MRC Still Pushing Big Lie That Trump Was Kicked Off Social Media For Calling For 'Peace' Topic: Media Research Center
We'vedocumented how the Media Research Center has tried to falsely impugn social media platforms with its wildly dishonest claim that Donald Trump was banned from those platforms because he called for "peace" during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, while ignoring the fact that Trump helped to incite that riot. Believe it or not, the MRC has never stopped making that claim since we last reported on it in June.
Kayla Sargent wrote in a June 2 post that "Trump was banned from at least 10 platforms, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, Stripe, Snapchat, Reddit, TikTok and even Shopify, after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol in which the former president called for 'peace.'" That slippery wording doesn't come out and directly make the false claim, but it's heavily implied there's a linkage that doesn't actually exist.A June 3 post by Casey Ryan, however, actually said the lie: "Before his ban, Trump had the biggest megaphone calling out Big Tech’s hypocrisy, and Facebook suspended him after he called for peace following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot."
Sargent compounded the lie in a June 4 post written with Michael Morris attacking Facebook VP Nick Clegg for keeping its ban on Trump: "The platform, in continuing to censor Trump, absurdly concluded that it is still convinced Trump’s calls for 'peace' during the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol constituted a “risk to public safety.” Clegg said in the Facebook statement: “Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr. Trump’s suspension, we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols.” In fact, nowhere in Clegg's statement does he reference Trump calling for "peace" as the reason he was suspended.
A June 5 post by Autumn Johnson declared that "At the beginning of the year, Twitter suspended then-President Trump after he called for peace in the wake of the deadly riots at the Capitol. Sargent repeated her bogus boilerplace in a June 8 post, claiming that "Donald Trump was suspended from at least 10 platforms following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol after he called for 'peace.'" Sargent made a similar claim on June 11: "Twitter removed former President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol after he called for 'peace.'" Sargent returned to her full boilerplate in a June 15 post: "Former President Donald Trump was banned from 10 platforms, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, Stripe, Snapchat, Reddit, TikTok and even Shopify, following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol after he called for 'peace.'"
Alexander Hall similarly wrote on July 7: "Trump was banned from at least nine other platforms after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, during which the former President called for 'peace,'" which was copied nearly word-for-word in a post by Sargent the same day, as well as a post on July 8. On July 12, Sargent stated that "YouTube, along with at least nine other platforms, banned Trump after he called for 'peace' following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. She declared on July 14 that "Former President Donald Trump was also banned from at least 10 platforms after he called for 'peace' following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol," repeating the statement in a July 15 post.
Ryan returned in a Sept. 3 post to take the lie further:
Twitter banned Trump after he called for peace following the Capitol riot in January. In a tweet, Twitter Safety appeared to falsely accuse Trump of inciting violence: “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” The platform has not allowed him back on since.
In fact, it's been amply demonstrated that Trump played a major role in inciting the riot.
Hall tried to forward the bogus narrative again in an Oct. 29 post complaining that Facebook has a history of sabotaging conservative politicians.
Facebook suspended then-President Trump indefinitely, even as he called for peace amidst the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6. Trump assured his supporters, “I know your pain. I know your hurt,” but told them “you have to go home now. We have to have peace.” President Trump also said he agreed the election was “fraudulent,” but warned, “we can’t play into the hands of these people.” Zuckerberg declared on Jan. 7 that blocking Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram would be extended indefinitely, as “We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.”
That's a highly selective reading of Trump's words, ignoring the part where he incited the riot and also encouraged the rioters by saying, "We love you. You're very special," and falsely claimed that "We had an election that was stolen from us."
Another MRC writer, Catherine Salgado, pushed the bogus boilerplate in a Nov. 2 post, stating that "Trump was also banned from at least 10 platforms after he called for “peace” following the Capitol 'riot.'" She didn't explain why she put scare quote around "riot," though elsewhere in her post she referred to the riot only as "the events of January 6th."
CNS Keeps Pushing Narrative That Biden Is Going Senile Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com lovestotake incidents out of context to make President Biden look senile and out of touch -- "four second mental meltdown," anyone? -- and it hasn't really stopped, even though that right-wing-driven narrative isn't really going anywhere and despite its own objections to anyone questioning Donald Trump's mental faculties even though his continued insistence against all legitimate evidence that he won the election and everyone else cheated can been seen as evidence of a mental disorder of some kind. By contrast, every verbal misstep by Biden -- no matter how minor -- is copiously documented and presented as implicit evidence of Biden's purported "cognitive decline."
Here's what CNS has been doing in recent months to push this narrative:
We don't recall CNS publishing article after article about Trump's manyverbalgaffes, let alone portray them as evidence of his failing mental health.
CNS got help from across the hall at Media Research Center headquarters in pushing this narrative. Tim Graham wrote a March column:
At a March 8 White House event to announce the nomination of two female generals to lead U.S. military combatant commands, President Joe Biden seemed to forget the name of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and where Austin works. Since the theme of the president's mental acuity is still associated with memes of former President Donald Trump, the media desperately wanted to forget this happened.
Just like CNS and the MRC desperately wants you to forget about all those Trump gaffes and his continued cloudcuckooland insistence that he won the election (a delusion the MRC has helped Trump maintain)?
CNS also gives uncritical free reign to Republican politicians to smear Biden and his purported "cognitive decline":
In February, Jones touted Rep. Matt Gaetz saing that "Biden is "not in a position to really make decisions day in and day out" and adding, "You look at a growing number of Democrats who are now concerned about giving Joe Biden the codes for the nuclear system. I'd be concerned about giving Joe Biden a code to my garage door opener."
A June 18 article by Jones uncritically quoted Rep. Tommy Tuberville saying of Trump that "he's got his handlers running this country. He can't do anything on his own. And people are losing confidence in him every day," adding that "Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), the former White House physician, sent a letter to President Biden, Biden's physician, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, urging a cognitive test for Biden, the results to be shared with the American people."
A July 14 article by Jones quoted Newt Gingrich saying, ""A lot of people worry about President Biden and his cognitive abilities."
On Aug. 9, Melanie Arter uncritically quoted former Trump director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe saying, "There's that other elephant in the room, in terms of cognitive difficulties from the leader of the free world. What does that tell our adversaries across the world?”
