Newsmax's Ruddy Still Defending Trump
Topic: Newsmax

As a good friend of Donald Trump, Newsmax chief Christopher Ruddy has been a staunch apologist for the president. Now he's venturing toward ridiculous-defense territory.

Ruddy's Dec. 29 column is devoted to trying to shoot down the idea that Trump is acting like a mob boss. He insists that "Over many years of speaking privately with the president, in the most unguarded of moments, I don’t recall him ever referencing" mob-related films like the "Godfather" movies or "Goodfellas." He then tells us all the reasons Trump mob-esque behavior are really just the opposite:

If he emulates guys in movies, I think he sees himself as more John Wayne in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” or George C. Scott in “Patton.”

Trump does value strength. And loyalty.

But I don’t see the president’s view here as too different than other business and political figures I have known that value the same.

The president does like to vent against critics and old enemies.

Much of it can be over-the-top. He would rise higher in the polls if he kept such resentments to himself.

But that’s not Trump. He likes the shtick.

Remember that more than half of the senior staff in the White House and the Cabinet have, at one time or another, said critical things about the president.

Is this the government of a mafia don?

[...]

Or what about after 9/11?

When most folks in New York were evacuating the city, Trump raced down to the site of the World Trade Center in the aftermath of the attacks.

He asked Trump Organization staff to join him and help first responders.

As others fled to safety, Trump ran to danger. I talked to people that were at Ground Zero and saw him up close.

Is this mobster behavior?

[...]

OK, so I give you permission big media. Accuse Trump of many things, but admit he isn’t a mafia man.

Because if he really was, you wouldn’t be talking.

Ruddy spun hard again in his Jan. 28 column, insisting that Trump's cave on the border wall during the government shutdown he forced wasn't a cave at all:

The press spin these days is that President Trump lost to Nancy Pelosi on the government shutdown.

But Trump has a way of winning when he loses, and this will prove to be one of those cases.

[...]

So, did he get wall funding?

No.

But he has moved the needle.

By the end of the shutdown, the Democrats were signaling they would give him the full $5.7 billion in border security funds he asked for, though they don’t want the word “wall” used in the appropriation.

OK, let’s call it a “protective barrier.” That works for me.

[...]

My view is that Schumer and Pelosi are starved for deals they want to see happen.

The president is actually sitting quite pretty.

The White House should not tie border funding to the CRs.

But tying border funding to any and all legislation is fair game.

Those betting against President Trump on border funding should take their chips off the table.

Ruddy clearly knows on which side his bread is buttered.

CNS Labors to Downplay Roger Stone Indictment, Touts Trump's CNN Conspiracy Theory
Topic: CNSNews.com

It's telling of the right-wing bias of CNSNews.com that its first reaction to the arrest of longtime Trump friend Roger Stone was to distance him from President Trump and allegations of Russian collusion and to spread a conspiracy theory about how Stone's arrest was covered by CNN.

Susan Jones kicked off the distancing in her initial story on the arrest:

The charges against Stone do not involve Russian collusion; they involve his alleged obstruction of, and false statements to, the congressional and FBI investigations into Trump-Russia coordination.

However, in what may be a preview of future legal cases, the indictment mentions the "Trump campaign" or "Trump campaign official/officials" 28 times, mostly in connection with Stone's attempt to get information from Wikileaks that would be damaging to the Clinton campaign.

Jones used the last paragraph of her article to play some partisan whataboutism demonstrating that she's not a fair and objec ctive reporter:

It should be noted that while Stone allegedly was seeking damaging information about the Clinton campaign from Wikileaks, the Clinton campaign and the Democrat National Committee were paying Fusion GPS, through a law firm, to gather information damaging to the Trump campaign. The so-called Steele dossier contained salacious and unverified information gathered by Christopher Steele from Russian sources; and eventually the FBI used the dossier to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on a Trump campaign volunteer.

Jones didn't mention that nothing in that paragraph was a crime, unlike Stone's dealkings with Wikileaks and lies under oath.

Jones followed up later in the morning by uncriticallly repeating what White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had to say:

"I can tell you the specific charges brought against Mr. Stone don't have anything to do with the president," White House spokewoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told CNN’s “New Day” on Friday morning, shortly after longtime Trump associate Roger Stone was arrested at his Florida home on charges of obstruction, making false statements and witness tampering.

Asked for her reaction, Sanders said, "Real simple, this has nothing to do with the president and certainly nothing to do with the White House. This is something that has to do solely with that individual, and not something that affects us in this building."

By midday on Jan. 25, Jones was doing her best to promote Trump's conspiracy theory about CNN's presence at Stone's house at the time he was arrested:

In a mid-morning response to the indictment of his friend and former campaign adviser Roger Stone, President Trump tweeted: "Greatest Witch Hunt in the History of our Country! NO COLLUSION! Border Coyotes, Drug Dealers and Human Traffickers are treated better. Who alerted CNN to be there?"

