MRC Pushed The Lie That Psaki Wanted Questions In Advance
Topic: Media Research Center

Media Research Center executive Tim Graham presumably chortled heartily to hgimself as he wrote this Feb. 1 item:

Daily Beast media reporter Maxwell Tani is reporting that anonymous White House reporters are tattling on Jen Psaki's press team, that they have already probed reporters to find out what questions they plan on asking Psaki during the daily briefings. Some of these reporters don't like an idea forming that they're coordinating their questions and coverage with the Democratic staff. 

The Biden White House did not deny this report, but the White House says "it has tried to foster a better relationship with the press corps than the previous administration, and has tried to reach out to reporters directly in order to avoid appearing to dodge questions during briefings."

You can see Psaki wanting to cut down on the "circle back" answers, but this kind of snooping can also affect which reporters are called on, and who might be skipped, or delayed until the end, when cable news might move on from live coverage.

It's always amusing to see reprters using each other as anonymous sources, so they can keep the White House from learning who's tattling on them. Journalists love to preach the need for transparency, and routinely avoid it with their sourcing.

Just one problem: It's not true, at least in the way Graham wants you to think it is. As Matthew Yglesias pointed out, well down in the Daily Beast article is a segment that discredits the entire premise:

Under previous administrations, many White House reporters would meet informally in the morning for gaggles with the press secretaries. During these interactions, White House communications staff could get a sense of the topics reporters were interested in that day, and would come prepared for questions during televised briefings later in the afternoon.

Eric Schultz, a former deputy press secretary in the Obama White House, said that the new comms team was restoring normalcy to the briefing process. Finding out what reporters are focusing on, he said, was standard procedure in most pre-Trump White Houses in order to reduce the number of questions that go unanswered during televised briefings.

“This is textbook communications work. The briefing becomes meaningless if the press secretary has to repeatedly punt questions, instead of coming equipped to discuss what journalists are reporting on,” he said. “In a non-covid environment, this would happen in casual conversations throughout the day in lower and upper press. One of the few upsides to reporters hovering over your desk all day, is that you get a very quick sense of what they’re working on.”

In other words: Psaki's comms shop is simply re-establishing what the White House press office did before Trump. Other reporters have also confirmed that Psaki was returning to a pre-Trump norm that nobody objected to. Graham isn't going to tell you that, though.

Nevertheless, Kristine Marsh kept the bogus narrative going in a Feb. 3 post, complaining that "The View’sliberal hosts weren’t only bored by the Daily Beast report that the White House press office was already asking reporters to feed them the questions before press briefings; in fact, they rationalized and defended it." She then laughably referred to 'the alarming behavior from the Biden administration," censoring the fact that this behavior occured and was accepted under many previous presidential administrations.

Meanwhile, Curtis Houck dishonestly complained in his daily press briefing writeup on Feb. 2 that "not a single reporter stepped up to ask Psaki about the embarrassing Daily Beast report that her team had been probing reporters to pre-screen their questions ahead of briefings. Talk about a case of collusion." Houck repeated the claim the next day.

Over at the MRC's more extreme MRCTV operation, Sergie Daez huffed: "Jen Psaki is off to a poor start as White House press secretary. Even though she’s been positively pampered by the leftist media, Psaki can’t seem to give direct answers to reporters in White House press briefings, constantly saying that she’ll 'circle back' instead. Now, it looks like the direct answers she is able to give can't come without rehearsal."

Daez cited a Fox News report as the basis for the post, which censored the fact that Psaki was returning to a pre-Trump practice.

In short: The MRC got days of content from spreading a lie. Don't expect Graham and Co. to apologize.

Michael Reagan: From The 'Reichstag Flu' To The 'Reichstag Riot'
Topic: Newsmax

When Germany was just on the cusp of becoming Hitler’s Germany, the Nazis needed an event that would fit their narrative.

That narrative was the near future was so threatening Hitler needed extraordinary power to save the nation.

Rather than wait, the Nazi’s created their own event and arranged for the burning the seat of the lower house of the legislature.

The resultant Reichstag Fire of Feb. 27, 1933 paved the way for Hitler to assume absolute power in his adopted country. 

The situation here in the United States last year was different.

The left was out of power and needed an issue that would make Donald Trump vulnerable in November. Then came a virus which blew up into a pandemic.

Thus, the OpMedia and Democrats turned a virus that was 99.8%  survivable into the "Reichstag flu."

[...]

Once Trump lost it was obvious that the left was going to be a collective sore winner.

Revenge and punishment were definitely on the agenda.

Only a pretext was needed.

Then Trump himself gave the left the Reichstag Riot where a few hundred of his rowdy, angry and violent followers breached the grounds of the Capitol and invaded the building.

The leftists in charge of our government have used that one-and-done riot as a pretext for what looks like a permanent crackdown on conservatives.

As this is written thousands of National Guard troops are still garrisoned in Washington, D.C. and hastily built razor-wire fencing is keeping ordinary citizens away from the buildings and officeholders their tax dollars have made and continue to make possible.

If we recall correctly, the USA went to Iraq to bring democracy to an authoritarian country.

What appears to have happened instead is the authoritarianism have been brought back to America. A Pentagon spokesman estimates the cost of keeping troops in the armed camp that is D.C. approaches half-a-billion-dollars.