On Aug. 24, Arter wrote that Republican Rep. Mark Green "questioned Biden’s cognitive abilities and his ability to lead as commander-in-chief because of his handling of Afghanistan," uncritically quoting him as saying, "The way the president is thinking, it calls to mind where his cognitive abilities really are."
Another article the same day by Arter uncritically quoted Republican Rep. Michael Waltz ranting, "He cannot handle it. He is not prepared for this. He is not cognitively fit to be our commander-in-chief right now."
That would seem to demonstrate all one needs to know about CNS' partisan motivation.
CNS tried to push questions about Biden's supposedly failing physical health as well. Melanie Arter leaned hard into that in a Sept. 16 article:
President Joe Biden’s frequent coughing during public speeches recently, including Thursday during a speech about his economic proposals, prompted NBC News White House Correspondent Kelly O’Donnell to ask about the president’s health.
“Many of us were in the East Room watching the president. We’ve seen him on many occasions where he has a repeated cough. What is the situation with that cough, and is that a concern?” O’Donnell asked.
“It’s not a concern. He has a doctor that travels with him obviously who checks in if it is ever warranted, and certainly, that continues to be the case as it has been since the beginning of his presidency,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.
“Is there an explanation for why he coughs so frequently in situations like that? I’m sure you saw it,” O’Donnell said.
By contrast, CNS touted Trump's purported manliness and perfect health, his cavalierness in associating with people know to be infected with COVID and uncrirtically repeating his lackeys' insistence that Trump was wonderfully healthy even as he because infected with COVID himself (which we now know was not the case, though CNS has yet to tell its readers).
MRC Promotes Anti-LGBT Right-Winger's Stunt To Attack School Board Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center loves to complain about softball interviews in the media -- but the MRC has conducted its own softball interviews. Take, for example, this Sept. 30 piece of sycophancy from MRC writer Gabriel Hays, who is interview right-wing columnist and anti-LGBT activist Matt Walsh. Hays doesn't call Walsh that, of course -- that would be too honest. Instead, he gushes that Walsh is a "Loudoun County resident and Daily Wire blogger" who is in the county to rage against the idea that Loudoun County schools might dare treat LGBT people with respect.
The sycophancy started early, as Hays wrote in the post accompanying the video: "The popular conservative columnist explained why it was important to stand up against this child abuse, which is not only destroying our young children in public school and destroying their parents’ right to a say in what their kids are being taught, it’s also denying the truth about biology." In the video, Hays' first sycophatic question was "Why is it important that you're here today, in this fight?" Hays then teed up various softballs for Walsh talk smack about LGBT people.
Surprisingly, Hays inserted a clip of a Walsh screed that showed his true hatred: He irrationally ranted that school board members were "child abusers" who "indoctrinate" children into a "insane, ideological cult" of transgenderism, going on to screech, "You are poison. You are predators." Hays followed up, however, by letting Walsh spout further on his extreme claim that letting transgender people be who they are is "child abuse" and never questioning him on it -- perhaps because Hays hates transgender people as much as Walsh does. Hays remained a passive interviewer even when Walsh insisted the way to handle transgender teens is "to lovingly correct them, to affirm them in the truth," even though nothing Walsh has shown thus far shows he is capable of love toward anyone, let alone transgender people.
Hays also gave Walsh space to reframe his stunt of leasing space in Loudoun County for the sole purpose of being able to harangue school board members after the board made the commonsense decision to limit speakers at meetings to county residents. As Hays sycophantically summed it up in the post accompanying his video:
In a hilarious work-around, Walsh signed a lease and rental agreement for Loudoun County property just days prior to the meeting so he could speak. In jest we asked if his new Loudoun County residency was a “coincidence” and he played along. “Just like they changed the rules before I showed up was a ‘coincidence,’ they said … coincidentally I just happened to decide to fulfill my lifelong dream of becoming a Loudoun County resident,” he quipped.
Well we’re honored to welcome Matt as a new Virginian. Hopefully he can move up here anytime there’s another LCPS board meeting looking to take advantage of our kids.
"Our kids"? We were not aware that Hays 1) had any kids, and 2) has meaningful residence in Loudoun County to send them to county schools. While Walsh did claim to have a kid, it's highly unlikely he uprooted her from his actual home in Tennessee to enroll her in a school just to pursue a hateful tranphobic vendetta -- which means he has abandoned his family to pull this stunt. Indeed, he simply paid a friend $1 to claim he was a Virginia resident, a tactic that probably wouldn't hold up for tax purposes. Hays didn't ask for proof of his residency, of course.
Further, as Wonkette points out: Pretending to be a resident of another state for the sole purposes of denigrating LGBT people and insulting school boards is not the mark of a healthy, well-adjusted man. Wonkette added: "Walsh isn't interested in honestly engaging on this topic nor even attempting to empathize with the people, including vulnerable children, he actively demonizes. This is all a sick game to him."
Walsh has no personal stake here -- no actual residency, no kids in public school (here or anywhere). He just wants a platform to spew hate. And Hays was just the hateful sycophant to eagerly provide that to him.
We knew our country had been stolen, almost immediately. Trump was the clear winner and then, in the dark hours, he wasn't. In the "battleground states," where it mattered, the counting was stopped … except it wasn't. The stoppages occurred almost simultaneously. All of this occurred after the poll watchers had been sent home. And suddenly, Trump's massive victory was flipped.
In singular strokes Biden's numbers suddenly spiked impossibly, just where needed, while Trump's numbers either ceased their steady increase or miraculously diminished.
The senators and congressmen that had proudly proclaimed their support for his values and accomplishments were swept to victory, almost universally, but the shirttails that had carried them all to victory showed up the next morning without the shirt itself. Their numbers had continued to rise in an even trajectory, through the long night of counting, while Trump's ascending path supposedly fell off a precipitous cliff, just as Biden's vote stopped spiraling toward the bottom of history and began to rise in the same sharp angle that Trump's had first climbed.
We all knew there would be every manner of theft, but we clung to what we felt was a certitude, that it could not be accomplished on such a scale as to overcome the thronging popularity of the one who had stood, in a manner unprecedented, against all our enemies, to succeed in valuing America first and in making her great again.
