After Trashing Inaccurate Election Polls, MRC Touts Dubious Finding Based On ... Trump's Pollster Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center spent the days immediately after the presidential election gloating that the polls showing a Biden blowout were wrong. Jeffrey Lord proclaimed that "the media and the polls blew it. Big time," and Tim Graham devoted an entire column to ranting that pollsters "are damaging the legitimacy of our democracy, not helping it. When they’re this off base, they lead to both sides of the divide feeling the system is rigged. What's obviously rigged are these polls, easily categorized as an alternative reality. It’s hard not to see intentional rigging, not some kind of accidental bias."
A new post-election poll from the Media Research Center, conducted by McLaughlin & Associates, shows 36 percent of Biden voters were NOT aware of the evidence linking Joe Biden to corrupt financial dealings with China through his son Hunter. Thirteen percent of these voters (or 4.6% of Biden’s total vote) say that had they known these facts, they would not have voted for the former Vice President.
Such a shift away from Biden would have meant President Trump would have won the election with 289 electoral votes.
[...]
The net effect: 13.1% of these voters (4.6% of Biden’s overall vote) say they would not have voted for Biden if they had been properly informed. Applying this to the most closely-contested states, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin would today all be in the Trump column, giving the President 289 electoral college votes and a second term. (This also assumes Alaska, where the current margins are not close, is also called for the President).
Obviously, the MRC is not going to mention that McLaughlin has long been a notoriously unreliable pollster -- receiving a C/D rating from FiveThirtyEight.com, perhaps best known for a 2014 poll for then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor that showed him up by 34 points two weeks before a Republican primary against opponent Dave Brat; Brat ended up defeating Cantor by 11 points.
But there's one other thing the MRC is not telling you: As we documented when the MRC used the company to advance another right-wing anti-media narrative, McLaughlin & Associates worked for Trump's re-election campaign. That's a blatant -- and undisclosed -- conflict of interest.
Despite bering on record denouncing the entire polling process as shoddy and biased, MRC put out a statement from Brent Bozell proclaiming the results of its own poll as "indisputable fact":
“It is an indisputable fact that the media stole the election. The American electorate was intentionally kept in the dark. During the height of the scandal surrounding Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings, the media and the big tech companies did everything in their power to cover it up. Twitter and Facebook limited sharing of the New York Post’s reports, and the liberal media omitted it from their coverage or dismissed it as Russian disinformation.
“Now we know the impact of that cover-up. 4.6% of Biden voters say they would not have voted for him had they been aware of evidence of this scandal. This story would have potentially changed the outcome of this election. The media and Silicon Valley were fully aware of this, so they actively tried to prevent it from reaching the American public. The American people deserved to know the truth; now it’s too late.”
It cannot be true that all polls are inaccurate except the ones bought and paid for by the MRC. But that's the fiction the MRC is going with.
UPDATE: The promotion of this story at the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, similarly censored the fact that McLaughlin was Trump's pollster and failed to explain why this poll should be trusted when it has attacked the entire polling industry and shoddy and inaccurate.
CNS Published Op-Ed By Admitted Criminal Before Election Topic: CNSNews.com
How desperate was CNSNews.com to see President Trump get re-elected? It published an op-ed by an admitted criminal that it pulled from a far-right conspiracy site.
The Oct. 27 op-ed was by Michael Flynn, the onetime Trump national security adviser who admitted to lying to the FBI, though he has since been trying to retract that admission. CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, falsely claimed that Flynn was "exonerated" after the Trump Justice Department decided to stop pursuing the case. His rant is a pretty standard right-wing screed:
Never should our nation, our president, or any family or individual be so viciously targeted, maligned, smeared, and threatened as we have all felt for the past four years and counting. This unconscionable and seditious direct attack by ideologically driven elitists strikes at the will of the American people who ensure our very freedoms through their vote and daily selfless actions.
We cannot allow the opposing leftist agenda to continue enabling the fleecing of America, peddling connected-influence for cash, exploiting American innovation for an elitist self-serving purpose, wielding official power and influence as a means to ensure personal gain while exercising mass control, and selling out our American ideals for ideologies to pursue what the leftists would like as “common and normal.”
These all diminish the power and purpose inherent in “we the people” who constitute our republic.
I ask that you stand with me today in renouncing this betrayal of trust that has burdened our nation and breached the foundation of our American ideals.
Needless to say, CNS made sure not to mention Flynn's criminality.
At the end of his op-ed, an editor's note stated, "A version of this article originally appeared on The Western Journal." That's the website that seems to be running WorldNetDaily these days,and it's a descendant of the right-wing nonprofit journalistic group that WND founder Joseph Farah created back in the 1990s. It was so into pushing right-wing conspiracies that it got blacklisted by social media, and it has been trying to act somewhat more legit under a slightly altered name.
CNS sullied what little journalistic reputation it has by publishing this, and Trump lost anyway.
