legal Consequences For Spreading Lies Topic: WorldNetDaily
Rachel Alexander continued her election frauddead-ender ways in contining to complain that those who pushed the bogus claims are being held accountable for their actions in her Oct. 30 column, bizarrely insisting that such accoutability is "fascist":
The left has gleefully discovered that by dominating the legal system, they can squelch conservative agendas and viewpoints through the courts. Judges afraid of losing their careers and reputations and being harassed by protesters are issuing rulings that comply with the fascists. State bars are disbarring conservative attorneys, deterring other attorneys from representing conservative positions like challenging election corruption. Prosecutors are going after the brave attorneys who assisted President Donald Trump with the 2020 election lawsuits.
Knowing the legal system is stacked against them, so they would very likely end up serving time in prison if they went to trial, attorneys Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro, along with bail bondsman Scott Graham Hall, agreed to accept plea deals in the politically motivated RICO prosecution by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis this past month.
The justice system has become so corrupt that conservatives can no longer get a fair jury trial. The Democrat-appointed judge who handled the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News forced a nearly $1 billion settlement by granting a summary judgment motion for Dominion, which resulted in jury instructions stating that all of the statements made by attorneys Powell and Rudy Giuliani, as well as all negative claims made on the network about Dominion, were false. So there's no way a jury would have found for Fox News based on that.
Is Alexander say that making specious claims of election fraud is part of the "conservative agenda" now? Appears so. And Alexander's evidence for her complaint that Dominion received "summary judgment" in its lawsuit against Fox News that statements by Powell and Giuliani were false was based on a pro-Fox writer's selective quoting of the judge's ruling in that lawsuit, which pointed out that "Through its extensive proof, Dominion has met its burden of showing there is no genuine issue of material fact as to falsity. Fox therefore had the burden to show an issue of material fact existed in turn. Fox failed to meet its burden."
Judges can also keep out evidence and witnesses based on bogus technical reasons. In the disbarment trial of Trump's former attorney and constitutional legal scholar John Eastman, California Bar Disciplinary Judge Yvette Roland, who contributed to Democrats while serving on the bench, has kept out the majority of evidence based on relevance or hearsay, even though the hearsay rules in that type of trial are much more relaxed.
She's even refused to allow multiple official government documents into evidence, such as reports by the Georgia State Election Board and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp's office regarding election irregularities. Many of Eastman's witnesses were not allowed to testify because she said their testimony wasn't relevant, even though they were going to testify about their interactions with him regarding investigating election corruption – the precise issue he's on trial for.
Alexander further complained, as shehas before, that Ellis has completely recanted her Trump work in an effort to save her skin:
Ellis, who cut a deal with the Colorado Bar earlier this year to avoid losing her law license, admitting she "spread misrepresentations" about election fraud, continued her implosion implicating others. Instead of merely accepting the plea deal, she decided to read a statement throwing everyone under the bus. She said she failed to do her "due diligence," claiming that if she had known then what she knew now, she wouldn't have represented Trump. She was charged with felonies related to the alternate electoral slate, and pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings.
The four will be required to testify against others. While Ellis appears to have no restraint at throwing others under the bus, the others are expected to be far more cautious with their testimony. Ellis raised over $200,000 for her legal defense, no doubt due to her name recognition from representing Trump, so after her statement in court some of her donors want their money back. The Colorado Bar is expected to go after her again due to her plea deal.
Alexander concluded by ranting:
While the Georgia court may be a kangaroo court, there is always a chance any conviction will be reversed by a fairer court. While the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to accept any election cases related to the 2020 contest – granted some were very narrowly split votes among the justices not to accept them – no doubt due to the justices not wanting to be hassled by the left the rest of their lives as "election deniers," there is a good chance they will draw the line at putting people in prison for merely being concerned about real election fraud.
Yes, Alexander is really claiming that it isn't "fair" for people to held accountable for their actions in perpetuating falsehoods because those lies advance her right-wing political agenda -- never mind that a lawyer getting caught lying in court is very much an easily actionable offense.
NEW ARTICLE -- Out There, Exhibit 87: Measuring Manhood At The MRC Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center spent a lot of time fretting that fictional characters weren't sufficiently manly -- and it was triggered by talk of vasectomies. Read more >>
MRC Cheered Rude GOP House Members Who Couldn't Handle A Reporter's Question Topic: Media Research Center
Nicholas Fondacaro huffed in an Oct. 25 post as part of his daily hate-watch of "The View":
At a late-night press conference to announce that House Republicans had nominated yet another speaker designate, North Carolina Representative Virginia Foxx ABC Capitol Hill correspondent Rachel Scott for asking ridiculous questions; telling who to “shut up” and “go away.” This absolutely triggered the left-wing cast of ABC’s The Viewo n Wednesday, with co-host Sara Haines flipping out completely and demanding the “nasty little woman” be kicked out of office.
“Oh my God!” Haines exclaimed after the edited soundbites of Foxx were shared. There was some confusion amongst the cast about who made the comments, so Haines tried to clear that up, saying, “Her name is Virginia Foxx, she’s a nasty little woman.”
“She's the meanest Republican,” faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin added.
