Swamp Creature: WND's Kupelian Again Hypocritically Lashes Out At Non-Right-Wing Media Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aside from being tasked to help keep WorldNetDaily alive through its ongoing financial crisis, David Kupelian's stock in trade these days is to pretend that WND always tells the truth and has never published misinformation or falsehoods while attacking other media outlets for doing those very things. So much so, in fact, that a recent edition of WND's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine is themed "Guardians of the Swamp," when it claims the "total corruption of what was once a vibrant news establishment is powerfully and insightfully explored." As if WND has ever been associated with being insightful.
The centerpiece of that issue was a rage-filled essay by Kupelian, published at WND proper on Dec. 8. He repeated a lot of right-wing media tropes:
Joe Biden "not only is obviously disintegrating mentally, is wrong on virtually every issue, and lies continually, but also, as recent but largely suppressed evidence proves, is one of the most spectacularly corrupt politicians in modern American history.
Kamala Harris is "one of the most thoroughly unlikable, abrasive, condescending, greedy, grasping, shallow and insincere candidates in a generation."
Trump, "the sitting president of the United States, who rescued the nation’s economy and destroyed ISIS, has since early 2016 been repeatedly compared by major U.S. news organizations to genocidal monster Adolf Hitler." Kupelian seems to have forgotten that his organization repeatedly compared President Obama to Hitler and other Nazis.
And there was also this:
Think of it: Hillary Clinton literally fomented a four-year attempted coup d’etat against Donald Trump, to whom she had lost the 2016 election, seriously interfering with and undermining his presidency. Why? To divert FBI and DOJ attention away from her own criminal wrongdoing – illegally deleting 33,000 emails after they were subpoenaed, a serious felony for which anyone else would be prosecuted and imprisoned. Yet the media, after front-paging the Trump-Russia collusion story virtually every day for years, simply moved on once their big story was proven to be the greatest political hoax in U.S. history. No apologies – none.
Kupelian went on to compalain that "MSNBC’s top brass determined it would make more money if it served the far left," while failing to admit that Fox News' top brass determined it would make more money if it served the far right. He then delved into coronavirus conspiracy-mongering, claiming that major media's alleged links to China are why "Credible reports from courageous Chinese virologists and other experts with intimate knowledge of the origins of the 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus, who claim China intentionally created the virus in a lab, are ignored or dismissed as insane 'conspiracy theories' and banned from social media platforms in the U.S." Perhaps that's because those reports are not, in fact, credible and actual scientists who have looked into it found no evidence COVID-19 was a lab creation.
Kupelian then lectured:
One final factor that makes all these various elements come together to create a biased, blind, amoral, dishonest, but yet strangely self-righteous press: Hate.
Members of the establishment media tend to revile Donald Trump for being a genuine outsider who dared to invade their beloved realm – known as “the swamp” to outsiders – and for his promise to “drain” it of the monumental corruption, self-dealing and privilege that comprise life within the swamp. The media also hate him for championing a strongly conservative-Christian agenda – for example, appointing conservative Supreme Court justices who threaten their beloved abortion-on-demand culture. And of course, they detest Trump for publicly and continually exposing them for exactly what they are.
Hate is much more than it seems. It’s a transformative emotion that almost magically enables people to be horrendously wrong, yet to feel they are right – even supremely righteous and virtuous (for example, the mobs burning down America’s cities). In that “altered state,” down appears to be up, immoral seems moral and, most basically, evil masquerades as good.
Biased, blind, amoral, dishonest, but yet strangely self-righteous and, above all, hateful? Kupelian is projecting once again, for he and WND are guilty of all of those things. And Kupelian has masqueraded as a "good" journalist when he was sucking up to Trump, a profoundly amoral man, lying to people about Trump's nature to push a political agenda.
As much has he likes to complain about the media being "guardians of the swamp," Kupelian is a swamp creature too -- a guardian of Trump's swamp as well as the journalistic train wreck WND has become.
NEW ARTICLE: Financial Non-Accountability At CNS, Part 2 Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor Terry Jeffrey spent the rest of 2019 the way he spent the previous months: complaining about the federal deficit while laboring to avoid putting blame on the Republican president and Senate that were largely responsible for it. Read more >>
Matt Philbin lost it when the pro-breastfeeding La Leche League expressed supporting a tweet for "chestfeeding" as part of a declaration of inclusiveness, sneering that it was "an attempt to get out ahead of the trans bullies," going on to whine that the organization "blocked your humble author" on Twitter before he could link to the tweet.
Boise, Idaho, you can kiss your inclusion in March Madness next spring good-bye. The NCAA prefers a different version of inclusion for its host sites, one that doesn't ban males from participating in female sports like Idaho does. College sports fans, trans inclusion is rolling down the tracks and little can stop it.
SB Nation Outsports reports that the NCAALGBT hasn't yet rescinded its agreement for NCAA Tournament games in Boise, but the sport's governing association is in the tank for transgenders.
[...]
NCAA postseason sports sites will only be awarded to states with the LGBT seal of approval. You may also see some very masculine dudes on college women's basketball teams in the near future. As well as some token females on the benches of men's basketball teams at Duke, Villanova and other affirming academic institutions.
Idaho is one of the few states with the guts to stand up to the unholy alliance of the NCAALGBT juggernaut, but it may get shot down in the courts.
[...]
As if social justice activism hasn't ruined people's enjoyment of sports enough, it's just a matter of when college sports become more defined by the letters NCAALGBT than by biological gender and notions of fairness.
