How Is Newsmax Fawning Over Trump These Days? Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax remains Trump-fluffer central (in case you were worried otherwise). For instance, it cranked out articleshyping Trump's visit to East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a train derailement that released chemicals in the area) even though no member of the Trump administration ever visited the site of a train derailment during his presidency).
Newsmax also generated a plethora of articles out of Trump's March speech at CPAC. The main article by Sandy Fitzgerald gushed that in his "highly awaited speech," Trump "spoke out about the 'battle for our lives' against both Democrats and establishment Republicans, and told an enthusiastic crowd that they have been engaged 'in an epic struggle to rescue our country from the people who hated it and want to absolutely destroy it.'" That was followed by numerous sidebars covering not only the speech but a interview Trump did with Newsmax during CPAC and other CPAC-related things:
In the midst of all this CPAC activity, Fitzgerald even wrote up an article on how Trump congratulated adviser Kellyanne Conway for getting divorced from her husband, George Conway, "a frequent Trump critic."
In the midst of its hysteria over Trump's (initially failed) prediction he would be "arrested," Newsmax also generated several articles out of a March 25 Trump campaign rally in Waco. Texas:
It seemed no Trump utterance was too minor to devote a "news" article to. Here are some of the bits of stenography Newsmax has done for Trump since the beginning of the year:
The last time CNSNews.com posted original content was on April 20. Here's what that front page looked like:
Since then, nothing. Interestingly, Craig Bannister has continued to post his largely anti-ESG rantings at another MRC site, MRCTV, where his bio oddly lists him as "editor" of CNS (he wasn't -- he was just a blog writer). On the evening of April 24, however, the CNS website went dead with all links disabled.
What happened? No announcement was made at any MRC website -- not even he CNS website -- or even on the CNS Twitter feed as to why a "news" website it had operated for around 25 years had been abruptly taken down without notice, and longtime staffers like Terry Jeffrey, Michael W. Chapman, Susan Jones, Melanie Arter and Patrick Goodenough probably deserved a better fake than to have years of work simply erased from the internet. (And then there's commentary editor Georgiana Constantin-Parke, who joined CNS just six months ago.)
Finally, after some digging, we seem to have found an answer. The MRCTV website now has a CNS page -- though it currently has only six stories ., four of which are by Bannister and the other two by writers from other MRC divisions -- and a notice at the top that read: "Welcome CNSNews readers! Effective immediately, CNSNews is being merged with MRCTV to form a new conservative media platform, designed to deliver news and commentary on all of the top issues of the day."
So CNS is apparently dead as an independent "news" operation -- not that it was ever that independent, of course, given that it was increasingly a slave to the MRC's right-wing narratives. Indeed, over the past few years, CNS was becoming little more than NewsBusters in an inverted-pyramid format. Merging it into MRCTV is an interesting choice, though, given that it's effectively the MRC's hot-takes division whose most popular segment (such as that is) are the video rantings of Brittany Hughes. That is most definitely not a recipe to be treated seriously.
Still, it's odd that the MRC effectively refused to publicize this move if the goal was to maintain a similarly functioning "news" operation to its standalone website; it may be that it has been gutted and CNS will be maintained simply as a brand name on MRCTV for things deemed to be "news" content from other MRC operations. And it may be that, as his bio states, Bannister really is the editor (whatever that means) for this newly gutted CNS, if not its only designated employee.
We'll continue to monitor doings at CNS/MRCTV and decide whether to document them (or whether to document the bias on CNS articles published before the shutdown that we hadn't gotten to yet -- the internet is forever, after all).
Meanwhile, a parallel and possibly related development happened: Chapman appears to have deleted his entire Twitter feed, which he operated for years and used a painting of 15th century Catholic bishop and thelologian John Fisher as the portrait image. The account was active as recently as April 12 and possibly a couple days afterward. Did Chapman wipe out his Twitter feed because he knew CNS was about to be shut down? Inquiring minds want to know.
UPDATE: The CNSNews.com domain now redirects to the CNS page at MRCTV.
With Reports That Nashville Shooter May Be Transgender, MRC Finds A Distraction From Guns Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's initial reaction to the March 27 gun massacre at a private school in Nashville was a familiar one: complaining that people were criticizing guns. Curtis Houck complained that reporters "flaunt[ed] their liberal views"in a White House press briefing after the shooting, with "NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell channeled Rahm Emanuel by ghoulishly speculating the reports of the shooter being a woman could represent a 'breakthrough' against those backward Americans stuck in their 'gun culture.'" That was followed by a post from Nicholas Fondacaro ranting that a Tennessee congressman got called out for expressing sympathy over the massacre despite he and his family posing with guns in a recent Christmas card photo.
But then the real news (as far as the MRC was concerned) surfact: the shooter was allegedly transgender. And, of course, the transphobes at the MRC totally ran with that. Typical was a rage-filled post by Kevin Tober:
On Monday, a transgender activist shot up a Christian school in Nashville Tennessee, killing three nine-year-old children and three teachers in an apparent hate crime against Christians. While all three networks mentioned a hate-filled transgender monster shot and killed six innocent Christians, the mentions were brief and CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell opened her program with a lecture on “gun violence.”
“Tonight, a targeted attack in Tennessee. A scene that has become all too common in America: A mass shooting. This time at a private Christian grade school in Nashville,” O’Donnell reported. She could've mentioned that once again a radical trans activist carried out a mass shooting, but she - like most leftists - was far more comfortable blaming guns.
“We just learned more about the six victims, the three children all 9 years old. The three adults in their 60s. One of them, Katherine Koonce, was the head of the school. The other adults, a substitute teacher, and a custodian,” O’Donnell noted.
O’Donnell’s only mention of the evil person who murdered six people was a brief mention of the suspect’s identity. She never mentions that the shooter was a mentally ill woman who pretended to be a man. She left that detail up to correspondent Janet Shamlian.
Tober offered no evidence the shooter was a "radical trans activist" or was "mentally ill" simply by allegedly being transgender.
Houck returned to whine about speculation that the shooter might have been motivated by right-wing anti-transgender laws like those recently passed in Tennessee:
Anchoring an ABC News Special Report early Monday evening on the deadly school shooting at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, senior national correspondent Terry Moran offered up one of the worst takes yet on the massacre by seeming to tie the transgender suspect’s premeditated attack on this Presbyterian school to Tennessee Republicans fighting back against gender mutilation and protecting children from graphic sexual content.
Moran offered this ghoulish insinuation after a press conference from Nashville officials in which they confirmed reporting and speculation of the gunman’s identity, their perceived gender identity, and how she left behind a manifesto and drawings of the school to chart the attack.
Speculating about motive does not equal approval of the motive, Curt.
Tober returned for more nastiness -- this time directed at President Biden -- while again calling the shooter "radical" without evidence:
Hours after a radical transgender activist shot and killed six people at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, President Joe Biden’s first public comments on Monday were not about the heartbreaking mass shooting, they were a bizarre rambling rant about how much he loves ice cream, and how “good-looking” four of the kids in the audience were.