But whoever wishes to live in a world that is mainly "nice," and where men can be credited as being generally "good," that person cannot and does not perceive the depths or the proximity of the evil that godless men will do.
After the election, we were sure that the theft could never stand. But it stood and stood in a clearly outlined profile – so well did every improbable aspect work in concert that nothing in any logical world could attribute it all to anything less than a plan, long in the making and unconscionably executed. Every legal objection was bumped to the next level, and we took heart that the truth was emerging and would come to the full light of day before the Supreme Court. In the justices' final and voiceless dismissal, we were mocked. Our nation and all it had ever stood for was mocked and condemned to the calamity we now watch, unfolding each day, as our ultimate destruction nears, by measures taken with blinding speed and actions heretofore unimaginable.
[...]
Most of the gathered Patriots kept themselves at a distance, listening as Trump spoke. But some of those righteously angered went to the steps of the Capitol, where many were invited to come in, by the very guards whose numbers there were so strangely limited. Among those gathered there, outside, a few fools were hectored, almost exclusively, by the FBI's agents provocateurs, there to repeat, in essence, the advantages to be gained by this new Reichstag fire. As the news of the "Insurrection" reached the floors of Congress, the cowards inside all breathed a sigh of relief, that they might therefore be able to justify their betrayal. And they certified the various states' electoral votes, knowing, each one, that it was wrong, and thereby gave us Biden and his puppet masters.
What has happened since can lead to only one good result. It must be in 2022, not in 2024 – or this country will be lost, and the world will be lost, to the Oligarchs and to those they let breathe, only as buying units, utterly controlled servants and human pets.
I pray as follows. Please join me.
That every effort, surely planned to cheat the midterms, will be foiled, or, at least, prove insufficient. That the American people, We the People, will vote in such great and sacred numbers that those who would see this country die will shrivel and shrink in abject defeat, like venomous spiders before a holy flame. That the party of would-be communist tyrants will be so crushed as to never rise again. That then, with an unstoppable majority, and on the first day they are sworn in to defend our Constitution, the Congress will, with a singular and incontestable will, replace the old speaker of the House with a new speaker, who need not, by law, come from among their ranks, and then, immediately, that day, impeach and convict both the criminal usurper and his cohort in crime and replace them, by order of succession, with the new House speaker, Donald J Trump.
I also pray, that in accepting this affirmation of the great and profound love these American people have offered to our bravest and most determined president, that he would be found so humbled as to be freed, to not only boast of his successes, both past and promised to come, but to admit and ask forgiveness for his one greatest failure and misjudgment, promising to right that as well by ending our Wuhan-COVID-19 insanity and punishing those who chose to mislead us all. We pray that a man so beloved of his people would know that his and our greatest safety is beyond prideful vanities and found assuredly in the whole truth.
The vaccines will fall soon enough to cheap and proven early treatments, now being proved around the world. May they then be realized as the ashes from which we all rise again.
Tim Graham Fact-Check Fail, Biden Booster Shot Edition Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center executive Tim Graham is so desperate to attack fact-checkers for calling out right-wing lies -- and so unconcerned about how dumb he looks in the process -- that he simply lashes out without thinking. He spent an entire Oct. 8 column whining in a picayune argument that fact-checkers busted right-wingers for asserting that President Biden got his COVID booster shot on a "fake White House" set:
When is a fake setting not a fake setting? When Joe Biden sits in front of it.
The “independent fact checkers” – a phrase that in itself strains credulity – leaped to defend President Biden after he received a COVID booster shot in the Old Executive Office Building on September 27. For political rookies, the “OEOB” is not the White House, but sits next to the White House.
Jokers on Facebook showed a photograph of Biden getting his booster vaccination in the South Court Auditorium in front of a set that resembled the Oval Office. One said "Joe Biden using a fake White House backdrop is so on brand for him." Another Facebook post said "They created a fake set for Biden to get his booster shot. The entire Biden presidency is one giant charade."
PolitiFact characterized the second post as “False” and announced these posts “were flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed.” This led Facebook to suppress the Biden mockery. The Facebook post at the page “Real Cloyd Rivers” quoted here as “False” was simply taken down. It can no longer be found.
What was “misinformation”? PolitiFact’s Louis Jacobson set the Biden scene: “Behind him was a backdrop featuring white walls and columns, along with ‘windows’ seemingly looking out toward the White House itself.”
Dear Louis: If you’re putting the word “windows” in quote marks, it can be mocked as a fake set.
Jacobson also tried these lame arguments: “There’s no indication that anyone in the Biden administration tried to pass this off event as being held inside the White House itself.” Claiming great intentions isn’t “fact checking.” It appeared to be like the Oval Office, and it wasn’t.
And: “The backdrop behind Biden as he was getting his booster shot wasn’t ‘created’ for that event — it had been used five days earlier for a global coronavirus summit.” So if the fake setting is not new, it’s not fake?
What Graham doesn't do, however, is offer any evidence that anyone in the Biden White House ever falsely portrayed the event as taking place inside the White House, as PolitiFact pointed out. Indeed, the White House transcript of the event specifically states that it took place at the "South Court Auditorium, Eisenhower Executive Office Building" (the official name for the Old Executive Office Building). It was a set; everyone in attendance knew it was a set. The only people trying to deceive were the right-wing Biden-haters, who Graham wants you to think are merely "jokers on Facebook" though he offered no evidence the claim was being made as a "joke."
Further, Graham's complaining about the stage being a "fake set" are nonsensical. It's a stage set, which by definition is fake. But nobody ever claimed it wasn't a set, which Graham doesn't seem to understand.
Graham went on to whine: "PolitiFact wasn’t alone. The website Lead Stories – heavily used to suppress Facebook content – ran an article, too. It warned of the claim 'Joe Biden Took His Booster Shot On A ‘Set’ Of A Fake ‘White House’.' But it was a set, and the set was technically not in the White House." Again, nobody was claiming it was in the White House or that it wasn't a set.
Unable to stop digging -- and still insisting without evidence that the right-wingers crying "fake!" were merely making fun of Biden -- Graham tried to invent a conspiracy theory:
The obvious question one might ask: Why not get the booster shot inside the actual Oval Office? Why create a set for “The President Biden Show”? On Fox News, Ari Fleischer suggested they wanted to give Biden a teleprompter inside the camera lens he's looking into, so he doesn't go off script.
