CNS Managing Editor Tries To Spin Capitol Riot Topic: CNSNews.com
We've documented how CNSNews.com uncritically repeated unproven conspiracy theories from Donald Trump and his supporters that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, then was briefly shocked into being a fair and balanced news organization after the Capitol riot, though it eventually descended into whataboutism over protests against police brutality. For the second anniversary of the riot, CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman worked to spin the events of the riot in a Jan. 9 article:
Contrary to the claims and inferences by Democrat [sic] Party leaders and many people in the left-wing media, not one Capitol Police officer was killed during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
However, three Trump supporters at the event died, two by natural causes and one by accident. Also, a fourth Trump supporter, Air Force veteran Ashlii Babbitt, was shot and killed by Police Officer Lt. Michael Byrd.
In a Jan. 6, 2023 tweet, House Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, commented, "Thinking of the families of law enforcement officers we lost that dark day."
On Jan. 5, 2023, President Joe Biden at a public event said, "Jill and I have mourned police officers in this Capitol rotunda not once but twice in the wake of January 6. Once to honor Officer Brian Sicknick, who lost his life the day after the attack. The second time to honor Officer Billy Evans, who lost his life defending the Capitol as well.”
As the autopsy report by the D.C. Chief Medical Examiner documents, Officer Brian Sicknick died of "natural" causes on Jan. 7. He died from "acute brainstem and cerebellar infarcts due to acute basilar artery thrombosis," states the report. In layman's terms, Officer Sicknick died from strokes. The "manner of death" was officially declared "natural."
Police Officer Billy Evans did not die "defending the Capitol" on Jan. 6, 2021. He was deliberately hit by a car at the Capitol on April 2, 2021; the driver of the vehicle was Noah Green, a "vocal defender of the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan."
We've noted how CNS largely ignored Sicknick's death until after that medical examiner's report came out blaming his death on "natural causes."Then as now, CNS censored the fact that the medical examiner also said that "all that transpired" at the Capitol riot "played a role in his condition."
Chapman further complained:
Speaking on the House floor on Jan. 2, 2023, newly elected Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) stated, "We are gathered here to honor their memory and acknowledge with deep gratitude the tremendous bravery of the hundreds of officers who defended us at this citadel of democracy that fateful day."
"As a result of the events on January 6, the lives of five heroic officers were lost," he added.
Yet not one police officer was killed (or died) on Jan. 6, 2021.
Chapman went on to list thet names of those officers who committed to make the point that they did not die the day of the riot. But again, he censored the fact that the suicide of at least one officer has been ruled a death in the line of duty.
Chapman then invoked ranty Fox News host Tucker Carlson to defend Babbitt and attack Byrd:
Commenting on Babbitt's death, Carlson said on Jan. 6, 2023, "Two years ago today, a Capitol Hill police officer called Michael Byrd shot an unarmed woman in the neck. At the time of that killing, Byrd had a documented history of gross negligence with a firearm. He left a loaded Glock pistol in a public men's room at the Capitol, which for a law enforcement official is a firing offense.
"But for some reason, Michael Byrd was still on the force that day. The woman he killed was called Ashli Babbitt. Babbitt was a married 14-year veteran of the US military. She ran a pool cleaning company with her husband in San Diego. Physically, she was tiny. She was also unarmed.
"Michael Byrd later admitted he had no indication at all that Babbitt was carrying a weapon. She posed no visible threat. He killed her anyway.
"Under normal circumstances, Byrd would have been fired immediately and charged with murder, which he clearly committed, but that's not what happened.
"After doing essentially no investigation into the shooting, Nancy Pelosi's congressional police force declared Byrd a national hero and the media strongly agreed."
In February 2019, Officer Byrd left his gun, a Glock 22, in a bathroom in the U.S. Capitol. It was found later that day in a routine security sweep. Byrd said the incident was a "terrible mistake" and he "was penalized for it."
Byrd's shooting of Babbitt was the first time he had discharged his weapon in 28 years as a policeman.
Neither Carlson nor Chapman explained why Babbitt was climbing through a broken window, nor did they mention any of the other acts ofviolence that day that made law enforcement less inclined to give domestic terrorists the benefit of the doubt. Neither was it explained why they are being so harsh on Byrd when these law-and-order conservatives normally stick up for law enforcement no questions asked.
MRC Continued Hypocritically Hammering On Biden Classified Documents Story Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's gloating over President Biden's classified document kerfuffle -- and complaining about people continually pointing out that it's nothing like Donald Trump's document hordading -- continued from where we left off, even though it laboredmightily to work the deflect-and-defend angle when the FBI raided Donald Trump's estate last year to retrieve classified documents he refused to return.
Jeffrey Lord gleefully declared that it was a "media misfire" that Biden got a special counsel to look into his document situation the way Trump got one for his in his Jan. 14 column:
Joe Biden’s Trump-hating liberal media allies can take a bow. By their insistence that a Special Counsel be appointed to investigate Trump because he had classified documents at Mar a Lago, the revelations that Biden did exactly the same thing - three times over! - has now won their hero a Special Counsel of his own, plus a congressional investigation. All this along with the revelation that his Penn Biden Center has been financed by millions in Chinese dark money. And also raising the question, of course, of how much of that Chinese money was laundered through the Biden Center before going in the Big Guy’s pocket.
The MRC played up a couple more instances of non-right-wing media criticizing Biden over this (oblivious to the fact that it discredits its narrative that these outlets are hopelessly biased):
Then it was back to whining that people keep pointing out the difference between the Biden and Trump situations. Bill D'Agostino huffed in a Jan. 16 post:
The rapidly unfolding nightmare of President Biden’s document scandal prompted desperate talking points from Democrat-friendly cable networks last week, the most prominent of which was the claim that Biden’s classified document issues bore “night and day” differences to those of former President Trump.
Pundits were clearly rankled that Republicans were drawing comparisons between Biden and Trump, and they endeavored at every turn to point out the differences between the two cases.
D'Agostino didn't dispute that there is a difference; instead he parroted Lord by noting that "despite the corporate media’s protests, a Special Counsel has been appointed. One suspects he will not receive the same high praise with which the media routinely showered Robert Mueller."
Public television’s idea of a balanced political debate: Friday's PBS NewsHour punditry found little daylight between “conservative” New York Times columnist David Brooks and liberal Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart, nodding in agreement that the new Biden classified document controversy had no comparison to Trump’s.
[...]
The Post’s Jonathan Capehart pretended the relative raw number of top secret documents found in the possession of Biden as compared with Trump was a significant comparison, though we don’t yet know what was in the Biden documents, calling the comparison "apples and basketballs."
[...]
Capehart tried to compare Biden’s woes favorably to Trump, saying the Biden team “have been cooperating. They have been transparent….The former president [Trump] stands accused basically of obstruction of justice. That is not what is happening with President Biden.”
Despite complaining that it was said, Waters also didn't dispute the accuracy of the assessment.
Curtis Houck repeated the MRC's sub-complaint, that it's being pointed out how Republicans are hypocritically using the discovery to attack Biden:
The Biden documents scandal entered its second week Monday and, on the flagship broadcast network morning news shows, ABC’s Good Morning America remained in a defensive mode for Team Biden by repeatedly insisting the White House will be cooperative and transparent with the special counsel, fretting “Republicans...are now pouncing,” and boasting Republicans will never be able to find out who’s been visiting Biden at his Wilmington, Delaware home.
Senior White House correspondent Mary Bruce may have tried to seem tough, but she was her usual self in falling on the grenades. She noted that “the White House is hardly being forthcoming,” but then said in the next sentence that “[t]hey are being extremely cautious” and fretting a “sense of drip, drip, drip” has set in.
After passing along the weekend’s developments with more documents found last week at Biden’s personal residence having triggered “more questions,” Bruce went into attack mode: “Republicans, who have shown little interest in investigating Donald Trump's handling of classified documents, are now pouncing on the President.”
It's "attack mode" to point out Republican hypocrisy?
