Maricopa County, Arizona, officials admitted after the 2020 presidential election that there were some 25,000 ballots counted with mismatched signatures that weren't reviewed, or in the language of the election industry, "cured."
Actually, the number was more than 200,000.
That's according to a study of the county's mail ballots that year that was commissioned by the Arizona State Senate, explains a new report from Just the News.
The study of signature verification processes is just one of the outcomes of the 2020 presidential election ballot count that now is mired in multiple scandals.
[...]
Just the News reported the study was done by Shiva Ayyadurai's Election Systems Integrity Institute, after the county claimed 25,000, 1.3%, of the 1,911,918 early voting mail ballots "had signature mismatches that required curing." The county said only 587 were confirmed as mismatched signatures.
The name Shiva Ayyadurai should raise a red flag. He was hired last year by Arizona to conduct a biased audit of the 2020 election, and as we noted, he got things so wrong that fact-checkers wondered ifhe even understood how mail-in voting procedures even worked. He's playing games here too; he analyzed only 499 ballots, and the error rate he claims he found was then extrapolated to more than 200,000 purportedly fraudlent ballots. But has Maricopa County Board of Supervisors chairman Bill Gates pointed out, Ayyadurai's work ere is just as slipshod:
Gates called the work “discredited,” saying voter signatures and ballot envelopes are not public records and he, therefore, couldn’t accurately compare signatures. Ayyadurai went to other signatures on file at the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office for things like mortgages to compare signatures. “How is comparing signatures from one unrelated public recorded document to an early ballot envelope signature considered a viable way of proving identity for voting purposes?” Gates asked. “It’s not surprising this more recent report also uses faulty analysis to draw the conclusions Ayyadurai desires.”
Ayyadurai is also an anti-vaccine activist who thinks Anthony Fauci is a deep-state plant and who has also dubiously claimed that he invented email and demands to be credited for doing so. In other words, just another WND-friendly crackpot.
MRC's Graham Otherizes SCOTUS Nominee By Using Just Her (Non-Mainstream) First Name Topic: Media Research Center
A Feb. 26 post by Media Research Center executive Tim Graham sought to reinforce the right-wing narrative of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson as a wild radical:
Naturally, the PBS NewsHour was delighted with President Biden's nomination of radical Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court on Friday night. David Brooks touted how Jackson brings “a new lived set of experiences. It can't help but have a humanizing aspect.” He put her in the mainstream….of the Democrats. That might be correct, but the Democrats are far to the left!
Interestingly, the headline of Graham's post simply referred to Jackson as "Ketanji," as if went by one name (she doesn't) and -- more importantly -- as if conservatives were trying to emphasize her out-of-the-mainstream first name as a way of "othering" her the way it tried do to Barack Obama.
Oddly, Graham appears to be a little sensitive to being accused of that. He defensively wrote in a Twitter post the next day:
For the record, I'm calling her Judge Ketanji because her first name is quite unique. If you think it's rude, and would prefer "Judge Jackson cause you're nasty," that's fine. But we're trying to get some attention here.
The MRC is a bit sensitive about this sort of thing, since it was very much fixated on Obama's middle name when it suited its right-wing agenda to do so -- but not so much when Obama himself used his middle name.Let's take a look back, shall we?
In 2008, the MRC rushed to the defense of right-wing radio host Bill Cunningham, who made a point of emphasizing "Hussein" in campaign appearances for then-GOP presidential candidate John McCain. Matthew Sheffield gave Cunningham space to laughably deny he was being Islamophobic by screeching "Hussein" at every opportunithy: ""I have nothing but respect for my Muslim brothers and sisters."And Brent Baker whined:
With cover from John McCain, NBC and ABC on Tuesday night condemned the “caustic” and “mocking” remarks of Cincinnati radio talk show host Bill Cunningham who, on stage before an Ohio campaign appearance by McCain, dared to utter Barack Obama's middle name and call him “a hack” Chicago politician.
Brent Bozell mocked in a 2008 column how some people "flail with outrage when a conservative uses his full name, Barack Hussein Obama. It’s not a lie. It’s not a distortion. It’s his name."grumbled in another 2008 column: "If you want an angry media mob, you need merely spit out "Barack Hussein Obama" at a McCain rally and watch the Guardians of Social Taste bring out the torches and pitchforks."
Scott Whitlock complained in 2009 that a reporter in Dubai "seemed interested in eliciting praise from the students about Barack Obama's middle name." Whitlock huffed in another 2009 post:
"Good Morning America's" Chris Cuomo reported live from Egypt on Wednesday and informed viewers that students at a university in Cairo are "given hope, just by the fact that a brown-skinned president named Barack Hussein Obama exists. " The news anchor, who was in the region to cover the President's speech on Thursday, provided a decidedly different tone than that of many journalists who avoided using Obama's middle name during the 2008 campaign.
Mike Bates obsessed a lot in 2009 over a clip of schoolchildren singing about Obama, writing in one post, "Last month it was school children merrily singing the praises of Barack Hussein Obama. Mmm. Mmm. Mm! huffed in a another post: "It appears that at CBS News, as in much of the mainstream media, a conservative is anyone to the right of Barack Hussein Obama. Mmm. Mmm. Mm!"
In 2010, Brad Wilmouth complained about a TV panel that debated whether "electing a President whose middle name was 'Hussein' had 'opened a door to better relations with the Arab and Islamic world. Or has it opened a door to more xenophobic American negativity?'"
Dan Gainor wrote in a 2011 post: "When Barack Hussein Obama was born, the United States budget was a bit more than $94 billion and ran only a $3 billion deficit that year. Ah the good ol' days." In anbother 2011 post, Noel Sheppard noted "what Senator Barack Hussein Obama said five years ago."
Graham played whataboutism over right-wingers who insisted on using Obama's full name in a 2012 post: "what about liberals who make fun of the name 'Willard Mitt Romney'?"
Yes, Graham may be trying to "get some attention" by emphasizing Jackson's name, but is it the kind of attention he really wants, given that it's tghe same playbook he and his fellow right-wingers used against Obama a decade ago? Apparently so, because he used "Ketanji" as a stand-alone name in more posts:
CNS Sneers At Biden During State of the Union Address Topic: CNSNews.com
Cherry-picking quotes to portray President Biden as senile was only one part of CNSNews.com's coverage of his State of the Union address -- it was highly critical and largely dismissive all around.