Purporting to review the HBO film "Transhood," about transgender children, Elise Ehrhard declared that parents who allow their children to explore their gender identity are engaging in "child abuse," and added this sneering description of a transgender teen:
Fifteen-year-old "Leena" is a boy who thinks he looks and sounds like a girl because he takes hormones, cakes on make-up and dresses in feminine clothes. He decided he was a girl at age 7 after his parents' divorce. Like many male-to-female transgenders, his make-up, mannerisms and looks are so "perfect" and cliched in their hyper-femininity that it is painful to watch as a real woman. His voice is clearly the voice of a transgender individual rather than a biological woman. At the end of the documentary, Leena gets castration surgery.
This was followed by a post from Gabriel Hays cheering on right-wing attacks of HBO over the film.
Alexander Hall cried censorship when YouTube deleted two anti-trans episodes of right-wing activist Candace Owens' show for violating its anti-hate policy; Hall framed the shows as "defending traditional gender differences" and was very light on the full content on those shows. He then defended one author who wrote an anti-trans book titled "Irreversible Damage," insistring that it "is not a scathing condemnation of transgender individuals, but rather a discussion about the lifelong effects of serious medical interventions that she says are occurring 'too fast with too little oversight.'"
Lindsay Kornick took the job of writing derisively about actor Ellen Page's announcement that she is transgender and now known as Elliot Page:
In non-Corona or election-related news, actress Ellen Page has officially come out as a queer trans person. Somehow, this still isn’t the most bizarre thing Page has ever said.
On December 1, Page took to Twitter to post a letter regarding this “coming out” as it were. The letter opens with the actor stating that “I am trans, my pronouns are he/they and my name is Elliot.” How one can be both “he” and “they” is confusing enough, but the message continues. “He” spends a paragraph thanking and praising the trans community for their courage, generosity, and “ceaselessly working to make this world a more inclusive and compassionate place.” I assume that means an “inclusive and compassionate place” unless you disagree with them.
Of course, this wouldn’t be an Ellen Page screed, or rather an Elliot Page screed, if there wasn’t more political posturing.
Kornick returned to complain about the TV show "Big Sky" for having a transgender character who says she knew she was transgender when she was quite young:
Most four-year-olds can barely tell you what street they live on, but Jerrie could apparently tell people s/he was a girl. Even worse, at fourteen, s/he was ready to really become a girl despite being born a boy. Considering a majority of children experiencing gender dysphoria grow out of it by puberty, this is probably the opposite message this show should send to people. That’s not to mention the fact that Jerrie’s definition of being a girl is liking dresses and dolls. Just last month, we were forced to claim Harry Styles could still be manly while wearing a dress, and yet Jerrie must be a girl if s/he liked them as a kid. And that says nothing of all the tomboy girls of the world.
(Yes, the MRC was quite triggered by Harry Styles in a dress.)
Ehrhard came back to grumble about the "woke gender agenda" of the "Save By the Bell" reboot, what with its "contemporary left-wing obsessions with LGBTQIA (particularly trans), race, and radical feminism," with a particular focus on a transgender character named Jamie: "Lexi has a crush on the straight male football player, Jamie. Lexi and Jamie reveal their attraction for each other and kiss at the end of the series. The viewer is supposed to pretend this is a male-female kiss. Actually, it is a homosexual relationship between two biological males, one of whom is taking hormones, dressing up in girl's clothes and 'acting' female. Lexie will never have the chromosomes or biological parts of a woman no matter what surgeons do. It is an insult to biological woman to pretend otherwise."
Likewise, Karen Townsend was quite upset that Netflix's "raunchy animated series" "Big Mouth" introduced a transgender character: "It’s too bad but these days, a transgender character is the new requirement in television and online series. Every series must have a trans character to be sufficiently woke, even a show about middle school kids."
Sergie Daez's head exploded while contemplating the idea of a transgender male is competing on "RuPaul's Drag Race":
One reason why right-wingers don’t like the wokes is because they make simple things extremely confusing. For instance, take gender. One is either male or female. But the wokes, with their infernal LGBTQ agenda, wanted to shake that simple formula up. Now the world has transgenderism, with transgender people being born as males, but later decide that they should actually be females, and vice versa. The premise is confusing (particularly for the sense of sight), but that’s nothing compared to a person called Gottmik. Prepare to be mind-boggled.
According to thewrap.com, makeup artist Gottmik (pictured) became the first ever transgender male drag queen on the show RuPaul’s Drag Race. Gottmik stated that “he” is “a trans man who is changing the face of drag.”
That’s not the only thing he changed. To make it entirely clear, since Gottmik is a trans man, “he” was born a woman, but now he's a man dressing up as a woman in drag.
If you find this hard to understand, don’t reproach yourself.
[...]
It’s guaranteed that Gottmik will win the hearts of all left-wingers while obliterating the minds of all right-wingers.
Newsmax's Ruddy Gushes Over Trump, Defends His Refusal To Admit Reality Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy began his Dec. 20 column with some serious sucking up to his friend, President Trump:
Donald Trump's late father Fred loved quoting a poem by Edgar Guest, one he kept framed on his desk.
It read, in part, "Success is failure turned inside out – The silver tint of the clouds of doubt, You can never tell how close you are, It may be near when it seems so far; So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit – It's when things seem worst that you must not quit."
For Fred's son, the key to winning was always about never quitting, even to the bitter end.
It's no surprise then that our President is fighting to that very last moment.
His vote challenge has been reasonable after an unusually close race in six states where he differed with Joe Biden by 1% of the vote or less.
A Newsmax poll conducted by McLaughlin & Associates found that 67% of Americans agreed it was fair for the President to seek a recount and challenge in those states.
Ruddy didn't mention that McLaughlin worked as the pollster for Trump's re-election campaign, so its objectivity and accuracy can be reasonably questioned.
Ruddy then defended his outlet's treatment of the election results: "Despite some media claims and even a skit on Saturday Night Live, Newsmax has never denied the official results. We called all contested states for Biden and described him as President-elect as of December 14th, when the Electoral College voted him so." Then, it was time to defend Trump's doomed efforts to overturn the election, with a side shot a one of his right-wing media competitors:
However, the major decision, including one made by Fox News, to crown Biden President-elect before the contested results were final, smacks of bias.