If Donald Trump had created a set, there’s no way “fact checkers” would check anyone making fun of him on Facebook. Anti-Trump mockery was the most accurate mockery, no matter how inaccurate it might be.
Perhaps Biden didn't do it inside the Oval Office because the White House wanted a sizable audience for this, and you can only fit so many people inside the Oval Office.
P.S.: Graham somehow managed to avoid any mention of the wacky claim from the MRC's favorite (misinforming) podcaster, Joe Rogan, asserting that the booster shot itself was a fake. That's the protection one gets in exchange for being an MRC fave.
WND Columnist Unironically Complains About Lies While Being Published By WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
Craige McMillan wrote in his Oct. 15 WorldNetDaily column:
Interesting, isn't it, the relative importance placed upon lying by God? Notice He is not only talking about election whoppers, but also "little white lies," the kind we concoct to save those we supposedly care about from pain.
Perhaps it never occurs to liars that in fact they care only about themselves. Thus media empires today live by lies that cause the nation pain, but preserve their own position and power in the political structure. Their lies lead the nation into godless choices, all of which pay dividends of the worst kind, including rivers of blood that have polluted our land. Perhaps when the time comes God will delay judgment on one of these lying media empires, so they can report the fate of their fellow liars who arrive first at the Lake of Fire.
What do you think? Would God assign the reporting task to the least or most guilty? I think the most guilty, because they would know all the while in their reporting that their impending fate would be worse than anything they had reported.
Lying is above all an offense against God. For Christians it is forgiven with confession and repentance. I sometimes wonder if the Catholics aren't ahead of the Protestants in requiring confession to a priest. It's pretty easy for all of us to fall into the trap of believing the lies we have told are tiny and insignificant, perhaps so insignificant that we need not trouble God with such trifles. The guidance from another human being might save us from such self-delusion, which only grows worse with the years.
Lying is fundamentally about gaining power over other people. By that definition pretty much our entire government, media, entertainment and education industries are full to overflowing with liars. Their goal is advantage to themselves while they steal from the rest of us. Eventually there are so many of them that they end up lying to themselves, too. Liars, I would guess, are no respecters of persons.
The headline of McMillan's co;lumn is "Liars doing the backstroke in the Lake of Fire" -- which seems to be what WND is doing. But McMilian would never call out WND for its lies; who else would publish him?
MRC Still Helping Babylon Bee Play Victim Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Rsearch Center loves to help right-wing satire site the Babylon Bee play victim for purportedly being "censored," when all that's actually happening is that it's getting fact-checked because its fellow right-winger have a bad habit of treating its satire as reality. Christine Salgao did her part to push the misleading narrative in an Oct. 7 post:
Big Tech just can’t seem to get off the censorship train — especially when it comes to content that runs counter to the left’s accepted narrative. “You know, tyrants don’t like [satire]. It’s the thing that they hate more than anything else,” said satire site Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon.
Dillonbappeared on Tucker Carlson’s show “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Wednesday to discuss how Big Tech censorship is harming humor. Tucker called Babylon Bee “one of the few remaining amusing sites on the internet.” He added, “[O]f course Big Tech hates it and is trying to censor it.” Dillon told Tucker, “We’ve been fact-checked to death,” specifically citing a 2018 piece which jokingly described an “industrial-sized washing machine” CNN bought “to help its journalists and news anchors spin the news before publication.”
Dillon said social networks use “fact-checkers” under a pretense of controlling “misinformation.” “It’s politically motivated, has been the whole time,” Dillon stated. Big Tech censorship, starting with the 2020 election, created “a drastic drop in [Babylon Bee] traffic,” explained Dillon. “We used to derive most of our traffic through Facebook,” Dillon said, but no longer. Babylon Bee articles, formerly “crazy viral,” are now barely shared. The satire outlet CEO said one recent piece reached only 11 people. “We could have reached more people if we’d printed it out and nailed it to like, a telephone pole in a small town,” Dillon expressed his frustration.
Dillon is deliberately misleading about the 2018 CNN piece. Snopes pointed out in its fact-check that "Although it should have been obvious that the Babylon Bee piece was just a spoof of the ongoing political brouhaha over alleged news media “bias” and “fake news,” some readers missed that aspect of the article and interpreted it literally. Again: Babylon Bee isn't being fact-checked because it's right-wing, it's being fact-checked because its readers believe its satire to be real life. Salgado added to the dishonesty by noting only that "Snopes admitted it 'should have been obvious' The Babylon Bee piece 'was just a spoof'" and censoring the part about Bee readers treating the spoof as real.
Kristine Marsh did her part to advance thte Bee's victimhood in an Oct. 15 item:
Lefty magazine The Atlantic published an interview with massively popular Christian satire site The Babylon Bee on Thursday, which turned out to be hilarious for all the wrong reasons. Religion writer Emma Green tried to guilt-trip Bee editor-in-chief Kyle Mann for mocking leftists (though she seemingly had no problem with the satire site’s self-deprecating jokes about the evangelical church.)
Green was so uptight about jokes aimed at the left, that Mann was actually forced to explain what self-evident jokes about Trump-deranged Democrats meant.
[...]
Green tried to railroad him for the Bee's scathing joke about Democrats being so crazed by Donald Trump, that they went into mourning when his orders took out a terrorist:
Like Salgado, Marsh censors the context that the piece was fact-checked because "some social media users mistook this piece of fiction as if it were a genuine news item."
But Marsh wasn't done complaining about tyhe interview:
After repeatedly trying and failing to shame the Bee, Green ended the interview lecturing the Christian website for being...un-Christian. (Funny how the media doesn’t ever lecture progressive Christians for not following the Bible on social issues.)
“Do you feel like your work at The Babylon Bee helps you live out what you see as the image of Jesus in the Bible?” she asked, following up with, “Jesus certainly calls out those who are powerful and strong, like in the Sermon on the Mount, but that doesn’t feel the same as taking a swipe at people who are weak and vulnerable.”
To The Atlantic, the Bee mocking the woke media, progressive Democrats and literally every major institution in the country that leans left is attacking the “weak and vulnerable.”
Only at the MRC is it a bad for a right-wing Christian site to be asked how what it does fulfill the Christian prinicples it professes to follow.
