MRC Trots Out Right-Wing Economists To Spout Talking Points Without Disclosing Their Bias Topic: Media Research Center
One of the things the Media Research Center loves to do when talking down the economy for partisan gain is to call on economists to repeat those right-wing talking points without explaining that they are also partisan actors as evidenced by their employment with right-wing think tanks. Joseph Vazquez dutifully did just that in an Aug. 24 post:
The Washington Post’s third-rate “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler butchered the facts when he claimed that the sky-high inflation brought on by Bidenomics barely made a dent in Americans’ spending power. Economists interviewed by MRC Business were having none of it.
Kessler went after presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) for his nuanced assertion during the GOP presidential primary debate that the average American family has lost “$10,000 of spending power” in President Joe Biden’s economy. “This seems wildly overstated,” objected Kessler. He then attributed Scott’s argument to an analysis by Heritage Foundation Research Fellow EJ Antoni, estimating that American families have lost roughly $7,000 in spending power since Biden first took office. Without being specific, Kessler vaguely pointed to some string of “economists we contacted [who] were dubious about the math, which relied on a change in purchasing power and a change in borrowing power.” But Kessler’s true-to-form retort to protect Biden would be fallacy-riddled and devoid of context that would actually blow up his argument.
MRC Business reached out to Antoni, who, in his response, didn’t mince words about Kessler’s shoddy argument. Kessler’s assessment of the numbers is “just flat-out wrong,” rebuked Antoni. Kessler “should know better,” Antoni reproached. “I literally explained [my calculations] to him both on the phone and via email in a previous conversation. I explained how these figures are actually calculated.”
[...]
Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Brian Riedl was blunt in comments to MRC Business that Scott was correct in his assessment and Kessler was wrong:
I understood Sen. Scott to suggest that inflation has cost the typical household roughly $10,000 in higher prices over the past two years. Using the economist rule of thumb that each 1% of higher inflation costs the typical household $650 annually (which renews the next year as prices remain elevated) produces a figure of roughly $10,000 in higher prices (compared to under the typical 2% inflation) since Biden took office. Sen. Scott is correct,[emphasis added].
Vazquez faild to disclose ythat both the Heritage Foundation and the Manhattan Institute are both right-wing institutions whose paid economists would be expected to follow right-wing talking points.
Vazquez pulled the same stunt again -- using one of those very same economists -- in a Sept. 19 post:
Philadelphia Inquirer national columnist Will Bunch gaslit the American public in an outrageous full-throated defense of “Bidenomics.”
Bunch’s Sept. 14 column headline speaks for itself: “The problem with ‘Bidenomics’? It didn’t go far enough.” The columnist doubled down on his absurd logic in the sub-headline: “New census data shows how ‘Bidenomics’ was helping America's working class and poor — until a key anti-poverty program was killed.” Economists interviewed by MRC Business showed why the argument was nonsense.
[...]
“If [not expanding the Child Tax Credit] were the only reason [for the increased poverty rate], then poverty rates would’ve simply returned to the level they were at before Biden’s expanded child tax credit,”Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni told MRC. “Instead, poverty rates greatly increased. What changed was inflation.”
Antoni ripped Bunch for deceiving readers into believing that anything other than the inflation crisis was responsible for the spike in poverty:
[...]
Center for Freedom and Prosperity President Dan Mitchell pointed MRC Business to three analyses he conducted illustrating why Biden’s “per-child handouts” Bunch haphazardly celebrated were a textbook case of government stupidity, not benevolence. “The bottom line is that the United States already has a big problem with government dependency. Per-child handouts will make a bad situation even worse,” Mitchell wrote in a June 27, 2021 blog post. Mitchell also directed MRC Business to an X post by American Enterprise Institute Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility Director Scott Winship<, who directly addressed the propaganda Bunch was pushing: “You'd be wrong if you think the expiration of the expanded CTC was the most important factor in raising SPM child poverty or if you think child poverty would have fallen had it not expired.”
The Center for Freedom and Prosperity is also a right-wing group, which Vazquez failed to disclose. He also included a quot from the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which of course is also right-wing -- and whose political slant went undisclosed.
Tom Olohan touted another right-wing economist repeating right-wing talking points in an Oct. 30 post:
Economist Stephen Moore pointed out Monday that despite government subsidies and companies pushing electric vehicles (EVs), Americans are rejecting them.
Moore told Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney on the Oct. 30 edition of Varney & Co. that extremely generous federal and state subsidies for electric cars have not been enough to push Americans towards them, simply because “car buyers do not want” electric vehicles. After mentioning that only 10% of cars being sold “off of lots” are electric vehicles, Moore said, “I’ve talked to dealers around the country, auto dealers, and they are telling me they have lots full of EVs, Stuart, and people come in and they say, ‘Wait a minute, I want to buy a gas car where are they?’ ‘Oh we don’t have many of those, but are you interested in this EV over here?’ And people say, ‘No, I don't want it.’”
As usual, Olohan didn't disclose Moore's partisan bias. Instead, he hyped how Moore used a separate column to "compare[] the present push to electric vehicles to the disastrous launch of the Ford Edsel Sedan." Olohan didn't bother fact-check Moore, otherwise he would have known Moore got basic facts wrong, starting with the name "Ford Edsel sedan." In fact, Edsel was a separate nameplate Ford tried to launch in the late 1950s; there was never anything called a "Ford Edsel," and the nameplate offered a full range of vehicles, not just sedans. In the column Olohan referenced, Moore falsely claimed only 10,000 Edsels were sold; in fact, about 116,000 were sold over the three years the nameplate existed. Moore also blamed Edsel's failure on company executives not "bother[ing] to ask car buyers what THEY thought of the new car"; more prominent factors include the fact that the cars were overhyped prior to launch, Edsel's place in Ford's brand hierarchy was not well defined, and the brand was introduced during a recession at a time the U.S. auto market was undergoing a brand shakeout.
Vazquez trotted out Antoni again in a Dec. 13 post for more recitation of talking points:
There seems to be no end in sight for the media gaslighting on President Joe Biden’s abysmal economy. One economist has had it.
Business Insider had the audacity to publish an asinine piece of economic propaganda Dec. 3 that reeked of a public relations stunt by Biden’s press team: “After 3 years of pain, America has finally achieved economic nirvana.” The author, Renaissance Macro Research Head of Economics Neil Dutta, celebrated how supposedly “[t]he signs of a well-balanced economy are everywhere.” He continued: “Current economic data is consistent with a soft landing for the economy — a situation in which inflation cools without causing a recession or sudden spike in unemployment.”
But Heritage Foundation Public Finance Economist EJ Antoni laid waste to Dutta’s argument in an exclusive interview with MRC Business: “Articles like that can only be written by those who are woefully ignorant of the data at every level.”
Antoni was right on target.
“The most obvious example” of Dutta’s illusory “nirvana” was “the slowdown in inflation,” cherry-picking how core consumer prices — which excludes food and energy — allegedly rose at “an annualized rate of 2.8 percent since June.” Of course, nowhere did Dutta mention that prices are still up 17.6 percent since Biden took office.
It's ironic that Vazquez called Dutta's piece "economic propaganda" -- even though he and Antoni are being paid to push their own economic propaganda that is deliberately designed to hurt President Biden's chances of re-election.