Alex Christy sounded like a PR flack for a Republican congressman in a Jan. 17 post: "It is still unknown what exactly was in the documents, how they ended up at the Penn Biden Center and his Delaware home, and why it took months for the public to be made aware of the documents’ discovery. Those are real questions that have nothing to do with the Trump case that deserve answers." Yet we do't recall Christy demanding similar answers from Trump.
Houck returned to repeat his narrative: "ABC’s Good Morning America fought a surprisingly lonely battle Tuesday in carrying water for President Biden and the White House amid their classified documents scandal, repeatedly touting the administration as 'firing back' at Republicans wanting to learn more and making requests of the regime because...Donald Trump." Again, despite the complaints, Houck made no attempt to argue that there wasn't hypocrisy. More complaints followed:
While most normal people had moved on by this point, the MRC wasn't going to yet, as evidence by Brent Bozell rushing to Fox Business for a softball interview to desperately keep the story alive:
Media Research Center Founder and President Brent Bozell joined the Wednesday edition of the Fox Business Network’s Varney & Co. to sound off on the liberal media’s coverage of President Biden’s classified documents scandal and, for Bozell, it boiled down to six stages of behavior.
Host Stuart Varney began with highlights from Tuesday’s firecracker of a White House press briefing before asking Bozell: “[H]as the media finally turned against the White House, in your judgment?”
[...]
The scandal only grew, meaning a stage three with the press “turning reluctantly against Biden after the first — after the second group of — of — of boxes were found.”
Bozell added stage four had the liberal media becoming “even more skeptical of Biden” last Thursday when Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel ahead of five and six: “Stage five is the interesting — this is where there are right now. They've grown frustrated with the White House. They know the White House is stonewalling. They know the White House is not forthcoming. Stage six is what's going to happen next.”
If there was any mention of Trump's document scandal, it was not deemed important enough to be referenced in the item.
But even that last-ditch effort didn't help, and the MRC got bored with it too, as the posts on it slowed to a trickle over the next few days:
Morris, Newsmax Made Sure Trump Got Credit For McCarthy's Speakership Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax's coverage of the House leadership battle didn't start out on a promising note: A Jan. 3 article by John Gizzi started by delaring that "Despite facing at least a solid 10 "no" votes, Kevin McCarthy will prevail Tuesday and become House Speaker. But his close supporters in the House told Newsmax it will likely come on the second ballot."
That didn't age well at all. Thatr forced Gizzi to take a more pessimistic tone for a Jan. 5 article:
After six ballots and still not being any closer to the speakership than when the votes began on the House floor, Kevin McCarthy may be poised to finally break the impasse that has kept him from his longtime dream of wielding the speaker's gavel.
Sources close to the embattled House Republican leader said his campaign team agreed Wednesday night to a proposal floated by the conservative Club for Growth to win over enough of the 20 House Republicans who have continuously voted for candidates other than McCarthy for speaker — and thus denied the Californian the 217 necessary to win.
It has been suggested that the Club for Growth deal could move about 10 votes to McCarthy. While not enough to make McCarthy speaker, it would give him tremendous momentum.
Later in the piece, Gizzi quoted a Republican congressman vaguely referencing an earlier incident:
Speaking to Newsmax on Wednesday afternoon, Michigan Rep. John Moolenaar underscored why McCarthy will remain in the race until he wins.
"In 2015, after he said some unfortunate things on TV about how the hearings on the massacre at Benghazi [when the U.S. ambassador was killed in Libya] and was widely attacked by Democrats, Kevin suddenly withdrew from the race for speaker because he felt it was the right thing to do for our country," recalled Moolenaar.
"Now he will stay in the race — and continue to have the unwavering support of 202 of us — because he feels it is the right thing to do for the country," he continued.
What the "unfortunate" thing McCarthy said? Gizzi won't tell us. In fact, he told the truth (known in DC parlance as a Kinsley gaffe) that the purpose of the GOP-led Benghazi hearings were to drive down Hillary Clinton's poll numbers.
As the speaker battle dragged on, it became time to put a pro-Trump spin on things. Dick Morris obliged in another Jan. 5 article:
"I've been talking to Trump, and he's getting really mad about this. He's annoyed," Morris told Newsmax on Thursday afternoon, while appearing on "American Agenda" with another segment guest, former Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, a Republican.
"[Trump's] mad [the 20 GOP holdouts who refuse to vote for Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.] are holding out, embarrassing the party, standing for absolutely nothing," Morris continued. "There's no substantive demand that hasn't been met. And [Trump] thinks they're absolutely fouling up the process."
From Morris' own perspective, the GOP holdouts — a group headlined by Reps. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., Dan Bishop, R-N.C., and Mary Miller, R-Ill. — are "killing" their political careers by continually fighting McCarthy's speakership bid.
"They probably couldn't get elected as dog catcher in their district. For the party, as a whole, 'chaos' was always a Democrat thing. The Republicans were typically the grown-ups in the room, there to restore order; and now, it's completely flipping," reasoned Morris, author of "The Return: Trump's Big 2024 Comeback."
Morris followed up the next day with some (presumably Trump-approved) sucking up to McCarthy:
Political analyst Dick Morris told Newsmax on Friday the skills Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., used to get fierce opponents of him as speaker back on his side shows promise for when he finally assumes the role.
A new agreement among House Republicans earlier Friday broke a logjam in the fight for the speakership, as 15 of the 20 holdouts flipped to McCarthy's side. But after the 13th round of balloting, the California Republican still fell short of the 218 votes needed to become speaker. (Newsmax reported Republicans believe they have the votes for McCarthy in the 14th round, which was set to take place at 10 p.m. EST Friday.)
"I think that this demonstrates that McCarthy will be a very good speaker," Morris said on "Rob Schmitt Tonight.""To navigate everything he's navigated and to succeed at it and go through it and get those votes one at a time, I think it was an act of juggling that would have made Sam Rayburn, the historic speaker of the House, proud."
Well, the 14th vote failed too. But McCarthy ultimately won on the 15th ballot, and Newsmax's Eric Mack knew who to credit in a Jan. 7 article:
Former President Donald Trump was derided for having some of his staunch supporters holding out against House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., but Trump's dramatic call to House chamber to Reps. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., is credited for closing the deal.
"Thank you Kevin," Trump posted Saturday morning to Truth Social, along with video of the newly tapped speaker hailing Trump's late-night call. "It was my great honor!"
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., an advocate for the rights of the imprisoned Jan. 6 defendants, tweeted photos of the callsfrom Trump to the six holdouts standing firm against McCarthy through the 14th failed vote.
"I do want to especially thank President Trump," McCarthy, once a critic of Trump from Jan. 6, 2021, told reporters after his speaker acceptance speech and the swearing-in of members. "I don't think anybody should doubt his influence. He was with me from the beginning. Somebody wrote the doubt of whether he was there. And he was all in. He would call me and he would call others.
"He really was — and I was just talking to him tonight — helping get those final votes."
Morris returned for a victory lap later that day to make sure Ron DeSantis got no credit whatsoever:
The high drama early Saturday morning in the House concluded after former President Donald Trump closed the deal with a phone call, not Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, presidential adviser Dick Morris told Newsmax.
"I think it was enormous," Morris told "Saturday Report" about Trump's last-second call to avert an adjournment to Monday and bringing a 15th vote that would elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as House speaker. "I think what we really just witnessed was the new Republican leadership team: McCarthy and Trump, Trump and McCarthy."
[...]
DeSantis, who once served in the House with many of those GOP members, would not have had the political cachet to pull off what Trump did at the stroke of midnight, according to Morris.
"And for those who like Ron DeSantis, he couldn't have done this," Morris said.
It is McCarthy's House and still Trump's Republican Party, according to Morris.
"They work beautifully together, despite centrifugal forces," Morris admitted, saying even some staunch Trump supporters were never McCarthy, but ultimately stepped aside to allow the centrist to become speaker of 118th Congress.
Wayne Allyn Root Trump Sycophancy Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
When last we checked in on Wayne Allyn Root's Trump sycophancy, he was trying to deflect from donald Trump dining with anti-Semite Kanye West and anti-Semite and white supremacist Nick Fuentes by insisting that he merely hung out with a "celebrity acquaintance" and a "stranger." For his Dec. 23 WorldNetDaily column, Root re-watched "Braveheart" and decided that it is somehow "the story of America today – with the middle class fighting for its very survival ... and one man standing in the way: Donald J. Trump":
Trump is today's embodiment of Sir William Wallace.