Imagine if former President Trump acted like this after a mass shooting. Creepy and thoroughly inappropriate comments like the ones Biden made would be aired and condemned on the nightly newscasts if Trump uttered them. Yet, sadly they were nowhere to be found on the big three evening newscasts of ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News.
Tober seems to have forgotten that President George W. Bush was reading a children's book to first-graders in Florida at the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
Alex Christy complained that another Tennessee politician's gun-laden Christmas card was called out. More whining about criticism of right-wing gun culture followed:
Christy groused in a related matter that late-night host Stephen Colbert mocked how right-wingers insisted that securing school doors was more important than gun regulation, huffing that Colbert was "apparently unaware of how doors work."
The MRC continued its transgender obsession as well:
Alexandra Steigrad at the New York Post reported Thursday that CBS News ordered its staffers to avoid "any mention" of Tennessee school shooter Audrey Hale's identification as transgender. CBS has weirdly asserted that they haven't "confirmed" what the police said. It's interesting that in this case, their failure to accept official sources lines up with the GLAAD crowd.
Pay no attention to the shooter's identity, said the hardliners in identity politics!
[...]
For a "news" network to tell their reporters to dismiss all mention of transgenderism as irrelevant to this story is to say some facts, in this case, are too inflammatory or damaging to a cause or a "community" to mention. Politics is trumping facts.
By contrast, Graham was silent when Fox News ordered its staff to censor revelations about the channel made in filings in Dominion's defamation lawsuit against it, and definitely no lecturing about how it was refusing to report facts that were "too inflammatory or damaging."
WND's Alexander Still Pushing The Big Lie In Arizona Topic: WorldNetDaily
Rachel Alexander has been WorldNetDaily's biggest promoter of the discredited claim that there was election fraud in Arizona that kept Republicans like Kari Lake from winning, and she's not letting an utter lack of credible evidence stand in the way of contining to push that conspiracy theory, writing in her March 6 column:
As Arizona experiences a repeat of the 2020 election with 2022, where MAGA candidates allegedly lost to poor Democratic candidates like Katie Hobbs who refused to debate, some are turning on the MAGA candidates and blaming them instead of election fraud. The candidates' lawsuits are predictably going nowhere, as judges throw them out for supposed "lack of evidence" or narrow technical reasons such as "lack of standing."
The judges pretend that witness testimony and affidavits don't constitute evidence, but every first-year law school student learns that of the 11 sections of the traditional Rules of Evidence in law, an entire section, section 6, is devoted to witness testimony. Witness testimony throughout history has been the smoking gun in many cases; defendants have suffered the death penalty based on witness testimony alone.
Well, there's evidence and there's credible evidence, and Alexanderofered no proof that the former is the latter. Instead, she touted how Lake still has a chance:
Lake's appeal brief is one of the best in all of the election lawsuits. It should be a slam dunk especially considering there is precedent; the Arizona Supreme Court once overturned a gubernatorial election where fraud was alleged and replaced the Democrat who had been in office for months with the Republican. Judges routinely overturn elections around the country where there was voter disenfranchisement and don't require the excessively high standards of proof we're seeing when Republicans lost or were disenfranchised. For example, in 2019, a judge ordered a new election for a Georgia House seat based on merely finding that four voters were ineligible.
But judges cannot rule in favor of election integrity when it helps Republicans because they are terrified of what the left will do to them and their careers. The type of person who becomes a judge is someone who isn't looking for the spotlight; most judges go their entire careers with very few headlines about them. If you look their names up on the internet, you can rarely find anything about them. They have relatively quiet, peaceful lives outside the public eye, and they live well with generous salaries.
The instance of a gubernatorial election being overturned "where fraud was alleged" happened in 1916 -- just four years after Arizona became a state, meaning that frontier justice had not yet been eliminated -- so that may not have been the best example Alexander could have used. She spent the rest of her column railing against judges for not being the right-wing lapdogs she demands them to be.
In her March 20 column, Alexander complained that Trump attorney agreed to getting censured for spreading election falsehoods (and, even worse, pointed out that Lake is scamming people by perpetuating a lie):
Earlier this month, Ellis quietly settled the case. She admitted to spreading "misrepresentations" "with at least a reckless state of mind." For these concessions, which are very damaging to Trump and his cause, Ellis escaped with a censure for professional misconduct from the Colorado courts. Based on her tweets, Ellis appears now to be leaning toward Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over Trump for president in 2024, although a year ago she offered to represent Disney against DeSantis.
Ellis' censure deal required her to say she had misled Americans with statements such as, "The election was stolen and Trump won by a landslide." And, "The proper and true victor … is Donald Trump." These are statements most Republican voters believe are true, according to polls. A Quinnipiac poll found that 76% of Republicans believe there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
Immediately before the censure was announced, Ellis tweeted that Kari Lake was a "grifter" for appealing her alleged gubernatorial loss in Arizona. While there's only a slim chance any judges will dare rule that there was voter suppression since it affected Republicans, Lake's supporters would be devastated if she dropped the battle to expose corruption, especially since more information continues to come out, including an exit poll finding that an astounding 8% more voters chose her over Katie Hobbs.
[...]
It's a Pyrrhic victory for Ellis, since she will continue to have the state bar hanging over her head, ready to pounce if she dares to say anything "controversial" again. The settlement serves her interests but not those of MAGA. Increasingly, zealous advocacy of a client's interests is allowed for criminal defendants and causes of the left, but few others. The right's lawyers, if they dare speak at all, must stick to the most humdrum of legal theories and narratives, or they risk professional sanctions or even bogus prosecution.
Caving in to the left-wing fascists is the last thing powerful figures on the right should be doing if we ever hope to stop election fraud and legal corruption. The 65 Project is currently going after a long list of attorneys on the right, and Ellis' surrender will be used against them as precedent.
We weren't aware that making liars face consequences for their lies is something "left-wing fascists" do.
Alexander's March 27 column was devoted to gushing of Ryan Heath, an attorney for Lake who sued a judge over the election-fraud stuff, going on to cheer, "He's filed and threatened lawsuits over face masks, CRT and mutilating children in the name of 'affirmative care.'" As Wonkette's Liz Dye has noted, Heath is also an anti-vaxxer and wrote "the greatest footnote of all time" to explain that he didn't sue the state in 2020 despite the fact the same exact election procedures were used then because he had just graduated from law school and "this election cycle is the first opportunity Petitioner has ever had to challenge this process."
Rather than note any of that, Alexander declared that "Unlike some attorneys who cower when it comes to election fraud and other areas where patriots are under attack, Heath is taking the exact opposite approach. In response, the left has filed six frivolous bar complaints filed against him in two separate states." She didn't explain what, exactly, was "frivolous" about those complaints." She conlcuded by encouraging her readers to donate to him.
MRC-Fox News Revolving Door Watch Topic: Media Research Center
The paradeofstaffers leaving the Media Research Center to work for Fox News has increased in recent months.
Jeffrey Clark, who spent less than a year at the MRC as a writer on business stuff, left in November then resurfaced at Fox News the following month. His Fox News bio highlighted his work as "a speechwriter for a cabinet secretary and as a Fulbright teacher in South Korea" butr mentioned nothing about his MRC employment.
