MRC Excuses Trump Trading In Anti-Semitic Tropes, Denies He's Anti-Semitic Topic: Media Research Center
In the month before Donald Trump had a dinner with anti-Semites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, the Media Research Center labored to protect Trump from allegations of being anti-Semitic over his criticism of non-right-wing American Jews for allegedly not being sufficiently supportive of Israel. When he first made the claim in October, Mark Finkelstein launched quickly into Trump Defense Mode in an Oct. 17 post:
Monday's Morning Joelaunched quickly into Trump Attack Mode, bizarrely claiming Donald Trump put out a "dangerous" and "anti-Semitic screed" on his Truth Social account about American Jews and Israel.
Today's Morning Joe deceptively cast this Trump "tweet" as suggesting that American Jews better get their act together before it's too late—for them!
That sounded ominous--until you read what Trump had actually written.
[...]
In other words, far from making a threat against American Jews, Trump's tweet was actually a plea for greater support for Israel! That Israel was endangered, from neighboring anti-Semites like the Iranians.
But Morning Joe repeatedly insisted that Trump's tweet was "anti-Semitic." And not merely a "dog whistle," but "screaming it out loud."
In a dramatic display of twisting these remarks out of context, Jonathan Lemire claimed that Trump's tweet "could be interpreted by his followers as a moment to potentially commit violence against Jews." And Joe Scarborough said the tweet was akin to a previous one by Trump in which he said that Mitch McConnell had a "death wish."
Trump was saying no such thing. But Morning Joe was sending a false message to potentially deranged people out there that Trump was in fact calling for violence against Jews. So if there's any violence that emerges, they can point their fingers.
Finkelstein followed up with more defense the next day:
This would be funny if it weren't so outrageous.
On his MSNBC show on Sunday, Mehdi Hasan, formerly of Al Jazeera, teed up notorious antisemite Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar to falsely accuse Donald Trump of making an antisemitic post, and to wring her hands of the rise of antisemitism in America.
As Eli Lake, tongue firmly in cheek, tweeted: "Up next, Vladimir Putin will talk to Mehdi about the importance of international law in a nuclear world."
Hasan introduced the subject by abjectly mischaracterizing Trump's tweet as having "threatened American Jews." To the contrary, as we noted yesterday, "far from making a threat against American Jews, Trump's tweet was actually a plea for greater support for Israel!"
Ilhan proceeded to wring her hands over Trump's alleged use of antisemitic "tropes." In particular, she condemned Trump's supposed charge of "dual loyalty" against Jews. This from the woman who said, in a reference to American Jewish supporters of Israel, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says that it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”
Omar has a long history of anti-Israel/antisemitic statements. There was that notorious tweet in which she wrote: "Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel."
Her most infamous bit of classic antisemitism came when, directly pointing the finger at AIPAC, Omar claimed US support for Israel is "all about the Benjamins baby."
Finkelstein didn't explain any criticism of Israel is automatically anti-Semitic.
When Trump said pretty much the same thing a month laters, it was Jason Cohen's turn to be the designated defender in a Nov. 22 post:
In the left’s latest effort to frame Donald Trump as an antisemite, HuffPost tried to spin his recent remarks at the Republican Jewish Coalition in a piece with the headline “Donald Trump Scolds Jews, Praises Evangelicals In Geopolitical Swipe.” Sounds terrible, right? But in reality, it was not at all. Huff Left out details about the speech and the response to it.
For starters, in the clip it used from Mediaite, Trump began: “I just grew up with a great fondness and a great feeling for Jewish people and for Israel.”
HuffPost ignored that and started with this quote: “Some people in the United States — Jewish people — don’t appreciate Israel the way they should.”
Funnily enough, this line received loud applause from the crowd at the RJC, but HuffPost neglected to note that. Is the audience at the Republican Jewish Coalition anti-Semitic too?
[...]
Trump continued, “But I appreciate Israel, and it’s an honor to have, I think, done far more for Israel than any other president.”
Trump is particularly proud of his accomplishments in Israel, his favorite child is Jewish, and he has a lifelong record of being a friend to the Jewish people.
Worst anti-Semite ever.
Actually, Trump has a record of invoking offensive Jewish stereotypes such as calling them good with money and shrewd negotiators, as well as telling Jews that Israel is "their country," which invokes another anti-Semitic trope, that of dual loyalty. Cohen's claim that Trump "has a lifelong record of being a friend to the Jewish people" linked to an article written by a pro-Trump organization called Jews Choose Trump -- hardly an objective source.
Cohen concluded by huffing: "When will the left ever learn to judge people by their actions, not words and tonality?" Weird how Cohen thinks words and tone don't matter when it's a right-winger spouting the offensive ones.
A few days later, Trump had his dinner with Ye and Fuentes. Cohen was among those MRCers who were mad -- not at Trump, of course, but that reasonable observers viewed this dinner as evidence Republicans have a certain comfort level with anti-Semitism.
WND's Alexander Pushes Dubious Election Fraud Claims In Arizona Topic: WorldNetDaily
Rachel Alexander spent her columns prior to the midterm elections laying the groundwork for claiming election fraud after the election if her preferred Arizona right-wing Repuhlican candidates lost. Well, they did, and she did exactly that in her Nov, 14 column -- though she also whined that there wasn't enough evidence to gum up the works:
As the former Maricopa County elections attorney, I've watched the midterm election results trickle in with disbelief. Polls across the country mostly showed a red wave, and usually in previous years when the polls tighten up and show Republicans neck and neck with Democrats, the Republicans end up winning. (I've always suspected the "tightening up" was a trick by pollsters to demoralize the right early on.) But this year, just like 2020, the results are defying polling.
There are some strange things occurring, such as how the results from the reddest batches of ballots in Arizona were widely expected to come in last – but by Saturday there were still plenty of blue batches. One election attorney told me the county is violating the law by changing the order of which ballots they are counting. Election fraud denier Bill Gates, chair of the Maricopa County Supervisors, said on Wednesday that 95-99% of the results would be in on Friday, but on Thursday he said counting would finish up the next week, with, oddly, no counting over the weekend.
[...]
Reports are coming out of suspicious activity, but without probable cause or a blatant "smoking gun," legal challenges will go nowhere. For example, at Washoe County in Nevada, the livestream cameras stopped working Wednesday night at 11:24 p.m. Officials said all staff had left the building an hour earlier and didn't return until 7 a.m., so the cameras were not restored until 7:53 a.m.
This doesn't easily translate into legal action. A judge isn't going to issue a search warrant to conduct a forensic examination of the voting machines solely based on that, and if there was nefarious activity with ballots, how would you figure out what it was, outside of a hand count, which is difficult to get ordered?
Alexander seems shocked that one must have evidence before making a claim. Rather than, you know, supplying evidence, she played victim by ranting that attorneys are being held accountable for making bogus claims:
The problem is no attorneys or judges licensed by state bars dare to get involved, since they're likely to get disbarred if they do; the left has so much control over state bars. One of the only election attorneys in Arizona who has the guts to get involved in these issues has been under investigation by the state bar for almost two years. The Arizona State Bar is one of the most vicious bars in the country targeting conservative attorneys. This is why the left repeatedly claims there has been no "evidence" of voter fraud in court cases.
People can rant all they want about voter fraud, but until they start cleaning up the legal system – and that means rallying around conservative attorneys under attack and conservative leaders targeted through lawfare who have been ignored and deserted since too many don't want to be associated with "losers," preferring to focus on sexier issues – no one is going to be prosecuted.
Alexander pushed the unproven narrative again in her Nov. 21 column:
The Democrats, MSM and RINOs are complaining about voters' concerns over election fraud, saying "we need to move on," "quit living in the past," and "no one cares about it as an issue; you're hurting the Republican Party to continue focusing on it." There may be a grain of truth in all of that, but it's outweighed by the fact that if we don't stop the fraud, we may never get another Republican president into office and more states will turn blue.
No one really believes deep down that Arizona rejected four top Republican candidates – three who were leading in almost every poll, including MSM polls – considering the breakdown of voter registration in the state. Republicans have a 4-point voter registration advantage over Democrats in the state as well as within Maricopa County. Republican candidates swept the rest of the races around the state, leading many to believe only those four top races, which featured all Trump-endorsed candidates, were deliberately targeted.
Again, Alexander has only conspiracy theories, not solid facts, to serve up:
One of the main theories going around in Arizona is that since bad actors knew Republicans were going to vote heavily on Election Day, they focused their efforts there instead of on mail-in ballots. They speculate that someone on the inside, likely a tech inspector, was paid a large amount of money to incorrectly adjust the settings on printers located in heavily Republican precincts the night before, after the final tests of equipment were performed, throwing in a handful of blue precincts for distraction. Well over 350% more Republicans than Democrats voted in person on Election Day in Maricopa County.
[...]
Election-fraud experts tell me it's part of a plan by Democrats to take over states one by one. First they started with states like California, Washington and Oregon. They moved on to states like Colorado and Nevada. Arizona happens to be their latest target. One election-fraud expert in California believes there are actually rather close numbers of Republicans and Democrats in that state, but due to years of election fraud there, no one bothers investigating anymore, allowing it to become rampant.
[...]
No one wants to talk about election fraud anymore because they risk being sued or even prosecuted, kicked off Big Tech platforms, or shunned by powerful Republicans with money, who are often referred to as RINOs due to their heavy conflicts of interest. In order to keep their money flowing in, these powerful players have to keep up many alliances and contracts with people who don't share conservative values. There's no easy solution there, because without funding, who's going to pay to get the conservative message out? There aren't enough millionaires and billionaires who can operate outside of those entanglements.