In fact, all Scott asked was whether newly chosen House speaker nominee Mike Johnson stood by his efforts to overturn the 2020 eleciton. Fondacaro hid that information to his readers -- leaving it buried in a transcript at the end of his post -- and he failed to explain why the question was "ridiculous."Also, Foxx wasn't theonly Republican who had a meltdown over Scott's simple question; other House members similarly shouted her down.
But because the MRC doesn't think non-right-wing journalists should be treated with basic humanity, it was tickled pink at the Republicans' rude response to a simple question. Tim Graham whined that Republicans were criticized for their nastiness in his Oct. 25 podcast:
After House Republicans agreed on Mike Johnson as a Speaker nominee, ABC reporter Rachel Scott started asking typical "election denier" questions, and drew boos and a "shut up" from Republicans. Reporters were outraged...even though they were 2016 election deniers.
AP's Seung Min Kim tweeted "For the record, a completely fair question." CBS reporter Robert Costa joined in: "Boos and jeers don’t make questions suddenly disappear." But these reporters don't ask the same questions of election-denier Hakeem Jeffries, who leads the House Democrats.
CNN veteran John King was especially upset: "They are anti-democratic. They simply are. That's a fact. And they are anti-free speech. They don't like questions that they don't like. They don't want to answer questions that they don't like. Well, sorry, welcome to America."
The problem with this hot take is that CNN used to send a rabid Rottweiler to the press briefings and now sounds like a poodle. When Fox's Peter Doocy asks tough questions, the same people who loathe him onThe View turn around and yell at Republicans to get out of Congress.
Graham didn't explain in his writeup why Scott's question was a "typical 'election denier' question," or why the question shouldn't have been asked. If Johnson wasn't an active election denier, there wold be no need to ask the question.
CurtisHouck complained that Foxx was called out for her nastiness in another Oct. 25 post:
Scott made sure to re-up footage of her asking Johnson if he “stand[s] by” his actions surrounding January 6 and both the subsequent boos and Congresswoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) telling Scott to “shut up”.
Scott defended herself, insisting in a voice-over that “it remains a legitimate question” and whining he again “didn’t answer” when she tried Wednesday morning[.]
[...]
After finishing her report, Muir sang Scott’s praises as if she had been subject to some sort of traumatic crime:“Rachel Scott asking the tough questions on the Hill and you’ll keep doing it. Rachel, we support you. Thank you.”
Graham returned to complain in an Oct. 29 post that ABC "This Week" host Martha Raddatz "had to replay a clip of Scott badgering Johnson about election denial as Republicans had just nominated him for Speaker" -- even though, again, she merely asked one simnple question, which is the opposite of "badgering." Graham went on to rant:
Raddatz and Scott didn't have anyone on the set to suggest why Scott's question was booed. It's booed because the Democrats have a pile of election deniers in their leadership, starting with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. For that viewpoint, you would have to turn to Fox News Sunday and Mollie Hemingway.
But "Fox News Sunday" didn't discuss that at all -- Hemingway jhoined host Shannon Bream in whining about a New York Times column pointing out how far-right Johnson is.
Graham went on to play the whataboutism card in an Oct. 31 post:
The "mainstream" journalists don't think of Fox News as well, journalists. When you insult them, it's fine. But insult the "mainstream," and "freedom of the press" is endangered. On Monday, the Society of Professional Journalists rushed to agree publicly with the National Association of Black Journalists that Republicans shouldn't have taunted ABC reporter Rachel Scott for asking Rep. Mike Johnson about being an election denier. Rep. Virginia Foxx told her to shut up. "Journalists should be able to hold those in power accountable without being harassed."
But SPJ didn't protest in January 2022 when President Biden called Fox reporter Peter Doocy a "stupid son of a bitch." Earlier this year, SPJ issued a long statement attacking Fox News over the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit. SPJ did tweet about Fox News...when they publicly supported CNN's Jim Acosta when he temporarily lost his White House (yelling) credentials:
[...]
Reporters never see themselves as doing the harassing and badgering.
Again, Scott was not "harassing and badgering" Johnson -- she just asked a simple question. Graham did not explain why he and Johnson should be so afraid of this question and are so eager to falsely portray it as "harassing and badgering." Instead, he whined that the National Association of Black Journalists, which defended Scott, is a "leftist lobby." We don't recall Graham ever describing Doocy as being a member of a "right-wing lobby" because he works for Fox News and advances right-wing narratives in the White House press briefings he attends.
Newsmax Mostly On Board With Mike Johnson As Speaker Topic: Newsmax
Despite floating the idea of Donald Trump serving as House speaker, Newsmax quickly got on board when Mike Johnson was ultimately chosen as speaker with the usual fawning promotion:
There was a little exasperation that the process took so long; an Oct. 25 column by Michael Dorstewitz suggested that House Republicans "may wanna just get together and chill out" before settling on a new speaker.
Newsmax was less than happy, of course, about criticism of Johnson. Jim Thomas complained in an Oct. 25 article that "President Joe Biden's reelection campaign issued a statement asserting that Johnson's ascent solidified the so-called MAGA takeover within the House Republican ranks." Charles Kim groused in another article that day:
Democrats and abortion rights organizations are pouncing on newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., for his "extreme" pro-life comments and positions on the controversial issue.