Trump believes in cutting back the power of the corrupt D.C. swamp and deep state. He wants to give more power, freedom and opportunity to the people – and that scares the swamp and deep state to death.
The evil villain of "Braveheart" is the king of England: Edward Longshanks. Today the embodiment of King Edward is this Biden administration – which is clearly run by Obama, back for his third term.
I call this two-headed monster "O'Biden."
Just like King Edward, O'Biden believes the citizens' money belongs to government. Just like King Edward, O'Biden believes every decision should be made by government, every conversation should be listened to, and the people's rights and weapons must be confiscated as a threat to government's rule.
I believe that, just like a tyrant, this O'Biden administration uses the FBI to rig and steal elections. Just like a tyrant, this O'Biden administration uses the FBI to frame and raid political opponents – even the former president of the United States.
Just like a tyrant, this O'Biden administration orders social media companies like Twitter and Facebook to censor, suspend and ban anyone who disagrees with their agenda. They even order the media to change the news feed to suppress any negative stories about O'Biden's corruption.
Always remember this administration wanted the FBI to arrest PTA parents. Now they've added 87,000 new IRS agents to act as enforcers and intimidate the people.
We give away $100 billion to Ukraine (the most corrupt country in the world) to protect their border from an invasion, while they leave our border open to an invasion of millions.
[...]
History repeats. It's all happening today ... in America. Trump is the only thing standing between us and them. Between freedom and serfdom.
They only attack Trump. Not DeSantis. Not any other Republican. Just Trump. What does that tell you?
Trump is taking our slings and arrows. He is being attacked from a thousand directions. He is being framed, demonized, slandered and destroyed. They want him in prison. The entire deep state is assembled against him. Think what he faces every day. Think what he has given up. For us.
This is a war to save the heart and soul of America: the great American middle class. Trump is our war general. Don't let the con men of the D.C. swamp and deep state turn you against Trump. Ever. He's all we've got.
This Christmas, please understand and appreciate that Trump is our Braveheart.
But Root shockingly disagreed with Trump for his Jan. 6 column:
McCarthy is a prime example of a UniParty fraud: He is a D.C. swamp, deep-state RINO fake who backstabbed former President Donald Trump and then raised money to attack and defeat Trump-backed, America First, MAGA candidates in the 2022 election. He is the worst kind of fraud, coward and pansy.
Trump argued with me on my Real America's Voice TV show "America's Top Ten Countdown" last week that Sen. Mitch McConnell is even worse and that McCarthy would be better than a lot of other horrible choices for House speaker. Basically, Trump was arguing "everyone in the D.C. swamp sucks, so let's settle for the best of the worst."
I disagree 110%.
I want to remind Trump of how he became one of the wealthiest and most famous human beings in world history. By never settling. By aiming for the stars. By never accepting less than No. 1. No one – including Trump – ever got famous by aiming for the lowest common denominator. You aim for the stars; you don't aim for the curb.
Kevin McCarthy is the curb.
Being "the best of the worst" is not something to vote for. I'm a Republican-conservative patriot. I want conservative, America First, MAGA patriots to lead my party. I want a general to lead us into battle. Not a wishy-washy, middle-of-the-road, RINO fraud who never fails to disappoint conservatives, but always caves to Democrats. That's McCarthy.
[...]
The entire U.S. media is gaslighting you, trying to convince you that McCarthy must be the House speaker ... his election must be rammed through ... the entire saga is a "humiliation" to the GOP ... and those 20 holdouts are "insurrectionists."
Nope. They're heroes of American patriotism, American exceptionalism, capitalism and conservative values.
Why is it acceptable to be a "Never Trumper," but not a "Never Kevin"? Since when does voting against someone who gets an "F" rating when fighting for your own top priorities make you an "insurrectionist"?
Root then rehashed one of his earlier sycophantic ideas:
I hate to say, "I told you so," but ...
President Donald J. Trump should have been our House speaker.
I was the first to publicly propose that idea on Jan. 30, 2021. I was the first to ask Trump about it. And I was the first to urge Trump to go after the House speaker position in my one-on-one interviews. I was right.
That's the solution. That's how we break this logjam. We need Trump now more than ever. Trump is the man to lead the battle. We can't wait until 2024. This is how we get Trump today.
Step up, Mr. President.
Of course, Trump is too lazy to actually do something like that (not that Root will admit it, of course).So, in his Jan. 14 column, he reframed things to portray McCarthy's eventual election as speaker as a victory for Trump:
I told you so. My plan worked. It just worked in a way I never imagined.
Like Martin Luther King Jr., I had a dream. My dream was former President Donald Trump as House speaker. I was the first in America to propose the idea in a commentary on Jan. 30, 2021. Then I talked about it nonstop for months on my nationally syndicated radio show. I personally lobbied Trump in numerous appearances on my radio and TV shows.
But Trump made it clear he never really wanted it. Trump is always No. 1. The chairman of the board. The five-star general. He doesn't take orders from anyone. I think he always looked at Nancy Pelosi, Paul Ryan and John Boehner (the last three House speakers) as errand boys and girls. Order takers. So, Trump never wanted the job. Not enough star power for him.
And who can blame him? Look at Trump's life. Trump has had the greatest life on Earth. He became not only a billionaire, but the most famous billionaire on Earth. The celebrity of all celebrities. With the most famous celebrity estate: Mar-a-Lago. And the most famous reality TV show, "Celebrity Apprentice."
Who'd give that life up?
Trump did. To save America and the forgotten middle class. To fight the D.C. swamp and the deep state. To make America great again. He gave up his one-in-a-billion life for you and me!
Now he wants to be president again. Trump never saw House speaker as his calling. He was flattered by my idea, but he never wanted the job. House speaker takes up too much time. Trump needs to be free to run for president again.
Trump plays chess at a much higher level. My idea was a good one. Trump just made it happen in a different way. You see, Trump is the newly elected House speaker – just not in name. In name, the title goes to Rep. Kevin McCarthy.
But guess who got McCarthy elected? Trump. And guess who controls McCarthy's every move as House speaker? The MAGA, America First, loyal Trump members of the Freedom Caucus.
MAGA has McCarthy by the short hairs. McCarthy can't take a bathroom break without asking the Freedom Caucus for permission. So, guess who's actually running Congress? De-facto House Speaker Donald J. Trump.
This is "the House that Trump built."
Root concluded by praising Trump's laziness some more:
Yes, Trump took my idea and ran with it. Trump is now the de-facto House speaker … without any of the day-to-day work that would prevent him from running for president. Nothing in Congress will happen without Trump's approval. And Trump runs the whole show, direct from Mar-a-Lago.
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC Flips Over Elon Musk, Part 6: The Twitter Files Cometh Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center did stenography work to promote the selectively released files through Musk's hand-picked reporters -- and attacked anyone in the media who wouldn't similarly parrot the pro-Musk narrative. Read more >>
MRC's Double Standard On President Classified Document Scandals Topic: Media Research Center
After the FBI raid on Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago to retrieve numerous classified documents that he had refused to return despite repeated requests from the National Archives, the Media Research Center was slow to respond to the story, then quickly moved into defense-and-deflection mode. When a handful of classified documents were discovered among Joe Biden's papers at private offices outside the White House and his Delaware home -- which, in contrast to Trump, he immediately returned when they were discovered -- the MRC moved exponentially faster and immediately went into full pounce mode. A Jan. 9 post by Kevin Tober kicked things off, with the usual MRC complaint that non-right-wing media was failing to embrace right-wing narratives -- and, even worse, pointed out that the Biden and Trump situations were different:
On Monday afternoon, CBS was given an exclusive that revealed that classified documents were found at President Biden's private office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington D.C. After the amount of handwringing and nonstop negative coverage of the news that Trump had classified documents at his home in Mar-a-Lago, you would think the media would take this story seriously. Predictably, they sought to downplay the news and deflect blame from Biden and distance him from any comparisons to what happened with Trump's storage of classified documents.