So many people just nod and wink and pretend there's no election fraud in order to keep their funding, labeling anyone concerned about it as "crazy" or "conspiracy theorists," which often destroys their reputations and careers and makes them question their sanity. Stories of mass election fraud, like the type "2,000 Mules" exposed in Yuma County, go ignored. The focus needs to be on figuring out how to turn this type of messaging around, vindicating those who question the obvious instead of ridiculing them.
Alexander repeated her conspiracy theories in her Dec. 5 column, ans well as her complaint that right-wing lawyers who tie up the legal system with bogus claims are being held accountable:
Republicans have started filing election lawsuits over the strange outcome in Arizona, since no one believes that the top Trump-endorsed slate of candidates who were almost all leading in MSM polls lost. But the left is already ahead of the lawsuits, filing bar complaints against conservative election attorneys. The scary 65 Project, which basically seeks to stamp out conservatives from the practice of law, has been selectively filing ethics complaints against these attorneys. Since state bars are almost all controlled by the left, and many states have mandatory state bars, it's a no-brainer way to push through an illegal agenda like rubber stamping voter disenfranchisement.
The 65 Project is all over conservative election attorneys in Arizona. I'm the former Maricopa County Elections attorney, and it's like a who's who list of my colleagues in Arizona. Recent state bar complaints have been filed against Alex Kolodin, Dennis Wilenchik and his son Jack Wilenchik, Lee Miller, David Spilsbury, Christopher Viskovic and Kurt Olsen, who's been heavily involved in Arizona litigation including representing GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.
Other prominent attorneys around the country they've filed complaints against (in states where there are no mandatory state bars, the complaints get filed with other types of grievance commissions) include Ted Cruz, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Joseph DiGenova, Cleta Mitchell of the Election Integrity Network and numerous Republican attorneys general.
Does anyone really believe that a large number of conservative election attorneys happen to all be corrupt? Of course not. The bar complaints are a horrendous abuse of our justice system. No attorneys dare stand up for those attacked because it then puts a big target on their back. Non-attorneys aren't aware of how bad the abuses have become because it's a very technical area with lots of intricate and vague rules.
To discuss just one of those lawyers, Olsen: Numerous other lawyers in Arizona have said the claims of election fraud by Lake, as represented by Olsen, lackmerit, and indeed, her lawsuit was thrown out. Alexander declared that "These lawyers are the last bulwark standing in the way of massive voter disenfranchisement and suppression, it is imperative not to let them hang out to dry" and pompously concluded:
If we do not stop the fraud, we will never see a Republican president again, and the left will continue toppling red states like dominoes. The RINOs can complain all they want that the Trump-endorsed candidates lost because they were too Trumpian, not because they were targeted with election fraud, but we all know history repeats itself. The left will come for the RINOs next.
Alexander began her Dec. 12 column with this wildly conspiratorial claim:
The MSM secretly distributes talking points, which often come from the DNC, instructing its reporters to include statements in articles about voter disenfranchisement and suppression of Republicans, declaring that there has never been any evidence of widespread voter fraud. If you're not a lawyer, you might buy it. But if you know just the tiniest bit about the law, it's frankly embarrassing to see non-lawyer journalists repeatedly writing this, pretending to be authoritative and objective.
Needless to say, she provides no evidence of these secret talking points -- which fits right in with her lack of evidence on other claims. And the conspiracy theories, and her cheering on of Lake, just kept coming:
Previous election lawsuits in 2020 challenging voter disenfranchisement and suppression were stymied due to other reasons, not lack of evidence. It's dishonest for the MSM to pretend otherwise. Judges found vague technicalities to throw them out, afraid of having their careers destroyed since the left dominates much of the legal system.
[...]
Trump-endorsed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake filed a lengthy lawsuit on Friday challenging the results of the state's botched election, where thousands of Republicans on Election Day in Maricopa County ran into complications voting and, based on what they saw, doubt their votes were counted. The complaint cited extensive witness testimony regarding wrongdoing, including 90% of mismatched signatures just swept under the rug and approved instead of being "cured" to ensure they were legitimate. Other witness testimony cited a lack of chain of custody for 298,942 ballots that were delivered to a third-party voter signature verification service. That is a class 2 misdemeanor.
Just because a judge comes up with a bogus technical reason to throw out a lawsuit doesn't mean there was never any evidence produced. Some of the reasons the 2020 lawsuits went nowhere were because the election attorneys were targeted with disciplinary actions, as in Wisconsin Voters Alliance v. Pence. The attorneys were only too grateful to drop the case to avoid worse discipline. They weren't just any attorneys either, but part of the respected Thomas More Society's Amistad Project. The judge who scared them into withdrawing the case was appointed by President Barack Obama, James Boasberg. The 65 Project, which appears to exist in order to drive conservative attorneys out of the practice of law, has preemptively submitted bar complaints against many of the election attorneys filing lawsuits over the 2022 election.
[...]
All eyes are on Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson, who was assigned to Lake's lawsuit. Will he withstand the immense pressure and acknowledge the massive statutory violations, or will he succumb to the bullies on the left and their comrades in the MSM?
Thompson threw out Lake's lawsuit and found what little evidence Lake provided was unpersuasive. Alexander will no doubt blame "the left" for this, while refusing to address the lack of credible evidence that was presented.
MRC Defends Musk, Clings To Its Manufactured Narrative About Conservatives Being 'Censored' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's hero worship over Elon Musk buying Twitter continued on its merry way. Tim Graham began his Nov. 30 column by whining:
Anyone who thinks the First Amendment is best represented by the “news” media is not paying attention to the way they wage war on freedom of speech for the conservative “rabble” on social media platforms.
Imagine if the media had attacked new media owners Jeff Bezos or David Zaslav with the kind of venom that they’re using on Twitter owner Elon Musk. No one would suggest it’s important for the government to monitor The Washington Post or CNN as potential sources of misinformation. Their brands are supposed to be synonymous with “trustworthy,” even though public opinion would offer a harsh reality check.
In recent weeks, Musk has taken the place of Rupert Murdoch on the information-supervillain beat. Outlets like CNN and the Post are actively rooting for Twitter to fail, chronicling that a third of Twitter advertisers haven’t appeared in the last several weeks.
But Graham's comparison is highly flawed. Unlike Zaslav's CNN or Bezos' Post, Twitter is not a media organziation that does original reporting -- it's a social media site with user-generated content, a big difference. He went on to stupidly huff that "The problem here is which privileged people are allowed to define what is 'misinformation' and what is 'hate'" -- as if the MRC doesn't exercise taht same privilege in attacking its political enemies.
Joseph Vazquez lashed out at the Post again later that day:
That The Washington Post can claim with a straight face that there was “no proof” of Twitter censoring conservatives when the Media Research Center has been documenting individual cases of censorship for over two years is simply ridiculous.
A Nov. 27 Post article written by three reporters brazenly claimed “[t]he right wing and conservatives for years have accused Twitter of censorship with no proof.”
That’s despite the fact that Twitter owner Elon Musk stated unequivocally days before the article’s publication that it was “correct” when conservative podcaster Dinesh D’Souza said that Twitter “[c]ensorship has been deployed as a one-way operation against conservatives.”
The Post glossed over Musk’s affirmation of Twitter censorship by teasing that he “agreed with right-wing figures on the site who accuse Twitter’s previous management of being biased against conservatives,” but only as a way of making it seem like the billionaire is misleading when “he says he’s a political moderate.”
Vazquez offered no reason why Musk's words should be trusted at face value or why a convicted felon and documented liar like D'Souza should be trusted at all. Instead, he felt he needed to shill for his employer:
MRC Free Speech America would also like to introduce The Post to its CensorTrack.org database, which was launched in September 2020 to specifically show the proof of the extent of Big Tech censorship of conservatives. It’s pretty convenient for the liberal rag to treat this database as though it didn’t exist. MRC Free Speech America researchers have logged 4,714 documented cases of Big Tech censorship across platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and others. Twitter alone accounted for 55 percent (2,583) of the total number of cases logged in CensorTrack.
The MRC’s exclusive database was so influential that an MRC Free Speech America study based on CensorTrack data was cited in an ongoing lawsuit from Missouri and Louisiana against the Biden administration for allegedly colluding with Big Tech to censor Americans. What’s ironic is that The Post has reported on the same lawsuit against Biden that cited CensorTrack data. One Oct. 25 story was headlined: “Cyber officials may have to testify about alleged social media collusion.”
Another MRC Free Speech America study released in 2021 showed that Big Tech overwhelmingly censored Republican members of Congress by a rate of 54-to-1 compared to congressional Democrats. But “[n]o proof,” right Washington Post?
The CensorTrack database is not proof of anything -- it's a political tool designed to push the partisan right-wing narrative of conservative "censorship" that completely ignores any other "censorship" claim and makes no distinction between a social media site enforcing its terms of service and actual censorship of a mainstream conservative view.
Vazquez played the Soros boogeyman card in another Nov. 30 post complaining that "A group funded by liberal billionaire George Soros is pressuring the federal government to investigate the world’s richest man simply because he now owns Twitter."
Autumn Johnson followed with a couple of hero-worship articles:
CNS Climbs Aboard The Right-Wing Anti-ESG Bandwagon Topic: CNSNews.com
The latest right-wing fad is to express performative outrage over investment policies that focus on environmental, social and governmental issues -- or ESG for short -- and CNSNews.com was pretty much ideologically ordered to hop aboard that bandwagon. Lauren Shank wrote in a Nov. 15 article:
The woke investing of ESG – Environmental, Social, and Governance – by state governments and other entities is destructive and a threat to pension holders, said Louisiana State Treasurer John Schroder on Monday in Washington, D.C. “We should invest more in our own states,” he said, “if you don’t invest in your own state, who is?”
