Ouch: WND Has To Walk Back Yet Another Bogus Article
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily continues to have a serious problem with the whole journalism thing, still insisting on publishing bogus claims that it's forced to walk back later. This time, it's a Feb. 1 article by Art Moore:

China, the World Health Organization and the U.S. National Institutes of Health have dimissed the theory that the virus causing the global pandemic that has killed more than 2 million people and devastated economies worldwide escaped from the Wuhan, China, lab funded by the United States.

But there's no disputing the fact, as Newsweek reported in April 2020, that NIH executive Dr. Anthony Fauci promoted a highly controversial type of research involving the manipulation of viruses to explore their potential for infecting humans. And it's known that more than 200 scientists pressured the Obama administration in 2014 to temporarily halt U.S. funding for that research because of the risk of a manipulated virus accidentally escaping a lab and igniting a pandemic. Nevertheless, under Fauci's direction, the dangerous virus engineering resumed in 2017 and continued until April 2020.

Now, documentary evidence makes it a "near certainty" that the coronavirus pandemic originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, where so-called "gain-of-function" research was funded by Fauci's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, according to Steve Hilton, who is leading a special investigation for his Fox News show "The Next Revolution."

Politifact subtly dragged WND in a fact-check: "WorldNetDaily has since dialed back on many of its claims, issuing three separate corrections, all of which cite scientists pushing back on the notion that SARS-CoV-2 was manmade. It has also placed a question mark at the end of the original headline. However, the bulk of the article text has not been updated."

Indeed, the original headline, 'New evidence ties COVID-19 creation to research funded by Fauci," now ends with a question mark, and Moore's article is topped with a massive correction that was added a week later:

UPDATED Feb. 8, 2021: A fact check by USA Today from March and April 2020 indicated the coronavirus is not man-made or engineered, but its origin remains unclear. It said, "There is no evidence to suggest that the virus was created in a Chinese laboratory. "It is probable, likely, that the virus is of animal origin," WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said.

The Scripps Research Institute released a study that rejects the notion that the virus was man-made. Researchers concluded that if the virus were engineered, its genome sequence would more closely resemble earlier and more serious versions of the coronavirus.

FactCheck.org stated on Feb. 7, 2020, "There is no evidence that the new virus was bioengineered, and every indication it came from an animal. ... All lines of evidence point to the virus coming from an animal. That's consistent with what scientists have learned about the ecology of coronaviruses in the last 20 years," according to Timothy Sheahan, a virologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It fits with the fact that the virus shares 96% of its genome with a bat virus.

"The genetic data is pointing to this virus coming from a bat reservoir," he said, "not a lab."

While publishing false information does not inspire confidence in WND's product, having to issue massive corrections doesn't either, especially when you're trying to get other websites to publish your content, as the WND News Center is trying to do -- not to mention getting people to donate money to fund the nonprofit effort.

There's clearly a fundamental dysfunction in WND's editorial process that no "news" organization in existence for 23 years should have. The continual walkbacks -- while a refreshing change from its usual practice of refusing to correct false claims unless someone threatens to sue -- make us wonder if, even after finally making concrete efforts to save itself from its ongoing financial crisis, WND deserves to live.

MRC Defends Trump's Barely Existent COVID Vaccine Distribution Plan
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center -- in apparent excersing of its pro-Trump defense reflex -- strangely went all in on defending the Trump administration's coronavirus vaccine distribution plan, even though there really wasn't much of one.

Curtis Houck ranted in a Jan. 21 post:

On Thursday morning, CNN White House correspondent MJ Lee filed an anonymously-sourced story on behalf of her fellow lefties that set the agenda for Zuckerville and like-minded outlets (which our friend Drew Holden chronicled in another legendary thread): “Biden inheriting nonexistent coronavirus vaccine distribution plan and must start ‘from scratch,’ sources say.”

But as we would learn hours later from Dr. Tony Fauci of NIH, the Biden administration “certainly [is] not starting from scratch because there is activity going on in the distribution.”

Huh. So, in other words, Lee’s story was nothing more than pants-on-fire fake news. Trump should ask Bernie Sanders how it felt to be on the receiving end of Lee’s propaganda.

[...]

If the plan was nonexistent, how come there have been 18.4 million shots given, according to Bloomberg?

Because, as others have pointed out, the plan, such as it was, wasn't a very good one -- it was concerned only with shipping the vaccines to states, which were then on their own in figuring out distribution. PolitiFact summarized: "There are many criticisms of this process, including that it took too long to give states money to implement their plans and a lack of communication from the top about how the rollout would work. But that was the plan they drew up." The Biden administration has said it will help the states much more closely than the Trump administration did.

But the MRC had its narrative -- Trump had a rock-solid plan, CNN was lying -- and it was running with it.

Tim Graham huffed in his Jan. 22 column:

Nonexistent? If the Trump administration had a “nonexistent” vaccine strategy, how was the vaccine distributed across the country? This is self-evidently false. CNN somehow didn’t have the talent or intelligence to Google the 11-page HHS document on their Operation Warp Speed vaccine strategy. Instead, CNN reporter MJ Lee was relying on anonymous Trump-trashing sources for her dishonest spin.

[...]

Trump is easily portrayed as saying any strategy he unveiled was the best strategy ever. The CNN/Biden approach is the exact opposite, a wild and boastful exaggeration that there was zero planning, zip, nothing. You could argue Trump’s plans were insufficient. But that wasn’t enough: they had to lie for effect.

MRC chief Brent Bozell ranted in a Fox Business appearance: "The plan called, had it all set up for distribution in every state, in every territory, tribal distribution, even local distribution. You're entitled to your opinion. You're not entitled to lie. And CNN flat-out lied to its viewers. Its viewers need to understand it is not biased, they're not spinning it, they're flat out lying. That just wasn't true.”

Graham returned to complain on Feb. 15:

Isn't it fascinating that the liberal media lecture us about all the dangers of misinformation about the coronavirus, but now the Biden-Harris team just keeps repeating nonsense about how they had to start "from scratch" on the vaccine? That there was "no plan"? 

Even after CNN fell on its face running this claim from an anonymous source, only to be corrected by media darling Anthony Fauci, Vice President Kamala Harris said it out loud to Axios reporter and co-founder Mike Allen for the website's HBO show. Allen just accepted this garbage.

