NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Childish War On CNN Topic: Media Research Center
Juvenile insults? Gloating over the failures of CNN+? Gleefully cheering for layoffs and creating scandals that don't exist? This lame CNN-bashing is what passes for "media research" these days. Read more >>
MRC Parroted False Attack On Children's Hospital Over Gender-Affirming Surgery Topic: Media Research Center
As part of its war on transgender people, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg ragedin a Aug. 12 post, taking her cues from a tweet by the LGBTQ-hating Libs of TikTok:
When reading daily headlines, I often find myself thinking that I dreamt what they say due to the extreme level of radical lunacy … Friday was one of those days.
Boston Children’s Hospital recently boasted about its new procedures for kids. It plans to offer hysterectomies as part of its “gender-affirming" treatment in order to help children remove organs that they don’t want.
No, this is not part of a dystopian fictional narrative. This is August, 2022 where even the craziest of stories and situations are coming to fruition.
PolitiFact fact-checked the Libs of TikTok tweet and clarified that Boston Children's does not perform hysterectomies on minors. Nonetheless, these are surgeries that take place at Boston Children's Hospital, a pediatric medical facility.
As part of the correction, Mandelburg changed "children" to " patients" but also added a sneer: "Boston Children's has not explicitly stated that it won't extend the procedure to younger patients in the future, not to mention, 18 is still too young for sterilization if you ask me." But nobody asked her, given that she's not a medical professional or is capable of expressing anything but hate and contempt for transgender people. The rest of Mandelburg's post was largely intact -- including the false Libs of TikTok tweet that remains embedded -- including her concluding rant:
Boston Children's has the potential to help and save so many lives but this “gender-affirming care” is a regression of those possibilities. This will only hurt patients in the long run and the media needs to expose the group for its lunacy in order to combat these vile, malicious, and destructive practices.
As right-wingers get called out for spreading this false information -- and as that misinformation resulted in threats against the hospital and its staff, to the point that the hospital sought help from law enforcement, even as Libs of TikTok continued to spread misinformation -- Alex Christy tried to parse things to justify the false attack in an Aug. 18 post:
On Wednesday’s installment of New Day on CNN, host Brianna Keilar and correspondent Alexandra Field alleged that it is “misinformation” and “demonstrably false” to say that Boston Children’s Hospital provides genital surgeries for minors. Unfortunately, reality is more complicated.
Keilar kicked off the segment by reporting that “Boston Children's Hospital says its doctors and staff have been facing violent threats after right-wing groups spread online misinformation and conspiracy theories like this one on TikTok about their facility providing care for transgender children.”
Obviously threats are not acceptable, but the purpose of this segment was to shut up BCH’s critics and Field wasted no time attempting to do just that, “Look, the claims being made online are demonstrably false, unequivocally.”
She further reported that, “But the hospital has now put out a statement saying it’s taking all possible measures to protect members of the community, and it is saying in no uncertain terms it condemns the attacks and misinformation that is being spread. It also goes on to say in very clear terms, ‘Boston Children's does not perform genital surgeries as part of gender affirming care on a patient under the age of 18.’”
It is true that if you go to BCH’s website it says in bolded text that “To qualify for vaginoplasty at Boston Children's Hospital, you must be at least 18 years old and meet certain,” but on August 7, before the video went viral, the same website said in unbolded text that the age was 17.
Either the original website was wrong and nobody noticed until they got embarrassed on Twitter or BCH is lying. Either way, it is dishonest to say critics are spreading conspiracy theories that are “demonstrably false.”
Christy censored the fact that his co-worker Mandelburg had her post on the subject corrected for repeating false information.
(Christy's post originally carred the headline "CNN Fact Check Peddles False Claims About Hysterectomies For Minors," but since he didn't actually identify any false claims CNN made, the headline was later changed without disclosure or explanation to "CNN Screams 'Misinformation' to Defend Woke Boston Children's Hospital.")
When the Washington Post reported that anti-trans attacks by Libs of TikTok are resulting in threats against hospitals, a Sept. 5 post by Clay Waters attacked not Libs of TikTok but, rather, rPost eporter Taylor Lorenz, who the MRC has previously bashed for following a trail of public information to identify Chaya Raichik as the homophobic woman behind the Libs of TikTok account:
Inflammatory, self-pitying Washington Post online media reporter Taylor Lorenz, who claims to fight (conservative) misinformation online, pushed her own line of intimidation and misinformation against one of her conservative targets, posted Friday: “Twitter account Libs of TikTok blamed for harassment of children’s hospitals -- Employees are warning colleagues to take action against the anti-LGBTQ account, saying it’s ‘only a matter of time’ before its posts lead to violence.”
So what awful deeds does the Libs of TikTok account actually commit? It reposts unedited videos previously posted by lefties (often of the gender-radical variety) on social media channels, sometimes with brief commentary. Liberals who don’t like their own idiocies exposed to the wider public react hysterically.
Lorenz had previously doxxed the woman behind the account, revealing her name and address in the Post.
Undaunted, Libs of TikTok is now publicizing video clips produced by hospitals, including Boston Children’s Hospital, promoting “gender-affirming” hysterectomies -- surgeries for the removal of sexual organs -- for young people, though whether the hospital offered the surgeries to actual minors has not been confirmed.
That triggered Lorenz to try and do (along with co-authors Elizabeth Dwoskin and Peter Jamison) what she loves most: Try and drive Libs of TikTok off the internet.
Waters didn't explain why an account that incites threats of violence should not be policed, or why it "inflammatory" for Lorenz to research the woman behind that incitement.
This was followed by a Sept. 13 attack on Lorenz by Nicholas Fondacaro, claiming that she was "threatening to run a story falsely claiming the account “helped to foster violence,” generate “death threats,” and “intend[ed] to continue to target hospitals” with bomb threats. All of which are untrue and not supported with evidence." Fondacaro offered no evidence this was the case -- even though it's indisputably true that the threats against the hospitals came after Libs of TikTok targeted them.
Funny how quickly the MRC moved from "threats are bad" to "you can't directly blame us so it didn't happen."
Meanwhile, despite having been burned by Raichik -- Mandelburg was eager to spread more hate from Libs of TikTok against another children's hospital in a Sept. 19 post:
If you’d like to suppress the normal functions of your child's body or medically delay natural gender differentiations, head on over to Ohio.
Akron Children’s Hospital in Ohio reportedly opened a “Gender Affirming Center” to shift the focus from actual children’s health to progressive child abuse, Libs of TikTok pointed out.
“Our goals are to help gender-diverse youth feel comfortable exploring their gender identity and improve their overall health,” the webpage, which has since been removed, said.
[...]
What’s sad is that Akron Children’s isn’t alone in its progressive madness. Even though kids can’t get a tattoo as they’re “permanent,” kids are not only able to, but encouraged to take life changing medicine to affirm an identity that is false.
This is the terrifying reality of our 21st century society.
Actually, what's sad is that haters like Mandelburg has a platform to spread and amplify that hate. Again, the predictable consequences happened: The hospital received threats, and a woman was arrested for calling in a fake bomb threat. We assume Mandelburg approves.
WND Puts Conspiracy Before Fact To Hype Quickly Dismissed Election Fraud Claims Topic: WorldNetDaily
An anonymously written Nov. 22 WorldNetDaily article uncritically advances conspiracy theories about the midterm election in a Pennsylvania county:
Ballot counting machines that won't count ballots. Hundreds of millions of dollars handed out, outside the election financing oversight system, to mostly left-leaning local election officials.
A coordinated media and Big Tech suppression of very damaging evidence about a candidate for president of the United States.