[...]

In an early morning tweet, CNN's "New Day" explained how a TV crew just happened to be in Stone's neighborhood before dawn: "CNN's @davidgshortell was on the ground when Roger Stone was arrested in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., this morning. He says he was monitoring the situation because of 'unusual grand jury activity in Washington D.C. yesterday.'"

Back to Trump's question: "Who Alerted CNN to Be There?"

Attempts to reach the FBI press office during the shutdown were unsuccessful.

But some suspect that Mueller's office or someone in the FBI or even the grand jury tipped off CNN, a liberal media outlet that Trump has blasted as "fake news."

Journalist Greta van Susteren tweeted: "CNN cameras were at the raid of Roger Stone...so FBI obviously tipped off CNN...even if you don’t like Stone, it is curious why Mueller’s office tipped off CNN instead of trying to quietly arrest Stone; quiet arrests are more likely to be safe to the FBI and the person arrested."

Jones spent one paragraph on how CNN pointed out it had been alerted to a possible Stone arrest because of "unusual grand jury activity," and nine paragraphs of random conservatives falsely speculating that CNN was somehow tipped off by special counsel Robert Mueller himself.

Promoting presidential conspiracy theories is no way to present yourself as a legitimate "news" organization.

WND Peddles Alveda King's Lies About Margaret Sanger
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Jerry Newcombe writes in his Jan. 22 WorldNetDaily column:

Does Planned Parenthood target blacks? That is what Dr. Martin Luther King’s niece thinks.

Recently, I spoke on my radio show with evangelist Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She is the director of Civil Rights for the Unborn with the organization Priests for Life. The focus was on Planned Parenthood and the African-American community.

[...]

Alveda King told our listeners: “Margaret Sanger, the founder of the Birth Control League [later, Planned Parenthood], said, that ‘colored people are like weeds,’ and they need to be eliminated. They need to be exterminated. We don’t want the word to get out, so let’s not package it that way. So that’s why they began to make a lot of propaganda and marketing materials, saying that abortion is a woman’s right. It will help her to finish college, get a job, do this or do that.”

But King is lying. As we've documented with others have made the same claim, there is no record of Sanger describing "colored people" as weeds. And since Newcombe is being a sympathetic host, he has no interest in fact-checking King as long as she keeps spinning the anti-abortion narrative he had her on his radio show to peddle in the first place.

(WND is not the only right-wing outlet to give King's lie a pass; a 2016 CBN article also uncritically quotes her making the same bogus claim.)

King is not the only misinformation peddler that Newcombe privileges and fails to fact-check. He also repeats right-wing historian Paul Kengor's biased, inaccurate framing of Sanger's speech to a women's Ku Klux Klan auxiliary: "Why would the KKK be so interested in Ms. Sanger? The reasons are obvious, a natural fit. It was because Sanger was a passionate racial eugenicist with grandiose dreams of 'race improvement.'"

As we've also documented, the KKK in the 1920s had a broad appeal beyond racism, to the point where it could almost be considered a mainstream conservative organization today. Further, Sanger spoke to a women's auxiliary of the KKK, not the KKK itself, and seemingly contrary to Kengor's portrayal of the speech as a "smash hit," she later called the speech "one of the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing." There's also no evidence that Sanger had any special fondness for the Klan, and it's clear from her writings that she would speak to any group that would have her. (Kengor walked back his portrayal of Sanger as a racist after we called him out on it.)

Newcombe also wrote:

Sanger did not want it known that she believed blacks should be targeted for a significant reduction in their population. She wrote, “We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” (Margaret Sanger, letter to Dr. Clarence J. Gamble, Dec. 10, 1939.)

That's another right-wing distortion. Anti-abortoin activists love to take that statement -- made in reference to a so-called "Negro Project" to target black women for birth control efforts -- out of context; in fact, it refers to an attempt to recruit black leaders for the effort in order to allay suspicions blacks might have had about whites like Sanger being involved.

But Newcombe wasn't done with pushing misinformation. He also writes: "To see for yourself the ongoing racism of Planned Parenthood in action, notice how often their clinics are still in very poor neighborhoods. Alveda notes some of those Planned Parenthood neighborhoods have streets nearby named after her uncle."

As we also documented, the Guttmacher Institute found that 60 percent of abortion providers are, in fact, located in majority-white neighborhoods. Newcombe seems to be alluding to an anti-abortion group's claim that a majority of abortion providers are "within walking distance" of a minority neighborhood -- which is defined as two miles.

Newcombe also refers to King at one point as "Dr. Alveda King," which is yet another bit of false privileging. As we've pointed out, King's doctorate is honorary, not earned. 

You'd think that WND would have learned by now not to publish so much fake news.

