WND Tries To Keep Bogus '2000 Mules' Film Alive Topic: WorldNetDaily
Even as the Dinesh D'Souza election conspiracy film "2000 Mules" continues to be discredited on little things (the geolocation data map is of Moscow, not anywhere in the U.S.) and big (D'Souza himself has been forced to concede that the film "does not show evidence to prove his claims about ballots being collected and submitted") -- so bad that even right-wing grifter extraordinaire Ann Coulter dismissed the "stupid movie" as a grift -- WorldNetDaily remains firmly in its roleas PRagent for the film.
A May 13 article by Art Moore uncritically forwarded a claim by Gregg Philips, "lead investigator" for the film, that "he and his witnesses have become the target of Georgia state officials instead of the people he believes delivered fraudulent votes to help Joe Biden win the White House." Moore made no apparent effort to fact-check Phillips. Moore devoted a May 26 article to attempting to debunk a fact-check that the film's depiction of geolocation doesn't match reality by citing a "wireless expert":
The CEO of a wireless company says fact checkers for PolitiFact and the Associated Press who question the accuracy of cellphone geolocation data presented by True the Vote as evidence of an alleged vote-fraud scheme in the battleground states in 2020 don't know what they're talking about.
An AP fact check said "experts say cellphone location data, even at its most advanced, can only reliably track a smartphone within a few meters — not close enough to know whether someone actually dropped off a ballot or just walked or drove nearby."
However, Volta Wireless founder David Sinclair told the Gateway Pundit the fact-checkers "don't have the technical foundation for the comments that they are making."
[...]
Sinclair said he's seen "2000 Mules," read the rebuttals and spoken with Phillips "to better understand the details of the data and the methodology they used."
He explained that location technology has "dramatically improved" and GPS and tower "triangulation" can pinpoint a person's location within a few feet.
In fact, Sinclar's LinkedIn profile suggests his expertise is in sales and management, not the technical end of cell phone communications, so he can't be much of an "expert" here. By contrast, actual experts at the Elecctronic Frontier Foundation point out that cell-phone geolocation data is only accurate to about 15 feet, adding that "Relying on commercial location data alone to allege ballot box stuffing is folly." (Also, the fact that Sinclair did an interview with Gateway Pundit, who's currently being sued for defamation for spreading lies about Georgia election workers, hows he has poor judgment.)
Desperate for anything to cling to to deny the film's lack of accuracy, Moore wrote a June 2 article touting the arrest of an Arizona woman "in an alleged ballot-trafficking scheme in the 2020 election that was featured in the film '2000 Mules.'" Moore didn't report that the sheriff in Yuma County, Ariz., where this took place, denied that any election investigation was launched as a result of the movie.
A June 5 article by Joe Kovacs touted a biased Rasmussen poll claiming that "77% of likely U.S. voters who have viewed the documentary by Dinesh D'Souza say the film strengthened their conviction of systematic and widespread election fraud in the 2020 election, possibly leading to a 'stolen election,' as former President Donald Trump has maintained." Kovacs does not mention whether the poll respondents were presented with the mountain of evidence discrediting the film; instead he whined that "The movie has received little, if any, mention on major broadcast networks including the Fox News Channel, which appears to be going out of its way to avoid any on-air mention."
Moore helped D'Souza have a little temper tantrum in a June 14 article:
After watching Bill Barr laugh about the vote-fraud probe featured in "2000 Mules," the film's producer, Dinesh D'Souza, has challenged the former attorney general to a debate.
Barr's reaction came in a video deposition featured in a hearing Monday by the House Select Committee on Jan. 6.
"My opinion then, and my opinion now, is that the election was not stolen by fraud," Barr said.
"And I haven't seen anything since the election that changes my mind, including the '2000 Mules' movie," he added before laughing.
D'Souza reacted on Twitter: "I'd like to invite Bill Barr to a public debate on election fraud. Given his blithe chuckling dismissal of #2000Mules this should be easy for him. What do you say, Barr? Do you dare to back up your belly laughs with arguments that can withstand rebuttal and cross-examination?"
Moore didn't mention that D'Souza himself conceded that the film doesn't present actual evidence of election fraud.
Trying to keep the flagging, bogus film alive, Moore spent a June 27 article claiming that "Allegations arising from the True the Vote investigation featured in the documentary '2000 Mules' have prompted a call by Michigan Republican lawmakers for a new investigation into the 2020 election." Moore censored all evidence that the film nas been discredited.
Meanwhile, Joseph Farah and Jack Cashill weren't the only WND columnist hyping the film. Jim Darlington complained in a May 26 column hyperbolically headlined "Was censoring of '2000 Mules' the sign of America's death?"
No one, anywhere, did not see the stolen election. One candidate was up by so much, and then counting stopped at 2 a.m. everywhere it mattered, only to bring us a new, absurdly improbable president the next morning. How sad that so many acquiesced to the drumbeat of lies and finally nodded in frightful agreement to what their hearts knew was false.
Well before the election we had allowed that maybe only a little censorship was in store. InfoWars' large following was effectively decimated and any mention of the others quickly following … was censored. We saw this coming long before the election. The lie, that challenges to a stolen election were really an effort to steal the election, filled the streets till there was no room to walk anywhere else. Years of passivity in the face of an ever-growing symphony of lies proved that the Big Lie could easily succeed.
[...]
Greg Phillips and Catherine Engelbrecht, from True the Vote, applied this same technology and similar sourcing, virtually mapping the paths of thousands of "mules" making numerous trips between ballot drop boxes and various left-wing NGO's nearby, repeatedly inserting 10 or 20 ballots at a time, their activities being confirmed, quite plainly, by video evidence.
The authorities gladly boasted of the technique used to round up the "insurrectionists." But they want to bury the undeniable proofs, offered in "2000 Mules," as deeply as inhumanly possible. The roster of those willing to turn a blind eye to this treachery must never be forgotten.
So, what do we do next? We should go inside the church and thank the Lord for our freedom, while we still can.
Like the rest of the WND bogus brigade, he too was sure to censor any mention of how the film has been discredited.
Newsmax Tries To Disown Columnist's Endorsement Of Paladino Topic: Newsmax
Carl Paladino is a Republican candidate for a congressional seat in New York, has managed to be even more controversial than Eric Greitens. In just the past couple months alone, he got busted for lauding Hitler as an "inspirational" leader and posted a Facebook rant calling the recent massacres in Buffalo and Uvalde false flags, and bizarrely accused Democrats of wanting to keep black people "dumb and hungry." Oh, and he has a convicted sex offender on his campaign staff. He's radioactive enough that even the right-wing New York Post wants him to lose.
Which made it interesting that Newsmax published a June 22 column by Gavin Wax offering a lengthy and full-throated endorsement of Paladino, desperately trying to spin his radioactivity as some kind of positive:
Some in the media have launched into overdrive, in an attempt to keep Palladino from winning. Some have purportedly pushed the narrative that Paladino supports Adolf Hitler.
They are also using Paladino's joking comments about former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle, in an attempt to paint him as extremist or unelectable.
In his district, it's not likely that such smears against Paladino will stick, considering his decades of credibility among his constituents.
Additionally, his history as a strong conservative, and a private sector record helps him.
[...]
Paladino is the opposite of these newcomers who see MAGA as a meal ticket, or as a way to ease their way into political prominence.
Paladino has been holding down staunchly conservative positions for years, taking flak from the liberal media and RINOs.
He could have changed his stripes for plaudits, or to avoid scrutiny, but he's never wavered.
Paladino doesn't cave.
Throughout all the flak, Paladino has only doubled down on his positions.
And with the advent and presidency of Trump, he's been vindicated.
[...]
Putting Carl Paladino in Congress, during a red wave would shift the GOP caucus significantly rightward, causing a realignment, one to generate momentum for bigger victories in 2024, thus shutting the door on leftist and RINO supremacy.
