NewsBusters Tries to Justify Racism of Trump Supporters By Insisting It's Not Racist Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters blogger Tom Blumer wants you to think that because Donald Trump's supporters believe racist things, it doesn't mean they're racist. No, really.
Blumer complains in a Sept. 19 post that Juan Williams, in a column for The Hill, agrees with Hillary Clinton that a significant number of Trump supporters are "deplorables," citing a poll showing that a large percentage of self-described Trump supporters describe black people as more “lazy” than whites, “less intelligent” than whites, more “rude” than whites, more “violent” than whites and more “criminal” than whites, and that 58 percent of Trump supporters have either a “very unfavorable” or “somewhat unfavorable” view of the entire religion of Islam. But Blumer doesn't want you to believe your own eyes:
Let's make one thing clear: All six of the views identified (five relating to blacks, and one relating to Islam) are NOT presumptively racist views. (Islam is a religion and not a race, so I'll set that matter aside after observing that the over 29,000 Islamic jihadist attacks around the world since 9/11 certainly influence the high percentage of Americans who view Islam unfavorably.) I would argue that the vast majority of people holding those views don't have a racist bone in their body. I'll demonstrate the accuracy of that argument later in this post.
That's right -- according to Blumer, it's not racist to believe blacks are inferior.
After trying to distract from the issue by noting that polls also showed a significantly lower number of Clinton supporters held similar views, Blumer hits us with his "accuracy" argument:
Holding any of those views is not an automatic indicator of racism — and this fallacy, which should be obvious to anyone, has seriously polluted political discourse in the U.S. for far too long.
You identify a genuine racist by asking the "born that way" question. That is, are blacks as a race inherently inferior because they are born less intelligent, lazier, more rude, more violent, and more criminal than members of other races? Only people who would say "yes" would likely qualify as racists. I would argue that fewer than 5 percent of all non-black Americans agree with even one of the five statements; my guess is that it's more like 2 percent (to be clear, this was not always so; it's a credit to the people of this nation that these attitudes have changed as much as they have in the space of no more than four generations).
Prove me wrong, pollsters, if you dare, and ask the questions properly. Sadly, most of won't even think about asking properly formulated questions, because doing so would delegitimize their own or their clients' agendas.
Not only is Blumer trying to obfuscate the issue -- for him, it apparently doesn't follow that declaring another race is violent, lazy, etc., is, in fact, a de facto "born that way" question -- he's trying to mainstream racist views.
In the original version of his post at his own blog, Blumer goes even further by explaining that "There are perfectly good reasons why respondents who are not racist in any way, shape or form would agree with each of the five statements." Which, somehow, gets even more racist while also trying to blame liberals in the process.
Blacks are less intelligent, Blumer argues, because "A disproportionate percentage of the black population receives substandard educations at inferior urban public schools and/or live in family situations where the parent or parents fails to treat childhood education with sufficient seriousness." He adds, "Those who have seen this disparity play out in real life will regretfully agree, without any hint of racism, that black adults in 2016 America are on the whole less intelligent than non-blacks, as much as they sincerely wish it were not so."
Lazy blacks? That's because "LBJ’s Great Society programs have devastated the black family and urban areas" and " Minimum-wage laws shut young blacks out of work ethic-building opportunities." Again, he adds: "Those who have seen this disparity play out in real life are going to regretfully agree, without any hint of racism, that black adults in 2016 America on the whole do not have as strong a work ethic as non-blacks, as much as they sincerely wish it were not so."
Rude blacks? "Again, we go back to the disastrous influence of the Great Society and its impact on the black family. Then add in the cultural influences which have filled the void, including violent and pornographic rap music." And again: "Those who have seen the difference in behavior in real life are going to regretfully agree, without any hint of racism, that blacks in 2016 America on the whole are more rude than non-blacks, as much as they sincerely wish it were not so."
Violent blacks? "The voluminous violent crime and other crime statistics, especially among black juveniles and early adults compared to non-blacks, speak for themselves. Sadly, those who are aware of the crime statistics are going to regretfully agree, without any hint of racism, that blacks in 2016 America on the whole have a record of more violence and more criminality than non-blacks, as much as they sincerely wish it were not so."
Finally, Blumer insists that Trump supporters are not racists but, rather, realists:
What that failure all too often shows is an inability to recognize or admit the sad realities in America today — again, as much as one sincerely wishes that these conditions did not exist. One could also argue that Donald Trump’s overwhelmingly non-racist supporters are more willing to recognize those realities, unintimidated by people like Juan Williams, [Slate writer] Josh Voorhees and so many other misguided commentators and thought-police enforcers.
As Trevor Noah has noted, if the only time you see black people is when they're in a criminal situation, you will believe that all black people are criminals. And if, as is apparently the case with Blumer, if the only media you consume is partisan-motivated right-wing media that portrays blacks as lazy and violent and insists that liberals made them that way as part of their political agenda, you will believe that. That seems to be why he is trying to tell us we shouldn't believe our own eyes with regard to the racist views of Trump supporters.
We highly doubt that Blumer "regretfully agrees" with the inferiority of blacks, as much as he sincerely wishes it were not so -- it's too good of a right-wing talking point for people like him to be regretful about.