That tone started in a March 1 preview of the address, in which Susan Jones dismissively wrote: "In his State of the Union address tonight, President Joe Biden 'will absolutely use the word 'inflation,'' White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Monday." Another preview article by Jones started by quoting a Democrat saying nice things, then quickly pivoted to spouting Republican talking points:
A number of Republicans are urging President Biden to sanction Russia's energy sector -- to stop its oil and gas exports, including those to the United States.
They say Biden should remove the restrictions he imposed on U.S. energy production to make the United States energy independent, even a net energy exporter, as it was just a few years ago.
At the moment, the Biden administration has exempted Russia's lucrative energy exports from U.S. sanctions.
And that was just the start of the pre-emptive attacks on an address that had not yet been given:
Melanie Arter wrote: "As President Biden prepares to deliver his State of the Union address, many are wondering what the president will say. For Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), one word comes to mind – 'bloviate.'"
Emily Robertson wrote that "President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address 'will not be a unifying or bipartisan speech and will not focus on the issues that the American people really need and are looking for him to address,' said Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel during a media call on Monday."
CNS began its coverage of the actual address with surprisingly straight reporting on what Biden said:
Then it was time to put out more Repuiblican talking points, as demonstrated by Jones:
Of all the sanctions the United States has imposed on Russia and its president, penalizing Russia's oil and gas sector is not among them.
The United States continues to buy gas from Russia, despite calls from Republicans to stop paying for Russian gas as President Putin wages war against democracy in general and Ukraine in particular.
In his state of the Union Address Tuesday night, Biden did not mention U.S. oil production, but he did mention climate change. And he noted that "so many families are...struggling to keep up with the rising cost of food, gas, housing, and so much more."
Jones followed that with an article devoted to one Republican's attacks on the address as "devoid of all reality of what is happening in the United States." Managing editor Michael W. Chapman, on the other hand, found a liberal columnist who complained that Biden didn't mention black people in his speech. There were no articles praising Biden.
Then there was a raft of anonymously written article cherry-picking varioius statements Biden made -- even though a comprehensive article that a CNS reporter would have been willing to put a byline on would have been more journalistically sound -- designed to fixate onthings right-wingers could exploit:
Speaking of that last item, abortion-obsessed editor Terry Jeffrey made sure to put his own slant on a post-address article:"After delivering a State of the Union Address on Tuesday in which he advocated for “a woman’s right to choose” to abort her unborn child, President Joe Biden attended Mass on Sunday at St. Joseph on the Brandywine Catholic Church in Greenville, Del." Jeffrey likes to lord his supposedly superior Catholicism over Biden.
MRC Cheers Death Of RT -- But Won't Mention Conservatives Who Had Shows There Topic: Media Research Center
We've noted how Russian aggression in Ukraine abruptly awakened the Media Research Center's interest in the Russia Today channel -- though it studiously ignored the fact that notable conservatives like Dennis Miller and Steve Malzberg had shows on the channel. As the Russian war in Ukraine escalated, so did the MRC's attacks on RT.
Nicholas Fondacaro served up some backhanded praise of non-right-wing channels in bashing RT in a Feb. 28 post: "You may have thought CNN and MSNBC spewed outright lies and falsehoods, but with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they don’t hold a candle to state-controlled RT (Russia Today)." Actually, the Fox News model is much closer to the RT model when it comes to spreading falsehoods, especially when Republicans control the government.
The same day, Catherine Salgado imposed another shopworn MRC narrative on RT and other Russian-controlled media: Russia state-affiliated accounts on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are still allowed to influence their approximately 38.7 million followers even as Russia attacks Ukraine. ... These are the same platforms that banned former U.S. President Donald Trump in January, 2021." Salgado then played dumb on what Trump did: "Facebook, YouTube and Twitter banned then-President Donald Trump in 2021 for supposedly encouraging violence." Wait, what? "Supposedly"? The record is pretty clear on Trump playing a major role in instigating the Capitol riot. In a case of reality overtaking a political narrative, Salgado had to update her post to note that, yes, social media sites were taking aim at Russian state-media accounts.
A March 1 post by Scott Whitlock cheered that "DirectTV was FINALLY dropping Russian propaganda outfit RT" and compiled "five of the most offensive, idiotic, ridiculous falsehoods" if found on RT -- an exercise the MRC will never do on Fox News. Salgado returned to lament that "DirecTV absurdly refused to renew One America News Network earlier this year while RT’s programming was only suspended after Russia invaded Ukraine." Curtis Houck marked the "final moments of Putin's stoogefest" as DirecTV pulled the plug.
Tierin-Rose Mandelburg also played the Trump equivocation in a March 2 post: "It took a full-fledged war for Big Tech to take action against Russia state-affiliated accounts like Sputnik and RT, Russia Today. President Donald Trump was censored 625 times before being permanently banned." The correct way to say that is that Trump violated social media terms of service 625 times, which led to him being permanently banned (plus the whole inciting-a-Capitol-riot thing).
When RT announced it would cease production after ghetting deplatformed, fondacaro cheered in a March 3 post:
Following DirectTV’s pledge and on dropping the state-funded “news” station earlier this week, Russia Today (RT) told staff that they would experience a “permanent” “layoff” as the network “ceasing production” in a couple of months. That, according to CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy, who obtained an internal memo announcing the move to staff.
In the memo, T&R Productions general manager Misha Solodovnikov informed their American-side propagandists they would be “ceasing production … as a result of unforeseen business interruption events.”
“Laid off employees will not have bumping rights, that is, the ability to use your seniority with T&R to remain employed by displacing another employee from his or her job,” the memo added.
[...]
Darcy deduced that “[t]he news would mean an effective end to RT America” as DirecTV and Roku have kicked dictator “Vladimir Putin’s main mouthpieces in the US” to the curb.
None of these posts mentioned the conservatives who had shows on RT -- not even to denounce them for working witih Russian state media. Maybe the MRC doesn't want to be reminded that it too held warm thoughts about Putin because he mouthed conservative-friendly talking points. It's part of the MRC giving conservatives a pass for being Putin-curious.