MRC Snowflakes Traumatized By Challenges To 'Toxic Masculinity'
Topic: Media Research Center

Conservatives love to mock liberals as "snowflakes" for allegedly being unable to handle points of view that differ from their own. By that definiton, the Media Research Center is an organization filled with snowflakes who freak out over any view that counters their right-wing agenda.

When challenges to the harmful side of traditional masculinity appeared earlier this month -- in the forms of a list of guidelines from the American Psychological Association and a Gillette commercial -- the MRC went into full snowflake mode.

Gabriel Hays sneered that the Gillette ad was "brimming with PC condescension" and "held men in general accountable for the existence of 'toxic masculinity,'" further huffing: "The most insulting part of the whole thing may be that a razor blade manufacturer believes men -- especially fathers raising boys -- need its advice on masculinity." Hay also insisted that Gillette wants "to join every bitter feminist and cosmopolitan soyboy who wants men to be something more acceptable in faculty lounges, big city newsrooms and, it seems, the offices of razor manufacturers."

Hays weirdly based his rant on a BBC article about the Gillette ad, despite the fact that it was targeted at an American audience.

Kyle Drennen tried for an irony angle, twisting an NBC report on the Gillettte into claiming that the network morning show that employed an alleged sexual harasser for 20 years thought it was great that shave company Gillette produced a commercial condemning 'toxic masculinity.'" Drennen linked to a Fox News article about the ad -- presumably because outrage about challenges to "toxic masculinity" is more on-brand for the channel whose male employees seem to be nothing but sexual harassers.

Drennen also complained that initial coverage of tte ad on NBC was limited to "two female co-hosts and female reporter" and that "it wasn’t until the 9:00 a.m. ET hour that the male hosts were given the chance to react to the story."

The MRC got mad at the APA guidelines as well, with Clay Waters deliberately issuing an overbroad assessment that "courage, risk-taking, and achievement are now black marks on a man’s character under the APA's guidelines" and that a in New York Times article on the guidelines, "liberal academics put positive spins on the controversial guidelines, and let them criticize the conservative point of view without rebuttal." Waters also played a bit of anti-elitist elitism, grumbling that "The guidelines themselves are suffused with sex-blurred 'non-binary' terms de rigueur in today’s intelligentsia circles."

Matt Philbin also groused about the APA guidelines with some stereotypical whining:

Here’s an outside-the-box -- not to say crazy (are you allowed to say crazy anymore?) -- suggestion for the gang at the American Psychology Association: If you’re going to issue what Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse calls an “an indictment … of rigid, traditional masculinity,” you might want to talk to some “traditional” men first.

That way, you won’t be blindsided when some folks think your research belongs under the scientific classification of “crap.”

[...]

Rulers and the ruled. Hesse thinks social organization and the relationship between the sexes is a zero-sum power game. And if you’ve spent your time at Bryn Mawr and the Washington Post, who could blame you?

[...]

Think about the reaction to the APA Guidelines: Single mothers raising sons is one of the biggest contributors to violence and lawlessness in huge swaths of society, but we’re not allowed to stigmatize out-of-wedlock birth or suggest boys need fathers. Meanwhile the elites eschew the religion that has traditionally tempered and helped tame masculinity, while they celebrate homosexuality and the other 31derful flavors of sexuality popular this week.

Of course, MRC bigwigs Tim Graham and Brent Bozell couldn't help but and their two cents in a column-length rant:

So who is the mastermind at Gillette who came up with the idea that the best way to sell men's razors is to insult the customers with condescending liberal propaganda about "toxic masculinity"? Is pandering to the perpetually angry feminists in the media the way to grab positive "news" coverage? Is online buzz the goal? If so, it must also be Gillette's goal to have its customers rush over to the Schick display.

[...]

There's a word for these ad campaigns: vomit. Go buy a Schick, where men are men; women are women; and all they want is a shave.

If an academic paper and a razor company's ad triggers right-wingers so ferociously, who are the real snowflakes here?

WND's Kupelian Repackages Ancient Interview As 'News'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

A Jan. 21 WorldNetDaily article by David Kupelian, tagged as a "WND Exclusive," carried the proud headline "My interview with the doctor who gave America legalized abortion: David Kupelian's revealing conversation with NARAL co-founder Bernard Nathanson." And it is indeed pretty lengthy -- of course, the right-wing Kupelian would not devote so much space to the co-founder of NARAL if had hadn't flipped and become an anti-abortion activist. He even gave Nathanson space to defend the misleading anti-abortion film he made, "The Silent Scream," with Kupelian lamenting that the film "provoked a massive campaign of defamation on the part of the pro-abortion movement."