Blumer is trying to thread a needle that nobody this side of VDARE believes should be threaded -- and he's making NewsBusters look racist in the process. The Media Research Center surely knows this, since it edited out the most offensive and indefensible part of his post. But what remains -- Blumer's insistence that obviously racist views can't possibly be racist -- is still pretty offensive and indefensible.
Not to mention an incredibly desperate and bizarre attempt at right-wing "logic."
WND Still Disparaging Transgenders With (Stolen) Hairy-Guy-In-Heels Pic Topic: WorldNetDaily
A while back, we documented how WorldNetDaily is unusually fond of illustrating stories about transgender issues -- and disparaging transgenders -- with a photo it stole from the Associated Press of the hairy legs of a man wearing a dress and heels (taken from a 2012 "hairy legs on heels" race in Madrid, so the person in the photo is not even transgender, just a guy in heels).
Well, WND and its stolen photo have struck again, this time on a Sept. 10 transgender-related article by Bob Unruh:
The photo lacks a credit, and WND is not a member of the AP, so WND has violated copyright law once again by using it. It's racking up quite a fee it must eventually pay the AP for repeated unauthorized use of its photo.
The sad thing is, that photo likely illustrates what WND thinks transgenders are.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:00 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, September 21, 2016 10:12 PM EDT
MRC: Mentioning Roger Ailes' Sexual Harassment Is 'Liberal Bias' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Alexa Moutevelis Coombs, in a Sept. 12 post, was tickled to death that her employer's signature issue of "liberal media bias" got a shout-out during the Miss America pageant, in the form of a question about Matt Lauer's questioning of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during a presidential forum.
Other things getting questions at the Miss America pageant, however, did not meet with Coombs' approval:
Other instances of liberal bias were on display through the selection of questions. Actress Sara Foster brought up Fox News to Miss Mississippi, Laura Lee Lewis, in saying, “Miss America 1989 Gretchen Carlson just accepted a $20 million settlement from Fox News for her sexual harassment suit against Roger Ailes. Fox paid, Ailes walked. What message does this send?”
Mark Cuban asked Miss Washington, Alicia Cooper, of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s National Anthem protest, “Do you sit with him or stand against him?” And she responds that Black Lives Matter, All Lives Matter.
Wait, so simply mentioning Ailes' sexual harassment scandal is "liberal bias"? And it's also somehow "liberal bias" to ask in a nonpartisan way how a contestant stands on Kaepernick's protest?
That tells us the MRC's definition of "liberal bias" is completely meaningless.
NEW ARTICLE: Bad Business At WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
The inability to understand how capitalism works -- and its knee-jerk insistence on falsely blaming the creative destruction of capitalism on the "Obama economy" -- is one big reason why WorldNetDaily is in serious financial trouble. Read more >>
AIM's Resident Birther Now Claims Birtherism Doesn't Matter Topic: Accuracy in Media
In a September 2009 column, Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid was in full birther froth, proclaiming that he had released a copy of his own birth certificate, in order to demonstrate what needs to be done to resolve the growing controversy over the alleged birth certificate of President Barack Obama, adding: “My birth certificate includes the names of my mother and father, my mother’s doctor, and the hospital in which I was born. ... This certified copy of an original long form document is what anyone who wants to be president should be prepared to produce.”
Kincaid also claimed: “It is not unreasonable to ask questions about Barack Obama’s birthplace. Anybody who has an original copy of their own birth certificate, or a certified copy of their own original birth certificate, should immediately understand that the Obama version is lacking in basic information that should be publicly available." Kincaid denied that contemporaneous notices of Obama's birth in Honolulu newspapers were not sufficient proof that he was born there, further whining that "today’s pro-Obama journalists want to ignore those questions when it comes to the constitutional eligibility of the current occupant of the oval office."
Now, however, with birtherism unambiguously proven to be a discredited fraud -- and with Donald Trump beating a public retreat from his years of birtherism -- Kincaid wants to change the subject.
He makes that abundantly clear in the headline of his Sept. 18 AIM column, "It’s the Marxism, Not the Birtherism." Ah, but the birtherism still matters enough toKincaid to talk at length about it:
The “birther” issue is now being used by Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama and their media allies to get black people riled up. It’s part of their get-out-the-vote drive. Not surprisingly, the Post and other media play right along with it. They realize Obama has done little for black people. So they have to demonize Trump.
The Post’s Jenna Johnson reported on Friday afternoon that Hillary Clinton “said Trump owes Obama an apology for promoting a false theory about his birthplace. She did not directly address the Trump assertion that her own 2008 campaign promoted the same theory, but her current campaign flatly rejected that claim.”
This appeared under the headline, “Trump admits Obama was born in U.S., but falsely blames Clinton for starting rumors.”
[...]
Actually, Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle did admit that a Clinton staffer had spread the claim that Obama was born outside of the United States. Hillary did not personally apologize to Barack Obama for that. Yet now the cry is for Trump, who questioned the place of his birth, to personally apologize to Obama.
All of this is just racial politics. Hillary knows that most blacks are not as enthusiastic about her as they were for Obama. So she has to get them up in arms.