[...]

Can we expect ANY "independent fact-checkers" to locate this obvious misinformation, just lying there?

Of course, we can't expect Graham to tell his readers that whatever plan Trump had was wholly inadequate to the task. 

On Feb. 17, Joseph Vazquez cheered how Fox Business host Larry Kudlow was eager to rip apart a lie Vice President Kamala Harris told Axios about the vaccine rollout effort of former President Donald Trump’s administration," even happier that "Kudlow shot back over a hot mic: 'Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!'"

The same day, Kristine Marsh accused Fauci of "backtracking from his own prior statements so he could defend Vice President Kamala Harris’s “starting from scratch” lie" by saying (accurately, not that Marsh or the MRC will admit it) that "the actual plan of getting the vaccine doses into people's arms was really rather vague."

Kyle Drennen groused that a later interviewer of Harris "ignored Harris lying in a recent interview about the Biden administration having to 'start from scratch' in its COVID response after President Trump left office," claiming that the questions that were asked "conveniently took the place of any attempt to hold Harris accountable for lying in a recent Axios interview about the Biden administration supposedly having to 'start from scratch' in its COVID response, as if the Trump administration had not done anything to combat the pandemic. Something even Dr. Anthony Fauci said was false."

Graham harped on it again in a Feb. 20 post, pretending to be outraged that the Washington Post gave Harris only two Pinocchios for Harris' statement, trying to split hairs in offering a defense:

In this case, Kessler thinks it's fair game to say there was "no national strategy" since it was "state-centric." You can't have a "state-centric national strategy"? He did think it was "trouble" to say "starting from stratch," even though he elastically allowed they have "fill in the blanks" a bit. 

[...]

"Starting from scratch" is not "trouble." It's non-factual. There is no evidence of such a claim, if we may use the liberal-media argot. For people who lecture about the importance of facts and truth, they seem to be extremely willing to sculpt falsehoods into all kinds of puzzling shapes and then pronounce they're well, half-true.

Remember: For the MRC, narrative is everything. The truth -- that Trump's plan was apparently only marginally better than no plan at all when it came to the end goal of vaccines in people's arms -- is secondary.

WND Columnist Thinks Trump Is John Wick
Topic: WorldNetDaily

What? Another movie analogy? Yep. It's life imitating art, or art imitating life, or something like that. It works – that's all I know.

In the "John Wick" trilogy of movies, Wick (Keanu Reeves) is the world's most feared assassin. But as feared as he is, even amongst his peers, there is another, even more menacing. It is the body that controls all underworld/criminal activity worldwide. It's called the High Table. In short, the High Table is a council of the highest-level crime lords, which governs and oversees the underworld's most powerful criminal organizations.

There are strict rules that must be followed to "serve under the High Table," and one must pledge his absolute loyalty to the Table.

As the trilogy progresses, John Wick runs afoul of these rules. For this the consequence is his elimination. An "Open Contract" is placed on his head, and his peers get to work to try to fulfill the contract.

Does any of this sound familiar? It should.

Donald Trump is John Wick, and all those who oppose his policies are officials on the High Table council.

For the crime of not pledging his undying loyalty, for non-adherence to Deep State dogma and attempting to undermine the authority of this criminal enterprise, an "Open Contract" of sorts has been placed on "Don" Wick's head.

The American High Table is the merger of Democrats, deep state Republicans, Big Tech, media and finance. They have a full-court press on to ruin Donald Trump. They are literally hitting him from all sides, working toward this common end.

Trump has been the bane of their existence since he announced he was running for president in 2015. And like John Wick, Trump, to them, is the most dangerous man in America.

-- Brent Smith, Jan. 15 WorldNetDaily column

After Months of Censorship, CNS Finally Admits Greene's Extreme Views
Topic: CNSNews.com

For months, CNSNews.com has been trying to mainstream extremist Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene by making sure nobody knows about her support for QAnon or other far-right views. But when those very views would become the subject of a controversy in the House -- coming after the revelation of even more extreme views -- would CNS finally tell its readers the truth?

The start of the controversy didn't bode well. In a Jan. 28 article, Susan Jones highlighted Nancy Pelosi saying that the enemy was "in the House of Representatives":

A reporter asked Pelosi, "What exactly did you mean that the enemy is within?"

"It means we have members of Congress who want to bring guns on the floor and have threatened violence on other members of Congress," Pelosi said.

Earlier, Pelosi mentioned freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, by name, blasting Republican leaders for assigning her to the Education Committee, given some of Greene's controversial and offensive social media posts.

Greene, a staunch Trump supporter, has been labeled a conspiracy theorist by the partisan media.

Nope, Jones wasn't ready to admit that Greene's views were extreme -- or even exactly what those views were -- given how quick she was to blame the "partisan media" and not, you know, common sense.

The same day, Craig Bannister complained that Midler as "'fantasizing' about three Republican members of Congress getting lost at sea, and that she isn’t joking." TYe list included Greene and Lauren Boebert -- another extremist congresswoman whose extremism CNS won't acknowledge.(CNS has a thing for repeating Midler's thoughts, for some reason.)

It was not until House leaders threatened to remove Greene from her committees that Jones finally felt compelled to discuss Greene in detail in a Feb. 2 article, though she took a somewhat lazy way out and simply quoted Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell:

The House Rules Committee will meet on Wednesday to discuss "removing a certain member from certain standing committees of the House of Representatives."

The member in question is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a freshman Republican from Georgia, who sits on the House Education and Budget Committees. Greene has been blasted as a "menace" by Democrats and as a "cancer" on the Republican Party by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

In a statement released to the media on Monday, McConnell wrote: 

Loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country. Somebody who's suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.'s airplane is not living in reality. This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party.

Jones also added a few defiant tweets from Greene, such as a rant that "If Democrats remove me from my committees, I can assure them that the precedent they are setting will be used extensively against members on their side once we regain the majority after the 2022 elections.

The next day, however, Jones was serving up revisionist history, minimizing what she said as having been done before she was elected and engaging in more media-blaming:

Greene has come under fire for some of the comments and opinions she's aired on social media before taking office -- speech that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called "looney lies and conspiracy theories."