NEW ARTICLE: Doing It For Durham Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center aggressively hyped claims by right-leaning special counsel John Durham that suggested the Hillary Clinton campaign was spying on Donald Trump -- then got mad that the hype was fact-checked and found to be factually lacking. Read more >>
WND COVID Fake News Watch, DNA Edition Topic: WorldNetDaily
It seems that just about every wild claim WorldNetDaily has published about COVID vaccines has proven to be highly misleading or entirely wrong, and that record unsurprisingly continues. Chief COVID misleader Art Moore wrote in a Feb. 24 article:
Fueling suspicion that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a lab in China, researchers have discovered a tiny piece of DNA in the virus that matches the genetic sequence patented by Moderna three years before the pandemic began.
The odds of Moderna's sequence occurring naturally are about one in 3 trillion, according to the researchers.
The code was discovered in SARS-CoV-2's unique furin cleavage site, the part of the virus that binds to human cells, allowing it to cause infection, London's MailOnline reported.
Many scientists have been saying for some time that the furin cleavage structure could not have developed naturally.
But as the medical fact-checker website Health Feedback reported, there are actually numerous instances of that DNA occuring naturally:
Overall, the claim seems to be founded on the belief that because the sequence in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 was identical to a manmade gene sequence, the sequence couldn’t have occurred by chance, and must therefore have been designed.
However, as scientists showed using the same search tools as the authors, this 19-nucleotide long sequence occurs naturally in other living things. For example, the sequence is present in eukaryotes, like a species of birds, contrary to the authors’ statement that it cannot be found in eukaryotes. This raises the question of whether the authors simply failed to check for matches to other organisms.
[...]
In short, the 19-nucleotide sequence isn’t unique to the modified MSH3 gene patented by Moderna and isn’t uniquely manmade, as it can occur in nature.
Health Feedback also pointed out that there is little actual evidence that noting that COVID-19 originated in a lab in China, among other things, "there isn’t a known coronavirus that is genetically similar enough to SARS-CoV-2 to be a plausible candidate for genetic modification.
But Moore wasn't done spreading DNA-related COVID misinformation. He wrote in a March 1 article:
Contrary to the CDC's claim that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines do not "change or interact with your DNA in any way," a new Swedish study finds Pfizer's shot goes into liver cells and converts to DNA.
It's the first time that researchers have shown in vitro – or inside a petri dish – how an mRNA vaccine is converted into DNA on a human liver cell line, the Epoch Times reported.
It's precisely what health experts and fact-checkers said for more than a year could not occur.
[...]
However, the researchers at Lund University in Malmö, Sweden, found that the mRNA vaccine enters human liver cells and triggers the cell’s DNA in the nucleus to increase the production of the LINE-1 gene expression to make mRNA.
The whole process occurred rapidly, within six hours, concluded the study, which was published by the university's Department of Clinical Sciences.
The experimental system used in the Lund University study is artificial. For example, it used liver cancer cells growing in the laboratory, which aren’t representative of healthy cells or a human being, to study whether the vaccine mRNA was reverse-transcribed. The study’s results therefore cannot be extrapolated to people.
[...]
Contrary to reports like the one by the Epoch Times, the study didn’t show the mRNA or reverse-transcribed DNA entering the nucleus of cells. The nucleus is where an organism’s DNA is stored. Rhys Parry, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Queensland who studies viral evolution, told Health Feedback that the study’s immunofluorescence experiment showed LINE-1 (in red; the nucleus is marked in blue) to be predominantly present in the cytoplasm of the cell, and this is the case even in the absence of the vaccine.
[...]
In summary, contrary to claims made by certain media outlets and social media users, the study by Lund University researchers didn’t show that the mRNA or reverse-transcribed DNA enters the nucleus and more importantly, it didn’t show that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines alter our DNA.
Nevertheless, Moore quoted one of his favorite COVID misinformers, Peter McCullough, claiiming that the findings have "enormous implications of permanent chromosomal change" that could drive a "whole new genre of chronic disease."
Both of Moore's articles remain live and uncorrected at WND.
MRC Targets RT -- But Is Silent On Its Conservative Shows Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center tended to leave Russia Today -- the Russian government-operated channel in the U.S. -- to its own devices ... unless it served a right-wing narrative to do so. It showed some interest in the channel when Ed Schultz and Larry King had shows there circa 2015-16, but had done little since. In fact, after its last Schultz-related post in May 2016, it had published only twoposts related to the channel in the following five and a half years (ones that were tagged with the "Russia Today" category, anyway).
Then came Russian aggression toward Ukraine, and suddenly the MRC cared about RT again. Catherine Salgado served up a familiar Trump-centric lament in a Jan. 25 post: "Twitter and Facebook allow Russian state-controlled media to maintain verified accounts even as Russia prepares to invade Ukraine. Both sites ban organizations involved in violence. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump remains banned from the social media platforms for allegedly encouraging violence." She added:
As one example of RT’s propaganda, last week it tweeted an article by Australian journalist Graham Hryce. Hryce explicitly accused Trump of a “ham-fisted coup attempt,” referring to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and insisting Trump “had cynically manipulated [his supporters] for his own purposes.”
Hryce’s basis for his extreme accusation against Trump was unspecified “evidence” from the partisan Jan. 6 committee established in the U.S. House. Trump had actually advised his supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Trump later tweeted a plea to “stay peaceful.”
Salgado didn't mention that Trump instigated "the events of Jan. 6, 2021" -- better known as the Capitol insurrection -- and didn't tweet his call for peace until hours after the riot started. He also told the rioters, "We love you. You're very special," and falsely claimed that "We had an election that was stolen from us."
Salgado also didn't mention the conservatives who had shows on RT at the time. There were at least three of them:
"Dennis Miller + One," hosted by the formerly funny comedian-turned-right-wing talk radio host.
"Eat the Press," hosted by right-wing radio host Steve Malzberg, who at one point had a show on Newsmax TV.
