Media Research Center writer Elise Erhard went on a drag queen-bashing tirade in an Oct. 9 post, in response to a health insurance company commercial that was "uplifting" until it showed "a drag queen reading and dancing for laughing children":
For decades, the left has successfully promoted the increased sexualization of children by portraying opponents as somehow mean or intolerant. In this latest volley, those who see problems with a sexualized man dressed as a woman reading to children are once again criticized as just disliking people who are different or "too much." A drag queen reading to children is the same as an elderly woman who dresses her best or a male healthcare worker showing a softer side, in a new commercial by health insurance provider Kaiser Permanente.
[...]
With the help of the American Library Association, drag queen story hours have been invading local communities, often against the communities' wishes. Children at these story hours have been exposed to convicted pedophiles, taught twerking, and placed in sexually suggestive positions with drag queens for photo-ops. One drag queen who participated in a story hour even admitted in front of his local city council that it was a form of “grooming.”
This is corporate advertising once again soft-pedaling a radical left-wing sexual agenda by integrating it into what seem to be benign, everyday advertisements. Kaiser Permanente has a long history of contributing to liberal causes, like GLAAD, Human Rights Campaign, Planned Parenthood, and National Urban League.
To all those parents and taxpayers who are fighting this latest insidious form of child sexualization, Kaiser Permanente literally says, “Too bad.” Apparently, the health insurance company thinks sexually grooming children is just another way for adults to “thrive.”
Erhard's "grooming" claim falsely suggests that drag queens are preparing children to be sexually exploited. In fact, that comment is taken out of context; the man who performs as a drag queen said at a Louisiana city council meeting in 2018 that he's "not there to push any kind of agenda":
I was told at the library council meeting last night that I am pushing the trans agenda, I am pushing an overly sexualized agenda, and that is furthest from the truth. I am just as talented as a singer or a dancer or anyone that has aspecial talent. It's just mine is dressing as a woman and entertaining a crowd.
Now, everywhere you can go, you can see that people can change their views for certain audiences. Just as much as someone can be an actor for an rated-R movie and they can go around and be in a G-rated movie, I can entertain adults in a club but also entertain a group of students and young children. I'm able to do that because I'm an adult and I know how to filter myself.
And I just think that it is implorable [sic] some of the opinions I've seen and some of the looks I've received here tonight. The eyes people give you whenever they think that you are the one that's in support of this event is truly disgusting. And I am not here to obviously change anyone's views about me, but I'm here to let you know that this event is something that's going to be very beautiful and for the children and people who support it are going to realize that this is going to be the grooming of the next generation. We are trying to groom the next generation not to see the way that they just did.
And just because I said that, you heard the little ploor [sic] of people behind me. It's disgusting. We're trying to teach people to be tolerable, to be patient, to be loving. And the fact of the matter is that I'm standing right here and there's probably 50 people behind me looking at me with daggers probably wishing I would probably die in a car wreck whenever I leave here. It's truly implorable [sic].
And that is what we're trying to do with drag queen story time. We're trying to raise people to be loving and caring individuals, and I really hope that this event is going to do that for not only just the children at this event but children in the future.
So, quite a bit different. The Daily Wire article to which Erhard links also takes the "grooming" comment out of context.
Meanwhile, the content-desperate folks at WorldNetDaily loved Erhard's drag qeen-bashing so much, the MRC item served as a basis for its own article, right down to adapting her "sexualized man dressed as a woman" phrase to the headline and repeating the out-of-context "grooming" line.
If these kinds of articles are so homophobic that WND thinks this highly of them, the MRC might have a problem. It already has one in echoing WND the other way.
MRC's Graham Serves Up More Right-Wing Ranting Passed Off As 'Media Research' Topic: Media Research Center
Why is the Media Research Center's Tim Graham a terrible media critic? Here's another reason. This is Graham in an Oct. 6 post (bolding in original):
Why would Republican appear on the "mainstream" Sunday shows? You could wonder after Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) was disgusted by moderator Chuck Todd's "very biased opening" segment on Meet the Press, and Todd openly fought with him and wouldn't let him finish a point as Johnson tried to tell him what he should ask John Brennan later in the show. Brennan received gooey sympathy.
Todd moaned and groaned and then said “I have no idea why Fox News conspiracy propaganda stuff is popping up on here. I have no idea why we’re going here." When Johnson said this is why people hate the media, "This is not about the media! Senator Johnson, please!!” As in "please stop criticizing the heroic press."
Johnson began: "your setup piece was --you know, typically, very unbiased [sarcasm]....Before I started answering all the detailed questions, let me just talk about why I'm pretty sympathetic with what President Trump has gone through. You know, I'm 64 years old. I have never in my lifetime seen a president, after being elected, not having some measure of well wishes from his opponents. I've never seen a president’s administration be sabotaged from the day after election. I -- I've never seen -- no-- no measure of honeymoon whatsoever."
And then he started talking about FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page texting about how they keep Trump from being elected. The networks have barely touched Strzok and Page.
Todd unleashed the Fox News dig, and angrily insisted "Can we please answer the question that I asked you instead of trying to make Donald Trump feel better here that you're not criticizing him." Johnson said "I'm trying to lay the groundwork...of your very biased opening."
Todd also said "I understand that a way to avoid answering a question is to attack us in the press. I'm well aware of that...And that doesn't work." Johnson said "You set this thing up totally biased. I could never really get into the full narrative. "
[...]
