MRC Still Censoring Its Mercer Conflict of Interest When Promoting Parler Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center haslongdefended right-wing Twitter clone Parler as a purported "free speech" app -- glossing over the fact that the Capitol riot was planned in part on it and it contains racism, pornography and violent threats, and it has completely censored from its readers the fact that Parler the fact that the MRC and Parler share a deep-pocketed funder in Rebekah Mercer.
After Parler's deplatforming by Amazon Web Services, Joseph Vazquez spent a Jan. 14 post complaining that "The Washington Post Editorial Board praised the shutdown of free-speech platform Parler by the company owned by the same 'world’s richest person' that owns The Washington Post." Vazquez couldn't compain that the Post editorial didn't disclose that Jeff Bezos owns the Post -- instead, he huffily acknowledged it by complaining that the editorial "even admitted that Bezos owns both the newspaper and the company it praised for shutting down a tech competitor" -- but he didn't disclose that his paycheck comes in part from Parler's major funder.
The censorship frenzy that began with the suspension of President Donald Trump put the conservative movement on notice: Conform and comply or be destroyed.
The conservative solution to Big Tech censorship isn’t as simple as “just build your own platform.” Despite years of the right being told just that. Multiple Big Tech companies worked together to deplatform free speech app Parler, a move which the platform’s CEO suggested may prove fatal.
Also on Jan. 14, Kayla Sargent cheered how Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) has demanded answers from several Big Tech companies about the suppression of the free speech-oriented platform Parler." Not only did Marsh and Hall fail to disclose their financial ties to the funder of Parler, Marsh failed to tell her readers that Paxton is under federal investigation for corruption.
Alex Christy grumbled in a Jan. 15 post that folks on CNN argued that Parler can't be fixed to get rid of the hate. He worked in some good old-fashioned Soros fearmongering: "CNN was roughing up Facebook on Friday, using a report from the Tech Transparency Project -- which is described as 'nonpartisan' but is transparently funded by leftist George Soros."
Vazquez returned on Jan. 21 to help then-Parler CEO John Matze play the victim:
Parler CEO John Matze flipped the script on Amazon, which had accused his platform of inciting violence and removed it from its web services as a result.
Matze and his family have since gone into hiding after reportedly receiving death threats.
Matze accused Amazon Web Services (AWS) of running a “PR campaign” with other tech companies against his company Parler. He said that these companies claimed “falsely, you know — without any evidence really other than a couple of articles that didn’t have any evidence either — that, you know, Parler, somehow, was responsible for inciting violence.” Matze said that such an accusation against his company was “crazy because their statements alone — on the first day that it was released, you know, had over a thousand death threats to our lawyer alone. Our employees are harassed, you know. We’re harassed.”
Matze didn’t mince words during the Jan. 18 edition of &Hannity and fired back at Amazon: “[T]he one inciting violence is AWS — Amazon — who incited, you know, economic violence against our company and has, you know, created people who actually want to threaten us and our employees too.”
Vazquez didn't note any example of Matze offering evidence that anyone from Amazon Web Services explicitly threated Matze or his family. He also let Matze's denial that Parler incited violence go unchallenged, even though there's plentyofevidence to support the claim that it did. And, of course, Vazquez said nothing about the fact that his paycheck is funded partly by the same women who funds Parler.
More victimization came from Alex Schemmel in a Feb. 2 post complaining that Bezos' successor as Amazon CEO is the man who runs Amazon Web Services, "the division of Amazon that canceled services to the free-speech site Parler following the Jan. 6 riot in the U.S. Capitol building," disingenuously adding, "Parler is the free-speech alternative to Twitter that conservatives began flocking to after social media firms started aggressively censoring conservative content." Schemmel certainly knows that "conservative content" is not the reason AWS deplatformed Parler -- unless he's telling is that hate and violence is now considered "conservative." He too failed to disclose the Mercer conflict of interest.
Meanwhile, other things were happening with Parler: In a bid to get back online, it signed a deal with with a Russian cybersecurity firm that has ties to the Russian government, and Matze was fired as Parler CEO reportedly after tanging with Rebekah Mercer. The MRC devoted no posts to those developments; a Feb. 8 post by Hall noted that Matze was Parler's "ex-CEO" but didn't explain why he was fired.
Finally: We'd previously noted a Jan. 12 post by Sargent touting a lawsuit Parler filed against Amazon, whose web services operation deplatformed Parler over the above-mentioned hate and violence. But Sargent and the MRC have yet to tell its readers that the lawsuit was swiftly thrown out of court because Amazon can't be forced to host Parler's hate because that's a breach of Parler's hosting contract with Amazon.