[...]
Meanwhile, on CBS Evening News, national correspondent Adriana Diaz ran to former federal prosecutor Scott Fredericksen to get assurance that what Biden reportedly did was different from what Trump was accused of.
“How significant is it that these documents were self-reported, and voluntarily turned over?,” Diaz asked.
Predictably, Fredericksen let Biden off the hook by explaining “the self-reporting here is probably the single most important part of this situation. It indicates a lack of intentional conduct. It's completely different from the Mar-a-Lago case, which tends, based on reporting, to indicate there was intentional activity to take those documents.”
Yes, so "predictable" to point out differences between the two.
On CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, senior political commentator Scott Jennings slammed President Joe Biden over his reportedly mishandling classified documents at his private office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington D.C. What made this revelation especially rich was the fact that Biden was so outraged at former President Trump allegedly having documents marked classified at his home in Mar-a-Lago. Jennings even got in a Michael Scott reference during his Monday night appearance.
The pouncing continued in full force the next day:
Alex Christy complained that CNN's Don Lemon (accurately) pointed out that the story has "already been politicized by those on the right."
Mark Finkelstein whined that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough also pointed out the difference between the Trump and Biden situations.
Nicholas Fondacaro grumbled that the hosts of "The View" defended Biden over "newly revealed fact that he stole classified documents." Did anyone at the MRC ever state that Trump stole classified documents?
Fondacaro returned to complain that CNN "sought help from former members of the CIA and FBI to defuse the situation Biden has found himself in."
Curtis Houck, meanwhile, served up the requisite daily take that right-wing media aren't sounding like Fox News:
Along with the Monday night network evening newscasts, the Tuesday morning broadcast network news shows tried to dial back the heart rates of liberal viewers by insisting there’s no there there to classified documents being found in the Washington D.C. office of President Biden’s University of Pennsylvania think tank. Instead, it was a case of Republicans “pounc[ing]” despite “key differences” between Biden and what they hope to be the jailing of former President Trump for classified documents found in Mar-a-Lago.
And predictably, none of them mentioned how the Penn Biden Center has received over $50 million in money from communist China.
In a Jan. 11 post, Christy looked at the reaction of late-night comedy hosts, complaining in particular that Jimmy Kimmel pointed out that "for the MAGA crowd, this was like Christmas and the McRib coming back at the same time." Other coverage complaints continued, again largely focused on non-right-wing media not attacking Biden like right-wing media would (and did):
Tim Graham's Jan. 11 podcast pretended that the "liberal media," not right-wingers, are the one with the real double standard:
CBS broke the news on Monday that Biden's lawyers disclosed they have discovered classified documents in an office at the University of Pennsylvania’s Biden Center in the nation's capital. The "roughly 10" documents are from President Biden's vice-presidential office at the center, which opened in 2018.
This triggered serious news coverage....and a rash of comparisons suggesting Joe Biden couldn't possibly be half as careless with classified information as Donald Trump. Journalists implied Biden’s a seasoned professional who understands national security, while Trump is the King of Recklessness. On NPR and other networks, they insisted you couldn't compare these two incidents "apples to apples."
NPR media reporter David Folkenflik argued "There really haven't been a ton of scandals during the Biden presidency affecting Joe Biden himself, beyond his troubled son, Hunter. So consider it a little bit of a media test case." Just like they said for Obama, there aren't many Biden scandals...because they're not looking for any Biden scandals. After all, it was NPR that insisted in the last weeks of the 2020 campaign that any focus on Hunter Biden was a "pure distraction."
Fact check: Right-wing media, including the MRC, have beenpushingattacks on Hunter Biden precisely because they are a distraction from everything Trump (whom the MRC will never completely repudiate, despite instigating a violent insurrection).
On Thursday morning, news broke that the second batch of classified documents President Biden took when he was vice president was found in the garage of his Wilmington, Delaware home, next to his Corvette. And conspiracy theories flew around the set of ABC’s The View as the co-hosts whine about how these documents just appeared, with some apparent suggestions that Republicans were “behind” them getting into the garage and the President’s former office at the Penn Biden Center.
Fondacaro somehow forgot mention that Trump himself accused the FBI (or, at least, the "Marxist thugs" therein) of planting those classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. You'd think he'd acknowledge there's precedent for such a view, but we know Fondacaro is not an honest guy.
The MRC did find a couple instances of non-right-wing outlets sounding sufficiently like Fox News to be worth promoting:
P.J. Gladnick, meanwhile, got assigned the duty of complaining that Republican (and MRC) double standards on possession of classified documents were being called out:
ABC News appears to be in such a state of urgency to defend Joe Biden in the wake of the documents scandal that they regurgitated a term that was thought to have been mocked out of existence. The worn cliché, "Republicans pounce" or as the title of ABC News reporter-producer Ben Gittleson's story put it on Wednesday, "GOP pounces," as you can see in "Biden leaves questions unanswered on classified documents, as GOP pounces."
[...]
If Gittleson did not write the title to his story, then he needs to warn the editor who did to never again use the "GOP pounces" in a title since it has long ago become a worn cliché that now only serves as a red flag for mocking any article using that term. Even its replacement "Republicans seize" has already become another cliché.
Perhaps Gittleson and his ABC News editors should consult the thesaurus for a suitable replacement. "Republicans swooped." That could work... but only for a brief time until it joins "GOP pounces" and "Republicans seize" in the stale cliché category.
Despite whining about the phrasing, Gladnick did not dispute that Republicans are exhibiting a double standard.
WND Trots Out Its Favorite Right-Wing Prophet To Rant Against Biden Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jonathan Cahn has longbeen a WorldNetDaily favorite (and onetime cash cow) -- a self-proclaimed messianic rabbi whose prophecies just happened to coincide with his (and WND's) right-wing editorial agenda -- and it's been trotting him out again recently. In January 2022, it promoted an event featuring Cahn that purported to be "focused on America's history, its spiritual foundations and the importance of its covenant with God." Given that it also featured fringe figures like pseudo-historian David Barton and election denier and MyPillow guy Mike Lindell, it's unlikely the event offered any sort of enlightenment (not to mention the fact that Cahn diminished what standing he has by appearing with such grifters).
In April, Art Moore interviewed Cahn to promote his latest "harbinger" pronouncements in a film in which he claimed to be "answering the 'what now' question that many have posed to him as current events mirror the biblical pattern he wrote about in 2011 in his first book." Cahn did another interview with Moore in September, in which he hyperbolically likened the secularization of Western culture to Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia: ""It's never neutral. The Soviet Union wasn't neutral. Nazi Germany wasn't neutral. And this isn't neutral ... It's just exposing itself now."
Cahn returned for a Jan. 3 article by Bob Unruh hyping his latest attack on President Biden, this time for not hating gay people:
Messianic rabbi Jonathan Cahn, who famously warned Joe Biden when he became president to follow God's laws or see America's blessings vanish, now is insisting that Biden prepare himself for the time that will come that he will face God.
"The day will come that you will stand before God and you will have no more position, no administration, no government, no media and no public opinion. It will just be you and Him, and He will ask you to give account of what you did, what you did with regard to His Word and His ways."
Cahn said, on video, "Judgment will come."
"Mr. President, the hour is late and eternity is soon coming. Repent and turn to God. The only hope yo have, and all of us have, is salvation."
Biden recently marked his 80th birthday.
Cahn noted he had asked Biden when he took office how he could place his left hand on a Bible, and then with his right hand sign laws that "war against the Word of God."
The issue at that point was the abortion-promoting agenda that Biden was pursuing. The latest video notes Biden's celebration of the misnamed "Respect for Marriage Act" that declares marriage to be whatever two people say.
Cahn cited his warning about following God's laws, or breaking them.
"Now you've done it," he said, citing Biden's decision to officiate over a ceremony that altered federal law.
"You did something no president had ever done," which was enshrine an alternate to marriage into federal law.
Then Biden held a "festival," Cahn said.
Unruh inserted his own bias along with Cahn's attacks:
Since he's been in office, Biden has overseen inflation of up to 9.1%, sky high fuel costs, an open southern border drawing millions of illegal aliens to America, an unstable relationship with foreign powers, shortages of medicine, radical ideologies forced on schools and members of the military, and much more.