There is no threat to the Capitol that could not be thwarted by using the thousands of law enforcement officers that are already there.

The troop’s job is to send a message to Trump voters.

And the message is the left is in charge now.

If they can turn Washington, D.C. into an Iraq-ike Green Zone without any pushback from our country club conservatives, just think of what they can do to individual Trump voters.

-- Michael Reagan and Michael Shannon, Feb. 13 Newsmax column

(Hey, at least Reagan admits that Trump lost the election and instigated the Capitol riot, though it's somehow not Trump's fault that the riot forced new security measures at the Capitol.)

(Also, the one in three people whose coronvirius symptoms linger well past  the typical two weeks might not want to hear Reagan blithely dismiss the virus as "99.8% survivable."

NEW ARTICLE: A Catholic Crack-Up At CNS
Topic: CNSNews.com
The uber-Catholics who run CNSNews.com still think they're more Catholic than the pope and will chastise Pope Francis for not hating gay people enough -- but they flip-flopped on how to report on a prominent bishop caught in sexual misconduct. Read more >>

WND Pushes False Claim That Pro-Lindell Boycott Hurt Company's Stock
Topic: WorldNetDaily

It's good that WorldNetDaily is getting more proactive about correcting false articles (though maybe it should do a better job of fact-checking before publication). But there are others that still need correction. Art Moore wrote in a Jan. 28 WND article:

Amid a boycott in response to its politically motivated decision to drop Mike Lindell's MyPillow products, shares of Bed Bath & Beyond plunged 36.4% at the close of trading Thursday.

The retail chain suffered its biggest one-day loss since going public in June 1992.

The consumer organization Media Action Network launched the boycott of Bed, Bath & Beyond after the retail chain stopped selling Lindell's products due to his support of President Trump's claim that fraud affected the outcome of the 2020 election. Retailers Wayfair and Kohl's also have stopped selling MyPillow products.

Lindell, famous for his TV ads, employs more than 1,500 people at his Minnesota plant. He recounted to WND last May the remarkable transformation in his lifethrough his faith in Jesus Christ.

"This isn't about pillows. It's about the continual punishment of conservative speech," Media Action Network founder Ken LaCorte said in an announcement of the boycott.

"And we've had enough."

Just one problem: There's no actual proof that a boycott or any Lindell-related action resulted in the steep share drop. As Media Matters summed it up:

The supposed “collapse” of retailer Bed Bath & Beyond’s stock has obviously got nothing to do with its decision to not carry MyPillow products. Rather, the company's stock price had recently become artificially high as part of the current online craze of small investors buying up stocks that had been short-sold by large hedge funds. The stock price then eventually fell from those heights. (The most famous example of such stocks is video game retailer GameStop, but it also includes other companies such as AMC, Blackberry, and Nokia.)

Moore also failed to tell his readers that Lindell's conspiracy theories aren't "conservative speech" -- they are falsehoods. So there's a lot of work to be done to make a full correction here.

The MRC's Hitler Hypocrisy Strikes Again
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has a bad habit of getting mad about others using Hitler comparisons when it does so on a regular basis, and it apparently has no intention of stopping its hypocrisy.

Teirin-Rose Mandelberg groused on Jan. 25 that director Spike Lee stated that Trump "will go down in history with the likes of Hitler," then played whataboutism: "The Capitol riots were disgraceful. But anyone who excused the summer’s race violence is in no position to dole out blame. Lee is blind to his own hypocrisy." The same day, Alexa Moutevelis channeled her inner Rush Limbaugh and used an article to smear abortion-rights supporters as "feminazis." 

On Jan. 27, Lindsay Kornick complained:

Talk about throwing Godwin’s Law out the window. This latest op-ed from the Philadelphia Inquirer goes so far as to compare Donald Trump to Hitler on Holocaust Remembrance Day. National unity is looking more and more like a pipe dream by the day.

On January 27, retired Inquirer editor David Lee Preston did his part in remembering one of the worst atrocities in humanity by, what else, comparing President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. His piece, aptly-titled “Is it wrong to compare Trump to Hitler? No,” dives straight to the point that yes, it is now okay to connect a former U.S. president to the Nazi dictator.

[...]

The last thing this nation needs is more lying, fearmongering, and division. And the last thing this solemn Holocaust Remembrance Day needed was a sideshow of more whiny Trump comparisons to Hitler.

Kornick then downplayed the  Jan. 6 right-wing riot at the Capitol by complaining about the writer's compaison of it to Kristallnacht: "Absolutely, yes, they are different! Once again, the Capitol Hill attack was reprehensible. What it wasn’t was a night of widespread slaughter and destruction targeting an oppressed minority. Any comparison of the two is disgusting, especially during a time when we’re supposed to honor the 11 million lives lost to the Holocaust, including six million Jewish people."

On Feb. 11, Tim Graham noted that ABC correspondent Terry Moran said of Trump's grip on the Republican Party: "He has the Republican party as a personalized power like we haven't seen. It's a caudillo, it’s a Caesar, it's a Fuhrer, we don't see that in this country. We do now." He huffed in response: "It's a little strange considering some rogue Republicans are voting and speaking out against Trump, which doesn't sound much like Hitler's Germany in action. But the media insist: you either agree with our plot, or you're like a Nazi."