The more surprising departure, though, is Scott Whitlock (pictured), who had been with the MRC since 2005 -- most recently serving as research director after Rich Noyes' retirement -- but left in October to be a Fox News editor. Whitlock's Fox News bio states only that he is "an editor for Fox News digital's media team" and like Clark's bio, mentions nothing about his MRC employment even though that was much, if not all, of his working career until then. Meanwhile, the MRC's NewsBusters site has blocked access to Whitlock's article arcihve (though the internet is forever).
An indirect person throught the revolving door is Joe Schoffstall, who worked at the MRC from 2010 to 2013 and had employment elsewhere, including the Washington Free Beacon, before joining Fox News in 2021.
Then there is the case of Kristine Marsh, who wrote for the MRC until last February. Marsh's last MRC post was on Feb. 9, 2022; eight days later, a writer named Kristine Parks wrote her first story for Fox News. We haven't been able to confirm that Kristine Marsh and Kristine Parks are one and the same, but as with the other MRC exiles, the subject matter Parks writes about echoes the right-wing culture-war and anti-"liberal media" attacks Marsh covered at the MRC.
Who will be next to go through that revolving door? We'll have to see.
NEW ARTICLE: Bill Donohue, Dishonest Apologist Topic: CNSNews.com
The right-wing Catholic activist is still using his CNSNews.com columns to distract from the long history of sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church and using them to spread his usual homophobia. Read more >>
MRC Turns On Musk Over Twitter Suspending Anti-Trans Accounts Topic: Media Research Center
The past year of sucking up to Elon Musk in order to encourage him to buy Twitter so that it and its fellow right-wingers would not feel the consequences of spreading hateful and extreme views -- which it misleadingly frames as "censorship" -- seems to have backfired a bit on the Media Research Center, because it appears there are still some things Twitter finds offensive. A March 29 post by Luis Cornelio was outrage that right-wingers (whom he misleadigly described as "pro-free speech") saw consequences (or, in Cornelio's parlance, were "censored") for spreading anti-transgender hate:
Despite Musk’s promises to protect free speech, Twitter silenced the Media Research Center and other free speech advocates who simply commented on the leftist ‘Trans Day of Vengeance’ event.
Twitter locked 11 pro-free speech journalists, politicians, and leaders out of their Twitter accounts for reporting on the infamous ‘Trans Day of Vengeance’ protest organized by Our Rights DC set to happen between March 31 and April 2. The censorship targeted accounts like The Media Research Center, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), The Federalist CEO Sean Davis and The Daily Wire podcast host Michael Knowles, among others. The platform’s active censorship appears to reveal that free speech is still being muzzled on Twitter.
Media Research Center President Brent Bozell blasted Twitter for its blatant censorship of a major news story. "Does Elon Musk know what his team is up to? Reporting on a 'Trans Day of Vengeance' right after the Nashville tragedy is important news,” he said. “Twitter should immediately remove these suspensions and explain what happened."
Twitter’s Vice President of Trust and Safety Ella Irwin explained the sweeping censorship related to tweets promoting the Trans Day of Vengeance. However, Irwin neglected to explain why those calling attention to the disturbing protest were also censored. “We had to automatically sweep our platform and remove >5000 tweets /retweets of this poster,” she wrote. “We do not support tweets that incite violence irrespective of who posts them. ‘Vengeance’ does not imply peaceful protest. Organizing or support for peaceful protests is ok.”
MRC Free Speech Vice President Dan Schneider ripped apart Twitter’s excuse:
“Twitter’s blatant hypocrisy is breathtaking. Just last week, liberals were on Twitter attacking Donald Trump for calling for protests in New York if he got indicted, but Twitter is now freezing accounts of conservatives who are simply reporting on planned protests by the left in Washington.”
Twitter locked the account of the Media Research Center’s video production division, MRCTV, after it called attention to the radical event.
Schneider overloooked the fact that these accounts posted a flyer promoting the event -- which was just a protest and not a call to violence -- not just "reporting" on it. The even ended up being canceled after the group putting it on was targeted with threats of violence, something the MRC never noted.
(Cornelio's post was updated to not that MRCTV's account was restored later that day.)
Cornelio went on to huff: "MRC Free Speech America will soon release a study that suggests that the rank-and-file employees at Twitter are in open revolt against the vision Musk articulated for the platform. Rather than building an environment where free speech is allowed to flourish at Twitter, employees continue to silence conservatives and censor opinions that run contrary to the woke agenda supported by so many in Silicon Valley." Indeed, Joseph Vazquez folled up the next day with this alleged study:
Despite public statements in support of free speech, censorship on Twitter has surprisingly increased since billionaire Elon Musk purchased the platform according to data from MRC Free Speech America's CensorTrack.org database. MRC Free Speech America found that Twitter censorship has been on the rise under Musk's leadership in comparison to the old regime. Musk once tweeted that he saw Twitter as the “de facto town square” and wrote that “failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy.” It appears that a lot of work needs to be done to achieve Musk’s vision.
Here are MRC Free Speech America’s findings:
Twitter censorship has been on the rise under Elon Musk.MRC Free Speech America found 293 cases of documented censorship since Musk took control of the platform and began terminating the previous regime’s employees from Nov. 4, 2022 through Mar. 4, 2023. That’s 67 more than the 226 documented cases in CensorTrack.org from the old regime during the same time period a year prior (Nov. 4, 2021 - Mar. 4, 2022).
The severity of the censorship since Musk took over has been harsher. In 245 of the 293 (84%) documented cases of censorship on CensorTrack.org, Twitter locked users’ accounts, and in nearly all cases users were required to delete the content to regain access to their accounts. Under the old Twitter regime, by contrast, only 136 of the 226 (60%) documented cases of censorship consisted of locked accounts.
The previous Twitter regime targeted the biggest, most politically sensitive user accounts. However, Musk’s moves that led to the firing and resignation of key leaders in the elitist team in charge of the effort to target high follower accounts has not resulted in a reduction of censorship practices by the remaining rank-and-file staff involved in content moderation. The implication? The remaining staff at Twitter are revolting against Musk’s efforts to foster a free speech environment on the platform. Some high-profile users censored under the old regime during the analyzed period included Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), conservative radio host Dan Bongino, Just the News founder John Solomon, and the American Heart Association.
Sixty-two percent of documented cases of censorship during Musk’s leadership involved tweets critical of the left’s transgender narrative. At least 182 of the 293 (62%) documented cases of censorship recorded in the CensorTrack.org database for Twitter under Musk involved users being censored for speech critical of the left’s woke “transgender” narrative. Twitter’s censorship on this issue stands in stark contrast to the theorized pretext for Musk launching his $44 billion bid to acquire the platform.
The Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon shared in a tweet that “Musk reached out to us before he polled his followers about Twitter’s commitment to free speech. He wanted to confirm that we had, in fact, been suspended. He even mused on the call that he might need to buy Twitter. Now he’s the largest shareholder and has a seat on the board.” The Babylon Bee was banned under the previous regime for a humorous tweet declaring transgender Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine its “Man of the Year” in 2022.