Cahn, on Biden's ascension to the White House, noted the pattern of God's judgment from the Old Testament that he discovered were remarkably repeated in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including on the spot where George Washington stood and prayed on the day of his inauguration. For Israel, he noted that after such a warning, there was a window of time of 19 years to return to God before judgment, or "great shakings" began. Clearly, 19 years after 2001, America suffered a year of "great shakings."
He directed his words to the current president.
"Mr. Biden, you have called for unity and peace. But how can a nation have unity and peace when it wars against the very foundation on which it stands?" he said.
Cahn said the nation can't have unity and peace when it has "turned against the God who brought it into existence."
There was no mention of the adulterous, immoral, thrice-married Donald Trump.
Newsmax Still Screaming Victimhood In Week 2 Of DirecTV Deplatforming Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax entered its second week of loudly screamingvictimhood and dishonestly elevating DirecTV dropping its TV channel in a business dispute into a "censorship" case and trying to get the government to interfere in it and punish DirecTV and its AT&T parent for its business decision. It has seemingly called in every right-winger who has ever appeared on the channel to register a complaint:
By our count, this makes at least 82 articles Newsmax has published attacking DirecTV in the first 10 days since it was deplatformed.
Newsmax CEO Chrstopher Ruddy also spoke out in a Feb. 1 article that began by complaining that DirecTV wouldn't negortiate with it, then ramping up the victimhood and unproven conspiracy theory that Newsmax was targeted for being right-wing:
"It makes you wonder if there's something bigger behind this that they're so inflexible," Ruddy said.
There has been a "targeted" attack on silencing conservative dissent of liberal political views, he added.
"It was a political decision," Ruddy said, rejecting DirecTV's claim the deplatforming was a "business decision." "They know the elections are coming up. They want to silence conservative voices. They got away with deplatforming One America News, and they hope that they can get away with this, and I think they were shocked and surprised by the outcry."
[...]
"They really were selectively trying to target us to essentially put us out of business, because they know a cable news channel needs to have license fee income to exist, and they didn't want us to be treated like another cable news channel," Ruddy told Van Susteren, maintaining that DirecTV's "cost-cutting" explanation does not hold water.
"Usually you do it by eliminating the very costly channels that have very little ratings," Ruddy continued. "And with us, they're taking a highly rated channel — we're No. 5 for cable news in the United States, we reach 25 million Americans, and we're top 20 of cable overall.
"We're a big deal in cable, and they're saying that we're not eligible for a fee."
Ruddy pompously thinking Newsmax is "a big deal in cable" doesn't mean it actually is.He also didn't mention that DirecTV replaced Newsmax with another right-wing channel, The First.
Newsmax columnists have also had their say.A Jan. 31 column by Craig Shirley weirdly blamed the "dark forces of Wokeism" for Newsmax being kicked off DirecTV:
Newsmax is the vision of founder Christopher Ruddy along with his flagship magazine and radio networks.
But collectivism cannot stand the dissemination of conservative ideas simply because, freedom is better than tyranny.
At the very least, DirecTV — and AT&T are guilty of violating the constitutionally protected right of free speech.
In other words, Direct TV is interfering with Newsmax audience's right to hear all the information on breaking news.
And Direct TV is disrupting Newsmax’s right to do business with you, the viewer.
You don’t get news and information anymore from NBC News' "Meet the Press," they are interested only in shrinking knowledge, not expanding it.
The program's ratings are abysmal.
Same too with The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC and CBS.
In fact, all the left-wing news outlets.
And forget about NPR. You might as well be reading Mao’s "Little Red Book."
The left just doesn’t want your hard-earned money.
A Feb. 2 column by Dave Donaldson offered another reason to oppose Newsmax's deflatforming -- it gave right-wing and religious groups (he runs a religious group called CityServe) free publicity:
Each week, Newsmax TV gives scores of nonprofits, especially faith-based organizations, valuable airtime to communicate with a broader audience. They get to talk about their projects and why they matter to the broader community. And Newsmax has a reputation for being very generous with its airtime.
Newsmax sees the world in a way that transcends the common partisan struggles over money and politics. Now, I'm sure losing the opportunity to reach 13 million DirecTV viewers will impact Newsmax's carriage and ad revenue. But AT&T and DirecTV need to understand who else is going to suffer.
By the way, none of these people, including Ruddy, have mentioned the fact that DirecTV replaced Newsmax with another right-wing channel, The First, meaning that claims of viewpoint "censorship"are completely inoperative.
Rev. Michael Orsi stillcan'tdecide if he's a Catholic priest or a wannabe right-wing pundit, so he's still ranting about things at CNSNews.com. He leapt aboard the anti-transgender bandwagon in his Oct. 19 column (after first ranting about "the legalization, and consequent proliferation, of marijuana"):
Transgenderism is a symptom of mental and emotional conflicts that need to be addressed before they prompt radical, self-destructive actions. But as with marijuana, we have failed to counter the strong economic incentives behind this movement. There’s big money in hormone therapies and sex-reassignment surgery.
Add to that the ideological insanity that’s promoting this nonsense even in our schools, and in spite of parents’ objections (often without their knowledge), and we’re witnessing a health crisis of monumental proportions.
People are not being helped by these barbaric procedures. Bodies are being mutilated. Families are being destroyed. Souls are being lost.
The Church — which is to say we believers who are the Church — must speak out against such plagues as marijuana and transgenderism. We certainly can’t depend on government to do it. The madness surrounding our health officials’ handling of COVID demonstrated their inability to discern appropriate preventive measures.
And now they’re issuing dire warnings about a monkeypox pandemic. Have they told us that the primary way monkeypox is transmitted is through homosexual contact?
Orsi spent his Nov. 3 column defending getting involved in politics:
I often hear complaints about “that priest down in Florida who gets involved in politics.”
Let me plead guilty to being that priest.
Clergy are often reluctant to take a public stand on political issues. They don’t want to risk alienating members of their congregations, or they fear challenges to their churches’ tax exempt status.
My view is that religious leaders must get involved in politics. Indeed, they have an obligation to address important public questions. Elections determine who will hold temporal power in the nation — and therefore, who gets to determine the civic atmosphere in which people attempt to live their faith.
Living by faith can be difficult under the best of circumstances. Right now, when so many stumbling blocks have been put in the way, conducting a moral, faith-filled life is a special challenge.
Politics matters, because souls are at stake.
Orsi then spouted righ-twing talking points on Republican hot-button issues like schools ("schools today celebrate perversion, and young people are actually groomed to take part in sexual practices that are not conducive to a healthy life and human flourishing"), border security ("Not only do we have a flood of illegal immigrants, we are being inundated with fentanyl and other dangerous drugs") and Ukraine ("We are spending billions of dollars, and putting American lives at possible risk, even raising the specter of nuclear war — all in a part of the world where we have no vital interests").
Orsi's Nov. 22 column was dedicated to bashing the Respect for Marriage Act (which the rest of CNS was already doing):
Lefty political planners are great at coming up with appealing names for laws that accomplish the exact opposite of what those names promise. Recall the Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as “Obamacare”). That law wound up costing most people more for healthcare than before the misnamed legislation.
Now we are presented with something called the Respect for Marriage Act. And a less accurate legislative title can hardly be imagined.
This bit of political sleight-of-hand doesn’t respect marriage at all — at least not marriage as it’s always been understood. What we have here instead is a brazen attempt to force people of faith into accepting relationships that are contrary to God’s law, and consequently have been considered evil by virtually every traditional religion from the beginning of civilization.
Orsi once again went into conspiracy theory territory -- spouting more right-wing tropes -- in his Dec. 15 column:
Society has reached a point where we face a choice, and it’s truly an existential choice — which is to say it touches on our very existence. We must choose between:
(A) the New World Order (otherwise referred to as the Great Reset), in which our educational paths, our economic options, and our life prospects come under central global control; or...
(B) God’s World Order (otherwise referred to as Faith), in which Jesus shows us how to live in freedom and individual moral responsibility.