If GOP criticism of Trump is a normal thing these days, where is that to be found on the MRC network of websites? Graham pointed to no examples, and we've seen no space on any MRC website where conservatives are permitted to criticize Trump with impunity.

Nicholas Fondacaro ranted in a Feb. 22 post:

To kick off Sunday’s Global Public Square, CNN host Fareed Zakaria, praised a “brilliant scholarly work” comparing British and German conservative parties in the early 20th century. The point was to suggest that America was on its way to emulate Germany with the modern Republican Party and News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch marching to create a new Nazi Party to destroy our democracy.

But fear not, Zakaria reassured would-be critics he wasn’t saying Republicans WERE Nazis. He was only saying they’re LIKE Nazis. He said this while the chyron said " Republicans need an exorcism."

Fondacaro then baselessly claimed that "Zakaria betrayed his own disgust for democracy and the will of the governed." That's a rather rich complaint given that his employer is still peddling the Big Lie that the election was stolen from Trump.

None of these complaints about others going Godwin noted that their boss, Brent Bozell, declared of Twitter removing Trump's account and Amazon Web Services canceling its hosting deal with Parler over the hate and violence Parler permitted: "Stalin censored speech. So did Mao. So did Hitler. It’s what tyrants do."

None of these MRC employees was fretting about Bozell spreading "lying, fearmongering, and division." None of these employees accused Bozell of being blind to his own hypocrisy. They're just loyal MRC drones being paid to not hold themselves to the same standards they demand of others.

CNS Piles On AOC Over Remarks About Cruz
Topic: CNSNews.com

The Media Research Center wasn't alone in trashing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for expressing her sincere fears about her fellow members of Congress who supported the attempt to overturn the presidential election that culminated in the Capitol riot. Its "news" division, CNSNews.com, joined in as well.

In a Jan. 22 article, Susan Jones seemed offended that Ocasio-Cortez didn't attend President Biden's inauguration in part because "we still don't yet feel safe around other members of Congress," specifically citing Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. Jones made sure to call Ocasio-Cortez a "non-senator" and tried to whitewash what the senators tried to do:

For the record, neither Sen. Hawley nor Cruz advocated “insurrection” or overturning the results of the 2020 election.

Hawley said he would vote against certification of the Electoral College tally because it was the only way to air his and his constituents' concerns about problems with the election and have a chance to debate it, as the law and Constitution allow.

Cruz and other Republican senators advocated a 10-day delay in congressional certification to make time for an audit of the results in swing states.

When Ocasio-Cortez explicitly claiming that Cruz was trying to get her killed through his support of overtunring the election (and he did effectively do that no matter what Jones thinks), CNS was quick to rush out Republicans demanding an apology in similarly headlined items, all by Craig Bannister:

• Lee: AOC ‘Should Be Admonished or Censured’ If She Doesn’t Retract False Claim Cruz Was ‘Trying to Get Me Killed’
• Rep. Roy to Pelosi: Call on AOC to ‘Immediately Apologize and Retract’ Tweet Accusing Cruz of 'Trying to Get Me Killed'
• 14 House Members Urge Pelosi to Call on AOC to ‘Apologize and Retract’ Tweet Accusing Cruz of 'Trying to Get Me Killed'

Bannister let the Republicans claim that Ocasio-Cortez was making a false accusation without providing the context for it. In the Roy item, he wrote: "On January 6 of this year, when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol while votes electing Joe Biden as president were being certified, Sen. Cruz was 'simply engaging in speech and debate regarding electors,' not threatening Ocasio-Cortez, Roy says" -- but he didn't tell readers that the attempt to overturn the election Cruz supported help instigate the riot.

Bannister comes off as doing PR for Republicans instead of being a reporter.

MRC Complains Once Again That Fictional (And Real) People Advocating For Abortion Are Not Shamed
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has long complained that woman who seek abortions -- even fictional characters -- are not shamed for doing so and that they and abortions providers are not smeared as Nazis. Well, the're on that kick again. Teirin-Rose Mandelberg complained in a Jan. 22 post ofering up a bizarre caricature of abortion-rights supporters:

Today’s a high holy day for lefties. On this date, January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade and mass infanticide became the law of the land.

Abortion clinic volunteer Lauren Rankin marked the occasion by complaining that “We Still Have a Long Way to Go.” Forty-eight years and 63 million lives later, the left still isn’t satisfied. What’s new?

Rankin wants laws updated so women can have access to dangerous abortion drugs via mail without a doctor's visit. Ostensibly, she’s worried about women being too nervous about COVID to go to an abortion clinic. But social distancing is a pretext so women can abort even more conveniently -- another leftist attempt to overstep and gain control.

[...]

Hollywood tries to "normalize" abortion and celebrities use it as a “dedicated to my craft” badge of honor. Having an abortion constitutes popularity.

Alexa Moutevelis used a Jan. 25 article to smear abortion-rights supporters as "feminazis" (looks like somebody's been listening to too much Rush Limbaugh!). And Rebecca Downs ranted on Jan. 29:

Not only have media outlets been ignoring the hundreds of thousands of pro-life Americans who participate in the March for Life, but they've been promoting and normalizing abortion on television. This has been going on for years, and 2020 was no different from 2019 and 2018.

Despite coronavirus canceling and postponing tv production for several months, they still managed to squeeze in several abortion storylines. Here's how abortion was portrayed on television last year.