American elections in recent years have seen a wide range of behaviors that give the appearance of bias, and may have been illegal.
But now a report at Gateway Pundit details something entirely new.
In fact, Pennsylvania election observers have filed a complaint against the Delaware County Board of Elections because county officials "took a detour on election night with the county's ballots and v-drives into a closed building."
"For six hours."
Poll watchers were banned.
Also raising concerns were the county's action to delete 194 vote registrations after people voted, ballots were mailed to unverified voters, records of requests for nearly 2,800 mail-in ballots were erased, and more.
At Bill Lawrence Online a report explained there was a nine-hour hearing before Judge Barry Dozor on election abnormalities, and a ruling was expected soon.
Voters Leah Hoopes, Gregory Stenstrom and Nicole Missino had asked that certification of the county's 2022 midterm votes be delayed until evidence about voting irregularities can be reviewed.
Note that the article doesn't actually repoirt on the hearing, just uncritically repeats the allegations -- a serious journalistic failure. Meanwhile, actual journalists covered the hearing -- and showed how shoddy the evidence was.
As one outlet reported, two of the so-called expert witnesses could not offer expert testimony, and that Dozor himself "said he had not heard any testimony to even suspect fraud or bad actors during hours of testimony." Indeed, Dozor quickly dismissed the claims as election officials such as Jim Allen explained everything, including the "detour":
Julie Yu, testifying for the plaintiffs, said she witnessed ballots taken from drop boxes on election going to the Flagship Corporate Center at 2 W. Baltimore Ave. in Media rather than the Government Center on Front Street or the Wharf building in Chester where votes were tabulated.
Allen explained that in years past, teams would go out at 8 p.m. to lock drop boxes and the county would collect those ballots later that night using a few trucks that would each go to 10 or 15 of the 40 boxes scattered around the county. Those trucks might not arrive back to the wharf until 2 or 3 a.m., he said.
But a new law, Act 88, provided grants to counties to help cover elections with some provisos, including that there had to be a “best estimate” of returns posted at 12:01 a.m. the day after the election and a running continuous count of mail-in ballots beginning at 7 a.m.
To meet those requirements, Allen said the county sent out teams of two, at least one which had to be a county employee, to collect ballots from drop-boxes and bring them to a central location: the Flagship Building. The drop-box ballots would then be collected and transported in one fell swoop to the wharf so that they could be tabulated to meet the “best estimate” requirement, he said, while all other ballots from the polling places would be returned to the Government Center.
Allen likewise dismissed the idea that any partisan third party handled any ballots whatsoever. He said there were groups of observers who could see votes being counted and ask questions, but none were allowed to touch equipment or balloting materials at any time.
But perpetuating conspiracy theories is more important at WND than reporting inconvenient facts, which means WND, anonymously or otherwise, never told its readers the conspiratorial claims were dismissed.
MRC Takes Break From Bashing Griner To Defend Trump Prisoner Swap With Taliban Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Resarch Center's attacks on Brittney Griner for failing to be white, heterosexual and a right-wing bot -- and, thus, unworthy of being traded in a prisoner swap from her trumped-up jail sentence in Russia -- took a little detour when the subject of a Donald Trump prisoner exchange was brought up.
Nicholas Fondacaro began a Dec. 12 post still whining that Griner was freed and criminal ex-Marine Paul Whelan was not, complaining that "The View" co-host and "faux Republican Ana Navarro" said that "Fox News anchors Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity were such good buddies with dictator Vladimir Putin they could just fly into Russia and free Paul Whelan, the Marine still imprisoned on trumped-up espionage charges" and added that they "have very good relationships with Putin. Tucker Carlson's a celebrity in Russia." Fondacaro didn't dispute the accuracy of Navarro's statement; instead, he huffed:
The show was kicked off with disinformation as Goldberg began by claiming the Trump administration had released 5,000 Taliban fighters in exchange “for no one” in return. But according to The Washington Post, the deal entailed “The United States would release 5,000 Taliban prisoners; the Taliban would release 1,000 of its prisoners” (A.K.A. our Afghan allies).
Fondacaro did not comment on the highly unbalance nature of that transaction -- at least Griner for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout was a one-to-one swap.
The next day, Tim Graham similarly complained that the highly imbalanced 5-for-1 swap was portrayed as "nothing" -- to the point that he was forced to cite hated fact0checker Snopes to back him up:
On Monday, the “independent fact-checkers” at Snopes.com explored “Did the Trump Admin Agree to Free 5,000 Taliban Prisoners?” They ruled this was "True." But they were not evaluating MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough, who repeatedly made the false statement on Friday and Monday that Trump received “nothing in exchange.”
[...]
In addition, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at that time called the agreement "an important initial step toward advancing security and stability in Afghanistan," adding that, "many significant additional steps remain to achieve comprehensive and enduring peace."
Snopes cited a Congressional Research Service report that said, "The prisoner exchange was completed in early September 2020, removing the main obstacle to intra-Afghan talks. Talks between the two sides continue but have not made substantial progress and remain complicated by a number of factors." Somehow, Liles thought there was a loophole in there. Despite the clear phrasing "the prisoner exchange was completed," he suggested "This indicated that the Taliban prisoners were released without both sides agreeing to terms."
But don't let the concept of a completed "prisoner exchange" disturb Scarborough! He was on a roll. In reacting to criticism of the Griner swap, we counted ten separate denunciations of Trump letting Taliban terrorists go for nothing on Friday and Monday:
Like Fondacaro, Graham is not about to admit that a 5-for-1 swap could be described as effectively "nothing," let alone defend the imblanced transaction in the face of the one-for-one Griner-Bout swap.
What Other Stories Are CNS Censoring From Its Readers? Topic: CNSNews.com
We've already noted how CNSNews.com effectivelycensored the news of Herschel Walker's multiple abortion scandals -- but what other legitimate news has the Media Research Center's "news" division hidden from its readers? Let's look at a couple of recent examples.
Trump controversies
When Donald Trump had dinner with anti-Semites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes in late November, CNS didn't want its readers to know about it, refusing to devote space to an undeniably newsworthy story.Melanie Arter even played a bit of misdirection in a Dec. 2 article:
President Biden seemed to call out rapper Kanye West on Friday, saying that “The Holocaust happened” and “Hitler was a demonic figure.”
“I just want to make a few things clear: The Holocaust happened. Hitler was a demonic figure. And instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides. Silence is complicity,” he tweeted. His comments come a day after West, during an interview with “Infowars” radio show host Alex Jones, praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, saying, “The Jewish media has made us feel like the Nazis and Hitler have never offered anything of value to the world.
His comments come a day after West, during an interview with “Infowars” radio show host Alex Jones, praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, saying, “The Jewish media has made us feel like the Nazis and Hitler have never offered anything of value to the world.
Arter was silent on the fact that Trump had dined with West a few days earlier.And the only reference to Fuentes at CNS appears in columns by now-retired columnist Michelle Malkin, who has laughably whitewashed the white supremacist and anti-Semite as a "multimedia entrepreneur" who is merely engaging in "peaceful political advocacy."
A couple days later, when Trump ranted on his social media site that the Constitution should be suspended so he can be returned to office, CNS served up only a Dec. 5 reaction piece by Arter noting that "Congressman-Elect Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) told CNN’s 'State of the Union' on Sunday that he disagrees with former President Donald Trump who advocated terminating the Constitution in the case of 'massive' election fraud." There was also an oblique reference to it in the attached transcript in a Dec. 8 article by Susan Jones, who otherwise didn't highlight Trump's remarks, choosing instead to promote yet another Mark Levin rant.