I hate to say it, but right now I think the New World Order is ahead in its influence and persuasiveness. The most powerful advantage it enjoys is: fear.
Those pushing a globalist agenda have been wildly successful in ratcheting up public anxiety about a broad range of concerns, the foremost of which is climate change.
Orsi then demanded that people distrust expertise (while, of course, denying he was doing any such thing):
We saw fear at work in a similar way during the pandemic. A new illness had come upon us with unpredictable effects, and we were frightened. So we turned to the “authorities,” who told us to separate ourselves physically, wear masks and face shields, stay home, take vaccines that were developed hastily and promoted in an atmosphere of panic.
What was the result? Putting our wellbeing into the hands of “authorities,” a lot of people still got sick. Some died. Others contracted weird and damaging health conditions (often fatal) from the vaccines. Some lost jobs or businesses because of public health restrictions.
Once again we trusted those whom we believed were most qualified. And — ironically — our trust was rewarded with physical, social and economic loss.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not telling anyone to ignore genuine expertise. There’s an old saying that illustrates the folly of that: “A man who tries to be his own lawyer has a fool for a client.”
But God has given us common sense. We must be attentive and astute in discerning between those with real knowledge and those who are feeding us half-baked ideas in order to advance an agenda.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of the latter type.
Individuals like Bill Gates, George Soros, Claus Schwab, and a host of others with global economic interests or political ambitions have determined that humanity would be better off if national boundaries, cultural distinctions, and constitutional protections were weakened (or eliminated altogether). These folks envision a system where everybody trades in one global digital currency, allowing the “authorities” to monitor our transactions and to “encourage” us toward more “sustainable” and “equitable” living arrangements.
Orsi concluded by trying to put a religious bow on things: "The greatest reset in history was accomplished by Jesus on the cross. We’re called to put our faith in him, face our fears, and choose God’s World Order."
Orsi doesn't seem to understand that Catholics would rather see a priest whose pronouncements on politics are driven by faith rather than whatever conspiracy theory he stumbled across on a right-wing website that morning.
Post-Election, MRC Continued To Serve As DeSantis' PR Agent Topic: Media Research Center
After Republican Ron DeSantis won re-election as Florida governor -- a campaign for which hisfanboys at the Media Research Center served effectively as a campaign press agent -- the MRC continued for weeks afterward to lash out at any perceived criticism of him in the media:
The MRC got some cheerleading in as well, such as in a Nov. 29 post by Catherine Salgado gushing over how DeSantis "slammed Apple for kowtowing to the Chinese communist government while simultaneously trying to squash free speech in America by potentially banning Twitter from the App Store." She didn't explain what such foreign policy pronounceents had to do with him governing Florida. Meanwhile, Tim Graham complained about all the criticism in his Dec. 2 column:
It’s a fair point for Trump diehards to suggest that DeSantis is going to face an all-out national-media assault. But that’s true of any candidate who leads a Republican primary poll. In 2011, the national media ripped into every Republican who seemed like the front-runner, from Michele Bachmann to Rick Perry to Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich, and then Romney.
Republican presidential contenders should never expect national reporters to be friendly to their campaigns, and neither should Republican voters expect that national reporters are interested in any other goal than keeping a Democrat in the White House.
This being the MRC, some of its defenses of DeSantis veered from reality. Kevin Tober complained in a Nov. 13 post:
On Sunday night’s American Voices on MSNBC, host Alicia Menendez and his panel of left wing radicals attempted to smear Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis as a “white Christian nationalist” whose religious beliefs “see[p] into his governance” of the state of Florida.
“Here's the thing with DeSantis. It's not just rhetorical. Right? It actually–this idea seeps into his governance,” Menendez cried.
Turning to MSNBC columnist and author Anthea Butler, Menendez wanted her to talk through the ridiculous argument she just made.
“it seeps into his governance because the way he thinks about the world is that God has put him in that place to rule over Florida. And so when you see this, when he’s against trans kids, and the don't say gay bill, and all of this, this is part and parcel of what he sees his Christian nationalism to be,” Butler falsely claimed.
Continuing to smear DeSantis and proving what an anti-Christian bigot she is, Butler huffed that DeSantis “thinks that he has dominion over this Earth and God has given it to him.”
But Tober censored any mention of the evidence that backs this up: an ad tweeted out by DeSantis' wife before the election featuring images of the candidate that began, "On the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said: ‘I need a protector.’ So God made a fighter." The ad went on to invoke God's name a whopping 10 times. It was so over the top that even religious media outlets criticized it -- but Tober wants you to believe such criticism of DeSantis is apropos of nothing.
Clay Waters complained that DeSantis' record on COVID issues and pandering to anti-vaxxers was criticized in a Dec. 17 post:
Don’t be fooled, voters: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is as insane as Donald Trump! That was Paul Krugman’s warning in his Friday column based on DeSantis’s occasionally hesitant tone toward vaccinations and a recent request for a grand jury probe over statements from COVID-vaccine makers: “DeSantis May Make 2024 an Election About Vaccines.”
[...]
He was angry with DeSantis for calling for a grand jury to look into possible misinformation spread by vaccine companies. Krugman sneered, “I doubt that anyone believes that DeSantis knows or cares about the scientific evidence here.”
Actually, DeSantis provided several examples of misleading claims about vaccine efficacy from Pfizer and Moderna, and President Biden himself, who falsely stated "You're not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations." Krugman probably didn’t bother looking.
To commit his latest anti-DeSantis rant, Krugman had to ignore actual facts, available at nytimes.com, showing Florida’s “fully vaccinated” percentage of the population is slightly higher than the national average (68 percent vs 67 percent), significantly higher than blue states like Michigan and comparable to Oregon and Minnesota. If DeSantis is trying to seed anti-vaccine propaganda in Florida, he’s doing a lousy job of it.
Waters went on to complain that Krugman noted "thousands of excess deaths in the Sunshine State" -- which, interestingly, he didn't dispute, perhaps beause he can't. Waters also cherry-picked the vaccination number: While the "fully vaccinated" number -- which refers only to the first round of vaccines -- is around the national average, the Times data to which Waters refers also notes that the booster rate is notably below the national average (29% vs. 34%).
Meanwhile, the MRC has been silent about election truther and MyPillow guy Mike Lindell questioning the legitimacy of DeSantis' re-election. It appears that not even the MRC will never amplify questions about elections in which Republicans win, even as it continues to cling to its bogus stolen-election narrative involving Donald Trump.
WND Contiues To Spin, Whitewash Capitol Riot Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has constantly tried to whitewash and downplay the Capitol riot since it happened, most recently complaining it was (not inaccurately) being called an "insurrection." Between the release of the House committee report and the second anniversary of the riot, WND -- mostly reporter Bob Unruh -- continued pushing that narrative. Unruh unsurprisingly promoted a shoddy Republican "shadow committee" report on the riot in a Dec. 22 article:
A partisan congressional committee this week blamed President Trump for the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol that left an unarmed protester dead at the hands of police, asking the Department of Justice to investigate and charge him with four crimes.
However, a new report from the House GOP suggested that outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her staff were more culpable than they've ever admitted.
[...]
It's been reported before that President Trump had offered additional National Guard troops to be present at the Capitol that day, but those responsible for security of the building, including Pelosi, refused.
Note that Unruh called the real committee report "partisan" but not this one, even though only Republicans are associated with it. As more honest media outlets reported, the GOP report omitted activities of congressional leadership on Jan. 6 scrambling to try to get the National Guard to the Capitol, or any mention that there were hours of inaction from former President Trump as well as other relevant information that's inconvenient to the narrative. Further, Trump did not sign an order to deploy the National Guard, so Unruh is perpetuating a lie.
On the anniversary of the riot, on Jan. 6, Unruh served up some partisan deflection on the fates of officers who died or committed suicde afterward:
There are a lot of very unpleasant facts surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
They include the fact that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been blamed, at least in part, for allowing the riot to occur since she rejected President Trump's offer of additional troops to be there, a responsibility that never was addressed during her congressional committee's review of the violence.
Another is that police shot and killed an unarmed protester, Ashli Babbit, the only person actually killed in the riot.