Note how Vazquez framed right-wing anti-transgender hate as being "critical of the left’s transgender narrative." Also note that the only "censorship" the MRC cares about are of it and its fellow right-wingers -- never mind that the Twitter algorithm already had a right-wing bias before Musk or that liberal-leaning accounts have also been targeted by Musk -- and how Vazquez hyped that Musk "reached out" to right-wingers like the Babylon Bee to see that they got special treatment, something we're not aware Musk ever did to non-right-wing accounts.
Despite all of that, Vazquez avoided actually blaming Musk himself, insisting the "censorship" was coming from "woke staff" at Twitter that Musk hasn't fired yet:
While the departure of Roth, Gadde, Agrawal and Dorsey appears to have helped Musk reduce the censorship of larger accounts, some believe that the censorship culture they fomented in the elitist SIP-PES [Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support team] has only grown stronger among the rank-and-file Twitter staff who are still moderating user content.
“Based on our analysis it is clear that there is an internal revolt going on among the woke staff at Twitter. I’m sure they don’t like that their new boss has dissolved the high-level censorship team, but Musk’s actions appear to have motivated the remaining staff to be even more aggressive toward regular conservatives on the platform. They are undercutting Musk’s plan to foster a free speech environment on the platform,” MRC Vice President for Free Speech Dan Schneider said. “Musk has a good history of fixing problems that are brought to his attention. But it is clear that the censorship police are still on the beat at Twitter. Musk still has a lot more housekeeping ahead of him.”
Vazquez did not explain what kind of "analysis" Schneider did that made him reach that concludion exonerating Musk, or wy Musk wasn't to blame for not firing these people, and no explanation was offering as the why SIP-PES is supposedly "elitist."
Meanwhile, neither Schneider nor anyone else at the MRC mentioned one of Musk's big failures in personnel management earlier that month: he openly mocked the disability of an employee who had asked Musk if he was still employed there because he had received no actual layoff notice despite having lost computer access and falsely accused him of not doing his job. He later had to apologize to the guy for spreading falsehoods and invited him to stay at Twitter.
The whining continued in a March 31 post by Cornelio:
Former U.S. athletes are slamming Twitter’s hypocrisy for censoring tweets reporting on the “Trans Day Of Vengeance” and not protecting them against the onslaught of Twitter harassment and death threats they faced when they spoke out against biological males in women’s sports.
In an exclusive interview with MRC Free Speech America, Riley Gaines, a 12x All-American swimmer and Stand with Women spokeswoman at the Independent Women’s Forum, and Taylor Silverman, an accomplished competitive skateboarder, pushed back against Twitter’s assault against free speech.
Both called out the platform’s hypocrisy for not protecting them against an onslaught of threats.
Cornelio again censored the fact that there was no call for violence, and he also misleadingly claimed that the protest was called off due to "facing scrutiny in the wake of the Nashville school shooting," even though the tweet he linked to specifically claimed there was a "credible threat to life and safety" and mentioned nothing about "scrutiny." He also failed to explain why it was apparently OK that transgender people face an onslaught of threats on Twitter.
Catherine Salgado served up even more whining and victimhood in an April 3 post:
In an all-too-familiar fashion, Twitter locked the New York Post out of its account for a story about the deletion of thousands of tweets relating to violent transgender activism. Twitter owner Elon Musk defended the supposedly accidental censorship on Twitter.
The Post said it tweeted an article about Twitter deleting more than 5,000 tweets with content about a planned (now canceled) “Trans Day of Vengeance.” Twitter went on a wild censorship binge by indiscriminately targeting accounts that promoted the “Trans Day of Vengeance” along with those that condemned the scheduled event.
[...]
It’s pathetic that the Post is still being targeted for committing journalism. The Twitter Files revealed Twitter censored the Hunter Biden story in 2020 after a priming campaign by the FBI. A Media Research Center poll found that Big Tech censorship of the Hunter Biden scandal helped steal the 2020 election for Joe Biden.
Salgado omitted the fact that the article reproduced the alleged flyer for the event, which Twitter pointed out was prohibited no matter who posted it.
CNS Colunnists Also Climb Aboard The Right-Wing Anti-ESG Bandwagon Topic: CNSNews.com
Just as the "news" side of CNSNews.com has been dutifullyparroting right-wing talking points against investments that take environmental, social and governmental issues into consideration, CNS' more explicitly opinionated commentary side has done so as well, with content largely from right-wing think tanks. A Feb. 9 column by Kimberlee Josephson of the Consumer Choice Center -- which is funded by right-wing billionaires and climate deniers -- complained:
The adoption of ESG standards, however, is truly problematic given that value and virtue are difficult to measure and there will always be tradeoffs – whether Freeman likes it or not.
A troublesome matter for businesses serving societal goals rather than marketplace needs is the complexity of catering to all stakeholders at once, and the subjectivity of what is meant as being ‘good’ or when ‘good’ does or doesn’t apply.
Josephson's op-ed came via another right-wing think tank, the American Institute for Economnic research.
The next day, Samuel Gregg of the Acton Institute wrote in a column headlined "Why Business Should Dispense with ESG" insistoing that ESG investing doesn't do as well as regular investing: "This just isn’t bad for businesses; it also damages society’s wider capacity to recognize that when business achieves its proper ends, the wider, albeit indirect benefits for others are enormous." A Feb 13 column by Brian Gottstein of the Heritage Foundation toutted anti-EDG efforts in Indiana:
ESG seeks to shut out traditional energy producers like coal and natural gas from the marketplace to advance the Left’s climate alarmism agenda. And it infuses businesses with critical race theory and radical gender identity theories to advance the Left’s so-called social justice agenda.
This is not smart investing, and ESG measures often are in direct conflict with business and shareholder interests. ESG costs Indiana in investment profits and costs consumers in the form of higher energy, food, automobile, and gas prices when companies focus on political agendas rather than meeting their customers’ needs.
The ESG-bashing continueed:
Josephson returned fort another anti-ESG attack in a Feb. 21 column: "So, although criticisms of ESG are on the rise, a pivot in portfolio management back to frameworks focused on corporate growth rather than cause-related ones seems unlikely. Both buyers and bureaucrats are to blame."
Heritage's Anthony Kim huffed in a Feb. 27 column that "it should be remembered that economic freedom—not the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) agenda—makes America and the world cleaner, safer, and better governed. The true path to ensuring environmental, social, and governance improvements lies in focusing on policies that enhance economic freedom.
Another AIER-linked writer, Peter Earle, proclaimed ESG investing to be over in a March 6 column: "Although it is unlikely to disappear completely, the ESG fad is probably past the crest of its popularity. It’s time again for firms to focus, singularly and completely, on the inestimable task of making money."
A March 13 column by Josephson cheered the "backlash over ESG" while complaining that "The ESG industry, however, shows no signs of slowing down, and initiatives seem to be ramping up on a global scale."
CNS' attack on President Biden's reversal of Trump-era anti-ESG regulations was echoed in a March 28 column by Stephen Moore, another right-wing think tanker:
Workers and retirees are angry about this decision -- as they should be. ESG is effectively a tax on your retirement funds, and it means you will have a smaller nest egg when you retire than if the money managers simply bought the top-performing stocks. Workers don't want politics diluting the returns on their 401(k) plans and other pension accounts.