CNS Touts Right-Wing Rabbis' Nonsensical Attack On ADL Topic: CNSNews.com
We'vedocumented CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman's enthusiasm for serving as the PR person for the group of right-wing, pro-Trump rabbis known as the Coalition for Jewish Values. Chapman gave space to a nonsensical attack from the group in a Sept. 28 article which followed on the group's Nazi smears of members of Congress like Rep. Rashida Tlaib who aren't in lockstep with right-wing pro-Israel policies:
The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), which represents more than 1,500 traditional, Orthodox rabbis, strongly criticized the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for not calling for consequences against antisemitic members of Congress, and instead attacking Fox News over illegal immigration.
[...]
In a statement about ADL President Jonathan Greenblatt, the CJV President Rabbi Pesach Lerner said, "In January, Greenblatt correctly stated that Tlaib's depiction of Israel as 'apartheid' was both ' restated that same false and antisemitic claim in order to demonize Israel's self-defense, and joined her fellow 'Squad' members to strip funding from a program designed to neutralize the war crimes of the Hamas terror organization."
"Greenblatt was right to say that this ' shameful act' by 'the Squad' emboldens Hamas & Hezbollah, but why has he not called for consequences after yet another antisemitic fiasco from the 'Squad?'" said Rabbi Lerner.
"Instead, he diverts our attention with another partisan fight against a conservative public figure who made controversial, debatable, but certainly not hateful remarks," said the CJV in reference to Fox News' Tucker Carlson, who has reported on Democrats' using illegal immigrants to replace voters in the U.S.
In fact, Carlson's pushing of "replacement theory" is quite hateful, since it comes from a basis of racism and white nationalism.But Chapman's job here is PR, not reporting,so he continued:
In August, the CJV criticized the ADL for partnering with a Jewish college organization to combat antisemitism on campuses because, the CJV explained, the ADL "lacks the moral clarity to properly identify antisemitism, let alone combat it."
An ADL spokesman wrongly claimed, according to the CJV, that “anti-Israel activism in and of itself is not antisemitism."
Rabbi Moshe B. Parnes, the CJV Southern Regional Vice President, said, “Only someone with no sense of Jewish history could claim that BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions] is not antisemitic."
Actually, there's plentyofdebate over whether criticism of Israel equates to anti-Semitism, and there is arguably at least some criticism of the countriy's policies that is clearly not.
And because Chapman is doing PR and not actual reporting, he couldn't be bothered to contact the ADL for a response to the CJV's hateful, ahistorical criticism.
MRC Complains That Protesters Use Tactics Against Sinema, Manchin That Anti-Abortion Protesters Use Topic: Media Research Center
As we learned with Tulsi Gabbard, pretty much the only the the Media Research Center would dare defend a liberal or Democrat is if he or she is doing something that advances right-wing narratives and agendas. It has done that again for Democratic Arizona Rep. Kyrsten Sinema because she has faced protesters opposed to her foot-dragging on supporting Democratic infrastructure and funding bills. Scott Whitlock was in high dudgeon in an Oct. 5 post:
It’s pretty safe to say that network media outlets would howl with outrage if far-left favorites like Nancy Pelosi or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were harassed and intimidated in a bathroom.
But when the same thing happened to moderate Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, the shocking incident resulted in a collective shrug. The October 3 intimidation — and similar acts directed at fellow moderate Joe Manchin — garnered just 188 seconds from the network morning and evening newscasts beginning on Sunday night.
ABC, so far, has ignored the Democratic activists harassing Manchin and Sinema. CBS allowed 54 seconds and NBC offered the most, a still scant 134 seconds. All of this is despite the startling follow-up of the President of the United States telling reporters the harassment of two Democrats holding up his agenda is “part of the process.”
The same network that depends on a continued uncontrolled stream of migrants has now granted celebrity status to a stalker and harasser that filmed herself confronting senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) at her seat on flight to D.C., regarding Sinema’s reluctance to support President Biden’s Build Back Better Act.
While Univision made an effort to portray the confrontation as an opportune chance for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient Karina Ruiz, introducing her as an “activist” didn´t help. Neither did the fact that Ruiz´ entrapment was one of three performative acts held by pro-immigration activists against Senator Sinema in a 24-hour period. More telling, the airplane “selfie” was promptly shared to Twitter – not by Ruiz herself, but by the Arizona Dream Act Coalition.
[...]
Makes one wonder if the Biden administration, and especially the DOJ, will label such threats, bullying and harassing as domestic terrorism.
Whitlock returned to grouse in an Oct. 29 article:
Progressive haters stepped up their harassment of Kyrsten Sinema over the last week, sinking to the disgusting level of destroying the wedding of a couple who invited the moderate Democratic Senator to officiate. The wedding took place on Saturday and the morning and evening shows on the networks ignored the cruel attack.
[...]
The growing and alarming pattern of harassment against Sinema has resulted in a collective shrug by the networks. In early October, when progressive thugs invaded a bathroom to yell at Sinema, there was just a scant 188 seconds of coverage from the network morning and evening shows. ABC skipped it entirely. On October 26, MSNBC’s Brian Williams touted liberal trashing of Sienma and “dickhead” Joe Manchin.
Just imagine if these insults were aimed at progressive darlings Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar.
What Whitlock and Krumhansl aren't going to tell you, however, is that such protest tactics are really no different from those used by anti-abortion protesters against their targets of doctors and other employees at abortoin clinics. As the Feminist Majority Foundation reported about one group of protesters:
Created Equal’s Killers Among Us Campaign (#KillersAmongUs) specializes in harassing and intimidating clinics and physicians. Created Equal creates and distributes WANTED-style flyers and posters with the photographs, names, and home addresses of physicians and the group has terrorized doctors at their homes in Ohio, New Mexico, California, and other states. Created Equal and Operation Rescue have joined together to sponsor demonstrations against abortion providers.
There is a long history of anti-abortion protesters harassing abortion clinic doctors and employees at home and even at the churches they attend, and we don't recall the MRC ever complaining about that. Further, abortion doctor George Tiller was murdered not at his clinic but inside a church by an anti-abortion protester. (The MRC and the ConWeb wanted to pretend that Roeder wasn't a "mainstream" protester, caring more about how bad the murder made the anti-abortion movement look than about the tactic of harassing Tiller in church.)