All major media stood down in making a call when Al Gore made his vote challenge in 2000. Why did Trump not have the same courtesy?
Trump has been a victim of media malpractice from the start.
A key factor why Biden took the battleground states with razor-thin margins was due to the media's suppression polls. These polls showed Biden winning in a landslide, dampening donor and voter support for Trump.
The Fox News Poll was particularly harmful, whose final polls had Biden winning by 10 points (he won the popular vote by 4.)
Ruddy then pontificated: "So where does Trump go from here? Well, the answer is upward." He further pontificated:
After his presidency, Trump will also become an unequalled global political and media force.
Trump will be surprised how much influence he has as a former President, without the limitations placed on being the actual President.
My late friend Ed Koch was seriously depressed after leaving New York's mayoralty. He later admitted to me that he became more influential outside of office as a media and political powerhouse.
Trump will do the same, but much more.
John Fund's recent column on Trump's successful presidency quotes David Shribman, a historian at Carnegie Mellon University, who thinks Trump will be "remembered in history as the most consequential president in three-quarters of a century and the most significant one-term president in nearly 175 years."
It's a good judgement for Fred Trump's son, a winner in every sense of the word.
Ruddy made no mention of the biggest immediate challenge his own operation faces: libel and defamation lawsuits. The day before Ruddy's column was posted, Newsmax walked back its attacks on Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, two companies Newsmax has accused -- falsely, it appears -- of manipulating votes to make sure Trump lost. Perhaps that's where his focus should be now instead of on Trump-fluffing.
What Else Did WND's Zumwalt Get Wrong In His Libelous Column? Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've already documented how WorldNetDaily columnist James Zumwalt may have drawn a lawsuit to himself and WND through a Dec. 2 column in which he repeated unsubstantiated, defamatory claims about Dominion Voting Systems offical Eric Coomer, who has sued numerous right-wing media outlets and personalities -- including Joe Oltmann, whose claims about Coomer Zumwalt uncritically repeated. But let's take a closer look at that column to see what other questionable claims he made. Like this one:
Other circumstantial evidence will follow from the testimony of a U.S. Navy veteran and data scientist in Pennsylvania.
"I personally observed USB cards being uploaded to voting machines by the voting machine warehouse supervisor on multiple occasions," he said. "This person is not being observed, he's not a part of the process that I can see, and he is walking in with baggies of USBs."
That allegation came from a poll watcher named Greg Stenstrom, and his claims quickly spread across right-wing media. We'll let FactCheck take it from here:
Stenstrom did not provide any evidence that the cards were used to upload fraudulent votes or that Biden benefited from this purportedly illegal upload.
Delaware County officials explained to us that the vCards are used to transfer data from the paper-ballot scanning machines at each precinct to the central vote tabulating system. Uploading data from the vCards is part of the regular process for tallying votes — there’s nothing untoward about it. Other parts of his claim are also false, they said.
“The allegation that someone from the voting machine warehouse uploaded anything from any vCards is utterly false,” Adrienne Marofsky, the county’s spokeswoman, told us by email.
Nobody from the warehouse is trained to use the software that uploads the data from the vCards, she said. That job is done by staff in the bureau of elections department or the information technology liaison.
“This is not a system designed for mass use and it is not intuitive such that a new user with no training on the system could manage to navigate their way through it,” she wrote, noting that it’s possible Stenstrom might have mistaken the IT liaison for a warehouse worker.
Zumwalt also wrote: "Biden's support base should have mirrored Hillary Clinton's in 2016, but he underperformed in every major metro area around the country, except in Democratic-controlled cities where fraud allegedly was rampant." Not true -- even the conservative National Review found that Biden actually overperformed compared to Clinton in 31 out of 36 urban counties.
Zumwalt then wrote:
And on election night, as Trump led in all battleground states, five (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Nevada) stopped counting votes for some inexplicable reason, simultaneously. During the next three hours, no votes were counted. When the count continued, Biden shockingly had overcome significant Trump leads in the five states, which all have Democratic governors.
The posts start with the claim that these five states took a three-hour shutdown in which they “found enough votes for Biden to catch Trump.” There is no evidence to show that any of these states took a three-hour break from counting votes.
Wisconsin did not stop counting on election night. In an elections update video posted on YouTube by PBS NewsHour (here), Meagan Wolfe, administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, can be heard saying at the 1:18 minute mark: “Our municipal and county clerks have worked tirelessly throughout the night to make sure that every valid ballot has been counted and reported accurately.”
Michigan did not stop counting ballots. Politifact reported that Tracy Wimmer, director of media relations for the Michigan Secretary of State, said: "At no point has the counting process stopped since it began at 7 a.m. yesterday morning (Nov. 3), which was when, per Michigan election law, it could begin.” (here)
Misunderstandings over tally updates stopping temporarily on election night in Philadelphia are explained in a Reuters Fact Check (here).
North Carolina did stop counting votes on election night, but it was not due to voter fraud. Local television station WSOC-TV reported that Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the state elections board, said: “North Carolina stopped counting votes on election night because there were no more votes to count that night” and added: “With very few exceptions, North Carolina’s election results will not change until November 12 or 13, when all mail-in ballots are received and counted by each county.” (here)
The Nevada Secretary of State released a statement explaining that the state did not stop counting ballots and that the “counting of ballots is ongoing and will continue until every cast ballot is counted.” (here)
Zumwalt even claimed that "Among other evidence that recently has come to light is SEC filings that reveal the firm owning Dominion received $400 million from a Swiss bank with close links to the Chinese government less than a month before the election." Dominion CEO John Poulos testified at a hearing in Michigan that the claim is "bizarre and completely unfounded."