Schroder made his remarks at the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF) National Convention on Nov. 14, where he was joined by state treasurers and auditors from Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and eight other states.
As explained by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, “ ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance. ESG investing is a way of investing in companies based on their commitment to one or more ESG factors. It is often also called sustainable investing, socially responsible investing, and impact investing.”
At the convention, CNS News asked Schroder how people can combat ESG investing, and what he has done to protect Louisiana from the effects of it.
As befits someone who cares more about pushing a narrative than being the fair and balance journalist she purports to be, Shank talked to no supporter of ESG investments. Instead, she hyped a study claiming that ESG investments perform relatively poorly.
Fellow fall intern Peyton Holliday also made a trip to that same convention, and she churned out a similarly biased article the same day:
“Elections matter” and Americans should strive to “elect people that are representing the interest of pensions,” said Kentucky State Treasurer Allison Ball on Monday in Washington, D.C. She also sharply criticized ESG investing and explained that many voters are unaware that their pensions are being invested in ESG companies instead of in what is best for their retirement and their state.
Ball made her remarks on Nov. 14 at the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF) National Convention, where she was joined by state treasurers and auditors from Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and eight other states.
Like Shank, Holliday made no effort to talk to an ESG supporter. But this narrative is apparently such a priority for CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, that both of these articles werereposted at NewsBusters. Apparently, there is no more wall between news and activism, if indeed there ever was.
She followed up with another anti-ESG article on Nov. 29 combined with Elon Musk stenography:
Entrepreneur and business magnate Elon Musk considers ESG -- environmental, social, and governance investing or ‘woke’ investing -- to be “the devil.”
Musk was tagged in a Twitter post by Carol Roth who wrote, “Remember when @ElonMusk wanted to bring free speech to Twitter and then S&P removed Tesla from their ESG 500 index, but kept in Exxon?”
“ESG is business social credit,” she added. “It’s a means to control capital, keep business people in line with the narrative, and, ultimately, control you.”
To which Musk responded, “ESG is the devil.”
Holliday did note a reason why Musk might be a little sour about ESG investments: Tesla, where he serves as CEO, was removed from from S&P 500's ESG index.
Craig Bannister served up another Republican anti-ESG promotion in a Dec. 5 article:
Florida is pulling $2 billion of assets from BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management firm, because the company should be choosing investments based on its clients’ best interests, and not on an environmental, social and governance (ESG) agenda, the state’s attorney general explained Monday.
“Governor DeSantis (R) has been very clear: Florida is where ‘woke’ goes to die. But, this is a bigger picture,” AG Ashley Moody said in an interview with Fox & Friends First:
[...]
Florida funds don’t belong in “these large institutions that were doing anything other than looking at risk, return and diversification, any other sort of ideological agenda,” Moody said.
Bannister served up more Republican anti-ESG stenography the next day:
On Tuesday, six House Republicans launched a probe into whether a group of banks and money managers, wielding the influence of a reported $60 trillion of investments, is violating federal antitrust laws in order to promote ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) policies.
The letter, sent to two investment executives on the steering committee of Climate Action 100+, is signed by the incoming chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), joined by Reps. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), Cliff Bentz (R-OR), and Tom McClintock (R-CA).
[...]
“Woke corporations are collectively adopting and imposing progressive policy goals that American consumers do not want or do not need,” the letter adds.
[...]
The letter also lists other ESG-related goals, such as abortion access, climate change fear-mongering, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, gun control and censorship of so-called disinformation.
Good intentions, no matter how dearly they are held, do not excuse antitrust violations, the letter explains, requesting that the information sought be provided by December 20, 2022.
Bannister became very much an anti-ESG propagandist for Republicans, writing in a Dec. 7 article:
The committee is looking into the ways, and extent, that BlackRock’s efforts to achieve an ideological agenda is harming its Texans and the state’s pension plans by boycotting some industries, such as coal and oil, in favor of less profitable, so-called “green” initiatives.
[...]
Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar has described the ESG movement as an “opaque and perverse system,” where financial institutions “use their financial clout to push a social and political agenda shrouded in secrecy.”
More propaganda -- and a promotional piece -- followed in a Dec. 9 article:
“If somebody tries to sell you on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing, hold on tight to your wallet and to your values – ESG is coming for both,” Senior Fellow at the School of Public Policy Pepperdine University Andy Puzder warns in a PragerU video.
Puzder details how, due to the ESG investment strategy, “companies, and even whole economies, go from woke to broke – including your 401(k).”
ESG is an anti-capitalism investment strategy that assumes that “If you’re a company just trying to make a profit, you’re the problem” – even though the profit motive has brought about some of mankind’s greatest inventions – including electric cars, solar panels and wind turbines, Puzder notes.
A bank tried to use his loan application as leverage to coerce him into publicly expressing support for Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) ideology, businessman Bud Brigham alleged in testimony at a Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs hearing.
Brigham, founder and executive chairman of Brigham Minerals, detailed his allegation at a December 15, 2022 hearing examining the harm that the ESG movement - in which financial institutions limit their investments to companies aligned with specific leftwing environmental and social causes - is doing to Texans, their access to capital, and their investment portfolios.
In his testimony, Brigham claimed that Credit Suisse, a global investment bank and financial services firm, suggested that his company would have its loan application approved – but, only if he tweeted out statements repeating and promoting principles of liberals’ climate agenda.
“I’m going to provide you with a couple of specific examples of how corrupt it is, looking at the ESG movement,” Brigham began his testimony.
In none of these articles did Bannister offer any sort of balance in the way of a pro-ESG viewpoint. That's because CNS is paying him to be a biased propagandist, not a balanced journalist.
MRC Tries To Rewrite Election History To Protect Republicans Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Kevin Tober complained in a Nov. 28 post:
On MSNBC's The ReidOut, New York Times editorial board member and MSNBC analyst, Mara Gay proved that she knows very little about the civil rights movement or how the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed when she attempted to slime the "modern" Republican Party as being in opposition to civil rights. When in reality, the civil rights legislation of the 1960s would never have passed without GOP support.
[...]
Gay jumped in to smear the GOP as a bunch of racists who are against civil rights for African Americans, which of course is an obvious lie to anyone who took a fifth-grade-level history course.
"The origin of the Republican Party as we know it today really has to do with a backlash to civil rights. And so any understanding of that Republican Party without that historical backlash to civil rights is incomplete," Gay said with a straight face.
While facts and logic are a foreign concept on MSNBC and The New York Times, they aren't here at NewsBusters. The truth is in 1964, the Civil Rights Act was in serious trouble because of Southern Democrats in the Senate.
Even then-Democrat [sic] President Lyndon Johnson told Hubert Humphrey that “The bill can’t pass unless you get Ev Dirksen," who was the Republican Senate Minority Leader at the time.
Despite having 67 members of the Senate, barely 40 Democrats supported cloture on the Civil Rights legislation. According to Senate.gov's history of the legislative fight, "This meant that Dirksen had to deliver at least 25 votes from his 33-member caucus that was divided among 21 conservatives, five moderates, and seven liberals."
In the end, the Republican Party under the leadership of Everett Dirksen, "the final tally stood at 71 to 29—27 Republicans and 44 Democrats joined forces to support cloture."
By focusing only on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 -- which Reid and Gay didn't even mention -- Tober is engaging in a highly selectiveand biased reading of history. Yes, Democrats joined Republicans in supporting that bill, but Southern Democrats (or Dixiecrats) were so mad about its passage that they began switching their party allegiance afterward to Republican. As one historical summary noted regarding that 1964 vote:
Six Republicans voted with the Dixiecrats, and one was Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who was that year's GOP nominee for president. One of the filibuster leaders was Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who switched his party allegiance to Republican and backed Goldwater for president. President Lyndon Johnson was elected in a landslide that November, but Goldwater carried Thurmond's home state and its Deep South neighbors: Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. It was a harbinger of things to come, when these states would help flip all the "Solid South" from D to R in the Electoral College.
So, yes, the civil rights movement did, in fact, establish the Republican Party as being opposed to civil rights. Sounds like Tober is the one who needs to take a remedial fifth-grade history course.
Brad Wilmouth served up his own similarly selective reading of racial history to protect Republians in a Dec. 10 post:
On Wednesday's CNN This Morning, as the show had on Washington Post reporter Matt Brown to discuss the Georgia Senate runoff, co-host Kaitlan Collins asked Brown about his article tying the runoff system to White segregationists who designed it in the 1960s.
Neither mentioned that these segregationists were Democrats as Collins vaguely called them "conservative White candidates," and Brown's Post article completely scrubs the word "Democrat" even though it recounts that "Republicans" in recent years have tweaked the system for self-serving purposes.
[...]
In the actual article, titled, "Georgia's runoff system was designed to dilute Black voting power," Brown begins: "Tuesday's showdown between Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D) and Republican challenger Herschel Walker is the product of an unusual general election runoff system that was pushed by a powerful Georgia segregationist who sought to blunt the power of Black voters in the 1960s."
In the rest of the 1,644-word article, which was mostly about Southern Democrats who tried to limit Black power in the 1960s, the word "Democrat" was not used at all. But, in the last few paragraphs, Brown did specify that "Republicans" had made reforms in recent years for self-serving reasons.
Without informing viewers that Democratic Senator Wyche Fowler was defeated in a 1992 runoff after he came in first place with less than 50 percent of the vote, Brown vaguely stated that the "state legislature changed the threshold for a runoff, requiring a candidate to win at least 45 percent of votes instead of 50 percent." Not mentioned was that it was a Democrat legislature that made the change, and that the change worked as planned, helping Democrat Max Cleland get elected Senator with just 49 percent of the vote in 1996 as the Libertarian candidate drew more than three percent.