In none of these posts were the targets of the MRC and its favored economists given an opportunity to respond to their criticism.
WND Pushes Right-Wing Crusade To Defend George Floyd's Killer Topic: WorldNetDaily
Apparently following the lead of columnist Jack Cashill, WorldNetDaily is getting on the Derek Chauvin-saving bandwagon. An anonymously written Nov. 16 article states:
Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer in prison for two decades for the death of George Floyd during an arrest in 2020, says he was deprived during his trial of evidence that reveals the real cause of Floyd's demise, and his conviction should be overturned.
Floyd died as Chauvin held him down with a knee on his neck for several minutes during the arrest.
[...]
His court filing asks that the conviction be overturned and a new trial ordered, or at least an evidentiary hearing be held.
The evidence is outlined as a determination from Kansas doctor, William Schaetzel, explaining that after a review of the Floyd autopsy records, he believes Floyd died from a complication from a rare tumor that can trigger an adrenaline surge that can be fatal.
Floyd, in fact, had multiple underlying health and drug issues at the time he died.
As we pointed out when Cashill pushed this argument, Schaetzel did not examine Floyd's body but merely read the autopsy report, and the unproven claim that an "adrenaline surge" and not Chauvin's neck compression sounds a lot like the dubious "excited delirium" defense that officers originally cited as an excuse to subdue Floyd.
The anonymous author stated that Schaetzel informed Chauvin's attorney of his opinion but that the attorney "never informed Chauvin about the pathologist or his theories." But it has been reported that as a condition of his guilty plea, Chauvin forfeited his right to an appeal except under the condition of asserting that his defense attorney was inadequate or incompetent to represent him, and no evidence has been offered to back up the credibility of Schaetzel's claim.
MRC Can't Stop Lashing Out At Jankowicz For Fighting Online Disinformation Topic: Media Research Center
We've documented how the Media Research Center has continualllyattacked Nina Jankowicz even after the "disinformation governance board" at the Department of Homeland Security she was to head was shut down due to liestold by the MRC and its fellow right-wingers. Unsurpriringly, those attacks continued many months after the board was shut down. A Sept. 8 post by Luis Cornelio whined that Time magazine added her to one of its lists:
TIME is laying the groundwork for a return of the embattled warlord of the defunct Ministry of Truth.
TIME awarded Nina Jankowicz, Biden’s disgraced disinformation czar, with a puff feature piece on the first edition of then TIME 100 AI list, which lists individuals influencing the rapid growth of artificial intelligence. The piece, first published on Sept. 7 by TIME staff writer Astha Rajvanshi, falsely portrays Jankowicz as a victim of so-called “disinformation” and touts the infamous Biden administration Ministry of Truth called the Disinformation Governance Board (DGB).
Ignoring the real reasons for the backlash against the DGB, TIME engaged in revisionist history. “[H]ours into her appointment, the then 33-year-old became the target of a sustained disinformation campaign herself,” Rajvanshi claimed of Jankowicz. “Right-wing trolls on the internet waged continuous attacks that included allegations that she was transgender and infertile.”
However, the truth is that Jankowicz resigned from her position amid a relentless outcry from Americans concerned about the government’s role in censoring free speech online. Through the defunct DGB, Jankowicz had positioned herself to be the arbitrator of truth despite her own contentious trouble with spouting disinformation. But don’t expect TIME to report on any of this.
Don't expect Cornelio to ever admit that the "Ministry of Truth" smear is an outright lie; the board would have done no such thing. That means Cornelio is the one engaging in "revisionist history."
Catherine Salgado spent a Sept. 14 post whining that "The Biden Pentagon awarded a contract to a disinformation researcher who celebrated Big Tech’s election interference by suppressing the 2020 Hunter Biden bombshell scandals." Now, this wasn't Jankowicz, but this person apparently bears the taint because she has "ties" to Jankowicz. This gave Salgado an opportunity to repeat the MRC corporate line: "A 2020 Media Research Center poll found that censorship of the Hunter Biden scandal helped steal the election for Joe Biden, since 4.6% of Biden’s total vote wouldn’t have voted for him if in possession of all the facts. Kaplan approved that election-altering censorship, making her recent DoD contract questionable." As we've documented, that poll was conducted by a polling firm founded by Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, casting doubt on its accuracy and raising the specter of bias and bad-faith "media research."
A Nov. 12 post by Tim Graham whined that Jankowicz (accurately) called out right-wing election misinformation as a threat:
On Friday night’s ludicrously titled All Things Considered, NPR devoted almost seven minutes to the whining of left-wing social-media censors – or as NPR put it, “the people working to safeguard voting” – complaining that the 2024 election won’t be as free of “election lies” as 2020 because conservatives are fighting back.
[...]
NPR even interviewed Nina Jankowicz, the foiled federal censor. She's not in the radio story, but she is there in the online story:
As Nina Jankowicz sees it, the opening salvo came in the spring of 2022, when a right-wing campaign quickly snuffed out a Department of Homeland Security initiative called the Disinformation Governance Board...
After a barrage of death threats and abuse, Jankowicz resigned, and DHS scrapped the board altogether. Jankowicz told NPR that the timid effort by the federal government to defend her or push back against the allegations sent a clear message.
"That showed ... that it was open season on researchers, on civil servants, on anyone who was working in this space," Jankowicz said.
So leftists trying to keep Trump and his "MAGA extremists" out of office are "researchers and civil servants," not terribly disguised campaign operatives who "fortify elections."
[...]
It's fair to be alarmed about the "Trump won in a landslide" messagers. But NPR and other liberal media outlets obsess over that and ignore all the other cases where social-media giants censored conservative narratives that have turned out to be true.
Graham listed "the Hunter Biden laptop" and "the Chinese lab-leak theory of the Covid pandemic" as examples of those "conservative narratives." But as we've also noted, the New York Post failed to offer any independent verification of the Hunter laptop that might have assuaged reasonable fears that the story was Russian disinformation being spread by a biased pro-Trump rag. And the idea that the COVID virus originated in a Chinese lab has yet to be proven.
Clay Waters complained in a Nov. 19 post that NBC defended Jankowicz in a story on GOP efforts to shut down anti-disinformation efforts on social media by dishonestly crying "censorship":
They even defended would-be-censorious songstress Nina Jankowicz, who would have headed the Biden Administration’s Orwellian “Disinformation Governance Board” but had her own problems spreading disinformation about Hunter Biden’s laptop, complaining she “quickly became the target of a debilitating harassment campaign.”
Waters didn't deny that Jankowicz faced (and still faces) a right-wing harassment campaign -- or disclose that his employer is one of her chief harassers.
NEW ARTICLE -- Michael Brown's Deceptive Anti-LGBTQ Attacks, Part 6: Hate As Virtue Topic: WorldNetDaily
The WorldNetDaily columnist condones lies to forward his anti-LGBTQ agenda and thinks homophobes like him are the real victims in culture wars. Read more >>
MRC's Year Of Talking Down The Ecomony To Hurt Biden Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center spent a good part of last year talking down the ecomony -- despite the fact that, by most traditional measures, it's doing well -- because such factually dubious trash talk is mandated by its right-wing anti-Biden agenda.After all, talking down the economy under Democratic presidents is what the MRC does, even when the economy is clearly improving. Let's take a trip down memory lane and see how this has taken place.