Newsmax did do its best to disown Wax's column, though, sticking an editor's note at the beginning that states, "The following op-ed does not reflect an endorsement of any kind, of any political candidate, by Newsmax." Too late, Newsmax -- you published it, you own it.
CNS Intern Takes Two Whacks At Downplaying Gun Violence By Referencing Abortion Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has been following the right-wing media playbook in downplaying the threat of gun violence in the wake of a rash of gun massacres. CNS also made sure to take thte next step in downplaying gun violence by irrelevantly comparing it to abortion -- though it took two tries for intern Lucy Collins to do it as demanded. First up was a June 6 article declaring:
Following the tragic homicide of 19 schoolchildren and two of their teachers in Uvalde, Texas, the mainstream media have pushed the claim that guns are now the “leading cause of death among children.” In reality, 2019 data show that 395 times more babies were killed by abortion than minors killed by firearms.
According to the CDC’s 2019 data on abortion, there were 629,898 abortions reported from 47 states and the District of Columbia -- excluding data from California, Maryland, and New Hampshire, which did not report their numbers. In the same parameters, firearm deaths for children aged zero to 17 numbered 1,596 deaths, making abortion deaths 395 times greater than gun deaths for children.
While only 42 states have so far reported their abortions for 2020, not including major abortion states like California, New York, and New Jersey, the deaths by abortion in 2020 were 264 times more than firearm deaths of children ages zero to 17, under the same parameters.
[...]
California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, made a similar claim during a press conference announcing his support of proposed gun control laws. Newsom said, “Guns are now the leading cause of death for kids in America.” The governor was likely citing from the CDC data, omitting abortion and including teenagers and some adults.
Collins then tried to parse the numbers to diminish gun violence even further (and portray abortion as so much worse):
Looking closer at the CDC’s data, it may be misleading to label firearms as the leading cause of death, even when excluding abortion.
For those under 10 years old, suffocation, causing 32% of deaths, is the leading cause of death with firearms being the fifth leading cause at 6.9%.
Non-firearm-related deaths are the leading cause of death in every below-teen age range. For ages one through three years old, drowning was the leading cause of death in 2020.
For ages four through 12, every individual age group reports motor-vehicle-related death as the leading cause, with firearms coming in second for ages seven, eight, 10, 11, and 12.
Excluding 18 and 19 year olds, 2020 CDC data show that firearms are the leading cause of death for the zero to 17 age group as a whole. Motor vehicle deaths come in second, with 50 fewer deaths.
When removing deaths caused by suicide, which account for 32% of firearm deaths, motor vehicles become the leading cause of death at 27% and firearms are second at 19%.
Combining what the WHO, CDC, and NIH define as “adolescence” ending at the typical onset of puberty and Cleveland Clinic’s age range of “child” as the ages between five to 12 years old, a more accurate CDC data analysis would say that in 2020 the leading cause of death for children (ages five to 12) is motor vehicles, causing 551 deaths.
[...]
Even when using the liberal media’s misleading age parameters of zero to 19 years old, 2020 available data show there were 41 times more babies killed by abortion than by all causes of death combined for zero to 19 year olds.
But sometime before June 9, Collins' article was deleted without explanation; the URL currently shows a message stating "The requested page could not be found."
Meanwhile, Collins took another stab at pushing this narrative in a June 7 article that had drastically lower numbers:
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), abortion killed 204.5 times more American babies in 2019 than the number of Americans ages 1 to 19 years old killed that year by firearms.
In 2019, there were 629,898 abortion deaths in the 47 states and the District of Columbia that reported their abortions to the CDC. That same year, there were 3,080 firearms deaths of people 19 and under in those same 47 states and the District of Columbia. That equaled 204.5 abortion for each firearms death of a person 19 or under.
[...]
Under these parameters, deaths by abortion were 140.2 times more than firearm deaths of minors and 46 times more than all deaths for the 1-19 age range in 2020.
On May 25, following the horrific mass shooting at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, California’s Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom said, “Guns are now the leading cause of death for kids in America.” The governor was likely omitting abortion data.
On May 27, CBS News reported, “New data from the CDC shows firearm deaths were the leading cause of death for children for the first time in 2020.” CBS was not counting the abortion numbers.
There was no indication hat this article superceded Collins' earlier article or that the numbers were drastically changed from her earlier effort.
By not holding Collins publicly accountable for whatever errors she apparently made in her first artcle and trying to flush it down the memory hole instead -- and forgetting that the internet never forgets -- CNS is doing its interns a disservice. It's supposed to be journalism, which is all about accoutability. Instead, as with letting another intern write an article that was discredited before it was even published -- CNS is teaching its interns to push political narratives and evade responsibility when they go wrong.
MRC Pushes Misleading Narrative About Gmail And Right-Wing Spam Topic: Media Research Center
For months, the Media Research Center has misrepresented a study in order to advance its anti-"Big Tech" narrative. Autumn Johnson tried to summarize it in an April 5 post:
Research from N.C. State University indicated that Google’s anti-spam algorithm overwhelmingly labeled emails from right-wing candidates as “spam.” The paper, titled A Peek into the Political Biases in Email Spam Filtering Algorithms During US Election 2020, said Google was biased against the Right, while Microsoft’s Outlook and Yahoo leaned right:
Note that Johnson wouldn't say that Outlook and Yahoo were "biased" against left-leaning candidates, since only conservatives faces "bias" in the MRC's world; only Gmail is "biased." The then proceeded to downplay the bias of Outhook and Yahoo to obsess over Gmail: "Gmail is the most popular email provider in the United States, and users are required to create an account to use the company’s spreadsheet and word document program. Users also need an account to use Google’s photo and document storage drives."
But Johnson also hid one other important related result from the study: When a user does things like read emails, mark them as spam or move them from the spam folder to the inbox, the mail programs learn and the biases largely disappear -- even more so for Gmail than for Outlook or Yahoo.
But who cares about facts when there's a narrative to advance? Brian Bradley embraced it in an April 29 post:
Three powerhouse conservative political groups are pushing the Federal Election Commission to look into alleged Google email censorship.
The Republican National Committee (RNC), National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), and National Republican Senate Committee (NRSC) filed a joint complaint with the FEC. The groups are asking the FEC to investigate findings of a March-released North Carolina State University (NC State) detailing Google’s alleged left-leaning bias.
Among other things, the study found Gmail marked 59.3 percent more emails from right-leaning candidates as spam compared to left-leaning candidates.
MRC President and founder Brent Bozell said the study confirms that Big Tech is meddling with the American democratic process.
"Concrete proof Google is interfering with elections," Bozell tweeted about the NC State study Friday afternoon. "The FEC must act immediately."
Bradley buried how other mail services were biased against left-leaning candidates, and completely censored the fact that user preferences pretty much eliminate the bias. Bradly pushed the right-wing narrative again in a May 22 post:
Months ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, Google leadership reportedly ignored GOP senators’ legitimate questions about Gmail’s apparent suppression of conservative political candidates’ emails.
“Google deflected, refused to provide any data, repeatedly refused to answer direct questions,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told MRC Free Speech America after a meeting Wednesday between GOP senators and Google brass.
Bradley then lashed out at politico for reporting the other side of the story, falsely portraying balanced reporting as "playing defense":
Google Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker was among the Google executives who attended, and claimed there’s no bias in how the tech giant deals with spam, according to Politico.
In the piece, tech lobbying and influence reporter Emily Birnbaum and Senate reporter Marianne LeVine tone-deafly wrote that “researchers” have found “no evidence” that tech platforms “disproportionately take action against content from conservatives.” The reporters also wrongly conflated “social media platforms” with Google and Gmail, which are a multiservice tech platform and email service, respectively.