Zumwalt asserted that "Yet more circumstantial evidence is the involvement, with Dominion and other players, of two anti-Trump billionaires, George Soros and Bill Gates," citing a fringe-right blog as evidence. One of the claims Newsmax issued under threat of lawsuit in a statement posted on its website and read on Newsmax TV is that Dominion has no "relationship with George Soros." The blog's sole evidence of a Gates tie is a 2015 tweet from Smartmatic -- which is a separate company that has no relationship with Dominion -- featuring a picture of Gates touring the company with Smartmatic's CEO.
Zumwalt's history of factual accuracy has always been dubious. Now that he's repeated false claims that are drawing lawsuits in a column filled with numerous other false claims, both Zumwalt and WND would be best advisted to lawyer up real soon.
The MRC's Autumn Of Swooning Over McEnany Topic: Media Research Center
We documented how the Media Research Center -- led by chief fanboy Curtis Houck -- spent the summer swooning over the alleged awesomeness of White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany's supposedly sick burns of the media for not being total suck-ups to President Trump. Well, Houck has continued to fanboy all over himself every time McEnany does a press briefing. here's a few headlines to how the swooning has gone since the last time we checked in in the run-up to the election, with more sycophantic odes to her petulant "mic drop" moments:
Houck presumably would have liked to gush over McEnany more, but that last post, on Oct. 1, was the last press conference she held before the election. He had to contain himself until Nov. 20, when his fanboying made up for lost time:
On Friday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany held a formal press briefing for the first time in almost two months and, as expected, she didn’t disappoint by opening with a timeline on coronavirus vaccines the liberal media so desperately worked to undermine and ended by smacking down the hurt feelings of liberal reporters like CNN’s Kaitlan Collins after they weren’t called on.
Houck touted her "closing statement," and added: "To be clear, McEnany’s opening statements shouldn’t be undersold either and Friday’s consisted of a thorough timeline in the federal government’s push to find coronavirus vaccine."
Houck had to wait a few more weeks for his next opportunity to gush (and McEnany's next briefing), which he did on Dec. 15, under the headline "Absolutely Fire":
On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany opened and closed the press briefing by savaging the liberal media for their behavior regarding on their hopes that a coronairus vaccine wouldn’t be available in 2020, their purposeful refusal to cover a Chinese spy cozying up to Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA), and waiting until after the presidential election to both cover and give credence to probes of Hunter Biden’s corrupt business dealings.
McEnany first addressed the liberal media’s wishes failing to come to fruition due to the overwhelming success of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative.
[...]
Surprisingly, the briefing proceeded without any real fanfare or fireworks in the Q&A portion with reporters behaving themselves and choosing not to go down the route colleagues like Jim Acosta, Peter Alexander, Brian Karem, Paula Reid, or April Ryan would normally go down. For the sake of the country, McEnany chose not to call on Acosta.
The only "Absolutely Fire" we're seeing may be Houck's apparent crush on McEnany -- and his burning hate for Acosta and every other CNN employee.
Houck is clearly going to have a hole in his heart when McEnany leaves the White House.
UPDATE: Houck capped off his year of gushing with a Dec. 28 roundup post sycophantically headlined "Tour de Force: Here Are the Top Ten Kayleigh McEnany Smackdowns of 2020." Houck gushed further in a tweet: "Kayleigh was masterful as @PressSec. In terms of personnel, she was one of President Trump's best hires. And even though her first briefing came in May, it was still a tough time narrowing down to ten. If the press had to face Kayleigh for four years, there'd be no one left."
That earned Houck praise from his idol, who retweeted the item with the message, "You are great! Thanks." Houck will probably sleep tonight with his arms around a printed version of that tweet.
Goodenough grumbled in a Nov. 13 article: "The world may be grappling with a once-in-a-century pandemic, but World Health Organization member-states dedicated four hours of its annual gathering in Geneva on Thursday to discuss and condemn Israel, accusing it of violating the health rights of Palestinians in the disputed territories and Syrians in the Golan Heights." By contrast, you'll never hear Goodenough say, "The world may be grappling with a once-in-a-century pandemic, but a 'news' operation sent its interns to pester members of Congress about transgender students in locker rooms."
On Nov. 18, Goodenough declared it a "parting blow" when the Obama administration "chose not to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution" condemning Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory shortly before Obama left office, then touted how "Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was expected on Thursday to became the first top U.S. diplomat to visit Jewish communities on disputed territory." Goodenough went on to frame the issue in right-wing talking points, writing that "Many Israelis view those areas, known for millennia as Judea (more than 800 references in the Bible) and Samaria (more than 110 references), as the Jewish nation’s historical and biblical 'heartland.'"
In a Dec. 1 article, Goodenough defended the honor of Jared Kushner for allegedly negotiating all those minor peace deals:
As President Trump’s administration winds towards a close, critics took to MSNBC airwaves on Monday to tear into White House senior advisor Jared Kushner for traveling to the Middle East, characterizing the president’s 39-year-old son-in-law as an abject failure and a “ridiculous” figure, and expressing relief that “serious, competent, intelligent people” will be returning to the executive branch soon.
In the space of less than three months Kushner, tasked to tackle a problem that has vexed U.S. administrations for more than half a century, helped to deliver three Israeli-Arab normalization agreements, with the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan.
He attributed the achievements to the administration’s rejection of “the failed conventional thinking of the past” – the dogma stating that the resolution of the Palestinian problem is the prerequisite for any progress in Middle East peacemaking.
[...]
Before the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan agreed to normalize ties with Israel in the summer and fall of 2020, only two other Arab nations had taken similar steps since the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948 – Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994.