A Feb. 21 post by Renata Kiss, for example, hyped one economist who foretold economic doom:
Former President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council Director sounded the alarm on the Federal Reserve’s inability to tame inflation and warned about “a collision or crash down the road.”
Economist Larry Summers warned the public in a Saturday interview with Bloomberg TV that the Fed’s interest rate hikes aren’t enough to cool inflation, yet he advised against hitting the brakes too hard. “The Fed’s been trying to put the brakes on and it doesn’t look like the brakes are getting much traction,” Summers said. “And when your brakes don’t get much traction, two things happen. You can be moving too fast: that’s the inflation pressure, and you can be setting yourself up for kind of a collision or crash down the road. And both of those things, I think, are real risks in this environment,” he continued.
That prediction didn't age well, since further interest rate hikes did slow inflation enough that the Fed is now mulling the idea of lowering rates.
When it was noted that the media plays a role in talking down the economy, Kevin Tober complained in a Feb. 26 post:
On ABC's This Week, co-moderator Martha Raddatz aired more of World News Tonight's exclusive interview with President Joe Biden during which anchor David Muir displayed how out of touch he is with the economic reality everyday Americans are facing due to Biden's rampant inflation and incipient recession. Not to be outdone, a "reporter" from America's state media, NPR, named Asma Khalid claimed the economy is improved from where it was six months ago.
During the Biden/Muir interview, Muir asked Biden about the economy and seemed befuddled why Americans weren't feeling good about their financial standing. Of course, Muir made sure to add every seemingly favorable metric he could come up with: "unemployment now at its lowest level in 50 years, but you've also seen the polls. Our latest ABC News poll shows 4 in 10 Americans say they're worse off than when you were elected. Only 16 percent said they were better off. So why is that? Why aren't Americans feeling this?"
Biden incoherently explained that Americans aren't feeling good because "it goes well beyond the economy." The octogenarian President blamed the constant negative stories Americans see when they turn on the news: "can you think of anything when you turn on the television that makes you think, God, that makes me feel good? Almost anything. Everything is in the negative."
Has there ever been a time when the news wasn't negative? Not to our memory. That's why there's the saying "no news is good news."
Tober pffered no proof that Biden and only Biden is responsible for "rampant inflation," and his prediction of a "incipient recession" has fallen flat because economists now predict that the economy will come in for a "soft landing" without a recession.
When Stephanie Ruhle made the same argument, Alex Christy lashed out in a June 3 post:
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle is not if not consistent in her efforts to blame the news media for the lack of confidence in the economy. On Friday’s The 11th Hour, Ruhle claimed that “we instilled this fear and unhappiness in people” right before going on to blame consumers for inflation.
During a panel discussion on the economy, REVOLT Black News anchor and managing editor Mara S. Campo made the normal observation that people do not feel confident in the economy because it does not reflect their everyday experience, “But I don't know if the messaging is getting through. Because I don't know that people feel it. You know, eggs still cost $8 a carton. A box of cereal is $10. Your credit card bills are going up every month by hundreds of dollars because the Fed keeps raising interest rates.”
Other than a gratuitous call for gun control, Campo summed up the problem with trying to convince voters the economy is doing great, “The housing market seems frozen because mortgage rates are at high sky high rates. We’re all afraid of getting shot by some lunatic with an AR-15 because no place feels safe. So, there are a lot of things that people are just feeling that don't feel good. But maybe when it comes to the economy it's not reflecting the messaging and the reality, but people are not really very enthusiastic.”
Ruhle wasn’t buying it, “But we, being the media, are somewhat responsible for that, right? Gas prices is the perfect example. When gas prices are up, like they were last year, every news organization and every reporter were standing in front of the gas station talking about it.”
Alternatively, consumers don’t need a reporter to tell them gas or egg prices are high because they see it themselves when they fill up their car or go to the store. Additionally, the media constantly tried to spin away inflation by repeating Ruhle’s point that the economy was actually doing rather well.
The MRC continued to bash the economy and anyone who noted it wasn't really as bad as right-wingers (are paid to) portray it:
The MRC was still pushing the bad-economy argument in an Oct. 23 post by Joseph Vazquez:
Liberal journos like Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias continue to treat struggling Americans as stupid for not giving President Joe Biden kudos on his so-called “great” economy.
Yglesias published a ludicrous Oct. 22 op-ed for Bloomberg Opinion with a headline that was nothing short of comical: “Biden’s Economy Is Great Everywhere Except in the Polls.” In Yglesias’s condescending, escapist worldview, those darn average Americans just don’t know what’s good for them: “Like a lot of world leaders, the US president must contend with voters who remain unhappy even as economic conditions improve.”
Yglesias even outrageously attempted to make Biden out to be a victim of unfair public perception, despite his administration’s policies largely contributing to the inflation crisis that crippled the U.S. economy: “This is undoubtedly a frustrating situation for the president, his campaign and Democrats overall.”
Utterly “silly,” Heritage economist EJ Antoni told MRC Business of Yglesias’ argument. “It is reminiscent of when football commentators say an NFL team is better than its record,” Antoni added. “That may be true in the initial weeks of the season, but at some point, your record is your record, and it is indicative of the team’s performance. The American people have judged Bidenomics and found it wanting.”
Vazquez didn't disclose that Antoni is a highly biased right-wing economist whose job at the right-winbg Heritage Foundation is to talk down Biden's economy in order to boost Republians' chances of getting elected, so his arguments should be seen as partisan attacks, not sound economic analysis.
WND's Brown Whitewashes Mike Johnson's Extreme Right-Wing Christian Views Topic: WorldNetDaily
Count Michael Brown as among the WorldNetDaily columnists eager to downplay the right-wing extremism of new House speaker Mike Johnson, which he did in his Nov. 15 column:
There are few things more frightening to leftist Americans than a Christian conservative who has political power. That's why the unexpected, out of the blue rise to power of Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., sent shock waves through the left, as if to say, "These religious fanatics are trying to take over the country! Soon they'll be imposing the Christian version of Shariah on every American! Danger!"
Johnson even had the temerity to say this in an interview with Sean Hannity: "I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, 'It's curious, people are curious: What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?' I said, 'Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That's my worldview.'" Oh, the horror!
To be sure, countless political leaders in American history, including many of our presidents, also extolled the Scriptures. In the words of Abraham Lincoln in 1864, when presented with a Bible by "loyal colored people" in Baltimore, "In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man's welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it. To you I return my most sincere thanks for the very elegant copy of the great Book of God which you present."
When Johnson's ties to the right-wing New Apostolic Reformation were noted, and that Johnson has a certain flag hanging outside his office, Brown served more downplaying:
This would be the "Appeal to Heaven" flag, of which Rolling Stone says, "Historically, this flag was a Revolutionary War banner, commissioned by George Washington as a naval flag for the colony turned state of Massachusetts. The quote 'An Appeal to Heaven' was a slogan from that war, taken from a treatise by the philosopher John Locke. But in the past decade it has come to symbolize a die-hard vision of a hegemonically Christian America."