But Kupelian obfuscates a bit  on the newsworthiness of his interview with Nathanson. It's not until the fifth paragraph that Kupelian gets around to mentioning that the interview actually took place in 1990 -- almost 30 years ago. And it's not until the very end of his article that Kupelian makes clear that "Bernard Nathanson passed away on Feb. 21, 2011, at the age of 84." This is followed by an editor's note: "The preceding interview with Bernard Nathanson, M.D., is excerpted and adapted from David Kupelian’s bestselling book, 'The Marketing of Evil.'"

In other words, Kupelian's interview is not only ancient, it's effectively copied-and-pasted from a book he wrote more than a decade ago. It has no news value whatsoever beyond its appearance around the time of the anti-abortion March for Life.

It may be very old news, but to WND's credit, it's not fake news.

Shocker: CNS Reports Actual News
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com is so dedicated to pro-Trump stenography that it's news when CNS reports actual news -- and even bigger news when CNS reports original news that isn't reflexively pro-Trump.

So, it's worth noting that a Jan. 10 article by Emily Ward found a State Department message marking Pride Month in June 2018 and expressing support for LGBT rights didn't appear on the websites of U.S. embassies in countries that are notoriously hostile to such rights. Unfortunately, Ward wasn't able to pursue the story much further; the State Department declined comment because much the department was closed because of the government shutdown.

It's not a lot, but it's something, and it shows that CNS actually has a bit of talent and can accomplish something when it chooses to act like journalists instead of stenographers.

WND Columnist Concedes Trump Is Amoral, Gives Him A Pass Anyway
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Adriana Cohen complains in her Jan. 13 column:

Morality for thee, but not for me.

That’s the Democratic Party’s elitist modus operandi when it comes to casting aspersions and judging President Donald Trump’s character, marital issues and moral compass – but not their own.

Take the recent revelations surrounding the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com and owner of the anti-Trump Washington Post. Bezos announced via Twitter this week that his 25-year marriage has gone bust, stemming from reports of a salacious affair the billionaire businessman allegedly had with a friend’s wife. Although both Bezos and his paramour have denied the illicit affair, according to reports their steamy sexts speak otherwise – indicating that the Washington Post’s owner could very well be no angel when it comes to marital fidelity. But that hasn’t stopped his newspaper from writing round-the-clock hit pieces against the president for the past several years highlighting Trump’s amorality.

Cohen goes on to complain about "the cesspool of liberal Hollywood hypocrites" and "President Bill Clinton’s numerous affairs – including with Monica Lewinsky, a young, impressionable intern he engaged in extramarital sex acts with in the Oval Office" that purportedly get less attention than Trump.

But while Cohen apparently concedes Trump's "amorality," she says nothing more about it -- nor does she explain why conservatives who were vocal about Clinton's affair with Lewinsky are silent about Trump's three marriages and his paying off a porn star to cover up their affair. Further, skimming through Cohen's WND archive, we could find no column that she devoted to addressing Trump's amorality.

It seems that Cohen is pushing the flip side of her opening line: Immorality for Trump, but not for thee.

MRC Embraces Trump's Scary-Illegal-Immigrant Crusade
Topic: Media Research Center

President Trump has been pushing the idea that all illegal immigrants are scary, if not actively coming to kill you, and the Media Research Center wants to help that narrative along.

A Jan. 17 post by Brad Wilmouth complained that "CNN senior political analyst John Avlon presented another of his infamous "Reality Check" segments, which is more akin to liberal spin than an actual effort to clearly inform viewers about the issues. The CNN analyst argued against a border wall as he cited Politifact to dismiss claims of 2,000 homicides being committed by illegal immigrants in one year being reported by ICE for FY2018." Wilmouth went on to convolutedly rant about the PolitiFact fact-check:

If one takes a look at the Politifact article he cited, it reads like another lame fact check that the site has become famous for that spins for liberals. The analysis has a point in that the 2,000 homicides cited do not actually come from 2018 since illegals who commit homicides are usually deported after they have spent years serving their sentences in prison, so the total number of homicides committed by illegal aliens in 2018 or any particular year is still unclear.

But the fact-checking site also bizarrely tried to suggest that many homicides were not so bad since not all homicides are actually murders. But legal justifiable homicides tend to make up only a small portion of total homicides, and manslaughter cases are still serious matters in which someone died even if they do not fit the legal definition of murder.

Additionally, if the site had bothered to check numbers for previous years, there were at least a couple of years -- 2011 and 2012 -- when the Obama adiministration reported a number of homicide cases processed by ICE as being well over 1,000, suggesting that numbers between 1,000 and 2,000 may actually be typical and reflective of how many homicides are committed by illegals each year.

And, in FY2017, ICE processed illegal immigrants who had similarly committed almost 1,900 homicides.

And, in a country where over the past 20 years the total number of homicides nationwide tends to vary between 14,000 and 17,000 a year, such numbers from illegal immigrants would represent a substantial chunk -- and probably a disproportionately high portion -- of the nation's homicides.