"Mike Johnson, probably more so than almost any other member of the House Republican conference, wants to criminalize abortion care and impose a nationwide ban," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said Wednesday morningduring an event hosted by the Center for American Progress, which preceded the House floor vote in which Johnson was elected. "Later on, today, [Democrats] will make clear that we will continue to forcefully push back against that extremism."
[...]
Democrat-led [sic] House Pro-Choice Caucus members also criticized Johnson for his views on the issue in a statement.
Still, Jeff Crouere used his Oct. 26 column to complain that Jim Jordan wasn't elected as speaker, even though "the party's base" suuposedly wanted him:
The overwhelming favorite of the party’s base was Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
Jordan is the co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus and has served admirably as the House Judiciary Committee Chairman.
His history as a stalwart conservative earned the trust of grassroots Republicans.
Unfortunately, a contingent of moderate Republicans were resolute in opposing Jordan.
Despite their office phone lines burning up with calls from Republicans throughout the country, these obstinate opponents of Jordan refused to budge.
[...]
Jordan would have been a different type of House Speaker, listening to the grassroots instead of the special interest groups.
He would have been hesitant to add to the $113 billion already sent by Congress to Ukraine.
Jordan would have also ended the practice of passing continuing resolutions which has been the standard operating procedure for 27 years.
He would have insisted on Congress passing twelve separate appropriations bills, which is what former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., did not do.
Crouere didn't mention that Republican House members were actually threatened with violence if they didn't support Jordan, which put off people who mighthave voted for him, or that he remains under a cloud of suspicion as former Ohio State wrestlers continue to accuse him of looking the other way amid accuations of a team doctor molesting athletes while he served as a coach there.
Crouere grudgingly acknowledged that Johnson won the vote for speaker, but he continued to whine that Republican leadership wasn't far-right enough even as he nosensically claimed that "All the top leaders in the Democratic Party are far-left progressives who espouse socialist policies."
WND's Root Has Another Outbreak Of Obama Derangement Syndrome Topic: WorldNetDaily
Wayne Allyn Root's Obama Derangement Syndrome hasneverstopped since Barack Obama emerged on the political scene, and he suffered another outbreak of it in his Oct. 27 column, which started like this:
I'm former President Barack Obama's college classmate at Columbia University, Class of '83. We've both had interesting political careers since graduating Columbia. We stand as polar opposites on every issue.
My classmate Obama clearly learned well at Columbia (even though he was rarely, if ever seen there by anyone – classmates or professors). I've already written about Obama, aka "the ghost of Columbia." I believe he spent his two years, after transferring into Columbia, at our sister school in the old Soviet Union studying communism.
And at Columbia at the time, the big strategy everyone talked about was called "Cloward-Piven." It was a plan created by two Columbia professors to destroy America and capitalism and turn the U.S. into a socialist Big Brother country.
Obama learned well. You're watching Obama right now, in his third term, carrying out this plan.
Root is lying. Obama's college years have been documented, people who aren't Root remember him there, and Root offered no evidence that Columbia even had a "sister school in the old Soviet Union," let alone that Obama ever went there for the goal of "studying communism."
Root went on to serve up performative outrage at Obama warning Israel to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza, huffing in response that it's "impossible" to do: "It has never been avoided in any war in history, and specifically in this case, knowing that Hamas and all Islamic radicals use women, children and the elderly as "human shields" to purposely increase civilian deaths (and then blame Israel)." He went on to rant about other advice Obama offered:
But this was Obama's most disturbing warning. He argues that if Israel kills civilians, "it could further harden Palestinian attitudes for generations."
I must respond to that evil, ignorant, dangerous, preposterous statement by Obama.
First, when Obama talks about further hardening Palestinian attitudes for generations, let's examine how preposterous that idea is. The Palestinian people hate Israel and Jews. Not just in Palestine, but in America. Have you seen the demonstrations across our country? In every American big city, on every elite college campus, Palestinians and Muslims chant about death to Israel and Jews and celebrate the mass murder of Jews by Hamas.
Shockingly, that's in America. So, maybe Obama should address the hate and obsession with Jews by Muslim Americans. These are "hate crimes" against American Jews.
Secondly, the idea that Obama is worried about "hardening Palestinian attitudes" is absurd. How can their attitudes be any "harder" than mass-murdering and slaughtering 1,400 Jews ... slicing children's throats, beheading babies, burning Jews to death ... mutilating bodies after death ... and I actually watched a video of Hamas soldiers cutting a baby out of the stomach of a pregnant Jewish woman (who was alive at the time) and knifing the baby to death.
Do you think Palestinian attitudes could possibly get any "harder"? I wonder why Obama didn't address that.
Third, what about Israeli and Jewish attitudes? Why isn't Obama worried about them? When Hamas mass-murders in demonic and barbaric ways that haven't been seen since the Holocaust, do they ever worry if they're "hardening Jewish attitudes" for generations to come? How come Obama doesn't worry about that?