Nevertheless, the MRC persisted with its narrative, roping in another Democratic congressman who was also boosting right-wing narratives by foot-dragging on the spending bills. Whitlock wrote in a Nov. 5 post:
The networks on Thursday night and Friday morning buried the harassment and bullying of one of the two moderate Democratic senators standing in way of Joe Biden’s liberal agenda. Climate extremists on Thursday morning followed, screamed at, and then swarmed the car of Joe Manchin as he was trying to leave his D.C. houseboat on Thursday.
Yet, ABC and CBS censored the story completely, allowing no coverage on the evening newscasts and morning shows. NBC skipped it on Thursday night and allowed just a scant 14 seconds on Friday’s Today< as Kristen Welker briefly noted, “Manchin confronted by climate activists yesterday over his opposition to the spending bill. That group surrounding and blocking the senator from driving out of a garage.”
The 14 seconds on NBC was out of a possible seven and a half hours of available air time on Thursday night and Friday morning. Clearly, journalists don’t care about the safety of moderate Democrats.
The anti-abortion movement (of which the MRC is part) has no problem disrupting people's lives when their target is abortion clinic employees -- one might even call it a "collective shrug" -- but is mad about it when those same tactics are used against a Democratic lawmaker whose actions are useful to its partisan narratives. Go figure.
WND's Farah Repeats School Board Lie Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah ranted in an Oct. 12 column:
Joe Biden gave us an attorney general who thinks parents are "domestic terrorists."
That's the latest outrage from Merrick Garland whom the Democrats wanted to be a Supreme Court justice!
Moms and dads attending school board meetings and speaking out about a host things, including Critical Race Theory, a Marxist teaching, threatens to get them a visit from the FBI!
I'm aware of the complaint that parents are madder than hell, but I'm not sure I've heard of any violence that's taken place.
But the press release from the Justice Department cites "threats of violence" as well as "harassment" and "intimidation" against school officials and teachers.
[...]
guess the FBI and police don't have anything to do with combating crime up in mostly blue states. This will give them something to do in red states.
And what about the constitutional rights of parents to speak harshly about whatever is on their minds? Isn't that their right? I guess not in this increasingly fascist state America is degenerating into under Biden.
But as we'vedocumented, the letter that prompted Garland's concern -- sent by the National School boards Association -- never accused all parents of being "domestic terrorists" simply for speaking out, and neither is Garland. But the facts don't matter to Farah -- he had another conspiracy theory to peddle.
Farah then piled on paranoia and conspiracy-mongering on top of his lie:
It just so happens that the teachers union is pushing the racist and Marxist agenda in government schools nationwide. The FBI is being ordered to go after the parents rather than the union goons. This is typical of the increasingly authoritarian left – indoctrinating students starting at the kindergarten level.
I encourage parents to protest louder and not be in the least intimidated by Garland's plan. It's about time parents awaken to the threat to turn our kids into programmed little Nazis.
Just keep doing this, Biden. You'll make more enemies throughout America. This is so transparent! Thankfully, the day of reckoning is near – just a little more than a year away.
And, Joe, there aren't enough phony voters for you to do anything to stop the inevitable!
Farah echoed his bogus attack on Garland in his Oct. 21 column:
He could not explain why his famous memo issued five days after the request by the National School Boards Association asked for the FBI to intercede in such matters. He didn't comment on when he got marching orders from Joe Biden to use the Patriot Act to deal with threats against school board members who cited incidents of non-violent disruption of school board meetings where parents voiced their concerns about issues such as the teaching of Critical Race Theory, prompting Republicans to voice fears that federal involvement will influence conservatives to keep quiet instead of continuing to engage with officials.
[...]
Garland defended the memo and said that "we are not investigating peaceful protest or parent involvement at school board meetings."
End of story. Period.
He then expressed complete lack of knowledge of a Loudoun County, Virginia, father whose daughter was raped and sodomized by a skirt-wearing male student in a bathroom in school. How could this be? What news does he consume? Is it all of fake variety? How can he vow to be even-handed?
It's one of the most shocking, disturbing and relevant stories of our time.
Does he hear just what he wants to hear?
It would appear so.
This is the most politically motivated attorney general in our history. Expect nothing short of a rubber stamp for all the whims of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party's bare minimum of votes in the House and Senate.
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC's War on Jen Psaki (And Man-Crush On Peter Doocy): August 2021 Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck plays hide-the-#PsakiBomb to protect his man-crush Doocy, then cheers how the White House press secretary was attacked over the Afghanistan withdrawal. Read more >>
CNS Finds More Foreigners To Bash Biden Topic: CNSNews.com
As its fealty to Russia's Vladimir Putin has demonstrated, CNSNews.com just loves it when non-Americans bash the U.S. and President Biden. During the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, CNS found a couple more foreigners to help it with Biden-bashing.
In December 2019, CNS' Patrick Goodenough had called on right-wing British politician Nigel Farage to defend then-President Trump by cvlaiming that his "presidential travel proclamation -- which critics call a 'Muslim ban' -- was built on security concerns determined under the Obama administration." So when CNS needed all the Biden-bashing it could find, Farage was a convenient go-to. Craig Bannister wrote in an Aug. 25 article:
Former BREXIT Party Leader Nigel Farage said that America’s world image and credibility have never been worse, now that President Joe Biden has pulled troops from Afghanistan and given in to Taliban’s demands the U.S. leave by the end of August.
In a Fox & Friends First interview, Farage was incredulous that Biden would ignore his G7 allies and allow himself to be bullied by the Taliban and ISIS:
“Amazing, isn’t it? The whole of the G7 begging the president to extend the deadline – but, no, no, no, because the Taliban and ISIS have threatened an American president and he’s decided to dance to their tune.”
“I mean, what kind of man is this?” Farage asked.
Bannister served up more Biden-bashing from Farage in a Sept. 22 article:
By turning his back on a post-Brexit trade deal with the UK, President Joe Biden is putting his globalist dogma ahead of the interests of American and British businesses and consumers, former Brexit Party Leader Nigel Farage said Wednesday.