But Kincaid's current story is that Obama's purported relationship with Frank Marshall Davis is what really matters. "orget Kenya or Hawaii as Barack Obama’s birthplace. The issue is that he was mentored by a communist named Frank Marshall Davis, who taught him that blacks had a “reason to hate” and that Christianity was the white man’s religion," Kincaid insists. "That was the smoking gun in Obama’s life story, not the place where he was born. His birthplace was always a secondary issue."
Yeah, it was so "secondary" to Kincaid that he was such a devoted birther he felt compelled to release his own birth certificate.
Kincaid forgets he has a paper trail so his lies are easy to track.
CNS' Starr Whitewashes Benham Brothers' Extremist Views Again Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com reporter Penny Starr is an apologist for the right-wing Benham brothers who likes to whitewash the extremity of their anti-gay views.
Starr does this again in a Sept. 13 CNS article giving themspace to baselessly rant that "if one disagrees with the 'sexual revolution' in Hollywood that promotes homosexuality and same-sex marriage they will be 'persecuted.'"She adds that the Benham's planned house-flipping reality show was canceled "after their stance on abortion was revealed and that they supported traditional marriage as the union of one man and one woman."
In fact, the Benhams are on record calling homosexuals "destructive," "vile," and controlled by "demonic forces," and they have said that Satan is behind gay marriage. As for abortion, the brothers are the sons of notorious anti-abortion activist Flip Benham, who was convicted of stalking an abortion doctor and effectively condoning calls for their murders. The brothers have never distanced themselves from their father's views and tactics, as far as we know.
Those are not mainstream views -- they are fringe, hostile and potentially threatening and violent. Starr is being dishonest to her readers by pretending otherwise.
WND Clinton Derangement Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
A few months back, WorldNetDaily took a full dive into Clinton derangement by devoting an entire issue of its sparsely read Whistleblower magazine to likening Hillary Clinton to Nurse Ratched. Apparently WND has worked up enough material for another Hillary-hating issue of Whistleblower, and it's been unleashed under the theme "WILL WE ELECT A CRIMINAL?"
WND's promotional copy for the issue shows just how far down the Clinton derangement rabbit hole it is -- led by WND managing editor David Kupelian, who sold his soul to back Donald Trump:
Of all the astonishing, historic aspects of the 2016 presidential election, perhaps the most vexing is that something like half of America’s voters seem content to elect a pathologically lying career criminal as president.
How can this be? Has the electorate grown stupid – or morally dead?
In some cases, yes, but many more are just abysmally ignorant, as revealed by an Annenberg Public Policy Center poll showing almost two-thirds of Americans cannot even name the three branches of the federal government. Tens of millions are just not paying attention.
The establishment news media, so totally biased toward Hillary Clinton they’ve abandoned their former pretense of objectivity, diligently labor to keep the electorate uninformed. So far they have been successful in protecting their favored candidate from public exposure of her three-decades-long record of crime, corruption and sleaze.
This is the electrifying topic of September’s issue of Whistleblower magazine, headlined “WILL WE ELECT A CRIMINAL? Hillary Clinton would be the most corrupt president in modern history.”
[...]
Why does the American public give the Clintons a pass on their lifelong, ever-cascading criminality?
“Dishonesty, deceitfulness, demagoguery – traits typical of so many politicians – are things the public understands,” said Whistleblower Editor David Kupelian. “Lying they understand; politicians lie. Liberal versus conservative they understand, also pro-abortion versus anti-abortion, socialism versus capitalism, amnesty versus deportation, sexual anarchy versus biblical values. They understand that candidates hold very different views on these issues and support or oppose them on that basis.”
However, said Kupelian, “actual criminality – the kind that lands people behind bars – is something else, and the reality of Hillary and Bill as career criminals hasn’t yet truly penetrated the public mind.”
Kupelian also made one more attempt to shame people into abandoning their sense of morality like he did: "It’s about time the self-absorbed NeverTrump Republicans wake up from their pathetic delusions before it’s too late. If they don’t, I predict they will come to regret their great foolishness during Election 2016 for the rest of their lives."
But what if the person with the pathetic delusions is actually Kupelian? He won't talk about that.
MRC Attacks Another Fact-Checker Who Accurately Checked Facts Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham grumbles in a Sept. 16 post:
The website Politifact Bias underlined how slippery the “fact checkers” get when they’re screening speeches by the Democrats – as they actually admit they’re following Clinton campaign tipsters. PolitiFact's Sean Gorman admitted "Sarah Peck, the Virginia communications director for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign, pointed us to a June 7 article in BuzzFeed News about the tent episode." They rated this speech nugget from Tim Kaine “True”:
"When Moammar Gadhafi was set to visit the United Nations, and no one would let him stay in New York, Trump allowed Gadhafi to set up an elaborate tent at his Westchester County (New York) estate."
Kaine’s next sentence: “That’s right, when Gadhafi was looking for a place to stay in America, and because of his human rights track record, and the pan am bombing, others were turning him away, he found one guy – one guy – who was willing to host him.”
There’s only one problem: Gadhafi never stayed there.