Then Todd turned to liberal Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy, who's used to softball interviews. Murphy was allowed to uncork long 180-word answers without Todd interjecting. Then Todd complained to Murphy, like they were teammates: "We have a major problem here. I mean, the-- the comfort level that the senator had to character assassinate the show and us-- in this-- in this bizarre, personal way I think shows you where we're headed. What do we do?"
So what went wrong here?
1) Graham never proves Johnson's assertion that Todd's opening was "biased" because he never quotes the opening.
2) Heputs words in Todd's mouth by claiming he really meant to say "please stop criticizing the heroic press." Can Graham read Todd's mind? Is there an ESP division at the MRC?
3) Graham praises Johnson for "talking about FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page texting about how they keep Trump from being elected," but he didn't mention that, as others have pointed out, it had nothing to do with Todd's question: "Again, what Todd is asking here is for Johnson to further explain his own quote about 'wincing' at the suggestion that military aid might be linked to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's willingness to investigate Joe Biden. This isn't some sort of "gotcha" question. Johnson said it! And recently!"
4) Graham engages in more purported mind-reading by claiming without evidence that Todd's "we" was in reference to "teammates" Murphy and himself. Apparently, Graham has never heard of the "editorial we" or any other common use of the word.
Of course, Graham is not being paid to be a good media critic -- just one continually on the attack.
How Is CNS' Managing Editor Being More Catholic Than The Pope Now? Topic: CNSNews.com
We've documented how CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman is such a right-wing Catholic that he thinks he can lecture the Pope Francis (who's too liberal for him) about Catholicism. Here's how Chapman has been acting more Catholic than the pope over the past couple months.
Sept. 4: Chapman touted how one Catholic school removed the Harry Potter book series from the school library because "they misrepresent magic as 'both good and evil, which is not true,' he said, and because some of the curses and spells are 'actual curses and spells.'"
Setp. 9: In a crossover with his gay-hating tendencies, Chapman huffed that the "gay media" praised a new Catholic cardinal, citing a right-wing Catholic website to claim that he was from a diocese that is "a hotbed of leftist politics and LGBT activism."
Sept. 13: Chapman was upset that the Catholic church in Switzerland would bless same-sex marriages in a special ceremony (but not actually marry them), ebven though "the Catholic Church teaches that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered" and cannot be approved under any circumstances."
Sept. 16: Chapman promoted a right-wing Catholic priest whining about Pope Francis' criticism of "rigid priests" and his lament that "I must honestly and painfully say that I am wearied from being scorned and demonized by you" despite not offering any evidence that the Pope actually knows who this priest is.
Sept. 17: Chapman gave an article to one of his favorite right-wing Catholics, the Francis-hating Carlo Vigano, to assert that the pope is provoking a schism over his support for something called the Amazon Synod. In August, Chapman touted right-wing attacks on the synod calling it an "apostasy" because it would discuss "ecology, economy and politics."
Sept. 19: Chapman gave space to another right-wing attack , this time on liberal priest James Martin because he advocates the view that people are born gay and generally doesn't hate the LGBT community to their (and Chapman's) satisfaction.
Sept. 26: Chapman featured a former bishop of Hong Kong complaining that "Rome no longer dares to criticize the Chinese government."
Ot. 7: Chapman dialed up another "apostasy" attack on the Amazon Synod from his other favorite right-wing Catholic, Cardinal Raymond Burke.
Oct. 9: Chapman pushed a claim from "Pope Francis' longtime atheist friend and interviewer, Eugenio Scalfari," who "claims that the Pope told him that once Jesus Christ became incarnate, he was a man, a "man of exceptional virtues" but "not at all a God." Chapman had to update the article to add a Vatican statement that the claim "cannot be considered as a faithful account of what was effectively said, but represent more a personal free interpretation of that which he [Scalfari] heard."
Oct. 17: It's another attack on the Amazon synod, a tangental one featuring one bishop accusing it of being funded with "blood money" because "money used to fund some of the groups participating in the Vatican's Amazonian synod came from the pro-abortion Ford Foundation -- whose Board members include former Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards."
You'd think Chapman would have enough to do running his "news" organization than to obsess over right-wing Catholic politics.
MRC Plays Whistleblower Whataboutism ... With Linda Tripp? Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has done a lot of whining about the whistleblower that got the ball rolling on President Trump's impeachment inquiry. It also went the whataboutism route via a hoary old Clinton Equivocation -- something the MRC did a lot of in 2016 to deflect from Trump's sleazy behavior. Rich Noyes wrote in an Oct. 2 item (boldface in original):
The anonymous whistleblower who complained about President Trump’s July phone conversation with the leader of Ukraine is being touted and toasted across the liberal media, but it was a far different story 21 years ago when a Pentagon employee named Linda Tripp helped bring Bill Clinton’s perjury and obstruction of justice to the attention of Independent Counsel Ken Starr.
For daring to undermine a Democratic President, the media had nothing but contempt for Tripp, who journalists disdained as a “pathetic, self-destroying older loser,” a “treacherous, back-stabbing, good-for-nothing enemy of the truth.”Time’s Margaret Carlson said Tripp “lost membership in the family of man” by recording her phone conversations with Clinton’s paramour, Monica Lewinsky. CNBC’s Geraldo Rivera said Tripp was a “betrayer on the order of Benedict Arnold,” while Newsweek tagged her a “friend-betraying Cruella de Vil.”