"News. Views. Hughes," hosted by Scottie Nell Hughes, a conservative activist who became a non-person in the conservative movement (including at the MRC) after she accused one of the MRC's favorite people, Fox Business host Charles Payne, of having coerced her into a sexual relationship. Fox News settled a lawsuit filed by Hughes over the controversy.
The MRC didn't get around to addressing RT again until Feb. 28, when Curtis Houck touted his new favorite channel NewsNation (you know, the one filled with ex-Fox News staffers) focusing on RT:
Thursday night on NewsNation, primetime host Dan Abrams pulled back the curtain on the abject sham and disgustingly pro-Kremlin RT, a so-called news outlet that’s spent 17 years spewing Russian propaganda and doing Vladimir Putin’s bidding seeking to expand his influence and splinter the west.
Over the course of his first two segments totaling north of 19 minutes, Abrams played numerous clips to then eviscerate the “astonishing” “cuckoo stuff” peddled in their “alternative universe” by Putin “stooges” that, prior to the European Union’s axing of RT, was “available in more than 100 countries,” including the U.S.
[...]
In a second segment, Abrams made the case for RT being kicked off American TVs, noting Germany made the move last year and, in the U.S., “RT has been registered as a foreign agent since 2017” with “U.S. intelligence agencies call[ing] it Russia's state-run propaganda machine.”
An editor for Mediaite (which Abrams founded), Colby Hall noted that “RT was always sort of a joke,” but the war has made their “propaganda...no longer just a funny joke” nd instead “really sort of dangerous.”
Like Salgado, Houck didn't mention the conservatives who had shows on RT. He did, however, mention in passing a segment with a former RT anchor that he complained "went off the rails as she fixated on how Fox News was part and parcel with RT" but made no effort to refute the claim or even bother to identify who the interviewee was.
But the MRC wasn't done bashing RT -- or hiding the fact that conservatives had shows on the channel. More soon.
Yes, We're Still Monitoring Ilana Mercer's White Nationalism Topic: WorldNetDaily
We're not monitoring it as much as we should -- we've been distracted by all the COVID misinformation put out by her publisher as well as its imminent demise -- but WorldNetDaily columnist Ilana Mercer continues to dabble in white nationalism. In her Nov. 18 column (also published at CNSNews.com), Mercer complained that Republicans like black people too much:
Ubiquitous black-on-white crime inflicted by a coddled criminal class, native born and energetically imported, is high on the list of State and corporate crimes against the citizenry.
Whether he postures on TV or on the Hill – the arguments advanced by the typical Republican front man against these defining depredations are, however, empty.
The "objections" put forth by Republicans in defense of their constituency are all theater and farce. It is essential to alert the voter to this void, mirrored, for example, in this columnist's February 2019 warning that, "Every time a manifestly racist, anti-white event goes down, which is frequently, conservative media and politicians can be relied on to dub it 'identity politics.' 'The left is playing identity politics,' they intone. 'They are dividing us,' they'll lament."
However, "whatever is convulsing the country, it's not identity politics, but anti-white politics, pure, simple and systemic."
Mercer went on to complain that a Fox News talking head said that Democrats "only care when a white person takes a black life. If a black person takes a black life, they don't even care at all," prompting her to rebut:
Likewise, it can be said that Republican don't much care when a black person takes a white life.
Seldom mentioned in Republican argumentation is the real hate crime in the room: black-on-white crime – which is invariably not reported, underreported, or if reported, masked as something other than what it really is, which is systemic, institutionalized, white-hot hatred of whites.
Republicans just can't seem to protect or stick up for besieged whites and are forever searching their brains for ways to show off their Abe Lincoln pedigree.
By showing how black-focused and caring they are – Republicans hang on to institutional respectability, and on to the good graces of the Dominatrix Party by the hairs of their chinny chin-chins. The empty "arguments" of Republican front men are a way to stay in the political game.
Mercer concluded by whining that Republicans didn't sufficient come to the defense of Kyle Rittenhouse, adding that "In Republican vernacular, white kid Kyle just doesn't cut it as a cause absent the moral padding of the 'black experience.'"
A knee-capping of a different kind was delivered to an exceedingly vulnerable Caucasian America by influencer Candace Owens. To wit, Darrell Brooks is the black supremacist who used his vehicle to mow down and murder white grannies and grandkids parading in Waukesha, Wisconsin. But if you had dared to consider the race of Brooks in a hate crime manifestly motivated by race – you were boorishly berated by Owens as "brainwashed":
"Darrell Brooks is a scumbag murderer – his race is irrelevant. … Disagree? You're brainwashed!"
America is now systemically and institutionally anti-white. Black-on-white hate crime is rife, but it's invariably not reported, underreported, or if reported, masked as something other than what it really is, precisely as Owens has done – and now orders you to do. Ignore her ilk – Republicans who are always boasting about their color-blindness and their blindness to white suffering. Your life and the lives of those you love, very plainly, depend on it.
Not that you'd know this from the malfunctioning media, but the 2017 rally in Virginia to protest the removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee was sabotaged from up-high. The tinpot authorities (city, state, and police at both levels) sabotaged the constitutional rights of those with a permit (Unite the Right) to assemble and speak unharmed, while letting the feral, predatory forces of Antifa and BLM – the military arm of the Democrat Party – go a wilding. Commissioned by the city, a report by a distinguished Virginia law firm confirms the "failures."
She also noted that "David and I also delve controversially – naturally – into the assault on speech by Jewish organizations (e.g., Anti-Defamation League) and activists, who seem intent on stymieing styles of speech, such as the use of hyperbole and the deployment of the reductio ad absurdum argument to drive home a point."
Trump's Pollster Accuses Biden Of Trying To Wag The Dog On Russia Topic: Newsmax
McLaughlin & Associates was Donald Trump's pollster for the 2020 campaign, so it's no surprise it cranks out alleged polls that are designed to make the guy who beat Trump look bad. In their Feb. 25 Newsmax column, John and Jim McLaughlin accused Biden of trying to wag the dog over Russia:
Our most recent national poll of 1,000 likely voters was completed on the cusp of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine just as President Biden was trying to publicly face down Vladimir Putin and rally the world to oppose the invasion.