I first heard about this flag with the publication of books by Dutch Sheets, "An Appeal To Heaven: What Would Happen If We Did It Again?" (2015) and Jennifer LeClaire, "The Next Great Move of God: An Appeal to Heaven for Spiritual Awakening" (2017) – yes, a spiritual awakening, not a Christian takeover. The concept was that American leaders in the past looked to God for mercy and help in times of need, recognizing that our only appeal was to heaven. The same must happen again in our day – there must be a fresh move of God, another great awakening – if our nation is to survive. Our only hope is an appeal to heaven!
[...]
The truth to be told, reports of the nefarious activities of "NAR" are grossly exaggerated, both in terms of numbers, influence and goals. (I write this as someone who knows many of the alleged leaders of "NAR"; for a more accurate assessment, go here.) And while I certainly have differences with some of the leaders referenced in Rolling Stone (see a statement I co-authored here and note my book "The Political Seduction of the Church"), most of the Christian leaders I know who work in politics are no different than their colleagues on the left.
Both are working within the political, democratic system to advance their values and goals. Those on the left have their vision for what is best for America, while those on the right have a different vision. But I do not personally know a single, significant, evangelical leader who wants to impose a theocracy on America. Not one.
As for Christians working to change the educational system, that's exactly what the left has been doing for decades, with disastrous results. But that's what every group does. We seek to convince others that our convictions and beliefs and values are in the best interest of the nation, and we do our best to live those values out and to influence others. What is so wrong about that?
What Brown won't make clear, however, is that he has been a longtime apologist for the NAR. Holly Pivec and Doug Geivett note how Brown lashed out at them for writing a book critical of the NAR, even denying that any such thing existed (though his own organization uses the term); they sum up what Brown did in a way that sounds familiar:
In short, Brown's article was careless. He didn't interact with the reasons we've presented. He didn't acknowledge the evidence we've brought to bear. Rather, he mischaracterized and oversimplified our case.
And Brown has done the very thing he accused of us. He puts all critics in the same basket: they all misunderstand what NAR is. This can be seen in the way he opens his article. He gives a lengthy description of NAR from a critic of the movement. But he doesn't identify the critic; he doesn't produce his source. The implication is that this critic speaks for all NAR critics.
Pivec wrote in 2023 of Brown's continued dishonesty about NAR: "In short, by denying the existence of NAR and directly supporting individuals like Mike Bickle, Brian Simmons, and Bill Johnson, Brown has compromised his claim to represent the charismatic/Pentecostal mainstream, squandered the opportunity to offer a well-informed and realistic appraisal of NAR, and relinquished all moral authority to speak for most continuationists. ... The more Brown defends NAR leaders and portrays them as mainstream charismatics, the more he alienates mainstream charismatics who know better—and that number is growing." Brown tried to defend Bickle a couple weeks earlier after he was accued of sexual misconduct.
Brown unsurprisingly concluded by once again whitewashing Johnson's extreme brand of Christianity:
Without a doubt, Johnson is a deeply committed, Christian conservative (for his views in his own words, go here.) And without a doubt, he would love to see more Americans embrace the best aspects of our national Christian heritage.
But, aside from praying for God's intervention in our nation – this is something every generation has done – he is committed to working within the political process. Even his attempts to challenge the results of the 2020 election were done in this spirit, ultimately stepping back from that pursuit as the courts refused to reexamine the elections.
In today's climate, however, Johnson is the most dangerous speaker of the House we have ever had, part of a conspiratorial plot to take over the nation and impose a fundamentalist version of Christianity over every American.
You can expect this fear-mongering, alarmist approach to become more shrill in the days ahead. Be prepared to respond with patience and with truth. Perhaps, over time, our fellow-citizens will realize that the alarmists are just crying wolf.
Is that like how his fearmongering about LGBT people has been repeatedlyexposed as hateful and alarmist?
MRC Fails In Recycling Old, Discredited Attack On J6 Committee Witness Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Clay Waters tried to revive an old controversy in a Sept. 29 post:
Even on a newscast preceding Wednesday night’s GOP presidential debate, the tax-supported PBS NewsHour kept its focus on former president Donald Trump, inviting former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson for a ten-minute interview to promote her book, Enough, about her traumatic experiences in the Trump White House and how dangerous it would be for Trump to win a second term of office.
You may remember Hutchinson as the left’s break-out star at the January 6 Committee hearings for the outlandish claims she made, though some of her most alarming allegations against Trump were denied by others. PBS took her at her word, after having spent weeks denying allegations against the Bidens as "unsubstantiated" or lacking evidence.
[...]
The PBS host forwarded as fact Hutchinson’s fiercely contested account of what Trump did on January 6:
Nawaz: Cassidy, one of the most explosive moments from your testimony was when you shared the story about, on January 6, Mr. Trump insisting he wanted to go to the Capitol, then trying to grab the steering wheel to get the Secret Service to take him there. What do you think he wanted to do there? What do you think he would have done if he made it to the Capitol?
Note the distinct absence of PBS reporters crying “unsubstantiated” or “no evidence” when it comes to a serious accusation against Donald Trump, though Nawaz and company deploy those phrases when defending Democrat Joe Biden. Nawaz took Hutchinson’s single-sourced account as the undisputed truth despite denials from sources close to the Secret Service[.]
It seems that Waters has forgotten that this line of attack against Hutchinson didn't age well. As we documented, the Secret Service agents who declared they would testify to the January 6 Committee that Hutchinson was lying -- who have been identified as Trump loyalists and yes men -- quickly lawyered up and refused to testify; when one finally did testify, he conveniently couldn't remember key details. Meanwhile, other witnesses corroborated key parts of Hutchinson's testimony. Given that, Waters' insistence that Hutchinson's account was "fiercely contested" completely deflates, since those doing so have not been found to be credible.
Note that Waters offered only anonymous "sources close to the Secret Service" as an attempt to discredit Hutchinson, as noted in a post by Curtis Houck that he linked to; doesn't the MRC hate anonymous sources? Waters also complained in the headline that there were "no fact checks on her testimony," which is false -- her testimony has been corroborated, so PBS did not need to do any further fact-checking.
Waters went on to whine that "For an eager PBS audience, Hutchinson described her White House time in melodramatic terms of an 'oppressive environment' that made loyalty more important than anything else." Waters didn't even bother to offer any sort of rebuttal, perhaps because he knows (or should know, since it's pretty common knowledge) that Trump is obsessed with loyalty.
WND's Cashill Has A Meltdown Over Soccer, Pushes COVID Conspiracy Theory Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill and co-host Loy Edge spent their Nov. 9 podcast raging about how soccer is purportedly sissifying America. Cashill declared: "Why have we let ourselves be invaded -- you know, the first stage, and we have the WHO, we have the World Economic Forum, we have the globalists -- the early stages of the movement was the insertion of soccer into our high schools, grade schools, college, neighborhoods." He then agreed with Edge that soccer was "a breeding ground for future Antifa movements" and "back-doored their way into our institutions." Edge sneered that "these guys normally wouldn't have been on a sports team. They weren't jocks by any stretch of the imagination." Cashill then identified another part of the conspiracy: "they probably measured their pitch in meters."