In a Fox & Friends First interview, Farage, who led the U.K.’s exit from the European Union (EU), said that Biden is favoring the “globalist Brussels elite in the European Union” over the single biggest investor in the U.S.
Farage wasn't the only one, though. Michael W. Chapman found a former British military commander to lash out at Biden in an Aug. 23 article:
In a very candid interview with conservative Mark Levin on Sunday, the former commander of British troops in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, said that President Joe Biden had single-handedly destroyed NATO's credibility and had betrayed the United States and the U.S. military, for which he "should be court-martialed."
"In my opinion, and I don't say this lightly, and I've never said it about anybody else, any other leader in this position, people have been talking about impeaching President Biden," said Col. Kemp on FNC's Life, Liberty & Levin.
"I don't believe President Biden should be impeached," he added. "He's the commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, who's just essentially surrendered to the Taliban. He shouldn't be impeached; he should be court-martialed for betraying the United States of America and the United States Armed Forces."
Kemp was never under Biden's command, so he has little reason to speak out. But CNS doesn't care.
Liars, Part 2: The MRC Perpetuates Its School Board Falsehood Topic: Media Research Center
We've documented how the Media Research Center chose to dishonestly portray a letter written by the National School Boards Association expressing concern over increasingly violent attacks against school board mebers over mask mandates and manufactured right-wing outrage over critical race theory as the group calling all parents terrorist for merely asking questions. The MRC spent the rest of October pushing that false narrative.
Nicholas Fondacaro -- who knows all aboutspreadinglies -- ranted in a Oct. 6 post cheering how Fox News also embraced the bogus narrative:
Last week, both CBS Evening News and NBC’s Today show peddled a smear against concerned parents protesting and rallying against their local school boards, parroting comments from the National School Boards Association attacking them as taking part in “domestic terrorism.” Now with the Biden Justice Department sicking the FBI’s anti-terrorism assets on American parents, those networks didn’t want to share how the parents they besmirched were fighting back.
[...]
But with the federal government this week showing they’re determined to fight against parental rights using lies and smears, the parents weren’t going to put up with it.
“Breaking tonight, the increasing pushback against the Biden administration over its efforts to stifle dissent on the part of parents against school boards disregarding their wishes over the children's education,” announced Fox News fill-in anchor Mike Emanuel on Wednesday’s Special Report.
Fox News correspondent Mark Meredith reported that Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke “says the Justice Department stands by its recent memo directing the government to do more to protect school board members from what it sees as an escalating threat of violence.”
The next day, Scott Whitlock huffed: "All three network newscasts this week buried the move by radical Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate and harass parents who speak out on issues like Critical Race Theory at school board meetings across the country. A Justice Department memo slimed those challenging CRT and other issues as possibly being part of an insurgent 'violent' effort to 'intimidate' schools." But as we detailed, the NSBA cited specific threats of violence and intimidation, and it never portrayed all parenbs who speak out as domestic terrorists.
Fondacaro returned to lie some more on Oct. 18, again giving a cookie to a right-wing outlet that stayed on message with the false narrative:
Over the weekend, a group of parents gathered outside the Department of Justice to protest the suggestion that parents outraged at radical leftist school boards were domestic terrorists. They stayed on message against schools poisoning kids with Critical Race Theory and apparent pornography in school books. Meanwhile, the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC kept silent on the rally as the networks previously backed the smear or remained silent on the topic.
In later September and early October, CBS Evening News and NBC’s Today show hyped a demand from the radical leftist National School Boards Association (NSBA) that demanded concerned parents protesting at school board meetings be declared domestic terrorists and have the terrible power of the federal government brought to bear against them.
[...]
As for what actually happened at the weekend rally, we look to Daily Caller education reporter Kendall Tietz. “Frustration at school boards boiled over for some parents and activists who protested outside of the Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C. Sunday,” she reported.
Adding: “A small crowd gathered for the ‘Parents Are Not ‘Domestic Terrorists’ Rally,’ a reference to Merrick Garland’s Oct. 4 memorandum that called on the FBI to “use its authority” in response to the ‘disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.’”
Tim Graham repeated the lie on Oct. 19 about a supposedly softball interview CBS did with first lady Jill Biden: "There were no difficult questions about how Attorney General Merrick Garland wants to investigate angry parents who attend school board meetings (as the National School Boards Association compares them to domestic terrorists). "
Earlier this month, Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Biden administration used federal actions in an attempt to chill the exercise of free speech by concerned parents protesting their school boards after they were equated to domestic terrorists by the National School Boards Association. But on Thursday, Garland was held to account by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee in a heated hearing that went unreported by the evening newscast of ABC, CBS, and NBC.
When the NSBA was force to backtrack in the face of the dishonest attacks by the MRC and other right-wingers, Scott Whitlock was still clinging to the lie in an Oct. 25 post:
Late on Friday night, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) belatedly apologized for language that linked concerned parents to domestic terrorists. But all three networks from Friday to Monday morning ignored the organization retreating, “On behalf of NSBA, we regret and apologize for the letter.... There was no justification for some of the language included in the letter.”
The original letter in question claimed that some actions by parents “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” On the weekend morning and evening newscasts, as well as Monday, the apology went unmentioned. NBC’s Sunday Today, however, offered a new hit piece on parents, falsely claiming that Critical Race Theory is not in schools and also blaming the whole thing on “former Tea Partiers.”
Yet the lie went on. Kyle Drennen huffed in an Oct. 28 post about "the DOJ complying with a now-withdrawn letter from the National School Board Association labeling parents speaking out at local school board meetings 'domestic terrorists.'"
Mark FInkelstein tried to dishonestly frame the letter in an Oct. 29 post, ironically while accusing CNN's Brianna Keilar of dishonesting framing it:
Co-host Brianna Keilar claimed "we should be clear" that there was a letter from the school board association to the Biden administration. But rather than being clear, Keilar was clearly deceptive. She framed the letter as simply "looking for help, because clearly school boards have been suffering a lot of violent threats, and a lot of tumult."
What she failed to disclose was that the school board association letter—signed by its two most senior officials—branded parent protests as " domestic terrorism."
Yes, when parents reacted with outrage to the accusation, the association subsequently withdrew the letter. But that "domestic terrorism" bell couldn't be un-rung. It was that accusation that Garland responded to with his memo to federal law enforcement.