[...]
My estimate is that ESG has cost the public billions of dollars of reduced returns on their retirement nest eggs. This comes atop the $30,000 or so that people have lost on average in their 401(k) plans after Biden came into office, and the combination of high inflation and lousy stock market returns overall.
Yet another AIER-supplied column, an April 10 piece by Ramon DeGennaro, complained:
ESG proponents have no shortage of reasons to support their position. The current tide of popular opinion and the lure of being on the right side of history, though, can and should trigger cognitive dissonance by thoughtful ESG advocates. Companies that score high on some measures fall short on others. A willingness to focus blindly on one social issue to the exclusion of the rest makes proponents susceptible to the fads and fashion of the times.
ESG proponents also bear the risk that future generations may view their actions differently. Professor Thomas Sowell wrote, “If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.” Today’s virtue may indeed be tomorrow’s taboo.
DeGennaro's column was headlined "How Will Future Generations Look Upon ESG Investing?" He didn't wonder how future generations would look aboutright-wing efforts to restrict people from investing the way they would like.
MRC Whines It Got Busted For Pushing Fact-Free Narrative Topic: Media Research Center
In between pushing the baseless narrative that "woke" policies caused Silicon Valley Bank to fail and fervently hoping the failure would have tanked the economy so Biden would be blamed for it and thus lose the 2024 presidential election, the Media Research Center found time to whine some more about fact-checkers. Tim Graham spent a March 24 post complaining that the Associated Press busted it for spreading the false narrative of "wokeness" being the downfall of these banks by posting an earlier clip of Bernie Marcus making the claim:
Beware those “independent fact-checkers” when they throw the allegation “Missing context.” This can translate as: “not enough liberal context.”
We discovered this on our own Facebook page, which was flagged for "Missing context" on the failure of Silicon Valley Bank:
But when we clicked on “See why,” it wasn’t a defense of their fractured SVB “context-checking.” It was a generic "Help" page.
[...]
So a lame "missing context" flag impairs our ability to share a conservative message. Bernie Marcus isn't even mentioned in the actual AP "Fact Check" article.
The rest of the post is a back-and-forth between the MRC and AP in which the MRC did not back up Marcus' claims about wokeness killing the bank -- only that Marcus was expressing an opinion, and that "Mr Marcus is a highly successful businessman and is entitled to share an opinion on this." But even a "highly successful businessman" should not be immune from having to back up what he says and from being called out when there's no evidence to support the claims he makes -- and the MRC has a responsibility to not repeat false claims merely because they fit a partisan narrative. Rather than behaving responsibly, Graham played the victim: "It's downright comical that AP would explicitly write us that 'missing context' means 'no liberal opinion included.' AP and other liberal outlets leave out any conservative rebuttal in 'news' stories on a daily basis."
If Graham doesn't want to be fact-checked, he and the MRC should stop spreading false and misleading things.
WND's Root: Literally Everything Is Evidence Of A Stolen Election Topic: WorldNetDaily
Wayne Allyn Root used his Feb. 17 WorldNetDaily column to declare that the evidence that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" is ... everything that doesn't involve the 2020 election:
To me the proof the 2020 election was stolen is the state of the nation. Open your eyes. The consequences of a stolen election are all around us.
The supply chain is crippled. Highways, ports and infrastructure are crumbling. Blue states are banning trucks from the roads. Grocery prices are skyrocketing. Egg farms are burning to the ground. Eggs cost $10 per dozen – if you can find them. Over 100 food plants have burned to the ground in the past year.
Trains are derailing. The East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment may be the worst ecological disaster in U.S. history. Experts are calling it "our Chernobyl." There is a mushroom cloud of deadly chemicals floating over the farm belt. Animals are dying. Fish are dead. People are sick. And it just happens to have poisoned hundreds of thousands of acres of prime Midwest farmland.
The same exact thing that's happening to food and farmland is happening to energy. Under former President Donald Trump we had energy independence and cheap, plentiful energy. Under President Joe Biden we have soaring gas and electricity prices, energy shortages and depletion of our national fuel reserve. In the middle of this, our government is desperate to ban gas stoves.
Our border is wide open, with millions of migrants pouring through. I believe all of them will require cradle-to-grave welfare and many of them are criminals. How many are terrorists? And through that border comes drugs. Fentanyl alone kills over 100,000 Americans per year. It sure seems like someone wants Americans dead. I and many others believe Biden's COVID-19 vaccine mandates are causing "sudden death" and cardiac arrest by the thousands per day. Read the headlines. Death rates are the highest in history. More children and young athletes are dropping dead suddenly than ever before in our lifetimes. Yet blue states are now mandating COVID-19 vaccines for your children to attend school. And our federal government is compiling a list of the unvaccinated. This won't end well.
Chinese balloons are sent to intimidate us. Russian warplanes are buzzing our borders. Russia is threatening nuclear war. China is ready to invade Taiwan, and $85 billion of military equipment was left in Afghanistan. The rest has been shipped off to Ukraine. Our military is in disarray, short on equipment, riddled with poor morale and unable to attract recruits.
Biden has based the economy on equity, social justice, diversity, LGBTQ and climate change. Result? Massive inflation is decimating the middle class. The national debt is exploding. So is the homeless population. So is violent crime and retail theft. Cities run by Democrats look like war zones filled with zombies.
The black national anthem opens our Super Bowl, dividing our nation. Meanwhile there isn't one black child able to do math at grade level in over 50 Chicago area schools. Insanity reigns.
Conservative voices are suspended, banned, silenced or fired for our political beliefs. Free speech is being eradicated.
The FBI and DOJ are persecuting PTA parents, conservatives and Christians, while woke district attorneys release violent criminals.
Conservative TV stations like Newsmax and OAN are removed from our airwaves.
And whether it's government, media, Hollywood or schools, our entire society is now about LGBTQ and transgender ideology. It's 24/7 brainwashing and propaganda.
Our president of the United States is clearly compromised, corrupted and owned by China. A Democratic U.S. senator has checked into the hospital for depression. And the former director of nuclear waste for the Energy Department is a man who dresses as a woman, now under indictment for stealing women's luggage.
Our country is a freaking mess. A shell of its former self, in free fall. The people in charge could star in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
This is the purposeful destruction of America and the great American middle class – in only two short years since an illegitimate, corrupt, brain-dead president was placed into power.
The humiliating state of our nation is all the proof you need of a stolen election. The evil all around us is the proof. In only two short years, a stolen election has unleashed the gates of hell. This was all a plan ...
And it's being carried out to perfection.
This would seem to be a roundabout way for Root to admit that he has no actual credible evidence of the 2020 election being tampered with. If everything is "evidence" -- including someone singing a song at the Super Bowl and a business decision about a TV channel -- then there is no evidence at all.
MRC's Jean-Pierre-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch Topic: Media Research Center
Kevin Tober got his usual malicious shots in at Karine Jean-Pierre in his writeup of the March 22 White House press briefing:
Once again, the first half of Wednesday’s White House press briefing featured National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby to serve as a crutch for incompetent White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Yet even during what WMAL radio talk show host Vince Coglianese referred to as “the grownup press briefing” there was at least one noteworthy moment.