Normally, at times of crisis the American public rallies to support our President. Currently, this is not the case. After weeks of President Biden wagging the dog against Putin and Russia, he still received only a 41% job approval with 57% disapproval. The same negative job rating as last month.
Even Joe Biden’s base is not rallying to him. President Biden has high level of disapproval among 2020 Biden voters 22%, Democrats 19%, African Americans 37%, women 55%, Hispanics 57% and independents 64%.
The reasons for this are obvious. Two thirds, 64%, of all voters say that America is on the wrong track. Only 32% say right direction. As gas and food prices rise the top issue is inflation. The number of voters saying the economy is in recession rose to 57%.
Needless to say, the McLaughlins believe this is very good news for their former employer:
In contrast, as we saw last month, President Biden’s colossal failure strengthens former President Trump. This explains the Democratic and liberal media’s more recent desperate attacks on President Trump. They are feeble attempts to stop him from running again. They must have the same poll numbers.
Based on support for President Trump, his statement that Putin’s war in Ukraine would never have happened if he were still President seems very credible with the voters.
It appears that the McLaughlins have never polled voters about Trump's remarks praising Vladimir Putin as "savvy" and a "genius" -- that would have made him look bad. Instead, for their March 28 column, the McLaughlins served up more anti-Biden polling that, of course, was good news for Trump:
The real beneficiary of Biden’s failure remains former President Donald Trump.
68% of all likely Republican primary voters want Trump to run in 2024.
If Trump runs again Republican primary voters will support him 82% to 15%.
In a wide 2024 Republican primary field of 13 potential presidential candidates, former President Trump leads with 55%, Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., 15%, and former Vice-President Mike Pence 13%.
All others received 2% or less.
It seems that the McLaughlin might be using their polls to audition for another job in a future Trump campaign.
CNS Took More Shots At Biden As Russia Invasion Began Topic: CNSNews.com
We've shown how CNSNews.com acted in an anti-American manner before Russia's invastion of Ukraine by touting Vladimir Putin as a strong leader compared with President Biden's purported weakness. AFter the invasion, CNS continued to attack Biden for allegedly not moving quick enough on sanctions.
IN a Feb. 24 article, Patrick Goodenough admitted that the initial round of sanctions after the invasion were "sweeping," yet he complained that they weren't sweeping enough since they didn't target Putin himself:
President Biden declared at the White House on Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin would be “a pariah” for invading Ukraine, but asked several times about the decision not to sanction Putin personally, he did not answer.
For the second time in two days, the administration announced sweeping new sanctions against Russia. But while the targets are significant and wide-ranging, they do not include the man who ordered his military to attack a neighbor, and issued what appeared to be a veiled threat of nuclear retaliation should “outside” nations interfere and threaten Russia and its people.
[...]
Minutes later a reporter asked the president about the option of sanctioning Putin himself.
“You said in recent weeks that big nations cannot bluff when it comes to something like this,” she said. “You recently said that the idea of personally sanctioning President Putin was on the table. Is that a step that you’re prepared to take, and if not—
“It’s not a bluff,” Biden interjected. “It’s on the table.”
“Sanctioning President Putin?”
“Yes.”
“Why not sanction him today, sir?” the reporter asked.
Biden did not answer, but pointed to another reporter.
The next day, Susan Jones complained that Biden didn't immediately cut off U.S. imports of Russian oil, while also rehashing right-wing narratives about Biden's energy policies:
"I guarantee you. We're going to end fossil fuel," then-presidential candidate Joe Biden said on the campaign trail in New Hampshire in September 2019.
And as soon as he took office, Biden canceled the Keystone pipeline and halted new oil and gas leasing on federal lands.
Biden is willing to curb U.S. oil and gas production, but even faced with Russian aggression, he's leaving Russia's energy sector alone.
"You know, in our (Russia) sanctions package, we specifically designed (it) to allow energy payments to continue," Biden told Americans on Thursday:
[...]
Yet, the Biden administration has said nothing about increasing U.S. fossil fuel production or reversing some of the president's own energy-crimping policies.
In fact, U.S. oil production has been on an overall upward trajectory since bottoming out because of the pandemic, and Jones did not explain how, exactly, the cancallation of the KeystoneXL pipeline (most of the oil from which would have been exported) or the pause in oil and gas leases on federal land (which have not only resumed but have outpaced Trump's record) directly harmed the U.S oil industry.
MRC Defends Credibility Of Newsmax, OAN To Own NewsGuard Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's waronNewsGuard has been continuing with a variation on a theme of attempting to portray right-wing news outlets as accurate and truthful. Catherine Salgado launched this particularly lame salvo in a Feb. 2 post:
Self-appointed online “credibility” arbiter NewsGuard rates several U.S. media outlets as less reliable than several Chinese Communist Party-controlled state media outlets.
Media in China is almost entirely under the control of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, meaning that they are little more than propaganda arms for a tyrannical government. This is so blatant that former President Donald Trump’s then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2020 designated nine Chinese media outlets operating in the U.S. as “foreign missions.” China Global Television Network (CGTN) and Global Times were among the nine outlets so designated.
Some of the genocidal CCP’s state media sites receive extremely low ratings, but other CCP-controlled state media outlets received higher NewsGuard ratings than several U.S. outlets. For example, China's Global Times, which has tweeted out violent rhetoric, was rated 39.5/100 by NewsGuard, while One America News Network (OANN) is rated 17.5/100. Not only that, but NewsGuard states of several CCP state-media outlets that they do “not repeatedly publish false content.” In contrast, Newsmax, OANN and LifeNews are all rated as “repeatedly publish[ing] false content.”
As before, during its complaint that NewsGuard rated right-wing websites lower than liberal-leaning ones, Salgado makes sure not to mention the ugly details of the "false content" published by those right-wing sites she's defending. We've already noted Newsmax's accuracy issues and the fact that it's currently being sued by voting-tech companies Dominion and Smartmatic for spreading false claims, as well as as the fact that LifeNews has been busted for spreading false information about President Biden's views on abortion and about Planned Parenthood.
OAN, meanwhile, is in a category all its own. It too is being sued by Smartmatic and Dominion for spreading lies about the companies to boost Donald Trump's bogus claims of election fraud. It's also being sued by two Georgia poll workers for spreading lies about them, and management ordered on-air personnel not to call the Capitol riot a "riot."