NEW ARTICLE: The Fake News Tally At WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily can't stop publishing fake news, and it hasn't told readers the cybercurrency it gave away was a scam or that a Seth Rich defamation lawsuit was settled. Shockingly, though, it stayed away from a birther conspiracy story that was right up its alley. Read more >>
Dick Morris Frets Over Biden's Legacy -- Two Days Into His Term Topic: Newsmax
Joe Biden had been president for only two days when Newsmax published a column by Dick Morris headlined "Will Biden's Legacy Be Reminiscent of Carter's?" No, really.
Morris declared that Carter was "another president who pledged to conquer the swamp," but "his cabinet of retreads and holdovers spoke of his inability to select a team of outsiders committed to change," adding: "In the end, the Carter presidency fell into the gap between his party’s (and Speaker Tip O’Neill’s) desire to do business as usual and the commitment to change articulated by his political base." Morris then ranted about transgender people"\:
Even before he was sworn in, Biden was whipsawed between Title IX of the Civil Rights Law, mandating equality between male and female athletes and the demands of the LGBTQ community.
President Trump acted to preserve the intent of Title IX by litigating against treating trans-males as women. That likely was Biden’s preference, but, pressured by his LGBTQ supporters, he moved to the left.
That has nothing to do with Carter, only Morris' continuing love for Trump; he also claim that impeachment efforts were driven by "a hot tempered desire to kick Trump when he’s down" -- which is to be expected from a guy who relentlesslypushed bogus election fraud conspiracy theories.
WND Corrects Columnist's False Claim About COVID Tests Topic: WorldNetDaily
Brent Smith wrote in his Feb. 5 WorldNetDaily column, under the headline "WHO changed virus test parameter the day Biden took office":
On Jan. 20, 2021, the WHO (World Health Organization) posted an important bulletin regarding polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for COVID-19. What else happened on 20 January that was important? That's right. It was the very same day Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. But I'm sure the WHO release was purely coincidental.
LifeSite News claims that the notice was released one hour after Biden took office. Although I can't confirm that exact time, the WHO guidance bulletin is dated Jan. 20, 2021.
This "new" guidance will change everything, and it has caused me not just to say, but to scream, SEE I TOLD YOU SO! The reason is that I and many others uncovered these facts many months ago – that the COVID tests were far too sensitive and that the WHO apparently was suppressing this information out of both fear and for political gain.
Likely millions of people who were told they were COVID positive, were not. Millions were forced into quarantine that shouldn't have been. Countless businesses were closed and people permanently laid off unnecessarily.
Well, that didn't actually happen. Two days later, WND changed the headline of Smith's column to "The WHO, its virus test parameter and Joe Biden" and added this correction:
CORRECTION Feb. 7, 2021: A fact-check by Health Feedback found that most positive COVID-19 PCR test results are true positives and that the WHO information notice didn't change the threshold or criteria for a positive COVID-19 test. The COVID-19 PCR test detects the presence of the genetic material of the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2. The test is highly sensitive, meaning that it can detect very small amounts of the virus in infected individuals, including those in the early or late stages of infection. The test is also highly specific for SARS-CoV-2, meaning that it doesn’t detect the presence of other viruses, such as other members of the coronavirus family that cause the common cold. Although no tests are 100% accurate, given the PCR test's high sensitivity and specificity, most positive COVID-19 PCR test results are true positives.
While it's nice WND is actually gettingaround to correcting false claims that it publishes -- though not the biggest ones, Obama birtherism and Seth Rich conspiracy theories -- perhaps it should have an editing and fact-checking process that prevents those false claims from getting published in the first place.
MRC's Graham Serves Up One Last Complaint That Trump Was Fact-Checked Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center executive Tim Graham has spentthepastfouryearscomplaining that President trump was fact-checked by the media. Now that Trump is out of office, Graham turned his whining to whataboutism in a Jan. 23 post grumbling that the fact-checkers at the Washington Post won't at this time do a running tally of President Biden's falsehoods the way it did for prolifit liar Trump:
Glenn Kessler and his Washington Post “Fact Checker” squad celebrated their end-of-term count of President Trump’s “false and misleading statements” – 30,573. Their level of aggression clearly increased as the term went on, since they announced on January 21, 2019 they had arrived at 8,158 of those – or 26.7 percent of the four-year total.
[...]
But party affiliation matters: there was no False & Misleading Statements count for Barack Obama, and there wouldn't have been one if Hillary Clinton won in 2016. Kessler told Jordan Klepper at Comedy Central "In terms of fact checking, Hillary Clinton is like playing chess with a real pro. Fact-checking Donald Trump is like playing checkers [Laughter] with someone that's not very good at it. It's pretty boring." Klepper shot back: "You find Donald Trump boring." Kessler replied: "Yes! His facts are so easily disproven, there's no joy in the hunt."