The final Jan. 6 committee report
CNS spent much ofthe year attacking the House committee looking into the Trump-incited Capitol riot -- and, unsurprisingly, it censored nearly all mention of the committee's findings when it held a final hearing. Instead, it devoted two articles to attacking the the committee's criminal referrals and ignoring the rest. First up with a Dec. 20 article eby Craig Bannister:
Alan Dershowitz says Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who announced the House January 6 Subcommittee’s criminal referrals on Monday, knows they’re unconstitutional – because he studied under the iconic, liberal constitutional scholar and professor emeritus at Harvard Law.
In an interview on Monday night’s “Hannity,” Prof. Dershowitz was asked by Fox News’ Pete Hegseth if the committee's members knew their actions were unconstitutional.
Alan Dershowitz says Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who announced the House January 6 Subcommittee’s criminal referrals on Monday, knows they’re unconstitutional – because he studied under the iconic, liberal constitutional scholar and professor emeritus at Harvard Law.
In an interview on Monday night’s “Hannity,” Prof. Dershowitz was asked by Fox News’ Pete Hegseth if the committee's members knew their actions were unconstitutional.
Bannister followed up later that day with another attack:
When Republicans take control of the House of Representatives in January, they should investigate the “malfeasance” of the Democrat-led January 6 Subcommittee, which edited out exculpatory information and cleverly edited in “incriminating” information, Fox News Legal Analyst Gregg Jarrett says.
After the committee announced criminal referrals to the Justice Department on Monday, calling on it to investigate former President Donald Trump, Jarrett appeared on Fox News with Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz to denounce the committee and its referrals.
Jarrett said that he agrees with Dershowitz that the Justice Department will simply throw the referrals into “the circular file”:
[...]
Jarrett said that he agrees with Dershowitz that the Justice Department will simply throw the referrals into “the circular file”:
Bannister refused to any committee member or spokesperson an opporturnity to respond to either Dershowitz or Jarrett. And CNS has completely censored any mention of the witness transcripts the committee has released since then.
Remember, CNS' mission statement claims that it "endeavors to fairly present all legitimate sides of a story." If it's censoring stories that make Republicans and conservatives look bad, it's not only not living up to that -- and looks more and more like a biased right-wing rag than a "news" organization.
MRC Complains Cowboys Owner Looks Like A Racist In Old Photo Of Him Hanging With Racists Topic: Media Research Center
Oh, the people the Media Research Center chooses to defend -- like Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones after the Washington Post found a 1950s picture of a teenage Jones among a crowd of segregationists harassing a group of black students integrating a high school in North Little Rock, Ark., where he grew up. An outraged Dec. 1 post by the mysterious Jay Maxson was in full lash-out mode -- not at Jones, of coruse, but at the Post for exposing and at LeBron James for commenting on it:
We know that LeBron James is more than an athlete and the Washington Post sports section is more than a sports section. They’ve told us so. On Wednesday night, James took on members of the media in condescending fashion after a Lakers’ game about why they did not question his reaction to an ages-old photo of Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones watching desegregation efforts in Arkansas.
The Washington Post’s race-baiting SJW’s (who take a backseat to nobody -- not even James -- in their self-regard) are doing a series castigating the NFL for not hiring more black coaches. Last week the installment centered in on the photo of Jones watching racial intimidation in Arkansas as a 14-year-old boy. Jones was quoted saying he was present to watch the event out of curiosity and he did not participate in it.
The Post headline belittled Jones as a man who transformed the NFL, except when it comes to race. He was photographed in Arkansas during a time of racial conflict, and he’s never hired a black man to coach the Cowboys. He’s risen to power in the confederacy of the pro football plutocracy, the Post story goes, in part based on the cultural effect of Jim Crow of his youth. It’s character assassination at its finest.
Maxson didn't explain why it was "race-baiting" for the Post to accurately report on the Cowboys' dismal record on coaches, or why it was "character assassination" to report accurate information about that and the photo -- or why he censored that the Post also reported that under Jones' Cowboys ownership, "just two of the team’s offensive or defensive coordinators, the steppingstones to head coaching positions, have been Black, including none since 2008."
We also don't recall the MRC calling it "character assassination" whenever someone pointed out that the late Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd used to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan -- heck, the MRC is still reminding us of that to this day, typically as a way of besmirching President Biden.Indeed, Maxson himself (or herself) called Byrd "a real-life Klansman" in a July 2020 post, going on to whine, "Why are the monument removers not busily scrubbing away his name, where's the media outrage over him?" Maxson censored the fact that Byrd spent the final several decades of his life apologizing for his Klan involvement, to the point that no less than the NAACP favorably eulogized him when he died.
Maxson then complained that James "was miffed that the media had recently jumped all over the Brooklyn Nets’ Kyrie Irving for anti-semitism and why Jones wasn’t canceled over a photo of Jones resurrected from 1957," going on to huff:
Getting back to James, while constantly running interference for his evil Communist Chinese benefactors, he assumed that Jones was guilty of something for just having watched race relations boil over in Arkansas so long ago. Jones also opposed anthem kneeling in 2017, putting a target on his back for social justice warriors. James is no longer the Dallas Cowboys fan he used to be.
Irving was suspended in November because he posted a link on social media to a documentary that included antisemitic tropes, and he has since apologized. The media typically feeds James’ massive ego and sought out his opinion on that issue. He craved for the same attention over Jones.
Maxson didn't mention that his MRC colleagues had trouble criticizing Irving's fit of anti-Semitism, with Maxson himself (or herself) playing the whataboutism card. And he played whataboutism here too, insisting that James was somehow a bigger racist than Jones.
In that vein, the closest thing to a forceful criticism of Irving's anti-Semitism by the MRC came in a Dec. 1 post by Mark Finkelstein -- and it happened only because Finkelstein was defending Jones and criticizing James:
What's next, Don Lemon: "whether or not you agree with the people hanging 'Kanye Is Right' banners?"
Lemon hosted a segment on Thursday's CNN This Morning to discuss LeBron James complaining that his old Cavaliers teammate Kyrie Irving has been subjected to intense criticism over his promotion of an antisemitic book and movie, whereas there has been relatively little attention paid to a photo that recently published by The Washington Post showing a 14-year-old Jerry Jones, now owner of the Dallas Cowboys, in a crowd blocking black children from entering a North Little Rock school in 1957.
Jones claims he was curious, but not a participant in the event. He was 14. Kyrie Irving is 30.
At one point, Lemon said of LeBron's statement:
"I've been making a very similar point, that there are a lot of people, whether you agree with Kyrie Irving or not, but there are a lot of people who feel the same way that LeBron James does."
So, there are two legitimate sides to this, Don? Those that agree with Irving that it is worthwhile to promote vile antisemitic tropes, including Holocaust denial, and those that don't?
To paraphrase a former president, are there "very fine people" on both sides of Kyrie Irving's promotion of antisemitism, Don?
Meanwhile, Nicholas Fondacaro suddenly found harsh words to condemn Kanye West's anti-Semitism -- something the MRC has also had trouble with -- in a Dec. 2 post that, again, came in the context of trying to defend Jones and attack James:
Racist Sunny Hostin was at it again on Friday’s edition of The View. During a discussion about Kanye West’s heinous comments spouting anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, the ABC co-host demanded a “limitation” on the First Amendment. Something she surely doesn’t intend to apply to her, as she followed up with a disgusting assertion that Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones could have been in the KKK when he was 14.
[...]
The condemnation of West and his ilk was broken by co-host Ana Navarro, who hijacked the conversation to draw attention to Jones. She began the detour agreeing with basketball player LeBron James’s hypocritical gripe that people go to him for his opinion on matters dealing with race and bigotry.