This came from Fox Business correspondent Grady Trimble who pointed out how the Biden administration seems to be talking out of both sides of its mouth when it comes to the dangers of the Chinese spyware app TikTok.
[...]
Once Kirby was gone and the children’s version of the briefing began with the inept Jean-Pierre, things got more interesting.
First up was the Associated Press’s Aamer Madhani who wanted Jean-Pierre to weigh in once again on Florida Republican Ron DeSantis’s anti-grooming legislation.
Funny, we thought the MRC hated it when the media didn't call the Florida law by its official name. Tober went on to whine about "the most pathetic moment of the entire briefing, when USA Today reporter Rebecca Morin (who has pronouns in her Twitter bio) tattled on Texas Governor Greg Abbott and basically begged the Justice Department to sue him for daring to secure his state’s border." Tober didn't explain what relevance declaring one's pronouns has to, well, anything. He then moved on to the Fox News PR segment of his post for the MRC favorite biased reporter and mancrush:
Then came the moment everyone was waiting for: “Doocy Time” (as NewsBusters’ Curtis Houck has coined).
Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy didn’t waste time. He asked the most important question of the day which was regarding the Biden crime family’s mounting scandals: “House Oversight says they’ve got bank records showing a Chinese energy company paying three Biden family members through a third party. What were they paid for?”
Jean-Pierre played dumb and demurred, “I don’t even where to begin to even answer that question because, again, it’s been lies and lies and inaccuracy for the past couple years.”
Doocy moved on and asked about the deteriorating relationship between the United States and China: “Xi told Putin at their meeting, ‘Change is coming that hasn’t happened in 100 years. And we are driving this change together.’ What do you think that means?”
Again, Jean-Pierre had no answer. “You would have to ask them,” she replied.
Houck returned to write up the March 27 briefing to whine that reporters at the briefing talked about the gun massacre in Nashville earlier that day:
Monday’s White House press briefing came after initial reports on the deadly shooting at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee that left six people (three students, three adults) dead and thus gave reporters to flaunt their liberal views.
Most notably, NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell channeled Rahm Emanuel by ghoulishly speculating the reports of the shooter being a woman could represent a “breakthrough” against those backward Americans stuck in their “gun culture.”
Houck was so focused on defending guns that he forgot to insult Jean-Pierre.
UPDATE: Houck also whined in a separate article about the March 27 briefing that reporters asked about the gun massacre at a private school in Nashville that day, complaining that reporters "flaunt[ed] their liberal views" by asking about gun regulations and whether the fact that the shooter was a woman might change things: "Jean-Pierre declined to comment on the gender because she wanted to remain 'mindful' despite having seen 'those reportings [sic].' On guns, she said Biden would 'continue to take action to reduce gun violence because this is a priority for him and he wants to save lives' and hoped Congress would 'enact common gun law reforms'."
CNS Columnists Cheer Lawsuit Against Abortion Pill Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has been promoting right-wing efforts to demonize and ban the abortion drug mifepristone, and that effort continued in commentaries in advance of a court ruling in one case seeking to outlaw the drug. A Feb. 16 column by Bill Donohue used the pejorative "chemical abortion" to describe the pills and cited anti-abortion activist Ingrid Skop (whom CNS has also promoted) to fearmonger about mifepristone and "the prevalence of non-doctors performing abortions across the country."
A March 6 column by Lathan Watts of the right-wing activist group Alliance Defending Freedom parroted the arguments used by anti-abortion activisrts in the lawsuit, which thte ADF is taking part in:
The FDA never studied the safety of the drugs under the labeled conditions of use, ignored the potential impacts of the hormone-blocking regimen on the developing bodies of adolescent girls, disregarded the substantial evidence that chemical abortion drugs cause more complications than surgical abortions, and eliminated necessary safeguards for pregnant girls and women who undergo the dangerous drug regimen.
[...]
ADF attorneys have participated in multiple interviews with major news outlets covering the litigation, including CBS, PBS, and The Washington Post.
Nowhere in the final published versions of their coverage did the journalists at these outlets mention the many women who have died from taking these drugs, nor did they report the experiences that our frontline doctors shared with them about how America’s emergency rooms are treating women harmed by dangerous chemical abortion drugs. Not once did their news coverage include the FDA repeal of a reporting requirement for non-fatal complications, suggesting willful ignorance to the dangers unleashed on American women. And there was nary a mention of the bureaucratic stonewalling for 14 years that prevented litigation until recently. Instead, the phrases “safe and effective” and “on the market for 20 years” appear multiple times.
In fact, the death risk from mifepristone is much lower than that from penicillin or Viagra. Nevertheless, he ranted:
A government accountable to its citizens and a free and independent press working to assure this accountability are two vitally essential elements of a republic. This lawsuit and the resulting media coverage demonstrate the public’s distrust is more than justified. Tragically, this is far more serious than typical bureaucratic incompetence and media bias; lives are at stake.
How many more women must die, knock on death’s door, or risk serious injury for the FDA to abandon its “safe and effective” mantra? And when will the national news media summon the courage and integrity to ask them?
Editor Terry Jeffrey spent his March 8 column hyping the lawsuit, which started by huffing that "In September 2000, not long before Clinton finished his second term in office, the FDA approved the use of abortion-inducing drugs in the United States." He concluded with an anti-abortion screed:
The administration completely ignores the fact that not only is there a death associated with the use of these drugs, it is the very purpose of these drugs.
An unborn child is a human being. A drug that is designed to abort the life of that unborn child is a drug designed to kill a human being.
This is what the FDA approved when it approved drugs that induce abortion: the killing of a human being.
Commentary editor Georgiana Constantin-Parke used a March 21 column to again promote Skop's activist attacks on mifepristone. She also complained that "Medical abortions apparently carry with them a risk of complications four times higher than surgical abortions" without mentioning that surgical abortions are also being targeted by anti-abortion activists, and hyped the alleged "terrible dangers" without disclosing that other drugs have higher risks. She concluded with her own anti-abortion rant:
But for those looking to politicize the abortion debate, nothing is too nonsensical or dangerous to attempt or legalize. They seem to leisurely sit on the sidelines and watch the effects of their policies: dead babies, traumatized and dead women, a polarized society, a manipulated narrative and populace. They teach other to raise clothing hangers and shout “never again!” or “keep abortion safe” while ensuring that the procedure is in fact increasingly turned into a horrific, traumatizing, and life threatening experience.
Constantin-Parke didn't mention that anti-abortion activists are the ones making it a "horrific, traumatizing, and life threatening experience" by imposing needless regulation on the procedure that are driven much more by ideology than medicine -- much like CNS' own commentaries are doing.