In an online poll, ABCNews.com put Tripp in the same league as mass butchers Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Even after impeachment, journalists felt comfortable using Tripp’s name as an epithet, as when NBC’s Katie Couric scolded George Stephanopoulos as “kinda creepy... a Linda-Tripp type,” because his memoir included too much personal information about Bill Clinton: “You’re airing all the dirty laundry, and some people just think that’s sorta gross.”
Noyes is whitewashing what Tripp did. She didn't reveal Clinton's "perjury and obstruction of justice"; she secretly recorded phone conversations with Lewinsky and falsely pretended to be her friend, and the only thing her tapes did is show that Lewinsky and Clinton had an affair. Tripp did, in fact, betray Lewinsky. Further, the Trump whistleblower exposing the president trying to link foreign aid to another country in exchange for dirt on a political opponent exposes a much more severe offense than Tripp exposing that Clinton had an affair.
Cleanup Mode, Part 2: CNS Tries To Retcon Mulvaney's Quid Pro Quo Admission Topic: CNSNews.com
Part of being a pro-Trump stenographer at CNSNews.com is having to clean up after President Trump or a surrogate when they screw up. We've caught them doing that already as the impeachment inquiry has progressed, and now they've done it again.
The big news from last week's press conference by acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney is that he effectively admitted that Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine because Trump wanted the country to investigate conspiracy theories that involved the 2016 election and Joe Biden's son -- then tried to walk back the claim shortly thereafter. But, of course, that's not the way CNS framed it.
Susan Jones' first article started by framing Mulvaney's remarks the way he wanted them framed -- by uncritically quotinghim saying there was no issue with Trump holding up aid to Ukraine because "President Trump is not a big fan of foreign aid, never has been, still isn't." The quid pro quo admission is buried far down and not highlighted. Sometime after the article was published, a note was added to the top of the article stating that "Mulvaney issued a statement pushing back on reports that he admitted to a quid pro quo involving Ukraine, i.e., U.S. military aid in exchange for Ukraine's cooperation with the ongoing 2016 election-corruption investigation"; it's not explained that those reports he's "pushing back" on are accurate and that he's now saying something different than his original claim.
Jones' next article tried to reframe things by criticizing the way Mulvaney was asked questions and parsing his answers to leave out the whole quid pro quo stuff:
Listen to these two questions asked of Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney on Thursday:
(1) "Can you describe the role that you played in pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens?" and (2) "Can you walk us through the meeting that President Trump was dangling over Vladimir Zelensky to have him right here at the White House? What were the preconditions of that meeting and was investigating Burisma one of them?"
Both questions assume guilt on the part of the Trump administration, but Mulvaney answered them.
The answer to the first question is "none," Mulvaney said. "I didn't have any--any--what was your question? What did I do to Ukraine or something? Nothing."
[...]
The reporter repeated: "The second question is about the meeting that was supposed to happen here at the White House between the two presidents. Could you walk us through the discussions for that meeting? What was on the table for a precondition, and was the investigation of Burisma ever brought up as a condition to meet with President Trump?"
"No," Mulvaney said. "Not to me and not to anybody I know of. I was never in a conversation that--that had the word Burisma in it...or the Bidens. That never happened with me in there.
Jones was pretty much the only person trying to make that argument -- even among her fellow right-wingers.
Melanie Arter gave it another shot in an Oct. 21 article, uncritically recounting Muvaney's "Fox News Sunday" appearance in which he continued to reverse himself on the quid pro-quo admission. It's straight, boring, badly formatted stenography that again buries the fact that Mulvaney is contradicting himself.
CNS is doing its readers a disservice by refusing to accurately and honestly report the news, instead serving as an extension of the White House press office. It hardly inspires trust in CNS' work.
MRC Went All In On Promoting Right-Wing Smear of Warren Topic: Media Research Center
When conservative writers spearheaded an attack on Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, the MRC couldn't wait to jump on it with its usual why-won't-the-liberal-media push our narrative spin. From an Oct. 7 post by Kristine Marsh:
Just like in 2016, the networks have done their best to ignore Democrat presidential candidate scandals and lies while harping on everything surrounding Donald Trump. After capitalizing on her grossly exaggerated Native American ancestry, frontrunner Elizabeth Warren has been caught in another lie, by her own words from twelve years ago. However, you wouldn’t know this if you only watched ABC, NBC and CBS.
In the last several months, Warren has been rehashing a story about how she was fired by a principal ending her first year of teaching, because she was “visibly pregnant,” several times. She told this story half a dozen times (it even made her autobiography), but most recently this past Wednesday.
[...]
But you wouldn't hear a peep about this story from the networks. The story has gained a lot of traction in conservative media circles this weekend, but so far the networks have been out to lunch.
The gist of this spin was that Warren is somehow lying about her past either now or in 2007 when she stated that she left her teaching job to go to law school -- school districts at the time typically fired or otherwise let go teachers who were pregnant. But Marsh would never admit that those "conservative media circles" are biased by failing to tell the full story. Indeed, she gleefully ads that "Only Fox News has been covering the story, so far"without acknowledging Fox's unambiguous bias.