She is a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump, and partisan cable outlets are giving her plenty of unflattering coverage as a way to tarnish all conservative Republicans.

Jones was defending Greene again in a Feb. 4 article:

As Democrats in Congress and the media go all-out to make freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) the face of the Republican Party, today they'll go beyond demonizing her (and her fellow Republicans) by stripping Greene of her House committee assignments.

Greene, who has espoused or endorsed a number of crackpot theories, nevertheless says 13,000 "America First Patriots" have raised $175,000 in the last 48 hours "to defend my seat in Congress."

"The people have my back," she tweeted on Wednesday.

Even Republicans who object to Greene's remarks say her congressional service should be up to the voters in her district -- not to Democrats:

"Tomorrow, they (Democrats) are going to take the unprecedented action of substituting the will of Washington for the will of people in this country," Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told Fox News's Sean Hannity Wednesday night. "And when we get the majority back, we better apply the same standard."

[...]

With Thursday’s vote, House Democrats want to get Republican lawmakers on record as supporting Greene by voting not to strip her of her committee assignments. It’s always about the next political campaign, in other words.

Rep. Ted Lieu is among the Democrats – and there are many of them – who is using Greene to paint all Republicans as wacky conspiracy theorists: "Marjorie Taylor Greene has become the voice and face of the House @GOP Caucus," Lieu tweeted on Wednesday.

Jones didn't admit that CNS wouldn't tell its readers the details of Greene's "crackpot theories" until the issue was forced in the House. Curiously, CNS didn't devote a story to Greene's House floor speech the same day in which she claimed to express regret for the extreme views she espoused.

But on Feb. 8, Melanie Arter whitewashed Greene's views even more, bizarrely claiming that she had merely made "years of misstatements." She did, however, quote Republican Rep. Liz Cheney admitting that "The things that she has said don't have any place in our public discourse, and we as a Republican conference should deal with that issue. We should have dealt with it."

UPDATE: A Jan. 29 article by Jones didn't mention Greene by name, but it gave Republican Rep. Steve Scalise a platform to complain that "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is playing a 'dangerous kind of game' by demonizing Republican lawmakers as the 'enemy,'" going on to approvingly cite Fox News host Laura Ingraham declaring that "Democrats, by making an overwhelming show of security at the Capitol and demonizing colleagues who exercise their right to carry guns, 'are setting the stage to make a run on the guns of law-abiding citizens...I think that is exactly right, whether it is going after ammo with obscene taxes on ammunition or other types of restrictions, I think you have just nailed it. I think that's exactly what's going on.'"

MRC Censors News Of Bozell's Son Getting Arrested For Capitol Riot
Topic: Media Research Center

Last week, it was revealed that Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell's son, Leo Brent Bozell IV, was arrested for his alleged role in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. The youinger Bozell has apparently worked as a girls' basketball coach in Pennsylvania, and he was identified in part because he was wearing a sweatshirt from a school in the town where he coached (though, apparently, not one that employed him).

You will not be surprised to learn that the MRC doesn't want you to know about Bozell IV's arrest. We could find no mention of it on any MRC-operated website, including its "news" division, CNSNews.com. Bozell has made no comment about it on his personal Twitter account, and the MRC has issued no statement from Bozell regarding it. It appears that the MRC wants it to blow over quietly through censorship and radio silence. (ConWebWatch even requested comment from the MRC on Bozell IV; we have heard nothing back.)

Interestingly, Bozell kinda-sorta endorsed the riot his son was arrested for being involved in. While he claimed to deplore the violence and was worried about its effect on the conservative movement, he justified the violence because "they are furious that they believe this election was stolen. I agree with them." Bozell has continued to cling to his conspiracy theory that pre-election polls showing Joe Biden with a huge lead were deliberately faked by the media, and that the election was "stolen" because the media didn't sufficiently parrot pro-Trump talking points.

Bozell is not going to admit that he was wrong, or that his son was wrong, because he has a very Trumpian impulse not to admit his mistakes. Just like no apology ever came when it was revealed in 2014 that Tim Graham ghost-wrote Bozell's syndicated column (Graham was simply added to Bozell's byline, and he was granted sole credit for the column last year), and just like when Bozell asserted that President Obama looked like a "skinny ghetto crackhead."

As Bill Clinton has said, it can be better to be strong and wrong than weak and right. Bozell has decided to live that -- even though it may harm the credibility of the MRC.

Newsmax Columnist Rants About Suspiciously High COVID Death Numbers (That Later Got Fixed)
Topic: Newsmax

You might remember Newsmax columnist Mark Schulte as 1) the guy who likes to spout conspiracy theories about coronavirus death counts, and 2) the guy whom Newsmax has to put a disclaimer on his column stating that he is a "non-clinician." Well, he struck again in his Feb. 4 column, and he thinks he has something this time:

President Joe Biden, during his first full day in the White House on Jan. 21, released a 100-plus-page report detailing a "National Strategy for COVID-19."

Biden's introductory letter promised his "fellow Americans" that "our national strategy will be driven by scientists and public health experts," and that his administration "will always be honest and transparent with you about both the good news and the bad."

Eleven days later, on Monday, Feb. 1, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the latest "Provisional Death Counts" for COVID-19, which are published daily Mondays through Fridays, and which totally discredit Biden's promise of honesty and transparency.

On Friday, Jan. 29, 2021 the CDC issued these fatality totals:

• 369,453 COVID deaths
• 3,446,816 deaths from all causes

(since Dec. 28, 2019)

On morning of Monday, Feb. 1, 2021, these deaths tolls were published on the CDC's website:

• 413,196 COVID deaths
• In three days, the COVID death toll skyrocketed by a stupendous 43,743, or 12%. Deaths from all causes jumped by just 59,875, or 2%.

COVID deaths account for a highly anomalous 73% of deaths from all causes added during these three days.

[...]

In conclusion, while I have written a number of articles in Newsmax since April 2020, documenting the "Fake COVID Epidemiology" disseminated by leading Democrats, including New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, New Gov. Phil Murphy and Joe Biden, the mind-boggling increase of 43,743 COVID deaths, reported by the CDC between Jan. 29 and Feb. 1, is the most brazenly dishonest and invalid.