[...]

In order for abortion to seem normal, viewers have to be bombarded that it’s no big deal.

Downs also pushed the dubious claim -- citing only an anti-abortion website -- that a chemically induced abortion can be reversed. And while she huffed at "leftist propaganda" on abortion, she was not above inserting some propaganda of her own:

It’s a biological fact that life begins at conception, meaning it's a child, the whole time. Not only is it a child, even going by the pro-abortion logic that it isn't a child until a later stage, it "would be" a child.

[...]

For an “honest abortion story” that is “diverse,” rather than just the one pro-abortion perspective television wants us to see, it would also include women experiencing not just the loss of their children, but suffering from psychological and physical effects, and from regret. 

Moutevelis returned in a Feb. 24 post to complain some more about "abortion propaganda" on TV -- unironically sounding a lot like a propagandist herself:

Pro-abortion columns are notorious for lacking facts and building bad faith strawmen to knock down, but I think this is the first time I’ve seen such a poorly constructed argument in a major paper like The Washington Post. If you're going to call for more baby slaughter on entertainment TV, put some thought into it.

Even the premise of the article is ridiculous. Apparently, the author just happened to be watching a show from 2019 that had an unexpectedly pregnant character and so she decided to rant about there not being enough abortions on TV. What editor authorizes an op-ed based on an obscure show that’s years old and includes no research to back up its hypothesis or make it relevant to today?

Somehow, on Friday afternoon, the WaPo powers that be allowed a Kate Cohen article to be published online complaining that the 2019 Netflix series Atypical did not include the preborn baby slaughter she’d wanted.

[...]

In fact, if she had made any attempt at research, she would have found that in 2019, The New York Times said abortions were “unapologetically” on TV “at record levels.” If she is still stuck in the past consuming media from 2019, I can also offer her the news that in that year, actress, director, and producer Elizabeth Banks joined the Creative Council at the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) to “help destigmatize abortion by sharing and supporting women's stories” in the entertainment industry. Or maybe she could read her own outlet’s The Washington Post Magazine piece that same year about “abortion rights…winning in Hollywood” because of Planned Parenthood consultants.

But Cohen, who wrote this column based on her own outdated anecdotes, with no statistics, facts or interviews to back her up, had the audacity to lecture, “Those who contribute to the cultural space have a responsibility to consider the historical and political context into which their work will land.” Maybe she should look in the mirror.

Written like a true propagandist for the cause, where opposing arguments must be obliterated and the people who make them must be stripped of their humanity.

WND Columnists Refuse To Take Biden's Election Well
Topic: WorldNetDaily

COVID-19 was more than just a pretext for crashing the U.S. economy to take down Trump. It served to justify repressive police-state controls across the globe. The election-fraud campaign was about more than stealing the presidency. It produced the stunning abandonment of any pretense of fairness or due-process in the vicious enforcement of Marxist narratives by all the power players of the elites: a result that will likely not be reversed despite the coup being completed. The dystopian jack-booted surrealism of Baghdad Biden's pending "inauguration" is more likely a glimpse at the "new normal" than just an historical aberration.

That's the soberingly pessimistic view we must include in our contingency planning, even as we hope – and work – for the best.

-- Scott Lively, Jan. 19 WorldNetDaily column

In October, Joe Biden told us America is headed into a "dark winter" and repeated that phrase Wednesday in his Inaugural Address. As America and Western nations head into a new Dark Age, ordinary citizens have increasingly little say over their own nations' political decisions. And when voters do exert their preferences over the objection of globalist elites, the political establishment uses their control of the bureaucracy to hamstring and block every change until they can reassert control.

-- Sean Harshey, Jan. 20 WND column

It is frankly disturbing, and more than a little terrifying, therefore, that more than a few Democrats and left-leaning pundits are calling for Republicans and conservatives, including Christian Republicans, conservatives and supporters of President Trump, to be deprived of their rights to free speech and freedom to assemble peaceably, as guaranteed by the First Amendment in the United States Constitution. In fact, some of them are even calling for the establishment of reeducation camps for those who reject the political and economic talking points put forth by the Democratic Party and its echo chambers, Big Tech, the mainstream media and the teachers unions. This is a real concern. Look at how many Democrat-appointed judges who are willing to go along with such totalitarian nonsense. If Democrat-appointed judges can force a Christian baker to bake a cake supporting same-sex marriage, or pay a big fine that destroys his business, why wouldn't Democratic elected officials force people to publicly support a taxpayer-funded government program to burn books they don't like, including a program to imprison the authors of those books? After all, we've already seen some elected Democrats refuse to stop or prosecute "protesters" trying to remove statues of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant from the public square.

-- Ted Baehr, Jan. 20 WND column

It's beginning to occur to me that when Joe Biden talks about "unity," he's not talking about we deplorables, or loyalist Trump backers, or even just plain old Republicans.

Remember, Trump supporters are the ones he has called by such vicious names as "extremists," "white supremacists" and "domestic terrorists."<

In fact, as we have learned in the last few days, we are considered his enemies – worse than the Iranian regime, worse than al-Qaida, needing deprogramming – and prompting the announcement of a brand new domestic terror program aimed at us.