Root returned to justifying killing civlians:
Fourth, what about our great country, the United States? Did we ever worry during WWII about firebombing German and Japanese cities? It was a war. We bombed and bombed until major enemy cities were turned to rubble. We killed the enemy, and many millions of civilians were "collateral damage." Millions of German and Japanese civilians died. That's what happens in war. Obama knows that. Yet he only holds Israel responsible. Isn't that telling?
Didn't we kill civilians in Vietnam? What about the two-decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Didn't America kill hundreds of thousands of civilians in the bombings? Didn't Obama himself conduct a drone war that resulted in thousands of Muslim civilian deaths? I guess he forgot all of that.
Did Obama ever warn Ukraine about civilian deaths? Did he ever mention that killing Russians might "harden Russian attitudes for generations"?
Root concluded by further counterfactual huffing at Obama:
Why is it always different with the Jews? Why would Obama be angry at Israel for responding in self-defense to one of the worst terror attacks in world history? Why is only Israel always supposed to show restraint? Why indeed.
Because Obama hates Israel. He always has.
As usual, Root offered no facts to back up his ranting.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Trump Indictment Distraction Game, Round 4 Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center covered Donald Trump's fourth indictment with the usual strategies of defense and distraction, with an added dose of hypocrisy and a dash of conspiracy theory. Read more >>
MRC Couldn't Stop Falsely Attacking Nina Jankowicz Over Disinfo Board Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center repeatedlyattacked a proposed "disinformation governance board" by the Department of Homeland Security with falsehoods and smears, declaring it to be an Orwellian "ministry of truth" despite the fact that it would have been no such thing. It also lashed out at the woman who would have headed the board, Nina Jankowicz, for calling out those lies and trying to fight back -- then continued to attack her well after it was clear that the right-wing smear campaign had succeeded in killing the board. Another example of that is a May 11 post by Autumn Johnson complaining that Jankowicz sued Fox News for lying about her:
Self-proclaimed “Mary Poppins of disinformation” Nina Jankowicz has hopped on the bandwagon and is trying to sic the legal system on Fox News.
In a lawsuit filed in the Superior Court of the State of Delaware, Jankowicz claimed that Fox News “defamed” her character despite her beloved Disinformation Governance Board being rightfully accused of seeking to censor Americans' speech online. The suit takes particular issue with the network’s labeling of Jankowicz as "unhinged” and a "Minister of Truth" in a reference to George Orwell's dystopian world in his book 1984. Apparently, Jankowicz doesn’t consider “Mary Poppins of disinformation” and “Minister of Truth” to be synonymous.
[...]
Jankowicz’s attorneys claim that Fox is supposedly responsible for the purported death threats she received after her address was released online.
The lawsuit further alleges that Fox’s coverage of her anti-free speech views created a "completely false reputation concerning government censorship.”
"[B]ased on verifiable falsehoods, Fox has made Jankowicz radioactive and deterred others from working with her as they otherwise would," her attorneys argued. Jankowicz registered as a foreign agent in 2022 after the DGB went kaput so she could work with the U.K.-based Centre for Information Resilience as an “ambassador” to fight so-called disinformation.
Of course, the lawsuit dismissed Jankwociz’s own history of spreading “disinformation.” But don’t worry, MRC Free Speech America has receipts.
Johnson is lying about Jankowicz as well. The DGB was never about censorship; its goal was to coordinate anti-disinformation efforts within the DHS and wouldn't be policing speech. Therefore, Jankowicz could not possibly have been the "Minister of Truth" Johnson insists she was to be, and her attempt to play whaboutism by accusingher of spreading "disinformation" doesn't change that fact.
A July 10 post by Gabriela Pariseau raged at Jankowicz for pointing out the factual deficiency of the right-wing "censorship" narrative, since the government isn't actually censoring anyone and doesn't have the last word on whether social media does so:
The former leader of the defunct Disinformation Governance Board argued Saturday that the government doesn’t censor users it just makes it easier for social media companies to censor them.
MSNBC host Ali Velshi brought Nina Jankowicz his show Velshi to critique the Missouri v. Biden case. The case came out with a momentous pro free speech ruling ordering that the Biden administration no longer encourage Big Tech companies to censor constitutionally protected speech. Jankowicz, however, was not too thrilled. She even argued that flagging posts somehow helps generate more speech.
Velshi claimed that the ruling implies that “the government was trying to influence social media companies in violation of the First Amendment which sort of prevents the government from stifling speech. That's not really the story.”
[...]
In case that was clear as mud, Jankowicz later explained that the government doesn’t censor it merely flags content that violates Big Tech companies' policies. “In more than 70% of the instances,” the platforms do nothing,” she added defending her position.
She further explained. “It's a flag saying [to Big Tech companies] hey, you may not have seen this… but here's some election disinformation. Here's something that could threaten public health that already goes against your policies. We thought you might want to know about it.”
Jankowicz failed to explain, however, how flagging content is different from trying to influence social media companies to remove speech. What does she expect the companies to do about the so-called disinformation the government is pointing out to them if not take it down?