Of course, these were provisional numbers likely to change due to errors and other anomalies -- and that's exactly what happened in the days after Schulte rushed his conpsiracy theory to publication. Here are the number of deaths currently listed by the CDC for those days:

• Jan. 29: 3,543
• Jan. 30: 2,873
  
• Jan. 31: 1,949
• Feb. 1: 1,696
  

That's a total of 8,311 over that four-day period, and more in line with the trends of that time. If only Schulte had bothered to wait until all the numbers were fully analyzed -- but then, he wouldn't have a column.

Schulte, by the way, has not corrected his column as of this writing or admitted that he rushed to judgment.

NEW ARTICLE: The MRC vs. Twitter, Part 1
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center repeatedly claimed that President Trump was being "censored" on Twitter (in fact, his lies were merely labeled as such), and it falsely portrayed political donations by Twitter employees as coming from the company. Read more >>

AAPS' Dubious Doc Jane Orient Still Pushing Shady Websites On Coronavirus
Topic: WorldNetDaily

In her Dec. 23 WorldNetDaily column fearmongering about the then-upcoming coronavirus vaccines, Jane Orient -- the dubious doc from the fringe-right Association of American Physicians and Surgeons -- concluded, "For more information on protecting yourself, see "A Home-Based Guide to COVID Treatment." For a variety of treatment protocols and physician resources, see c19protocols.com."

The former is a free PDF booklet you have to give up your email address to get; we're not in a hurry to do that, given Orient's and the AAPS' history of promoting conspiracy theories and dubious treatments for coronavirus.

But what is c19protocols.com? It's simply a list of links to various alleged treatments.But the fact that the third link involves a protocol from Vladimir Zelenko -- an AAPS-promoted doctor who got notoriety early in the pandemic for pushing hydroxychloroquine despite lacking documentation for his claims -- does not inspire confidence. The website also links to America's Frontline Doctors, a right-wing group known for pushing dubious treatments despite its members lacking experience treating COVID-19 patients.

The website itself is a one-page generic-looking WordPress design, and there's no indication of who runs it -- which also doesn't inspire confidence in its contents. But a look at the WHOIS information for the domain name indicates that it's run by Orient's AAPS. It's strange that the AAPS wouldn't put its name on this website, and it makes one wonder what they're trying to hide by keep it somewhat secret. It's especially ironic given that Orient has written a column, published Dec. 30 by WND, attacking health authorities for putting out "fake news" and "scaremongering," adding that "Public health authorities are very worried about loss of public trust."

If that sort of obliqueness sounds familiar, it is. We've written about websites such as c19study.com (which c19protocols.com links to) and HCQTrial.com, which are completely anonymous websites -- their owners have been hidden on WHOIS -- pushing dubious claims and pseudoscience. It's been speculated that AAPS also runs those websites, given that Orient and other AAPS-linked writers have touted them.

Orient has continued this lack of transparency in her WND columns. In her Jan. 11 column, Orient declared that "Lack of early treatments for which there is substantial and growing evidence may cause more than 100,000 needless deaths," in which she linked to c19protocols.com and c19study.com without disclosing the links between them and her AAPS. She unironically added, "Those who are for protecting human lives are against censorship, central planning and unfettered, unaccountable government – and for freedom and individual rights."

In her Jan. 13 column, Orient fearmongered again about coronavirus vaccines, declaring them to be "not a magic bullet." She again linked to c19protocols.com, this time in a bullet list at the end of her column along with the AAPS "Home-Based Guide to COVID Treatment." 

In her Jan. 18 column, Orient wrote about the mutating coronavirus and touted how "Re-purposed old drugs – ivermectin and antimalarials such as hydroxychloroquine – act by mechanisms that do not depend on a stable virus." In addition to linking to c19protocols.com and the AAPS guide, she also linked to a article from something called Physicians for Civil Defense -- which, as we've noted, is little more than a blog run by Orient.

Orient devoted her Feb. 12 column to attacking  mask mandates, insisting that "natural immunity, sensible precautions and early treatment" makemore sense (which conveniently ignores the fact that a significant amount of coronavirus cases are spread by asymptomatic carriers). In her bullet list at the endof the column, Orient promoted not only c19protocols.com, the AAPS guide and Physicians for Civil Defense, but also webnites touting vitamin D and zinc as treatments -- apparently run by the same anonymous folks behind the other COVID-related operations.

Orient seems more interested in making political arguments and pushing anonymous arguments than genuinely trying to help people. That just makes her look even more dubous and untrustworthy.

MRC Sneers At Tom Brokaw's Retirement
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's reason for existence is to hate anyone who doesn't peddle right-wing talking points in the media and to brand those people as "liberal" (even though the MRC's worldview is so far to the right that it brands objective reporters as "liberal"). So when legendary anchor Tom Brokaw announced his full retirement from NBC, Geoffrey Dickens offered nothing but sneering and derision:

On Friday, Tom Brokaw formally retired from NBC News. If you are confused, it’s because he already had one retirement when he vacated the NBC Nightly Newsanchor chair for Brian Williams back in 2004. But like a college professor who awkwardly still hung out with kids decades younger than him, he hung around the NBC offices in an Anchor Emeritus role. Some of those “kids” like Chuck Todd, Peter Alexander and Willie Geist said their goodbyes over the weekend. 

Newspaper headlines touted Brokaw as a “broadcasting legend,” while he was toasted on Twitter as a “national treasure.” On Monday’s Today, Hoda Kotb boasted her colleague was “a titan in journalism, an icon here at NBC.” New York Times critic James Poniewozik wistfully remembered the era when Brokaw, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings had huge influence over the public: “They were in a way like world luminaries in themselves.”

Occasionally we’d hear from Mr. Brokaw at the MRC. Like that one time at a July 25, 2004 forum at Harvard University’s School of Government where he complained: “There are organized interest groups out there. There’s a guy by the name of Brent Bozell, who makes a living at, you know, taking us on every night. He’s well-organized, he’s got a constituency, he’s got a newsletter. He can hit a button and we’ll hear from him.”

And, while Brokaw was never as obnoxious as today’s outspoken liberal hosts (think: CNN’s Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo, or MSNBC’s Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow), he certainly used his perch at NBC to promote a liberal view of politics.

So Dickens is mad that Brokaw called out the MRC for what it is -- a right-wing outrage machine.