Salgado went on to huff that "NewsGuard’s ratings of outlets that AllSides rates “right” or “lean right” and at least one pro-life outlet versus some Chinese state-run media sites would seem to ignore the utter lack of journalistic credibility of the latter." But she made no effort to prove thatNewsmax, OAN or LifeNews have any journalistic credibility.
Givenn that Newsmax and OAN were effectively pro-Trump state media during the Trump presidency -- and LifeNews has more than proven itself to be an unreliable source -- Salgado not only makes herself look silly trying to defend them as supposedly not as bad as Chinese state media, she proves that she and the MRC has a weird vendetta against NewsGuard because it doesn't adhere to right-wing media narratives.
Root Peddles Conspiracy Theories In Interview With Trump Topic: WorldNetDaily
Wayne Allyn Root can't stop sucking up to Donald Trump -- presumably because Trump won't do interviews with him if he doesn't -- and he did it again in his Feb. 14 column:
I've really gotten to know former President Donald J. Trump over the past six years since he came down that escalator. I was the first to predict he'd be the next president of the United States (at Fox News on the day Trump announced in June of 2015). I was the first to compare him to Ronald Reagan and predict Trump would become the greatest conservative president ever. I was the first to predict he'd create the most jobs in history for black and Hispanic Americans (in a Fox News editorial before he was elected). I was the media personality who called Trump the greatest world leader in history for Israel and the Jewish people. That caused a global media meltdown.
Guess what? I was right. It all came to pass.
Trump brought us prosperity, opportunity, mobility, jobs by the millions, the greatest middle-class income growth in history, a secure border and peace around the world.
This gushing led up to Root touting "my third interview with Trump in the past nine months," in which the sucking up continued:
First, because of my background as the man the media once dubbed "The King of Vegas Sports Gambling," I wanted to report to Trump that U.K.-based sportsbooks have made him a big favorite over Biden to win the 2024 election. Watch his response in the video.
Secondly, I was the first person in America to recommend to Trump last spring that he should become speaker of the House if the GOP retakes control of Congress. My suggestion caused a media meltdown across the globe.
So, I asked him for an update. Has he decided? Will he run for speaker of the House? The big news is Trump didn't say no. I'm guessing this will cause another global media meltdown.
Root also found a new conspiracy theory to commiserate with Trump about:
Trump brought up the 2020 election. I pointed out the latest jobs report released by the Labor Department was rigged just like the election. It was pure fraud, mixed with fantasy. Trump agreed. Watch his response in the video below.
Interestingly, soon after this interview I found out how Biden's Labor Department arrived at the numbers. They added over a million jobs out of thin air, based on "population increases." It was a guess. We were correct. The system is rigged.
This conspiracy theory is based on an unproven claim that the Bureau of Labor Statistics changed the way it computed how it counts jobs created. Like the Media Research Center before him, Root offers no evidence to back up his claim.
Surprisingly, there was none of Root's gentle hectoring of Trump over COVID vaccines beyond a shared desire to get rid of vaccine mandates. Instead, he served up even more conspiracy theories, like his (similarly unproven) suggestion that the Biden administration overpaid for COVID tests from China by $800 million "so that Biden or his family could receive a $100 million bribe/kickback deposited into an offshore account." That's the highly unreliable Root we all know.
MRC Hypes Trump Social Media Site Launch, Censors Its Problems Topic: Media Research Center
We've documented how the Media Research Center has slobbered over Donald Trump's new social media operation, Truth Social, while also censoring the numerous financial and management questions surrounding it. As the launch date neared, MRC writer Alexander Hall ramped up the slobbering.
"FREE SPEECH!" Hall declared in the headline of a Jan. 7 post cheering that a launch date had been announced:
Former President Donald Trump’s Big Tech alternative platform Truth Social will reportedly go online on Presidents Day in February.
Presidents Day will have a powerful new association with liberation for many Americans in 2022. “Trump Media and Technology Group, former President Donald Trump’s new company, indicated Thursday it’s planning to launch a social media platform February 21, more than a year after Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter,” Forbes reported Jan. 6. Truth Social is viewable in preview form on Apple’s online app store, including screenshots of a sleek interface very similar to Twitter, but touting inclusivity for all ideologies. Screenshots indicate a similar newsfeed structure and red check mark verification badges.
Far from being an exclusively conservative platform, Truth Social boasted of a “Big Tent” approach as a selling point and compared itself to the bipartisan public gathering both polarization and the pandemic have driven to near extinction:
[...]
The press release quoted Trump hailing the launch of his social media empire as a new era for the United States: “America is ready for TRUTH Social, and the end to cancel culture."
Of course, Hall didn't mention the whole inciting-insurrection thing that got Trump banned from Facebook and Twitter, or that none of the people involved in the venture are known for taking a "big tent" approach to viewpoints they disagree with.
When Truth Social finally launched, it was like Christmas Day for Hall, as he wrote in a Feb. 21 post headlined "Happy President's Day!" that reads not unlike a press release:
Former President Donald Trump’s Big Tech alternative platform Truth Social has gone online.
Truth Social has met the ambitious President’s Day headline and is currently the #1 most popular app in the Social Media category on Apple’s app store. “An alternative social media platform backed by former President Donald Trump went live on Monday, becoming available for download on Apple's App Store — but access to the service appears limited for now,” CNN reported Feb. 21.
“Truth social begins today! It’s very cool,” former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell declared on Twitter. “They are limiting the number of signups per day at first - so be patient and sign up early. No more silencing our voices!”
Hall went on to tout an endorsement of the site from one of the most divisive and inflammatory right-wing activists out there:
Other popular Trump supporting commentators celebrated the launch as well. “I’m on Truth Social! As the only Member of Congress to have had my personal @Twitter account banned, I understand what millions of conservatives have gone through having their personal freedom of speech stolen from them by Big Tech for not parroting the approved messaging,” Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) explained in a tweet.