Cashill then mocked the idea of penalty kicks being a lot of the scores made in soccer: "Imagine an NBA game ... and at the end of regulation time it's 0-0, right, and they have an overtime, it's still 0-0, and they say, OK. get out your best five free-throw shooters, we'll get out our best five free-throw shooters. ... And then you call this -- you have your propaganda arm call this the greatest game in the world, the game that attracts the greatest amount of viewers in the world, right? And I think we're all being tricked. I think it's all a giant way -- one subtle, sneaky way of taking over our country."
Cashill offered his suggestion for improving the game: "make the goals bigger," since goalies have gotten bigger since the game was formed.
Cashill and Edge then went on a long digression about baseball, which included Cashill claiming that most of the racist hate letters Henry Aaron received as he approached breaking Babe Ruth's home run record were written by the KGB. That led to a sub-digression into COVID vaccine conspiracy theories:
CASHILL: When he was still alive -- and his ending was tragic. You know how that was. You know about that?
EDGE: I don't remember.
CASHILL: It was like a day after he got his jab.
EDGE: Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. Boy, this show's not gonna air. Maybe he was, you know, jabbed, criticized by some people and died.
CASHILL: I mean, it could be a coincidence, but something tells me --
Cashill and Edge eventually got back to soccer, with lots of whining about the "toxic" Megan Rapinoe. Cashill then derided women who think they can impress men by being into sports, insisting that the "don't just quite get it." He then claimed that female sports commentators can only do one thing "halfway well" is "on-the-field intervews which are brief and short and not in very much depth. The problem is they're talking to people who are sometimes two feet taller. In the booth they never sound quite right, in my humble opinion. ... They don't just get the rhythm of talking to men."
MRC's Jean-Pierre-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch, Year-End Edition Topic: Media Research Center
Curtis Houck started winding down the Media Research Center's in hating White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a Dec. 22 post covering two press briefings, beginning with touting Mrs. Peter Doocy (as Houck calls her on his Twitter account):
With Tuesday and Thursday serving as the final White House press briefings of 2023, we had everything from questions at the border — which was a focus of the year’s first briefing — to more pro-Hamas idiocy.
Starting with Thursday, the best exchange came when the Fox Business Network’s Hillary Vaughn battled the National Security Council’s John Kirby over the latest flare-up in the seemingly never-ending Biden border crisis.
Vaughn started with the simple question of whether President Biden had “seen photos and videos from the past week of the sea of people crossing into this country illegally” beyond being briefed.
When Kirby demurred, Vaughn called out the administration’s pro-illegal immigration policies, such as giving illegals nearly a decade to mill about the country before a judge will hear their asylum claims: “Some illegal border crossers are being given court dates in 2031. What are they supposed to do here for seven years?”
Kirby took a page from his far-more-inept colleague, Karine Jean-Pierre, by punting to Homeland Security since he’s “not in a position to — to talk about specific cases like that”.
Vaughn kept pressing, pointing out Biden seems to be creating this crisis “for the next president” and if he believes it’s a problem to allow people to put down roots here before presumably being deported if their asylum claim is denied.
[...]
In the seat usually occupied by Vaughn’s husband, Peter Doocy, their colleague Rich Edson also had a simple question Kirby answered with a whole lot of nothing: “How successful would you say the administration’s efforts to stem root flow, to get to the root causes of migration have been?”
Houck finished out the year with a few briefing-related summary items. The first, on Dec. 26, lashed out at journalists who didn't follow pro-Israel narratives:
For decades, the liberal media have always had a soft spot for Hamas. Heck, even the Associated Press’s Gaza bureau shared a Gaza City high-rise with the barbaric Islamists. In the days following Hamas’s animalistic reign of terror on October 7, some in the White House press corps pestered National Security Council’s John Kirby during briefings with Hamas talking points.
Kirby, while a longtime Democratic administration apparatchik, showed serious fortitude to not only push back on, but utterly demolish many of their galling takes while reminding them that Hamas’s inhumanity on October 7 started this war.
Houck left out the part where the AP said it did not know Hamas was in the building and that Israel refused to provide evidence that Hamas was there, which puts the lie to his "soft spot for Hamas" claim and making it seem he approves of the death of journalists who don't push his approved narratives. Furthe, Houck portrayed questions about Israel's actions or that showed concern about civilians in Gaza as being "for Hamas."
A Dec. 28 post attacked questions by "stooges" from "the left":
On Tuesday, we took a look back at six moments from the past year when the questions inside the White House’s Brady Press Briefing Room skewed in favor of Hamas and against Israel. This time, we’re going to serve up six more times journalists showed their far-left bona fides, except this one will be more of the traditional sense as this summary touches on gun control and race.
This list focused on questions asked by journalists, so we left this one out as an honorable mention as, on April 24, the entire press corps – left, right, and center – failed to bat an eye when Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed during government spending negotiations that Republicans purposefully wanted to “fill our cities with smog,” “give asthma to our children,” and let oil companies use chemicals that’d “melt bones.”
Houck's final piece was a Jan. 1 post in which he summarized "the 12 best moments – battles, beatdowns, and hardballs – from 2023, the first full year of the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre’s term at the podium." Unsurprisingly, most of those questions were from biased right-wing reporters, whom he refused to give an ideological tag as he did with the purportedly "far-left" reporters.
Newsmax Columnist Complains That Haley Fought The Confederacy Topic: Newsmax
Jeff Crouere's Nov. 20 Newsmax column attacking Nikki Haley isn't as extreme as that of fellow Newsmax columnist Paul du Quenoy -- who demanded that people not vote for Haley becuase she purportedly hates men -- but Crouere is mad that that Haley worked to erase symbols of insurrrectionists and traitors to the U.S.:
One issue that is important to many conservative voters is preserving our nation’s history. Conversely, liberals want to erase our history in the name of fighting "racism."
As Governor of South Carolina in 2015, Haley became a national political figure when she successfully pushed for the removal of the Confederate flag from the state house grounds. This was done in response to the murders of African American churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina by a racist killer.
Haley said she was "proud" of her actions, which catapulted her political career.
While removing the Confederate flag did not make South Carolina a more racially unified state, it did inspire other politicians to pursue similar actions.
Haley started a national movement which has continued to this day. A recent report by the far-left group, Southern Poverty Law Center, noted that 482 Confederate "symbols" have been removed since the murders in Charleston. Yet, countless other monuments of previous U.S. Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, and Founding Fathers, have also been removed across the country.
To protect our history, President Trump signed an executive order on June 26, 2020 to prevent "American Monuments, Memorials and Statues "from being vandalized or removed."
Crouere offered no evidence that Haley had any non-Confederate monument or statue removed, nor did he explain why getting right of Confederate monuments is a bad thing. Arguably, Confederate statues and monuments are not covered under Trump's order since they are not, but definition, "American."
The rest of Crouere's column is boilerplate right-wing talking points, largely focused on how Haley is allegedly "in sync with the big military and business powerbrokers and is extremely comfortable with big government."
I have never been afraid to show my respect for Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom I believe is the most competent, effective and law-abiding head of state on the five-member U.N. Security Council. I've weighed and rejected the various claims made against him over the past 20 years as fairly obvious war propaganda, and have admired his calm and measured prosecution of the current war in Ukraine that NATO forced upon him.