Another is that one police officer died of natural causes shortly after the riot.
And yet another is that four police officers committed suicide in the months following the fracas, for which nearly 1,000 people have been arrested on charges, often including trespassing.
But Kamala Harris, Joe Biden's vice president, invoked the names of those five officers in her politicized statement on the two-year anniversary of the riot, saying all died "protecting our democracy."
Although all the officer deaths are tragedies, details on the suicides have never been released that would show the Jan. 6 riot had any bearing on their decision to take their own lives.
Unruh went on to claim that the officer who died of "natural causes," Brian Sicknick, "died of natural causes, multiple strokes," while "the other four ended their own lives," going on to whine that "for weeks after the riot, major media persisted in claiming daily that Sicknick had been killed by pro-Trump rioters who hurled a fire extinguisher at the officer -- a total fabrication." In fact, the medical examiner who looked into Sicknick's death stated that "all that transpired" at the Capitol riot "played a role in his condition," and the suicide of at least one officer has been ruled a death in the line of duty.
A report from government watchdog Judicial Watch reveals that Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who shot and killed an unarmed Ashli Babbitt during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, was given, afterward, the "Distinguished Visitor Suite" at Joint Base Andrews in which to live.
The report said thousands of taxpayer dollars were used to house Byrd and "his pet" for several months.
It was the only "homicide" tied to the riot, the watchdog said.
Neither Unruh nor Judicial Watch seem to have considered the possibility that Byrd was housed there to protect him from rabid, violent MAGA supporters -- like those who took inspiration from Trump to perpetrate the riot -- who seek to avenge the death of domestic terrorist Babbitt.
Unruh served up more partisan reframing in a Jan. 15 article:
A new report has documented the latest round of "more proof" of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's culpability for the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
It's that senators have unanimously approved a plan to deprive the House speaker of the authority to call out the National Guard to protect to Capitol, and give that decision to Capitol Police.
The report is from PJMedia and expands on the well-known agenda of Pelosi's own special committee to investigate the riot that ignored her own decisions.
In fact, President Trump had offered additional troops to protect the Capitol on that day, when hundreds broke into the building, or walked past security officers holding the doors open for them, and did vandalism.
Others simply walked about and took selfies in the building.
Again: Unruh is lying by claiming Trump offered the National Guard that day. And in fact, the bill merely allows the Capitol Police to call in the National Guard without having to go thorugh the Capitol Police Board, of which Pelosi was not a member (it's made up of the Senate and House sergeants at arms, the architect of the Capitol and the police chief).
MRC Just Can't Stop Bashing Brittney Griner Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center cheered how WNBA star Brittney Griner was rotting in a Russian prison on trumped-up drug charges, smearing her as a black non-heterosexual who purportedly doesn't love America anough, and then was bitter when she was released in a prisoner swap (while censoring the actual criminal history of their preferred release fandidate, Paul Whelan). Nicholas Fondacaro spent a Dec. 22 post complaining that another American imprisoned in Russia on dubious charges didn't get the same attention as Griner:
When it comes to Americans being detained and held hostage in Russia, many have focused on the case of anti-American WNBA star Brittney Griner being swapped for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, while U.S. Marine Paul Whelan got left behind. But as ABC’s Good Morning America revealed on Thursday, there was another: Sarah Krivanek, who was arrested two months before Griner but was left to “rot” by the Biden administration and assaulted by a male inmate while in prison.
Krivanek was released the same day as Griner, and Fondacaro huffed that "there was no reception for Krivanek nor evidence the Biden administration helped out." But even he was forced to admit that "Krivanek wasn’t bitter with Griner for getting released in a prisoner swap."
Fondacaro not only failed to offer evidence to substantiate his claim that Griner is "anti-American," his whining about this is hypocritical to the max: This post is the only reference to Krivanek in the NewsBusters database, showing that she was "forgotten" by the MRC as well.
Jay Maxson -- the MRC's point man (or woman) in hating Griner -- spewed even more hate at her in a Jan. 3 post:
The legend of Brittney Griner grows. Now she’s “the face of global unrest” and Arizonan of the Year, according to the left-stream Phoenix newspaper, The Arizona Republic. That award went to the late, great American hero Pat Tillman in 2004, but the standards for this honor have weakened substantially since then.
“Today we name Brittney Griner ‘Arizonan of the Year’ because no other Arizona newsmaker in 2022 captured the public eye as intensely as she did,” wrote the Arizona Republic’s editorial board. “Nor has anyone’s story in this state aroused the kind of fear and foreboding that hers had for nearly 300 days.”
She broke the law on foreign soil. She was in the public eye only because of her modest fame -- and perhaps because she checked lefty identity boxes.
When a sports writer pointed out how right-wingers (like Maxson) smeared Griner for not standing for the national anthem as a protest against police brutality, Maxson sneered that "Griner was just another lemming following the crowd," further whining that she is "a hero of the Black Lives Matter movement that shook down corporate America and professional sports two years ago, ruining the sports experience for untold numbers of Americans."
Maxson also attacked President Biden,claiming that he "let the Russians keep a real hero, Marine Paul Whelan, locked up so that a woke athlete could play basketball." Yes, Maxson thinks a man who received a bad-conduct discharge from the Marines following a court martial for attempted larceny, false statements and dereliction of duty, among other things, is a "real hero."
Maxon concluded with more hate:
Arizona criminal of the year would have been a more appropriate “honor” for the woman for whom President Joe Biden gave up the Merchant of Death – Viktor Bout – in a late-year prisoner swap.
How about cannabis smuggler of the year? This one applies, too.
Griner checks all the boxes for fawning left-stream media: she’s black, lesbian, woke and despises American ideals.
[...]
Griner isn’t anywhere near the heroic stuff of Pat Tillman, and it’s true that she hasn’t asked for awards like this one. Her story is another example of media idiocy in the U.S. Tillman was a true American hero, and he must be turning over in his grave regarding The Republic’s farce.
Maxson is simply parroting the hate of his (or her) fellow right-wingers desperate for any excuse to attack a woman of color who's not heterosexual and who won't also peddle their partisan narratives. Who's the real lemming here?
NEW ARTICLE: Lack Of Respect For Marriage At CNS Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com's coverage of the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act was highly biased to the point of bordering on homophobic. Read more >>
MRC Starts New Year Keeping Up Its Role As Musk Stenographer Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center entered 2023 continuing to serve as Elon Musk's servile stenographer, uncritically promoting the selectively released "Twitter files" he gave to hand-picked journalists. Gabriela Pariseau wrote in a Jan. 3 post:
The latest Twitter files show that the liberal media mafia, Democrat politicians and the intelligence community went on an apparent witch hunt to shut down Russian social media accounts, bringing Twitter to its knees and paving the way for the FBI to push Twitter to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The media, politicians, and so-called experts worked in lockstep bullying Twitter into making mass Russian disinformation materialize as far back as 2017, according to the latest Twitter files. “This cycle – threatened legislation, wedded to scare headlines pushed by congressional/intel sources, followed by Twitter caving to moderation asks – would later be formalized in partnerships with federal law enforcement,” independent journalist Matt Taibbi tweeted Tuesday.
If Taibbi is Musk's handppicked journalist, he's not "independent." And Pariseau's description of outlets who don't peddle pro-Musk narratives as the " liberal media mafia" shows she's far from independent as welll. Augumn Johnson served up more Taibbi stenography the next day:
A Tuesday evening “Twitter Files” drop revealed the censorship-obsessed Big Tech platform caved to pressure from Democrats and created a task force to investigate Russian “interference” in the 2016 election.
The document drop is the latest installment of internal “Twitter Files” company owner Elon Musk promised to promote transparency on the platform after years of one-sided censorship. Matt Taibbi, who has reported several file drops, revealed damning evidence of an “astonishing variety of requests from officials asking for individuals they didn’t like to be banned.”
In one glaring case, the office of California Representative and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D) reportedly asked journalist Paul Sperry.
Twitter denied the request, but Taibbi said “almost everyone else’s requests” were granted. The platform apparently received later suspended by Twitter anyway.