“LeBron made the point that he gets all these questions about Kyrie Irving, about everybody else, and all these things. He says, you guys haven't asked me about Jerry Jones and why the disparate attention?” she said.
They missed the obvious point that James gets people asking him about those things because he’s put himself out there as an activist on the issue of so-called “social justice.” He gets asked about Irving because he’s a fellow player in his league, while Jones is an owner in a different one. Meanwhile, The View doesn’t have an issue with James’s silence on China’s genocide of the Uyghurs.
“I hope Jerry Jones really does take the opportunity to own this, to talk about it, to explain it and to talk about the change that has happened in 65 years, and his role in it,” Navarro proclaimed, saying he’s someone “who has so many black players, who has such a platform, who has all this money, who's got all this access”
In the 1957 photo in question, a 14-year-old Jones can be seen craning his neck from what The Washington Post reluctantly admits is “yards” away from other teens blocking passage of black students from entering a high school. And Hostin admitted Jones “claims he was just a casual observer at that event.”
Joy Behar pointed out that Jones, who’s now 80, was only 14 in 1957. But Hostin countered, pointing to how other kids Jones’s age at the time were in the KKK, seemingly hinting at the possibility that Jones could have been one of them:
On the subject of China, Fondacaro seems to have forgotten that his employer hypocriticallystopped criticizing Elon Musk for being too cozy with those commies when he got intersted in buying Twtter to own the libs. Instead, Fondacaro is demonstrating yet again that the MRC cares only about criticizing racism or anti-Semitism when doing so advances its partisan right-wing narratives, and they have little interest in unequivocal criticism of their fellow right-wingers.
Newsmax's Morris Keeps Sucking Up To Meal Ticket Trump Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax pundit Dick Morris is nothing if not painfully loyal to Donald Trump -- he's Morris' current meal ticket, after all, with at book promoting a low-stakes prediction that Trump will run against Hillary Clinton in 2024. And as Trump continues to rack up scandal after scandal, Morris has been studiously ignoring them in his frequent Newsmax TV hits. In between that, Morris was rehashing a previous claim that Republicans need to embrace early voting -- a view counter to other right-wingers and even Trump himself -- declaring in a Dec. 3 TV appearance:
If Republicans want to keep the House in 2024 and regain the Senate, they'll have to play by the same rules that have been enacted for elections as the Democrats use, Dick Morris of the bestseller "The Return: Trump's Big 2024 Comeback" told Newsmax on Saturday.
"First, read the book; that's all they have to do," Morris, the host of Newsmax's "Saturday Report." "I say that the reason the Democrats won in 2020 was not so much fraud as skill in understanding the new rules they enacted for elections."
Republicans didn't like the rules when they were enacted, he continued, "but they are the rules by which the game is played, and Republicans better start playing by those rules, because otherwise, we'll never win an election."
The first rule, Morris said, is to embrace early voting.
Morris added a news hook to this claim in a TV hit two days later:
With more than 1.8 million votes cast before Tuesday's U.S. Senate runoff between Republican Herschel Walker and Democrat incumbent Raphael Warnock, Democrats have built an advantage yet again through early voting.
And if Republicans are going to prevail in future elections, they will need to mirror their political rival's strategy, Dick Morris told Newsmax on Monday.
Then it was Trump-fluffing time, as Morris used a Dec. 10 appearance to spin potentially bad news for Trump as a good thing:
Former President Donald Trump might be investigated, indicted and prosecuted for "technical violations of the law," but none of it will ultimately matter, nor stop his 2024 presidential campaign, according to presidential strategist Dick Morris on Newsmax.
"None of this amounts to anything; each of them may be technical violations of the law, and he may be indicted, he may be found guilty, but it's not going to be a legal bar to his running for president, and it's not going to be a political bar," Morris told "Saturday Report." "If anything, it will stoke the enthusiasm of Republican voters."
The three investigations into Trump — Mar-a-Lago presidential documents raid, Jan. 6, and the election challenge — all amount to nothing more than minor violations, if anything, and pale in comparison to the unlawful activity of President Joe Biden.
A short column that day by Morris attacked a poll showing Ron DeSantis running close to Trump:
Yahoo News/YouGov completed a national survey on Dec. 5 of 1,635 American adults that purports to who that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis now runs even in a hypothetical Republican primary matchup with former President Trump. But when we drill deeper into the data, we find that Trump has a healthy 39 percent to 29 percent lead among Republicans.
When UGov asked respondents if they felt that Trump would be the party’s strongest candidate in 2024 or that it would be better if someone else ran, Republicans said by 48-28 that Trump should be the nominee.
The methodology of the Economist UGov poll is also questionable. Drawn from an online sample, they typically have very long questionnaires and have pay their panelists to complete the survey. By paying respondents, they are more likely to attract Democrats to their sample, putting the accuracy of their results in question.
Morris then used a selective reading of Trump's actions during the Capitol riot to portray him as a victim as shown by the "Twitter files" selectively released by Elon Musk in his Dec. 11 column:
New information revealed in the fourth release of Twitter files, documents how the Internet portal railroaded the former president and bent the rules to force his removal from the site.
On January 6, 2021 former President Donald Trump sent a message over his Twitter account for rioters to go home and to refrain from violence. This tweet mirrored what he had already said on television in a direct appeal to demonstrators to be nonviolent.
Nevertheless, on January 8th, two days after the riot, Twitter permanently banned Trump, while he was still in office as president of the United States.
Recently released Twitter files demonstrate that the decision to ban Trump stemmed from what Internet journalist Michael Shellenberger called “internal and external pressure” from inside and outside Twitter to ban him.
Morris talked about this on Newsmax TV the next day:
With Twitter and the FBI allegedly "conspiring" to suppress promotion or awareness of the original Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020 (courtesy of the New York Post), "it's becomes it own form of election-rigging," said Morris, author of the book, "The Return: Trump's Big 2024 Comeback."
The investigative findings in the files — along with the leaked whistleblower complaints against Twitter's old management — have "become far more potent than anything that happened in the [election-running] backrooms of Michigan and Arizona" in 2020.
Morris once again spun away Trump's potential legal troubles in a Dec. 16 appearance:
Political consultant Dick Morris says none of the criminal charges the Jan. 6 House select committee is expected to refer to the Justice Department against Donald Trump will bar the former president from running.
"It will have no impact on him politically," Morris said Saturday on Newsmax's Saturday Report."
"The Republican primary voters see it for what it is. They're going to stick with Trump, and he's going to get the nomination easily. ... All this is going to do is to revivify Trump's fortune. It will do one other thing. It marginalizes [Ron] DeSantis because ultimately the choice here will be, 'Do you think Trump should be in jail or not?' And if you say 'not,' you can't then say, 'Oh, but he should be out as president.' It just doesn't work that way. I think Trump will benefit from all of this, and the FBI indicts him and it gets even worse. I don't think that's going to hurt him. I think he's going to absolutely come through as unscathed as he was in two impeachments," added Morris, author of "The Return: Trump's Big 2024 Comeback."
Morris similarly spun the next day: "The Republican primary voters see it for what it is. They're going to stick with Trump, and he's going to get the nomination easily. ... All this is going to do is to revivify Trump's fortune."
As the commitee made those criminal referrals, more deflection occurred in a Dec. 19 appearance:
Political commentator and author Dick Morris told Newsmax Monday that the four criminal referrals against former President Donald Trump passed on to the Department of Justice by the House select Jan. 6 committee are a political "contrivance," "absurd," and are not likely to be prosecuted by the agency.