Pariseau offered no evidence that anyone in the government demanded "censorship" -- indeed, she later admitted that "government agencies had no power to censor users directly" -- and didn't explain why it was bad if all that was being done was flagging of violations of the social media sites' own policies, which tend to censor on prohibiting the spread of hate, lies and misinformation. Pariseau didn't explain why stopping hate, lies and misinformation is a bad thing.
Clay Waters served up his own anti-Jankowicz rant in a July 13 post, complete with the lie that the DGB would have been "Orwellian" and a complaint that Jankowicz pointed out that she faces "threats of physical violence" from the right-wing hate campaign:
On Amanpour & Co., which airs on CNN International and PBS, journalist Michel Martin commiserated with Nina Jankowicz, cringeworthy songbird and appointed director of the Biden administration’s Disinformation Governance Board before the Orwellian outfit was scuttled after outcry from conservatives and concerns from liberal groups like the ACLU.
[...]
Liberal journalists love pounding that note of violent threats, as if conservatives never get those. It underlines that the conservatives are the kooky extremists.
Waters didn't denounce those threats or make any effort to distance his fellow right-wingers from them. Instead,he complained further that the right-wing extremism against her was pointed out:
Martin flattered her guest by painting her opposition as nonsensical.
Martin: So, they make you controversial and that becomes an excuse for people to make you untouchable, because you are controversial, even though controversy is invented to begin with.
Jankowicz: Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it….
Martin’s speech then slowed, as if it was painful for her to inject a few seconds of balance into this 20-minute fawnathon, then quickly scurrying away from providing the actual counter-argument.
The former disinfo head claimed to be suing Fox News for defamation because the network lied “about statements that I was alleged to have made….And they lied about me being fired when, in fact, I resigned, and lied about my intention in joining the government.”
It sounded like an awfully thin reed on which to hang a lawsuit that impinges on the First Amendment rights of journalists, even as she claimed to be “standing up for democracy and standing up for the truth.”
Waters didn't disprove anything Jankowicz or Martin said about those right-wing attacks. He then claimed that she "misleadingly denied what the administration did was censorship, but merely 'law enforcement agencies speaking to social media platforms and saying, 'hey, we see a problem on your website here.'' Translation: Nice social media outlet you have here, shame if anything happened to it!" Like Pariseau, Waters ignored the fact that there were no orders to do anything and that the things being flagged were violations of the social media sites' own policies.
When Jankowicz made another TV appearance, it was Alex Christy's turn to rage about it in a July 15 post:
MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, best known for standing in front of a burning building and saying nothing “unruly” was going on, used his Saturday show to proclaim that his audience, unlike Fox’s, does not conspiracy theorists in it.
Speaking to Nika Jankowicz, formerly of DHS’s infamous Disinformation Governance Board, Velshi recounted, “I just did that intro to the segment, right? So that my audience would understand this conspiracy theory that I guarantee you, pretty much nobody in my audience knew that story because why would they?”
Velshi was referring to Ray Epps<, who recently sued Fox News for claims that he was an FBI agent who encouraged the rob to storm The Capitol on January 6. Velshi claimed he is not like that. Instead, viewers tune in to his show for egghead takes about economics, “Two segments ago I talked about red states and Bidenomics, again I’m not-- my audience doesn't have conspiracy theorists in, right?”
[...]
Proving that MSNBC’s concern about disinformation only goes one way, Jankowicz responded by hyping her own lawsuit against Fox, “I've decided to sue Fox, as well, for the conspiracy theories they spread about me. I think there needs to be consequences for people running people’s lives, lying for profit.”
Of course, the MRC's concern about disinformation only goes one way, as Christy failed to disclose the lies and misinformation his employer spread about Jankowicz and the DGB.
Mandelburg's Year Of Anti-Abortion Extremism At The MRC Topic: Media Research Center
Cheering right-wing efforts to use the courts to outlaw the abortion pill isn't the only thing the anti-abortion extremists at the Media Research Center have done this year -- they've been pushing the usual rhetoric as well. Chief extremist Tierin-Rose Mandelburg spent a Jan. 26 post serving up performative outrage about a proposal to reverse the Hyde amendment blocking federal funding from paying for abortions:
On January 26, House Democrats introduced a bill that would reverse the Hyde Amendment, the bill that banned federally funded abortions. The left wants to make abortion even more easily accessible, and use our hard earned money to do so.
[...]
I’m still perplexed as to why abortion is called “care” when it ends the life of at least one human being. Actual care would help women receive prenatal care and hospital care when giving birth.
And why are Democrats trying to kill minorities?
Twitter abortion enthusiasts were thrilled at the prospect of more abortions.
Mandelburg similarly raged in a Feb. 2 post about a new law in Minnesota:
If you have the sudden urge to kill a child, head over to Minnesota because it just got THAT much easier.
Governor Tim Walz (D-Minn.) signed the PRO Act into law on Jan 31 legalizing, or at least not prohibiting, abortion at any point. This is the first state since Roe’s overturn in June to enshrine the abortion statutory and make s such an irrational and extreme pro-death law.
“After last year’s landmark election across this country, we’re the first state to take legislative action to put these protections in place,” Walz said at the signing ceremony.