Actually, the PolitiFact article debunks the claim a lot more than Wilmouth would admit, further explaining that "those offenses could have been accumulated over many years — not just 2017 — and didn’t necessarily happen the same year ICE arrested these people. In addition, a homicide could be a murder, but it could also be an accidental killing. Finally, ICE didn’t pick any of these folks up for murder; it picked them up for being in violation of the nation’s immigration laws." The number also doesn't reflect when homicide charges are dropped.

The next day, the MRC dropped any subtlety on the issue with a headline screaming "Seven Horrific Crimes by Illegal Immigrants that Networks BURIED." In it, Bill D'Agostino insisted that all crimes by illegal immigrants demand national news coverage -- no matter how minor, apparently -- because, duh, they're illegals:

Crimes perpetrated by illegal aliens deserve attention because, by their very nature, all of them theoretically could have been prevented with sufficient enforcement of existing laws. Even if the crime rate among illegal aliens were a fraction of that among the native population, those few offenses still committed would be otherwise avoidable if the culprits had been either deported or prevented from entering in the first place.

MRC analysts examined Nexis transcripts of all network evening news coverage from 2018 and compiled the following list of some of the most heinous crimes committed by unlawful residents over the past year. None of these stories received even a second of evening news coverage – with the exception of the Colorado Spring Wildfire, which the networks briefly covered without mentioning the accused’s immigration status.

As usual, the MRC "study" is limited only to CBS, NBC and ABC -- because it's easier to monitor only a half-hour of programming a day -- and ignores its favorite channel, Fox News, completely.

WND Unhappy With Call To Impeach Trump, Forgets It Demanded Obama's Impeachment
Topic: WorldNetDaily

An anonymous WorldNetDaily writer appears upset in a Jan. 17 article:

Special counsel Robert Mueller has yet to issue a report on his probe of alleged Trump-Russia collusion, but the new issue of The Atlantic features the word “IMPEACH” in large, red letters.

The cover story by Atlantic senior editor Yoni Appelbaum argues Congress has the authority, through impeachment, to “rein in a president who is undermining American ideals,” The Hill reported.

The title subhead reads: “It’s time for Congress to judge the president’s fitness to serve.”

Appelbaum asserts Trump has “repeatedly trampled” on the Constitution through his policies, resistance to investigations and attacks on political opponents.

“These actions are, in sum, an attack on the very foundations of America’s constitutional democracy,” he writes.

We would remind WND that it didn't even wait the two years the Atlantic did, or that there was no special counsel investigation whose results needed waiting for, before calling for the impeachment of President Obama.

As we documented, WND promoted a call for impeachment of Obama in October 2009 -- less than a year after Obama was elected -- then teamed up with the Brown-operated Western Journalism Center (which WND editor Joseph Farah had founded in the 1990s) the following year to churn out "The Case for Impeachment," a shoddily written screed filled with misleading claims and outright falsehoods -- and, of course, birther conspiracy theories -- that purported to make the case for Obama's impeachment.

In other words, one could argue that the Atlantic is following in WND's footsteps. Shouldn't WND be proud of that, or something?

MRC's Allen West Rants About Media 'Borgs' -- While Acting As A Borg For Trump
Topic: CNSNews.com

Allen West spins a conspiracy theory in his Jan. 14 CNSNews.com column:

When I watch the repetitive collective messaging of the left in America, it reminds me of the aliens from “Star Trek: Next Generation” called The Borg. Y’all remember The Borg, right? They were the alien life form that was half human, half machine that forced you into their collective and assimilated you into their group think. Their standard line to their victims was “you will be assimilated; resistance is futile.”

And so, it was last week as I watched leftist pundits, liberal progressive media talking heads, and the utterances of Democratic Party members, such as Senator Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi repeat incessantly that the whole kerfuffle about border security and a wall is just a “manufactured crisis.” I am quite sure my colleagues at the Media Research Center can do quick research and uncover how many times leftists used the reference, “manufactured crisis,” in the last ten days. The results should not be shocking, but they would undoubtedly confirm what we all know. The real collusion in America is between the Democratic Party and the liberal, progressive news media, which we have come to recognize as “fake news,” subjective, propagandized reporting.

[...]

The real crisis that has been manufactured in America is one by the liberal, progressive fake news media that refuses to report the truth. They have taken up the position that they will not report anything that is contrary to their goal to support progressive socialism in America. Also, they make sure that anything that would favor President Donald Trump is to not be reported. And so, it is, on the issue of border security, when one confronts a progressive, socialist leftist who depends on ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, or PBS for their news reporting, not to mention Mother Jones or other far leftist internet sites, they are woefully uninformed. What the “manufactured crisis” the leftist media has advanced promotes is the ignorance of their viewers, readers, and listeners. They are indeed like The Borg, only able to regurgitate the implanted chip message of the collective. They become incapable of critical thinking, and when faced with truth and facts, they become overly hostile and violent in many cases – just like The Borg.