As far as Biden is concerned, he's coming after all of us – he's approving of it in advance, he's celebrating it. Why do you think his inauguration had 25,000 National Guardsmen? To protect a couple hundred people? To add an audience to the proceedings? Come on, man. This was a show of force – nothing less.

-- Joseph Farah, Jan. 20 WND column

Having successfully circumvented the will of the American people to an extent never before realized, look for the Biden administration, its surrogates, congressional Democrats and radical socialists at large to become emboldened to an exponential degree – far more than when Barack Obama occupied the White House. The majority of Americans simply have no advocate at this juncture, save for a paltry handful of Republicans in Congress. The socialists have won.

I could project what the weeks and months ahead might hold for us, but I obviously don't know for sure. As it stands, my past prognostications – accurate though they may have been – didn't count for much, save for the edification of those who were pretty well clued-in to start with.

-- Erik Rush, Jan. 20 WND column

I wrote a while back about what Ernest Hemingway described as a writer's most important tool: it's called "a built in, shock proof s–- detector." Mine has been blaring loud and clear since the campaign attorneys did not cite the U.S. Supreme Court's 1997 Foster v. Love 9-0 decision, which ruled that Election Day means Election DAY. Ballot counting stops at midnight. That's when it's over.

States never considered this when they counted their ballots and certified their election and ballot counting that went on for days. The Senate and House ignored it when they accepted those flawed results. You can work out for yourself where the end of Election Day left the two candidates last November. Maybe that is part of what is giving me this unfinished-story feeling.

[...]

Is it possible this coup is really directed against Almighty God and His government? The usurpers would be many: governments, our own as well as others, with cameo appearances by big media and big tech.

As such, would it be so surprising to see such an insurrection addressed by Almighty God? As the momentarily former President Trump likes to say, "I guess we'll see what happens."

Maybe you're not there yet. I understand. But I think we are going to see a divine response to what is in reality a coup against our Creator and His Laws.

-- Craige McMillan, Jan. 22 WND column

Remember the old New Orleans Saints coach Jim Mora, who went nuts at a press conference? "Playoffs? Are you kidding me? Playoffs?" he said.

You can quote me today: "Unity? Are you freakin' kidding me? Unity? There's no unity. President Joe Biden can mouth the word 'unity' all he wants. It's a lie. Democrats don't want unity. They want to censor us, ban us, purge us, wipe away American history like it never happened and then intimidate us into meekly going along with it all. They want us to kneel and say thank you while they destroy America and the American way of life. That's what they mean by 'unity.' So, you can take your unity and shove it where the sun don't shine."

[...]

Biden is not a "moderate." He is either a radical Marxist out to destroy America or a feeble old man with dementia being used as a puppet by George Soros, former President Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Ilhan Omar and other radical, extreme, crazed America haters to destroy this country. But it really doesn't matter. Either way, he's leading us down the road to disaster, ruin, misery and poverty. He is going to turn America into Venezuela.

This isn't "unity." It's the destruction of America and everything that ever made it great. I'm not in unity. Are you?

Count me as "the Resistance."

Wayne Allyn Root, Jan. 25 WND column

MRC's Houck Uses Space Force Quip To Attack Psaki
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck has made it claear that -- in a reversal of his obsequious fawning over Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and wild attacks on any reporter who asked her a challenging question -- Biden press secretary Jen Psaki would be a target and any reporter who asked her a challenging question would be virtuous.

Houck is reviewing Psaki's press briefings as a "performance," looking for ways to attack. Thus, he declared in a Feb. 2 post because she was not sufficiently reverent of the Space Force that was created under President Trump:

Tuesday’s White House press briefing was perhaps Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s most combative one yet, facing tough questions on China, coronavirus relief, illegal immigration, Israel, and schools but also softballs on topics like COVID and impeachment.

[...]

 

It was the Space Force question that raised the most eyebrows as Bloomberg’s Josh Wingrove simply wanted to know if President Biden “has made a decision on keeping or keeping the scope of the Space Force.”

Psaki interjected and chuckled, making a reference to a question about Air Force One from the inaugural briefing: “Wow, Space Force. It's the plane of today.”

Wingrove pushed back that this matters and Psaki further beclowned herself: “It is an interesting question. I'm happy to check with our Space Force point of contact. I'm not sure who that is and find out and see if we have any update on that.”

Hours later, Psaki tweeted in a piece of damage control that the administration “look[s] forward to the continuing work of Space Force.”

We don't recall Houck ever saying that McEnany "beclowned herself" -- he was much to enamored by her allegedly sick burns and scripted insults of the media she was supposed to be briefing (thought she did, indeed, beclown herself regularly).

The next day, Houck got more mileage out of the Space Force kerfuffle while adding in a couple other pedantic attacks:

On Thursday’s episode of the White House press briefing, Press Secretary Jen Psaki refused to apologize for having mocked the Space Force a day earlier and skimped on funding schools that teachers unions have kept shuttered, and falsely claimed that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was the first openly gay cabinet secretary.

[...]

The daughter of astronauts, the Fox News Channel’s Kristin Fisher brought up the Bloomberg reporter Josh Wingrove’s Space Force question: “The top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee is asking you to apologize for the comments made yesterday in the briefing room about the space force. Will you apologize?”

Psaki declined, only alluding to a tweet she sent “invite members of Space Force here to provide an update to all of you on all the important work they're doing and we certainly look forward to seeing continued updates from there — from their team.”