Politico played defense for the powerful Facebook and Google, noting they denied conservative politicians’ allegations that Big Tech companies “routinely stifle free speech.” The story also used extremist language to characterize right-wing lawmakers, calling their efforts part of a “conservative crusade” against major tech companies.
By contrast, Bradley censored the fact that the found user preferences eliminated the bias and all mention of other mail services "biased" against liberals.
Alexander Hall followed this with a May 24 post parroting Republican Sen. Marco Rubio parroting the narrative. Bradley returned on May 26 to whine that the Wshington Post called out right-wingers' dishonesty in promoting the study:
Just days after Politico defended leftist Google from allegations of election interference, The Washington Post attempted to whitewash the results of a university study finding considerable left-leaning bias in Gmail’s spam-filtering algorithm.
In The Post’s piece, Post tech reporter Cristiano Lima, with the assistance of Post tech policy researcherAaron Schaffer, wrote that congressional Republicans “omitted or downplayed biases against Democrats in Outlook and Yahoo Mail.”
But it’s a bit curious how GOP politicians could downplay the study’s findings, given that it showed much lesser bias in favor of right-wing candidates by Outlook and Yahoo than it showed in favor of left-wing candidates by Gmail.
Bradley omitted the fact that the Post article also quoted a study co-author pointing out how right-wingers like the MRC have misrepresented the study's results:
“Our study does not make any such conclusion,” Muhammad Shahzad, one of its lead authors, said of Daines’s claim in the group’s first media interview on the topic.
Shahzad, an associate professor in computer science, said while the paper “demonstrates that there is a bias” under certain circumstances across services, it “has nothing in it that demonstrates that someone is deliberately trying to turn the elections.”
[...]
Shahzad said while the spam filters demonstrated political biases in their “default behavior” with newly created accounts, the trend shifted dramatically once they simulated having users put in their preferences by marking some messages as spam and others as not.
“What we saw was after they were being used, the biases in Gmail almost disappeared, but in Outlook and Yahoo they did not,” he said.
Brtadley then tried to reframe things to keep his narrative alive, as if posturing Republican congressmen were more credible than the guy who actually co-wrote the study:
But the core concerns expressed by GOP lawmakers and aides stem from the finding that Gmail’s spam filter skewed against GOP candidates at all, and more so than Outlook’s and Yahoo’s spam filters disadvantaged Democratic Party candidates. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) laid this out in a recent letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, demanding he answer, “Why, in Google’s view, is Gmail’s filtering algorithm bias so much more pronounced than Outlook and Yahoo’s bias?”
The NC State study plainly stated that Google’s, Outlook’s and Microsoft’s filtering biases could have an “unignorable impact” on election outcomes, and the study included no pretense of accusing Gmail of “deliberately” trying to influence elections.
It’s unclear whether The Post wants you to know that based on its reporting.
It's quite clear that Bradley does not want you to know that the study is much less clear-cut than his narrative has indicated. Indeed, he returned to narrative-advancing hype in a June 15 post touting how "Twenty-seven Senate Republicans led by Sen. John Thune (R-SD) on Wednesday introduced legislation that would ban email providers from using algorithms that mark certain political campaign emails as spam." He againhyped Gmail but buried the anti-liberal bias of other mail operations.
Bradley did the same thing in a June 22 post hyping how "Eight House Republicans on Tuesday joined their Senate counterparts in proposing legislation aimed at curbing left-wing political bias in email services’ spam filters." This time, he completely censored the anti-liberal bias of other services and didn't mention that user preferences eliminate the bias. Bradley was even firmer into GOP stenography territory in a July 5 post:
Republican senators are calling on Google to take quicker action after the company recently asked the Federal Election Commission to approve a pilot program to address concerns that Gmail’s spam algorithm disproportionately affects GOP electioneering campaigns.
Google’s filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) claims emails from participating campaigns won’t be “subject to regular spam detection algorithms.” But Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) flagged the FEC’s approval timeline as one of several concerns associated with the pilot, which comes at a critical time as GOP and Democratic campaigns briskly move forward just four months ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
Yet again, Bradley censored anti-liberal bias at other services and that user preferences eliminates it. No need to let the facts get in the way of a good narrative, right, Brian?
CNS Obsessed With Jean-Pierre Being Black And Gay Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com doesn't like new White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre any more than its Media Research Center parent does. But it was particularly annoyed by her status as the first black and LGBT press secretary -- so much, in fact, that it devoted three articles in 10 days to emphasizing that fact. First was a May 6 article by Melanie Arter upon her appointment to the position, replacing Jen Psaki, headlined "Psaki: Karine Jean-Pierre Will Be First Black Woman, ‘First Out LGBTQ+’ Press Secretary ‘Because Representation Matters’":
Psaki announced Thursday that Jean-Pierre would be the first black woman and “first out LGBTQ+” press secretary.
“So, I just want to take the opportunity to celebrate and congratulate my friend, my colleague, my partner in truth, Karine Jean-Pierre, the next White House Press Secretary. Now, many people in this room have known her for some time, but for anyone who does not know her, I want to provide a little bit of a primer for you, so settle in,” the press secretary said.
“First, as you all know, she will be the first Black woman, the first out LGBTQ+ person to serve in this role, which is amazing, because representation matters, and she is going to — she will give a voice to so many, and allow — and show so many what is truly possible when you work hard and dream big, and that matters, and we should not — we should celebrate that, but I also want to make clear what all of her qualifications are, what a remarkable person is,” Psaki said.
A separate, anonymously written article that day emphasized that point even more, under the headline "Biden’s Incoming Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre: ‘I’m Gay. I Am a Mom.’":
President Biden announced on Thursday that when White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki leaves her job on May 13 she will be replaced by current Principal Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
In a video posted on YouTube in 2018 by Jean-Pierre’s former employer, MoveOn.org, Jean-Pierre said: “I am everything Donald Trump hates.
“I’m a black woman. I’m gay. I am a mom,” she said. “Both my parents were born in Haiti, and they came here for the American dream.”
CNS didn't dispute that Jean-Pierre is "everything Donald Trump hates."
When Jean-Pierre officially took over the job, Arter used a May 16 article to drive that narrative home once more, under the headline "WH Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre: ‘I am a Black, Gay, Immigrant Woman’":
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that as a Haitian-American woman who is also a lesbian, she’s “acutely aware” that her position represents “a few firsts.”
“I am a black, gay, immigrant woman, the first of all three of those to hold this position,” Jean-Pierre said at her first press conference as press secretary, replacing Jen Psaki, who stepped down to take a job with MSNBC.
“I would not be here today if it were not for generations of barrier-breaking people before me. I stand on their shoulders. If it were not for generations of barrier-breaking people before me, I would not be here, but I benefit from their sacrifices. I have learned from their excellence, and I am forever grateful to them,” the press secretary said.
“Representation does matter. You hear us say this often in this administration, and no one understands this better than President Biden, which is why is administration is not only the most diverse in history, it is filled with barrier-breaking women and men from the vice president to cabinet secretaries, to his Supreme Court nominee to senior staff throughout this administration,” she said.
It even comes up when it's not relevant; a July 13 article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman that is otherwise about inflation made a point of noting that Jean-Pierre is "the first black female lesbian to hold the position."
CNS is notoriouslyhomophobic, and its emphasis on these particular attributes of Jean-Pierre appears to be a way to otherize her for its similarly homophobic right-wing audience.
NEW ARTICLE: Psaki-Bashing And Doocy-Fluffing At The MRC: The Finale Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck made sure to get his final licks in before he no longer had Jen Psaki to kick around as White House press secretary. Read more >>
WND Went Into Deflection Mode After Buffalo Massacre Topic: WorldNetDaily
Like the rest of the ConWeb, WorldNetDaily spent the days after the Buffalo massacre blaming anything but guns and conservatism, even though the shooter could not have killed so many people if he did not have an assault rifle and he expressed support for the replacement theory conspiracy voiced by the likes of Fox News' Tucker Carlson. A May 15 article republished from Western Journal, for instance, declared that "it has been revealed that the suspect openly hated all the conservatives the media wants to blame as a motivation for the crime." A May 16 article by Bob Unruh complained that Rolling Stone had called the shooter a "mainstream Republlican" and only briefly referenced his embrace of replacement theory.The headline on Unruh's article claimed that the shooter was called a "registered Republican" despite the fact he quoted nobody in his article using the word "registered."