Dickens went on to attack Brokaw for expressing "liberal" opinions he didn't agree with from the past 16 years, when he was not acting as a reporter or anchor and thus should have had no problem expressing opinions. But they were deemed to be "liberal" opinions, which Dickens and the MRC are trying to eradicate from the media landscape.

The MRC has long hated Brokaw, even though he has Republican leanings (indeed, Tim Graham had no problem with Brokaw serving as a liaison between John McCain and NBC during his 2008 presidential campaign). It also praised a 2009 book by anti-liberal ex-reporter Bernard Goldberg that included a doctored coversation involving Brokaw. In 2012, MRC chief Brent Bozell ridiculously attacked Brokaw for complaining he was put into an for then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

CNS Pushes Pro-Trump Narrative Before Impeachment Trial
Topic: CNSNews.com

We've documented how quickly CNSNews.com got over the Capitol riot, slipping into reflexive defense mode as the House of Representatives impeached President Trump for inciting it. That grousing about impeachment continued in the days afterward, featuring complains from Republican politicians:

• Rep. Nancy Mace: There Was a Bipartisan Effort to Look at Censuring Trump, But Pelosi Wouldn’t Allow It
• Sen. Graham: Biden 'Incredibly Weak' If He Does Not Oppose Impeachment After Trump Leaves
• Sen. Paul: If Senate GOP Leaders Help Impeach Trump, 'They Will Destroy the Republican Party'
• Graham: 'We're About to Impeach a Guy in Florida, OK?' 'Continues to Divide the Country'
• Rubio: Holding an Impeachment Trial for Trump Would be ‘Stupid’—Like Throwing Gasoline on a Fire
• Sen. Cotton: 'I Don't Think This Trial...Is Within the Senate's Constitutional Authority'
• Rep. Jordan: 'How Do You Unify When You're Trying to Impeach a President With No Due Process?'
• Rubio: 'For the Political Entertainment Business, This (Impeachment) Is About Ratings and Clicks'
• Sen. Rand Paul: If You Impeach Trump, You Should Impeach Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Maxine Waters and Cory Booker

CNS also uncritically repeated Sen. Rand Paul's counterfactual recounting of the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise and other Republican politicians at a baseball field:

I was at the ball field when the Bernie Sanders supporter showed up and shot Steve Scalise, almost killed him, shot four other staffers, shot one of the staffers 10 feet from me. It was a very violent episode, but as the guy was shooting at us, he was saying “this is for healthcare," and at that time, the Democrats were saying that the Republican health care plan was “you get sick and then you die.” You can see how that kind of language might have incited this person. But I never in my wildest dreams or any kind of sense of fairness would’ve said “oh we need to have a hearing to impeach Bernie Sanders, and that it’s his fault that this crazed gunman came.”

We found no contempraneous accounts from Paul claiming that the shooter said "this is for healthcare" as he was shooting. Further, Paul identified nothing Sanders personally said that could possibly have incited the shooter; indeed, Sanders quickly condemned the shooting.

In this time period -- Jan. 18 to Feb. 1 -- CNS published only two article featuring a Democratic politician's view of impeachement: a Jan. 19 piece by Craig Bannister featuring Rep. Rashida Tlaib arguing that had President Obama did what Trump did in inciting the Capitol, he would almost certainly be conviced by the Senate, and a Jan. 26 piece by Susan Jones featuring Rep. Eric Swalwell claiming that Trump incited the riot to disenfranchise Black Americans. There was also a Jan. 26 article by Patrick Goodenough framing president Biden's statement that the impeachment trial "has to happen" as being made even though he "came into office aiming for 'unity'."

CNS was also dismissive of Republicans who supported impeachment. In a Jan. 25 article, Jones editorialized that "Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), never a Trump supporter, sounded a lot like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Sunday when he was asked about the impeachment of former President Donald Trump," adding that "Schumer used some of the same words in a speech on the Senate floor last Friday."

When Paul's Senate motion to declare Trump's impeachment trial unconstitutional failed when five Republicans chose not to support it, Goodenough devoted ample space in a Jan. 27 article to Paul's arguments for it --  11 paragraphs of statements from Paul and GOP Sen. Thom Tillis, cmpared with three paragraphs from Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer -- and named the five Republicans who voted against it, pointing out that they "are all known critics of Trump," further complaining that one of them, Romney, "was the lone Republican to vote to find the president guilty of one of the two charges he faced – abuse of power" and that two others "both called on Trump to resign, following the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol."

Goodenough encapsulated the partisan, pro-Trump framing that CNS would go on to use for the impeachment trial itself -- just as it did last time.

MRC Still Spreading Lies About Margaret Sanger
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has long spewed hate at Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, much of it factually incorrect (good thing for the MRC that it's not against the law to libel the dead). And it hasn't stopped.

In a Dec. 2 post, Elise Ehrhard attacked the ABC show "Black-ish" for having a character who donated to Planned Parenthood instead of to church. Ehrhard huffed in response: "Why would a show that is supposed to promote an empowering image of black Americans promote an organization that kills thousands of black babies every year? Are the writers of Black-ish not aware that Planned Parenthood was founded in part to 'eliminate the Negro population?' Its founder Margaret Sanger considered black Americans, as well as other minority populations, to be 'human weeds.'"

The "human weeds" quote is a lie. Ehrhard's source is the rabidly anti-abortion LifeSite News, which falsely claims that  Sanger called blacks "human weeds" in a publication called "The Pivot of Civilization." But the phrase "human weeds" is nowhere to be found in the copy of "The Pivot of Civilization" to which LifeSite links. And the "eliminate the Negro population" phrase is plucked out of context from a letter regarding a project to bring birth controlto black communities; in full context, Sanger was seeking to recruit black leaders for the effort to allay suspicions blacks might have had about whites like Sanger being involved.

In a Jan. 15 post attacking Time magazine for interviewing the head of Planned Parenthood, Tim Graham claimed that the interviewer "very carefully avoids the trap of Planned Parenthood's founder Margaret Sanger being a eugenicist who wanted to abort minorities." Graham's support for this claim was a column from July in which he twice asserted that Sanger was a "racist and eugenicist" but the only evidence he offered to back up the claim was that she once spoke to a Ku Klux Klan women's auxiliary.