It becomes rather simple, easy, for the leftists to promulgate a message such as “manufactured crisis” and be believed. It is because their followers tune in to be told what to say and what to think. And when the progressive, socialist fake news refuses to tell the real story, then their patrons find themselves lost, and as Vladimir Lenin is quoted as having called them: “useful idiots.”

But West himself is involved in Borg-like regurgitation. A few days before his column appeared, President Trump said during a visit to the Texas-Mexico border:

“Democrats have refused to listen to the border agents, and they say this is a manufactured crisis,” the president said during a roundtable about border security at the border between Texas and Mexico. He continued:

That’s their new sound bite. All over. I turn the television on—you know, I call it the opposition party. It’s called the fake-news media. And what happens is every network has “manufactured crisis. This is a manufactured crisis.” Every one of them. It’s like they, you know, send out to everybody, “Let’s use this sound bite today.”

In other words: West is projecting. He took a Trump rant and turned it into a column -- like he was told what to say and what to think. He is a Borg creature hypocritically ranting about the Borgs he doesn't like.

MRC's Double Standard on Being Haunted By The Past
Topic: Media Research Center

The mysterious Jay Maxson ranted in a Dec. 12 post about Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray's homophobic tweets as a teenager resurfacing:

Oklahoma University's superstar quarterback Kyler Murray won the Heisman Trophy on Saturday night, but by Sunday he was being shamed by the media for something that has absolutely nothing to do with his incredible 2018 football season. Instead, Murray became just the latest high-profile athlete to be busted by social media "cops" in the sports media exposing anyone who has written "anti-gay slurs" in their youth.

You won't find a single one of Murray's impressive stats (51 total touchdowns and nearly 5,000 all-purpose yards) in Sunday's USA Today story by Scott Gleeson, who's focused much of his career writing on LGBT issues.

Gleeson tackles Murray "for homophobic tweets that resurfaced after he won Heisman Trophy." Murray has apologized for what he wrote on social media six years ago, apparently calling a friend "a queer," when he was just 15. Now he's joined a growing list of athletes attacked by the media for similar "thought crimes" as a youth.

Maxson attacked Gleeson as "obsessed with the LGBT agenda to search and destroy adult athletes for youthful remarks," then lamented of Murray: "No matter where he plays in the future as a professional athlete, it's not likely the progressive media will let him escape the "homophobic" taint.

(You might recall that Maxson's Media Research Center colleague Michael Morris, of CNSNews.com, similarly targeted Gleeson for exposing Murray's homophobic tweets.)

But just a month earlier, Maxson was cheering an athlete's youthful behavior coming back to haunt him. Just a month earlier, Maxson was gleefully touting an unverified claim that former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick "allegedly mistreated women in the past," citing a blogger who said she received communication from an anonymous woman who claimed to know Kaepernick during his college years and that he allegedly was "disrespecting women, my friends and people I grew up with." The blooger herself admitted the claims are unverified. Maxson demanded: "The questions we're left with are these: will other media explore the claims of Salome about Kaepernick's history? Or will they sit on this and protect him and his social justice cause?"

Maxson has long been obsessed with Kaepernick.

Democrat Derangement Syndrome, Charlie Daniels Edition
Topic: CNSNews.com

In Schumer-Pelosi’s ideal America:

Guns would be confiscated. There would be no restrictions whatsoever on abortion. Taxes would be through the roof. Global warming – the new religion of the left – would become front and center, and American manufacturing would, again, begin a monolithic evacuation.

Self-proliferating bureaucracies would spring up and regulate every facet of personal life in this nation. Eventually, you would have to get a permit to dig a hole in your own back yard.

Think that’s impossible?

Ask someone in Holland where you have to get a permit to build a dog house.

Getting any kind of license would become a nightmare as self-governing bureaucracies would hire inept political cronies, and inefficiency would slow the process down to a snail’s pace.

Think that won’t happen?

Ask the people in Italy where the licensing offices only work four days a week, use any excuse for a holiday and make even obtaining a marriage license like taking a trip down Alice’s rabbit hole.

Do you want to live in such a country?

If you don’t, you’d better let your voice be heard because with the Democrat/media cartel it can happen very quickly, and you could wake up one morning to find out that your country has been pulled right out from under you.

-- Charlie Daniels, Jan. 15 CNSNews.com column

Democrat Derangement Syndrome, Jesse Lee Peterson Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Jesse Lee Peterson hit the ground ranting in his Jan. 13 WorldNetDaily column:

Immoral Democrat [sic] women have corrupted young people to believe that morality is not important, and now more than ever these women are being elected to run our government. Women, more than men, promote and make excuses for immorality. Real men do not go along with wrongdoing, but beta males abandon morality and follow these women. Such people hate God, hate men, hate the unborn child, and love to promote their immoral false morality.