But Kaine never said Gadhafi stayed there. He said Trump allowed Gadhafi to set up a tent at his estate, something Graham and his fellow fact-check-hater concede is true. You really can't fact-check an implication.
You can, however, fact-check deliberately imprecise language used to promtoe a false talking point, as the MRC did all weekend in parroting Donald Trump by falsely insisting that Hillary Clinton directly promoted birtherism.
CNS Maliciously Attacks Obama As Insensitive By Not Speaking Publicly on Weekend Attacks Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com serves up a particularly odious bit of Obama derangement in the form of a Sept. 19 article by Susan Jones portraying Obama as, at best, callous and insensitive to the detonation of a bomb in New York and other violent incidents over the weekend and, at worst, celebrating them.
Jones' article has the out-of-context headline "Obama Tells Black Lawmakers, 'There's an Extra Spring in My Step Tonight'," which -- precisely because it's placed there devoid of context -- suggests that Obama is saying the spring in his step is because of the weekend's incidents.
Jones then maliciously frames Obama's speech to the Congressional Black Caucus as insensitive to the weekend's events:
As of early Monday morning, President Obama had made no public comment on a series of weekend bombings, attempted bombings and stabbings in three states, but he did make time to address a Congressional Black Caucus awards dinner Saturday night and a Democrat fundraiser Sunday night.
At Saturday's event, Obama thanked the assembled guests, then joked: "There’s an extra spring in my step tonight. I don't know about you guys, but I am so relieved that the whole birther thing is over.
"I mean, ISIL, North Korea, poverty, climate change -- none of those things weighed on my mind -- (laughter) -- like the validity of my birth certificate. (Laughter.)
Jones then complained that "all three attacks had happened by the time Obama attended a Democrat fundraiser in New York on Sunday night, and a transcript shows he made no comment on the attacks at that event. A fourth attempted attack, on a train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey, was discovered after Obama had left the fundraiser."
Indeed, portraying Obama as deliberately ignoring the weekend's events was Jones' directive and obsession this morning. She quickly followed up two hours later with an article whining that White House spokesman Josh Earnest didn't commit to a time that Obama would speak on the events of the weekend, emphasizing that "As of Monday morning, Obama has made no public comment on the series of bombings and stabbings in three states -- Minnesota, New York and New Jersey -- that took place on Saturday and Sunday."
In neither article does explain when Obama should have spoken on the weekend's events, given that few details were available immediately after they happened.
This is just sleazy Obama derangement at its worst, from a right-wing "news" outlet trying to score cheap political points after a potentially tragic event. Jones and her bosses Terry Jeffrey and Michael W. Chapman, should be ashamed.
UPDATE: Obama spoke about the weekend incidents later in the morning. Jones did not consider this newsworthy enough to write about story about, despite the fact that she wrote two articles complainingthat Obama was too slow to speak out. And even though CNS considered Jones' articles worthy of the front page, Obama's statement did not appear there in any form.
WND Still Clinging To Its Birther Lies Topic: WorldNetDaily
The news that Donald Trump has renounced birtherism (in front of the cameras, anyway) has to be a blow to WorldNetDaily, which helped Trump behind the scenes with his 2011 birther obsession. Not surprisingly, WND doesn't want to talk about the implications of it but, instead, endeavors to cling to its old, discredited birther lies.
Bob Unruh's Sept. 16 WND article on Trump's announcement refuses to admit that birtherism has been discredited or even admit that President Obama has released a valid birth certificate, rehashing tired old language that Obama released "a document he said was his Hawaii birth certificate" (the state of Hawaii says it is too) and that "The only official law enforcement investigation into the issue, authorized by Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, concluded the document was fraudulent" (actually, the investigation itself is what was fraudulent).
And rather than admitting the fact that WND's birther crusade was always a partisan fraud and never about the Constitution -- reinforced when WND's Jerome Corsi appeared on a right-wing radio show after Trump's statement and refused to even discuss the issue of which he has been such a key part of for several years (including being a key part of Arpaio's rigged "cold case posse") because it's being used to hurt his candidate Trump and "I’m done with the topic until Obama’s out of office" -- Unruh pivoted to the new Trump-approved talking point: it was all Hillary's idea in the first place and that birtherism is Obama's fault.
WND editor Joseph Farah's first column after Trump's statement was not about said statement but, rather, focused on a statement a week and a half earlier by Ben Carson that Trump should apologize for being a birther in order to appeal to black voters. Farah asserted that Carson was " just plain wrong" to say that:
Who believes support from black voters hinges in any way on this question?
Experience more of Joseph Farah’s no-nonsense truth-telling in his books, audio and video products, featured in the WND Superstore
Who believes that Donald Trump or anyone else who raised the question of Obama’s constitutional eligibility did so because they were motivated by racism?
How is the so-called “birther issue” even relevant with Obama’s term ending Jan. 20, 2017, and the American people faced with a choice between two candidates – both of whom questioned Obama’s eligibility, the first being Hillary’s campaign in 2008?
And how in the world does Dr. Carson’s answer help defeat Hillary Clinton, which I know is his priority?
It’s very strange and disappointing.