There is no "hunt" for Democrats. Only admiration for those chess pros!
Needless to say, Graham offered no evidence that Obama, Hillary or Biden have ever told falsehoods at the same rate as Trump, whom Graham has previously handwaved as merely having "a casual relationship with the truth." Graham then got mad that the Biden White House quickly responded to the Post's questions about evidence to back up the claims it has made:
On January 15, Kessler signaled his new approach in fact-checking Biden's address on the coronavirus. He boasted that Biden's team responded to him immediately. That's because Democrats care about their home-team newspapers, and Biden's team knew he would be sympathetic.
[...]
Kessler warmly accepted Biden's use of liberal think tanks like the Brookings Institution, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, and poverty analysts at Columbia University backed by liberal foundations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But when Trump used the National Federation of Independent Business for a survey of small business confidence in 2018, Kessler dismissed it as a "conservative group" whose survey didn't draw enough responses to impress him. "Misleading"!
Oddly, Graham seemed to think it was OK that the Trump White House had little interest in proving what they said was true.
CNS Continues Obsessing Over Bette Midler's Political Thoughts Topic: CNSNews.com
Back in September, we showed how CNSNews.com has shown obsessive interest in the political thoughts of entergainer Bette Midler for no apparent reason. It kept doing that through threst of 2020:
That's another 11 items, for a total of 40 articles CNS devoted to Midler in 2020.
CNS has yet to explain why it's so obsessively focues on Midler, but casting aspersions on her is clearly one intent being doing so. The posts are typically accompanied with photos of Midler either with Hillary Clinton or dressed in some outlandish costume for an event, as if to imply she dresses llike that all the time.
We also noted that CNS did 14 articles on Cher's tweets through September. It sseemed to be losing interest in her as the year concluded, doing only four more articles on her last year:
As with the Midler articles, the vast majority of them are credited only to "CNSNews.com Staff," but a quirk of CNS' archive search indicates that they were posted by editor in chief Terry Jeffrey.
Given that neither Midler nor Cher are terribly relevant in American culture, one can only speculate on reason for why Jeffrey is so fixated on this women that he devoted 58 articles to their thoughts last year.
MRC Mad That Biden Led A Memorial For COVID Victims Topic: Media Research Center
The sheer hatred at the Media Research Center for President Biden and any media outlet that doesn't relentlessly trash him that it has to attack a memorial service for victims of coronavirus because Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris attended, MSNBC said something nice about it, and a panelist --gasp! -- referenced the Bible.
Early Tuesday night, MSNBC was caught after a Joe Biden/Kamala Harris coronavirus memorial event between churning out more of their daily dreck against President Trump and returning to their Obama-era role of state-run TV.
In the case of the latter, the event was deemed reminiscent of Psalm 147, proof that the federal government felt the pain of those lost to COVID-19, and a call to action against 74 million Trump voters as culpable for the pandemic and American division.
MSNBC contributor and Princeton professor Eddie Glaude was most unhinged, claiming America’s “selfishness” had “suffocated the land was held at arm's length” until Biden and Harris “pulled the grief and regret out of the privacy of our hearts, if just for a moment, so that we all could share it.”
He then invoked the Bible and how the event was akin to what the Psalmist has told us about the Lord: “Oh, what a first step. What a beautiful step. So, I'm going to, you know, I'm reminded of the Psalmist, you know? ‘He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.’ Maybe the dead will speak to us now. Maybe they can rest now.”
Terrible, huh? Houck further whined:
Rewinding back to when the memorial ended,11th Hour host Brian Williams hailed it as “a beautiful and fitting memorial” and Deadline: White House host Nicolle Wallace gushed that Biden and Harris “may have just cracked open a lot of people who were holding it all in, and I think this is the first time that anyone in a position of power has spoken to the families of 400,000 Americans who have died from COVID.”
So, according to Wallace, the entire administration — ranging from the President to Vice President Pence to HHS Secretary Azar to Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany — never said a thing about or expressed condolences about the dead? What a pathetic insult.
Wallace added that Biden’s “been processing the grief of the nation's loss due to COVID since the very beginning, because he understands that one loss, two losses, three losses was too many and understood the pain that people were feeling, and now he is our country's president.”
MSNBC contributor and former Obama official Kavita Patel agreed that Biden and Harris (and not any religion or self-reflection) were who “crack[ed] open” America’s “shell” of grief.