While Sanger was unquestionably a eugenicist -- as were many people of her time --  but there's no evidence she was especially racist. As we've documented, the KKK women's auxiliary was not the Klan itself (anyway, the Klan of the 1920s was actually not that different from conservative groups of today, with as much focus on fundamentalism and patriotism as racism and anti-Catholicism, and it was arguably something of a mainstream group), Sanger would speak to anyone who would let her, and she later called the speech "one of the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing."

Yep, the MRC should be very glad that it's OK to libel the dead.

Mychal Massie Has Issues With Women (And Biden, And Democrats, And Republicans, And...)
Topic: WorldNetDaily

I'm not interested in being liked or being popular. If I were, I'd be a black Republican ideologue where they would hang on my every word as long as I towed the party line. If I were interested in being filthy rich, I would have converted to being an African-American Democrat who blamed white people for everything from slavery to unconscious racism to the notion growing a garden is racist. If I were an African-American Democrat, I'd be a god, and a very rich one. I wouldn't have to speak broken English and dribble a basketball (and from my mouth) like "Low-Brain" James. I wouldn't have to be what the old-timer blacks called "high-yellow," nor a homosexual like a certain sour lemon program host on CNN.

I speak the truth and often in incendiary forthrightness, and that makes people uncomfortable. I don't apologize for speaking the truth nor for the way I speak it.

Democrats are as unholy as the Children of the Corn. There's no biblical support that allows for them to be recognized as anything other than the progeny of Satan. They promote every single thing God's Word condemns. The problem is that most people who reference themselves as conservative, especially those who reference themselves as Christian and conservative, have bought the damnable lie that the Republican Party is more trustworthy than Democrats despite all evidence to the contrary.

The Republicans' participation in the betrayal of President Trump was Machiavellian to the point of making Macbeth look like a rank amateur in the court of political treachery.

-- Mychal Massie, Jan. 18 WorldNetDaily column

Republicans are worse than Democrats, because Democrats are proven pernicious, congenital, pathological liars. Democrats have an unimpeachable record of promoting slavery, Jim Crow, baby killing, reprobate sexual perversion and deconstruction of America's most valued institutions, beginning with the family and the church. However, we expect Republicans to respect and uphold the Constitution, the family, the church, national sovereignty, our borders and so on.

Which makes the point I have argued for many years: Republicans aren't there to serve We the People or the country. They're in office to get rich serving the interests of the nefarious entities that manipulate outcomes and incomes.

Republicans near en masse worked harder to obstruct President Trump than they worked to secure Joe Biden's defeat.

[...]

Democrats have set a new standard of commonality for presidential wives and now vice president. Hillary Clinton is a wild-eyed, screeching, low-self-esteemed caricature of a woman – a venomous, mean-spirited human being. She has suffered a life of public humiliation. Even worse, she was made to defend the man responsible for her repeated public humiliation.

The Obama woman was … well, a grotesquely unattractive, uncouth, racist harridan who reduced poor personal appearance instincts to painful new lows. But! Now comes Harris.

Kamala Harris combines the worse qualities of Hillary and the Obama woman, and she's lauded for it. She's a rabid liar. She's an avowed neo-Leninist, and she's shameless in her public display of whoredom with married men for political gain, specifically California politician and political influencer Willie Brown. What parents in their right mind would want any one of these women to be the model for their daughters?

-- Mychal Massie, Jan. 25 WND column

Bush 41 was a horrible president (and person); thanks to him much of what President Reagan accomplished was undone. Following President Reagan's presidency, the most mouthed words in the Republican lexicon were "I'm a Reagan Republican." Many of the worst Republican politicians in history blathered that phrase as if they were repeating the Lord's Prayer. That included John Boehner, R-Ohio, Eric Cantor, R-Va., and John Kasich, R-Ohio, to name but a few. Boehner and Cantor were instrumental in Obama and Eric Holder slipping the noose of judgment for the illegal gunrunning operation called Fast and Furious.

By these miscreants identifying themselves as "Reagan Republicans," gullible voters elected them. They were nothing more than officeholders and profiteers, who grew fat feeding on lobbyist money and betraying We the People – and it continued with Bush 43.

He was and is a fraud and liar. He hid the fact that his wife is rabidly pro-choice, which is pro-abortion. He played Christians like a fiddle. 

[...]

My Bible tells me not to be envious or desirous of the spoils of the wicked, and the Republican Party is just as wicked as Democrats.

There's no limit to what President Trump could have accomplished if he hadn't been forced to fight Paul Ryan, Rove, Priebus, McConnell and an endless phalanx of backstabbing Republicans.

Now these people are savaging the single greatest president in our lifetime and absolutely one of the greatest two or perhaps three of all time. They're trying to raise money, pretending to have our interests in mind in an effort to take back the Senate and win the House.

That ship has sailed for me. They had a thoroughbred in President Trump who defied all odds to do great things for America and We the People. But, the traitorous GOP leadership didn't view his accomplishments favorably.

-- Mychal Massie, Feb. 1 WND column

I refuse to comply with anything that insists I disobey my God. That means I'll continue to speak out against the sin of homosexuality. Homosexuality is sexual sin. The practice is an abomination before God, and I'll not sanction it on any level, not least of which in the church. I will under no circumstances downplay the amorality of same, by foolishly calling such decadence "gay." It's not "gay"; it's sexual sin and godlessness debauchery, and I will address it as no less. I'll love those caught up in said sin, but I won't embrace their disobedience.

That includes all of the other divisive assignations including those based upon skin-color hyphenations.

[...]

I condemn Biden, just as John the Baptist publicly condemned the tetrarch Herod Antipas for taking his brother Philip's wife and many other wicked acts.

In Biden's case, not only did he steal his friend's wife, but also he lied about the circumstances surrounding the death of his wife and child. His son Hunter is credibly alleged to have engaged in "inappropriate behavior" with underage girls, allegedly including his niece (Biden's granddaughter), in addition to having sexual relationship with his brother's wife. Furthermore, the elder Biden is guilty of approving the murder of more children than Herod had murdered upon his finding out about the birth of Christ.

I will encourage people to stand upon the Word of God, not the lies and treachery of Erebusic politicians, their cronies and sycophants.