Farah went on to assert that "there were and are legitimate questions about Obama’s constitutional eligibility that have been swept under the rug – one more part of our nation’s foundation of the rule of law chipped away forever." But given the chance to further explore those questions with a candidate he didn't despise, Ted Cruz, Farah chickened out instead.
Farah actually addressed Trump's statement in his Sept. 18 column -- sort of. He main job here is to pivot the blame away from Trump (and, by extension, WND), insisting that the honor of being the first birther "belongs to one person and one person alone – Barack Obama," because of a 1990s-era book publisher's bio in which Obama "billed himself as having been born in Kenya." But that bio didn't surface until 2012 -- by which time WND had been hardcore birthers for years -- and Obama didn't provide that information to the publisher.
With that falsehood as a setup, Farah then shifts full gear into doing what he does best -- lie. Such as his assertion that "Obama refused to release his birth certificate during his entire first term in office." In fact, Obama released a birth certificate before the 2008 election; WND simply refused to recognize it as real.
Farah then claims that the certificate Obama released in 2011 "has never been authenticated as genuine." False -- as former cold case posse member Brian Reilly has pointed out, the state of Hawaii has officially verified the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate.
And then Farah's off to his beloved conspiracy land:
I won’t go into the voluminous amount of evidence of a cover-up, or all the valid reasons for questioning not only where Obama was born, but whether he had even retained citizenship when he and his mother left the country to move to Indonesia and enroll him in a Muslim school there over the objections of U.S. immigration officials concerned, at the time, about the status of his citizenship status.
I won’t go into his missing college records, which might shed light on whether Obama had claimed to be a foreign student, as many at Columbia assumed.
I won’t go into the fact that his supposed “birth hospital” in Hawaii steadfastly refused to acknowledge publicly that simple fact.
Personally, I thought it was important to establish that Obama met the minimal constitutional litmus test for eligibility. For that I was vilified, called a racist, lampooned, besmirched, called a conspiracy theorist and worse.
During all that time, I never drew any conclusions about his birthplace – just that there were questions that needed to be answered.
Funny, Farah never felt similarly compelled to establish that his beloved Ted Cruz met the minimal constitutional litmus test for eligibility, even though by the overly narrow definitions of "natural born citizen" WND has pushed over the years, Cruz is even more ineligible to be president than Obama.
The fact that WND refused to apply its Obama birther standards to Cruz tells us that, like Corsi, Farah never cared about the Constitution at all; he cared only about trying to personally and politically destroy someone he, for whatever reason, had some sort of grudge against.
Now, like Corsi, Farah no longer wants to talk about what was his website's signature issue for eight years: "Excuse me for not answering at least a dozen requests for interviews from the global media last week when Trump admitted Obama was born in the U.S. – something he actually has no evidence to conclude with any certainty."
Farah couldn't talk about birtherism enough when the target was Obama. But now that it's come back to bite not only his preferred presidential candidates but WND as well -- its insistence on clinging to birther lies and refusal to apply Obama birther standards to Cruz are no doubt two big reasons why WND is in serious financial trouble -- he wants to take his ball and go home.
But that means Farah has signed the death warrant for WND. No rational person would choose to believe a "news" organization that clings to something so definitively and prominently discredited.
Whether Farah admits it or not, birtherism is the hill WND will die on. His refusal to admit he misled readers about birtherism for years means that death will come sooner rather than later.
MRC Spins Hard To Falsely Blame Hillary For Birtherism Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center couldn't be a better public-relations agent for the Trump campaign if it was being paid for it (and it may be, as far as we know). Just look at how it is despserately spinning for Trump to go against the facts to portray Hillary Clinton -- not Trump -- as the biggest promoter of birtherism.
On Friday, both NBC’s Today and CBS This Morning blasted Donald Trump for refusing to respond to a question about whether President Obama was born in the United States and “fact-checked” his assertion that Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign actually first pushed the conspiracy theory. On Today, correspondent Peter Alexander noted: “The Trump team issuing a reversal, saying, quote, ‘Mr. Trump believes President Obama was born in the United States’....And falsely accusing Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign of first raising the issue.”
On This Morning, correspondent Major Garrett similarly mentioned: “At a conservative political conference in 2015, Trump again questioned the President’s citizenship and falsely tried to pin the rumor on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign.”
Most likely both reporters picked up the “false” label from liberal source PolitiFact, which rated the claim to be untrue. However, the website’s own fact-check of the issue cited a Daily Beast report which detailed the prominent role a Clinton campaign volunteer played in push birtherism during the 2008 campaign.
Drennen proves that statemenet wrong by quoting from a Politico article admitting that "a volunteer coordinator in Iowa had to step down from the Clinton campaign after the coordinator sent an e-mail saying Obama was a Muslim."
So, no, not actually "prominent" at all.
Next up was Tom Blumer, who was upset at the Associated Press for stating the fact that "there is no evidence" that "the 'birther movement' was started by Hillary Clinton." His evidence that this isn't true: The hosts of "Morning Joe" chatting about it. No, really.