Then the spin from WND's columnists began. Michel Brown seemed to want to distract from the shooter's deire to kill black people by declaring that he also wanted to kill Jews as well, though the shooter was apparently not targeting them that day. Editor Joseph Farah, meanwhile, lashed out at President Biden (as he is wont to do) for denouncing the shooting and noting the shooter's racism:
Joe Biden has been singing this medley for his entire sham presidency, and he finally got one of these incidents. Did we think he would let it go? Not on your life.
[...]
"Any act of domestic terrorism, including an act perpetrated in the name of a repugnant white nationalist ideology, is antithetical to everything we stand for in America. Hate must have no safe harbor. We must do everything in our power to end hate-fueled domestic terrorism."
Any act of domestic terrorism, including an act perpetrated in the name of repugnant white nationalism ideology – have we seen it in this country? It's surprisingly rare. But if you keep saying it, keep expecting it, unfortunately you will see it – fully documented.
[...]
The semi-automatic rifle that was used to commit the massacre had the "n-word" painted on the barrel, along with the number 14. In addition to the semi-automatic weapon, Gendron also had a hunting rifle and a shotgun, which were recently purchased legally. After the school-shooting threat, I wonder?
Think of all the violence perpetrated on the American people – killers released without bail, all of the black-on-black mayhem, the car that drove through the parade in Waukesha, and what gets the attention of the Biden regime?
The accused upstate New York shooter, Payton Gendron, who is only 18 years old, dressed up like a character found in violent video games to which millions of teenage boys are addicted. He wore camouflage and a helmet as can be seen in images from "Call of Duty," one of the most popular shooter games having billions of dollars in sales.
Gendron has no military training and yet ruthlessly killed with horrific efficiency, just as a "gamer" is trained to do by these shooter games. Being shot at by a security guard did not faze him, as these games train players to continue shooting rapidly in order to score as many points as possible.
The deadly skills developed and encouraged by playing thousands of hours of shooter games make it more difficult to stop a player when he goes on a real rampage. The heroic security guard at the Buffalo grocery store, a retired police officer, repeatedly shot the intruder only to be killed himself by the teenager trained by shooter video games to quickly fire back.
[...]
Republicans are obviously not to blame for these mass shootings, and should lead to address the contributing causes of addictive violent video games and understaffing police departments. The demagoguery by Democrats in exploiting these tragedies does not help prevent them.
Jack Cashill blamed the shooter's lack of right-wing Christianity ... and Greta Thunberg:
Early in his surprisingly well-written manifesto, 18-year-old Buffalo shooter Payton Gendron asks himself one question whose answer explains everything else that follows: "Are you a Christian?"
Answers Gendron, "No. I do not ask God for salvation by faith, nor do I confess my sins to Him. I personally believe there is no afterlife." The rest of the manifesto documents Gendron's futile quest to find something, anything, to believe in.
[...]
It makes more sense to blame environmentalist Greta Thunberg for Gendron's ideas than it does conservative Tucker Carlson. "Green nationalism is the only true nationalism, " he tells us. "There is no conservatism without nature, there is no nationalism without environmentalism." In fact, however, to blame either Carlson or Thunberg is absurd.
Cashill cited no statement by Thunberg that might have even indirectly inspired the shooter, and he referenced replacement theory only in passing and did not disclose that Carlson is the media's highest-profile promoter of it, which would seem to undermine his claim that Carlson is no more culpable than Thunberg.
MRC Decries Kavanaugh Threat, Buries History of Anti-Abortion Violence Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center needed something to distract its followers' attention from the house hearings on the Capitol riot, which it tried to insist wasn't news. It found that distraction in the form of a man who planned to shoot Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, following the leak of a draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, but turned himself in before he even allowed himself to pull the trigger. The MRC went into full screech mode and declared this an "assassination attempt" and "failed ... murder" -- again, despite the fact that nobody was shot by anyone and the man turned himself in before anything even happened -- and ranted that the non-right-wing media wasn't paying enough attention to this:
Speaking of memory-holing, the MRC was certainly not going to mention the inconvenient fact that the anti-abortion movement has a 50-year legacy of violence and murder, as it similarly refused to do when it was fearmongering about violence in the wake of the leaked opinion -- and they got mad when others did. Alex Christy accused CNN of "both side-ism" -- ironically, a favorite MRC tactic -- in bringing it up:
CNN is still stuck on both sides-ism when it comes to reporting on the failed assassination attempt of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. It could even be argued that New Day Weekend went beyond both side-ism on Saturday and used the attempt to highlight violence from the other side.
[...]
Against a backdrop of old news footage, Watt continued, now using the occasion to highlight that “Abortion has long fueled fury since the Roe v. Wade decision nearly 50 years ago. Anti-abortion extremists have carried out multiple bombings and murders.”
Reverting back to both sides-ism, Watt added, “Now, the DHS since the leak of that draft opinion that could Roe v. Wade also fears pro-abortion rights extremist violence. So, there is now a high fence around the highest court in the land.”
It is almost impossible to mention that a failed attempt to assassinate a liberal judge would have resulted in so much denunciations of “both sides.” Instead, we would’ve gotten much talk about how the GOP needs to watch its tone.
Actually, the MRC would be complaining that any attempt to assassinate a liberal justice got too much coverage, because liberals don't deserve coverage.But you stick with that narrative, Alex.
Remember that the MRC spent a lot of time defending Kavanaugh during his nomination process -- even using him to spew more hate at Anita Hill -- in part by denigrating the women who accused him of sexual misconduct. As a right-wing apparatchik who reliably rules in favor of conservative causes, he remains useful to the MRC.
WorldNetDaily is a big fan of the anti-vaxxers who run something called the "Global COVID Summit," which exists mainly to put a false patina of legitimacy on fringe doctors who prefer dubious medicines like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin to vaccines as a way to fight COVID. The fact that documented misinformers like Robert Malone and Peter McCullough are associated with the group is reason enough to dismiss it. But because WND is dedicated to spreadingCOVIDmisinformation, we hear more about the group and get articles like this May 16 piece by misinformer Art Moore:
Decrying "disastrous" COVID-19 public health policies, more than 17,000 physicians and medical scientists from around the world are calling on nations to lift health emergency declarations, restore scientific integrity and address "crimes against humanity."
Among the signatories is Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of the mRNA technology behind the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, who argues that the concerns raised in the declaration go beyond COVID-19, threatening constitutional rights.
The fourth declaration of the Global COVID Summit states that the COVID policies imposed over the past two years "are the culmination of a corrupt medical alliance of pharmaceutical, insurance, and healthcare institutions, along with the financial trusts which control them."
"They have infiltrated our medical system at every level, and are protected and supported by a parallel alliance of big tech, media, academics and government agencies who profited from this orchestrated catastrophe," the signatories declare.
The "corrupt alliance" continues "to advance unscientific claims by censoring data, and intimidating and firing doctors and scientists for simply publishing actual clinical results or treating their patients with proven, life-saving medicine."
That, of course, is all conspiratorial claptrap; the "proven, life-saving medicine" being referred to is hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, which is neither. The reason why the emergency declaration was extended is because COVID hasn't gone away.