"This is so obviously a contrivance, and so obviously it's wrong," Morris said during "American Agenda" Monday. "I mean, Trump tried to bring in 20,000 [National Guard] troops to quell the riot. He told everyone to go home peacefully.
"To say that he fomented insurrection is just absurd. And that's obvious just as the two impeachment grounds were absurd, and voters understand that, particularly Republican voters."
Morris spun again -- with a large dose of self-aggrandizement -- in a Dec. 22 column:
When the House Jan. 6 Committee voted to send four criminal referrals against President Trump to the Department of Justice, this should not have come as any surprise to anyone.
Especially to anyone who read my bookThe Return: Trump’s Big 2024 Comeback.
In fact, in The Return, I predicted it, as well as almost all major developments involving the former president.
And I correctly predicted that very soon after the midterm elections, Trump would announce his candidacy for reelection.
I also claimed that he would stake out a huge lead over Ron DeSantis.
All of that has now happened.
Morris' book probably didn't predict that Trump would dine with a couple of anti-Semites or call for the suspension of the Constitution to put him back in office, and Morris remains unsurprisingly silent about that.
For decades, we have been moving toward government by technocracy, with major policy made by "expert" bureaucrats in agencies, supposedly above and immune to dirty politics. They can base their benevolent rules on The Science™ and not worry about public opinion.
If you like that idea, you probably do not understand how the administrative state ("Deep State") works. It may be above the melee of electoral politics, but it is deeply immersed in and the captive of intra-agency politics. That is increasingly determined by giant international corporations and global nongovernmental "nonprofit" (tax-exempt) organizations (NGOs) funded by Bill Gates, George Soros and nameless other mega-billionaires. And you can't throw them out.
We need Congress to take back its power from these agencies, and for the courts to stop allowing this unconstitutional delegation of power to the administrative state. We must exert the only leverage we have on Congress: Voting the rascals out.
She then went on to sound like a boilerplate right-wing ranter, complaining that "The current regime is the party of masking; lockdowns; coerced vaccinations no matter the necessity, efficacy, or risk; and suppression of physicians' ability to prescribe or even discuss government-disfavored treatments."
That column was unironically followed by a Dec. 6 column hypocritically complaining about the politicization of medicine, even though she's one of the people who helped politicize it by attacking anyone who criticized her anti-vaxxer rantings and who advocated commonsense measures to slow the spread of COVID as a big-government liberal:
The COVID-19 pandemic, with its mandates, was a rude awakening for many conservatives. In a free society, it is essential that experts and institutions be neutral. For example, medicine should be a neutral tool, the purpose of which is to detect and cure disease. Politicization turns it into a partisan weapon designed for manipulation and coercion.
The very definition of "neutral" has changed. It now means "secular," with the abolition of long-accepted religious or patriotic expressions, replacing them with aggressive ideological advocacy and performative activism in clinical spaces.
Before politicization, medical experts were expected to be impartial, skilled consultants whose role was to guide less-qualified colleagues, reassure the public and advise policymakers about rational public health policies. Politicization of medicine has perverted this mission. Politicized medical experts do the bidding of their masters. They rubber stamp medical treatments and policies that are favored for political reasons even if they are harmful and ineffective. The primary function of such "experts" is to deceive their colleagues and the public.
Many people have started to question the sincerity of politicized experts, and the universal trust in previously reliable experts and institutions has crumbled. The vacuum has been filled by alternative authorities. Unfortunately, the quality of this newly founded industry is variable. Speculation, misinformation, propaganda and outright lies are inter-mixed with true and genuinely helpful information. These dissident experts lack the resources to undertake the sophisticated research needed to answer difficult scientific questions. While their role is indispensable, their abilities are limited.
The politicization of medicine should be stopped and abolished. This is unlikely to occur as long as a heated political climate combined with economic crisis favors the deployment of powerful partisan weapons. While awaiting better and more harmonious times, people of goodwill and conscience need to recognize that we are engaged in asymmetric warfare, and try to expose and oppose the politicization of medicine by any means available to them.
No one should be coerced to follow one set of politically motivated rules presented under the guise of "benevolent" public health policies or "scientific" medical care.
Freedom fighters must not lose hope. In asymmetric warfare, the superpower does not always win, as the American Revolution showed.
Ironically, Orient did not say whether she would stop her politicization of medicine.
Orient was back to good ol' misinformation in her Dec. 12 column, irresponsibly promoting the discredited notion that people across the world are suddenly dropping dead from getting the COVID vaccine and outrageously making Holocaust comparisons:
ome Germans who lived through World War II have said that they had no idea the Holocaust that was going on. Maybe they thought the reports were fake news or enemy propaganda, or that civilized Germans would never commit such crimes. One "denialist" was a bartender whose bar was downwind from the ovens. He claimed to have noticed nothing.
Humans have an enormous capacity to see no evil.
Holocaust denial might have been more excusable had the deaths been scattered and seemingly random, not concentrated in a vilified ethnic group, and had they resembled natural death. Sudden death occurs, doctors might say, as some did in my residency program: "We see this from time to time."
Some who knew full well that Jews were being murdered rationalized it by calling it an essential public health measure, claiming that Jews were the source of the dread typhus epidemic.
We of course are not like them, and nothing could be as evil as the Nazi Holocaust. But consider the possibility that a genuine epidemic might rationalize public health measures that (inadvertently, we presume) lead to death. One is not supposed to blame officials or question their policies. Instead, we blame the disease on noncompliant people, deny them medical care and even hope that they die.
Bodies are in fact accumulating, though not concentrated in an identifiable location. But we are in denial even about the occurrence of excess deaths.
[...]
Financial analyst Edward Dowd presented figures showing an 18% increase in excess deaths across all age groups in Australia, an unprecedented insurance catastrophe. The legacy media? Silent.
That's because Dowd's claims are not true. But whoneeds facts when there is a conspiracy theory to peddle? Orient continued:
Even raw numbers from actuaries vanish. But where are the bodies?
Many were cremated. Most were disposed of without autopsy. Hospitals and medical examiners don't like to do autopsies – insurance doesn't pay, and few families can pay a $5,000 cost out of pocket. The results in any event could be attributed to natural causes. An autopsy of journalist Grant Wahl's body revealed a ruptured aortic aneurysm. His widow said: "It's just one of these things that had been likely brewing for years, and for whatever reason it happened at this point in time." She also said: "His death was unrelated to vaccination status." Quite possibly true. But she did not say what his vaccination status was. (Wahl had been vaccinated and had received at least one booster.) Dr. Peter McCullough advises patients with prior aortic abnormalities to avoid COVID-19 vaccination because of potential damage from spike protein.
Wahl did, in fact, die of a ruptured aortic aneurysm, and there's no reason to trust such a ridiculous misinformer like McCullough. Orient concluded:
An alternative to an autopsy might be to do an MRI scan and preserve samples of tissue like liver or heart for tests that might become available later.
As it stands, we have an epidemic called Sudden Adult Death Syndrome (SADS). Statistics on the full extent are being suppressed. One prominent physician told me he had never heard of it. The cause is not known, and few dare to suggest a connection with the mass vaccination campaign.
What we urgently need is a neutral scientific inquiry that is not politicized. The typhus epidemic showed that this is possible. Even Germans (aside from some murderous Nazis) became allies of their mortal enemies in the war against typhus-spreading lice. Using apolitical scientific analysis of the objective evidence, Nazis, Soviets, Americans, British and all Allies used virtually the same methods of prevention and treatment of epidemic typhus.
Why isn't that happening in America?