Here’s a video from the event. If you notice, there are two children clearly in attendance, jumping up and down in celebration of the signing. They’re being taught that life has so little meaning that a law that enables people to kill babies is something to jump for joy over.
[...]
When did we start saying that the legislators who support life are the ones who are “extreme?” Wouldn’t the “extremists” be the ones who want to promote innocent baby death? The world is all kinds of wack.
Propbably around the time people like Mandelburg endorse the creation of an Orwellian survelliance state to monitor pregnant women lest they choose to have an abortion in another state.
Mandelburg pretended to be a legal expert in a Feb. 7 post:
The left is desperate to keep killing babies.
A federal judge in Washington, D.C. suggested that abortion may still be a federal right baked into the 13th Amendment, the one that prohibited slavery. Throw it against the wall, and see if it sticks, Your Honor.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, appointee of former president Bill Clinton, turned heads this weekend with her suggestion. During an ongoing criminal case, Kollar-Kotelly proposed that the Dobbs ruling overturning Roe only concerned the 14th Amendment, and maybe there are "emanations" and "penumbras" elsewhere in the constitution.
She suggested that the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, could “cement abortion rights,” as The Hill noted.
Essentially she thinks that abortion should be protected because slavery is prohibited and a woman carrying a baby in utero is apparently a form of slavery.
She pretended to be an expert on religion in a Feb. 27 post:
This pro-abort argument has never and will never work. Stop trying!
Yet another abortion supporter has tried pretending that abortion is in line with the Bible’s teachings. He told his congregation that their faith is “way too small” if they don’t support expansive abortion access.
T. Michael Rock, co-pastor of Robbinsdale Parkway United Church of Christ in Minnesota, blatantly lied to his congregation. In a tweet from Alpha News MN, Rock explained how Christians that don’t support abortion, or in other words, those who follow the Lord’s teachings on the sanctity of life, are considered his “not so kind Christian colleagues.”
[...]
Actually, sir, faith in God means you trust His teachings. His teachings give us free will for our lives but a woman’s free will takes place when she decides to get pregnant. If she made her choice, had sex and got pregnant, then that was her decision. But, once she’s pregnant she’s no longer dealing with decisions that would only affect her, she’s also dealing with the life of her child, a separate entity from her.
Mandelburg offered no proof that a woman "chooses" to become pregnant simply by having sex. She also ignores that no woman "chooses" to be raped or be the victim of incest.
Mandelburg raged at the existence of a day to honor abortion providers in a March 10 post:
What a sick holiday to not only make up, but also to celebrate. These people are playing too close with the devil.
March 10 apparently marks one of those dumb holidays that people make up, like National Pet Your Dog Day, or National Eat a Waffle Day. This early March holiday, however, celebrates the people who conduct the murder of innocent babies: Abortion Provider Appreciation Day.
Celebrating the people who kill innocent children is like celebrating serial killers or terrorists. Do we have a day celebrating Adolf Hitler’s accomplishments of being responsible for slaughtering 6 million innocent people? No. Do we celebrate Osama bin Laden for the near-3,000 people he killed on 9/11? No. So why are we celebrating the people who professionally rip out babies limb-by-limb from their mothers' wombs?
Leave it to the left to send praises and appreciation for these domestic terrorists.
Likening abortion doctors to Hitler and "domestic terrorists"is another reason whynormal people consider Mandelburg to be "extreme."
Similarly, Mandelburg used a march 15 post to praise a speaker at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast who called abortion "lethal violence" done to advance a woman's "self-invented goals," declaring the speaker's words "a vision of hope for the pro-life movement moving forward in our post-Roe America."
Mandelburg endorsed one state's advancement toward her preferred Orwellian anti-abortion survelliance state in an April 6 post:
Idaho Governor Brad Little just signed a bill that makes it illegal for an adult to help a minor get an abortion without parental consent. The bill is known as the “Abortion Trafficking” ban.
At its core the bill makes it a crime for adults to obtain abortion pills and give them to a minor. The bill states that it is illegal for adults to be “recruiting, harboring or transporting the pregnant minor” without the consent of the minor's parent or guardian.
The “Abortion Trafficking” part of the bill criminalizes bring minors to other states where abortions are legal to obtain the procedure.
[...]
Here’s the bottom line: every child has value that is not dependent on the age of his or her mother or how he or she was conceived. This bill helps point that out and will hopefully limit the number of abortions in Idaho.
Mandelburg spent a May 12 post whining that abortion and Mother's Day were referenced in the same article:
In celebration of the first Mother’s Day since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, Time magazine decided to yet again push mothers' apparent “need” to abort their kids.
Yeah, this world is freaking sick.
“This Sunday will be the first Mother’s Day since the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and struck down the constitutional right to abortion,” the Time author began.
It seems pretty twisted to promote murdering babies on the very day that women, the badasses who birth said children, are supposed to be celebrated. But, leave it to Time to do just that.
That's coming from the woman who doesn't think it's "twisted" to maliciously liken abortion doctors to Hitler. Meanwhile, she brought her similarly twisted extremist framing to a July 9 post:
It’s 2023 and people are upset that babies weren’t killed. WTF has our society turned into?