Like Tober, Wilmouth similarly forgot to mention that segregation-favoring politicians in the South went from Democrat to Republican after civil rights legislation passed -- and those Republicans did nothing to get rid of the runoff system. And why would they? Out of 10 runoffs between 1992 and 2018, Republicans won nine of them, and the GOP candidate saw an average vote percentage increase of 5 points. Wilmouth also didn't mention that it was a Republican-controlled state legislature who changed the law back in 2005 to requiring a 50 percent threshold.
Further, it's only because Republicans have lost runoffs in the past few years -- two of which involved Warnock -- that Georgia Republicans are now calling for the runoff system to be eliminated. Neither Wilmouth nor anyone else at the MRC have told their readers about that.
The Big Lie About Election Fraud Moves To Brazil, And WND Buys Into It Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has kept an eye on presidential elections in Brazil -- unsurprising since it likes the very Trumpy right-wing authoritarian leader there, Jair Bolsonaro. Scott Lively used an Oct. 24 column to fret that a Bolsonaro loss might mean a decrease in hate for LGBT people there:
On Oct. 30, 2022, the people of Brazil will chose a new president in a run-off election featuring conservative incumbent Jair Bolsanaro and the Marxist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, aka Lula. Current polling in the corporate media shows Lula in the lead, raising the nightmare specter of a return to the extreme homofascism that marked the Lula regime from 2003-2010.
It was during Lula's regime that Brazil's LGBT Brownshirts drove my friend and ministry ally Julio Severo and his young family into hiding in a foreign country. He died there in 2021, partly in consequence of the dire poverty they faced as Brazilian ex-pats living illegally in exile. My ministry has taken up the task of helping his widow, Sarah, and seven young children to survive without him.
[...]
Allow me at this point to remind the reader that the slur "homophobe" is an invention of the LGBT movement to characterize literally ALL disagreement with its political agenda as mental illness. A phobia is a anxiety disorder, and the purpose of the "homophobia" slur is to frame disagreement as hateful bigotry driven by an irrational fear of homosexuals.
"Homophobia" was originally a psychiatric term for a person's fear of his own homosexual inclinations back in the days when "science" admitted the truth about sexual health and actually helped people overcome same-sex attraction disorder. But after the LGBT movement took permanent control over the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in a political coup in 1973, the "science" was edited to serve the new agenda. And the term "homophobia" was re-purposed to create an anti-Christian/anti-naturalist pejorative equivalent to the anti-homosexual slurs "fag" and "dyke." All such slurs are dehumanizing and antisocial, and "homophobe" should be condemned alongside the other two – but of course the only standards upheld by the left are double-standards.
[...]
I am urging Christians around the world to join me in prayer that Lula does not return to power in Brazil. And I include especially in that call to prayer our Russian brethren, who since 2013 have set the standard in their own law banning "gay" propaganda to children, and who have influence in Brazil as a part of the BRICS alliance. Ukrainian believers too should pray with us, because they face under pro-LGBT Zelensky the same agenda as Brazilians will again suffer under a second Lula regime – and if prayer can save Brazil that fate, it can save Ukraine (and I pray that even now). But mostly I appeal to American Christians, because it is our government that has been the Whore of Babylon pushing LGBT perversions across the entire globe, and thus we have a special duty to try and mitigate the damage.
After Bolsonaro lost, he pulled another Trumpy move by crying election fraud ... and WND bought into it. Editor Joseph Farah-- already a pro-Trump election fraud dead-ender despite a complete lack of credible evidence to support it -- rushed to Bolsonaro's defensein his Nov. 17 column:
While Americans continue to grumble about the elections stolen in Arizona and elsewhere, the blackout news media refuse to cover it – with the notable exception of WND, Gateway Pundit and Real America's Voice
But our neighbor to the south, in Brazil, haven't left the streets for weeks because of the electoral cheating that has taken place there.
Brazilians packed the streets in admirable civil protest again Nov. 13, on Republic Day – to the tune of over 3 million people.
In fact, the party of President Jair Bolsonaro presented its report on the Really Big Steal, announcing it will apply to have the election annulled since the results could not be validated.
Since the massive fraud during the runoff election on Oct. 30, millions of Brazilians have been protesting on the streets every day against fraud by communist convicted criminal Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the supposed winner.
[...]
Even before Election Day, Biden had a not-so-subtle message for Bolsonaro: According to Foreign Policy magazine, "Over the past year, U.S. President Joe Biden has deployed top administration officials to meet with their Brazilian counterparts and convey a simple message to President Jair Bolsonaro: Don't derail Brazil's democracy."
In other words, the fix was in.
[...]
Further, Bolsonaro was a friend of President Trump – so of course he had to go.
In fact, not even the Bolsonaro-controlled Brazilian military has found any evidence of election fraud. But lack of evidence has never stopped WND before, so the narrative continues. Art Moore wrote in a Dec. 1 article:
For the 32nd consecutive day, millions of Brazilians are on the streets of cities throughout the nation in perhaps the largest pro-democracy protests in history, contending left-wing presidential challenger Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's declared victory over conservative populist President Jair Bolsonaro was fraudulent.
Brazil's Superior Electoral Court announced Tuesday the certification ceremony of da Silva, a member of the Workers Party, will take place at 2 p.m. on Dec. 12. The inauguration is scheduled for Jan. 1.
On Wednesday, however, Bolsonaro filed a petition with Brazil election authorities formally contesting the results, alleging some voting machines malfunctioned and that any votes cast through them should be annulled.
[...]
Establishment media largely have ignored the massive protests, said investigative reporter Matthew Tyrmand.
"This is the largest democratic protest in possibly human history, and the global media is crickets on this," he said in an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
What's clear, he said, is that the Brazilian people "don't want to be led by a convicted criminal."
Moore didn't mention that Tyrmand has been busted for telling lies about the Brazilian election before. He also didn't mention that the Brazilian military found no election fraud, though he did note that the mlitary "has a special role in the Brazilian constitution giving it authority to adjudicate separation of powers disputes."
MRC Bitter That Herschel Walker's Scandals Were Accurately Reported Topic: Media Research Center
On the day of the Georgia Senate election runoff, the Media Research Center continued to whine that Republican Herschel Walker's failures were being pointed out by the media. Mark Finkelstein played whataboutism in a Dec. 6 post when "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski questioned whether Walker could do the job if elected, huffing, "You had to wonder: was Mika talking about Herschel Walker—or John Fetterman?" He had more whataboutism when it was pointed out that Walker would be nothing but a GOP rubber stamp: "Unlike Raphael Warnock? That brave, independent-minded, iconoclast who has only voted with Joe Biden . . . 96.4% of the time?" He ended with one last bit of huffiness:
Note: Morning Joe regular Eugene Robinson was not on the panel today. But he has a Washington Post column out claiming [emphasis added],"If Walker wins, it will be because Republican voters decided that loyalty to party was more important than having effective representation in the Senate."
Not loyalty to party, Mr. Robinson. Loyalty to principles that are important to many Georgians. Warnock will not be providing "effective representation" for those Georgians, when, if sent back to the Senate, he will dutifully vote for lax border control, higher taxes, more gun control, etc.
FInkelstein didn't mention Walker's loyal to the "principles" of committing domestic violence and handing out abortions like candy to his girlfriends. And needless to say, the MRC censored the fact that five more women came forward to accuse Walker of abuse.
Kevin Tober sounded a little desperate in a Dec. 6 post, loudly complaining that Walker's scandals were being accurately reported on while his preferred right-wing anti-Raphael Warnock narratives were being ignored:
On Tuesday evening, as many voters in Georgia were heading to the polls after work, ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News continued to provide in-kind contributions to the campaign of Democrat Senator Ralphael Warnock by burying his scandals and ties to a noted racist and anti-Semite and getting in one last hit job on his Republican opponent Herschel Walker.
ABC unsurprisingly left the smears to one of their most partisan “reporters” congressional correspondent Rachel Scott, who dutifully regurgitated DNC talking points by sneering: “Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock says this race comes down to two things: character and competence. He says his Republican rival Herschel Walker has neither.”
“For months, Walker has fended off a barrage of scandals, accused of domestic violence, of lying about his resume, failing to publicly acknowledge several children, and paying for two women to have abortions, which he has denied,”Scott continued.
She even interviewed voters, many of whom were voting for Warnock due to his perceived lack of qualifications and scandals which the media were responsible for hyping.
Tober didn't explain why he was continuing to defend such a scandal-ridden candidate like Walker. Also, his anti-Warnock link went to a Fox News story, but he didn't accuse Fox News of offering "in-kind contributions" to Walker's campaign by publishing it. Instead, he concluded by whining, "If Walker does indeed lose on Tuesday, the leftist media’s election interference and censorship of damaging stories about Warnock will certainly be a contributing factor."
Yes, only in the MRC's right-wing bubble would accurate reporting be considered "election interference."
Walker did lose to Warnock like he lost the general election, and this time the post-election whiner was Curtis Houck, who complained like Tober that accurate reporting was so unfair:
The flagship broadcast network news programs were ebullient Wednesday morning on the heels of their team’s victory in Tuesday’s Georgia Senate runoff election with Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) defeating Republican Herschel Walker, whom ABC, CBS, and NBC boasted had “struggled to overcome” “one scandal after another” (and thus allowed Warnock to evade questions about his past).
On ABC’s Good Morning America, liberal congressional correspondent Rachel Scott bragged that Walker “spent much of his campaign fending off one scandal after another, accused of domestic violence, of lying about his resume, failing to publicly acknowledge several children and paying for two women to have abortions, which he denies” even though it “turned some voters...away.”