Because people like Orient spread lies and would demand that any such investigation be politicized to treat her lies seriously when there's no legitiamte evidence to back them up. She has played a key role in poisioning the well with her misinformation, and there's no reason to trust anything she might be involved in.
NEW ARTICLE: Midterm Stenography From CNS, Part 2 Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com was still pushing Republican talking points on the day of the midterm elections, but the reality of poor GOP performance slowly sank in -- to the point that it was even critical of Donald Trump. Read more >>
MRC Complains About Griner Prisoner Swap, Censors Criminal Record Of Ex-Marine Left Behind Topic: Media Research Center
Mysterious sports blogger Jay Maxson has been the Media Research Center's pointman (or woman) in cheering Russia's dentention of WNBA star Brittney Griner on trumped-up drug charges (even while the MRC was acting all sad that Russian athletes were being banned from international competition due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine), going on to insist that Griner deserves all the harsh treatment the Russians could dish out because she's a black non-heterosexual who purportedly doesn't love America enough (even though speaking out against injustice is a First Amendment right). When the U.S. gained Griner's freedom through a prisoner exchange for U.S.-imprisoned Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout -- whom the MRC had previously deemed too valuable to exhange for Griner -- Maxson rushed to whine about it in a Dec. 8 post:
The Biden Administration today got taken to the cleaners in the prisoner swap of Viktor Bout – the world’s most notorious arms dealer in the world -- for American basketball player Brittney Griner while a real hero rots in a foreign prison.
This morning, Joe Biden said of Griner, “She’s safe. She’s on a plane. She’s on her way home.” However, American Paul Whelan, a former Marine serving 16 years in a harsh Russian penal colony, is not safe and is not coming home. He was arrested by Russia for alleged espionage in 2018. It’s no surprise that Biden failed a high-profile veteran. He left Americans behind in Afghanistan, too, just last year.
Griner checks the political boxes for the leftist president. She is black, lesbian, woke. Griner was arrested in Moscow last February attempting to board a plane with cannabis. Later, she was convicted of drug smuggling, sentenced to nine years in prison and recently transported to a harsh prison. The Phoenix Mercury center has already been canonized by the far-Left Women’s NBA.
[...]
Griner returns to pounding a basketball. Whelan pounds sand.
Maxson censored the fact that Whelan is hardly a saint. He received a bad-conduct discharge from the Marines following a court martial for attempted larceny, false statements and dereliction of duty, among other things. In other words, he actually committed crimes that were much worse the Russia accused Griner of doing (having a couple vape cartridges of cannabis oil) - but Maxson wants you to think his "former Marine'" status makes him virtuous.
On Thursday, the liberal media celebrated Russia’s release of WNBA player Brittney Griner as a triumph for President Joe Biden. But back in 2018, the same journalists were desperate to find a negative framing when the Trump administration negotiated the release of three American hostages from North Korea.
[...]
It’s right to celebrate when an American is brought home after an ordeal in a hostile country, but what the liberal media have been demonstrating is a double standard of lukewarm praise - annoyance when a Republican scores that victory.
But that defense crumbled quickly after former Trump national security adviser John Bolton revealed that Trump had a chance to exchange Whelan for Bout but declined to do so.
Kevin Tober went on to whine that "anti-American WNBA player Brittney Griner was released from a Russian prison due to the Biden administration trading away one of Russia’s most dangerous terrorists and arms dealers Viktor Bout" -- the only evidence Tober provided of Griner being "anti-American" was her protesting against injustice by sitting out the National Anthem during WNBA games, which she has the very American First Amendment right to do -- then expressed glee that "the 'big three' nightly newscasts actually gave voice to criticism that the United States shouldn’t have traded a dangerous Russian terrorist for Griner, especially while leaving U.S. Marine Paul Whelan behind." Tober failed to mention the criminal background that got Whelan kicked out of the Marines, let alone explain why such a criminal should be let back into the country.
On Thursday evening’s edition of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, host Tucker Carlson exposed to a national audience what was revealed on investigative journalist Jordan Schachtel’s Substack, which is that NBC News originally reported that Russia reportedly offered the Biden administration a choice between freeing Marine Paul Whelan and anti-American Basketball player Brittney Griner, and Biden chose Griner. Then when nobody noticed, NBC quietly covered for Biden and changed the story to what is currently the media narrative that Russia said take Griner or you get nobody.
After airing Biden repeating his claim that Griner was the only American prisoner they would allow to go home, Carlson mocked Biden’s apparent lie: “This was not a choice of which American to bring home. Really? Oh but it clearly was a choice and we know it was a choice because the first accounts of the prisoner swap with Russia said it was a choice.”
Unfortunately for Tober and Carlson, NBC retracted that claim the following day. Tober has yet to correct his post.
In a Dec. 9 post, Mark Finkelstein complained that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough called Republican critics of the Griner-Bout swap given how they are die-hard supporters of the "fascist" Trump, grumbling further that this was "a classic straw man diversion. Many non-conservatives, including MSNBC's own contributors, have criticized Biden's swap." Maxson returned to tout the anti-Griner rantings of a right-wing sports guy:
Due to America’s obsession with identity politics, Russian President Vladimir Putin knew we were ripe for the plucking. That's Jason Whitlock’s This explanation for Thursday’s outrageously uneven U.S.-Russia prisoner exchange that left behind American ex-Marine Paul Wheland and teacher Marc Fogel.
Whitlock claimed on his Blaze Fearless podcast that “CRT, diversity inclusion and equity (DIE) dictated that President Joe Biden go to unreasonable and dangerous lengths to win the release of Brittney Griner. She’s black and gay. Her membership in the LGBTQ, BLM alphabet mafia makes her more valuable to the Biden Administration than (ex-)Marine Whelan and school teacher Fogel, both white men incarcerated in Russia.”
Putin used America’s commitment to racial and sexual idolatry “to fleece us in a trade,” Whitlock added. “There are rumors that Putin targeted Griner because he recognized that the Biden Administration would be forced to bow to pressure from the alphabet mafia.”
[...]
CRT and DIE have weakened the American educational system, work environment, movies and television. Whitlock says we should not be surprised when it is also evident in our foreign policy.
Again, Maxson failed to mention Whlean's criminal record.
Brad Wilmouth used a Dec. 11 post to complain that Republicans were being called out for opposing the Griner swap because she was a black lesbian:
On Saturday afternoon, CNN was again showing how fixated on race and identity the liberal media are as CNN contributor S.E. Cupp and former contributor James Carville suggested that racism is to blame for Republicans criticizing President Joe Biden's prisoner exchange agreement with Russia that led to the release of the WNBA's Brittney Griner.
The allegedly conservative S.E. Cupp theorized that House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy criticized the agreement because Griner is a "Black lesbian," and Carville declared that is it because she is "not White" and "not straight."
After host Jim Acosta showed a clip of McCarthy criticizing the plan that resulted in the release of a high-value Russian prisoner known as the "merchant of death," Carville began his response: "So, Jim, I'm going to say something controversial, but I'm going to preface it with something true."
After acknowledging that a reasonable argument can be made against doing such prisoner exchanges because of the cost, he still accused Republicans of the worst motives as he continued: "Does anyone in their right mind think that if Brittney was a blind Chi Omega from SMU that the reaction would have been the same? Of course not."
A bit later, he added: "...a lot of this like a lot of things in America are driven by the fact that this young person is not White and is not straight. And if you don't believe that, you're not in tune with American politics. I'm sorry, this is something that just has to be said."
Wilmouth didn't mention that the MRC's own Maxson specifically cited Griner being a black lesbian as a reason to oppose the exchange.