On Thursday July 6, CNN released a piece indicating that 10,000 children were born in Texas. Though all life should be celebrated, CNN was disappointed that these 10,000 children lived.
The piece was titled, “Under strict abortion law, Texas had nearly 10,000 more births than expected in last nine months of 2022, research suggests.” Tell me you’re pro-death without telling me you're pro-death.
Mandelburg concluded by huffing: "Overall, it's disturbing that CNN thinks babies being saved is somehow a bad thing but then again, this is CNN we’re talking about. The expectation for a moral compass is low." No normal person looks to an extremist like Mandelburg for rulings on the moral compasses of other people.
A July 14 post by Mandelburg cheered a company pushing anti-abortion propaganda:
It’s a bummer that we have to say this occurrence is rare.
While most companies this year have pledged their allegiance to the abortion flag, one company is taking the opposite approach. EveryLife is a baby product brand that spreads the mission that all children are miracles from God who deserve to be “loved, protected, and supported.”
EveryLife released a video ad on July 13. In just one day, it reached over 1,000,000 views while garnering thousands of likes.
Mandelburg raged at Vice President Kamala Harris for talking about abortion in a July 31 post:
Kamala Harris has a tendency to say whatever she wants to support abortion … even if it’s not true!
Vice President Harris recently visited Iowa, who’s governor just signed a six-week abortion ban. Following a pro-abort speech, Harris was interviewed by ABC News’ Linsey Davis for a post-event discussion. In both events, the VP blatantly lied about abortion bans, among other things.
Harris used her favorite phrase while in the Hawkeye State. “One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do.”
That’s right folks, this “baptist” thinks that you can support, believe and follow the teachings of the Holy Bible and still support murdering innocent babies. M'kay sureeee.
[...]
Finally, Harris claimed that states with abortion bans wont help women who are suffering from miscarriages. This is straight fear-mongering on Harris’ end. Abortion bans protect babies in the womb from being killed. Such laws do not interfere with miscarriages as a miscarriage is when a child dies in utero accidentally, spontaneously or unintentionally. To compare those who have a miscarriage to those who actively want to kill their babies is twisted logic.
It's not "twisted logic" at all -- strict anti-abortion laws like those in Texas do, in fact, inhibit care for miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and other nonviable pregnancies.
Mandelburg whined in an Aug. 2 post that the fact that anti-abortion laws force women to have children they weren't prepared for was pointed out in a Washington Post article: "It’s shocking, but not surprising for The Post to allude to every issue that this couple has to deal with to be the result of not getting an abortion. The outlet has this disturbing idea that people’s lives will be ruined if they don’t abort their kids." Mandelburg offered no help for this couple and their children, of course, whcih tells us that she's all about making women are punished for having sex or being raped.
Mandelburg cheered the progression of an abaortion pill ban through the legal system in an Aug. 17 post:
Represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a group of medical professionals condemned the negligence of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and said it should be “illegal” to distribute the abortion pill. ADF claimed the FDA didn’t adequately evaluate the abortion drug's safety and urged officials to take it off the market. On August 16, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FDA must restore crucial safeguards around chemical abortion drugs.
ADF is representing four different medical associations and four different doctors with experience caring for pregnant and post-abortive women. When the FDA permitted the distribution of mail order abortion pills, these medical professionals spoke up against the dangers of said drugs and sued the administration back in November 2022.
First of all, if the drug, mifepristone, works, it ends the life of at least one human being. Second of all, it poses significant risks to the health and even life of the mother who takes it. The drug can cause the mother to experience a month of cramping, bleeding and severe pain. According to Sen. James Lankford (R-Texas), the drug is “four times more dangerous” than surgical abortions and has reportedly increased abortion-related ER visits by “500 percent” from 2002-2015. Yet in April, the Supreme Court ruled that it would stay on the market.
Note Mandelburg's framing of those behind the lawsuit as "medical professionals" and not the anti-abortion activists they actually are. Also, it's nonsensical for Mandelburg to hype a claim that mifepristone is "four times more dangerous" than surgical abortions when Mandelburg and her fellow extremists also want to outlaw surgical abortions. Further,. such language obscures the fact that complications from either mifepristone or surgical abortions are very rare.
A Sept. 22 post by Mandelburg raged at comedian Leslie Jones for talking about how she learned about contraception from Planned Parenthood after having abortions:
Despite her realization, Jones accredited Planned Parenthood to being her Hail Mary during those times and her babies were already killed by the time she understood that birth control is to prevent pregnancies, not end them when they already exist.
“When I went to Planned Parenthood, I finally learned how to prevent pregnancies and take care of myself. Thank God for those people and what they do,” Jones wrote. “I still give money to them to this day.”
It’s kinda ironic that Jones is thanking God for Planned Parenthood. If she’s talking about the real God, based on everything He teaches, I am pretty sure He doesn’t support anything Planned Parenthood does. As a matter of fact, Jones should have been thanking the Devil because personally, I think Planned Parenthood is a direct result of his work!
Mandelburg's rage at Planned Parenthood for teaching Jones about contraception as a big clue that she wants to outlaw contraception as well as abortion.