In the show’s second hour, Scott repeated this narrative: “Warnock said that this race was about two things, competence, and character, pointing to a string of controversies that plagued Herschel Walker's campaign.”
[...]
NBC correspondent Peter Alexander was similarly happy about the Warnock win on Today and promoted how the Peach State senator “reflect[ed] on his mother’s extraordinary journey” from a poor woman picking cotton to mother of a senator.
On Walker, Alexander only had negativity and focused on scandals: “Walker struggled to overcome a series of public scandals from allegations of domestic abuse to accusations he paid for two women to have abortions, claims that he vehemently denied.”
Houck didn't explain why he chose to defend such a morally compromised candidate even after that immorality could not be denied.If he can't do that, he -- like the rest of the MRC -- has no moral authority to pass judgment on anyone else.
Finkelstein returned for one last post-election defense, whining in a Dec. 7 post that S.E. Cupp, whom he dismissed as a "CNN Republican: said that Walker wouldn't have been a candidate "if you had a strong Republican leadership willing to say to Donald Trump, this candidate is crap," huffing in response: "Can you imagine Cupp, or any CNNer, ever disparaging a Democrat in such a scatological manner?" He then tried to wash his hands of Walker by blaming GOP primary voters, not Trump, for picking Walker as their nominee (though Trump did, in fact, endorse him) -- and he still couldn't stop playing whataboutism:
David Urban, a former Trump adviser, pushed back. He said there are no smoke-filled rooms choosing candidates, and that Walker was not the pick of the GOP establishment, but of one man: Donald Trump.
In fact, although Trump did push Walker's candidacy, it was not even the former president who chose Walker--it was the Republicans of Georgia, who gave him a resounding 68% of the GOP primary vote.
Lemon stubbornly clung to his notion that the Republican establishment hand-picked Walker. That was Lemon's way of suggesting that Republicans are condescending to black candidates and voters, falsely assuming that black voters will support any black candidate, regardless of qualifications.
In fact, if there is a group that truly disparages black Republicans, it is the liberal media, particularly fellow African-Americans.
In denial to the end. So much for putting principles before party.
As it has for the pastfewmonths -- and as it regularly does with Democratic presidents -- CNSNews.com obscured November's good employment numbers by cherry-picking other numbers. Susan actually led with the good numbers in her lead article, yet the headline read "Dropping: Labor Force Participation, Number of Employed; Rising: Labor Force Dropouts":
The Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said the economy added 263,000 jobs in November, higher than the anticipated 200,000; and the unemployment rate held steady at 3.7 percent.
But there are troubling trends in Friday's employment report:
Despite the rising cost of living, the number of employed Americans dropped for a second straight month, falling by 138,000 to 158,470,000; the number of Americans counted as not in the labor force -- meaning they have no job and are not looking for one -- increased by 359,000 to 100,227,000, the highest this number has been in a year; and the labor force participation rate declined for a third straight month, to 61.1 percent in November.
People who are not in the labor force are retirees, students, caregivers, and others who have dropped out.
Conversely, the participation rate is the percentage of the population that is either working or actively looking for work.
When Jones got to her preferred number, the labor force participation rate, she did have to admit that Biden's record improved since he took offices while het again touting how much better it was under Donald Trump:
In November, the civilian non-institutional population in the United States was 264,708,000. That included all people 16 and older who did not live in an institution, such as a prison, nursing home or long-term care facility.
Of that civilian non-institutional population, 164,481,000 were participating in the labor force, meaning they were either employed or unemployed -- they either had a job or were actively looking for one during the last month. This resulted in a labor force participation rate of 62.1 percent in November -- down from 62.2 percent in October; 62.3 in September; and 62.4 percent in August, so the trend continues to be negative.
The participation rate was 61.4 percent when Joe Biden took office as the pandemic raged. Today's number, 62.1 percent, is more than a point below the Trump-era high of 63.4 percent recorded in February 2020, just before COVID-prompted shutdowns.
There was no sidebar this time, such as the typical story from editor Terry Jeffrey on government employment.
WND Writers Desperately Want Trump To Run Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily is filled with Trump dead-enders, and they want their guy back in the White House. Scott Lively set up conspiracy theories to support the idea in his Nov. 11 column:
The all-too predictable RINO campaign to defeat Donald Trump's bid for the White House in 2024, before it has even been formally announced, has begun. Interestingly, it features as its leading argument that Ron DeSantis would make a better president and wouldn't have all the "divisive" and distracting baggage Trump has. We're expected to believe that the RINOs actually want DeSantis as president, when all they really want is a Trump/DeSantis primary-season bloodbath so the White House will stay blue and they can keep their lucrative posts as willingly controlled "opposition" and preserve the corrupt cozy collegiality of the Purple Uniparty.
Does anyone really doubt that Mitch McConnell deliberately sabotaged the MAGA takeover of the U.S. Senate to preserve his own place and power? Does anyone really believe that the light-in-the-loafers Lincoln Project perverts would willingly let "Don't Say Gay" DeSantis get within a hundred miles of the presidency? No, the dump Trump to crown Ron is a bait-and-switch con game trolling for suckers. Donald Trump is not going away, and the only thing that will come from the effort to dump him is an expansion of the list of people we know can't be trusted to defend the Constitution and Truth itself: some because they never stood on principle in the first place and others because they are otherwise good people who nevertheless allowed themselves to be duped into the role of useful idiots, even after having their eyes opened to election fraud, the plandemic and other serious crimes of the elites.
Every virtue-loving American, but especially the latter group being lured into the RINO trap, should remember one essential fact: Donald Trump doesn't need to win another election to legally and morally deserve a second term in the White House. HE ALREADY EARNED IT IN 2020! The Usurper-in-Chief occupying the Oval Office is a filthy traitor whose every pronouncement is a pack of lies, and whose very presence behind the presidential podium is an act of contempt for the citizens of this country and our Constitution.
America owes Donald Trump a second term in the same way that a government-run impound yard owes a new car to a victim whose own car was stolen while under government protection. Our election system has a legal and moral duty to conduct free and fair elections and to ensure the rightful winner is seated after an honest, objective and transparent review of the votes cast by legally qualified citizens only. That process was hijacked and grossly abused by a vast network of conspirators of both parties, united by a visceral hatred of Trump so intense that it justified in their warped minds the greatest political crime in world history: a literal regime-change coup in the most powerful nation on earth and a cover-up of that crime, which continues to this very day using every possible weapon and tactic in their considerable arsenal. Not even the United States Supreme Court could stand against that conspiracy, as all the many highly meritorious lawsuits were derailed on cynical procedural pretexts – even the ones that reached the Supremes.
And yet, by the sheer persistence of one of the most remarkable men ever born on this earth, that conspiracy – intended as an American version of the Reichstag fire – has been exposed, explained and partially extinguished in the build-up to the 2022 midterms.
Every honest, educated citizen in America knows that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, and by the time he is finally inaugurated in January of 2025, the entire world will know that as well – with all the evidence laid out clearly on the table for all to see, along with a list of those awaiting prosecution to the fullest extent of the law – some of them deserving the death penalty for treason. The MAGA movement in the House of Representatives and throughout the citizenry will pursue that mission with a passion for truth, justice and the American way that would put Superman to shame.
Donald Trump doesn't have to earn his second term a second time, but he will. Only an act of God telling him not to run, or assassination by the elites, will stop that from happening.
[...]
I'm not going to offer the standard platitude about Trump being a flawed man like the rest of us, because he's NOT like the rest of us. Only Donald Trump could have brought America back from the precipice of Marxist hell in 2016, and only Donald Trump can finish that job. He is absolutely perfect for the task God has assigned to him, warts and all, and America owes him a massive debt. Admitting that and fully backing his campaign (should he choose to climb back on that bronco and not hand the reins to Ron early) is the very least we can do.
Michael Master penned an "open letter" to Trump in his Nov. 14 column that pushed election fraud conspiracy theories before he got around to the interesting stuff:
If you decide to run, then you will win the Republican nomination. Your support in the Republican Party is huge. MAGA is the only real alternative to Democratic destruction of American values. Mitch McConnell et al. have no answers. Ninety-three percent of your candidates won in the Republican primary elections. You will win the Republican nomination in 2024 if you want it.
Now, can you win the general election in November 2024?
As you well know, Democrats have figured out how to cheat. Ballot harvesting, drop boxes, mail-out of ballots, weeks of voting, days of counting ballots, machine manipulation.
Mr. Trump, can you stop the cheating? Since states are responsible for how each one runs its own elections, can you stop all the fraud?
Now, for the bigger question: If you cannot stop the cheating and Republican leadership will not try to stop it, then who else can? Answer: no one.
So what do we do if you do not run?
Trump's actual announcement on Nov. 15 warranted a fluffy "news" article by Joe Kovacs that started by falsely calling him "President Donald Trump." (He's not president now, Joe, despite your bogus wishes to the contrary.) Indeed, Kovacs is still bitter about 2020 and clinging to conspiracy theorires:
Biden won then, but his victory likely will carry an asterisk mark for many people because of two outside influences that polls and surveys confirm almost without a doubt took the victory from Trump.
One was that the FBI interfered in the election by calling on social media companies to suppress what it called "Russian disinformation" about the curious income – millions of dollars – the Biden family got from sources in Russia and China.
It wasn't disinformation, however. It was accurate reporting, and polls suggest that enough Democrats would have fled his camp if they had known that Trump would have been re-elected.
The second factor was Mark Zuckerberg's distribution of $400 million plus, through foundations, to various local election officials. They often used it to recruit voters from Democrat districts, perhaps explaining why Biden got so many millions more votes than the very popular Barack Obama had years earlier.