Houck failed to mention that the Trump administration could not be bothered to memorialize COVID-19 victims the way this ceremony did. After all, a key part of Houck's MRC job is to emphatically deny that Trump ever did anything divisive or admit that liberal disdain for him has more than a little basis in reality.
WND Reacts To The Capitol Riot, Part 3 Topic: WorldNetDaily
Even though President Trump never called for a riot, never called for an insurrection, never stated anything other than his belief that the 2020 election was won by Biden because of election fraud, Democrats and establishment politicians are blaming him for those 1/10th of 1% of people at the peaceful assembly who entered the Capital building Jan 6.
The cancel culture, Democrats and American oligarchs have gone to work against all those who agree with Trump about election fraud with more shunning, more canceling and even restricting more discussion about this in the mainstream media, social media and Congress. It's no different than what was done by tyrants all through history.
All Republican senators need to think about this: Donald J. Trump received more votes in 2020 than any Republican in the history of the nation. He has the highest approval rating from Republican voters of any president since Eisenhower. Most Republican voters still believe that Biden got more electoral votes because of election fraud, and no court has allowed any thorough investigation to allay those beliefs.
[...]
Senators, you took an oath to defend and protect the Constitution. Read the First Amendment. Free speech and peaceful assembly are American rights! If you cannot find exact words by which Donald J. Trump asked the protesters to riot, to overthrow the government, then you are in violation of your oath of office if you vote to remove him.
Even more serious are the reactions to last week's attack on the Capitol. There is universal shock and outrage at pipe bombs left at the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee headquarters, and the injuries and deaths caused by a mob at the Capitol building. But it is equally shocking to watch public officials pretend that the violent unrest we all watched for months last year was any less serious or somehow justified. Hundreds of marches were held protesting police abuse, and most were not violent. But those that were caused billions of dollars in damage, destroyed countless businesses and resulted in the deaths of almost three dozen people. If we are to take the position that we cannot judge all protesters by the actions of a relative few, then neither can we lump all pro-Trump marchers with the small group of people who burst into the Capitol and wreaked havoc.
Like most Americans, I'm still reeling from the reality of the coup d'état taking place under our very nose. Things are changing so fast – hour by hour, minute by minute – that doubtless this column will be out of date by the time I finish writing it.
So far leftist revenge has ranged from the massive (banning the president from all social media, taking down Parler) to the petty (Democrats drafting a bill to prevent anything being named after President Trump), but it all reveals a universal truth: Leftists hate and loathe the Constitution and Bill of Rights with a seething, burning passion. But hey, we knew this already, didn't we?
The prevailing and contrived "wisdom" among the mainstream media and political establishment since the events at the Capitol building a week ago Wednesday is that President Donald Trump incited violence over the election fraud that has landed Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and their ultra-leftist hordes in charge of the executive branch of government, coupled with similar election fraud during the Georgia run-off, resulting in the Republican Party losing control of the U.S. Senate. To add to this phony narrative, this same mainstream media – including Fox News – and the political establishment have been spewing that right-wing radicals are solely responsible for these events.
Both of these narratives are largely wrong. Indeed, the people who attended the rally that day, before which the president spoke his mind but did not advocate violence, were surely incensed at the election fraud that has turned over the keys of government control to leftist radicals, largely comprised of socialists and communists of all colors, sexes, religions and ethnicities. And the people were also incensed that a brain-dead criminal and lying witch like Biden and Harris were about to ascend to the presidency and vice presidency – Biden in particular being perhaps the most felonious president-elect in American history given his and his son Hunter's shakedown of Communist China, Russia and Ukraine, which resulted in the laundering of millions into the family's coffers.
[...]
In short, the majority of the people who occupied the Capitol cannot and must not be written off as fringe criminals, but rather American citizens who reached the point, like the majority of the rest of us, where they could not take it any longer.
The mainstream media breathlessly reported that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni shut down social media prior to the Jan. 14 presidential election, comparing the move to President Trump's criticisms of social media here. But the reality is Museveni's actions are more comparable to what the left is doing to conservatives and Trump. He's just more bold about it. The left here finds ways to undermine our republic and elections that appear to be legal and constitutional, as long as you believe their claims. If you don't believe them, you are labeled a conspiracy theorist and risk being doxed.
[...]
So why does everyone see through the sleazy actions in Uganda but not here? It may be because the MSM here controls much of the narrative, and they hide, mischaracterize and minimize the wrongdoing. Museveni is more blatant about directly using the government to conduct abuse. The left here is sneakier. They work behind the scenes and through large powerful corporations. They don't murder their opponents, although Antifa beats Trump supporters. They've figured out how to undermine the Constitution without making it look like they are violating it. The similarities to Third World elections are disturbing and growing.