WND's Elizabeth Farah Still Invoking Christianity To Get Trump Re-Elected Topic: WorldNetDaily
In her husband's stead, WorldNetDaily's Elizabeth Farah has been keepingup the website's far-right poliltics, including sycophantic love of President Trump and vicious hatred of Joe Biden.
Farah kicked off her Oct. 30 video by declaring that a Biden presidency will bring "wickedness, tyranny, destruction that is unimaginable, at least to me." She then went off on an article by pastor John Piper bashing Trump by pointing out that since he "models self-absorbed, self-exalting boastfulness, he models the most deadly behavior in the world. He points his nation to destruction," and that Trump's support of anti-abortion policies aren't enough to warrant his support. (WND columnist Michael Brown also attacked Piper over this.)
In her lengthy response -- the video runs an hour and 40 minutes -- Farah declared that Piper's comments "to not only be unconvincing, but -- I'm going to say it -- incoherent, dangerous, harmful and without proper and sufficient Biblical foundation," adding that "if Piper's influence wit Christians affected the outcome of this election negatively for donald Trump's re-election, I believe Piper would be guilty of doing great harm." She accused Piper of "erasing the distinction between greater and lesser sins, which is a form of Christian or Biblical relativism. ... I'm asking myself, how many dead babies outweigh a boastful comment on Twitter by our president?" The ranting continued:
Secondly, Piper's reasoning the manifold sinfulness of the entire Democratic Party leadership and its platform, and he doesn't even address Joe Biden's corruption and wickedness. Effectively, he turns a blind eye to their lying, their slander, covetousness, corruption, fraud, theft, oppression, prejudice, boastfulness, manipulativeness, conspiracy, sexual immorality as well, lawlessness, blasphemy against God, and you know -- I mean, that's a short list. So this party that has these extraordinary list of sins and Joe Biden its titular head -- so long ago, I believe, we saw that they turned very much to the dark side.
Farah listed a group of Democratic politicians and huffed: "All these men and women, to a greater or lesser degree, have been complicit in attempting a coup d'etat of our country. they've been bearing false witness, devising conspiracies, slandering, perverting justice, speaking lies and hypocrisy, oppressing and persecuting innocent people in their vicious desire to circumvent the law and will of the American people who put Mr. Trump in to office, all to achieve the overthrow of our government and to eject President Trump from his presidency under the color and fiction of law."
But isn't that same thing what Farah's WND did to Barack Obama throughout his presidency? Where's her sincere repentence for that? Nowhere that we've seen.
Farah laughed as she noted that Trump "tweets things that would fall under the Sermon on the Mount admonitions by our Savior, to say it lightly. Then she played dumb about Farah's amorality: "I don't really know about Donald Trump's supposed vulgarities and his boastulness and his so-called divisiveness."
Responding to Piper's contention that "It is naive to think that a man can be effectively pro-life and manifest consistently the character traits that lead to death — temporal and eternal," Farah huffed, "the most pro-life president since there was such a thing needed. Mr. Piper, give me the name of one president in our history that was more effectively pro-life than Donald Trump. ... After the appointment of three pro-life justices, I believe that Donald Trump's tweets have not led to more death than the life that will be -- that has been lost and the live will be saived if he continues in office, assuring good things in the courts."
Farah then conducted a Nov. 2 interview Farah did with the messianic rabbi who was at one time WND's would-be cash cow, Jonathan Cahn.
Cahn asserted that Trump's election meant that "God gave us a window ... an extension of time," asserting that "it's not about the personality, it's not about the tweets, it's about the issues," which for both Cahn and Farah boils down to abortion. Cahn's feed cut out during Cahn's rant that Trump is "turning back death" while Democrats have "pledged to strike down the Hyde Amendment." If Trump doesn't get re-election, Cahn asserted, it could bring "not only a fall of the nation but also judgment."
Farah once declared that it's "Christian moral relativism" for Christians not to support Trump, to which Cahn responded by depicting Trump as a jerkass fireman who "might break a few things but he's going to save your house." Farah then went the Divine Donald route: "Going on your analogy, if I were literally going get my life saved from drowning, would I stop to say, are you a Sermon on the Mount kind of a guy, do you turn the other cheek? I want to make sure before I allow you save me and my children who are drowning next to me that you are right with God." She later proclaimed that Trump is "God's blessing on America."
Cahn also ranted against the proposed Eqality Act, misleadingly insisting that it means "government is officially not going to recognize gender, male and female. ... Once this goes through, forget about Christian bakers, forget about Christian florists, forget about Christian photographers, that's all gonna be wiped out. Also, there will be men, boys in girls' rooms and in girls' sports. ... And it may come down to telling ministries and churches -- ministries, you must hire those who are living blatantly against God for your ministry, which could mean the destruction of ministry."
Needless to say, neither of them think Trump might have been sent by God as a harbinger, not a blessing.