WND's Lively Remains A Trump Election Denier Topic: WorldNetDaily
Even though Scott Lively thinks Donald Trump doesn't hate LGBT people enough, he still believes in the myth of election fraud and that Trump should still be president. Lively began his March 13 column -- headlined "Trump shouldn't have to run to gain back the presidency" -- by complaining that Trump lawyer was censured in Colorado for her election lies:
This past week one of the last loose ends from the 2020 election coup was tied up by the conspirators: the neutralizing of Jenna Ellis, arguably the most effective of the Trump attorneys who sought justice for the American electorate in the courts. The media widely but falsely reported that she admitted to lying about the election in a deal she made with the State Bar of Colorado to keep her law license.
What seems to the general public to be a slam-dunk victory for the "cleanest election in U.S. history" choir (filthy scoundrels all) was in fact the administrative equivalent of a plea-bargain in which an innocent party facing certain defeat in court admits to a lesser charge and consequence to avoid a much harsher sentence. We've all seen how this works in Hollywood courtroom dramas and Ellis is a real life example. There was no way the leftist Colorado Bar Association and courts were going to let her get away with challenging the election results. Per a 2020 post-game wrap-up by KDVR in Denver, "Tuesday night was a good night for Democrats across Colorado. Democrats now control the governor's office, the state House, the state Senate. … Hickenlooper's win also gives Democrats control of both Colorado U.S. Senate seats in addition to their 4-3 advantage in the U.S. House."
You get the picture, but an apparently fair-minded judge bucked the leftist mob to broker a compromise (censure, not disbarment) so she wouldn't lose her license to practice. In any case, what Ellis signed was in no way an admission that she "lied" – a point she vigorously argued on Twitter after the fact:
"The politically-motivated Left failed miserably in their attempt to destroy me. They're now trying to falsely discredit me by saying I admitted I lied. That is FALSE. I would NEVER lie. Lying requires INTENTIONALLY making a false statement. I never did that, nor did I stipulate to or admit that." You can and should read the full statement here.
But as one observer pointed out, Ellis admitted to knowingly making misrepresentations, which most normal people would call lies.
Lively then went on to spout his own conspiracy theory about the 2020 election, unencumbered by facts:
Let me add my own un-parsed perspective here on behalf of Ellis (whom I have never met nor communicated with) and every other Trump defender in America who is constrained by politics and the risk of severe punishment. TRUMP WON the 2020 election by an overwhelming majority. We all know it, despite the relentless narrative-spinning, witness intimidation and criminal cover-ups by our corrupt government and media.
To eject Trump from the White House, the American Uniparty and its globalist allies around the world orchestrated the largest and most extensive campaign of fraud in the history of the world: the Purple Revolution. Their multi-faceted, multi-stage conspiracy included and integrated:
the Russian Collusion Hoax;
two back-to-back baseless impeachments;
the genocidal, global COVID-19 Plandemic (with all its many sub-components including lockdowns and coerced "immunizations" with poison);
the creation of massive new election fraud infrastructure (including neutralization of election safeguards by corrupt courts and legislatures, universal mail-out balloting and harvesting, Zuckerbucks and unmonitored leftist-controlled ballot counting processes);
the de facto takeover of Big Tech by deep-state intelligence agencies for use as censorship and propaganda machinery;
the outrageous staging of the J6 "insurrection" (to prevent a vote to postpone certification pending congressional investigation, which made Mike Pence's treason in certifying the false Biden presidency all the more heinous); and
the post-election intentional triggering (through un-ignorable provocation of Russia) of the Ukraine war as a cover-up facilitator and foreign distraction from the domestic fallout to the coup.
But despite ALL of that, Trump won in a landslide, and a steadily increasing percentage of the public openly admits it.
I've had my disagreements with President Trump – mostly regarding "Operation Warp Speed" and his endorsement of some aspects of the LGBT agenda. But despite these serious policy flaws, Donald Trump is by far the best candidate we have to overthrow the deep state and bring the real America back from the abyss.
Of course Lively threw Ukraine in there, given his position as a self-proclaimed Putin apologist. Lively conclucded that all other Republicans should step aside and help Trump regain was is purportedly rightfully his:
For the sake of their own political futures and the rescue of the world from globalist tyranny, Ron DeSantis and the rest of the Republican primary field should ceremoniously stand down, forcefully condemn the coup criminals and endorse Trump's already-earned second term unequivocally. The primary season should be treated as a war-time national coalescence behind Trump and getting a massive head start on assembling the most extensive "get-out-the-vote" army in U.S. history, with DeSantis and other worthy contenders serving as the Eisenhowers, Pattons and MacArthurs of that effort.
Whether or not that happens, Jenna Ellis remains a national heroine despite her plea bargain. And Donald Trump remains the (as yet uncertified) president of the United States with four more years to serve, pending the upcoming eviction of the present White House squatter.
NEW ARTICLE -- Newsmax's Victimhood Blitz: Endgame Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax continued to loudly complain that DirecTV dropped it -- until it started seriously negotiating to return there. It was then apparently forced, as a condition of its return, to walk back all those partisan attacks that it was the victim of "censorship." Read more >>
Anti-Drag Hate Continues At The MRC Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center kept its rage againstdrag queens burning hot as 2023 progressed. Matt Philbin spent a Jan. 27 post reacting to a drag show during halftime at a pro basketball game in a freakout filled with toxic masculinity:
Well, the Milwaukee Bucks came out of the closet this week, becoming the first NBA team to declare itself queer.
At Wednesday’s “Pride Night” game, the team gave attendees a "Bucks Pride" scarf and beanie, and announced that the Milwaukee PD officially recognized their arena as a terrific place to be gay. Team members made videos about how great the gay is, and at halftime they ceded the court to gyrating dudes in women’s clothes for a drag show. Apparently, they found time to play basketball too. All in a night’s work.
[...]
Well, if you knew it was Pride Night and you bought your family tickets anyway, you don’t much care what your kids are exposed to. And since the whole point of Pride Night is to advertise the team’s virtue, it’s hard to imagine someone not getting word before hand.
So please join me in congratulating the Bucks for their courage, wishing them well as they continue to live their truth as the first gay pro basketball team.
Philbin seems a bit insecure in his masculinity if all he can come up with is a childish "you're so gay" insult.
Later in the day, Philbin cheered anti-drag laws in North Dakota:
We’ve reached the point where we need laws to keep men in women’s clothes from performing lewd dance routines in front of kids. Isn’t progress great?
The North Dakota House voted 79-13 to make it illegal to do drag shows with children present. According to Fox News, “Rep. Brandon Prichard, a Republican from Bismarck, said Thursday he proposed the bill after learning of drag shows performed in front of children, including at least once on the Capitol steps.”
At leastone …
So the question is, who were the 13 reps that think pervs and kids belong together?
Philbin did not explain who indoctrinated him with the hateful belief that all drag queen are "pervs" who only do "lewd dance routines."
The MRC's chief dragphobe and transphobe, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, got to mix both hateful obsessions in a Feb. 3 post that went on a tirade against "drag queen turned trannie" Jinkx Monsoon, who landed a part in a Broadway musical. Mandelburg quickly descended into your typical right-wing "drag queens are coming for your children" fearmongering:
The two then got into the growing "backlash" that drag queens have been receiving. “Drag has slayed and sashayed its way into mainstream entertainment,” [CBS correspondent Christina] Ruffini began, “it’s also become a target.” Violence against anyone is always wrong, but it's important to point out that drag only became an issue when drag queens got out of their own lane and got into the lane where children exist.