-- Mychal Massie, Feb. 8 WND column

MRC Makes MyPillow Guy A Victim To Own The Libs
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's record of embracing fringe-right extremists who get banned on social media as a way to own the libs continues with its attempt to turn MyPillow buy Mike Lindell into a victim over his spreading of false election fraud conspiracies. Kayla Sargent lamented in a Jan. 26 post:

Perhaps Twitter was losing sleep over the fact that it’s been a whole three days since it censored a prominent conservative.

Twitter banned MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, making him only the latest conservative censored on the platform this month alone. 

“The account you referenced has been permanently suspended due to repeated violations of our Civic Integrity Policy,” a Twitter spokesperson told MRC TechWatch. However, Twitter did not respond to an inquiry about which specific tweets led to Lindell’s ban. Lindell has been an avid supporter of former President Donald Trump, a fact that many media outlets despise.

Sargent is lying when she suggests that Lindell was banned merely for being a Trump supporter. In addition to Lindell's election fraud lies, Lindell has also falsely claimed that Antifa sparked the violence at the Capitol riot.

Jeffrey Lord ramped up the victimization narrative in a Jan. 30 post:

What was Mike Lindell’s offense? Why, the man had the audacity --- the nerve!! --- to support former President Trump and to say what he thinks about the 2020 election results.  And with Twitter going out of its way to cancel the ex-president himself, how tough is it to cancel one of his most prominent supporters?

On top of this, corporate America has piled on. Companies run by leftist executives have abruptly pulled the My Pillow products from their stores.

[...]

But it is time --- more than time --- to stand up and bring a full stop to this craziness. On Friday, Sean Hannity reported on his radio show that Lindell boycotter Bed Bath and Beyond had its stock collapse by a stunning 36% as a direct result of BBB’s ostentatious boycott of My Pillow. This is not about pillows or how to take care of babies or Fox News or building presidential libraries. This is about free speech. And if this fascist cancel culture is not protested and stopped in its tracks, it will only get worse.

Actually, Hannity was lying: The drop in Bed Bath & Beyond stock that day had everything to do with it being turned into a bit player in the GameStop stock short-selling craziness and nothing to do with MyPillow.

Lord's item appeared under the provocative headline  "The Twitter Censors Come for Mike Lindell; Are You Next?" Unless you're spreading repeatedly debunked lies like Lindell did, the answer is no -- not that Lord will tell you that, of course.

When Lindell's crazy video filled with bogus election fraud conspiracy theories was removed from YouTube and Vimeo, Sargent was there to paint Lindell as a victim again:

The self-proclaimed truth overlords have struck again, lest anyone raise questions about possible election fraud in the 2020 presidential election. 

[...]

Lindell claimed in Absolute Proof that he had obtained “a print [of] inside of the machine of a timestamp that showed another country, other countries attacking us, hacking into our election through these machines. And it showed the votes flipped.” Lindell was referencing voting machines used in the November 2020 presidential election. Dominion Voting Systems has reportedly threatened “litigation” against Lindell for accusations he has made against the company, according to The Washington Examiner.

“Per our presidential election integrity policy, we remove content uploaded after the safe harbor deadline that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election,” YouTube spokesperson Alex Joseph told The Washington Times (The Times). “We removed this video and its reuploads in accordance with this policy.” 

Video-sharing platform Vimeo similarly removed the documentary for allegedly “violating Vimeo‘s policies on posting content that claims that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent or stolen or otherwise illegitimate,” the platform told The Times.

[...]

The Times referred to Lindell as “an unwavering supporter of former President Donald Trump.” In January 2021, Twitter banned Lindell from the platform “due to repeated violations of our Civic Integrity Policy,” a spokesperson told MRC TechWatch. The platform also went so far as to ban the MyPillow account after Lindell used it to “circumvent his own ban,” according to Forbes.  

Sargent didn't mention the pertinent fact that fact-checkers found Lindell's video to be filled with lies -- so much so that when Lindell bought time on One America News to repeatedly air the video, OAN added a massive disclaimer stating that it doesn't endorse the video's claims in general or regarding specific people and companies like Dominion and Smartmatic, which have not been shy about suing right-wingers who lie about them.The disclaimer also added that the video is "not intended to be taken or interpreted by the viewer as established fact."

But telling the truth is not Sargent's job here; keeping the narrative alive is.

UPDATE: The MRC loves Lindell's victimhood. Last April, it twice touted his unproven claim that Twitter was "shadowbanning" him, gushing over the number of followers he had and his engagement rate. In June, Joseph Vazquez praised Lindell for refusing to pull MyPillow ads from the increasingly extreme and hateful content on Fox News: "In a country where corporate liberal pandering to violent mobs is the new trend in business, one CEO decided to stand on principle and go against the tide."

David Kupelian's Warped View Of America
Topic: WorldNetDaily

January's edition of WorldNetDaily's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine carried the theme "Tribulation and Redemption in America." Of course, Donald Trump was not the cause of this; WND claims he was "fought mightily against this tide for four years, tirelessly pursuing a pro-life, pro-religious freedom, pro-Constitution, pro-America agenda." Nope, it's the liberals fault, as it usually is at WND, prompting the question: " With such genuine wickedness openly manifesting in “the land of the free,” so much that it evokes the Apostle Paul’s admonitions about “powers and principalities” and “spiritual wickedness in high places,” what can good Americans do about the precarious state of their country? During this time of genuine tribulation and even persecution, how should moral, right-thinking Americans, who work hard, love their country, honor its history and obey its laws – and who don’t pretend there are dozens of new genders and that America is a despicable racist hellhole – now respond?"

Well, WND managing editor David Kupelian is here to lecture and browbeat and share with us his particularly warped view of America. For instance, there's this list of bullet points from his lead essay, published Jan. 14 on the WND website:

Consider that in the past year the radical Left – with whose cause Big Media, Big Tech, Big Education, Big Hollywood and the entire Democratic Party totally identify – has succeeded in:

* indicting the freest, most welcoming and least racist nation on earth as irredeemably racist;

* inciting violent Marxist revolutionaries to riot, vandalize, loot and burn America's major cities;

* abandoning their former "safe, legal and rare" stance on abortion in favor of wanton celebration of late-term abortion up to the moment of birth and beyond;

* encouraging innocent children to irreversibly ruin their lives by chemically (and sometimes surgically) "transitioning" to the opposite sex – a scientific impossibility;

* using the COVID pandemic as a cover for imposing unprecedented totalitarian control over Americans; and

* gaslighting an entire nation by perpetrating the most wide-ranging, egregious and in-your-face election fraud in U.S. history while pretending disenfranchised American voters who simply want a fair and impartial investigation are the crazy ones, "trying to steal the election from Joe Biden."