MRC Tries To Dismiss Revealed Identity of 'Anonymous' Author Topic: Media Research Center
When the New York Times published a 2018 op-ed by anonymous Trump administration senior official who claimed he was part of a group in the White House keeping President Trump from acting on his worst instincts, the Media Research Center hated it. Nicholas Fondacaro whined that the author "pompously painted them self as part of a secret, superhero-like team in the White House keeping the wildly unstable President from harming us all," Kyle Drennen cheered how Megyn Kelly "blasted the article for trying to 'subvert the President' and 'dripping with sanctimony,'" and Jeffrey Lord argued that the Times was "a Deep State co-conspirator against a sitting President of the United States" for publishing a "self-righteous idiot."
A few days before the election, the anonymous author revealed himself as Miles Taylor, then the deputy chief of staff (and later chief of staff) to then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Unsurprisingly, the MRC cranked out a bunch of posts on that too.
Fondcaro returned to whine some more, insisting that Taylor's original allegations against Trump were "unsubstantiated," that he was a "serial liar" since he denied he was Anonymous, and that his first interview after revealing himself "was filled with unsupported accusations of 'Nazi-like' policies and delusions of grandeur with comparisons to the authors of the Federalist Papers."
Rich Noyes insisted Taylor was a "nobody" and a "low-level flunkie." Kayla Sargent complained that Taylor later took a job at Google, "as if we needed any more proof of Google’s leftist leanings." Joseph Norris groused that "the timing of this announcement was suspicious. Instead of reprimanding him for having lied to CNN on-air about whether he was Anonymous, they've brought Taylor on to further bash Trump," adding that during an interview CNN "did not ask for evidence of the allegations, documents, conversations, or witnesses to bolster his claims about the President." Curtis Houck sneered that Taylor "became 2020's media equivalent of Al Capone’s vault."
Tim Graham quickly cranked out a column calling the Taylor reveal an attempt by the media to distract from Hunter Biden's alleged scandal, denigrated him as "someone barely old enough to be elected to the Senate," huffed that his anonymity was a "smelly veil" and complained that the book Taylor wrote wasn't given away: "Taylor’s publisher, Hachette, churned out a first print run of 500,000 copies. Such public-spirited anonymity was going to make some people a tidy profit."
But none of Taylor's MRC detractors offered any evidence that Taylor was wrong, which is really all you need to know -- and which is why Noyes returned to attack the Times for originally describing Taylor as a "senior administration official," huffing that it used "those magic words to confer a sense of knowledge and authority on its otherwise anonymous sources who may hold a position few would consider 'senior.'" He further complained that "A Nexis search of Times articles shows the phrase 'senior administration official' or 'senior White House official' was used 1,104 times from January 20, 2017 through October 29, 2020."
Noyes didn't tell you that his employer has a wildly inconsistent record on the use of anonymous sources.
CNS' Jeffrey Whines Biden's Victory Speech Interrupted A Football Game Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey is a bit of a football fanatic -- so much so that, for some unexplained reason, today's CNS front page includes a link to a 2012 column by him gushing that the Princeton-Harvard game that year was "football as it was meant to be."
But that love -- on top of his apparent seething hatred for all things liberal -- led him to post what may already be the worst take on Joe Biden's defeat of President Trump. He actually felt the need to write an entire article to petulantly whining that Biden's victory speech interrupted a football game:
Former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris decided to give victory speeches in Wilmington, Del., on Saturday night, causing NBC to break away from its broadcast of the football game between No. 1 Clemson and No. 4 Notre Dame to cover the speeches.
The game was in the second quarter--and Biden could not even wait until halftime.
Did Biden believe it would increase his audience to interrupt the broadcast of a contest between the No. 1 and No. 4 college football teams in America?
Did Biden--a self-described devout Catholic--know that Notre Dame was playing Clemson?
Notre Dame and Clemson fans--and fans of college football wanting to watch the contest between two of the leading teams in the country--were forced to switch to a cable channel to continue watching the game as Harris and Biden interrupted it.
That's the caliber of "news" coverage we've sadly come to expect from CNS. Expect much more petulance as the Biden administration proceeds.
MRC Does An Ad For Biden Accuser's Book Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center never cared about Tara Reade and her sexual misconduct accusations against Joe Biden -- it hypocritically used her as a cudgel to bash Biden, though it smeared or outright censored women who made similar (or worse) accusations against Donald Trump. So it's unsurprising that the MRC basically did an ad for Reade's new book. Scott Whitlock gushed in an Oct. 31 post:
After Reade went public in March to assert that Biden forcibly penetrated her while a Senate staffer in 1993, the networks, as well as CNN and MSNBC, buried the story. Since protective journalists don’t want to tell the truth, Reade is telling her own story in a new book called Left Out: When the Truth Doesn’t Fit In.
For anyone who wants to know the depth of corruption and collusion between the liberal media and the Democrats, this book is a must read. Activist and actress Rose McGowan put it this way in the introduction to Reade’s book: “Fake news isn’t only what’s written, it’s what’s purposely omitted. When it comes to observing the cabal of liberal media titans working against Tara, the only word that comes to mind is sad.”