Putin's leadership in preserving and promoting true marriage, the natural family and gender normalcy against the LGBT global war-of-conquest is the unrivaled model for the world and the only real hope for a rollback of that truly satanic and literally existential threat to humanity. If Russia falls to that agenda, the entire world will drown in its own moral sewage just like America's groomer-targeted schoolchildren in the deep blue cities are doing. All our other disputes will be moot because we will have lost the favor of God.
As someone who has done missionary work in Ukraine and worked shoulder to shoulder with Ukrainian Christian coworkers around the world in the culture-war battles against the LGBT agenda, I deeply deplore the staggering human losses the poor Ukrainian people have suffered in their tragic role as cannon fodder proxies for the U.S./U.K. aggressors. But the blame for that falls squarely on those who orchestrated the very long campaign of encroachments and provocations against Russia, repeatedly broke negotiated settlements such as the Minsk accords, and deliberately sabotaged the French and German brokered peace agreement of March 2023 (and Nord Stream 2). High on the American segment of that list of evil elites are Obama, the Clintons, the entire inner circle of the present Obiden administration and their many allies in the "controlled opposition" wing of the GOP.
Nah, those deaths had nothing to do with Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine -- it was far-off countries who are somehow to blame. And Russia also played a role in breaking the Minsk accords. It has also since been revealed that the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline was apparently done by Ukrainian forces, not other countries. Lively then argued that Putin was playing a "dangerous game" even as he cheered Putin's alleged revival of a "Russian Orthodox Empire":
Vladimir Putin's dangerous game – perhaps more accurately characterized as a tightrope walk over the pit of hell – is his attempt to balance the realpolitik variables of geopolitics vis-a-vis the BRICS alliance/NATO showdown while managing the risks of overly empowering his Islamic political and military allies. As an heir to the Christian Byzantine Empire whose wondrous capital, Constantinople (now Istanbul), was wrested from them by Muslim warlords centuries ago, today's newly revived Russian Orthodox Empire should know better than most the consequences of underestimating Muhammad's religion-of-conquest, literally founded on militarism.
Ignoring all the carnage Putin has created in invading Ukraine, Lively declared:
If by God's mercy we avert the descent into the global collapse/reset I write so much about, and also restore Trump to the White House in 2024, I believe there is a very good chance Trump and Putin will together walk the world back from the brink of global Marxism, kill the "climate change" canard, restore traditional values and establish a healthy balance of superpowers that will respect national sovereignty and sweep all the shattered pieces of the globalist one-world dictatorship into the dustbin of history.
Admittedly, that's a Yuuge IF.
When a readers called Lively out on his love of Putin, he devoted his Nov. 6 column to responding to the criticism. First, he played dumb by effectively denying that Putin has a habit of poisoning his political enemies:
She said: "So, you admire a man who kills or nullifies those who have run against him? Really Mr. Lively!"
I replied: Do you have actual proof of that, or are you just parroting the talking points of the war-propagandists? If you're reading WND, you're likely a fairly well reasoned conservative. If so, my question back to you is, "Do you believe these same sources about all the other lies they spin, or do you spend half your time debunking them like I do?" Never trust narratives based on only one side of an issue, especially where counter-evidence/counter arguments are deemed meritless without investigation and are actively suppressed.
She replied: "It has been in the news. As well as those who were attacked with plutonium. Their hospitalization is well-documented."
I responded: That's all it takes for a conviction in your eyes? J6 has been in the news too. Do you believe the media in those cases?
Of course, Lively made no effort to actually disprove her claim about Putin poisoning people -- he simply muddied the issue with a blanket claim that you can't beleive the media. When the reader pointed out that Putin is "a dictator and a no-goodnik. … I still maintain Putin is no one to be admired. After all he wants to resurrect the Soviet Union," Live argued that Russians love authoritarianism and handwaved Putin's documented suppression of political dissent because participants in the Captiol riot were held accountable for their actions (and, hey, Putin may not even know about that suppression):
I replied: Well, admittedly Russia is a more autocratic society than ours, but that's the way they like it. I've done three mission trips there and studied that firsthand. That mindset has almost certainly saved them from the "regime change" our side so hypocritically specializes in orchestrating in the non-submissive nations of the world. Putin wisely expelled all the Soros-connected organizations from Russia several years ago, but apparently "our side" left enough assets behind to keep trying anyhow. I strongly suspect that's who tried to launch the anti-war effort the Russian government quickly suppressed.
Putin may or may not have had a hand in that, but I suspect only a minor one at most because much of the rest of the Russian government is considerably more hardline than he is and would have needed no prompting from above. Indeed, the most common criticism of Putin inside Russia is that he's too soft and too pro-Western in his views and actions. God help us if Putin leaves the presidency before the current season of world crisis is resolved.
However, if you're going to take the Amnesty International line of reasoning on the internal dissent topic, you first have to admit that J6 proves that our system is more broken than theirs since we now have more political prisoners incarcerated than Russia does, and we're supposedly the "gold standard" for human rights.
Lively then argued that Putin's dictatorship is better than the Soviet Union version:
The reason the Soviet Union was evil and deserved dismantling was its godless communist ideology. Putin's Russia is now overwhelmingly anti-Marxist Orthodox Christian. During my 50-city speaking tour of the former Soviet Union in 2006-2007, I saw that amazing transformation still in progress everywhere. Much of the rusting ruins of the ugly utilitarian infrastructure was still there –what the people deridingly called "Sov-Dep" (Soviet depredation) alongside new and modern communities and commercial centers to rival anything in the West – adorned by countless gorgeous new and reclaimed Orthodox churches and cathedrals. Even then they had become fully capitalist and largely re-Christianized.
Lively then went further, effectively siding with the enemy:
The Reagan/NATO deal with Russia that made Glasnost possible was the firm promise of no further eastward expansion. "Not one inch" was the operative phrase, which was violated almost immediately after the dismantling began. Meanwhile, the "democratic" value system the Russians abandoned their international partnership for steadily morphed into the LGBT freak show America, the U.K. and EU are now using all of our collective international power to impose on the world, backed by an autocratic punishment of dissent increasingly getting as harsh as anything the KGB ever did.
Understandably, Russia wants a restoration of its superpower status as a counterbalance to the U.S., and that explains both the BRICS alliance and the proxy war in Syria. The broader geopolitics of that is too multi-faceted and complex to tackle in the remaining space I have, but suffice it to say that de facto one-party power in the U.S. has done nothing but increase corruption, and the same seems to be true on a global scale under U.S. hegemony. A little competition, especially by a power firmly grounded in traditional family values, will almost certainly move the world in a healthier direction, so long as it doesn't trigger nuclear war.
The column ended with a brief discussion of whether events in the region foretell a war between Gog and Magog as prophesized in the Bible.
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC Flips Over Elon Musk, Part 18: An Anti-Semitic Meltdown Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center decided that the best person it could find to defend Elon Musk's rage that the Anti-Defamation League showed how anti-Semitism has grown on Twitter since he bought it was ... racist cartoonist Scott Adams. Read more >>
MRC Promoted Bogus Claim That Photojournalists Embedded With Hamas Topic: Media Research Center
Nicholas Fondacaro loves spreading lies -- we just documented him lying that a Palestinian Instagram influencer was a "crisis actor." A couple days before he started that lie, he repeated another one in a Nov. 8 post:
On Wednesday, HonestReporting drew attention to what they described as “ethical questions” stemming from the fact that local Gazan photojournalists affiliated with the Associated Press, CNN, the New York Times, and Reuters followed Hamas terrorists through their breaches in the border fence and into Israel during the October 7 terrorist attack. This led to accusations that these journalists were “embedded” with the terrorists and that they were given advanced notice of the attack.