In a Jan. 6 post, Catherine Salgado expressed horror at the idea that Musk might be forced to address disinformaiton on Twitter:
Germany’s digital affairs minister claimed on Twitter that Elon Musk agreed to target “disinformation” on the platform, which would be problematic for free speech.
The German Federal Minister for Digital and Transport Volker Wissing claimed Twitter owner Elon Musk had agreed to restrictions on “disinformation” until pro-censorship European Union (EU) legislation comes into force. Such an agreement could do further damage to the already >precarious state of online free speech in Europe. But more troublesome is Musk’s apparent agreement to censor speech even before such legislation takes effect.
Wissing tweeted Jan. 4 from his verified account (Twitter’s translation), “Thank you @elonmusk for a constructive conversation in San Francisco. My stance is clear: the platforms' commitment to #D[i]sinformation must be strictly adhered to until #DSA comes into force. Elon Musk agreed with me.” The tweet included a selfie of Musk and Wissing.
[...]
The left routinely uses “disinformation” removal as an overused catch-all excuse to censor free speech.
That statement, of course, is more of a restatement of a right-wing narrative than verified fact. Salgado didn't explain why she doesn't believe that disinformation on social media should be allowed to spread unchecked.
An anonymously written Jan. 9 post detailed how the MRC and its fellow right-wing Musk fanboys are requesting a meeting with their idol:
Dozens of members of the Free Speech Alliance sent a letter to Twitter owner Elon Musk requesting for him to meet with conservative leaders to discuss methods to promote free speech on the Big Tech platform following years of massive censorship. The Media Research Center's CensorTrack database has currently logged over 4,800 cases of censorship across a litany of Big Tech platforms, and cases from Twitter make up over 55 percent of that number.
The CensorTrack database is a partisan tool, not a legitimate research database, because it excludes anythignn that doesn't advance the right-wing "censorship" narrative. Meanwhile, the same day, Salgado served up another dose of Musk stenography:
A Pfizer director pushed Twitter to censor critics of COVID-19 vaccines while denying his actions, according to the most recent Twitter Files drop.
Former FDA commissioner, CNBC contributor and current Pfizer Director Dr. Scott Gottlieb pressured Twitter to censor tweets critical of COVID-19 vaccines, former New York Times journalist Alex Berenson reported in the latest installment of the Twitter Files. Not only was Gottlieb pushing purely positive coverage of Pfizer’s product, but Gottlieb even publicly denied that he was exerting censorship pressure. The Pfizer director also “used the same Twitter lobbyist the White House did.”
Salgado didn't mention that Berenson is a notorious COVIDmisinformer -- which means Musk further showed his partisan agenda by choosing Berenson for this selective document. Needless to say, the MRC has previously bestowed victimhood on Berenson after being held accountable for his misinformation.
Salgado (and Musk) merged the "Twitter files" with another right-wing narrative in a Jan. 12 post:
Democrats pushed Twitter to support the Russia-Trump collusion hoax without evidence, as per the revelations in Thursday's newest batch of Twitter Files.
The accusations of “Russia collusion” (“Russiagate”) against then-President Donald Trump turned out to be lies, but that didn’t stop Democrats from pushing the accusations.
Actually, Salgado is the liar here. There was, in fact, plenty of evidence to warrant an investigation into Trump's Russia connections and contacts.
Meanwhile, the MRC was silent about how NBC News found that child sexual abuse content continues to be prevalent on Twitter despite Musk's vow to fight child exploitation on the platform. Twitter did block the related hashtags after the story went public.
As Inflation Goes Down, CNS Stops Invoking It To Attack Biden Topic: CNSNews.com
As it did with oil prices, CNSNews.com followed the partisan right-wing playbook to explicitly or implicitly blame President Biden for high inflation even if it couldn't identify any specifric policy that led to a specific increase. A Sept. 13 article by editor Terry Jeffrey, hyped how "prices on all items in the United States increased by 8.3 percent from August of 2021 to August of 2022" and was illustrated with a file photo of Biden.
A Sept. 19 article by Susan Jones complained that Biden was "putting his best possible spin on the highest inflation since 1982" by emphasizing slowing month-to-month increases instead of the annual number Jones would rather hype, though he did parenthetically admit his humbers were correct: "The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that year-to-year inflation in August was 8.3 percent, but the monthly increase was 0.1 percent, both numbers higher than expected." Jones didn't identify who "expected" lower numbers. Of course, Jones was determined to put her worst spin out there, in part by including a chartt hat "shows how inflation has accelerated since Biden took office," though she identified nothing showing Biden was personally responsible for any of it.
An Oct. 13 article by Jones hyped another monthly inflation increase:
Inflation in September was worse than predicted, rising 0.4 percent month-to-month, compared with the 0.1 percent monthly increase in August.
The year-to-year number, the "headline" number, was 8.2 percent for September, down a tenth of a point from +8.3 percent in August, but still hovering at 40-year highs.
The headline noted that the midterm elections were approaching, which is why Jones hyped these numbers -- to help Republicans win and Democrats lose. Jones complained about another failure to accept right-wing narratives on inflation -- or, in the headline's words, "reframe[d] the argument" -- in an Oct. 13 post:
With two weeks to go until election day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested that Americans shouldn't worry so much about the rising price of food and gasoline, because that's not the real issue.
"It's not -- the fight is not about inflation. It's about the cost of living," Pelosi told CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday.
"And if you look at what we have done to bring down the cost of prescription drugs, to bring down the cost of -- of energy and the rest in our legislation, you will see that that has been opposed every step of the way by the Republicans, and they have no plan for lowering the cost of living or helping with inflation."
Pelosi said when the talk turns to inflation, Democrats "have to change that subject."
She noted, as other Democrats have done, that inflation is a "global phenomenon." "The E.U., the European Union, the U.K., the British, have a higher inflation rate than we do here."
An Oct. 17 article by Melanie Arter seemed annoyed that Rep. Bernie Sanders (not inaccurately) argued that inflation was being caused by the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and "incredible corporate greed."
Consumer prices rose 7.7% in September, compared to the same month last year, and increased 0.4% from September, on a seasonally-adjusted basis – but, the cost of energy rose much more, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reportedThursday.
Overall, energy prices rose 17.6% in October on an unadjusted basis, compared to the same month in 2021. Compared to the previous month, October 2022 saw the energy price index increase a seasonally-adjusted 1.8%, according to the monthly BLS report.
he price increases in energy products are making it much harder for Americans to afford to heat their homes this winter.
Bannister concluded with a quote from the right-wing Heritage Foundation attacking Biden for inflation, though citing no specific policies responsible for a specific increase.
When November's numbers came out, CNS went into spin mode again. A Dec. 12 article by Arter complained that "President Biden on Tuesday seized on news that inflation is slowing, rising only 0.1 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in November, after increasing 0.4 percent in October." The next day, Bannister did some more reframing to portray inflation as still high while hiding that rate decrased, under the similarly wordy headline "Inflation Tops 7% for 12th Straight Month in November, with Food, Energy Recording Double-Digit Increases from Year-Ago":
Over the last 12 months, consumer prices for all items have increased 7.1%, before seasonal adjustment, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Tuesday, releasing data for November 2022.
On a seasonally-adjusted basis, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) rose 0.1% in November. However, when compared to the same month in 2021, overall prices were up 7.1% last month, with the food and energy categories suffering double-digit percentage price increases.
What’s more, it’s been a full year since the last time inflation increased by less than 7.0%, year-over-year. In November of 2021, prices rose 6.8% from the previous November’s level. The next month, the 12-month increase rose to 7.0% and hasn’t been that low in any month since.
Bannister refused to tell readers that the rate was a decrease from 7.7 percent in October.
Inflation fell even further in December to an annual rate of 6.5 percent thanks to a 0.1 percent decrease from November to December. But neither Bannister nor anyone else at CNS thought this was newsworthy enough to do a story about.
We've documented how CNSNews.com uncritically repeated unproven conspiracy theories from Donald Trump and his supporters that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, then was briefly shocked into being a fair and balanced news organization after the Capitol riot, though it eventually descended into whataboutism over protests against police brutality. For the second anniversary of the riot, CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman worked to spin the events of the riot in a Jan. 9 article:
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