And that's just for starters.

Indeed it was for Kupelian. He went on to rant that liberals "pretend the corrupt and shockingly senile Joe Biden is qualified to be president" and that thy "liken Trump to Hitler," ignoring all the times that the website he runs frequently likened Obama to Hitler and various Nazis.

In between the blathering about Marxism -- which he sees as no different from liberalism despite the fact that there are obvious differences that anyone who's not a far-right like him can see -- Kupelian did things like downplay the death toll of coronavirus, presumably because much of it occurred and was exacerbated by the actions of his beloved Trump:

The intervening centuries have all too often presented equally daunting circumstances. While today's coronavirus pandemic has taken several hundred thousand American lives, 14th century Europe had to contend with the Black Plague, which killed some 25 to 50 million people – and no treatments or vaccines. Then there have been the countless wars, the costliest being World War II with over 70 million deaths, including over 400,000 Americans. Indeed, the 20th century was the bloodiest in all of human history, dominated as it was by the ever-metastasizing Marxist cancer, which consumed an appalling 100-200 million lives.

Truth is, the human race is so regularly mired in intractable crises, one could reasonably conclude that crisis and chaos are the norm for humans, with societal peace and prosperity but rare and cherished aberrations.

Then it was back to ranting about the election being stolen, despite the fact that he can't produce a single piece of verified evidence to prove it:

First and most immediate: November's election was a freak show featuring hands-down the most massive amount of voter fraud in Americans' lifetimes. If the various states that permitted and encouraged election fraud – such as Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and others – aren't compelled to play by the rules, America will never again be a unified, peaceful nation – ever. So that is job one.

Even setting aside the outrageous election abuses, the major news media and tech monopolies pre-rigged November's contest long before Election Day by continually portraying Donald Trump as a Hitlerian, mentally ill traitor while casting the demented and spectacularly corrupt Joe Biden as a moral paragon and guarantor of national healing.

They all knew better, but they did it anyway.

As usual, Kupelian's solution is to revival:

Indeed, no real and lasting recovery is possible for America without a genuine spiritual revival. And each of us can and must play a key part in this revival. How? While we're engaged on every battlefront – committed to work creatively and effectively, to educate and persuade, to enlighten and awaken, and to outthink and outmaneuver the demented Left – each of us needs, as Christ commanded, to "Let [our] light … shine before men," always praying we can wage the battle righteously. And even praying for our enemies.

Christianity has historically grown during times of persecution, not only in numbers but in depth and sincerity. America's coming days promise to be very tough ones, with much persecution directed toward those who dare speak the Truth. But if good people stand up for what is right, for their nation, for what is legal and proper and moral and good – and if they do it with faith in Almighty God that He may be glorified and His will ultimately triumph – they absolutely cannot lose.

Kupelian's idea of "revival" is to force others to be the kind of right-wing Christian that he claims to be, because he's simply not patient enough to let God work his magic.

Kupelian is clearly going to cling to his far-right views, even though they played a key role in leading WND into its current ongoing financial crisis and certainly won't get WND out of it.

CNS Walks Back False Attack On Va. Governor Candidate
Topic: CNSNews.com

WorldNetDaily isn't the only ConWeb component to have to do embarassing walkbacks of false claims. Rob Shimshock thought hehad a great gotcha piece in a Jan. 28 article headlined "Mega-Rich GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Supported Anti-Christian SPLC":

A new Republican entrant to the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial race matched donations to several left-wing groups just last year, when he headed a massive private equity firm.

Former Carlyle Group Co-CEO Glenn Youngkin, who has an estimated net worth of $265 million, announced his bid for the office of Virginia governor Wednesday, choosing to run on the Republican side. But he and his fellow co-CEO, Kewsong Lee, offered to match donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), and the NAACP Legal Fund, organizations which have been hostile to conservatives.

But sometime after publication, the walkback happened. An editor's note at the top of the article states that "This story's headline and lede have been amended to clarify that support for these left-wing groups came from Carlyle Group, the private equity firm Glenn Youngkin headed at the time, and not Youngkin in his personal capacity." The headline is now the more cumbersome "GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Was CEO of Firm That Pledged to Match Donations to SPLC, Which Put Conservative Christian Groups on 'Hate Map'," and the lead paragraph now states that the donations came from "A private equity firm led by a new Republican entrant to the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial race."

It's not in the editor's note, but reaction from Youngkin's campaign was also added after publication that actually calls out Shimshock's error:

"This is a false and deceptive smear from political opponents who are scared of Glenn, a conservative outsider and leader from the private sector who can win," Youngkin campaign spokeswoman Macaulay Porter told CNSNews. "Glenn has never donated to the SPLC and does not agree with them. He is a Christian and a conservative who is pro-life and served in his church for years."

Other deceptions, however, remain. In his attack on the SPLC, Shimshock wrote:

The SPLC regularly demonizes conservative groups as "hate" groups, often with dire consequences. Amazon employs the SPLC's "hate group" list to bar Christian, conservative groups like the pro-religious liberty Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) from participating in its AmazonSmile program, preventing the nonprofit from receiving donations consumers can make when completing a purchase. And in 2012, a gunman raided the headquarters of Family Research Council (FRC), shooting the building manager in the arm before getting tackled. The gunman reported finding the FRC on the SPLC's website.

Shimshock omitted the pertinent fact that the SPLC has explained in detail why it considers the ADF and FRC actually are "hate groups": they do, in fact, clearly hate LGBT people and fight against them having rights, especially when they conflict with the rights of right-wing Christians like those who run those organizations. And despite Shimshock's implication, the SPLC did not incite Corkins; all he found on the SPLC website was a list of anti-LGBT groups, of which the FRC is undeniably one, and absolutely no direction or exhortation to act.