In the subsection titled “AP: Photojournalists or Infiltrators?,” HonestReporting identified four photojournalists with various ties to Western liberal media outlets who somehow found themselves among the chaos of the invasion of Israel that was a shock to everyone but those who planned it. The reporters of note were “Hassan Eslaiah, Yousef Masoud, Ali Mahmud, and Hatem Ali.”
“What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas?” HonestReporting wondered. “Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and The New York Times, notify these outlets?”
The answer was obvious to Free Beacon contributor Noah Pollak, who posted on X (formerly Twitter): “Important expose by @honestreporting: Photographers working for AP, CNN, NYT, and Reuters were EMBEDDED with Hamas on 10/7 and accompanied the terrorist group into Israel. They knew the attack was coming, and participated in it.”
Fondacaro followed up with a post the next day noting that the media outlets in question denied having any advance knowledge of Hamas' attack. But he didn't tell readers the truth: that the allegation was a lie.
The Associated Press reported that HonestReporting admitted it never had any evidence to back up its claims of embedding; it insisted it was merely asking "legitimate questions" and that despite its name, "we don’t claim to be a news organization." But because the lie serves the MRC's anti-media narratives, not only did it stay silent about the lie being exposed, it chose to perpetuate the lie. Curtis Houc, ranted about the lie being called out in a Nov. 10 post:
On Thursday night, CNN sent out its cartoonishly pathetic senior media reporter Oliver Darcy to do what he dubbed “Shooting Down a Smear” in the wake of HonestReporting’s bombshell alleging Gaza freelance journalists for CNN and The New York Times as well as Associated Press and Reuters embedded with Hamas terrorists during the group’s animalistic October 7 terror attack.
[...]
Touting the outlets “strongly pushing back against the report from the staunchly pro-Israel media watchdog, HonestReporting, that claimed photographers for the news outlets were present during the initial attack,” Darcy insinuated there’s nothing further to see since the AP and CNN “severed ties with the freelance photographer Hassan Eslaiah”.
The former conservative reporter pointed to an AP story doing damage control and doing what the liberal media do when targeted, which is try to smear and maim those who criticize them:
When Darcy cited the AP takedown of the lie, Houck whined with out evidence that "Darcy and the AP were a tad misleading":
HonestReporting published a statement Friday morning that, while they “unequivocally condemn calls for violence or death threats aimed at bona fide media workers” and disagree with arguments that there’s no distinction between terrorists and journalists, “HonestReporting stands behind the legitimate questions we asked media outlets in our recent expose.”
Back to CNN from the night prior, the dictatorial dweeb bemoaned that “the damage had already been done” in that “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu...used HonestReporting’s story to give credence to the false notion that newsrooms were aware of the terror attack prior to it taking place” with a member of his war cabinet saying terrorists and those who stood as “idle bystanders...are no different”.
Actually, Houck is the one who's being a tad misleading here, having deliberately omitted the fact that HonestReporting admitted it never had any evidence to back up its claims.
Houck promoted the lie again in another Nov. 10 post promoting an interview NewsNation host Leland Vittert (a former Fox News personality) did with IDF spokesman Jonathan Conricus:
After alluding to the HonestReporting bombshell about Gaza freelancers, he asked Conricus for his reaction whenever he “see[s]...that the stories that Israel puts out and then the...same validity given to information coming from Hamas in American media.”
Conricus acknowledged journalists shouldn’t be threatened before hitting the nail on the head that Gaza journalists “report what Hamas allows them to report...and, if they don’t prove correctly, according to the Hamas message page, then they” and their families “face consequences.”
He even called them “compromised”:
[...]
Vittert spoke from experience on that issue: “I dealt with it myself. I mean, I — I worked with stringers in Gaza as well. And you had to — you had to sort of — ba — try — try and figure out what was Hamas propaganda and what were they really trying to tell you.”
Houck did not indicate whether Vittert and Conricus discussed whether journalists who cooperated with the IDF are "compromised" because they report only what the IDF allows them to report.
This also spread to an interview MRC executive Dan Schneider did with far-right writer Sara Carter, as detailed in a Nov. 10 post by Tom Olohan:
Liberal media photojournalists employed by CNN, Reuters, The New York Times and The Associated Press have been accused of embedding with Hamas during the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks against the nation of Israel. According to NewsBusters, on Nov. 8, The Associated Press, CNN, The New York Times and Reuters have all responded to HonestReporting's story with reactions ranging from cutting ties with the photojournalists in question to defending their work. You can read NewsBusters' reporting on their statements here.
Schneider commented on these atrocities in his interview with Carter. “[T]these photojournalists were embedded with the Hamas terrorists before the attack began,” Schneider explained. “They knew the attack was going to commence. They did not warn anybody that the attack was going to commence.”
Schneider also predicted that there will be consequences for the journalists involved in attacks. “I think we’re going to see big lawsuits by the families of the murdered victims and the injured victims against AP, CNN, [The] New York Times and Reuters at a minimum for paying these, their own photojournalists kept silent about what was about to happen,” said Schneider
Carter agreed, also calling for lawsuits. “I certainly hope so. I hope every single family that is connected and has lost a loved one or has a loved one who has been taken, or who was harmed in any way shape or form or had to flee their home or has family in the United States, I hope there are multiple lawsuits across the board, targeting these news agencies,” Carter said.
No mention, of course, that the story was a lie. The narrative, however bogus, is more important than the truth, remember?
Newsmax Writers Try To Spin Eleciton Results In Va. Topic: Newsmax
Things did not go well for Republicans in off-year elections in Virginia, and Newsmax struggled a bit to figure out how to spin it. A Nov. 8 column by John Gizzi admitted that one casualty of the election was Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin's presidential ambitions:
Two years after his dramatic capture of the Virginia governorship, Glenn Youngkin already was being boomed as a late-starting candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 — speculation about which he did little to dampen.
But on Tuesday, after his party failed miserably in a drive backed personally by Youngkin to capture the state senate — the Old Dominion State governor's dreams of a White House bid seemed to have evaporated.
Worse, Youngkin even lost Republican control of the lower House of Delegates to the Democrats.
The governor now faces two years of a legislature with Democrat [sic] majorities in both houses and thus very capable of thwarting his conservative agenda on issues ranging from abortion to taxes.
Indeed, later that day, an article by Solange Reyner confirmed that Youngkin "says he won't be running for president in 2024 after Republicans narrowly lost both state legislative chambers in Tuesday's election."
Pro-Trump pollster Jim McLaughlin, meanwhile, admitted that Republicans messed up by obsessing over abortion in a Nov. 8 Newsmax TV appearance:
Virginia's Republicans "made a mistake" by going on defense against Democrats' General Assembly campaigns that focused on abortion rights instead of going on offense on issues that the voters "really care about," said Jim McLaughlin of McLaughlin and Associates, who is also a pollster for former President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign.