If you wanna do drag, go ahead. You’re weird but I mean, feel free. However, the second a drag queen enters a space with children present, THAT’s when the line needs to be drawn. Children should not be subjected to such a twisted way of life and told to accept it as normal.
Whether its children attending “family-friendly” drag shows where performers execute provocative dance moves and lay spread eagle on the floor, or where drag queens host fashion shows for “drag youth,” or drag queen story hour, “drag” and “children” should never intersect.
Why is Mandelburg so afraid of drag queens? She offers no evidence that drag queens pose any sort of realisitic threat to children -- after all, children in the 1950s weren't traumatized by Milton Berle in drag on national TV (which wouldn't be allowed under some states' anti-drag laws).And one has to think that Mandelburg doesn't really mean that "violence against anyone is always wrong" when she's suggesting it would be permissible against a drag queen who got even remotely close to a child.
Kevin Tober spent a Feb. 6 post lashing out at TV panelists -- one of whom is one of the MRC's favorite targets -- who pointed out the scare tacics behind the right-wing anti-drag crusade:
On Monday's edition of CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront, host Erin Burnett and her panelists tore into Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis for the grave sin of holding companies accountable that seek to sexually exploit and indoctrinate children for the left's political gain. Most notably, panelist and co-host of The View Alyssa Farah Griffin defended parents who want to abuse their children by bringing them to drag shows and beclowned herself by admitting that she "love[s] drag."
Burnett turned to left-wing radical Van Jones on the drag queen story hour topic and falsely claimed: “this is not a big thing, okay.”
She then added: “But to the extent that it is something that comes up, there are a lot of parents who may not be Republican or right-wing Republican or whoever who might be uncomfortable with that. Is it a smart issue to pick it? So in other words, so that you as a Democrat aren't put in a position of defending why 6-year-olds should be allowed to go to drag queens?”
Jones deflected from the question posed to him and whined: “It's cynical. And it's the kind of cynical thing a bully does. It speaks poorly to his character. I don't think that the biggest threat to American children is some drag queen thing.”
[...]
Finally, the most insane commentary was predictably given by The View co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin.
At first, it started off promising when Griffin said she’s “not comfortable with the idea of a 6-year-old being at a drag show.”
But then it took a turn for the worse when she embarrassed herself by admitting “I love drag. I'm 33. So, let's not ban it.”
“Let’s not have the heavy hand of the state come in and make a decision for parents. This seems like conservatism 101. Let the parent opt-in to what they want their kids to have exposure to,”Griffin lectured.
If that’s "conservatism 101" then conservatism deserves to die a swift death. But luckily that’s not what conservatism stands for.
This shouldn't be a political issue. Children don't belong at drag shows. Period.
Tober didn't dispute that his fellow right-wingers are using bully tactics against drag queens. And, like his fellow co-workers, he failed to expain why he believes all drag queens are all inherently evil who must ber purged from society and hidden away lest chidren see them and learn not to hate the way their parents do. And if Tober and his pals support trying to legislate drag out of existence, they're the ones who are politicizing things.
Mandelburg returned to freak out in a Feb. 9 post:
CNN is doing its part for the drag queen lobby.
The network's Erica Hill did a puff segment Thursday morning with Reverend Todd Vetter and Jonathan Hamilt, Executive Director of Drag Story Hour, to protest the GOP-backed legislation that aims to protect kids from the obscenity of drag shows. In a roughly six-minute exchange on live TV, the trio spewed lies and woke propaganda about the need for drag in kids' lives -- and in the lives of Christians.
Vetter, of the First Congregational Church of Madison, Connecticut, put on a drag bingo event to raise money for his youth group to attend a mission trip to build homes for people. Naturally, he received some backlash but he kept it up He claimed it wasn’t a “political statement” and insisted it was to signal that his church was an “open and affirming” place.
Being judgmental about anytthing and everything that offends her far-right sensibilities and ideology is, of course, Mandelburg's brand. She then imposed her rigid and narrow view of Christianity on the situation, insisting that Jesus would never hang with drag queens:
Vetter said the experience was “an affirmation of who we are as a church, how we think about the commandment to love our neighbor and I think it, whatever lessons the community has taken away from this is -- I think, positive -- but it is a great affirmation for us of who we are and who we are called to be.”
So his flock is called to hang around with perverts?
While the Bible does say to love our neighbor and that we are not to judge others, it also commands us to walk as Jesus would. If Jesus were running a church in the U.S. today, he wouldn’t be using men in dress-up clothes and wearing boob attachments to raise money for a youth mission trip. Vetter is enabling drag behavior and exposing kids to it.
Mandelburg did the stock right-wing ranting about drag queen story hours: "Most regular story-hour’s don’t and shouldn't have men with fake boobs wearing short skirts and makeup." She then went on to justify anti-drag hate by using the Orwellian framing of calling it "pro-child":
He claimed that people who are in opposition of kids being in spaces with drag queens are simply homophobic and transphobic.
Hill then went on a tangent bashing the Republican-introduced law that would help protect kids from the immorality at drag shows. The law indicates that parents may be charged if they bring their kids to drag events, as they should, as well as insists that restaurants and bars that host the drag shows to register as sexually oriented businesses ... I mean, duh.
The bill isn’t “anti-drag,” but instead is “pro-child.” If you want to dress up in drag, go ahead, you’re a freak but not hurting anyone but yourself. But the second drag and children intersect or enter into the same place, a thick line needs to be drawn.
Kids should not be exposed to drag. Period.
Again, Mandelburg didn't explain exactly how any child -- or any adult -- is threatened in any way by drag queens.
UPDATE: One we overlooked earlier: A Dec. 22 post by Brad Wilmouth complained that right-wing dragphobia was called out, huffing that a PBS show "devoted a segment to an LGBT activist who has been defending drag shows against efforts by conservatives to restrict their ability to involve children" and that the host "made sure to label critics of drag shows as 'far-right' as she set up the interview." Wilmouth didn't dispute the accuracy of the label.
Newsmax remains Trump-fluffer central (in case you were worried otherwise). For instance, it cranked out articles hyping Trump's visit to East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a train derailement that released chemicals in the area) even though no member of the Trump administration ever visited the site of a train derailment during his presidency). 
The Media Research Center's initial reaction to the March 27 gun massacre at a private school in Nashville was a 
Rachel Alexander has been WorldNetDaily's 
The 
The past year of sucking up to Elon Musk in order to encourage him to buy Twitter so that it and its fellow right-wingers would not feel the consequences of spreading hateful and extreme views -- which it misleadingly frames as "censorship" -- seems to have backfired a bit on the Media Research Center, because it appears there are still some things Twitter finds offensive. A March 29 
Just as the "news" side of CNSNews.com has been 
In between pushing the 
Wayne Allyn Root used his Feb. 17 WorldNetDaily 
Kevin Tober got his usual malicious shots in at Karine Jean-Pierre in his 
CNSNews.com 
Even though Scott Lively thinks Donald Trump 
The Media Research Center kept its 