Moore is also helping the summit folks mislead about the number of signatories. The 17,000 number appears to refer only to those who signed the original declaration from the group, which ranted against vaccinating children against COVID, among other right-wing talking points; there's no evidence that the number of signatures have been confirmed or even if the signatories themselves -- which have largely been kept secret -- have been verified to be "physicians and medical scientists." That means the declaration is meaningless and shouldn't be trusted. Further, no evidence is provided that every single one of those people signed this fourth declaration as well.
Alos note that the screenshot Moore selected for this article from the summit shows the alleged doctors all wearing white lab coats, even though no self-respecting doctor wears one outside his own examination area. That's simply performative and an attempt to add gravitas and respectibility to an otherwise disrespectful spectacle. Instead, Moore stuck to the script and claimed that "The 17,000 Global COVID Summit physicians and medical scientists 'represent a much larger, enlightened global medical community who refuse to be compromised, and are united and willing to risk the wrath of the corrupt medical alliance to defend the health of their patients.'"
Moore also attached a video of Malone and others '"discuss[ing] the latest Global COVID Summit declaration" at an unnamed place. Turns out it's on a podcast called "The Highwire," hosted by Del Bigtree, who runs the anti-vaxxer "Informed Consent Action Network" and has a six-figure income from spreading anti-vaxxer conspriacies. Not the way one builds credibility if you're trying to reach people outside your fringe bubble.
Newsmax Joined Right-Wing Narrative Of Pretending Capitol Riot Hearings Aren't News Topic: Newsmax
Like the Media Research Center and its "news" division CNSNews.com, Newsmax labored to pretend that the first prime-time hearing from the House committee looking into the Capitol insurrection would not be newsworthy. The first order of business was to frame the fact that the committee hired a retired TV producer to help organize its coverage as proof the hearing was all style and no substance:
Newsmax then called on the usual right-wing voices to denounce the hearing; for instance, Republican Rep. Andy Biggs declared that the hearing "is a distraction from a disastrous domestic and international policy performance by this president."Columnist Michael Dorstewitz, meanwhile, ranted that the hearing "has nothing to do with fact-finding, and has everything to do with winning elections," huffing: "Democrats are using an arguably illegitimate committee to prevent a former president from reelection, to nationalize all future elections and possibly trash the Electoral College — the final two in violation of the Constitution. And they hired a TV expert to make it sound perfectly reasonable. It all sounds kinda insurrectiony."
On the day of the June 9 hearing, an article by the apparently uniroinically named Charlie McCarthy declared in its headline, "Watch Jan. 6 Hearing Live on Newsmax — Without the Spin!" But as McCarthy went on, it was all too clear there would be copious amount of spin in Newsmax's coverage:
Newsmax host Rob Schmitt will anchor Newsmax's live coverage beginning at 8 p.m. ET, and expected to end about 9:30 p.m.
Analysts are expected to include former acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, attorney for former President Trump Alina Habba and attorney Ameer Benno.
In a statement, Newsmax said, "This is an important news event and the reason Newsmax will carry it live, but it will also be important for us to make sure the public is aware of any and all partisan bias that results from the hearing."
Newsmax seems to be unaware of what the word "spin" means. Of course, McCarthy injected his own spin as well:
Reportedly, the purpose of the hearing is to blame then-President Donald Trump for the tragic events that unfolded that day.
The special House panel has defied all precedent, and was created by the majority without the approval or representation of the minority Republican caucus.
[...]
Republicans claim the prime-time event is political theater that is timed to influence voters as the November midterm elections approach.
Indeed, Newsmax's on-air coverage was filled with spin, as CNN documented:
Newsmax, Fox's right-wing rival, actually showed most of Cheney's remarks, but cut away for analysis from pro-Trump commentators. The network's banners also promoted Trump's talking points and, at times, Newsmax's own app.
[...]
When the video [of the Capitol being attacked] concluded, Newsmax's Rob Schmitt said, "we saw a lot worse in the summer of 2020, spurred on by comments from the other side of the aisle, that burned major cities in this country down. Where's the hearing on that? Well they don't have that hearing, because they don't care about your life, where you live."
Newsmax even gave Trump himself a platform to spin things in another pre-hearing article:
The Jan. 6, 2021, protests "represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again," former President Donald Trump said Thursday in a post mocking the House select committee investigating the attacks on the U.S. Capitol as the panel prepares to go public with its findings in prime-time Thursday.
"The 'Unselect Committee' didn't spend one minute studying the reason that people went to Washington, D.C., in massive numbers, far greater than the Fake News Media is willing to report, or that the Unselects are willing to even mention, because January 6th was not simply a protest, it represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again," Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
"It was about an Election that was Rigged and Stolen, and a Country that was about to go to HELL..& look at our Country now!"
After the hearing was over, Newsmax cranked up the spin machine. An article by Eric Mack ranted that it was "demonstrably false" that Trump did not condemn the riot, as Cheney said,citing as evidence "a contemporary report on Trump's condemning the attack on the Capitol published by Newsmax on Jan. 6, which was headlined "Trump Urges Peace, Protesters to 'Go Home.'" Mack didn't mention that this video did not get posted until hours after the riot started, making it largely meaningless. Mack didn't mention how this contrasted with Trump's pre-hearing declaration that all this violence was "the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again."
While Newsmax did publish a straightforward Associated Press article on the hearing, it also trotted out the usual gang of pro-Trump right-wingers to denounce it, including a Trump lawyer and the widower of dead insurrectionist Ashi Babbitt:
Newsmax let Trump spin the hearing afterwards as well, with McCarthy uncritically writing how he "blasted the House Jan. 6 select committee for its biased, 'negative' prime-time hearing on Thursday night."
Newsmax also tried to play games over ratings in an anonymously written June 10 article:
CBS, NBC, and ABC, which switched their regular prime-time programming to air the House Select Committee on Jan. 6's first public hearing Thursday evening, saw a huge ratings decline, according to Nielsen figures.
ABC, whose fall schedule normally includes Grey's Anatomy at 8 p.m., took in the largest haul of viewers with 4.8 million, while NBC and CBS carried 3.5 million and 3.3 million, respectively.
The three outlets typically average 18 million collectively during prime time, according to The Federalist.
As we noted when the MRC played this same game, the hearing drew more than 19 million viewers across all channels that aired it.
CNS Columnists Blame Everything But Guns for Gun Massacres Topic: CNSNews.com
We saw how CNSNews.com used its "news" coverage to blame the gun massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on anything but guns -- and its actual opinion side did the same thing. Bill Donohue kicked off the stream of deflection in his May 26 column:
The ruling class, especially the media, are consumed with race and guns in America, yet the mass shootings in Uvalde, Tex. and Buffalo, like those in Dayton and El Paso in 2019, have little to do with either. It is not as though there aren't some common causes, threads of behavior that link all mass shootings. There are. But the media are looking in all the wrong places, thus providing the wrong diagnosis. This, in turn, ensures the wrong remedies.
There are five major reasons why we have mass shootings: the killer is asocial, he comes from a seriously dysfunctional family, he has mental issues, he is fascinated by violence, and red flags were ignored by almost everyone.
[...]
We need to encourage people to come forward and to act on red flags. We also need to get to these young men early on and not pretend that they are simply eccentric. Most of all, we need policies and laws that strengthen the family, paying special attention to the needs of young men.
Woman-hating men's rights activist Edward E. Bartlett devoted his May 30 column to, yes, blaming women for the massacre:
So what has happened in our culture that teenage boys have been marginalized to the point of losing their vision of a better future? When I look at the listing of student clubs at my local high school, I see Young Women in Engineering, Chicas Poderosas (“Powerful Girls”), and several clubs for LGBT students, African-Americans, and Muslims.
But nothing for boys.
Which points to the much broader problem that is referred to as the “Boy Crisis.” This term captures the undeniable fact that males are lagging in virtually every arena of society. In college, for example, 59.5% of students are women, while only 40.5% are men. In health care, the Department of Health and Human Services, where I used to work, sponsors multiple separate offices of women’s health.