Tens of millions of Americans remain convinced that Trump won the recent election, as confirmed by polling. This reinforces President Trump's statement earlier this month to the huge crowd of more than 250,000 supporters who filled the large space from the White House to the Washington Monument that "we won this election."
Last week a new report from the White House explains what many ordinary Americans already perceive. Peter Navarro, Ph.D., authored this report entitled "Yes, President Trump Won," which was the latest installment in his three-volume series demonstrating that the election was stolen.
[...]
As to the phony "insurrection" on Capitol Hill, the Quinnipiac poll confirmed that 80% of Republicans do not hold Trump responsible, while 71% disagree with those who characterize the incident as a "coup attempt." Some 70% of Republicans believe that Republican lawmakers who objected to the Biden electors were "protecting" rather than "undermining" democracy.
[...]
In nearly all of the battleground states, Republicans control a majority of the legislature, which is solely authorized under the Constitution's Article II, Section 1, to establish the process for selecting presidential electors. State governors, who are Democrats in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, do not have any role in this process, and neither do courts.
These and all state legislatures should enact new rules for selecting presidential electors that are based entirely on in-person voting on Election Day, with the real winner announced soon after the closing of the polls.
Even After Riot, MRC Still Did PR For Trump Topic: Media Research Center
It was embarrassing that anyone would continue to shill for Donald Trump after the Capitol riot he instigated. But Media Research Center writer Nicholas Fondacaro is clearly not afraid to embarrass himself.
In a Jan. 17 post, Fondacaro complained that MBC's Chuck Todd said of Trump's presidency that "it is hard to look at this as anything other than a failed presidency when you look at particularly the coronavirus in the last year and obviously the violent ending to his presidency." Fondacaro first retorted, "While Trump’s actions and the events of the last couple of weeks did taint his legacy and final days in office, there was a long list of accomplishments; even if Todd, a man who rents to Democrats, didn’t want to see them." That weird attack referenced a post by MRC executive Tim Graham claiming that Todd once rented a home he owned to Democratic Rep. Amy Klobuchar; apparently, Graham wants Todd to violate anti-discrimination laws by refusing to rent to a Democrat.
Then, Fondacaro started acting as if he was the payroll of former Truymp press seretary Kayleigh McEneny:
As noted by a list put out by the White House, the administration could brag about Operation Warp Speed which oversaw the fastest vaccine research and development ever. And before the coronavirus, “The unemployment rate reached 3.5 percent, the lowest in a half-century,” which included record low unemployment for many minority groups. Also, “The DOW closed above 20,000 for the first time in 2017 and topped 30,000 in 2020.” Plus, the tax cuts.
And aside from renegotiating the trade deal with Canada and Mexico (replacing NAFTA with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement), the Trump administration had other trade and foreign policy accomplishments like energy independence and getting our NATO allies to give more money to our mutual defense.
Just to name a few.
Nothing says "media research" like coping and pasting from a press release in order to obscure Trump's failures. Of course, the MRC hasacted throughout Trump's presidency as if it was an extension of his White House and his re-election campaign.
The lead story at WorldNetDailiy on Jan. 21 was an interview managing editor David Kupelian conducted with pro-choice doctor turned anti-abortion activist Bernard Nathanson. It's not until the fifth paragraph that Kupelian admits this interview was conducted in 1990 -- and it's not until the very final paragraph of this lengthy article that Kupelian notes: "Bernard Nathanson passed away on Feb. 21, 2011, at the age of 84." So not only is this a 31-year-old story, the interviewee died 10 years ago.
If Kupelian's interview sounds familiar beyond its date, that's because it is. He posted this exact same article two years ago, when we also noted its age and also the fact that it came from Kupelian's book "The Marketing of Evil." And if you look at that 2019 link, you'll see that the date now reads Jan. 21, 2021 -- meaning that Kupelian simply changed the date on this 2-year-old story to make it appear new. The URL indicates the original 2019 date.
A 2-year-old version of a 31-year-old interview of a man who died a decade ago is the anthesis of "news." It's the apex of lazy reporting. But do we expect any more from WND?
CNS Whitewashes Curt Schilling's Hate, Lets Him Play Victim Topic: CNSNews.com
Craig Bannister manufactured some victimization for retired baseball pitcher Curt Schilling in a Jan. 27 CNSNews.com article:
Former three-time World Series winning pitcher Curt Schilling is asking that he be removed from contention in next year’s vote for Major League Baseball’s (MLB) Hall of Fame, voted on by “morally bankrupt” sports writers.