Whitlock is surely pleased that Reade is parroting the MRC's own rhetoric about "liberal media titans." He followed with lots of blockquoting from Reade's book and a declaration that "Reade ended with a message of hope, despite the trauma she suffered, despite the corruption of the mainstream media."
Needless to say, Whitlock is not going to tell you about Reade's history of manipulative and deceitful behavior, nor the dozens of Biden staffers who dispute Reade's accounting of events. Nor did he breathe the names of E. Jean Carroll and Amy Dorris, who are merely the latest Trump accusers.
Whitlock concuded his ad with the expected link-filled sales pitch: "The e-book version of Left Out is available now and can be ordered here and on Amazon here. The hardcover will be available January 1, 2021. (Also available for pre-order here.) If you want the truth that journalists have hidden, read this book."
Whitlock will never say the same about any Trump accuser. Hypocrite.
Fake News: WND Spreads Lie About Biden Topic: WorldNetDaily
Remember how WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian keeps insisting that WND publishes the truth, despite all evidence to the contrary? Well, we caught WND lying again. An anonymously written Oct. 26 article claimed:
During a virtual event over the weekend, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden added to a long list of gaffes, misidentifying the current president.
"This is the most consequential election in a long long time, and the character of the country in my view is literally on the ballot. What kind of country are we going to be four more years of George, uh, George, uh …"
His wife, Jill Biden, sitting beside him, muttered "Trump" under her breath.
President Trump took notice.
"Joe Biden called me George yesterday. Couldn't remember my name," he wrote on Twitter. "Got some help from the anchor to get him through the interview. The Fake News Cartel is working overtime to cover it up!"
Biden apparently was thinking of George W. Bush, president from 2001-09, or George H.W. who was in office from 1989-93.
WND is lying. As actualnews outlets reported, Biden was talking to interviewer George Lopez. And there's no evidence Jill Biden actually "muttered 'Trump' under her breath."
Kupelian once huffed, "the truth – what a concept!" He might want to try it sometime, particularly if he wants WND to survive.
MRC Frets Over Newspaper Endorsements Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center, it seems, can't agree on the importance of newspaper endorsements for presidential candidates -- even from post to post.
On Oct. 20, Scott Whitlock raged against the very first presidential endorsement made by the country's largest newspaper, USA Today, because it was for Joe Biden:
Given that USA Today has never, technically, endorsed a presidential candidate before, the paper touted this as historic and important. But, as the opening paragraph of the 1775 word pronouncement noted, just four years ago the paper demanded that Americans not vote for Trump. That, of course, is very close to endorsing Hillary Clinton.
[...]
[Editor-in-chief Nicole] Carroll went on to promote USA Today as ideologically diverse: “The 10-member Editorial Board includes conservatives, liberals and centrists.” Yet the decision was “unanimous.”
So not one member, even among the "centrist" or "conservative" wing of the USA Today editorial board supported Trump? Yes, this all sounds very “non-partisan.” This is the same USA Todaythat has begun producing “fact checks” for the paper, including one in July that declared it “false” to say the Democrats started the Civil War and founded the KKK. (They absolutely did both. Here's my fact check of the fact check.)
In fairness, credit to USA Today write an op-ed responding to the editorial.
The paper closed the editorial by insisting the endorsement was a one-time deal: “We may never endorse a presidential nominee again. In fact, we hope we'll never have to.” However, once you start endorsing Democrats, it can be hard to stop.
By contrast, Tim Graham spent an entire Oct. 26 post dismissing the importance of the New Hampshire Union Leader, a longtime conservartive newspaper, endorsing Biden. He started by attacking CNN's for getting something wrong regarding the endorsement, then admitting he was right after all:
CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza tried to hype a newspaper endorsement with this headline: "This influential newspaper just broke a 100-plus year streak of endorsing a Republican."But it was false.
The New Hampshire Union Leader endorsed the Libertarian ticket in 2016. Cillizza actually included this fact in his article, that the newspaper touted Gary Johnson and Bill Weld as "a bright light of hope and reason."
How can CNN bungle the facts so badly?
Graham then complained that Cillizza's statement that "It's hard to overstate the influence of the Union Leader in conservative circles" was "false" because it had endorsed Chris Christie in the 2016 Republican primary and not Trump. We would remind Graham that his boss, Brent Bozell, supported Ted Cruz in 2016 before he and the rest of the MRC did the big Trump flip. Does he think his boss lacks influence?
When the Union Leader editorial pointed out that Trump was "forcing a reexamination of what words like "Republican" and "conservative" even mean, Graham went all ranty:
It is absolutely a "reexamination" of what "conservative" means when a "conservative" newspaper complains about the national debt: "Since Trump took over, the national debt has exploded by more than 7 TRILLION dollars." So the answer to that problem is....Joe Biden? As if the Democrats in the House did NOT pass spending bills exploding the debt? As if Biden isn't proposing a massive spending increase? At least they acknowledged a blue wave would be a disaster and urged split-ticket voting. But one might call the editorial page there "formerly conservative."