WND's Farah Goes Wobbly On Ukraine, Hides Reason Why Churches Are Being Targeted Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah declared in his Dec. 8 WorldNetDaily column:
I was fooled about Volodymyr Zelensky.
Yes, even I. When I'm wrong, I like to admit it. And I was horribly wrong.
How wrong was I and about the entire war in Ukraine?
Last March, I called Zelensky a courageous "Hebrew warrior." How's that? Worse yet, I jumped to conclusions about his war.
I apologize.
I even compared him to biblical heroes from the book of Judges. Sheesh! Was I ever wrong about him.
I was too quick to believe the media – something I rarely do. My whole career trained me against it.
But today, seeing is believing.
So what has he done wrong? It's legion. Zelensky has banned opposition parties. He's shut down critical media by force. He's arrested his political opponents. He has sent soldiers into churches. Zelensky's secret police have raided monasteries across Ukraine, even a convent full of nuns, and arrested dozens of priests for no justifiable reason whatsoever and in clear violation of the Ukrainian constitution, which apparently no longer matters. And in the face of this, the Biden administration has said nothing.
Last week, he announced his plan to ban an entire religion, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – more than a thousand years old – and to seize its property, all for being insufficiently loyal to his regime. A free country does not ban a major religion.
Nor is it permissible in time of war to place soldiers in churches. It's wrong to arrest dozens of priests. It's a war crime. And he's doing it to a Ukrainian church!
Joe Biden remains silent about all this – of course.
Farah is deliberately omitting a significant fact: All of these things Zelensky has cracked down on are aligned with Russia, the enemy who's trying to destroy the country, something that happens during any war. That includes the Ukrainian Orthodox Church -- which is fully labeled as the Moscow Patriarchate -- that still has ties to the Russian Orthodox Church, headed by staunch Putin ally Patriarch Kirill, who cheers Russia's war against Ukraine. A breakaway sect, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, has formed independent of Moscow, which the Russians have tried to suppress. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church monasteries were raided because it is believed that Russian special forces were involved in "subversive activities" against Ukraine inside them.
But rather than tell his readers the truth, Farah decided it was more important to fearmonger about "the Deep State – and the Uni-Party" and portray support for Zelensky as somehow evil:
You know what Big Tech and the U.S. media are like. Ukraine is worse. The Zelensky government bans all opposition voices and parties. Priests are arrested. Is that freedom?
I repent of my once-enthusiastic support of Zelensky and the immoral war in Ukraine. Not another dime for the U.S. war machine in Ukraine. Not now. Not ever. We were sold a bill of goods.
I regret my support for this quagmire – just one more permanent war for the war party.
It was never the right call – especially when we are at real risk of nuclear war.
But Farah never states the obvious: Because he has reneged his support for Ukraine, that means he has become an ally of the warmongering Vladimir Putin and RussiaIf anyone has created that "real risk of nuclear war" he purports to abhor, it's Putin, not Zelensky; Farah seems to be mad at Zelensky for fighting back and refusing to let his country be taken over by a hositile neighbor.
Newsmax Hyped (Non-Existent) Threat Of Armed New Black Panthers In Ga. Runoff Topic: Newsmax
Theodore Bunker hyped in a Dec. 6 Newsmax article:
The New Black Panther Party will deploy armed guards at polling locations across Georgia during the runoff between Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., and GOP candidate Herschel Walker.
The New Black Panther Party was joined by Black Lawyers for Justice and other groups in the effort, which they said is intended to protect voters from violence or intimidation. They also said that they are not endorsing either candidate in the race.
"No one will come and touch, harm, threaten, do anything to any person walking into that voting booth to exercise that right," organizer Khallida Ramla Bastet said Monday during a press conference, according to Fox 5 Atlanta.
"This is a legal position that we are taking. We are in position so that if anything happens to anyone, we are here to offer you legal representation. We are here to offer you security. And that's that. And may the best person win," Bastet said.
The Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center have both described the New Black Panther Party as a hate group.
Just one problem with this scenario: it didn't actually happen. As PolitiFact reported:
However, the New Black Panther Party told PolitiFact it decided against armed patrols.
Ahmad Muhammad, national assistant to Malik Zulu Shabazz, the chairman of the New Black Panther Party, said the group’s members appeared at polling places in Savannah and Brunswick, but decided against carrying firearms because they didn’t want to deter voters.
"We try not to have anyone feel unsafe at the polling sites," Muhammad said.
County officials in multiple counties, the secretary of state’s office and voting rights groups said they received no reports of armed Black Panthers at voting sites on Election Day. We also found no news reports or video footage to support the claim.
PolitiFact added: "If armed individuals had shown up near voting sites, that wouldn’t be illegal under Georgia law unless they stood too close to voters or intimidated them."
Bunker's story has not been corrected to reflect that what he reported on didn't happen, and Newsmax published no follow-up stopry to that effect.
Ted Cruz was having a gangbusters year of being featured at CNSNews.com -- it help when you hire the daughter of CNS editor Terry Jeffrey as your spokesperson. Here's the free promotion Cruz got from CNS in the final quarter of 2022, which throttled things back a bit from earlier in the year:
As usual, CNS has never explained why it considers Cruz so newsworthy, and it definitely hasn't disclosed in any of these the fact that Cruz employs Jeffrey's daughter.
MRC Is Lashing Out At NewsGuard Again Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has spent the past couple of years waging a loud, lamewar against website credibility-rating firm NewsGuard for pointing out the inconvenient fact that right-wing websites are not very credible -- which, in the tunnel-vision eyes of the MRC, can only mean that NewsGuard is somehow "biased" and its rating system is faulty. That fallacious whining has continued of the fall.
An Oct. 25 post by Catherine Salgado complained that the New York Times was "citing leftist, biased NewsGuard to back up its claims" that disinformation is rife on what she euphemistically called "alternative social media platforms" -- read: right-wing sitres like Gettr, Gab, Rumble and Truth Social, which she also laughably and dishonestly called "pro-free speech platforms" -- going on to reference how "MRC Free Speech America research showed that NewsGuard’s ratings skewed in favor of left-leaning outlets, the firm rating those outlets as having substantially more “credibility” on average than right-leaning outlets." Salgado also referenced"evidence that censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story by Big Media and Big Tech helped steal the election for then-presidential candidate Joe Biden in 2020, according to a Media Research Center survey conducted by McLaughlin & Associates." As we've pointed out, McLaughlin was Donald Trump's election pollister, so a poll result that supported its client was preordained and discredits the MRC's "evidence."
Joseph Vazquez spent a Nov. 4 post complaining that NewsGuard called out the disinfomation posted at Rumble:
Leftist internet traffic cop NewsGuard is in no position to be throwing around the “hoax” label when its own CEO tried to dismiss the Hunter Biden laptop scandal as a “hoax.” It's a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.
NewsGuard released a new self-serving report headlined: “Making YouTube Look Good: Rumble Becomes Hoax Central Ahead of the Midterms.” NewsGuard's primary complaint was that Rumble doesn’t abide by NewsGuard’s leftist ratings system like censorship-obsessed YouTube does:
“In search results, Rumble pushes twice as many sites rated untrustworthy by NewsGuard as YouTube,” which is laughable in the face of a December 2021 MRC study that showed outlets rated “left” or “lean left” by AllSides getting an average NewsGuard score of 93/100, while sites that AllSides considered “right” or “lean right” scored an abysmal average NewsGuard rating of 66/100.
This is the same NewsGuard whose CEO Steven Brill claimed before the 2020 elections that the Hunter Biden laptop scandal reported by the New York Post was a Russian “hoax.”