Greene condemned the political powers that be for failing to prevent the rise of censorship on legacy platforms, lamenting that “when it comes to freedom of speech, Congress has failed and stood by while Big Tech & Big Media reigns over information with an iron fist.” She appeared to imply that Truth Social may provide a “competition in the market place” in the same way that “a restaurant with bad food & service will go out of business when a new restaurant with good food & service opens.”
The MRC loves to portray the extremist Greene as a victim for her repeated violations of good taste, sanity, and the terms of service of other non-right-wing social media platforms.
Hall concluded with another PR-rep-worthy outburst:
Truth Social reportedly has a massive waitlist of people who are all signing up to have their own profiles on the platform. CNET reported that the platform has been strained by its massive popularity in its first day, as many users have been “placed on a waitlist after signing up. ‘Due to massive demand, we have placed you on our waitlist,’ read the message, which included a waitlist number. People who preordered Truth Social had the app automatically downloaded to their iPhones.”
As to be expected from Hall, all this PR hype is highly divergent from the truth. The back end of Truth Social is a mess; the day before the launch, a reporter was able to get the @realDonaldTrump handle (it has since been stripped from him). The massive backup in signups on launch day is actually a bug, not a feature. And far from being the "big tent" site Hall told us it would be, its terms of service blocks users who "disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site"; in practice, that meant an account under the name @DevinNunesCow -- the same handle that mocks former congressman and current Trump Media & Technology Group CEO Devin Nunes, who actually sued Twitter in an attempt to shut down that particular form of free speech -- was banned.
A couple weeks later, Truth Social was still having trouble getting people signed up, making it a fairly lonely place, and even Trump's inner circle has demonstrated little interest in the platform, and Trump himself isn't even using it.But Hall's readers don't know about any of this because he (nor anyone else at the MRC) hasn't written about Truch Social since launch day.
Apparently, even he knows it's a dog and that all the mindless PR he serves up isn't going to change that.
NEW ARTICLE: Fairness Is In Cognitive Decline At CNS, Part 2 Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com trying to portray Joe Biden as senile before the election, and it has only continued now that he's president. But it will never question Donald Trump's mental health. Read more >>
MRC's Graham Pretends Right-Wing Narrative On Durham Filing Hasn't Been Debunked Topic: Media Research Center
We'vebeendocumenting how the Media Research Center hyped the right-wing narrative over John Durham's filing dubously suggesting that the Hillary Clinton campaign was spying on Donald Trump, but there's one key narrative manufacturer we haven't covered yet: MRC executive Tim Graham, who pushed the narrative in his own unique way.
For his Feb. 14 podcast, Graham repeated the MRC's whining over non-right-wing not immediately covering the Durham filing, huffing in the preview: "Fox News analysts suggested this was "worse than Watergate," but the liberal networks only use this kind of promotional phrasing for Republican scandals, like for Trump or George W. Bush." On the podcast itself, Graham touted how Fox News jumped on it, when whined that it was being portrayed as "a Fox News story. That's their way of dismissing it andsaying they don't have to do it." Graham then cheered that "Durham's enough of a pro that his team is not loaded with a bunch of liberal partisans who then can leak hourly to other liberal partisans at MSNBC or CNN or the New York Times or the Washington Post -- you know, the quote-unquote objective medla seeking the quote-unquote truth." Graham didn't admit that Durham seems to have right-wing partisans apparently leaking to their fellow-right-wing partisans at Fox News, et al. Then, as if to prove this unspoken point, he ran a clip of Mollie Hemingway ranting about it at Fox News -- neither or whom he identifies as the partisan conservatives they are.
Graham than played the worse-than-Watergate card: "Worse than Watergate has gotten to be a cliche , to the point where you wonder whether Watergate was overpushed to begin with, as Mollie suggested. That was definitely dirty pool, but yes, if you compare 'Oh, we broke into the DNC headquarters once,' that's dirty. So is spying on the president or looking at his internet usage. That's dirty pool too,but apparently the media only cares about one party committing the dirty pool."
Actually, there's no evidence that any of the alleged spying happened while Trump was president, but who ever said Graham cared about the facts when those facts conflict with right-wing narratives?
Graham went on to rant that the Mueller report was "war." Discounting the Mueller report is, of course, another right-wing narrative.
Graham rehashed a lot of this for his Feb. 16 column, whining that "While the networks spent more than 2,600-plus minutes on the Trump-Russia narrative, they’ve done next to nothing on Durham. ... To the media elite, Durham’s probe is only useful to the 'right-wing media wormhole.' Facts don’t come first. The truth isn’t more important than ever." Graham lives in the "right-wing media wormhole," so it's a bit rich to hear him complaining about the label -- and he's certainly not going to admit that what he's serving up is a narrative as well. He rehashed all this again in his Feb. 16 podcast.
Graham used a Feb. 17 post to whining that CNN's Brian Stelter accurately called out the attempt by the right-wing media -- including the MRC -- to aggressively hype the Durham filing:
When the liberal media aren't ignoring the John Durham probe, they're "reporting" on it by suggesting it's the newest pile of overwrought MAGA propaganda. CNN's covering it by letting Brian Stelter cry "HOAX" at Fox News and other conservative outlets.
[...]
Stelter summarized his own dismissive analysis in his "Reliable Sources" newsletter. The use of bold type below is Stelter's, not mine.
I felt compelled to write about it, too, because the actual court filing at issue is much less newsworthy than the explosion of false claims that have ricocheted from it. Here are the takeaways from a media phenomenon POV:
Translation: Pay no attention to the Special Counsel behind the curtain! CNN spent years promoting every tissue of gossip around the Robert Mueller investigation. They willed a scandal into existence -- collusion between Trump and the Russians -- that Mueller ultimately couldn't prove. But:
>> It seemed like Donald Trump's media allies tried to "will" a scandal into existence. The talk had a snake-eating-its-own-tail quality. But it worked.
Yes, CNN is lecturing about cable coverage having a "snake eating its own tail quality. This, from the network with 77 stories gossiping about nonexistent "pee tapes." Stelter still insisted "journalistic analysis" isn't what conservatives are doing.
>> The ideological outlets that blew the filing way out of proportion weren't incentivized to apply journalistic analysis to the filing. They were incentivized to do the opposite.