PS: Brent Baker -- who vacations in New Hampshire -- pointed out the Union Leader still endorsed Republicans for the U.S. House and Senate -- which may also demonstrate their endorsements don't matter.
We would also remind Graham that Terry Jeffrey, editor in chief of the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, is such a Trump fanboy that he can't quite bring himself to criticize the person who's most responsible for running up that $7 trillion debt.
The MRC flipped back to caring about newspaper endorsements three days later, when Geoffey Dickens complained about all the newspapers endorsing Biden:
With just five days to go, polls show a tight race in many of the key battleground states. But one place where the race isn’t tight: newsrooms across America. The country’s newspapers have absolutely thumped Donald Trump in their official endorsements, favoring Joe Biden by a count of (88) to (7).
Out of a total of (95) newspapers that have offered an editorial on who their readers should vote for, 88 (93 percent) of them have endorsed Joe Biden. Only seven (The Las Vegas Review Journal, Santa Barbara News-Press, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, The Spokesman-Review, The New York Post, The Washington Times and Boston Herald) have advised voting for Trump.
Dickens avoided mentioning the relevant that all of those newspapers have an explicitly conservative agenda and/or conservative owners.
CNS Touts Pre-Election GDP Numbers To Help Trump Topic: CNSNews.com
The Trump-fliuffers at CNSNews.com put in one last pre-election effort to boost his campaign, managing to get a whopping four articles out of a relatively good-looking GDP number.
"GDP Grew at Record 33.1% in 3rd Quarter," proclaimed the headline of Susan Jones' Oct. 29 article, complete with photo of a grinning, thumbs-up Trump to reinforce the message that he should be given credit. Jones reinforce it further in the copy:
The key indicator of an economic rebound comes at an opportune time for President Trump, just days before the presidential election.
“This record economic growth is absolute validation of President Trump’s policies which create jobs and opportunities for Americans in every corner of the country," Tim Murtaugh, Trump's campaign communications director, said in a statement released by the White House[.]
Jones followed that with a full five paragraphs of Murtaugh shilling for his boss.
That was followed by an anonymously written article that tried to dunk on Nancy Pelosi for criticizing the economy the day before the GDP number came out:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, appearing on MSNBC on Wednesday, said that “now we’re in worse shape” in response to a question about the “markets falling.”
The next day, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its report for the 3rd quarter of 2020, stating that real Gross Domestic Product grew at an annual rate of 33.1 percent during the quarter.
Craig Bannister checked in with a blog post about Trump-loving Fox News personality Geraldo Rivera complaining that Trump won't getcredit for the GDP growth because "Big Media is so toxic." Bannister also gave space to Rivera to spin away the growth in coronavirus cases in the U.S. because his critics "they should realize that the virus has surged in other countries, too – and they can’t blame Trump for that."
Finally, CNS sent an intern to Capitol Hill to ask Pelosi, "The economy grew at an annual rate of 33.1 percent in the third quarter. Does President Trump deserve any credit for that?" Pelosi responded with the argably more accurate point that the CARES Act, which pumped billions into the economy, deserved the credit for the GDP post. CNS loves to send interns to pester members of Congress.
Bozell's Conspiracy Theory: Polls Showing Biden With Big Lead Were Faked Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center' Brent Bozell is not taking the possiblity that Joe Biden may win the presidential election very well. He issued a statement concocting a conspiracy theory that polls about the election were "deliberately wildly wrong" in order to "suppress the vote" for Trump:
“While votes are still being counted and the outcome of the election is undetermined, there is one thing we can say with certainty: once again, the polls weren’t just wildly wrong, they were deliberately wildly wrong.
This was no mistake. These were the same pollsters who predicted the same thing four years ago, day after day after day: there was no way Donald Trump could win. It was clear then that they were attempting to suppress the vote. The pollsters denied it, of course.
Here we go again four years later. Same pollsters, same prediction, day after day after day: Trump could not win. This time it’s indisputable. They did it on purpose. They knew exactly what they were doing. Just as with Clinton four years ago, they were firmly vested in Biden’s election.
There needs to be a federal investigation. This is clearly election tampering. At the very least, this is a violation of federal election laws.
So many of these pollsters worked for the national ‘news” media.’ It’s yet another reason why Americans should never believe these hucksters again.”
Needless to say, Bozell offers no evidence to back up his paranoid conspiracy theory.
Bozell also issued a video claming that the MRC is "going to show the supression that took place," as well as other conspiratorial claims to be made in an upcoming "explosive report" that will purport to prove that "the national news media stole the 2020 campaign."
CNS Does Damage Control For Trump Chief of Staff Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com worked until the very end to play damage control and cleanup on behalf of President Trump's re-election.
On Oct. 25, Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows got himself into a spot of bother when he admitted on CNN that "We are not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas." That didn't go over well -- a fact reinforced by CNS, which ignored the remark at first. It took nearly two full days after Meadows said it for CNS to acknowledge it, apparently requiring that long to come up with a way to spin it. That angle -- blaming Joe Biden for taking Meadows out of context -- debuted in an article by Susan Jones:
Giving a speech near his home in Delaware Monday, Vice President Joe Biden said, "Look, yesterday White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows went on television to admit to the country his administration wasn't even trying -- trying anymore to deal with the pandemic." He said, and I quote, 'We're not going to control the pandemic.'"