That was followed by WND's biggest Trump fanboy, Joseph Farah, gushing all over himself at the announcement in a Nov. 16 column with the screaming headline "THE RETURN OF TRUMP!":
"We do not have to endure what is taking place in Washington. You see our country, the corridors of power … they're our corridors, they're not their corridors. These are our corridors, and we are going to take those corridors back."
That was one of the seminal lines that distinguished Donald Trump's speech announcing his bid to recapture the White House. He hit just the right notes. It was a home run.
They're OUR corridors, not their corridors. These are our corridors, and we are going to take those corridors back.
He was at once telling Nancy Pelosi – as well as affirming a truism to the average American – that these institutions are OUR institutions and this movement is about taking them back.
That's what Trump did with his Tuesday bid to retake the White House in 2024.
Farah simply repeated a lot of quotes from Trump's low-energy speech, then concluded:
But is Trump the undisputed frontrunner?
"I do want to point out that in the midterms, my endorsement success rate was 232 wins and only 22 losses. You don't hear that from the media." It is a remarkable record. He's the only candidate who could do that.
Trump has promised to Make America Great Again – and he is probably the only person who can do it. Nobody else rises to the occasion. We're lucky to have him.
Farah may think that because the audience for his WND these days is largely MAGA conspiracy theorists like him.
NEW ARTICLE: Fake News And Flip-Flops On Abortion At The MRC Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center changes its argument about an anti-abortion vote in Kansas, spreads lies about Margaret Sanger, and throws a fit over Chrissy Teigen saying her miscarriage was an abortion. Read more >>
MRC Whined About Wins By Young, Non-Heterosexual Candidates Topic: Media Research Center
Another piece of bitterness the Media Research Center spouted over Republican failures in the midterm elections was whining over certain Democratic candidates making history in their wins. Curtis Houck grumbled in a Nov. 9 post about attention given to one particular Florida candidate:
Following most nationwide elections, one of the liberal media’s favorite tropes is to trumpet so-called “historic” winners that assist one in filling out a diversity bingo card. Such was the case Wednesday morning after the lackluster Republican performance as ABC, CBS, and NBC used their flagship news programs to swoon over Democrat Maxwell Frost winning a dark-blue Orlando-area House seat to become the first member of generation z elected to Congress.
And following CNN from Tuesday night, the networks basked in the election of two Democrats to Democrat states as Maura Healey will become the first openly lesbian governor in U.S. history and Wes Moore was elected as Maryland’s first black governor.
ABC correspondent Victor Oquendo made sure to tuck Frost’s win in during a Good Morning America segment about the massive red wave that struck in Florida: “That said, [Democrats’] one highlight, 25-year-old Democrat Maxwell Frost winning his election becoming the first gen-z member. He is now filling Val Demings’s seat. She lost to incumbent Marco Rubio.”
[...]
[On CBS Mornings] Frost came up a third time in the 8:00 a.m. Eastern Eye Opener. King gushed that she “like[s] him already” after hearing a soundbite of him saying, even though he’s barely eligible to serve, “I’m not too young, I’m just on time.”
“Gen-Z is making their presence felt,” Burleson added.
Tim Graham noted that one of the subjects of in his Nov. 14 podcast was "the post-election huzzahs over 25-year-old Democrat socialist Maxwell Alejandro Frost, the first "Generation Z" member elected to Congress from the Orlando area. NPR promoted him like a new Taylor Swift album. PBS also threw him softball questions over the weekend. That's your tax dollars at work. Of course, MSNBC also tried to blow the wind beneath his wings." Graham complained further in a Nov. 15 post:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently turned 33, so it’s time for a younger socialist Democrat for the media to swoon over. In September, I found at least eight sappy national interviews with 25-year-old Maxwell Frost, who had won a primary to fill the seat of Rep. Val Demings, who ran for the Senate against Marco Rubio.
After he won the general election in a blue district by 19 points and became the first member of Generation Z to win a House seat, the swoon cycle began all over again.
National Public Radio repeatedly touted Frost. They boosted him online on Election Night, displaying several of his tweets, including one tweet from June, where he apparently heckled DeSantis at a Dave Rubin event.
NPR toasted him on Thursday night’s All Things Considered. Anchor Elissa Nadworny explained “After the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, Frost was drawn to anti-gun violence activism." Then they did use the P-word: “He received support from high-profile progressives like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.”
Though Graham sought to tar Frost with the "socialist" label, he didn't cite any "socialist" policies the guy actually held.
But Frast wasn't the only MRC target -- it was also unhappy that non-heterosexual people won elections. A Nov. 9 post by Kevin Tober was upset that one newscast was "virtue signaling over the first openly-lesbian governor elected in the United States. And Tierin-Rose Mandelburg whined so spitefully in a Nov. 10 post about a transgender candidate that she not only misgendered her but also baselessly suggested there was election fraud in her victory:
Remember when we used to elect political officials based on their skills, not how progressive they were? No? Me neither, but it's getting silly.
Congratulations to the state of Minnesota for electing transgender Leigh Finke and abetting the “rise of Queer Political Power.”
Finke, she/her but born a he/him, was elected to serve for District 66 of Minnesota as a state representative. Finke’s Twitter indicated that his priorities are to ensure that bodily autonomy for women & queers (aka fake women) is considered “essential healthcare.”
I presume that he’s one of the firm believers that ripping apart an unborn child’s body, limb by limb, should be called “healthcare.
Remember when we used to elect political officials based on their skills, not how progressive they were? No? Me neither, but it's getting silly.
Congratulations to the state of Minnesota for electing transgender Leigh Finke and abetting the “rise of Queer Political Power.”
Finke, she/her but born a he/him, was elected to serve for District 66 of Minnesota as a state representative. Finke’s Twitter indicated that his priorities are to ensure that bodily autonomy for women & queers (aka fake women) is considered “essential healthcare.”
I presume that he’s one of the firm believers that ripping apart an unborn child’s body, limb by limb, should be called “healthcare.
[...]
Supposedly Finke collected 15,635 votes or 81 percent in the district he ran. The previous seat warmer was Alice Hauseman who’d been in office since 1989, Fox News said.
What an honor it must be to lose your seat to someone who’s pretending to be a woman.
Mandelburg concluded by sneering: "All I can say is that thank God I don't live in Minnesota and I pray that we start electing people based on their skill set, not who they sleep with and which gender they decide to be on a given day." If she doesn't understand anything about transgender people -- which she clearly doesn't based on her uninformned assumption they choose "which gender they decide to be on a given day" -- she shoiuldn't be writing about them. Then again, the MRC isn't about advancing facts; it only cares about pushing ideological hate.
WND Shills For, Spreads Misinformation From Dubous Doc McCullough Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has long been a fan of -- and uncritical conduit for -- the COVID vaccine misinformation peddled by dubous doc Peter McCullough. It's still giving him that challenge-free platform. Art Moore did a softball interview with him for a Sept. 20 article designed to plug McCullough's new health operation:
The crushing of debate and traditional scientific inquiry that has curbed access to proven treatments and forced ineffective and even dangerous therapeutics on patients during the COVID-19 pandemic has, for many Americans, created an unprecedented crisis of faith in the world's most advanced health-care system.
If I get sick with COVID-19, can I trust my doctor to treat me as a unique human being, with a unique medical history and provide me – without hindrance from corporate or government bureaucrats – with a treatment plan that will help me heal?
For many who can no longer say yes to that question, Dallas-based internist and cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough – one of the most outspoken critics of the government and medical establishment response to the pandemic – has become a de facto primary-care physician, particularly through his "McCullough Protocol."
He now has a far more sustainable solution, a health-care enterprise he has helped launch with former Yale University Medical School professor Dr. Harvey Risch and others called The Wellness Company.
In an hour-long interview with WND in which he also discusses the latest COVID-19 developments – including President Biden's declaration that the pandemic is "over" – McCullough explains the new venture's holistic, prevention-based approach to health care through telemedicine and, eventually, through in-person consultation as well.
"People have lost trust in the health system – there's no doubt about it," McCullough said. "It's the first time people were turned down for a treatment. ... It was inexplicable."
Then, there was a "second major hit," McCullough told WND, "where people just walked away," when doctors urged patients to take "the investigational COVID-19 vaccines."
Unmentioned, of course, was the role of both McCullough and WND in manufacturing that distrust, largely through the deliberate spread of misinformation. Risch, his partner, is another COVID misinformer, and that "McCullough Protocol" is heavy on things like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin which haven't been legitimately proven to fight COVID.
Moore did another interview with McCullough for a Nov. 6 article, this time complaining that his misinformation has cost him his board certification:
Accused of spreading "misinformation," outspoken COVID-19 vaccine critic Dr. Peter McCullough is facing the loss of his board certification in cardiology and internal medicine.
In a video interview with WND (embedded below), the world renowned cardiologist and epidemiologist – with 677 scientific publications to his credit – explained he is now engaged in a rigorous appeal process at great expense personally as well as professionally.
"I can tell you this is unprecedented. We've never had a federal board like this, recommend that a doctor become decertified because of political reasons," he told WND.
"There is no complaint regarding my critical care. No complaint regarding my board scores."
After launching an initiative on COVID "misinformation" in September 2021, the American Board of Internal Medicine targeted statements McCullough made to the Texas Senate the previous March and to media. In May 2022, the board sent a letter to McCullough accusing him of spreading misinformation. McCullough crafted a 20-page response, citing the evidence for each statement he made, and requesting that he be allowed to attend a meeting about his case. The board denied his request and last month sent him a letter informing him that the meeting had taken place and the board had decided to remove his credentials. He has until Nov. 18 to file his appeal.