But before the above quote, she worked in another dig at the Space Force: “I did send a tweet last night. You may not all be on Twitter. Maybe they’re not on Twitter.”

Houck then complained that "Psaki memory-holed former acting DNI Richard Grenell as having been the first openly-gay cabinet official when she boasted that the Senate had 'just confirmed as the first LGBTQ secretary in a cabinet.'" But he didn't mention that Grenell was only an acting cabinet official; Buttigieg is the first gay official to be confirmed by the Senate, nor did he mention all the falsehoods McEnany from the podium.

Houck also grumbled: "And yet, no one stepped up to the plate to ask Psaki about a 2020 tweet of hers calling “LadyG,” specifically). After expressing interest in past statements from Kayleigh McEnany, the press corps doesn’t seem to care about Psaki’s record." Houck didn't care about McEnany's record, and he certainly didn't mention the MRC's proud anti-LGBT record -- which included the MRC's Dan Gainor working to get Grenell fired from Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign simply because he was gay.

CNS Columnist Still Whining About Minorities Getting COVID Vaccine
Topic: CNSNews.com

Back in December, CNSNews.com columnist Hans Bader argued (badly) that Blacks and Hispanics don't deserve early acceess to a coronavirus vaccine because they are "not inherently at greater risk of contracting the virus" (which is not true) and that it's their fault they tend to work in jobs that expose them to greater risk of catching the virus. Apparently that argument didn't gain any traction, for he tried it again in a Jan. 21 column:

Oregon plans to give minorities preference over whites in access to the coronavirus vaccine, which is unconstitutional.

After vaccinating healthcare workers, teachers, and seniors, Oregon plans to vaccinate "people in communities of color, specifically those most impacted by the pandemic: 'Black, African-American, Hispanic/Latino/Latinx, indigenous peoples, tribal and urban-based native communities, and Pacific Islanders.'”

[...]

The racial differences in disease rates aren't based on genetic susceptibility. Hispanics, who have a lot of white DNA, are the most disproportionately impacted: they account for 36% of COVID-19 cases in Oregon, despite being only 13% of Oregon's population. People who have looked at similar or larger disparities in other states have concluded that they are not due to racism, but rather due to other factors, such as Hispanics being a disproportionate share of the essential workforce exempt from government lockdowns, or their living in densely-populated apartment buildings.

[...]

There is nothing special about their genes that puts them in danger. It is just that their jobs, neighborhoods, and backgrounds tend to put them in more frequent contact with people who already carry COVID-19. As medical school professor Sally Satel observes, the risks of exposure for blacks and Hispanics "are increased because they are more likely than whites to work lower-paying jobs that require interaction with the public and to travel to those jobs by public transportation. Blacks and Hispanics are also more likely to live in homes with many family members sharing close quarters."

So it is those characteristics -- not race -- that Oregon can legally consider in handing out the vaccine to individuals.

[...]

It might be argued that blacks live in densely-populated areas plagued by coronavirus partly due to discrimination, such as redlining by banks, or discrimination by landlords. But the Supreme Court has ruled that "societal discrimination" against a minority group is not a valid reason for giving priority to members of that group. (See Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co. (1989)). So even if black and Hispanic people experience discrimination that shunts them into lower-paying jobs with increased risk of catching the coronavirus, that wouldn't be reason enough for Oregon to give them a racial preference.

It seems that Bader is just searching for legal loopholes to keep Blacks and Hispanics from getting the vaccine ahead of him. And, strangely, he doesn't seem all that eager to give vaccines to those essential workers whose jobs put them more at risk.

MRC Pushes Bogus Anti-Transgender Angle On Biden Executive Order
Topic: Media Research Center

Tierin-Rose Mandelberg's Jan. 22 Media Research Center post was dramatically headlined "Biden’s Title IX Order Erased Women on His First Day. Twitter Noticed." In fact, Mandelberg was a woman before Biden's order, and she remained one afterward. Mandelberg then served upher definition of what President Biden's executive order to cover gender identity and sexual orientation under the Title IX guidelines governing women's sports:

Essentially, Biden’s trans-friendly order expanded the nondiscrimination protections of the LGBTQ community, prohibiting all workplace and educational discrimination against gender identity and sexual orientation. But, in addition to at least recognizing the existence of a right of association, Trump’s policy supported the difference between biological women and confused men.

Title IX was originally intended to ensure equal access and academic experience for women in higher education. But it has since progressed to locker rooms, bedrooms, and bathrooms, creating plenty of potentially uncomfortable (at the minimum) situations for women. 

But the liberal overreach does real harm. In sports, for example, a biological male identifying as a “female” is inevitably going to beat out a real female if allowed to compete against her. As this situation gets more common (and the Trans industry very much wants it to) it will start depriving women athletes of scholarships, advancement opportunities, and honest victories. Biological men will dominate a sphere constructed solely for women.

Liberals claim to fight against male dominance --- ironic. This isn’t about inequality or being transphobic. It’s about taking away the honor of being born a woman.

Notice how quick she was to define Biden's order as "liberal" and smears transgender women as "confused."

In fact, as a fact-checker points out:

The executive order does not address athletics beyond the mention of discrimination in "school sports." Further, transgender amateur athletes already have policies they must follow in order to compete.