Yes, Meadows used those words. But clearly, Meadows did not mean the Trump administration is giving up.
Here's what Meadows actually told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, in context:
[...]
So clearly Meadows meant that the contagious virus is impossible to control, absent a job-killing lockdown, until therapies and vaccines are able to keep it at bay. Meadows did not mean the Trump administration doesn't care about controlling it.
Jones further complained that "Biden made that comment after reporters asked Mark Meadows about his 'we're not going to control the pandemic' remark on Monday morning," in which he did his own damage control.
This was joined by an article from Melanie Arter attacking MSNBC host for noting Meadows' remarks (and referencing Jones' attempt at damage control):
MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday compared the Trump administration’s approach to the coronavirus to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt saying during his re-election campaign that we’re not going to win WWII.
On MSNBC’s “Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,” O’Donnell was referring to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadow’s comments over the weekend, saying that we’re not “we’re not going to control the pandemic. We’re going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas.”
As CNSNews.com reported, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden twisted Meadows’ words, claiming that Meadows “went on television to admit to the country his administration wasn't even trying -- trying anymore to deal with the pandemic."
That's basically all CNS had on this. It seems even they didn't think it was all that defensible.
AAPS' Dubious Doc Shills For Trump And HCQ, Attacks Fauci Topic: Newsmax
Dubious doctor Jane Orient of the fringe-right Association of American Physicians and Surgeons spent her Oct. 28 Newsmax column touting President Trump's "America First Healthcare Plan" -- despite the fact that it's not an actual replacement for the Affordable Care Act and Trump hasn't really tried to implement it beyond a few executive orders -- and fearmongering about what she claims Joe Biden will do to healthcare.
Orient also gushed over how Trump "mentioned hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) favorably" as a treatment for coronavirus -- not a surprise, since we last saw her touting a fake study purporting to defend the efficacy of the drug --But she didn't mention that Trump apparently did not take HCQ during his recent bout with the virus.
Also unsurprisingly, Orient attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci for committing the sin of insisting on rigorous medical standards:
Dr. Anthony Fauci has been very negative about early COVID-19 treatment as "unproved," and Biden has declared Trump as being "totally irresponsible" for taking HCQ for a time until last May.
At age 80, Dr. Fauci himself may not be in his position much longer, but he exemplifies the mindset of federal bureaucracies.
He was in charge early in the AIDS epidemic. In 1987, when patients were dying of pneumocystis pneumonia, activists pleaded with Dr. Fauci to issue guidance that suggested prophylactic treatment with Bactrim, a safe sulfa drug, based on studies done in transplant patients in 1977.
Dr. Fauci refused, insisting on the "gold standard" of randomized controlled trials (RCTs).
Since the National Institutes of Health refused to fund trials, activists raised the money themselves. By the time the results were ready, two years later, 17,000 patients had died needlessly. Since efforts to develop an HIV/AIDS vaccine have so far failed, the standard of care is now pre-exposure and post-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP and PEP).
In a 2020 re-play with COVID-19, Dr. Fauci disregards the experience of thousands of physicians who treat patients worldwide, demanding RCTs.
In referencing Fauci and AIDS, Orient is parroting an attack from Harvey Risch, a Yale professor turned HCQ obsessive. But Risch's advocacy has been discredited.
MRC Gives Dubious Anti-Google Researcher Another Platform Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center absolutely loves Google-hating researcher Robert Epstein for his conspiracy theories about Google secretly gaming search results to steer users toward Democrats and against Republicans -- never mind that others have discredited him. So with another election coming up, it called on him again in an Oct. 13 item by Corinne Weaver:
The social media researcher who warned about Google’s power to shift the election said that the company may be focusing on a new solution: the United States Senate.
Dr. Robert Epstein, senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, told the Media Research Center that Google is “now focusing most of their vote shifting power on the Senate races, where big-margin outcomes will be hard to contest.” Thirty-five seats in the Senate are up for election on Nov. 3, 2020. Out of those races, 23 seats currently belong to Republicans.
Epstein theorized that Google had the power to “mobilize the base supporters of Democratic candidates to register to vote and then to vote; they can discourage some Republican voters from registering to vote or voting.” He wrote that the company had “at least 9 million undecided voters they can still play with.”
[...]
Why would Google put so much effort into manipulating votes in order to flip the Senate? Epstein said, “That will guarantee a Democratic Senate, which will leave a Trump presidency powerless.”
Needless to say, Weaver was silent about how Epstein's previous research was based on just 21 undecided voters and that he employed dubious methodology in determining the alleged bias of a given website. But he's saying what the MRC wants to hear to advance its war against social media and "Big Tech," so Weaver isn't going to bother herself with such details.