Meanwhile, McCullough has been terminated from his editor-in-chief roles of two different journals, Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine and Cardiorenal Medicine.
"With no due process, no courtesy phone calls, no editorial board meetings, I simply received an email, a letter, saying that I was terminated as editor-in-chief," he said regarding the latter journal.
The letter "thanked me for my years of service, but no explanation, and I can tell you that never happens in academic medicine."
The fact that Moore went for the appeal-to-authority fallacy in hyping McCullough's credentials tells you that he will never seriously question McCullough about the misinformation he has peddled. And there's plenty of it to be found at WND -- not only did he falsely downplay last year's Delta variant as "the mildest one we've seen so far" with "a very low mortality,"he declared last December that the Omicron variant as a "minor variant" and is "simply not going to be as infectious" and "doesn't look like it's going to have the evolutionary efficiency to become a dominant strain." As we all know, Omicron variants are the most infectious and have become the dominant strain.
But Moore won't hold McCullough accountable for his wildly inaccurate prediction -- he needs the guy too badly to push more COVID misinformation, blaming people who purpotedly "died suddenly" on COVID vaccines. Moore uncfritically wrote in a Nov. 7 article:
Citing the available scientific evidence, renowned cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough believes the best explanation for the "sudden and unexpected" cardiac events and deaths in otherwise healthy people is the COVID-19 vaccines.
"When someone dies and the family doesn't come out and say anything, or doctors don’t come out and say anything, it’s a reasonable assumption that it was the vaccine, until proven otherwise," McCullough told WND.
First: Advising that doctors assume a cause for a medical condition runs counter to medical science and justifies the removal of McCullough's credentials. Second: McCullough is misrepresenting the results of those studies to which he referred.
In the first study, McCullough and Moore censored the fact that, as a more responsible publication found, that number of "about 100" was taken from a pool of 43 million people who had received at least one dose of the vaccine; counting people who were also hospitalized for myocarditis but didn't die for a total of 2,861 people, that's just 0.007 percent of people who got vaccinated -- while the number of people who suffered myocarditis after catching COVID was 11 times greater. The other two are case reports on a total of three people -- still a miniscule percentage of people affected by the vacctine compared with the millions who have benefited from it.
Moore then laughably wrote that, despite all evidence to the contrary, McCullough "doesn’t want to scare the public."
The MRC's Double Standard on Election Mandates Topic: Media Research Center
As part of the Media Research Center's bitterness that Democrats did much better than expected in the midterm elections, Nicholas Fondacaro complained in a Nov. 8 post:
With the red tsunami just beginning to swell on Election Day, with only a few races called early in the night, CBS was already in damage control mode. They insisted that despite Republicans taking control of the House, they wouldn’t have a mandate from Americans to investigate aspects of the Biden administration.
Near the top of their America Decides: Campaign '22 coverage, chief election and campaign correspondent Robert Costa reported that he had just gotten off the phone with future Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who laid out an agenda of fixing America’s problems and investigating the administration:
[...]
He then suggested, without evidence, that Republicans wouldn’t have a mandate from the American people to launch investigations:
Also, I don’t know what our exit pools are going to show but I'm pretty sure they’re not going to show Americans wanted investigations. This will be one of the early challenges. How much does a majority investigate, how much does a majority deal with the issues Americans are burning with about prices, education, and other things?
Walking and chewing gum in terms of investigating and fixing America’s problem wasn’t an option CBS would allow a Republican majority.
Needless to say, the MRC had the opposite argument on mandates in 2020, when Democrats won the presidency as well as both houses of Congress. MRC writers repeatedly attacked the idea of a Democratic mandate -- despite much greater victories than merely (and barely) flipping the House -- with one dismissing them as "elitist, leftist partisans" who demand "we must also subscribe to the electoral conclusion that Biden has a mandate while ignoring the Democratic Party's horrid performance in House and Senate races." And in a January 2021 post, Scott Whitlock cheered that "60 Minutes" made that argument to Nancy Pelosi:
Where was this 60 Minutes before the 2020 presidential election? On Sunday, co-host Lesley Stahl grilled Nancy Pelosi, telling the House Speaker that she has no “mandate” on policy and hitting the Democrat for failing to compromise with Republicans. Stahl even brought up Pelosi’s obstruction of the COVID relief bill. In contrast, in a big pre-election 60 Minutes, this same woman said that Joe Biden was "not" part of any controversy related to his son Hunter.
On Sunday, Stahl used the famous “someone says” line, often an excuse to tout Democratic talking points, against Pelosi. She hammered the Democrat’s partisan rigidity: “In the election in November, someone said that the-- the mandate that the Democrats won was not about issues because you lost so many seats; that the mandate was for tone, and attitude, and a-- a strong desire for compromise.”
The MRC is certainly not going to argue that Republicans have no mandate because they performed so badly in the midterms.
CNS Moving Back To Defending Israel Over Death Of U.S.-Palestinian Journalist Topic: CNSNews.com
A while back, we noted how CNSNews.com was actually publishing articles that were a bit critical of Israel, whom it has long praised as part of right-wing orthodoxy. Apparently it got the message it was falling out of step because it's reeled that in a bit.
One Israel-related story CNS has been following has been the death of Palestinian-American journlalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed covering a protest in the West Bank. It was immediately suspected that Abu Aleh was shot by someone in the Israeli Defense Force, and even Israel-friendly CNS reporter Patrick Goodenough seemed to concede that. In a May 12 article, he noted the "widespread criticism" of Israel over Abu Aleh's death and repeated Israeli officials claiming that they would conduct a thorough investigation. A July 6 article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman noted U.S. findings that an IDF bullet killed her:
On July 4, the U.S. State Department announced that after extensive investigations by several parties, overseen by the U.S. Security Coordinator (USSC), it was concluded that the gunfire which killed Shireen Abu Akleh, a U.S.-Palestinian citizen and journalist, likely came from Israeli Defense Forces.
Akleh, who had worked for Al Jazeera since 1997, was shot in the head and killed on May 11 while covering an Israeli military raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. Akleh was wearing a press vest and standing with other reporters when she was shot.
Al Jazeera journalist Ali al-Samoudi, who was at the scene, was hit in his back with a bullet. He survived.
[...]
National Public Radio reported that Israel "has strongly denied she [Akleh] was deliberately targeted, but says an Israeli soldier may have hit her by mistake during an exchange of fire with a militant."
Journalist Al-Samoudi told Al Jazeera there were no Palestinian militants at the scene when Akleh was killed.
This was followed by a July 19 article by Chapman noting that "In his meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) last week, President Joe Biden raised the issue of the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 by Saudi officials. In response, MBS reminded Biden of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and also asked what the U.S. was doing about the recent killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh allegedly by Israeli forces."
Chapman started to return to pro-Israel form in a Sept. 7 article:
Although the Israeli military admitted on Monday there was a "high probability" that one of its soldiers shot dead U.S.-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh back in May, Israel's prime minister, Yair Lapid, rejected any suggestion that the U.S. would influence its rules of engagement for soldiers dealing with violent conflicts.
The U.S. announced on Tuesday, Sept. 6, that it would "press Israel" to "review its policies and practices" in such instances because of Akleh's death.
"[N]o one will dictate open fire regulations to us when we are fighting for our lives," said Prime Minister Lapid on Sept. 7, as reported in Haaretz.
He added that he would "not allow them to put an IDF soldier on trial who defended himself against fire from terrorists, just to receive a round of applause from the world."
[...]
On Sept. 5, the Israel military report stated there was a "high probability" that one of its soldiers accidentally shot Akhel. The report further said no one would be punished for the shooting, reported the Associated Press.
Chapman also exhibited sloppiness in repeatedly misspelling Abu Akleh's name in his article.
Apparently, though, it has been decided that nobody is to make Israel feel bad about killing Abu Akleh, and as a Nov. 17 article by Goodenough documents, that order came from none other than the guy who employs the daughter of CNS editor Terry Jeffrey:
Anyone involved the decision to launch an FBI investigation into the death of American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during an Israeli security operation “should be fired or impeached,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said this week, responding to a move that sparked strong pushback in Jerusalem.
“This administration has spent its time in office weaponizing the DOJ to target their political enemies as a matter of policy, and now they have allowed that tactic to bleed into their obsession with undermining our Israeli allies,” Cruz said in a statement.
While the news of an FBI probe into the shooting of the Al-Jazeera journalist – evidently by an Israeli soldier – is being welcomed by some Democratic lawmakers, Israel’s outgoing government says the Israeli Defense Forces will not cooperate.
“IDF soldiers will not be investigated by the FBI nor by any foreign body or state, friendly as it may be,” caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid told lawmakers in the Knesset on Tuesday. “We will not abandon IDF soldiers to foreign investigations, and we expressed our strong protest to the Americans at the appropriate levels.”
Defense Minister Benny Gantz in an earlier statement called the investigation “a serious mistake.”
“The IDF has conducted a professional, independent investigation, which was presented to American officials with whom the case details were shared,” Gantz said. “I have delivered a message to U.S. representatives that we stand by the IDF’s soldiers and that we will not cooperate with an external investigation.”
[...]
In his statement, Cruz accused the Biden administration of “unleashing the FBI” on Israel and Netanyahu, whom it views “as political enemies.”
“Our Israeli allies have, since the very beginning, cooperated closely with the United States in investigating this incident, and the State Department and Defense Departments had already drawn their conclusions,” he said.
“This outrage underscores how corrupt and blatantly politicized the Justice Department has become, and how entirely beholden to the radical left-wing Squad Democrats really are.”
“Everyone involved with this debacle should be fired or impeached – all the way up to Attorney General Garland.”