Blumer also brings up the 2007 Mark Penn memo proposing to attack Obama's "American values," but he fails to mention that Penn's suggestion was never implemented by the campaign. Nevertheless, Blumer rants: "Memo to AP and all the other establishment press outlets claiming that Donald Trump is making a false claim about Hillary Clinton: Yes, there is evidence, and no, it's not a false conspiracy. You just don't have the courage to do your jobs, break from your reflexive pro-Hillary mindset, and report it."
Just like Blumer doesn't have the courage to admit he's trying to deflect attention away from Trump for an odious act he did for much longer than Hillary Clinton was ever accused of doing it?
Blumer followed up with another post with some new supposedly damning evidence: how Sidney Blumenthal, "a close confidant of Mrs. Clinton herself," allegedly floated it in 2008 to a couple of McClatachy reporters, who checked it out and found no merit. Blumer did note that Blumenthal denied the allegation, then sneered, "Sure, Sid."
But neither Blumer nor McClatchy offer any evidence that Blumenthal was acting in any official capacity for Hillary's 2008 campaign. Yet Blumer attacks McClatchy for keeping its investigation hidden for all these year -- as if facts would have stopped Trump from embracing birthers.
Remember, Blumer and the MRC could have forcefully denounced birtherism a long time ago before it took root on the right and when Trump first embraced it, but they didn't. The MRC it took great interest in the subject only when birther allegations swirled around Brent Bozell's preferred candidate, Ted Cruz (which, as it so happens, was also promoted by Trump).
Clay Waters came next, complaining that the New York Times "denied that the Hillary Clinton camp had anything to do with spreading the lie in the first place, though information both new and old undermines that easy assertion." Waters is muddying his terms here; by using the word "camp," he's suggesting that birtherism was promoted as an official campaign strategy -- which it wasn't.
Jeffrey Lord then rants about the "birther" issue being applied to John McCain in 2008 because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. But Lord omits the obvious: once experts ruled that McCain was indeed a "natural born citizen" and, thus, eligible to run for president, it quickly stopped being an issue. Trump pushed birtherism for five years despite the fact that his claims had been discredited.
Brad Wilmouth then made his case for Blumenthal being meaningful: "Even though Blumenthal was not a paid part of the Clinton campaign, if he made efforts to boost Clinton by trying to tear down her opponent, such activities would still be part of the Clinton team effort." Well, no, not if he wasn't a "paid part of the Clinton campaign."
Next up was Nicholas Fondacaro, who asserted it was "not accurate" to claim that the Clinton campaign never pushed birtherism, but he cites only the never-implemented Mark Penn memo and Clinton supporters he does not prove had any official sanction from the campaign. Despite the fact that he has nothing, Fondacaro repeats his so-called evidence in a second post.
The MRC is being fundamentally dishonest. Rogue supporters were not the "Clinton campaign." Sid Blumenthal was not the "Clinton campaign." And the MRC completely censors the fact that it was right-wingers like WorldNetDaily and political opportunists like Trump (with WND's help) who perpetuated the birther lies long after anyone even remotely linked to the "Clinton campaign" stopped talking about them.
The fact that birtherism is an issue today is because of Trump, not Clinton. The MRC -- which promoted Obama birtherism off and on through the years -- should stop shilling for Trump and tell its readers the truth.
WND Censors Alleged Broaddrick Witness' Grudge Against Clinton Topic: WorldNetDaily
An anonymously written Sept. 14 WorldNetDaily article states:
Juanita Broaddrick’s rape accusation against Bill Clinton now has medical corroboration for the alleged violent attack that occurred in a hotel room 38 years ago.
Norma Rogers, the nurse who treated her in the hotel room immediately following the incident, told Aaron Klein, a radio host in the New York and Philadelphia markets and a staff writer for Breitbart News: “She was crying. And the thing I think I remember most is that her mouth was all swollen up. It was cut. … Her pantyhose were all ripped.”
At the time, Broaddrick was a nursing-home administrator volunteering for the gubernatorial campaign of then Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton in 1978.
The anonymous writer did admit that Rogers "worked for Broaddrick," but there's no mention of another, more pertienent issue regarding Rogers.
We've previously noted that Rogers and her family has a grudge againsdt Bill Clinton because as Arkansas governor he had commuted the death sentence of the man convicted of murdering her father.
That, along with her apparently loyalty to her former employer, tells us that she's not objective on this issue, though that should be taken into consideration in reporting her story. Klein's story at Breitbart summarizing his interview also fails to report this important fact.
But she's telling the story that WND wants to hear, so WND will give her a free pass.
MRC's Bozell Defends Pence Against Tough, Fair Questioning Topic: Media Research Center
In a Sept., 12 interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Mike Pence refused to call David Duke "deplorable" -- laughably insising that "I'm not in the name-calling business" -- though he did disavow Duke's support of his and Donald Trump's campaign.
Cue a Brent Bozell temper tantrum.
Bozell raged about Blitzer's "hounding" of Pence in an official Media Research Center statement:
Wolf Blitzer and CNN showed their true colors tonight. Blitzer’s question to Gov. Mike Pence was textbook gotcha journalism and it didn’t work. The question was both absurd and obnoxious. And for anyone to suggest Gov. Pence failed to repudiate David Duke is laughable. What part of ‘we don’t want his support’ does CNN not understand? This is just another left wing smear designed to help Hillary because they know she is in trouble and CNN is all too willing to do Clinton’s dirty work. Media trust and credibility continue to plummet in public polling because there is nothing the press won’t do to slander conservatives. It’s despicable and repulsive.