Kupelian Lies Some More About WND Reporting The Truth Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian loves to tell the lie that WND reports the truth, usually as a ploy to get people to give him money to keep WND afloat. He did both things again in a Nov. 1 column that was also sent out to WND's mailing list.
First, he declared that "No matter how this election charade ends, the media landscape will be forever changed. Most so-called “mainstream journalists” have disgraced themselves beyond repair, having proven they are no better – and no different – than Pravda, the pretend “newspaper of record” in the former Soviet Union that was actually just a craven, lying, servile propaganda operation for that totalitarian regime’s ruling elite." Of course, WND has been quite the craven, lying, servile propaganda operation for the Trump regime, but Kupelian won't tell you that.
Then it was time for Kupelian to play the victim:
WorldNetDaily fully intends to remain a key part of America’s truth-proclaiming free press in the days, months and years to come. Indeed, our motto since 1997 – long before most of the rest of the online media pack even existed – has been “A Free Press for a Free People.”
Unfortunately, I’m sorry to say powerful forces are hard at work attempting to destroy us. Recently, three major international online advertising companies that had long served ads on WND – our main source of revenue and sustenance – all suddenly decided, at the same time, to cancel WND in the run-up to the most important presidential election of our lifetimes. The ad companies blacklisting WND – namely, TripleLift, AppNexus/Xander and Teads – all cited vague breaches of their terms of service (i.e. “any content that is illegal or otherwise contrary to any applicable law, regulation, directive, guideline or order, including without limitation any misleading, unethical, obscene, defamatory, deceptive, gambling-related or hateful content,” etc.). You get the idea: If they don’t like your politics, you’re cancelled.
Even worse than losing key ad companies: A few months ago Facebook suddenly decided to massively suppress WND’s traffic on their platform – which forms a key part of our overall reader engagement, since WND has close to a million Facebook friends. Why is Facebook massively suppressing WND? No reason given, despite repeated attempts to find out from them. As a result, WND’s overall traffic, and therefore our revenue, is down significantly and painfully from what it was a few months ago.
[...]
So WHY do they do this to WND?
It’s not because we are “conspiracy theorists” or “white supremacists” – or as one of the three advertising companies that just blacklisted us alleged, because we engage in “hate speech.”
It’s because we dare to publish the truth, something basically forbidden in today’s leftwing-dominated news and information culture.
That’s right, the truth – what a concept! The truth about Joe Biden’s decades-long family corruption, serial plagiarism, continual lying, dismal half-century track record, growing dementia and more. The truth about Kamala Harris being rated by the nonpartisan GovTrack.us as the most leftwing member of the U.S. Senate – further left than Bernie Sanders (not to mention being one of the most dishonest, vacuous, insincere, abrasive, condescending and excruciatingly unlikeable candidates for high office in our lifetime). The truth about the Chinese coronavirus – about what real science actually says about masks, about lockdowns, about medications like hydroxychloroquine, about school openings, about the importance of early treatment and much more. The truth about Hillary Clinton being the actual villain at the heart of the whole Trump-Russia collusion hoax. And much more – including the truth about America’s “mainstream media” having morphed fully into the militant, continually lying propaganda wing of the Democratic Party.
All this, however, was a setup for Kupelian making his most dire comments about WND's future in the hope that you'll send some cash his way:
Please help us. We have been hit hard. It’s very difficult for us to pay our terrific and dedicated journalists, all of whom have taken major pay-cuts and missed paychecks entirely.
I won’t prolong my request: If WND dies, the world will go on, but (and hopefully you would agree) it will have lost something valuable and needful. And I can promise you, the Left – from Big Tech and the “mainstream media” to the Democratic Party and their rioting street goons – would be overjoyed to gloat over the demise of America’s original, pioneering, independent online news source, now in its 24th year.
[...]
One final thought: Whatever happens in Tuesday’s election, the good people in America are going to need to stick together. As I said, even if Trump wins, the left will go crazy. (Yeah I know, they’re already crazy – but I mean crazy violent.) If Biden wins … well let’s not go there. Either way, expect the media to lie their heads off like never before.
But if you want honest news reporting by journalists who honor God, America and the Constitution, please help us out now, so we can be there for you in the months and years to come. In other words: Let’s help each other.
Kupelian won't tell you that the last time WND tried that, it gave away a cybercurrency to donors that turned out to be something of a scam.
MRC Bogus Trump-Coverage 'Study' Watch Topic: Media Research Center
Election season is almost over, which means it's time for yet another bogus Media Research Center "study" of media coverage. Whine away, Rich Noyes:
Four years ago, the Big Three broadcast evening newscasts tried to destroy Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign with historically negative press coverage. This year, those newscasts are doubling down, with coverage that is even more hostile to the Republican. Meanwhile, his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, is enjoying mostly positive coverage and a friendly media that’s virtually ignoring all topics — such as the scandal swirling around his son, Hunter — that might harm his prospects.