Schilling, who won 216 games and had an 11-2 record in the playoffs in his major league career, made the announcement on social media on Tuesday via a pair of tweets linking to a Facebook post of his request in a letter to the Hall of Fame:
[...]
Schilling has been the subject of hostile press for his conservative views and public comments, such as his opposition to transgender bathroom policies, comparison of Muslim extremists to Nazi-era Germans, and characterization of liberals who refused to denounce last year’s violent riots in major U.S. cities.
But Bannister is not telling the full story about Schilling's "conservative" comments. Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy explained:
Curt Schilling would help himself if he’d stop spewing hate and claiming he’s being punished by Baseball Hall of Fame voters because of his “politics.”Supporting a racist mob that stormed the Capitol is not being “political.” Advocating for lynching journalists, calling Adam Jones a liar when he said he heard racist slurs at Fenway Park, bilking Rhode Island out of $75 million, collecting Nazi memorabilia, and posting anti-transgender material … these are not “political” stands.
Mariano Rivera is a Donald Trump supporter and he sailed into the Hall of Fame unanimously.
Shaughnessy added that even without his hateful remarks, Schilling's Hall of Fame entry would not be guaranteed: "Schilling’s baseball case for Cooperstown is legit, but hardly a slam-dunk like a Pedro or a Koufax. He was 11-2 in the postseason and a historic strike-throwing machine. Otherwise, he compares most favorably to Kevin Brown, Kenny Rogers, and Tim Hudson, who are not in."
But when you're pushing conservative victimization, as Bannister is here, the narrative is more important than the truth.
ConWeb Hypes Arrest Of 'Leftist' Rioter To Distract From Pro-Trump Nature of Capitol Riot Topic: The ConWeb
The ConWeb has had trouble accepting that their fellow Trump supporters committed the Jan. 6 Capityol Riot (witness WorldNetDaily's attempts to blame Antifa). But when an purported leftist was arrested for his alleged role in the riot, they were ON IT.
Unsurprisingly, WND dived in deeply, first with an anonymously written Jan. 14 article:
The FBI has arrested anarchist leader John Sullivan of Utah for participating in and committing various crimes during the riot at the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6.
He was quoted as saying, "We got to rip Trump from office" and "It's time for a revolution."
Videos showed Sullivan agitating the crowd and encouraging violence.
That was followed the next day with an article by Art Moore declaring that this proved Antifa provoked the riot:
The FBI's arrest of a "revolutionary" activist Thursday night has shattered the conventional narrative that the loose-knit, "anti-fascist" movement known as Antifa had nothing to do with the violence that shut down the U.S. Capitol and prompted the second impeachment of President Trump.
John Earle Sullivan of Sandy, Utah, insists he's not a "member" of Antifa or Black Lives Matter, but the activists in black bloc who were behind the estimated $2 billion in damage over the summer don't carry membership cards. In quieter moments, many explain their aim is to provoke a revolution and replace the American republic with an anarchist system in which there is no state.
[...]
Prior to Sullivan's arrest, the prominent "fact-checker" site published by the Poynter Institute, Politifact, declared there's "no evidence that the crowd was infiltrated or led by antifa activists in disguise, and specific individuals held up online as antifa activists have turned out to be Trump supporters."
In fact, BLM activists in Utah, where Sullivan is from, have said Sullivan was kicked out of the group for extreme behavior and suspected far-right ties. Observers of Sullivan at the riot have said they did not see Sullivan inciting violence.
Moore then labored to distance the rioters from purportedly real Trump supporters:
Along with anti-Trump extremists, the FBI has arrested extremists who have declared support for the president.
Among them is Jacob Chansley, the QAnon conspiracy theorist who was photographed wearing horns as he stood at the desk of Vice President Mike Pence in the Senate chamber.
However, Chansley doesn't fit the profile of a typical Trump supporter. He has explained he's a practioner of shamanism, and Reuters reported a detention memo by Justice Department lawyers in Arizona said he "has spoken openly about his belief that he is an alien, a higher being, and he is here on Earth to ascend to another reality."
Among the mob at the Capitol were members of a "group" that has drawn the attention of the FBI ahead of the inauguration called the Boogaloo Bois.
The Atlantic reported the FBI warned earlier that boogaloos could launch attacks in state capitols this Sunday.
But the center-left magazine said "the boogaloos don't appear interested in fighting for Donald Trump — they tend to despise him, mostly because they think he panders to the police."
But Sullivan appears to have been the only non-right-winger arrested in connection to the riot, undercutting Moore's bogus contention that it was instigated by Antifa.
Moore is also being disingenuous by dismissing the "QAnon Shaman" arrested at the riot as not a true Trump supporter because "he's a practioner of shamanism." He's deliberately overlooking the QAnon part of the description, which is very much a pro-Trump movement.