According to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which oversees 24 sports at over 1,000 colleges and universities, gender confirming surgery or legal recognition of a player's transitioned sex is not required in order for transgender players to participate on a team.

When hormones are used, the NCAA requires one year of hormone treatment for trans female athletes prior to competing on a women's team, and trans male athletes remain eligible to compete in women's sports until the athlete begins a physical transition using testosterone.

[...]

For K-12, according to Transathlete.com, policies vary by state and and school district, with 16 states having policies in place that facilitate the full inclusion of transgender, nonbinary and gender nonconforming students in high school athletics. There are 14 states that require medical proof, and 10 states that did not issue statewide practices but allow schools to create their own policies on a case-by-case basis. 

So Biden's executive order barely mentions school sports, but Mandelberg falsely tried to portray the order as mostly about it. That's a mischaracterization that, unsprurpisingly, occurred across right-wing media.Nevertherless, Mandelberg concluded by ranting: "Do they not realize they take the special part of womanhood away by allowing anyone and everyone to identify as one at any time? Where does women’s empowerment go if anybody can just decide to be a woman? Obviously, it doesn’t take strength or power. Tomorrow, you can identify as a woman, too, and then go back again the next day, if you'd like."

No, Tierin-Rose, that's not how being transgender works.

WND's Farah Recycles A Column
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily editor Josephy Farah devoted his Jan. 19 column to ranting about Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnel and his wife, former Trump transportation secretary Elaine Chao. He complained that "McConnell congratulated Joe Biden for being president-elect on Dec. 15, while President Trump was still trying to 'Stop the Steal,'" while bashing Chao's "ties to Chinese business" and her father, who allegedly "had a cozy relationship with then-Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin and owned a shipping company that does business with the Chinese government." He concluded, "While we're working on cleaning out the dead-wood RINOs like Rep. Liz Cheney, we had better take a long look at Mitch and Elaine too."

If Farah's Feb. 17 column resulted in a sense of deja vu, there's a reason -- it's mostly the exact same column, right down to the headline. Without telling readers, Farah recycled the column.

The main difference is that he appended Donald Trump's petulant attack on McConnell in its apparent entirety, then added a few lines perpetuating the Big Lie about election fraud:

Let's remember, Donald J. Trump got more votes than any other president – including Biden!

He's going to get even more if the next presidential election is not rigged.

Mitch McConnell doesn't have a future in the Republican Party. We're tired of being the party of good losers.

Farah is the guy who spearheaded WND's years-long birther lie against Barack Obama, so we already know he's a sore loser. Apparently, election fraud is the new birtherism (which, in turn, was the new Vince Foster).

NEW ARTICLE: The MRC vs. Twitter, Part 2
Topic: Media Research Center
After Twitter suspended President Trump for his repeated violations of the company's terms of service, the Media Research Center couldn't wait to portray Trump as an innocent victim -- and Twitter as irredeemably evil. Read more >>

CNS Touted -- Then Deleted -- Extremist GOP Rep Mocking Her Critics
Topic: CNSNews.com

In our overview of how CNSNews.com reacted to the mass condemnation of the extreme views of Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that CNS had been hiding from its readers for months, we overlooked an article -- but there's a good reason.

In a Feb. 5 article written after the House had stripped Greene of her committee assignments for her extreme-right views, Susan Jones was letting her have a little victory lap, -- under the headline "Rep. Greene tweets: 'I Woke Up...Laughing, Thinking About What a Bunch of Morons the Democrats...Are'" -- while also trying to enforce the new narrative of CNS' owner, the Media Research Center, that Greene's views don't reflect those of the Republican Party:

Stripped of her two committee assignments, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene nevertheless tweeted on Friday that she woke up "laughing" about Democrat "morons" who are giving someone like her "free" publicity.

On Thursday, the House voted 230-199 -- with eleven Republicans joining Democrats -- to remove Greene from both the Education and Budget Committees, after Republican leaders declined to do so.

Greene's critics, including many Republicans, have condemned her espousal and apparent endorsement of kooky conspiracy theories and implied violence. Democrats and their media allies have painted Greene as representative of the entire Republican Party.

On Friday, Greene tweeted: "I woke up early this morning literally laughing thinking about what a bunch of morons the Democrats (+11) are for giving some one like me free time. In this Democrat tyrannical government, Conservative Republicans have no say on committees anyway."

Speaking on the House floor during Thursday's debate, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said the Democrat resolution to punish Greene "sets a dangerous new standard that will only deepen divisions within this House."

McCarthy said Democrats are declaring that "the majority has veto power over the minority members' selections for committee." He called it an unprecedented abuse of power by Democrats who are "blinded by partisanship and politics."

McCarthy said Rep. Greene's past comments and posts as private citizen do not represent the values of the Republican Party: "As a Republican, as a conservative, s an American, I condemned those views unequivocally. I condemned them when they first surfaced, and I condemn them today."

McCarthy said Greene has apologized for her past comments and acknowledged that House members have a responsibility to hold themselves to a "higher standard."

"I will hold her to her word and her actions going forward," he said.

Well apparently someone at CNS thought better of this article, because it was deleted sometime after its publication. The original link goes to an empty page, and the article is no longer listed in Jones' article archive. CNS has not explained why it deleted Jones' article; perhaps it decided after the fact that it was a bad look to cheer on Greene's sick burn of the Dems when it's trying to distance itself and the entire conservative movement from her.