And no offices of men’s health.
So why hasn’t anyone sounded the alarm? Much of the problem can be traced to the feminist movement that has spawned a pervasive “female-as-victim” narrative. This narrative neutralizes virtually every attempt to draw attention to the plight of boys and men.
A June 1 column by CNS editor Terry Jeffrey tourted how John Adams talked about "morality, religion and God" in the first presidential address inside the Capitol, adding:
What would John Adams think if he were told about the recent mass murders in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas? Would he think they were manifestations of a gun problem in America or a moral problem?
To pass the American tradition of freedom down to future generations we must also pass down the moral and religious foundations needed to sustain it.
A June 2 column by R. Emmett Tyrrell also wanted to distract from guns:
Possibly some people are going, in light of these shocking events, to conclude that America is confronted with something far more serious even than gun violence. They are right. We are confronted with living in a violent culture. No one ever mentions it, but we are. I seldom watch television. I watch the evening news, and that is about all. But even in watching the evening news, I see trailers for astoundingly coarse shows that are thought to be entertainments. Recently, I saw a man put a revolver to another man's head. After that, I lost interest. Who knows what happened? I saw monstrous vehicles running down pedestrians; I guess they were pedestrians. I saw monstrous monsters. The world of Televisionland is inhabited by the monstrous and the fanciful.
It is hard to believe that ordinary Americans come home from work, turn on the television, and sink in with an evening of mayhem and madness, but apparently, they do. No wonder so many people have so much trouble sleeping. Then there is the rock music, the talk shows, the game shows, and the weather reports. No, I am only joking about the weather reports, but I have no doubts that the day will come when inclement weather will be reported with genuine thunder, pouring rain, lightning across the screen, and tornados on a particularly blusterous day.
[...]
These solitary gunmen are the symptom of something far more pervasive than gun violence. The bearers of our culture — you and me and the loudmouthed politicians now denouncing guns — have got to rid our culture of coarseness and violence. It will not happen.
A June 3 column by white nationalist-adjacent Ilana Mercer (also posted at WorldNetDaily) lashed out at schools themselves for promoting "anti-white racism":
The Stupid Party says, "Just arm the teachers." You want to train and arm teachers and faculty staff members to protect your kids? Have you seen what falls under the category "teacher" and faculty? Seen the people who zealously inculcate ungrammatical pronoun illiteracy? Who promote and further entrench systemic anti-white racism and exotic age-inappropriate sexuality? Have you seen these mountains of flesh videoing themselves gyrating obscenely, sexual exhibitionists in flagrante delicto, under whose tutelage “sexual curiosities, once called perversions, flourish”? Give guns to the same "dedicated" pedagogues who took two years off for COVID?
Get your kids the hell out of U.S. schools!
American schools, incidentally, are well capitalized. They have active-shooter training and security protocols in place. What they don't have is decent human capital.
Decades of feminization, emasculation, and preferential hiring account for America’s low-intelligence, self-serving work force. This malevolent matriarchy-in-the-making increasingly lacks the higher-order capacity for altruism and heroism.
Catholic priest-turned-right-wing activist Michael Orsi deflected as well in a June 13 column:
These slaughters always raise the same questions: Why do such tragedies occur? Were there no warning signs which someone might have spotted? How did security procedures fail so miserably?
And they bring forth the same proposed solutions: Provide better mental health services so troubled individuals can receive help. Keep those individuals from getting their hands on guns. Ban guns altogether.
Then, following the principle of never-let-a-crisis-go-to-waste, they bring forth legislation to increase funding of favorite government programs, and expand bureaucratic regulation of our lives.
The questions may or may not be relevant to the problem. The proposed solutions may or may not do any good. But they never quite get to the heart of the matter: evil.
[...]
The problem isn’t guns; it’s godlessness.
You think taking away guns will make society less violent, more humane? Good luck with that.
No mention, of course, of the inconvenient fact that the shooter couldn't have killed that many kids in that short of time if he didn't have a gun.
MRC Sports Blogger Lashes Out At Women Playing The Wrong Sport, Having Snacks Named After Them Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center sports blogger John Simmons may be hiding his Lia Thomas transphobia behind a concern for women's sports, but that doesn't mean he actually likes women playing sports. Simmons had a meltdown in an April 6 post because the makers of Cracker Jack introduced a "Cracker Jill" variant:
If you've ever gone to a professional baseball game, you'll likely end up buying a package of Cracker Jacks. But the next time you go, you might have to get the woke version of this iconic snack.
To celebrate "the women who break down barriers in sports," Frito-Lay announced they will be donating $200,000 to the Women's Sports Foundation and that the mascot for the caramel-coated popcorn will now be "Cracker Jill," with women cartoon characters from five different ethnicities replacing the big, bad white male on the snack's packaging.
That's strike one for stupidity.
Simmons then oddly invoked his hatred of Thomas to justify his hatred of a delicious snack:
Okay, but can we really celebrate women's sports if we no longer keep strict boundaries between men and women in sports?
After all, Lia Thomas just decided he wanted to be a female and has thrown women's collegiate swimming into chaos. Every time a state passes a bill to keep men from being in women's sports, society erupts in disbelief that someone would have the common sense to maintain a boundary between the genders.
So as it turns out, society at large really does not care about women, and therefore the snack company cannot properly celebrate them.
Sorry Frito-Lay, that's three strikes you're out at the old woke virtue-signaling game.
In a May 2 post, Simmons mocked a woman playing men's baseball under the headline "Some Crying In Baseball?"
Last night was a historic night for the MLB’s partner league, the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball (ALPB), but for the wrong reasons.
In a game between the Staten Island Ferryhawks and the Gastonia Honey Hunters, Kelsie Whitmore became the first woman to start in an ALPB game, batting ninth for the Ferryhawks and going 0-2 while being hit by a pitch. Whitmore has five prior years of experience pitching for the U.S. women’s baseball team.
[...]
Sorry to be the one to rain on the parade, but hopefully we only see men in the MLB as long as it is in existence.
Men should have leagues of their own where they compete against other top male performers, and the same goes for women. If Whitmore is so concerned about competing at the highest level, then she should find the highest level possible for women in this sport.
Blurring the lines between the genders in any sport only leads to confusion and ultimately, nothing beneficial. We have to ask ourselves why we think a woman participating in a male sports league would be a good thing. Is it for the sake of “progress,” which is today’s codeword for breaking down basic perceptions of reality and how to keep a society functioning, or rather because we think that women earn an extra level of value by competing with men? Both of these motives are extremely harmful to society at large, and applauding people like Whitmore for their actions only makes the problem worse.
The analysis and only logical take on these situations might seem repetitive and overused, but it bears repeating because apparently people still need to hear it.
Just like a man to mock women for being too emotional and insisting they can't do a job as well as a man.
Simmons used a May 5 post to dismiss female athletes who have opinions on abortion that don't conform tohis right-wing views as nothing but "lesbians and hardcore feminists" who should be ignored because their sports aren't popular:
The potential overturn of Roe v Wade as a national precedent has predictably drawn countless knee-jerk reactions from left-wing crazies who want to keep the practice of murdering babies going strong.
Some of these radicals are in the sports world in all the places you’d expect to find them: the WNBA, former Olympians … and of course, Billie Jean King.
In no way is it surprising that a league full of lesbians and hardcore feminists would be against anything that goes against “a woman’s right to choose,” and it is even less surprising that the WNBA is making it a priority to use their platform to advocate for voting for politicians that support abortion.
It might be effective too, if more than a handful of people had ever even seen a WNBA game.
Simmons went on to lecture: "It’s not a woman’s right to 'choose' to kill a baby for convenience, it is murder cloaked as 'healthcare.'" If abortion is murder, Simmons should be demanding that women be imprisoned and even executed for having abortions, but he was silent about that logical endpoint.