CNSNews.com also glommed onto Sullivan's arrest in a Jan. 15 article by Melanie Arter touting how "A leftist activist was arrested and charged with taking part in the Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol," adding that "Sullivan told the Rolling Stone that he tried to blend in so that Trump supporters would trust him." Strangely, CNS deleted Arter's article; it's no longer in the CNS archive, and the original direct link comes up empty.
At the Media Research Center's NewsBusters blog, P.J. Gladnick got all excited about Sullivan's arrest -- and his appearance on CNN after the riot but before the arrest -- in a Jan 15 post:
On January 6, after the rioting in the Capitol building, Anderson Cooper interviewed a leftist "journalist," John Sullivan, who was filming the scene when Air Force veteran, Ashli Babbitt, was shot and killed. Conveniently not mentioned by Cooper during the interview was the fact that Sullivan had been arrested the previous July for rioting and making threats in Provo, Utah. Somehow this important fact, which would have put Sullivan's background in the proper perspective, was skipped although CNN seemed to know enough about Sullivan to identify him as the founder of far left Insurgence USA in its transcript.
[...]
It is therefore not very surprising that this "journalist" has now been arrested for very similar activity at the Capitol that CNN somehow overlooked although his organization appears in the report of Sullivan's Provo arrest.
Interestingly, we have not seen that WND, CNS or the MRC has given another other person arrested at the riot the kind of headline coverage it gave Sullivan -- which tells us they're using Sullivan as a distraction from the fact that the rioters were, in fact, pro-Trump extremists not too much unlike themselves.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's War On Warnock Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center and its "news" division, CNSNews.com, formed a tag team to attack Raphael Warnock, the Democratic candidate for a Georgia Senate seat -- effectively serving as the (unpaid?) oppo-research division of his Republican opponent. Read more >>
CNSNews.com found its two great hatreds of late -- transgender people and PresidentBiden'scabinet nominees -- merging into a single story. A Jan. 19 article by Melanie Arter introduced it, making sure to find an unflattering screenshot to illustrate it:
President-elect Joe Biden nominated Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine to be assistant secretary of the Department Health and Human Services on Tuesday.
If approved, Levine would become the first openly transgender Senate-confirmed federal official, The Hill reports.
“Dr. Rachel Levine will bring the steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get people through this pandemic — no matter their zip code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability — and meet the public health needs of our country in this critical moment and beyond,” Biden said in a statement.
Transgender Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine, who was tapped by President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday to be assistant HHS secretary, faced scrutiny last year for moving her own mother out of a nursing home after ordering all nursing homes and long-term care facilities to accept COVID patients from hospitals.
The Daily Caller reported in May 2020 that Levine admitted she pulled her mother out 11 days after issuing the order on March 29. Levine’s admission came after a local TV station discovered what the secretary had done.
In fact, Levine's mother was not in a nursing home but, rather, in a personal care facility that is regulated separately and under Levine's jurisdiction as state HHS director.
Arter also repeated criticism of Levine from a Republican state senator who claimed that moving COVID patients from hospitals to long-term-care facilities caused coronavirus to spread there, killing patients. But Arter censored the state government's response, that doing so freed up beds in hospitals for more COVID patients and that the virus' spread in long-term-care facilitiesis more likely due to asymptomatic employees.
CNS editor Terry Jeffrey went transphobic on Levine in his Jan. 20 column:
When Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf named Levine his state's "physician general" in 2015, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story explaining the doctor's background.
"She has been a leading voice in efforts to treat teens with medical and psychological problems," the paper quoted the governor as saying.
She went to Harvard as an undergraduate and then to medical school at Tulane, and eventually worked at the Penn State Hershey Medical Center and Health System.
"Along the way, she was married and fathered two children," said the Inquirer.
That's right: The Inquirer reported that "she ... fathered two children."
Someone else, apparently, mothered them.
"Now divorced," the paper explained, "Levine said she began the transition to becoming a woman about 10 years ago."
The internet played an important role in this "transition."
[...]
This week, both The Washington Post and The New York Times featured Levine's transgenderism in their online headlines about her nomination. "Biden Selects Transgender Doctor Rachel Levine as Assistant Health Secretary," said the Post. "Biden Chooses Rachel Levine, a Transgender Doctor, for Senior Health and Human Services Role," said the Times.
But does the science say that a male can become a female when he changes his name and his manner of presenting himself?
The same day, Craig Bannister complained that "This week Biden nominated transgender Dr. Rachel Levine — the former Dr. Richard Levine — as an assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services."