The next day, professional liar Nicholas Fondacaro ramped things up by screaming that Warren "LIES" in his headline, touting how "The Washington Free Beacon caught her in another apparent lie. This time it was about allegedly being fired from a teaching gig for being 'visibly pregnant.'" Pushing the biased-media narrative, Fondacaro huffed that "Instead of reporting on Warren, ABC and NBC touted polls that showed a majority of Americans supported the impeachment inquiry into President Trump" but happiliy touted that "The only evening news program to cover Warren’s dubious claims was the Fox News Channel’s Special Report," pretending to be oblivious to Fox News' own bias.
Tim Graham similarly screamed "LIES" in his headline, declaring that "she's been lying about this tale -- repeatedly." Scott Whitlock -- perhaps understanding where his colleagues don't that no lie has been proven -- instead focused on "contradictory facts" and expressing pleasure that one report highlighted previous "scrutiny over her claims of Native American ancestry."
Clay Waters, meanwhile, got mad when the New York Times pointed out that it was a right wing-generated smear, complaining that "The paper aided her in changing the subject to a more general phenomenon of the time, when women lost jobs for becoming pregnant," ultimately whining without evidence: "It was actually a Socialist magazine, Jacobin, that first challenged Warren’s account, but the Times probably knows its liberal fanbase would have a reliably Pavlov-type reaction on Twitter when baited with the phrase 'conservative news site.'"
Two days later, Waters returned to rage at the Times again, this time for having "hurled the “sexism” card at the GOP for daring to show Warren in a lie about the circumstances of her leaving a teaching position in 1971," adding more fact-free speculation: "The press may be fighting her corner so fiercely on this because the contradiction lies across an ideological faultline, with Warren’s new story about a pregnancy-motivated firing more amenable to the Democratic feminist view of the world than her original story, in which she shouldered the responsibility."
Graham similarly wasn't done whining, returning to complain that a Washington Post columnist "took great exception to conservative news sources saying Warren 'lied' -- the opposite of how liberals insist the L-word needs to be used against Trump as often as possible." Graham, by the way, is an apologist on behalf of Trump's voluminous falsehoods.
But neither Graham nor anyone else at the MRC or the right-wing media has proven a "lie" on Warren's part, and you'll never hear Graham admit that inconvenient fact.
WND's Kupelian Serves Up More Factually Dubious Liberal-Bashing Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian's Oct. 9 column -- part of the sparsely read Whistleblower magazine's latest theme issue "The Lawless Ones," in which Trump is of course portrayed as the victim of purported lawlessness instead of the perpetrator -- is filled with ranting about "the left" and how its alleged "full-on assault on the very laws – moral, legal, economic and scientific – that govern and protect every aspect of our lives is transforming America right before our eyes."
Kupelian engages in the usual right-wing claptrap, complaining that President Trump is facing an "attempted coup d'etat with the 'Trump-Ukraine collusion hoax.'" Of course, Kupelian would never concede that if impeachment is a "coup d'etat," the impeachment of President Clinton was by definition also a coup attempt. He also wrote:
Democrats violate the laws of economics continuously, scheming to spend not just more money than America has, but more than the world has. The Green New Deal proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which every Democratic presidential candidate has signed on to, could cost as much as $93 trillion – about $600,000 per American household – says a study co-authored by the former director of the Congressional Budget Office.
In fact, as we've documented, that very former CBO director has admitted the $93 trillion number is bogus and based on assumptions that have nothing to do with the costs of transitioning to carbon-free electricity and transportation. Kupelian then plays his usual game of protraying people like himself to be morally superior to anyone whose views disagree with his own:
Clearly the left, including pretty much the entirety of the Democratic Party's national leadership and its presidential candidates, is now in outright rebellion against the laws of life itself – legal, moral, economic, religious and scientific.
Why?
Laws created by man – good laws, anyway – are based on largely self-evident moral law, God's law. Thus we make laws against stealing because it's wrong to steal, and we have laws against murder because murder is wrong, immoral, predatory and against God's law. And so on.
[...]
Violating and disregarding the law is not just something the left blindly does, as though it were stumbling into it. Rather, the left's very identity is tied up in ignoring the law – natural law, God's law, constitutional law, biological law, sound economics, and all the hard-won lessons of history. The law represents a higher standard than oneself and thus represents restraint. But the left doesn't acknowledge any higher standard than itself, nor does it tolerate any restraint, borders, limitations or prohibitions on itself – only on you. Lawlessness and rebellion, then, is the core identity of the radical left, which is obsessed with recreating the world in its own divine image and thus, in effect, rewriting the laws of life.
In short, the left is hell-bent on playing God.
Never mind that Kupelian's idea of morality is to use WND to spread lies and fake news about President Obama and bogus conspiracy theories about Seth Rich (which Kupelian and Co. still won't admit are bogus). And he wants you to think that he's a better person than you for doing so.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC vs. Google Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is going after the search-engine giant with some less-than-convincing weapons: "whistleblowers" with far-right sympathies and a Google-hating researcher using dubious data. Read more >>
China and Ukraine should investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, President Donald Trump said Thursday.
Speaking to reporters prior to heading to Florida, the president was asked what he hoped Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would do about the Bidens after his phone call with Ukraine.
“Well, I would think if they were honest about it, they'd start a major investigation into the Bidens. It's a very simple answer. They should investigate the Bidens, because how does a company that's newly formed, and all these companies – and by the way, likewise, China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine,” Trump said.