For this study, the MRC analyzed all coverage of President Trump and former Vice President Biden on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts from July 29 through October 20 (including weekends). This is the same time period examined by the MRC four years ago, in advance of that year’s election.
This time around, it’s obvious that the networks are pouring their energy into confronting and criticizing the President, not equally covering both campaigns. During the twelve weeks we examined, Trump received 839 minutes of coverage, compared to just 269 minutes of airtime for Biden, a three-to-one disparity.
Even more lopsided, our analysts found ten times more evaluative statements about Trump than Biden: 890 comments about the President, of which 822 (92.4%) were negative, vs. 68 (7.6%) that were positive. Note that these totals do not include statements about the candidates’ prospects in the campaign horse race (i.e., standings in the polls, chances to win, etc.), nor does it include partisan statements from the candidates or their surrogates.
It focuses only on a tiny sliver of news -- the evening newscasts on the three networks -- and falsely portrays it as indicative of all media.
It pretends there was never any neutral coverage of Trump. Indeed, the study explicitly rejects neutral coverage -- even though that's arguable the bulk of news coverage -- dishonestly counting "only explicitly evaluative statements."
It fails to take into account the stories themselves and whether negative coverage is deserved or admit that negative coverage is the most accurate way to cover a given story.
It fails to provide the raw data or the actual statements it evaluated so its work could be evaluated by others. If the MRC's work was genuine and rigorous, wouldn't it be happy to provide the data to back it up?
Noyes went on to whine further that the media pointed out negative things Trump did:
The topics tell the story: Trump’s coverage during these crucial 12 weeks has been dominated by the coronavirus (424 minutes — 284 minutes spent on policy and 140 minutes on the President’s own diagnosis), his comments about mail-in voting (87 minutes) and the ongoing protests in major American cities (63 minutes). Notable controversies include The New York Times’reporting on Trump’s apparently stolen tax returns (23 minutes), and the hotly-disputed Atlantic story about the President supposedly calling U.S. war casualties “suckers” and “losers” (19 minutes).
The newscasts are airing practically nothing about controversies that could jeopardize Biden’s lead in the polls. Topping the list: the former Vice President’s age and health, with 10 minutes, 33 seconds of coverage — a tiny fraction of the airtime devoted to President Trump’s health following his coronavirus diagnosis (140 minutes).
The criticism that Biden and his running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris, would pursue left-wing policies outside of the mainstream was given a mere five minutes, 43 seconds of airtime over the past 12 weeks, or barely two percent of the Democrat’s total coverage.
Noyes is, in effect, saying that he wants false balance -- that positive and negative coverage should be balanced, regardless of whether that reflects reality. At no point does he argue that any of the negative Trump coverage regarding his tax returns or his handing of the coronavirus pandemic wasn't deserved; he wants positive coverage about him (and negative coverage about Biden) to be manufactured -- and, more to the point, that it reflects the partisan priorities of the MRC. And because he's so far to the right, Noyes thinks that accurate reporting about Trump is "liberal":
But the basic premise of our democracy is that voters are presented the facts about both sides, and then make up their own minds based on their own values and their own views of the candidates. What we’ve seen in this campaign, and over the past four years, is the establishment media choosing to abandon its traditional role and become combatants on behalf of liberal politicians.
Noyes is a combatant on behalf of Trump, which makes his defense of this bogus "study" even more suspect.
The Media Research Center spent the days immediately after the presidential election gloating that the polls showing a Biden blowout were wrong. Jeffrey Lord proclaimed that "the media and the polls blew it. Big time," and Tim Graham devoted an entire column to ranting that pollsters "are damaging the legitimacy of our democracy, not helping it. When they’re this off base, they lead to both sides of the divide feeling the system is rigged. What's obviously rigged are these polls, easily categorized as an alternative reality. It’s hard not to see intentional rigging, not some kind of accidental bias."
How desperate was CNSNews.com to see President Trump get re-elected? It published an op-ed by an admitted criminal that it pulled from a far-right conspiracy site.
In her husband's stead, WorldNetDaily's Elizabeth Farah has been 
When the New York Times published a 2018 op-ed by anonymous Trump administration senior official who claimed he was part of a group in the White House keeping President Trump from acting on his worst instincts, the Media Research Center hated it. Nicholas Fondacaro 
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey is a bit of a football fanatic -- so much so that, for some unexplained reason, today's CNS front page includes a link to a 2012 
The Media Research Center 
Remember how WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian 
The Media Research Center, it seems, can't agree on the importance of newspaper endorsements for presidential candidates -- even from post to post.
The Trump-fliuffers at CNSNews.com put in one last pre-election effort to boost his campaign, managing to get a whopping four articles out of a relatively good-looking GDP number.
The Media Research Center' Brent Bozell is not taking the possiblity that Joe Biden may win the presidential election very well. He issued a 
CNSNews.com worked until the very end to play damage control and cleanup on behalf of President Trump's re-election.
Dubious doctor 
The Media Research Center 
WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian 
Election season is almost over, which means it's time for yet another bogus Media Research Center "study" of media coverage. 