Notice that Bozell conveniently omits what the question is, so as not confuse his readers with the facts.
Bozell continues his rant in his and Tim Graham's Sept. 14 column:
Let's be clear about this interview. Blitzer offered 39 hostile questions or interjections about Trump's tax returns, medical records and charities, and made offensive remarks before asking a single question about policy. In the middle of this contentious exchange, Blitzer arrived at Hillary Clinton's recent gaffe of calling Trump backers a "basket of deplorables." Blitzer obnoxiously underlined that some Trump backers were truly deplorable: "David Duke, for example, (and) some other white nationalists, (would) fit into that category of deplorables. Right?"
[...]
It's the kind of "gotcha" journalism that has the public disgusted with the press. Whatever Pence answered would have been deemed wrong and exploited by the media. Had he uncorked the easy answer and called Duke deplorable, Blitzer and everyone else would have had their headlines read, "Pence Admits Hillary Was Right." Pence chose not to give them that luxury, so he gets "Pence Won't Deplore Duke."
So Bozell and Graham are defending Pence for refusing to make an unequivically true statement lest it make his opponent look good? Sad!
But Bozell and Graham want to completely avoid opening the can of worms that is the group of alt-right activists, white nationalists and neo-Nazis that have gotten behind Trump's campaign, immediately going into attack-and-misdirection mode on Hillary and Tim Kaine.
Bozell and Graham whine: "Blitzer & Co. unloads smears designed to help Hillary Clinton because they know she is in trouble. And CNN is all too willing to do Clinton's dirty work."Only in the fevered hyper-partisan minds of Bozell and Graham is asking simple questions "dirty work."
But Bozell and Graham must rush to change the subject because they know if the conversation turns in detail to the "basket of deplorables," Trump is in trouble, and they're all too willing to do his dirty work.
In this alternative reality scenario, Hillary Clinton would be a completely different story. Objective reality would probably represent her appearance as an amorphous, grayish-green entity with only occasional glimpses of her leering face and trendy designer apparel peeking through the goo. Festering boils, sores and other lesions would populate a shifting, gelatinous corpulence. Groups of diseased genitalia and excretory organs might form in random areas on her glistening skin, migrating across its surface and occasionally engaging each other in horrid fashion. Even to the non-religious person, her appearance would be truly evocative of a creature from hell, a vision to make even the late H.R. Giger cringe.
Clinton’s campaign speech would be a disturbing cacophony of insane squeals, gibbering laughter and profanities punctuated with her trademark shrill yammering. Audibly bursting abscesses and purulent excretions emanating from her would give rise to a stench of sufficient putridity to induce immediate vomiting in most individuals, thus it’s unlikely that many would dash off to cast votes for the slithering obscenity.
Unfortunately, the electorate doesn’t have the benefit of such insight, and the power of America’s incomprehensibly corrupt press cannot be underestimated. Ms. Clinton could be clinically dead for six weeks before the election, and the press might still manage to get her elected. For now, they focus on a mission similar to their mission in 2008: Nothing is going to prevent the election of Hillary Clinton, nor should anything prevent this momentous and historic event.
We are on the verge of electing our first woman president – it matters little that she is the most fundamentally evil individual ever to seek the office.
“Lying Hillary Clinton” is the poster girl for the politically correct, post-Christian age in America. She is a perfect illustration of how morally empty and philosophically barren the PC landscape and the world of secular law have become. Joseph Farah sees her “as an existential threat to life and liberty” and “perhaps the most corrupt major American political figure in the last 50 years,” and Dr. Herbert London says she is “the embodiment of evil.” Dr. Ben Carson even links her with Lucifer himself by virtue of her connection with Saul Alinsky!
The moral bankruptcy of Hillary Clinton is a bottomless pit, but it graphically illustrates how secular legalism and post-Christian “morality” are the driving forces behind America’s regressive march back to the primitive, godless and pagan roots of humanity.
Hillary Clinton has neither disavowed the KKK leaders who were her friends nor has she disavowed members of the KKK who support her. One branch of the KKK says it has donated $20,000 to her campaign, and she has not returned that money.
Clinton praised former KKK Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops Robert Byrd while she was secretary of state.
Hillary Clinton did the opposite of disavowing. She praised the former Klan leader while she was secretary of state, and she still refuses to disavow him.
We can only speculate as to why Hillary Clinton refuses to distance herself from the KKK. Could her party’s historical ties to the KKK be the reason?
Hillary Clinton cannot have it both ways and neither can her lapdog sycophants in the media. Clinton cannot claim to be fit to be president while at the same time claiming incompetence suffering from what she herself said was severe head trauma that causes her to forget.
Friday, Sept. 2, responding to Freedom of Information Act demands from Judicial Watch and others, the FBI released dozens of pages of documents from its interviews of Hillary Clinton. The documents, although many of the pages contained redactions including some pages that had been fully redacted, were a damning indictment of her that leaves only the questions of whether she is an abject liar, a pernicious liar, or a woman suffering from a debilitating mental illness. Regardless, the released documents clearly prove Clinton is someone who is too unfit physically and/or too unstable to occupy the White House.