This invitation by Trump to a foreign government to investigate a political opponent didn't go over well, especially since the impeachment inquiry is centered on his attempt to get a different foreign government to investigate the same political opponent. So, a couple days later, CNS went into cleanup mode by suggesting that Trump was merely joking (though Arter didn't indicate he was doing so).
Thus, in a Oct. 7 article, Arter quoted a chief Trump defending trying to retcon and spin away Trump's remarks:
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopolous” on Sunday that he doesn’t think President Donald Trump was serious about China investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
When asked whether he thinks it’s appropriate for Trump to ask China and Ukraine to investigate Biden, Jordan said, “George, you really think he was serious about thinking that China’s going to investigate the Biden family?”
“He said it right there in public,” Stephanopolous said.
Jordan said Trump has been tougher on China than any other president, and the president wants to make sure China quits stealing America’s intellectual property and starts abiding by international trade norms.
Jordan said he wished there was the same outrage from the media when the DNC hired a foreigner who worked with the Russians to dig up dirt on the Trump.
The same day, Arter penned a different article by a different Trump defender pushing the same just-kidding talking point:
Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he doubts that President Donald Trump was serious when he called on China last week to investigate the Bidens.
“I doubt if the China comment was serious to tell you the truth,” Blunt said, adding that he hadn’t talked to Trump about his comments and doesn’t know what the president was thinking, “but I do know he loves to bait the press.”
Blunt said he baits the press “almost every day” to see what they will talk about.
Two days later, on Oct. 9, Arter eventually wrote about Biden's response to Trump's demand. Unlike with her original bit of Trump stenography, she allowed another side of the story to be told in the form of Trump tweeting in response to Biden.
It wasn't until a nearly week later, on Oct. 14 -- 11 days after the original story broke -- that Arter got around to quoting a Republicanb who disagreed with Trump's call for China to investigate the Bidens:
Asked whether it is appropriate for President Donald Trump to say that China should investigate the Bidens, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said, “Of course not.”
In an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Cruz said, “Of course, not. Elections in the U.S. should be by Americans, and it's not the business of foreign countries, any foreign countries, to be interfering in our elections.”
[...]
“Listen, foreign countries should stay out of American elections. That's true for Russia. That's true for Ukraine. That's true for China. That's true for all of them. It should be the American people deciding elections. I don't know what Rudy's been saying. I do know, though, that we should decide our elections. It should be the American people making those decisions,” Cruz said.
That's life as a pro-Trump stenographer at CNS. And even then, she wasn't so dedicated to the job that she could be moved to figure out how to spell George Stephanopoulos' name correctly.
Newsmax Co-Hosts Democratic Debate In Iowa Topic: Newsmax
Back in 2011, Newsmax tried to host a Republican presidential debate that would have been moderated by ... Donald Trump (whom Newsmax had been building up as a possible presidential candidate). Even with a former CNN executive producing the debate and a motley group of conservatives endorsing it (Steve King, anyone?), doubts about whether Trump would keep his word to endorse the Republican nominee and not run as a third-party candidate kept candidates away (only two committed to taking part) and the debate was canceled.
Now, Newsmax is putting together something a little smaller in scale: a town hall in Iowa this week for Democratic presidential candidates co-sponsored by a libera-leaning Hispanic group.
An Oct. 18 Newsmax by Bill Hoffman article proclaimed:
On Thursday, October 24th, Newsmax TV and League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) will co-host a two-hour Presidential Town Hall meeting featuring top Democratic candidates vying for the party’s nomination.
The LULAC-Newsmax Town Hall will include candidates Bernie Sanders, Beto O’Rourke, Tulsi Gabbard and Julian Castro. The program will air live from the Des Moines Events Center in Iowa.
The Town Hall will begin at 8 p.m. ET, and Newsmax will air a pre-Town Hall starting at 7 p.m. ET. The program will open with a message from Domingo Garcia, LULAC’s national president. The co-moderators for the Town Hall will be Newsmax TV’s John Bachman and Spectrum News 1’s Annette Garcia.
This Presidential Town Hall will focus on issues of importance to all Americans and the impact policies will have for Hispanic voters in Iowa and across the nation.
The event is expected to draw more than 800 people, and will be attended by more than 500 eligible and registered Latino voters from the Des Moines area. Iowa is the home to an estimated 73,000 Latino voters.
Because none of the questions directed to the candidates are known in advance, the Presidential Town Hall promises to be lively and unpredictable, and a potential game-changer in the Democrats’ quest for their nominee.
Hoffman also did a follow-up interview with LULAC president Domingo Garcia playing up how the town hall "will show Americans that the Latino vote is truly up for grabs."
The stakes are a bit lower this time -- it's earlier in the primary process than its 2011 attempt, and it has a partner different enough from Newsmax to at least plausibly claim some bipartisan motive. (Fun fact: LULAC's Iowa chapter called for King's resignation over his "many years of hateful, divisive and racist statements.") Still, only four candidates, all of whom (with the possible exception of Sanders) are considered lower-tier, have signed on.And Newsmax TV is not exactly a broadcasting powerhouse, though perhaps a better choice than its 2011 broadcast partner, the sparsely watched ION Television.
But low stakes come with low expectations, and this might just be the best way for Newsmax to learn how to do one of these things.