Goodenough didn't explain why Cruz did not make the same demand of the IDF forces involved in Abu Akleh's death, and Goodenough cited no consequences anyone in the IDF has faced as a result of killing a journalist.
MRC Bashes Pelosi Again, Lashes Out At Anyone Saying Nice Things About Her Topic: Media Research Center
Fresh off trying to deny that the violent attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband could possibly have been inspired by right-wing vitriol toward her, the Media Research Center greeted Pelosi stepping down from House leadership as her stint as House majority leader end with, unsurprisingly, more right-wing vitriol. Alex Christy complained in a Nov. 17 post:
From Nancy Pelosi herself to her white suit to her relationship with former President Trump, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell and her Thursday guests could not stop gushing over Pelosi before and after her speech announcing she step down from House Democratic leadership in the next Congress.
Before the speech, Mitchell had a difficult time keeping it together as she declared, “And [Capitol Hill correspondent] Ali Vitali, we've heard all these scenarios that, you know, there was one report Jon Meacham had contributed to the speech—speeches we should say because they’re were different options, but eventually, she was rewriting herself because she knows herself better than anyone, of course.”
[...]
After the speech, Vitali also fawned over Pelosi and her clothes, “Pelosi making a nod to all of those as she stood there in that iconic white pantsuit that we have seen her wear time and again at these momentous, historical inflection points, a nod to the suffragettes and the women’s movement.”
After touching on Pelosi’s role in passing Obamacare, Vitali also hyped her relationship with Trump, “And then, of course, the work that she's done over the course of the pandemic, the work that she did on accountability around Donald Trump during the era of his government.”
“Accountability” is now less than two months away from being redefined as “obstructionist” or “partisan witch hunts.”
Just as MSNBC couldn’t contain its adoration Thursday for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as she announced she wouldn’t be seeking reelection to House Democratic leadership, CNN was also on Team Pelosi and nowhere near Chris Licht’s model of delivering the news as hosts and other supposed journalists swooned over the “spunky grandmother” as akin to “great performer on the stage or a great athlete” walking away.
And despite her being radically pro-abortion, CNN had the gall to insist she’s dedicated her “career” to helping “children.” That is, the ones she’s allowing to live, of course.
[...]
King had more eyebrow-raising moments as he argued “the connective tissue in her career is children and China in the sense that she has always pushed programs to help children, whether education programs, health programs” (minus the whole abortion thing) as well as being “a fierce critic of China.”
Cornish stepped in moments later and not content with that. Instead he boasted she’s more than “a spunky grandma,” but someone who “was there for the most consequential moments of the last 15 years legislatively.” Obviously, King seconded her on the “spunky grandmother” line.
Kevin Tober served up more attacks on anyone who committed the offense of saying something nice about Pelosi:
With the news Thursday that Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be stepping down from Democratic House leadership, ABC’s World News Tonight and CBS Evening News spent time gushing over Pelosi’s “historic” tenure as speaker of the House and highlighted her publicized fights with former President Trump and her infamous temper tantrum after his 2020 State of the Union address where she tore up a copy of his address in anger.
On ABC, Capitol Hill correspondent Rachel Scott dramatically announced Pelosi’s “historic passing of the torch.” Scott could barely contain herself when she drooled that “Pelosi is a singular figure in American history.”
Scott even praised Pelosi’s petulant fights with former President Trump: “Pelosi worked with four Presidents, often going toe to toe with Donald Trump.”
Tober didn't explain why Trump wasn't the petulant one. Christy returned to whine some more the next day:
The never-ending worship of Nancy Pelosi continued on Friday’s Morning Joe on MSNBC as host Mika Brzezinski repeatedly asked House Republicans “who raised you?” in response to the lack of praise from the GOP and demanded they make their mothers proud by reversing course.
Brzezinski’s angry rant was in response to reading Sen. Mitch McConnell’s statement on Pelosi’s decision to step down from leadership and wondered why other Republicans couldn’t do the same, “End of an era, first woman to serve as speaker, an amazing career, a mother of five, and by the way, her husband was just attacked as a result of political violence. This would have been the moment to step up and show some grace.”
[...]
Pelosi didn’t die and contrary to what USA Today Washington bureau chief and Pelosi biographer Susan Page said at the beginning of Brzezinski’s diatribe, she isn’t even retiring from Congress. She simply decided to become a backbencher. The demand that you praise a hyper-partisan figure for that is one that only goes one way.
Following suit from Thursday night, the flagship Friday morning broadcast network news shows were bursting with adulation for the “end of an era” as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced she wouldn’t seek reelection to House Democratic leadership. On ABC and NBC, they called her a “hero” and “icon” “went toe-to-toe with some of the most powerful men in the world” and whose “reign...was legendary.”
ABC’s Good Morning America co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos said his piece, lamenting her absence at the top “marks a seismic shift” before giving way to congressional correspondent Rachel Scott boasting of Pelosi as “the most powerful woman in Washington for decades.”
[...]
On NBC’s Today, congressional correspondent (and former CNNer) Ryan Nobles couldn’t hide his feelings. He told co-host Hoda Kot[b] that “Pelosi's reign over the Democratic caucus was legendary” and that she “went toe-to-toe with some of the most powerful men in the world and rarely backed down, making her a hero in her party and enemy number one for Republicans.”
Nobles reiterated moments later that Pelosi was “[a]n icon to Democrats and a villain to Republicans” and, as part of her farewell to leadership, she “paid homage to the presidents she worked with” even though she only touched on three of them.
[...]
And over on CBS Mornings, they too joined in on the “end of an era” laments with co-host and Democratic donor Gayle King boasting Pelosi was “winning rare praise from both sides of the aisle and I understand there were a lot of tears in the room yesterday.”
Christy even attacked a historian for issuing a judgment on Pelosi:
Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley joined CNN Inside Politics John King on Friday to talk about Nancy Pelosi’s place in history. As Brinkley tells it, Pelosi is the most significant Speaker in American history because she helped pass liberal legislation, mainly Obamacare.
King began by asking, “Nancy Pelosi's place in history will be what?,” Brinkley got straight to the point, “It's large. I think she's maybe the most important Speaker of the House in American history.”
After running through some of the other contenders, Brinkley gave his reasoning, “Nancy Pelosi has a legacy that is so large not just for shattering the glass ceiling of being a woman but I think the Affordable Care Act.”
Brinkley was not content to just label Obamacare as a significant piece of legislation, but had to qualify that it was good legislation as well, “I mean, that really has provided so many people with the ability to pay for operations, surgical procedures, saved lives, and Obama and Harry Reid say it couldn't be done without Nancy Pelosi. That's a big feather in her cap and John, I don't think she's going away.”
Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) second and final stint as Speaker of the House is over, and the establishment media are waxing sentimental. Since she announced her retirement from Democratic leadership, media types have heaped praise and adoration on the Congresswoman: “legendary!” “incredible!” “a towering figure!”
On Thursday, the Washington Post ran a goopy love letter to the Speaker from purple prose enthusiast Eugene Robinson, who went with the subtle headline, “Nancy Pelosi was the most consequential speaker of our time.”
[...]
But the grand prize for excessive Pelosi praise goes to MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski. On Friday, theMorning Joeco-host gushed: “Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, it’s sort of hard not to be in awe of what she has accomplished. Unless you’re in a cult.”
Of course, journalists slobbering all over Democratic politicians is fairly unremarkable. But given the Republicans’ rather lackluster performance in the recent midterm elections, now more than ever it’s worth noting just how subservient the media are to Democrats.
Says a guy who just demonstrated how subservient he and his employer are to Republicans. And Tierin-Rose Mandelburg didn't want to feel left out, so she contributed her own whinefest:
Boo hoo!
Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday that she will not seek reelection as the Democratic House Leader. Though essentially Pelosi was forced to step down due to the fact that Republicans took back the house and she'll be 127 yrs old any day now, Hollywood celebs and blue check elitists used the opportunity to fawn over her success in office.
Singer Barbara Streisend claimed that the world is going to miss having Pelosi as our speaker … I guess I’m not part of this world then.
[...]
The hashtags #ThankYouMadamSpeaker and #ThankYouSpeakerPelosi also began trending on twitter in honor of her exit.
Legacy media also praised Pelosi likening her to an "icon," "legendary," and "the most important" speaker "in American history." Eat it, Henry Clay!
The fact that blue checks praise Pelosi's every movement and motive is honestly, embarrassing.
More embarrassing than Mandelburg and her co-workers reflexively denigrating Pelosi and lashing out at anyone who dared to say something nice about her just for the sake of a paycheck?
In the month before Donald Trump had a dinner with anti-Semites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, the Media Research Center labored to protect Trump from allegations of being anti-Semitic over his criticism of non-right-wing American Jews for allegedly not being sufficiently supportive of Israel. When he first made the claim in October, Mark Finkelstein launched quickly into Trump Defense Mode in an Oct. 17 post:
achel Alexander spent her columns prior to the midterm elections 
The Media Research Center's hero worship over Elon Musk buying Twitter continued on its merry way. Tim Graham began his Nov. 30 
The 
The Media Research Center's Kevin Tober complained in a Nov. 28 
WorldNetDaily has kept an eye on presidential elections in Brazil -- unsurprising since it likes the very Trumpy right-wing authoritarian leader there, Jair Bolsonaro. Scott Lively used an Oct. 24 
On the day of the Georgia Senate election runoff, the Media Research Center 
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WorldNetDaily is filled with Trump dead-enders, and they want their guy back in the White House. Scott Lively set up conspiracy theories to support the idea in his Nov. 11 
Another 
WorldNetDaily has long been a fan of -- 
As part of the Media Research Center's 
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