Peterson then felt the need to explain exactly what alleged offenses to immorality these Democratic women committed, complete with graphic:

And, yes, tops on Peterson's scare-quote-laden list is marrying a man who already has a child, because having a family is somehow bad:

Ayanna Pressley is celebrated by morally bankrupt people as the first “African American” representative from Massachusetts. But she married a man who already has a young daughter by another woman. This is immoral and selfish – children’s souls yearn for their real parents, and don’t want to compete with a stepparent for attention. Ayanna and her new “husband” have sacrificed his daughter’s soul to satisfy their own desires. This beta male supported his new “wife’s” campaign and has been misleading other young black males a “leader” in Barack Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper” program.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., is a divorced and remarried mother, and a hijab-wearing Somalian Muslim refugee. She should not be allowed to wear an Islamic headscarf in Congress! She supports socialism and the radical “LGBTQIA+” agenda. She also lied about opposing “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” (BDS) against Israel. Moral people would never elect such a Muslim to run our government!

Deb Haaland, D.-New Mexico, is celebrated by shallow people as one of the first “Native American” women in Congress. She was a single mother and raised a daughter who came out as a lesbian. After Haaland was elected, she falsely accused President Trump of “rhetoric of erasing trans people in this country” and “ripping children from their parents.” This failure of a parent turned her daughter away from the father, and pretends to care about people confused about their gender and sexuality.

Veronica Escobar, D.-Texas, is a “Mexican-American” mother and politician who officiated the so-called “wedding” of a young “gay couple” who supported her. She claimed Trump “really frightened” her, saying, “I worry about the planet. I worry about immigrants. I worry about women. I worry about the LGBT community.” President Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio, the sheriff falsely accused of “racial profiling” and “contempt” of court by a liberal judge. In reaction, she cursed and lied, “Un-f***ing-believable! … do you know what message that sends to Hispanics? ‘You don’t belong here.'” She doesn’t belong in office!

Sharice Davids, D.-Kansas, is another first “Native American” female representative – and a lesbian, the “first openly LGBT member of Congress from Kansas.”

Last week I wrote about “the first Palestinian American” Muslim Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D.-Michigan. The divorced single mother told one of her young sons of President Trump, “We’re gonna impeach the motherf—er.” She repeated this at a bar at a MoveOn.org event after being sworn into office. I said then that she is a national security threat to the country. She should be focused on setting a better example for her children, not running the country!

(Sorry, Jesse, the charges for which Arpaio was convicted are very much true, and the judge's alleged politics are irrelevant.)

Peterson went to make up stuff about President Trump:

President Trump is a moral man. He loves the country. He moved past his errors in life, no longer bragging about wrongdoing. Sinners attack Trump because he says he does not ask God for forgiveness. But he does right today – not wrong. Once you repent and are born again of God, you no longer sin. The hypocrites, like Satan, endlessly bring up Trump’s past to accuse him, when they’re no better.

Peterson offers no proof Trump is a "moral man" who "moved past his errors in life," or that he has ever repented for his rampant immorality.

The MRC's Continuing War on Fact-Checkers
Topic: Media Research Center

Because President Trump and his administration are constantly spreading falsehoods, the Media Research Center must try to discredit fact-checkers. Let's take a look at a few recent MRC posts to see how that war is going.

Tim Graham, in ragebot mode yet again, was very mad that Trump was fact-checked during his Oval Office address regarding his government shutdown over border wall funding. He further whined that Trump's statement that Sen. Chuck Schumer "has repeatedly supported a physical barrier in the past" was found to be misleading because it ignored the context that the barrier Schumer supported has already been built. Graham went on to huff:

This underlines that these "fact checkers" are really "context checkers," because the sentence itself is true. Schumer and other Democrats repeatedly supported a physical barrier in the past. It doesn't make Trump's current sentence "un-factual" that he said the fence was too modest as he campaigned. It's an interesting oppositional point, but it doesn't make the sentence "misleading."

Well, actually, yes, Tim, if you do not make the full context of a statement clear, a statement that's "true" on its face can also be misleading.Graham shouldknow this because the MRC he helps run regularly attacks non-conservative media for allegedly taking the words of conservatives out of context.

Graham took offense to another fact-check on Trump's speech, this time insisting that Trump's false statement that "Democrats will not fund border security" should not be judged factually because it is "a political statement blaming the Other Party."

Nicholas Fondacaro then rehashed a Fox News appearance by former Border Patrtol chief Mark Morgan attacking fact-checks of Trump's speech. Morgan claimed that, in Fondacaro's words, that"it was the media that didn’t know what they were talking about" and that he "ripped the liberal media for acting as their own 'self-appointed experts' who spout off their own opinions." Fondacaro also wrote:

Another liberal media suggestion Carlson picked Morgan’s brain on was their claim that studies showed illegal immigrants committed crimes at a lower rate than native-born Americans. “I've never seen the study either and I pose that to somebody to show me that stat and show me how they can come up with that. Because can I show you the opposite,” he declared.