MRC Gives Shepard Smith A Less-Than-Fond Farewell From Fox News Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is so far to the right that it thinks anyone who continually spout right-wing, pro-Trump propaganda is a "liberal." Which is why, despite treating Fox News with kid globes, it has longdespised news anchor Shepard Smith for actually living up to the fair-and-balanced slogan the channel had for years. An Aug. 29 post by Mark Finkelstein, reacting badly to MSNBC host Joe Scarborough saying "In Shep We Trust," summed up the prevailing anti-Shep attitude at the MRC: "On everything from downplaying the problems associated with illegal immigration, to defending the Clintons against charges of profiteering, to suggesting President Trump bore responsibility for the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, Smith reliably toes the liberal line."
Suffice it to say that when Smith abruptly announced he was leaving Fox News, the MRC was all too happy to help the channel shove him out the door. It didn't start that way at first; Curtis Houck's Oct. 11 post announcing Smith's departure was largely straightforward and free of snark, though he did insist that Smith was "a straight news anchor with a penchant to lean leftward that ingratiated him with the anti-Fox crowd and liberal media elites." But the bashing began soon afterward -- a Twitter thread later that day rehashed the MRC's hatred of Smith, snarling: "'Straight news'? 'Just the facts'? Don't buy that myth."
The MRC's chief Smith-hater, Tim Graham, could only sputter whataboutisms in responding to people who lamented Smith's departure. He ranted in an Oct. 12 post:
NPR's longtime loathing of Fox News approached Maximum Shamelessness on Friday night when NPR anchor Ari Shapiro suggested that Shepard Smith abruptly leaving Fox looked like "a purge based on purity." As if NPR has a pile of conservatives on staff for balance?
[...]
The notion that Shep Smith didn't take a side is just as ridiculous as The New York Times when it used the motto "without fear or favor."
Graham's Smith-bashing (and deflectionary whataboutism) got even more unhined in an Oct. 18 post:
The Drudge Report is passing along an article by Gerry Smith at Bloomberg hitting the predictable and hyperbolic note that somehow, Chris Wallace is the only remaining example of "news" at Fox News after Shepard Smith suddenly resigned. The headline carried a Big Gulp of hyperbole: "Meet the New Face of the Trump Resistance at Fox News."
Pointed questions to this administration don't equal #Resistance. This is the same Wallace that thought CNN's White House Resister Jim Acosta "embarrassed himself" by yelling at the president about a caravan of illegal immigrants.
Smith's experts all lined up with the CNN mantra that Fox can't handle the "truth" and "realism" is defined as insisting Trump is coming mentally unglued.
Then again -- given that the MRC has never objected to it -- Graham probably thinks that Wallace was being fair and balanced whwen he gave Republican politician Paul Ryan a birthday cake in 2012.
WND Adds Gay-Hater Scott Lively As Weekly Columnist Topic: WorldNetDaily
Professional gay-hater Scott Lively has long been a friend of similarly gay-hating WorldNetDaily, touting his discredited book "The Pink Swastika" and backing him in a lawsuit over his anti-gay activities in Uganda. WND has published columns by Lively for years, but not until recently did it make him a regular weekly columnist.
Lively declared at the start of his Aug. 5 column: "This is the first of a weekly column I will write for WND after several years of publishing occasional articles here. I consider WND to be the bravest and most biblically grounded conservative news and opinion source on the internet, and it is an honor to become a regular contributor."
The resdt of his column was Lively's usual anti-LGBT claptrap, ranting against "the LGBT threat of personal destruction to those who oppose them." Of course, Lively advocates the personal destruction of those who oppose him; he supported a proposed law in Uganda that would criminalize homosexuality (but denies he supported a death-penalty clause that was ultimately dropped).
Lively served up more of the same in later columns:
On Aug. 12, he touted how the Bible listed homosexuality among "capital crimes," hastily adding: "This is NOT to endorse or promote capital punishment of homosexuals under the letter of today's secular laws, even though the implicit moral principles of God's law-above-the-law remain constant and binding." Still, he huffed that "homosexuals have accurately been called "deviants" from time immemorial, and why authentic Christianity never condones or accommodates homosexuality or any of the sexual sins God condemns."
On Aug. 19, he lamented that "we've passed the point of no return in the collapse of Judeo-Christian civilization," adding: "Our 'Donald Trump reprieve' may continue into a second term, but even so, the most central aspects of the eventual Antichrist government per Revelation 11:7-8 – homosexuality and polytheism – continue to advance globally under his reign." He also announced he had moved to Memphis to own a Bible college.
On Aug. 26, he argued that "societal acceptance of homosexual perversion" was a "greater sin" than abortion and that "as much as I still believe Donald Trump is God's man in the White House – like a warts-and-all Old Testament-style figure from the book of Judges – he is deliberately facilitating, not opposing, the LGBT agenda within his MAGA plan."
On Sept. 9, he huffed about "iconic former Christian strongholds that have been conquered by the LGBTs" and described Pete Buttigieg's husband as "Buttigieg's sodomy partner in a false 'marriage.'"
On Sept. 23, he insisted that real Christians must discriminate against the LGBT community and that idea of homophobia (which he clearly suffers from) is merely an example of "the left's abuse of language."