[...]
There are also the issues of Clinton’s health. It is a gross understatement to simply say Clinton is in poor, if not failing health. The Twittersphere exposed that some in the mainstream media have been using photos from as long as four years ago in a draconian attempt to conceal how sickly and horrid she looks.
Hillary Clinton’s broom as the Wicked Witch of the Left has flown off with her once again, this time not only with regard to her mission to obstruct justice, compromise national security and generally lie about her continuing private-server email scandal, but now also to ignite a race war. Continuing to woo black and black Muslim votes in her quest for the presidency, Hillary Clinton continues to stir up racial conflict between blacks and whites, furthering the racist agendas of the likes of Black Lives Matter, Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, Rev. Al Sharpton, the New Black Panthers and of course their evil benefactor George Soros, who is funding much of this hatred toward white and black police officers, Jews, Christians and anyone who believes in the vision of our Founding Fathers.
“Hillary, I’m your Conscience. You can’t lie to me. Why didn’t you designate Boko Haram as a terrorist group when you were secretary ofsState? Maybe those hundreds of girls in Nigeria wouldn’t have been kidnapped. Most still haven’t been located. Couldn’t the U.S. do more to find them?”
“I sent out tweets about the kidnapped girls, just like Michelle Obama! The Nigerian government could have done more. I said it was ‘abominable‘! And it’s John Kerry’s problem now.”
“Is this the whole story? One Nigerian bishop believes the U.S. won’t help them or other African countries unless they embrace homosexuality, population control and abortion.”
[...]
Conscience paced. “Sorry to unload on you, Hillary. Well, actually, I’m not sorry. You and I don’t talk much. In fact, we haven’t really gotten to know each other at all over the years – although I keep trying.”
The coughing spasms finally ended. Hillary stormed out the door.
MRC's Bizarre 'Chappaquiddick' Attack on Esquire Writer Topic: Media Research Center
On Sept. 14, the Media Research Center used its NewsBusters Twitter account to bizarrely attack Esquire writer Charles Pierce as "Chappaquiddick Charles Pierce":
The post being promoted -- an item by Tom Johnson complaining Pierce wrote that if modern conservatism hadn't been graded "on an intellectual curve, it would've flunked out of Human College decades ago" -- says nothing about Chappaquiddick, nor does it mention any member of the Kennedy family; it actually features a picture of Ronald Reagan. Heck, Johnson doesn't even question the accuracy of Pierce's statement.
What's going on here is a continuing petulant grudge the MRC has had against Pierce for years. As we've documented, Pierce wrote a 2003 profile on Ted Kennedy that noted the Chappaquiddick incident and added, "If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age." Ever since then, the MRC -- led by Tim Graham -- has falsely promoted this quote as a an example of fawning liberal bias toward Kennedy. In fact, as Pierce himself states, it's taken out of context from a section that takes a "tough, but fair, shot" at Kennedy by acknowledging that the Chappaquiddick incident effectively kept him from having the "moral credibility" to be president.
The MRC has continually refuse to apologize to Pierce for misrepresenting the quote, let alone give him space anywhere on any MRC website to tell the truth about it.
But then, Graham -- like his boss Brent Bozell -- never has to answer for any of his falsehoods and failures, let alone pay any sort of price for getting it wrong.
NewsBusters blogger Tom Blumer wants you to think that because Donald Trump's supporters believe racist things, it doesn't mean they're racist. No, really.
The Media Research Center's Alexa Moutevelis Coombs, in a Sept. 12 
In a September 2009 
CNSNews.com reporter Penny Starr is an apologist for the right-wing Benham brothers who 
A few months back, WorldNetDaily took a full dive into Clinton derangement by devoting an entire issue of its sparsely read Whistleblower magazine to 
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham grumbles in a Sept. 16 
The news that Donald Trump has renounced birtherism (in front of the cameras, anyway) has to be a blow to WorldNetDaily, which helped Trump behind the scenes with his 2011 birther obsession. Not surprisingly, WND doesn't want to talk about the implications of it but, instead, endeavors to cling to its old, discredited birther lies.
The Media Research Center couldn't be a better public-relations agent for the Trump campaign if it was being paid for it (and it may be, as far as we know). Just look at how it is despserately spinning for Trump to go against the facts to portray Hillary Clinton -- not Trump -- as the biggest promoter of birtherism.
An anonymously written Sept. 14 WorldNetDaily 
In a Sept., 12 
In this alternative reality scenario, Hillary Clinton would be a completely different story. Objective reality would probably represent her appearance as an amorphous, grayish-green entity with only occasional glimpses of her leering face and trendy designer apparel peeking through the goo. Festering boils, sores and other lesions would populate a shifting, gelatinous corpulence. Groups of diseased genitalia and excretory organs might form in random areas on her glistening skin, migrating across its surface and occasionally engaging each other in horrid fashion. Even to the non-religious person, her appearance would be truly evocative of a creature from hell, a vision to make even the late H.R. Giger cringe.