Morgan's not looking to hard to find those studies. The MRC knows they exist, if only beause it's laboring so hard to discredit them with an even more discredited study claiming the opposite.

Brad Wilmouth touted how "On Wednesday's Tucker Carlson Tonight, veteran Fox News analyst Brit Hume called out journalistic 'fact checkers' who assume that liberal opinions on the illegal immigration issue are facts, and therefore that the conservative counter-opinions are claimed by those journalists to be not factual." Invoking his current favorite bugaboo, Wilmouth added: "A bit later, Carlson brought up the recurring tendency of journalists to make questionable claims that illegal immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than U.S. citizens, leading Hume to point out that, even if that were true, it would not contradict President Trump because he is not claiming that illegals have a higher rate of committing crimes -- only that some do commit serious crimes."

Corinne Weaver then lectured:

It is important for anyone who identifies as a ‘fact-checker’ to be as objective and neutral as possible. At least in theory.

But Facebook might not have done its homework in finding the right fact-checkers. The “charity” Full Fact was announced on January 11 as the new fact-checkers for Facebook. The BBC reports that the organization will “review stories, images and videos and rate them based on accuracy.”

But these fact-checkers might have a bigger agenda, according to their funding page. Google and liberal billionaire George Soros have donated extensively to Full Fact in 2018 alone. It is also funded by a radical leftist, Pierre Omidyar, who funds the Never Trump site the Bulwark, headed by Bill Kristol.

Perhaps the move was meant to placate Soros, whose organizations, including the Color of Change, have lobbied to have Facebook undergo a civil rights audit. Facebook has been under fire following the New York Times report, which said that Facebook hired a right-wing group to do opposition research on Soros.

However, there are no conservative fact-checkers left in the Facebook fact-checking family. With the close of the Weekly Standard, Facebook has yet to name a conservative successor to fact-check.

You might remember that Facebook's oppo research on Soros -- presumably done to placate its right-wing critics -- undercut the MRC's shaky narrative that social media outlets like Facebook are run by liberals determined to censor conservatives.

Weaver did not name any conservative fact-checkers who could be considered credible and not motivated by politics over journalism.

WND's Farah Expects 'Another challenging Year,' Still Won't Address His Fake-News Issue
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Joseph Farah's Jan. 15 WorldNetDaily column asked readers to pray for WND because it faces "another challenging year." After going on his usual attack against the "Digital Cartel" of "Google, Facebook, Amazon, apple, Twitter, et al" for monopolizing ad revenue, he then plays the victim, suggesting without evidence that those outlets targeted WND for loving President Trump too much:

Why did they do it beginning in January 2017? It was an effort to go after Trump by attacking media that were fair to him, to hinder his sweeping policy changes and deprive him of re-election in 2020, if they couldn’t see him impeached before that.

How did it affect us? In 2016, WND had over $10 million in revenues. In 2017, following the attacks on us, that number dropped to $6 million. BUT IN 2018, THAT NUMBER DROPPED TO AN ASTONISHING $2 MILLION!

Can you imagine what that would do to any company? Most of our staff is gone. We’re struggling to survive. But we are determined to do so, no matter how tough the challenge is.

Yet again, Farah does not address the elephant in the room: WND's legacy of fake news and conspiracy theories that, at least as much as the ad-revenue that are affecting most online media outlets, drove WND to the brink of extinction. Indeed, while WND has spent the past year begging for money from readers to stay alive, it has continued to publish fake news -- demonstrating it has learned nothing from its continuing near-death experience.

Farah then invoked God to kick off his spiel of begging for more money:

Almost every digital media company now relies on direct donations from its subscribers and visitors to make it in this new environment – where Google and Facebook and Amazon are raking in all the profits and deliberately starving those they don’t like.

I’m not just asking for your financial contributions, I’m asking for your fervent prayers. Because this is very much a SPIRITUAL WAR, not just a matter of corrupt, politically motivated crony monopoly capitalism at its worst.

We at WND serve a power higher than this cartel. And we ask for your prayers to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob through Jesus of Nazareth, the One and Only Mediator and the Coming King.

Will you do that for us starting today, if you have not already joined us in this effort?

Given WND's history of playing fast and loose with facts, we suspect that Farah's "higher power" is not happy that such shoddy work is meant to serve Him.

And Farah hypocritically adds as his first bullet point for support: "Pray for God to bless WND with financial support and the will and strength to continue to fight for truth in an age of fake news and lies."

Farah should probably ask Clark Jones and Chobani yogurt what they think about WND's so-called "fight for truth."