On Oct. 7, he called transgenderism "self-evident mental illness" anbd promotes a book he wrote that "offers my Bible-based analysis of the centrality of the LGBT movement and agenda in the last days and incorporates all major references to homosexuality from Genesis to Revelation. I assert that so-called 'gay theology' is the heresy of the last days warned about by the Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 2 and that the consistent warning of Scripture is that widespread social acceptance of extreme sexual perversion (most especially homosexuality) is always a harbinger of the wrath of God."
MRC's Double Standard On Anonymous Whistleblowers, Part 2: The Oppo-Research Link Topic: Media Research Center
Aswe'vedocumented, the Media Research Center loves to complain about anonymous sources in the media -- unless those anonymous sources are making claims that advance the MRC's conservative agenda. This hypocrisy continues over the whistleblower who exposed President Trump's quid-pro-quo phone call with the president of Ukraine, whom the MRC has attacked for remaining anonymous (even though the whistleblower's claims have largely been corroborated).
In an Oct. 9 post, Geoffrey Dickens gushed over a claim from the Washington Examiner's Byron York that the whitleblower had a "significant tie to one of the Democratic presidential candidates, complaining that "So far ABC and CBS have spiked the story, even with President Donald Trump tweeting about it on Tuesday evening." But Dickens didn't tell his readers that York's sources for this claim are themselves anonymous; he cites three anonymous people "with knowledge of what was said" by the intelligence community's inspector general, Michael Atkinson, over the situation, with no on-the-record confirmation.
Of course, fear of being called out on double standards wasn't going to stop the MRC from running with this story. Kristine Marsh got excited when "CBS was the only network to concede that their own reporting corroborated the President's claims" -- though she didn't note whether CBS had on-the-record confirmation of the claim. (Funny how "liberal media" outlets like CBS suddenly become credible when they report something the MRC thinks helps its right-wing agenda.) Marsh also didn't mention the fact that York's sources are anonymous.
Kyle Drennen touted how "as reported by Washington Examiner’s Byron York, the whistleblower having a “political bias” and “professional relationship with one of the 2020 candidates” was something revealed by Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson during recent congressional testimony," complaining that the whistleblower's "attorney denied the connection, but didn’t offer any actual evidence to 'refute' the charge."
When another Washington Examiner article reported that the Joe Biden was the candidate the whistleblower had a relationship with, the MRC pounced on that too, with Curtis Houck turning in the standard MRC "the liberal media won't report this right-wing claim so they're obviously biased" article. Scott Whitlock whined on Oct. 14 that "The fact that the CIA whistleblower had a “professional tie” to Joe Biden still hasn’t garnered any interest on the network morning and evening newscasts. Three and a half days after it was first reported by The Washington Examiner, ABC, CBS and NBC yawned at the story."
But, again, that claim is anonymously sourced; the Examiner article cites only "intelligence officers and former White House officials" -- specifically, a "retired CIA officer," "an experienced CIA official" and a "former Trump administration official." Neither Houck nor Whitlock told their reader that the Examiner's claims are anonymously sourced.
The MRC will never admit that the Examiner is a conservative outlet and, thus, effectively an opposition-research arm of the Republican Party (like the MRC is). Remember, the MRC has a deal with Examiner columnist Paul Bedard to do a promotion of an MRC item every week as the "Mainstream Media Scream."
CNS Still Putting Pro-Trump Spin On Syria Withdrawal Topic: CNSNews.com
We've documented how CNSNews.com put a pro-Trump spin on the first week of coverage over President Trump's decision to remove U.S. troops from northern Syria, thus exposing Kurds in the region to attack from Turkey (which is exactly what happened). That spin continued largely unabated in the second week of coverage.
An Oct. 14 article by Patrick Goodenough noted that Trump's withdrawal was a "widely-criticized decision, but devoted his article entirely to Trump defending his decision and not mentioning what, exactly, those who opposed the decision were criticizing. That was joined by a Goodenough article highlighting further U.S. troop withdrawals "in the face of Turkey's military onslaught," not mentioning that the withdrawals are what's prompting the military onslaught in the first place; it's not until the 22nd paragraph that Goodenough mentions one key reason Trump's decision was criticized, that it could allow ISIS to reconstitute itself. An article by James Carstensen highlighted European Union criticism of Turkey's invasion, but made almost no mention of the U.S. withdrawal that facilitated it.
Meanwhile, Melanie Arter served up a third article featuring Republican Sen. Rand Paul's support of Trump's withdrawal, and Susan Jones played whataboutism in an article highlighting Democratic criticism of Trump's "precision airstrikes" in Syria in response to the country's "gassing of civiliians" while criticizing Trump's withdrawal, not noting the significant differences between the two situations.
On Oct. 15, Goodenough highlighted U.S. sanctions on Turkey "in a bid to pressure its Islamist government to change direction on policies seen as inimical to U.S. interests." It's not until the 21st paragraph that he notes Trump's withdrawal "has drawn flak from critics who argue it amounts to abandoning those Kurdish allies, risks strengthening the hands of Russia and Iran in Syria, and could result in a resurgence of ISIS."
An Oct. 16 article by Arter uncritically repeated another Trump defense of his withdrawal. Goodenough, meanwhile, served up pro-Trump spin on a letter Trump sent to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan under the sycophantic headline: "Trump Urged Erdogan Not to be ‘a Tough Guy’ and ‘a Fool.’ Erdogan Ignored Him and Went Ahead"; Goodenough made no mention of the fact that Trump's letter has been almostuniversallypanned as unprofessional and disrespectful and, thus, utterly ineffective as a tool of diplomacy (Erdogan himself threw the letter away).