But because the internet is forever, Jones' article remains for perpetuity at the Internet Archive.

MRC Changes Its Victimization Narrative On Extremist GOP Rep.
Topic: Media Research Center

The last time we checked in, the Media Research Center was still aggressively portraying Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as a victim of "censorship" by social media over her extreme and crazy views -- all while censoring any mention of what those extreme and crazy views are to its readers. But when Greene's views became so extreme (and so publicized in non-right-wing media) that the couldn't be ignored, the MRC switched tactics.

Alex Christy firmly threw Greene under the bus in a Jan. 30 post demonstrating the MRC's new narrative, insisting that Greene's views don't represent Republicans and conservatives as a whole:

Are you opposed to massive job killing climate regulations? Do you believe that the Laffer Curve has some basis in reality? If so, CNN's John Harwood said on Friday that the rise of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and her history of insane and bigoted conspiracy theory beliefsthat include 9/11 trutherism, Parkland trutherism, and anti-Semitic claims that Jewish space lasers caused California's wildfires in 2018 is the logical conclusion of your beliefs.

Harwood's remarks came after days of the media trying to make Greene the face of the Republican Party. CNN Tonight host Don Lemon asked, "John, President Biden is trying to get Republicans on board with the COVID relief deal but how is he suppose work with a party standing by the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene?"

[...]

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a blot on the Republican Party, but if the media truly wants to see her marginalized, blaming people who just want lower taxes is not going to bring about those results.

Unsurprisingly, Christy failed to discuss the issue of why the MRC spent months defending Greene if her views were "extreme and crazy" and she "is a blot on the Republican Party."

In a Feb. 2 post, Scott Whitlock echoed the under-bus-throwing by noting "the repellant actions and comments from freshman Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene," making sure to add that "Mitch McConnell has condemned her conspiracy theories."In his Feb. 3 column, Tim Graham referenced "nutty extremists like new Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene," then attacked a "liberal" New York Times columnist who he claimed wanted to "shut down the opposition’s media outlets" in order to stanch such extremism.

Mark Finkelstein didn't take it well when MSNBC's Joe Scarborough shot down efforts by Republicans to pretend that Greene is simply the Republican version of GOP-loathed Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by pointing out that unlike Greene, AOC "never actually threatened to kill" anyone:

Scarborough made his remark for purposes of contrasting Ocasio-Cortez with unhinged, bizarre conspiracy-supporting Marjorie Taylor Greene. Scarborough noted that Greene liked a tweet calling for the assassination of Nany Pelosi, and spoke of strategies for hanging Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. That's when Scarborough offered his backhanded compliment about AOC never having actually threatened to kill a Republican.

According to Scarborough, it was unfair of Republicans to try to attach Ocasio-Cortez's politics to Pelosi and Biden. Scarborough cited the fact that, soon after AOC was elected, Pelosi mocked her and her Squad on 60 Minutes, saying "your caucus is like five people."

But, argued Scarborough, it is fair to stick the Republican House with Greene, since they "won’t criticize her, won’t take away her committee assignments, won’t rebuke her."

That remains to be seen. And on the Senate side a number of Republicans have voiced forceful condemnations of Taylor Greene.

Kristine Marsh, meanwhile, defended comparisons of "nutty, fringe" Greene to another Democratic House member right-wingers loathe, Ilhan Omar, declaring her to be a "radical Democrat" and attacking NBC's Seth Meyers because he "left out every similarly offensive comment made by the Democrat rep. He constructs a straw man, scoffing that “Medicare for All” is what Omar’s biggest controversy is; not her repeated patterns of anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, anti-Israel hate or her sick comments downplaying 9/11."

Nicholas Fondacaro whined on Feb. 4 that "The liberal media were making a full-court press in an effort to try to make freshman Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and her loony conspiracy theories the face of the entire Republican Party," allegedly ignoring "a new government report detailing excessive levels of toxins and heavy metals found in multiple baby food brands" to do so. He concluded, "It’s a shame that ABC and NBC were willing to put toxic baby food in the backseat as they accelerated their efforts to divide America further." In another post the same day, Fondacaro complained that CNN's Chris Cuomo "was desperately trying to use the craziness of freshman Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) to smear the entire Republican Party."

Christy returned to labor once more to turn the spotlight away from Greene, complaining that Omar appeared on CNN "to attempt to debunk Republican comparisons between her and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene," adding that "And while the media has spent the past week trying to make Greene and her crazy conspiracy theories the face of the Republican Party, despite three separate polls showing a majority of Republicans do not even have an opinion of her, back then the media covered for Omar, either ignoring her comments or even defending her.

Christy came back once more to huff that a former Republican congressman "pleased CNN by trying to portray conspiracy theorist and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as& more popular than she really is." Christy ignored the inconvenient fact that she was obviously popular enough to get elected in the first place.

And, again, Christy -- like his fellow MRC writers -- failed to mention that Greene was the same person they had been painting as a victim because that very same extremism they now admit is "nutty" and "fringe" got her "censored" by social media, which feeds into a separate (and bogus) MRC narrative.

The MRC has to always forward a victim narrative, and the case of Marjorie Taylor Greene shows how cynical and calculated that strategy is.