Here is the usual CNN bluster about how Fox News is an ideological outlet....and CNN is not.
[...]
>> Before reporters from normal news outlets could even dig into the filing, Fox's abnormal operation screamed "MEDIA IGNORES DURHAM BOMBSHELL." Later fact-checks were cast as part of a media coverup.
We're still waiting for ABC, CBS, and NBC to touch the Durham filing on television. The minute count on CNN and MSNBC is...minute. And yes, "fact checks" and "explainers" are actually "explain away-ers."
At no point does Graham refute anything Stelter says -- he just plays whataboutism. And on top of that, he effectively confirms that right-wing media have created the narrative of how the media won't cover the Durham story to the MRC's satisfaction.
Graham spent his Feb. 18 column pretending to be aghast that right-wing media claims about the Durham filing were being fact-checked and found wanting, and that fact-checking somehow proves what a "threat" Durham is:
This is the threat that Durham represents. He is exposing that everything the Clinton campaign did here was to politicize national-security agencies, sharing their smears with the FBI and the CIA to spur spying on Trump advisers, to inflame media coverage, and then to taint the judicial process through the Mueller team, where 11 of 16 prosecutors were Democrat donors. Five of them were Hillary donors.
[...]
A similar spin came from taxpayer-subsidized NPR, under their internet headline “The John Durham filing that set off conservative media, explained.” Their online summary of the All Things Considered story blatantly editoralized “The political right is making hay out of a recent filing in special counsel John Durham's investigation into the Trump-Russia probe. We break down the truth behind their outlandish claims.”
Outlandish? Fill-in host Elissa Nadworny asserted “Fox News even said Clinton had, quote, ‘infiltrated Trump Tower and the White House.’ But is that what Durham actually said?”
Reporter Ryan Lucas replied: “No. Durham never said in his filing that Clinton paid operatives to spy on Trump or his campaign. He never used the word infiltrate.” All this parsing sounds like saying Bill Clinton never had “sex” with Monica Lewinsky, since he claimed it was all oral sex.
Nadworny implied this was ancient history: “So all of this is tied up in events that happened five or six years ago. Why does it matter now?” Lucas explained “Trump had hoped that Durham would deliver a report before the 2020 election that could help Trump's campaign. That, of course, didn't happen. But the battle over shaping perceptions is still very much raging.”
NPR is aggressively “shaping perceptions” that conservative media manufacture "outlandish" claims that mangle the truth.
Again, Graham doesn't prove any of this fact-checking wrong, nor does he admit that his fellow right-wing media denizens deviated from the facts in overhyping the story. His goal is to progray the "liberal media" as evil and the right-wing media as victims.
Similarly, a Feb. 18 post by Graham complained that fact-checkers pointed out the holes in the right-wing media narrative on Durham, again mostly by playing whatboutism:
The "independent fact checkers" really wanted to downplay anything John Durham was saying about lawyers for the Clinton campaign snooping around in the Trump team's internet activities. They seized on words that Fox News used that sounded like active verbs meant to sell a story -- in this case, that Team Clinton paid to "infiltrate" the Trump orbit.
First there's Dean Miller at Lead Stories, a website that Facebook uses to warn users of "misinformation."
Fact Check: Special Counsel Did NOT Say Clinton Paid Tech Boss To 'Infiltrate' Trump Tower And White House Servers
This on some level assumes that liberal media outlets never used more colorful words to describe Mueller findings. They have an energetic tendency to check the hype in conservative media articles, not liberal media articles.
Yet again, Graham does not disprove the fact-checks; he whines about "nitpick[ing]" and complains about "misleading words in headlines" being singled out.
Graham devoted yet another podcast to the Durham filing on Feb. 18, this time focused on Vanity Fair covering the other side of the story by -- gasp! -- talking to Hillary Clinton, whining in the writeup: "Hillary and her glossy-magazine enablers don't want anyone to focus on how desperately they tried to tie Trump to Russia both during the election and then afterward." Given that the Trump campaign had dozens of contacts with Russian operatives and his onetime campaign manager had contacts with a Russian spy, it wasn't very difficult -- or counterfactual -- to do.
Graham was still at it in a Feb. 20 post, trying to spin away Durham's own statement trying to decouple himself from media coverage of his filing:
Liberal journalists on Friday rallied around a New York Times article by Charlie Savage titled "Durham Distances Himself From Furor in Right-Wing Media Over Filing."
Like a good Democrat, Savage spun that Durham "distanced himself on Thursday from false reports by right-wing news outlets that a motion he recently filed said Hillary Clinton’s campaign had paid to spy on Trump White House servers."
But Savage story quoted Durham, and his actual argument said something different, distancing himself from anyone overstating or understating his filing:
Of course, Durham is still distancing himself from right-wing overhype.He then rehashed claims about the filing from right-wing activist Andrew McCarthy, whose partisan leanings Graham did not disclose. He concluded with one last bit of whataboutism: "The Times really thinks they didn't run "blaring outrage" and "grievance-stroking headlines" about Trump?"
Meanwhile, Graham really thinks all the whataboutism he has been spewing is distracting people from the fact that he's trying to cover up for getting the story wrong in order to manufacture a narrative. That's the state of "media research" at the MRC these days.
Though its COVID misinformation campaign has been driving it recently, WorldNetDailiy seems to want you to know that its election fraud misinformation game is trying to be strong too. Bob Unruh wrote in a Feb. 28 article:
A Feb. 26 
Cherry-picking quotes 
We've noted
It seems that just about every wild claim WorldNetDaily has published about COVID vaccines has proven to be 
The Media Research Center tended to leave Russia Today -- the Russian government-operated channel in the U.S. -- to its own devices ... unless it served a right-wing narrative to do so. It showed some interest in the channel when Ed Schultz and Larry King had shows there circa 2015-16, but had done little since. In fact, after its last Schultz-related 
We're not monitoring it as much as we should -- we've been distracted by 
McLaughlin & Associates was Donald Trump's pollster for the 2020 campaign, so it's no surprise it cranks out alleged polls that are designed to make the guy who beat Trump look bad. In their Feb. 25 Newsmax 
We've shown
The Media Research Center's 
Wayne Allyn Root 
We've documented
We've