"There's no question that Republicans underperformed in Virginia, but I saw one analysis that said the Democrats outspent them by almost $8 million," McLaughlin said on Newsmax's "National Report" about Tuesday's election, in which Democrats in Virginia won full control of the General Assembly.
McLaughlin acknowledged that "every race is different," but said that in Virginia and other places, making the race a "referendum on abortion" hurt Republican candidates.
Gizzi, however, returned for a Nov. 14 column in which he tried to spin results as not so bad after all:
In the week since elections in Virginia, the national press has made much political hay about the outcome — in which Democrats control both houses of the state legislature and are sure to lock horns with Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
To no one's surprise, Youngkin has since ended widespread speculation he would jump into the GOP presidential sweepstakes. Moreover, there is now ubiquitous analysis that the governor's support of a ban on abortion 15 weeks before birth — reasonable by virtually all standards but used as a "dog whistle" by many Democrat candidates to charge a Republican-ruled legislature would ban abortions under all circumstances.
But in the end, were the results in the Old Dominion State were a "wipeout" for Republicans? Hardly.
[...]
Much has been made in the press about many School Board candidates in Virginia endorsed by the pro-parents rights Moms for Liberty group falling short of an across-the-state sweep. There was considerable coverage devoted to the defeat of Meg Bryce, a daughter of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, losing a bid for the Albemarle County School Board to Allison Spillman, a liberal and mother of five (one of whom her campaign brochure describes as "a proud member of the LGBTQ community").
But another conservative, pro-family group, the Middle Resolution, endorsed 28 winning School Board candidates throughout the state.
Only 7 Middle Resolution-backed candidates lost.
All told, November 7 was not a day Virginia Republicans want to remember. But it wasn't a bad day, either.
Gizzi's only glimmer of hope was that Repubilcans appeared to have won a seat in the state Senate, though Democrats would still hold a three-seat advantage.
The Persistence Of Stelter Derangement Syndrome At The MRC Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center went into full-scale Stelter Derangement Syndrome when Brian Stelter released a new book about Fox News. When the sales numbers came in, that derangement quickly became gleeful schadenfreude, as Tim Graham exhibited in a Nov. 28 post:
Colby Hall, the founding editor of left-leaning Mediaite.com, reports that Brian Stelter's new Fox-trashing book Network of Lies is selling well below expectations, like a Disney blockbuster. It's a dud!
Published on November 14, Stelter’s book sold 3,807 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen BookScan. Those numbers are down 82% from his previous book about Fox (Hoax), which saw first-week sales of 20,832 in August 2020, according to ookScan.
Mediaite has learned that Stelter’s latest will not make the New York Times bestseller list. As of publishing, it is currently ranked 6,638th on Amazon’s Best Sellers list, despite his numerous appearances on cable news and several podcasts, including Mediaite.
Stelter has been on CNN and MSNBC and PBS and NPR and NewsNation and Univision and a plethora of podcasts to plug his "epic saga" -- we're still waiting for the NewsBusters Podcast, come on, pal -- but it's not moving the needle.
Graham didn't mention that despite all his mocking, Stelter's book still had better first-week sales than Chadwick Moore's fawning biography of Tucker Carlson, which sold just 3,227 copies. (You will not be surprised to learn that right-wingers have manufactured a conspiracy theory about this.) Instead, he complained that the New York Times published a positive review of Stelter's book, though he did not question thedid accuracy of either the review or the book.
That was followed by an even more shadenfreude-filled Nov. 30 post by Bill D'Agostino claiming to note "9 Tiny Things That Still Outnumber Brian Stelter’s Failed Book Sales." He too did not mention that Stelter's book outsold Moore's bio of Carlson.
A Nov. 30 post by Graham whined that Stelter appeared on MSNBC to point out how Trump did try to block the merger of CNN's parent with another company because it aird things critical of Trump and is threatening MSNBC's parent for doing the same thing:
On Wednesday night's All In on MSNBC, host Chris Hayes brought in Brian Stelter to address the latest Trump outburst on his Truth Social account threatening Comcast and MSNBC for their left-wing propaganda: "our so-called government should come down on hard on them and make them pay for the illegal political activity. Much more to come, watch."
There's nothing there defining what is "illegal" in all of MSNBC's propagandizing. But it certainly allows MSNBC to feel good about their "defending democracy" credentials. Hayes warned Trump's "whining" could turn into "real punitive action."
Hayes and Stelter talked up how the Trump Justice Department sought to block AT&T's merger with Time Warner in 2017, which went through in 2018. The top antitrust official at the time said he never spoke to Trump or his aides about AT&T, but the liberals only believe the Justice staff is independent when Democrats are running it.
You know liberal media outlets are involved when liberals love a merger of mega-corporations. Before long, AT&T dumped Warner's media assets like CNN to Discovery.
Graham then went on a whataboutism tear, whining that Stelter questioned the reach of right-wing influencers "after January 6," but he left out the part where those right-wing influencers helped incite a violent insurrection.
Nicholas Fondacaro added a little Stelter derangement to his own Nov. 30 post as part of his daily hate-watch of "The View":
The sales of Brian Stelter’s latest anti-Fox News book were so low that he made an appearance with the liberal ladies of ABC’s The View on Thursday in an attempt to bump up his numbers. Of course, there were the usual back-slapping conversations for him going after one of their mutual hate objects, but Stelter also had sweet nothings to proclaim the cast: falsely claiming the show was home to truthful conversations.
[...]
As they were nearing the end of the second segment with Stelter, Farah Griffin finally got around to admitting “have a handful of very good reporters like Trey Yingst, Jennifer Griffin, people who cover actual news.” Lamenting: “And it's so hard for those journalists that they have to be next to basically people espousing propaganda.”
Stelter called Fox News “a very uncomfortable environment” for them and suggested that that was why The View was better. “[W]e should advocate to have a truthier, healthier environment. That’s why I love this show! Your guys are louder than the liars!” he praised.
The MRC concluded 2023 with one final reminder of how Stelter lives rent-free in their collective heads: One of its year-end awards is named "The Brian Stelter Memorial Award for Worst Quote of the Year." Never mind that Stelter isn't dead, or that all he has done is write a book telling the truth about Fox News.
One of the things the Media Research Center loves to do when talking down the economy for partisan gain is to call on economists to repeat those right-wing talking points without explaining that they are also partisan actors as evidenced by their employment with right-wing think tanks. Joseph Vazquez dutifully did just that in an Aug. 24 post:
Apparently following the lead of columnist 
We've documented how the Media Research Center has 
The Media Research Center spent a good part of last year talking down the ecomony -- despite the fact that, by most traditional measures, it's doing well -- because such factually dubious trash talk is mandated by its right-wing anti-Biden agenda.After all, talking down the economy under Democratic presidents is 
Count Michael Brown as among the 
The Media Research Center's Clay Waters tried to revive an old controversy in a Sept. 29 
WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill and co-host Loy Edge spent their Nov. 9 
Curtis Houck started winding down the Media Research Center's in hating White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a Dec. 22 
Jeff Crouere's Nov. 20 Newsmax 
Scott Lively is Vladimir Putin's 
Nicholas Fondacaro loves spreading lies -- we just 
Things did not go well for Republicans in off-year elections in Virginia, and Newsmax struggled a bit to figure out how to spin it. A Nov. 8 
The Media Research Center went into 