The next day, Goodenough repeated a claim from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that Trump could adjust his withdrawal decision, claiming that "My experience with the president is that he makes decisions and then absorbs data and facts, evaluates situations"; no mention of why Trump doesn't absorb data and facts before making a decision. Arter did more Trump stenography in another article, repeating claims from White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley's claims that the media is lying about the withdrawal giving Turkey a green light to attack Syria.
Surprisingly, CNS also published an Oct. 17 op-ed from Hans Bader criticizing the withdrawal, highlighting that the Turkish invasion in the face of the U.S. withdrawal has resulted in the deaths of "hundreds of people" and that "the Kurds relied on the Trump administration’s claims to their detriment," adding: "Our shameful treatment of the Kurds is one of many examples of American politicians being unreliable in their dealings with foreign peoples. That discourages people in foreign lands from helping and cooperating with the United States." But Bader also made sure to play whataboutism, referencing what he called "the Obama administration’s even more disastrous military intervention in Libya," which is what got his op-ed published at CNS.
Seemingly to offset that, CNS also published twomore columns by Pat Buchanan cheering the withdrawal.
Meanwhile, the pro-Trump spin continued: Arter touted how Vice President Mike Pence announced that "the United States and Turkey have agreed to a ceasefire in Syria, and Turkey will allow for the withdrawal of YPG forces from the safe zone" -- no mention, of course, of the fact that the decision effectively lets Turkey get away with its invasion -- though a follow-up by Goodenough points out that the cease-fire "applies only to one relatively small section of the strip of Syrian territory that Ankara wants as a buffer zone" and quotes a Turkish official admitting that the country got what it wanted under it.
Arter did, however, add a late-Friday article featuring Republican Sen. Mitt Romney's criticism of Trump over the withdrawal.
MRC Complains Its 'Right-Wing Media Machine' Is Called Out, Offers Only Whataboutism In Response Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham and Brent Bozell huff in their Oct. 2 column:
CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy is warning the public about a "right-wing media machine" that has demonstrated "zero willingness to abide by any traditional rules of engagement." That shameless "machine" opposing President Trump's impeachment and removal is, of course, composed of Fox News, talk radio, conservative websites and an "army of trolls" on the internet.
We're all shameless manure spreaders in the eyes of CNN (and its shrinking band of die-hard fans). "The next few months will test the power of this right-wing media machine," Darcy says. "To succeed, it will not only have to suspend reality for its audience, but also feed the millions who watch, listen, and read a counter-narrative to fill actuality's void." Trump's survival depends on this reality-denying machine, Darcy insists: "If Trump sees support on Fox or talk radio erode, it would help shift the tide and give Republicans wiggle room to turn on him."
Darcy, who graduated from college in 2011, is perhaps young enough to have no idea what the left-wing media machine — especially CNN — did to protect and defend Clinton, his lying in court under oath, his lying to the public about his affair with "that woman, Miss Lewinsky" and his attempts to instruct others to lie on his behalf. At a recent panel discussion in New York, Darcy's colleague Brian Stelter yelled that Clinton "was crushed by the media," just "destroyed by the press corps!"
Wolf Blitzer should really take these youngsters out to lunch and tell them how CNN fiercely smeared Clinton's opponents and denounced itself for having reported anything about Clinton's scandalous behavior.
At no point do Graham and Bozell actually address what Darcy said, let alone rebut the claim of a "right-wing media machine" or admit he's a major part of it. Indeed, their MRC has been engaging in machine tactics by aggressivelydefending Trump in the face of an impeachment inquiry, even embracing conspiracy theories in the process. It's also so eager to make money off defending Trump that it's boldly proclaiming that the facts don't matter.
Instead, they play whataboutism, cherry-picking anecdotes about what the claim the media allegedly did in 1998 during President Clinton's impeachment. One typically lame retort: "Clinton wasn't indecent; the media were. In the Trump era, CNN insists this president is a morally unfit tyrant and the media are the heroic enforcers of fact, oozing integrity in every article and interview."
Graham and Bozell then unironically write: "It's easy to portray your opponent as operating a nefarious 'media machine.' It's easy to say your opponent is 'weaponizing' information or specializes in 'disinformation.'" Instead, that statement leads to a rant that "nobody should put up with the leftist media's duplicity."
But Bozell and Graham never explain why anyone should have to put up with theirs.
Media Research Center writer Elise Erhard went on a drag queen-bashing tirade in an Oct. 9 post, in response to a health insurance company commercial that was "uplifting" until it showed "a drag queen reading and dancing for laughing children":
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Part of being a pro-Trump stenographer at CNSNews.com is having to clean up after President Trump or a surrogate when they screw up. 
When conservative writers spearheaded an attack on Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, the MRC couldn't wait to jump on it with its usual why-won't-the-liberal-media push our narrative spin. From an Oct. 7 
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CNSNews.com writer Melanie Arter served up another one of her 
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The Media Research Center is so far to the right that it thinks anyone who continually spout right-wing, pro-Trump propaganda is a "liberal." Which is why, despite treating Fox News with kid globes, it has 
Professional gay-hater Scott Lively has 
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The Media Research Center's Tim Graham and Brent Bozell huff in their Oct. 2 