NEW ARTICLE: Chuck Norris' Cash Grab Topic: WorldNetDaily
The former action star is abusing his WorldNetDaily column to shill for gold and survival-food companies that pay him to be their spokesman -- and WND seems totally cool with it. Read more >>
MRC Keeps Acting As Elon Musk's PR Firm Topic: Media Research Center
Because Elon Musk has started spouting right-wing talking points and is trying to buy Twitter, the Media Research Center has deemed him an expert on everything. Autumn Johnson was mad that President Biden wouldn't take economic advice from Musk in a June 3 post:
President Joe Biden seemingly dismissed Elon Musk’s concerns that the economy was headed for a downturn.
When asked about Musk’s comments, Biden dismissively responded to the Tesla CEO’s economic concerns:
"While Elon Musk is talking about that, Ford is increasing their investment overwhelmingly," Biden said according to Reuters. "Ford is increasing investment and building new electric vehicles. Six thousand new employees, union employees I might add, in the Midwest."
Biden then wished Musk “lots of luck on his trip to the moon."
[...]
The comments from the president came after Musk wrote in a company email that he had a “super bad feeling” about the U.S. economy.
Reuters reported that Musk told employees that ten percent of salaried jobs at Tesla would be cut in response to a downturn in the economy.
Speaking of which, Johnson cheered the next day that Musk's Twitter deal "just avoided a lengthy review period" with the federal government declining to do an antitrust review of the deal. She also served as a Musk PR person by hyping Musk's alleged concerns about the number of bot accounts on Twitter. That is apparently going tobe Musk's -- and, thus the MRC's -- narrative as a way for him to weasel out of the deal, as Alexander Hall enthused in a June 6 post:
As Tesla CEO and free speech advocate Elon Musk has fought to acquire Twitter, he demanded the platform reveal how many of its users may be spam or fake accounts. His legal team accused the platform of deliberately hiding information amid Musk’s investigation.
Musk’s attorneys blasted Twitter leadership in a June 6 letter to Twitter Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde. “Twitter has, in fact, refused to provide the information that Mr. Musk has repeatedly requested since May 9, 2022 to facilitate his evaluation of spam and fake accounts on the company’s platform,” says the letter, which was posted on the Securities and Exchange Commission website.
“[Musk] does not believe the company’s lax testing methodologies are adequate so he must conduct his own analysis,” the letter noted “The data he has requested is necessary to do so.” The letter explained that Musk “believes the company is actively resisting and thwarting his information rights (and the company’s corresponding obligations) under the merger agreement.”
Jeffrey Clark gushed even harder over a Musk opinion in another June 6 post:
Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned of “population collapse” in China as a result of tyrannical government policies that devalue human life.
“Most people still think China has a one-child policy,” Musk said in a June 6 tweet. “China had its lowest birthdate ever last year, despite having a three-child policy! At current birth rates, China will lose ~40% of people every generation! Population collapse,” Musk tweeted in response to a article headlined “Could China’s population start falling?”
Clark didn't mention the inconvenient fact that just a few months earlier, the MRC was criticizing Musk for his cozy ties to China, which it memory-holed once he started spouting right-wing talking points and got interested in buying Twitter. There was also no mention of the fact that Musk is so dependent on China for materials used in making Teslas that his purchase of Twitter raises national security questions regarding privacy of user data, since China could use Tesla's dependence on Chinese materials to force Musk to give it information on users who are critical of China.
But who cares about facts when there are right-wing narrataives to advance? Which is why Johnson spent a June 9 post hyping how "A new story suggested on Wednesday that Twitter agreed to provide Elon Musk with raw data concerning the platform’s bot accounts." And a June 17 post by Clark touted Musk's purported commitment to free speech:
Tesla CEO Elon Musk defended free speech online and fielded questions from Twitter employees, according to a leaked video call.
“You can communicate with millions of people on Twitter. That’s just an incredibly important thing,” Musk told Twitter staff during a June 16 all-employee call. “I think it’s essential to have free speech and to be able to communicate freely.”
[...]
Twitter Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland asked Musk about “content moderation,” a leftist euphemism for censorship, during the call.
“The standard is much more than not offending people,” he added. “The standard is — should be — that [Twitter users] are very entertained and informed.”
But a few hours before Clark's post was made live, Musk demonstrated his real feelings about free speech when he fired SpaceX employees who criticized him. Clark made no mention of that in his post.
Cathierine Salgado hyped another Musk pearl of wisdom in a June 20 post:
“Is TikTok destroying civilization?” Elon Musk tweeted June 17. “Or perhaps social media in general.” Hyperbole? Perhaps, but maybe not considering new revelations about TikTok’s reported data sharing with China.
BuzzFeed News reported the same day as Musk’s tweet that it reviewed tapes of TikTok employees making statements that indicate its parent company, Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-tied ByteDance, accessed non-public U.S. user data from TikTok. “Everything is seen in China,” one member of TikTok’s Trust and Safety department said during a September 2021 meeting, according to BuzzFeed.
As we've noted, the MRC has been parroting attacks on TikTok that were apparently fed to it by Facebook through a Republican consulting firm. Salgado made no mention of that. But then, for the MRC, it's all about helping Musk win, and JosephVazquez literally invoked that in a June 21 post headlined "MUSK WIN":
Twitter’s Board of Directors told the platform's shareholders to accept the world’s richest man’s $44 billion takeover deal, according to a new government filing.
The filing specifically told shareholders that it “unanimously recommends that you vote” for “the adoption of the merger agreement” with Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Musk reportedly “listed the approval of the deal by shareholders as one of several ‘unresolved matters’ related to the Twitter deal” during an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum. The document also stated that the board "unanimously" agreed that "the merger agreement is advisable and the merger and the other transactions contemplated by the merger agreement are fair to, advisable and in the best interests of Twitter and its stockholders; and (2) adopted and approved the merger agreement, the merger and the other transactions contemplated by the merger agreement."
[...]
With Musk seeming apparently ready to take over the platform and make crucial changes to its bloated censorship apparatus, it looks as if Silicon Valley oligarchs may have finally lost one of its core vehicles to control online speech just before the 2022 midterm elections.
Vazquez also rehashed the MRC's attacks on social media over the Hunter Biden October surprise before the 2020 election, declaring that "A whopping 45 percent of Biden voters surveyed in a Media Research Center poll weren’t aware of the Hunter Biden scandal in part because Big Tech censored it." Vazquez didn't mnention that this poll was conducted by The Polling Company, a Republican firm founded by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, making its independence and reliability highly suspicious.
CNS Pushes Pro-Gun Spin, Deflection After Texas School Massacre Topic: CNSNews.com
Just as it did after the Buffalo massacre, CNSNews.com went into defense mode after the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. A May 25 article by Susan Jones grumbled about President Biden's remarks following the shooting:
The president blamed the "gun lobby," the reflexive response of people who believe gun bans are the solution. There was no mention of hardening schools with metal detectors or other serious security measures used to prevent mass shootings at airports, government buildings, even museums.
Jones went on to gush that Fox News host Laura Ingraham "made the point that 51 people were shot and killed in Chicago, just in the month of April."By contrast, another article by Jones that day praised Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for reliably spouting the gun lobby's post-massacre talking points:
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Texas Lt.-Gov. Dan Patrick told Fox News in separate interviews on Tuesday that one way to minimize school shootings is to "harden the targets."
[...]
Paxton said "absolutely" it's possible to arm teachers: "That's something that should be done. They are the ones on the ground. They are right there.
"If we're going to save these kids and stop mass shootings from occurring, we have to have people that are prepared and trained to react appropriately and quickly with urgency, because we just don't have the resources to get law enforcement there quickly. This has to be part of the solution."