And when Morocco signed a normalization pact with Israel -- with the help of the U.S. recognizing Morocco's sovereignty over a disputed African territory -- Goodenough was on hand to gush once more:
President Trump on Thursday announced a fourth Arab-Israeli normalization agreement in as many months, as Morocco agreed to recognize the Jewish state. In return he issued a proclamation recognizing Morocco’s longstanding claim to sovereignty over a sparsely-populated disputed territory in north-western Africa – an attempt to break a decades-long stalemate.
“Another HISTORIC breakthrough today!” the president tweeted. “Our two GREAT friends Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco have agreed to full diplomatic relations – a massive breakthrough for peace in the Middle East!”
According to the White House, Morocco and Israel will restore diplomatic relations and expand economic and cultural cooperation, launch direct flights and grant overflight rights, and immediately reopen liaison offices in Rabat and Tel Aviv, followed “in the near future” by embassies.
As part of the agreement, the U.S. has agreed for the first time to back Morocco’s claims in the Western Sahara.
The dealmaking is characteristic of the Trump administration’s norm-breaking approach to the region: Sideline for now the Palestinian issue, and encourage Arab and Muslim states to normalize relations with Israel, offering concessions from the U.S. as an incentive.
It wasn't until the 21st paragraph of his article that Goodenough got around to admitting that "Morocco’s human rights record in Western Sahara has been widely condemned. The territory is the seventh lowest-scoring country or territory in Freedom House’s annual assessment of civil liberties and political freedoms, just one place above North Korea." He then let Kushner simply handwave the issue by declaring that "Obviously, we don’t share the same values with all these countries" and that "we obviously respect the sovereignty of different places."
MRC Lets Mark Levin Whine Some More About Facebook 'Censoring' His Falsehoods Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center and its president, Brent Bozell, are close friends of right-wing radio host Mark Levin -- to the point that its "news" division, CNSNews.com, is essentially his (paid?) PR agent -- so it's been giving him space to whine about how he's being "censored" by Twitter and Facebook. Alex Schemmel gave him space agan in a Nov. 19 post:
Mark Levin, the host of Fox’s Life Liberty & Levin, has had enough social media censorship. After getting throttled yet again by Facebook, Levin has said he will “probably” be leaving the platform “by the end of the year.”
For the third time since October, Levin received a notification from Facebook indicating the social media giant reduced the reach of his page and levied other restrictions against it for repeatedly sharing what it considers false news. “Your page has reduced distribution and other restrictions because of repeated sharing of false news,” Facebook said in a notification, according to a screenshot from Levin. “People will also be able to see if a Page has a history of sharing false news,” the notification added.
“I've been restricted and censored on Facebook. Please make sure you transition to Parler ASAP as I will be leaving Facebook probably by the end of the year,” Levin said on Twitter.
On the eve of the 2020 presidential election Levin received the same notificationfrom Facebook stating it would be reducing the distribution of his page. Before that, in October, Levin had shared an article labeled by an "independent fact-checker" as "missing context," which led to the same throttling of his page.
"It’s a clear effort at censorship. Every link I post is from a legitimate source," Levin tweeted after receiving the notification from Facebook. "But because so many people are seeing what I’m posting and we’re within weeks of the election it’s clear that Facebook is trying to influence the election’s outcome."
"Legitimate source" or not, Levin has, in fact, been using Twitter and Facebook to spread false information. Notice that Levin doesn't actually deny spreading false information -- which, as we've documented, he has; one of those "legitimate sources" actually did report something false, and Levin apparently never told his readers that the source corrected the false information -- he's just mad he got caught.
Also notice that Schemmel won't admit it either; he claims Levin is being flagged for spreading "what it considers false news." The MRC pulled that dishonest rhetorical trick last time too.
Another thing Schemmel didn't mention: Levin was in the middle of a month-long binge of writing daily posts on Twitter and Facebook about how he was "probably" going to leave Twitter and Facebook at some undetermined time in the future. When finally called out on it, Levin huffily asserted that he would be leaving Facebook at the end of the month. Of course, conservatives using Twitter to vocieferously tell us they're leaving Twitter for Parler while not actually getting around to leaving Twitter is a staple these days.
And, as usual, Schemmel's plug for Parler censored the conflict of interest that a key Parler investor, Rebekah Mercer, is also a key funder of the MRC and on the MRC board of directors.
WND's Election Conspiracy-Mongering, Part 5 Topic: WorldNetDaily
Trump's numbers, 5 million more than 2016, are inconsistent with the expected "voter suppression" practiced by all the major polls that gave Biden double-digit leads until the end to discourage Republican turnout.
Nevertheless, as Stalin said, "It does not matter so much as to who votes; what matters most is who counts the votes!" Corruption in tabulation in Democrat-controlled cities is legendary. But battleground Philadelphia, which also benefits from visiting voters from three surrounding states, took the lead this year, followed by cities in the swing states. Characteristically, the daily results come in and are posted up until after midnight, then there's a typical stop in counting. Then in the middle of the night there's a "dump" of more than enough votes to guarantee a Democratic victory.
What is said to happen in the middle of the night? Some votes are "lost" intentionally while others are "found," or manufactured. Pennsylvania even counted 700,000 more mail-in ballots than were mailed out!
I feel disenfranchised with last month's vote because of such apparent widespread voter fraud in six key swing states. But the media say, "There's nothing to see here." As of this writing, 40 court decisions seem to agree with them.
Thank God for the alternative media, which is a lifeline of information and which big tech, big media and the cultural elites are doing their best to suppress. But you can't suppress the truth forever.
[...]
I showed my wife a compilation of highlights of the Giuliani-Ellis Michigan hearings of alleged voter fraud. After a while, she almost wept, wondering how this could happen in her adopted country. She is originally from Norway and gladly became a U.S. citizen many years ago.
Democracy is messy. But to ensure voter integrity, it's worth sorting through this mess.