Vazquez doesn't prove anything NewsGuard says to be wrong -- he simply engages in whataboutism ranting about how "authoritarian Russia and Communist China" have accounts on Facebook. He also whined that NewsGuard called out the Rumble accounts of right-wingers Steve Bannon, Steven Crowder and Dan Bongino for spreading disinformation, but he offered no evidence that they don't.
When NewsGuard highlighted how purveyors of misinformation saw increased engagement after Elon Musk bought Twitter, Brian Bradley was there to complain about it in a Nov. 15 post:
Another day, another NewsGuard mudsling against the First Amendment.
NewsGuard, a wildly biased website rating firm, attempted to tarnish Elon Musk's Twitter using its flawed rating system. Musk has expressed an eagerness to promote free speech and eschew unfair censorship on the platform, but not without a fight by NewsGuard.
“Twitter’s most popular NewsGuard Red-Rated untrustworthy accounts garnered 57.04% increase in engagement in the week following the change in ownership,” NewsGuard wrote in an article Friday.
New Twitter CEO Musk’s pro-free-speech stance has apparently encouraged “greater activity by malign actors, boosting the popularity of misinformation on the platform,” the article reads.
In fact, both Twitter and NewsGuard are private companies to which the First Amendment does not apply. Bradley even hyped a couple of those serial misinformers -- but insisted that NewsGuard is the problem, not them, because it apparently doesn't have a sense of humor:
NewsGuard took specific aim at two of the 25 accounts that it lambasted as publishing “false” claims about COVID-19: Dr. Joseph Mercola and Dr. Christiane Northrup.
Mercola turned to Substack after YouTube in September 2021 banned his account for spreading so-called COVID-19 “misinformation.”
NewsGuard complained that Mercola “published numerous false claims about vaccines and the COVID-19 pandemic, and that Mercola’s Twitter interactions “rose from 932 to 19,259, a 1966.42% increase in engagement and the largest increase measured by NewsGuard.”
The article also included a tweet of a meme Northrup posted on Oct. 28, depicting a cartooned Musk mocking a caricatured, crying leftist.
NewsGuard portrayed Northrup as “a self-described wellness expert that has also repeatedly published false information about COVID-19.”
Maybe get a sense of humor, NewsGuard?
By not disputing that Mercola and Northrup do, in fact, spread misinformation, Bradley is basically trying to maliciously privilege misinformation by dishonestly labeling it as "free speech." He doesn't explain why misinformation shouldn't be countered, or why he's so desperate to see it spread.
After NewsGuard called out Fox News' Tucker Carlson for his rampant misinformation, Salgado went on the attack in a Dec. 6 post:
Try figuring this one out. Biased ratings firm NewsGuard reportedly gave leftist CNN’s Inside Politics a credibility score of 9/10, while Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show notched a 0/10.
MRC Free Speech America showed in a December 2021 report that “credibility” arbiter NewsGuard has a strong leftist, anti-free speech bias. But the online ratings firm is now expanding beyond online news to TV news, Variety reported.
Variety said NewsGuard’s ratings of “140 cable, streaming, and network television shows and networks will be available to advertising agencies, marketers, and others starting January 2, 2023.”
NewsGuard’s bias is already evident based on its TV show ratings. NewsGuard scored Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight< at rock bottom, giving the show a 0/10.
NewsGuard claimed Carlson’s show “regularly advances false, misleading, and unsubstantiated claims on topics of importance such as COVID-19 and U.S. and international politics.”
"NewsGuard is a dangerous form of censorship," said MRC President Brent Bozell. "They are trashing Tucker's show and downgrading anything they don't like, then pushing advertisers to bail and force them off the air."
As with her fellow writers, Salgado made no effort whatsoever to rebut what NewsGuard actually said ahout Carlson, even though its report on him cites numerous examples of misinformation he has spread. Instead, she whined that "Inside Politics" host John King is "blatantly biased" while citing a few cherry-picked statements.
The MRC has no interest in a good-faith debate with NewsGuard about website credibility -- it simply wants to shout down NewsGuard for revealing inconvenient truths about the shoddiness of right-wing media.
WND Still Defending The Honor Of Ivermectin Topic: WorldNetDaily
Art Moore is WorldNetDaily's chiefdefender of ivermectin as a drug to treat COVID (despite a lack of quality research to back it up), and he was in full defender mode in a Nov. 23 article:
In a lawsuit by three doctors accusing the FDA of interfering in their treatment of COVID-19 patients with ivermectin, a lawyer for the agency insisted that urging people to "stop" taking the medicine was merely an informal recommendation.
The fact that the "recommendation" – which included mocking the drug as "horse dewormer" – prompted hospitals and pharmacies to ban its use for COVID-19 doesn't mean the FDA bears any responsibility, contended Isaac Belfer in a hearing in federal court in Texas.
"The cited statements were not directives. They were not mandatory. They were recommendations. They said what parties should do," Belfer said Nov. 1, Epoch Times reported.
Attorneys for the physicians, who included Dr. Paul Marik, cited three online posts by the FDA, including a tweet, featuring a photo of a horse, saying: "You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it."
The tweet linked to an FDA web page titled "Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19." On a separate page, the FDA stated: "Q: Should I take ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19? A: No." A subsequent tweet said: "Hold your horses, y'all. Ivermectin may be trending, but it still isn’t authorized or approved to treat COVID-19."
Ivermectin – which has been a safe and effective, Nobel-prize-winning, FDA-approved treatment for many diseases – can be prescribed for COVID-19 by a physician "off label," and 93 randomized controlled trials confirm the reported success of many physicians around the world.
[...]
The lawsuit charges the FDA interfered with the doctors’ practice of medicine, violating the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and other laws. It asks the court to prohibit the FDA from issuing guidance on whether ivermectin should be used to treat COVID-19. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, has said he would rule "as quickly as we can for ya'll."
Because Moore is getting his information from a story by the Epoch Times -- one of the more prolific outlets for COVID misinformation -- he's misleading his readers. As FactCheck.org reported:
The FDA’s lawyers also pointed out that although the doctors bringing the case allege that the statements interfered with their ability to practice medicine, the doctors also said that they continued to prescribe ivermectin for COVID-19 patients despite the FDA’s online posts.
The FDA’s description in court of its posts as recommendations didn’t constitute a change in the administration’s position.
[...]
The FDA’s website still explains why people shouldn’t use ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment, and the National Institutes of Health recommends against its use for the disease, except for clinical trials.
FactChck added that "randomized clinical trials have repeatedly found that ivermectin does not benefit COVID-19 patients"-- something Moore will never tell his readers because he's too invested in the right-wing pro-ivermectin narrative. Indeed, that touting of "93 randomized controlled trials" comes from an anonymous website that, as we've noted, may be secretly run by the fringe-right, anti-vaxxer Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and there's arguably more quality research showing that ivermectin doesn't work to treat COVID.
As part of its war on transgender people, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg ragedin a Aug. 12 
An anonymously written Nov. 22 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Resarch Center's 
We've already noted how CNSNews.com 
Oh, the people the Media Research Center chooses to defend -- like Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones after the Washington Post 
Newsmax pundit Dick Morris is nothing if not painfully loyal to Donald Trump -- he's Morris' 
Like her fellow WorldNetDaily COVID misinformer 
Mysterious sports blogger Jay Maxson has been the Media Research Center's 
Joseph Farah declared in his Dec. 8 WorldNetDaily 
Theodore Bunker hyped in a Dec. 6 Newsmax 
Ted Cruz was having a 
The Media Research Center has spent the past couple of years waging a 
Art Moore is WorldNetDaily's 