Yet another "news" article by Jones that day cited a "bitter screed" by MSNBC host Joe Scarborough calling for increased gun regulation, then tried to reframe the massacre to distract from the fact that the shooter was heavily armed: "The 18-year-old gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers at an Uvalde, Texas elementary school came from a broken home. He reportedly shot and seriously wounded his grandmother, with whom he was living, before acting out the veiled threats he made on social media."
Craig Bannister served as stenographer for an anti-abortion fanatic, writing that "'It’s totally despicable' for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to try to justify the mass slaughter of millions of unborn babies by vilifying Second Amendment supporters, pro-life advocate and Live Action Founder Lila Rose said Wednesday." Another Bannister article hyped pro-gun zealot Dana Loesch claiming that "Instead of blaming legal gun owners, Democrats should be looking at the influences that shaped the individual who was personally responsible for the shooting."
Like its Media Research Center parent, CNS lashed out Democratic Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke for channeling anger over the massacre during a press briefing led by his Republican opponent, Gov. Greg Abbott; a May 25 article by Melanie Arter was headlibned "Democrat Beto O’Rourke Interrupts Gov. Abbott’s Press Conference on School Shooting to Make a Political Statement." Of course, CNS has never accused anyone spouting pro-gun talking points of making political statements.
The next day, Arter gave a platform to a Republican senator to uncritically spout more gun lobby talking points:
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) told Fox Business’ “Mornings with Maria Bartiromo” on Wednesday that it’s “not acceptable” to say that the 18-year-old Uvalde school shooter is going to “wipe out gun ownership across the country” for “responsible gun owners.”
“We all have incredible grief in this. Let me first say thank you to folks in the Border Patrol community and the local law enforcement that responded incredibly rapidly in this situation to be able to engage the challenges of how you deal with a needle in a haystack at this point,” the senator said.
“There are millions and millions of gun owners in America, and to be able to say this one 18-year-old is now going to wipe out gun ownership across the country is absolutely not acceptable for the responsible gun owners that are out there that are trying to identify why this 18-year-old went and buys guns for his 18th birthday, shoots his grandmother, and then goes to elementary school and kills 7-year-olds. He’s irrational and unthinkable in so many ways,” he added.
By contrast, a May 26 article by Jones highlighting Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin's call for a "good faith invitation" to Republicans to discuss gun regulation injected other viewpoints and much editoralizing. Jones sneered that Durbvin "didn't say" that he supports "an 'assault' weapons ban" and added that "the National Rifle Association does oppose the two Democrat bills" regarding gun regulation.
More deflection came in a May 26 article by Craig Bannister touting how "former NFL safety-turned-evangelist" Jack Brewer declared that "a godless upbringing, combined with the influence of media and godless teachers, has left the minds of children – like the Uvalde shooter – confused" and "embracing sin." Contrast that uncritical treatment with his hostile response later that day to Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer pointing out how Republicans refuse to do anything about gun violence:
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) used the deadly Uvalde, Texas shooting to repeatedly vilify Make-America-Great-Again (“MAGA”) Republicans, in a Senate speech pitching his "Domestic Terrorism Protection Act" on Thursday.
“No amount of bloodshed seems to be enough for MAGA Republicans,” Schumer said, adding that Americans are sick of hearing “the same string of hollow words from the MAGA Republicans that never lead to action.”
“MAGA Republicans don't want to get the results,” Schumer claimed. He smeared MAGA Republicans again while praising Texas Democrat gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke for interrupting a press conference by Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott:
Bannister did not disprove anything Schumer said, making it impossible for him to claim there was any sort of "smear."
Arter returned to stenography mode with a May 26 article parroting a Republican congressman's claim that "The Bipartisan Background Checks Act (HR 8), which Democrats are demanding that the Senate pass, would not have stopped the Uvalde school shooter from purchasing weapons." Another article that day from intern Stephanie Samsel hyped right-wing radio host Mark Levin ranting that an NBA coach was a "moron" and "derelict" for having an opinion about the massacre that didn't agree with his.
CNS also made sure to hype claims that police on the scene did little to stop the shooter while the massacre was going on in another apparent attempt to shift blame away from guns:
Meanwhile, Arter was in stenography mode again. In a May 27 article, she let the mayor of Uvalde play politics by requesting that the government spend money on mental health instead of "sending billions of dollars to countries 'that don’t even like us,'" while being silent on the fact that the previous month, Texas Gov. Abbott cut $211 miliion in funding to the agency that oversees the state's mental health programs. And she wrote what was essentially a press release for the gun lobby in a May 28 article:
National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre addressed the Uvalde school shooting at the group’s national convention in Houston, Texas, on Friday, saying that restricting the rights of law-abiding citizens to own firearms is not the answer to gun violence.
[...]
“There are absolutely certain things we can and must do. Where we part ways with the president and those in his party is on the policy question, and what we can and should do to prevent the hate-filled vile monsters who walk among us from committing their evil. Restricting the fundamental human right of law-abiding Americans to defend themselves is not the answer. It never has been,” he said.
“Each year, over 1 million law-abiding men and women use a firearm to save their own lives and the lives of their loved ones. That is over 1 million innocent Americans every year who owe their lives and the lives of their loved ones to their 2nd Amendment rights. Taking away their right to self-defense is not the answer, but there are certain common sense things we can and we must do,” LaPierre said.
“We need to protect our schools, because our children deserve at least and in fact more protection than our banks, stadiums, and government buildings. They are our most treasured and precious resource, and they deserve safety and protection,” he said.
Arter stayed in stenography mode for a May 31 article in which she uncritically transcribed a Republican congresswoman blaming single-parent families for the massacre. A June 2 article by Jenny Olohan promoted Ingraham's baseless conspiracy theory that the shooter's marijuana use caused the massacre. And Bannister gushed that day how "In May, U.S. firearm sales surpassed one million for a record 34th straight month, as Americans sought protection from mass shootings - as well as from politicians pushing for more laws infringing on citizens’ gun rights," apparently obvious to the fact that the right-wing "more guns, less crime" trope has failed.
Even as the Dinesh D'Souza election conspiracy film "2000 Mules" continues to be discredited on little things (the geolocation data map is of Moscow, not anywhere in the U.S.) and big (D'Souza himself has been forced to concede that the film "does not show evidence to prove his claims about ballots being collected and submitted") -- so bad that even right-wing grifter extraordinaire Ann Coulter dismissed the "stupid movie" as a grift -- WorldNetDaily remains firmly in its role as PR agent for the film.
Carl Paladino is a Republican candidate for a congressional seat in New York, has managed to be even more controversial than 
CNSNews.com has been 
For months, the Media Research Center has misrepresented a study in order to advance its anti-"Big Tech" narrative. Autumn Johnson tried to summarize it in an April 5 
CNSNews.com doesn't like new White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre any more than its Media Research Center parent does. But it was particularly annoyed by her status as the first black and LGBT press secretary -- so much, in fact, that it devoted three articles in 10 days to emphasizing that fact. First was a May 6 
Like the rest of the ConWeb, WorldNetDaily spent the days after the Buffalo massacre blaming anything but guns and conservatism, even though the shooter could not have killed so many people if he did not have an assault rifle and he expressed support for the replacement theory conspiracy voiced by the likes of Fox News' Tucker Carlson. A May 15 
The Media Research Center needed something to distract its followers' attention from the house hearings on the Capitol riot, which it t
WorldNetDaily is a big fan of the anti-vaxxers who run something called the "Global COVID Summit," which exists mainly to put a false patina of legitimacy on fringe doctors who prefer dubious medicines like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin to vaccines as a way to fight COVID. The fact that documented misinformers like 
Like the 
We saw how
Media Research Center sports blogger John Simmons may be hiding his 
Because Elon Musk has started spouting right-wing talking points and is trying to buy Twitter, the Media Research Center has deemed him an expert on everything. Autumn Johnson was mad that President Biden wouldn't take economic advice from Musk in a June 3 
Just as it did