In his Jan. 29 column, dishonest Catholic Bill Donohue claimed that a Catholic media outlet's Twitter account was suspended after it described Levine as "a biological man identifying as a transgender woman," insisting that this was "innocuous speech" and ranting, "the free speech rights of all Catholic media outlets and websites are in jeopardy. Twitter is a menace to freedom. It needs to be reined in by the Congress."
Tony Perkins referenced the incident in his Feb. 2 column, adding, "It's incredible how far we've come since November. Now, Big Tech can't even co-exist with the facts!"
How Has The MRC Been Freaking Out Over George Soros Now? Topic: Media Research Center
The last time we checked in on the Media Research Center's obsession with George Soros, MRC writer Joseph Vazquez seemingly had an assignment to fearmonger abaout him every week or two. Vazquez was at it over the last half of 2020 and into 2021:
In a Nov. 30 post, Vazquez complained that "It took Election Day being over for CNN to slam Democratic hypocrisy on the use of dark money," highlighting that "The George Soros-funded Sixteen Thirty Fund — a left-wing group CNN noted as responsible for about a third of the 'dark money' that helped fuel Democratic candidates this cycle — had given $52 million to other 'groups active in the 2020 elections.' CNN ignored mentioning that the group was connected to Soros." Vazquez wasn't similarly concerned about dark money in Republican political campaigns.
Meanwhile, Alexander Hall went on a Soros-blaming binge in a July post:
Don’t doubt that Wikipedia is liberal. Fierce debate erupted among Wikipedia moderators about whether Fox News could even be used as a credible source in Wikipedia entries. It ended by being a source that could only be used with proper warnings in place.
Wikipedia labels itself as the internet’s encyclopedia. Like so many other internet institutions, it seems to have been co-opted by left-wing radicals. “The Wikipedia community recently engaged in a spirited debate over whether Fox News is a reliable enough source to use as a citation in entries on the encyclopedia,” CNN’s’ Reliable Sources newsletter reported.
The administrators overseeing the platform decided that since there was “no consensus regarding the reliability" of Fox News, that it “should be used with caution.” Perhaps this shouldnt be a surprise from an institution which has received $2 million in donations from liberal billionaire George Soros.
Yes, Hall really was blaming all of this on Soros giving money to Wikipedia.
In a Dec. 2 post, Hall complained that Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the "infamous" Anti-Defamation League, "has smeared online conservatives as being 'anti-Semitic' for their criticism of liberal billionaire George Soros. He claimed 'George Soros is patient zero for the anti-Semites.'" The MRC has declared Soros as a Jew conservatives are permitted to hate, pre-emptively absolving them of anti-Semitism in doing so, even though it has applied the anti-Semitic "puppet master" trope to him.
We've already noted that on Dec. 18, MRC chief Brent Bozell attacked the Americans for Prosperity Foundation for seeking emails the MRC may have sent to Trump administration officials to pushing its dubious conservative victimization agenda regarding social media, further attacking key AFP funder the Koch brothers for having "launched a multi-million dollar venture with George Soros."
The Media Research Center has long defended right-wing Twitter clone Parler as a purported "free speech" app -- glossing over the fact that the Capitol riot was planned in part on it and it contains racism, pornography and violent threats, and it has completely censored from its readers the fact that Parler the fact that the MRC and Parler share a deep-pocketed funder in Rebekah Mercer.
Joe Biden had been president for only two days when Newsmax published a 
Brent Smith wrote in his Feb. 5 WorldNetDaily 
Media Research Center executive Tim Graham has 
Back in September, we 
The sheer hatred at the Media Research Center for President Biden and any media outlet that doesn't relentlessly trash him that it has to attack a memorial service for victims of coronavirus because Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris attended, MSNBC said something nice about it, and a panelist --gasp! -- referenced the Bible. 
Even though President Trump never called for a riot, never called for an insurrection, never stated anything other than his belief that the 2020 election was won by Biden because of election fraud, Democrats and establishment politicians are blaming him for those 1/10th of 1% of people at the peaceful assembly who entered the Capital building Jan 6.
It was embarrassing that anyone would continue to shill for Donald Trump after the Capitol riot he instigated. But Media Research Center writer Nicholas Fondacaro is clearly not afraid to embarrass himself.
The lead story at WorldNetDailiy on Jan. 21 was an 
Craig Bannister manufactured some victimization for retired baseball pitcher Curt Schilling in a Jan. 27 CNSNews.com 
The ConWeb has had trouble accepting that their fellow Trump supporters committed the Jan. 6 Capityol Riot (witness WorldNetDaily's attempts to 
CNSNews.com found its two great hatreds of late -- 
The 