The Trump MOAB, dropped on Monday, is the Texas lawsuit against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which, as of this moment, six states have formally joined, with 17 signing on to a friend-of-the-court brief. The timing is perfect in that the several evidence-based lawsuits alleging criminal election fraud have finally arrived at the high court. The Texas case itself is perfect in that it is a matter of pure constitutional law over which SCOTUS has original jurisdiction. Indeed it is so perfect that I predict even John Roberts will vote with the conservative majority, because it solves the election crisis without the court having to take a stance on the validity of the allegations of fraud – allegations which, though absolutely true, are inextricably bound up in partisan politics.
This is not say that SCOTUS will rule against Trump on the other suits, but if it rules for him, those opinions will very likely be 5-4, while the Texas case could (conceivably) be unanimous – and, indeed, there could be horse-trading going on even now by the liberal justices to limit the court's action to just the Texas complaint. The best America's liberals might get from this mess is the chance to decry partisan politics in the state legislatures' pick of swing state electors following the invalidation of their elections, and avoiding a formal court ruling on the fraud itself.
SCOTUS completely ignored the fact that election fraud occurred in several states, wrongly tipping those states to Biden and hence the election, which disenfranchised voters in the other states that went for Trump. SCOTUS was the only remedy, since it decides controversies between the states and constitutional issues. The Electors Clause states that state legislatures shall make the laws conducting presidential elections. Those states violated it by allowing election officials to supersede the legislature with various orders and rules, making the election fraud easy. The Texas brief showed how SCOTUS had accepted similar cases in the past, and clearly laid out the fraud.
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We may not be able to stop the election fraud in the future; this may be the end of our representative democracy and the beginning of rule by a handful of powerful oligarchs who control elections as they do in Third World countries, shifting the country to socialism. But we can't lie down and take it. There aren't any better countries to move to. Nor can we simply move to red states and segregate ourselves, because the left uses the federal government to control them, as well as moving into those states and transforming them, as we're watching take place in Arizona.
Right now, everyone knows Trump won the election in a landslide. They can't take that away. It's just a matter of outsmarting the left and figuring out how to deal with the election fraud when most of our institutions won't. The left controls the MSM, big tech, education, Hollywood, the judiciary and state bars. But there has to be a way to stop massive felony voter fraud. Maybe the civil unrest that is brewing will lead to changes. It is only going to get worse as Democrats reveal they are not going to stop the lockdowns any time soon even if Biden is in office.
Donald Trump's presidency and his campaign have ripped the mask off. Those desperately trying to hide behind the curtain lied, of course, to say it is only about Trump. Now, the insurgency has grown so strong that the deep state had to come out of the shadows and showed themselves in full view of the American people in order to counter Trump as the figurehead.
President Trump has fundamentally changed the entire political landscape because the hidden armies had to come out of the forest and engage in open warfare on the open plains in full view of the public. They lost their invisibility as the cost of attacking Trump. We must make sure they are not able to shrink back into the shadows, but keep fighting.
Note: The legal world will deceitfully try to argue that the word "corrupt" means accusing someone of taking an envelope of cash. That is not what we are talking about. "Corrupt" also means bent and distorted from a thing's intended purpose, as in the corruption from decay.
Currently in fashion is a lie associated with the adjective widespread. You will hear this accompanied by the word "fraud," as in, "There was no widespread fraud in the presidential election."
Purveyors of this adjectival prevarication are careful not to say, "There was no fraud." One would have to be afflicted with intellectual glaucoma, macular degeneration and cataracts not to see the fraud that took place on and after Nov. 3, 2020.
Indeed, it was not widespread fraud. It was localized fraud, concentrated fraud, focused fraud. The perpetrators of this electoral swindle knew they couldn't get away with their scheme in the heavily Republican cow counties, where voters instantly would smell the rat.
They knew as well that they needed just a few loci where the sheer volume of ballots would dilute and disguise their efforts. All they needed were a few counties containing such cities as Milwaukee and Detroit, Atlanta and Philadelphia. In other words, nothing widespread.
Members of the new 117th Congress should put the contested states on notice now that if they refuse to allow a full signature audit of their mail-in ballots, then their Electoral College votes will not be counted on Jan. 6. That is the day when the House and Senate will determine the validity of votes cast by the Electoral College on Dec. 14.
While the Supreme Court recently held that a state lacks legal standing to challenge a defective voting procedure used by another state, Congress has the responsibility not to accept Electoral College votes from a state which included fraudulent votes. Senators need to object to allowing states to include fraudulent votes with invalid signatures on mail-in ballots.
When students cheat on an exam, as occurred this year at West Point, the remedy includes disqualifying the entire exam, not merely a portion of it where the cheating can be proven. The counting of improperly signed mail-in ballots occurred in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and other key states, and on Jan. 6 Congress should disqualify all of their Electoral College votes.
MRC's Anti-'Censorship' Operation Censors Us Topic: Media Research Center
Back in September, the Media Research Center set up something called "Free Speech America," which claims to be "designed to push back against Big Tech’s abuse of power." It includes a website called CensorTrack, which claims to be "an archive of incidents of bias, as well as a resource for people interested in the issue or writing about it." It's designed to work with the MRC's tech-monitoring operation that is largely responsible for pushing the increasingly bogus narrative that Twitter and Facebook are "censoring" conservative -- and only conservative -- websites and accounts by enforcing their terms of service against extremism.
It was a momentous enough occasion that the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, was called in to do an article on it. Managing editor Michael W. Chapman did his corporate duty, uncritically quoting his boss, Brent Bozell, dishonestly declaring that "Every platform coming out of Silicon Valley today is censoring conservatives. ... Our position is, if they can do it to the president of the United States, they can do it to anyone, and in fact that is exactly what’s happening. And it’s starting to happen worldwide to conservatives."