MRC's DeSantis Defense Brigade Watch Topic: Media Research Center
When it wasn't working thedebates for his benefit, the Media Research Center's DeSantis Defense League continued to promote and defend its favorite Republican presidential candidate. Clay Waters was angered in an Oct. 3 post by the New York Times pointing out that DeSantis' anti-immigration platform is unrealistic:
The New York Times continued to paint Republicans as the extremists on the immigration issue, even when it’s the Democratic Party who seems eager to welcome a surge of migrants and perhaps even give them the vote.
The online headline over the story by Nicholas Nehamas and Eileen Sullivan didn’t even nod toward objectivity: “With Unrealistic Immigration Proposals, DeSantis and Trump Try to Outdo Each Other.”
Campaign reporter Nehamas is notoriously hostile to DeSantis, and Sullivan's previous misleading reporting captures her siding with illegal immigrants, so this anti-DeSantis screed comes as no surprise.
[...]
The Times piled on details to make it seem an impossible mission to enforce U.S. law, making the unbearable status quo, which is causing protests in even liberal New York City, seem inevitable.
Waters is notoriously hostile to the Times -- bashing it was once his exclusive job at the MRC -- so perhaps he should be disregarded the way he thinks we should ignore Sullivan. Also, Waters is too busy bashing the Times to even bother to explain why DeSantis' eagerness to deport all undocumented immigrants has any basis in reality.
Luis Cornelio served up DeSantis stenography in an Oct. 9 post, cheering how he adhered to his employer's talking points:
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) did not mince his words against the leftist Silicon Valley giants and the onslaught of free speech in response to the Supreme Court agreeing to hear a case involving a 2021 Florida anti-censorship law.
DeSantis blasted Big Tech platforms' role in blocking information from the American public during an interview with Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday on Oct. 8. “We have to grapple with the fact that these Big Tech companies colluded with the federal government to stifle dissent on COVID,” DeSantis said. “If you put up an article in COVID in March of 2020 saying COVID came from the Wuhan Lab, they would take it down and censor it. If you criticized lockdowns, they would take it down. They censored the Hunter Biden laptop story at the behest of the federal government.”
Indeed, MRC Free Speech America exclusively unveiled over 800 instances of COVID-19-related censorship in 2022.
Kevin Tober groused in an Oct. 10 post that "Correspondent Lisa Ling’s first assignment for CBS Mornings Tuesday after leaving CNN was to smear the AP education standards and accuse conservatives like Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis of not teaching the full history of the United States, especially when it comes to slavery." Tim Graham followed with an Oct. 16 post complaining that "60 Minutes" pointed out the negative effects of DeSantis' policies in Florida:
Two years ago, CBS reporter Sharyn Alfonsi unloaded a 60 Minutes hit piece on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his COVID-vaccine rollout. She said it sounded like....The Hunger Games. Alfonsi went to a DeSantis press conference and fought with him, and then edited out his rebuttal in their hit piece. On Sunday, CBS and Alfonsi uncorked another one.
Remember DeSantis flying migrants to Martha's Vineyard? CBS promoted a Democrat sheriff in Texas who says DeSantis committed a crime.
[...]
First, she turned to local lefties, like tavern owners Larkin and Jackie Stallings. Jackie speaks Spanish, so she claimed all the migrants were touting what work they could do. Alfonsi wouldn't tell viewers Jackie Stallings tweeted that DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott should be in prison!
Graham went on to complain that the show quoted a Texas sheriff who said "it was wrong for the Florida governor to fly illegal immigrants from Texas to Massachusetts," but Graham never explain what was right about it. Graham continued to rage about the "vicious attack piece" on DeSantis in his Oct. 16 podcast.
A Nov. 3 post by Mark Finkelstein touted that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough "conducted a lengthy interview with Ron DeSantis. A wide range of issues, foreign and domestic, were discussed, with DeSantis displaying an impressive breadth and depth of knowledge." He expressed surprise that "the overall tone was respectful, with Scarborough even praising DeSantis for being forthright about his views."
The MRC, meanwhile, did not want to discuss DeSantis' apparent preference for wearing lifts in his shoes to make himself look taller.
The Media Research Center's latest round of loud and lame attacks on website-rating firm NewsGuard continued in an Oct. 30 post by Autumn Johnson:
Newsmax pundit Dick Morris says what he needs to to get on his employer's TV channel, and he had opinions about the House Republicans firing Kevin McCarthy as House speaker and squabbling over picking a new one. He surprisingly didn't endorse it, as an Oct. 4 Newsmax TV 
WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh did what he could to overhype a minor election controversy, declaring in a Nov. 2 
After the Hamas attack on Israel in October, the Media Research Center rushed to attack anyone who dared voice anything even slightly critical of Israel as an endorsement of Hamas and liberally throwing around the "anti-Semitic" tag. For instance:
While it 
Rachel Alexander continued her 
Nicholas Fondacaro huffed in an Oct. 25 
Despite 
Wayne Allyn Root's Obama Derangement Syndrome 
The Media Research Center 
Cheering right-wing efforts to 
When it wasn't working 