Of course, Finkelstein can't point to any wording in the letter that specifically accused all parents of taking part in "domestic terrorism" -- because it doesn't exist.
One other thing worth noting: By embracing the false narrative that the NSBA letter called all parents domestic terrorists, the MRC absolved itself from ever criticizing the specific examples of intimidation and violence the letter cited -- thus suggesting it endorses that intimidftion and violence in furtherance of its right-wing agenda. When you're dealing with liars, would you expect anything different?
The MRC has clearly decided that pounding right-wing narratives is more important than telling the truth. It may be politically expedient, but the ultimate result is that nobody will be able to trust anything the MRC puts out. Is that what they really want?
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:29 PM EST
Updated: Wednesday, November 10, 2021 10:12 PM EST
On Sept. 24, CNSNews.com published part of a rant by Chris Jacobs headlined "Politico Published 20 Stories About Trump’s Taxes And Only 1 About Joe Biden’s." CNS only published the first few paragraphs, but the rest is at right-wing site The Federalist, where Jacobs' thinking goes awry:
I examined Politico, a publication many “inside-the-Beltway” types read. It showed a yawning gap between coverage of Joe Biden’s tax affairs compared to coverage of his predecessor.
Between January 21 and August 9 of this year, Politico ran at least 20 separate stories about Donald Trump’s taxes. By contrast, during the same period this year, Politico appears to have run only a single story related to Biden’s taxes, when the Bidens released their returns in May.
That story spent many more paragraphs talking about Trump not releasing his taxes (seven) than it did about Biden’s questionable use of this tax loophole (one). Therefore, some may consider what initially looks like a 20-to-1 disparity of stories about Trump’s taxes vis-à-vis Biden’s more like a 21-to-1, or 21-to-0, gap.
As Jacobs seems to conced but won't explicitly admit, the lesson here is that Trump's refusal to release his taxes made news outlets want to report on them, whereas Biden made his taxes public like every other presidential candidate of the past 40-plus years, thus making it a non-issue for him.Yet Jacobs made an attempt to justify his double standard:
I won’t argue the legal controversies about Trump’s taxes aren’t newsworthy—they clearly are. I have also previously stated that Trump should have released his taxes as president, and should get held to the same legal standard as everyone else if he did in fact violate any tax laws.
But Biden’s taxes are just as relevant as Trump’s, if not more so, given a combination of factors. Those include that Biden is the current president, as opposed to the former president. Also, unlike Trump, Biden has publicly advertised himself as a paragon of virtue regarding his taxes and financial affairs.
Jacobs went on to complain that Biden was a hypocrite for taking advantage of tax deductions and loopholes he has proposed eliminating. But that's just a lame gotcha -- rich right-wingers will tell you that nobody is legally obligated to pay more taxes than mandated. Indeed, other rich people have used the same loophole that Biden did, and Jacobs isn't lashing out at them. That's the real hypocrisy -- Jacobs can't prove Biden broke the law (because he didn't), so he has to attack Biden on something, anything.
We're willing to bet that Jacobs has never complained about Trump's absolute refusal to release his taxes the way he has nitpicked Biden's actual release.
Newsmax Columnist Won't Apologize For Being A Right-Wing Anti-Vaxxer Jerk Topic: Newsmax
In his Oct. 4 Newsmax column, Judd Dunning serves up some curious definitions of when it's a good thing to be "unapologetic." Like being like a right-wing anti-vaxxer:
The solution to apology-obsessed leftist rage is to be unapologetic.
So what does it mean to be unapologetic?
Being unapologetic does not mean callousness for its own sake. We all make mistakes.
Apologies are righteous when appropriate. Being unapologetic means rejecting any need to make inappropriate apologies.
Guilty people should apologize. The innocent should remain unapologetic.
Being unapologetic means owing no apology to cancel or consequence culture for merely existing. Unabashedly free Americans with rock-solid conservative values rarely have to apologize.
Being unapologetic means not joining the cult.
Cultists wear “I’m vaccinated” necklaces as an apostle of vaccine messiahs and crazed leftists. Cultist New York Governor Kathy Hochul said "God is telling you to get vaccinated."
[...]
Unapologetic authentic Americans won’t shut up, comply, or be silenced when government comes with their needles, for your guns, at your children, or to shut down your businesses and take your money and rights. Being unapologetic means supporting innovative drug makers like Merck, who just developed a COVID pill that could render all vaccines irrelevant.
Being unapologetic means forcefully rejecting the twin liberal narratives that any speech a liberal disagrees with is hate speech, and therefore not free speech.
Just as Christ flipped a few tables in the temple (John 2:13-16), a healthy rebuke to having your rights violated is more than only OK. It's an obligation to reject violations thrust upon our American way of life by the cultural Marxists of our day.
Hate speech is the very speech deserving of the most protection. Liberals declared opposition to COVID vaccines, voting for Donald Trump and questioning climate activism as hate speech. When that fails, the inevitable race card is played, since nothing is more truly hateful than real racism.
Or, apparently, believing that right-wing violence like the Jan. 6 Capitol riot deserve to be "unapologetic" when non-right-wing violence is not:
Hate, the necessary shadow side of love, is at the heart of free speech. Nobody is allowed under the Constitution to instigate violence or riots. This includes BLM and Antifa.
Note, again, that Dunning does not explicitly call out the Jan. 6 rioters.
And you should especially be "unapologetic," Dunning claims, for staying in your right-wing bubble and being resistant to the change happening around you:
The revolution always eats its own, just as all empires fall. When everyone has been conquered, turning inward is inevitable. Until that inevitable conclusion, we must know there is no safe space. We must accept an imperfect world with bad people saying bad things. “Toughen up, buttercup.”
The far worse alternative is a world where even one innocent person is wrongly shunned, jailed or killed over misunderstood innocent free speech.
Undocumented workers? I say illegal aliens. Workplace violence? I label it radical Islam. Handi-capable? I say handicapped. African-Americans? I call them blacks, just as Rev. Jesse Jackson agrees. You call them LGBTQIASANDEVERYOTHER ACRONYMINTHEBOOK.
I call them Dave or Bill or Janice or whatever first name they claim.
Actually, Dunning is the one who's retreating to his safe space by declaring he shouldn't have to apologize for being a jerk.