Interestingly, a guest on the Zoom call at which the initiative was annouced was Robert Epstein, whose dubious research pushing the narrative that Google uses its search results to push anti-conservative bias has been embraced by the MRC. So much for Epstein's defense that he's a Hillary Clinton supporter.
But we didn't see any evidence that CensorTrack has tracked the "censoring" of our Twitter feed -- even after we asked nicely to be put on it -- because we accurately quoted Rush Limbaugh's smear of Sandra Fluke. Of course, the mere existence of that blows a hole in the MRC's narrative.
Speaking of destroying a narrative: The Twitter page for the Free Speech America operation has, uh, censored us, as the above screenshot shows. How strange for a new operation to pre-block us, we thought -- but the page states that it was created in October 2010, which tells us it's simply a renamed page.
Still, it's a bad look for an operation that purports to be all about "free speech" that's trying to silence its critics.
CNS Gotcha-Question Time, Abortion Edition Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com already forced its interns this fall to pester members of Congress with an anti-transgender gotcha question. But it also tried to squeeze in one more gotcha question before the holidays. TYhe first victim was Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy in a Dec. 8 article:
Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who said he is “pro-choice” on abortion, also said that President-elect Joe Biden (D) “might be right” in his view that “life begins at conception.”
On several occasions, Biden has said that “life begins at conception” but he would not interfere with doctors who abort human lives in the womb.
At the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday,CNSNews.com asked Senator Murphy, “Do you agree with Joe Biden that life begins at conception?”
Sen. Murphy said, “I’m pro-choice, I think it should be up to, you know, every woman and every individual to make that choice on their own.”
CNS News then asked, “Well, but Joe Biden’s stated position is that life begins at conception.”
Murphy then replied, “Okay, I mean I don’t know. He might be right.”
Two days later, the CNS intern went after another Democratic senator:
When asked whether she agreed with Joe Biden’s position that “life begins at conception,” Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said, “I’m not going to answer the question.”
Biden has said in several interviews that he believes “life begins at conception,” and even expressed this view in the Oct. 11, 2012 vice presidential debate.
At the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 8, CNS News asked Senator Feinstein, “Do you agree with Joe Biden that life begins at conception?”
Feinstein initially said, “Oh, my god, I can’t believe you,” and her aide interjected, “That’s not an escalator question!”
She then said, “I’m not going to answer the question.”
“I don’t think it is necessary for what I do or part of it,” the senator added.
CNS News then said that Biden has “stated that he’s in favor of repealing the Hyde Amendment and using federal funds to pay for abortion services.”
Feinstein then replied, “Well, let me try and find out what’s going on.”
Of course, getting members of Congress, especially Democratic ones, perturbed by gotcha questions is pretty much the point of this exercise -- it's all about the clicks. After all, one CNS intern who made Nancy Pelosi mad managed to parlay it into a job at Fox News.
These were apparently the only two victims, though. It seems the interns ran out of time or the members of Congress have gotten better at avoiding reporters acting in bad faith.
MRC Defends The Honor Of Pandemic-Defying Bar Owner (Who Ran Over A Police Officer) Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Gabriel Hays ranted in a Dec. 7 post:
Pete Davidson is at it again, mocking freedom-loving, everyday Americans from the comfort of his cushy “SNL” gig.
A year or so after Pete Davidson landed in hot water for mocking then-U.S. Congressional candidate Dan Crenshaw’s (R-TX) war injuries on an episode of SNL, that actor/comedian made insensitive remarks about average Americans protesting strict lockdown orders, as if they were selfish dummies rather than Americans desperate to earn a paycheck.
Talk about smug elitism.
On the December 5 segment of the NBC series’ sketch “Weekend Update,” Davidson gave his flippant and disrespectful opinion on New Yorkers protesting the closing of local bars and restaurants due to the state’s strict China plague lockdown orders. Last week, one defiant Staten Island pub owner of Mac’s Public House re-opened his restaurant despite Governor Andrew Cuomo’s latest lockdown orders.
The bar’s open defiance, which has drawn the attention of NY’s Governor, mayor and law enforcement, has inspired many like-minded New Yorkers and Staten Island residents fed up with NY’s lockdowns to come up in crowds and protest the government’s COVID overreach.
But for a smug elitist like Davidson, who hasn’t had the misfortune of losing his livelihood, the Staten Island protests have become a topic of derision. The star of The King of Staten Island mocked the protestors as “babies” and indirectly called them the worst people of Staten Island, by deriding himself as no longer the “worst thing about Staten Island.”
Though that’s ironic because these protestors are demonstrating against the very idea of being coddled by the mommy state, which has convinced the real idiots -- like Davidson -- that the virus requires Americans to cancel their entire lives for as long as they’re told.
Davidson was "flippant and disrespectful"? Hays must be jealous, because that what the MRC pays him to be and he probably doesn't like anyone horning in on his territory.
But Hays somehow forgot to mention in the middle of his tirade that the day before his item was posted, owner of the bar, Danny Presti, was arrested for running down a sheriff's deputy while trying to avoid arrest for his bar violating the mask mandate. Seems a bit flippant and disrespectful on Presti's part, but that's just us. We don't recall Davidson ever doing anything like that, no matter how much Hays loathes him for failing to be a kneejerk right-winger like himself.
This is the guy Hays thinks we should admire and emulate. And we thought the MRC was a "Blue Lives Matter" kind of place ... but apparently the police too can be thrown under the (metaphorical) bus if they don't fit in with the narrative du jour.
Smug elitism indeed.
UPDATE: The MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, also attacked Davidson for criticizing Presti and Staten Island bars -- and also failed to note that Presti was arrested for running over a sheriff's deputy.
Newsmax Downplays Another Legal Entanglement Topic: Newsmax
While Newsmax has gotten increased attention as a Trump loyalist, it's also received attention of the negative kind as well: lawsuits and threats of lawsuits over its content. But Newsmax is largely hiding that from its readers.
On the Nov. 30 edition of right-winger Howie Carr's radio show, which Newsmax TV simulcasts, right-wing lawyer Joe DiGenova went on a tirade against Christoper Krebs, the former head of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agencywhom Trump fired after he stated that the presidential election was secure. "That guy is a class A moron," diGenova said. "He should be drawn and quartered, taken out at dawn and shot."
That's a pretty clear threat -- so much so, that Krebs quickly filed a lawsuit against DiGenova and Newsmax for defamation. Newsmax responded in a CNBC article with an attempt to distance itself from diGenova:
Newsmax said: “Newsmax TV airs the The Howie Carr Show, a Boston-based syndicated radio program it licenses, as a simulcast for one hour each weekday. Mr. diGenova appeared by phone on that simulcast as a guest and made comments that were inappropriate. Mr. diGenova is not a paid contributor to Newsmax and has no official ties to him.”
“Mr. diGenova has appeared on Newsmax since then on two occasions stating he made the comment ‘facetiously’ and apologized,” the right-wing media outlet said.
“He stated that he intended no harm to Mr. Krebs. Newsmax believes that claims made by Mr. Krebs in his suit of a ‘conspiracy’ and defamation against him are a threat to free speech and his legal action endangers all media organizations that seek an open discourse of ideas and news.”
You won't read that at Newsmax, however -- it has censored news of the lawsuit. The only reference you'll find to the controversy is a Dec. 5 article by Eric Mack in which DiGenova appeared on a different Newsmax TV show to walk back his threat against Krebs, insisting that it was "made in complete jest" and "a poor attempt at humor. They were hyperbole during a political discussion," adding, "I meant no suggestion of harm or intention to harm Mr. Krebs or his family, and I apologize for any misunderstanding of my intentions."
Actually, diGenova's intentions were all too clear -- and that's why Krebs is suing him and Newsmax.
CNS Does Stenography For White House Press Secretary Topic: CNSNews.com
Melanie Arter wrote in a Nov. 30 CNSNews.com article:
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany accused the Washington Post of pushing “blinding” propaganda by reporting that former Vice President Joe Biden has selected an “all-female senior White House press team.”
McEnany pointed out that the Trump administration already has an all-female senior communications staff.
McEnany tweeted Monday “President @realDonaldTrump already has an ALL FEMALE Senior White House Press Team.
So does @VP
So does @Flotus
So does @SecondLady
The completely DISCREDITED @washingtonpost once again reveals their blinding propagandist Fake News proclivities”
As we pointed out when CNS' corporate bretheren at the Media Research Center similarly uncritically repeated this narrative, McEnany is wrong -- two press secretaries in Trump's office are actually men. Indeed, as the hated Washington Post noted, this is all a picayune argument over the definition of a "senior" comms job, which obscures the fact that three comms jobs currently held by men under Trump will be held by women under Biden.
That's not the only worship of McEnany CNS has done. On Dec. 1, Arter was in full stenography mode in uncritically repeating another McEnany claim, that "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democrats have been trying to undermine the U.S. election system for years by allowing illegals on the voting rolls and fighting against signature matching." She also repeated McEnany's bogus complaint about Biden getting credit for an all-female comms team.
In a Dec. 3 post, Craig Bannister gushed that McEnany used a White House press briefing for "subjecting" attending reporters "to a video montage of prominent Democrats violating the very COVID-19 restrictions they’ve imposed on others."
On Dec. 8, Arter uncritically repeated how "McEnany is disputing reports that the Trump administration turned down a chance to buy additional coronavirus vaccine from Pfizer beyond the 100 million doses that was contracted and now has to wait until the summer to get more." In fact, Scott Gottlieb, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner and current Pfizer board member, confirmed that the Trump administration turned down an offer from Pfizer last summer to obtain an additional 100 million doses of its vaccine.
NEW ARTICLE: Conspiracy-Mongering For Trump Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center constructs its own elaborate conspiracy theory to prove President Trump should have won re-election -- through hiring Trump's own pollsters and bizarrely claiming that pre-election media polls showing Trump losing big were faked. Read more >>
Aside from being tasked to help keep WorldNetDaily alive through its ongoing financial crisis, David Kupelian's stock in trade these days is to pretend that WND always tells the truth and has never published misinformation or falsehoods while attacking other media outlets for doing those very things. So much so, in fact, that a recent edition of WND's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine is themed "Guardians of the Swamp," when it claims the "total corruption of what was once a vibrant news establishment is powerfully and insightfully explored." As if WND has ever been associated with being insightful.
It's been well established that the Media Research Center 
Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy began his Dec. 20 
We've already 
We documented how the Media Research Center -- led by chief fanboy Curtis Houck -- 
CNSNews.com reporter Patrick Goodenough is very much a pro-Trump and pro-Israel reporter, as evidence by his 
The Media Research Center and its president, Brent Bozell, are close friends of right-wing radio host Mark Levin -- to the point that its "news" division, CNSNews.com, is essentially 
Trump's numbers, 5 million more than 2016, are inconsistent with the expected "voter suppression" practiced by all the major polls that gave Biden double-digit leads until the end to discourage Republican turnout.
Back in September, the Media Research Center 
CNSNews.com already forced its interns this fall to pester members of Congress with an 
The Media Research Center's Gabriel Hays ranted in a Dec. 7 
While Newsmax has gotten increased attention as a Trump loyalist, it's also received attention of the negative kind as well: lawsuits and threats of lawsuits over its content. But Newsmax is largely hiding that from its readers.
Melanie Arter wrote in a Nov. 30 CNSNews.com 
