MRC Tries To Bury Musk's Twitter Blue-Check Debacle, Continues Doing PR For Him Topic: Media Research Center
When it wasn't gushing over Elon Musk for arbitrarily putting a false "state-affiliated media" tag on NPR's Twitter feed, the Media Research Center was doing PR for Musk in other ways as well.Joseph Vazquez cheered Musk spouting the MRC's narrative against so-called "liberal media" in an April 3 post:
Twitter owner Elon Musk identified what many Americans know to be true about the leftist New York Times: Its incessant propaganda isn’t even good enough to line a birdcage.
Musk tweeted April 2 that the “real tragedy” for The Times is that their “propaganda isn’t even interesting.” In addition, Musk said in a follow-up tweet, “their feed is the Twitter equivalent of diarrhea. It’s unreadable.” Musk is right and it doesn’t take much digging into the NewsBusters archives to see the kind of brain-melting nonsense that The Timesspits out on a regular basis.
Catherine Salgado happily repeated Musk repeating right-wing talking points about Donald Trump's indictment in an April 5 post:
Don't kill the messenger... er, realtor? Elon Musk brought humor to recent news, as he mocked the ridiculousness of Donald Trump’s indictment on Twitter.
Musk reacted to the April 4 temporary arrest and arraignment of Donald Trump in New York. He tweeted a meme mocking the Democrats’ irrational hatred and attacks on Trump. “If the Dem Party had a time machine,” Musk joked, with a meme showing a younger Trump and the comment, “‘Why do time travelers keep trying to kill me? I’m just a realtor!’ -Donald Trump, 1980.” Musk previously shared a March 18 meme showing a man saying, “The banking system is collapsing” with a woman screaming in reply, “Arrest Donald Trump”!
In a more serious vein, prior to the official indictment, Musk predicted how a Trump arrest might affect Trump’s reelection chances.
On March 18, he responde to a reshare by Viva Frei of a Fox News clip and a tweet in which Mario Nawfal remarked, “Trump may be HANDCUFFED and arrested next week. This is as a result of a possible indictment. Could this be the end of Trump?” Musk disagreed. “If this happens, Trump will be re-elected in a landslide victory,” he insisted.
Also on March 18, Musk critiqued Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s financial tie to leftist billionaire George Soros.
In fact, Bragg arguably has no "financial tie" to Soros -- he never contributed any money to Bragg's campaign, though hedid give money to an organization that campaigned for Bragg.
In an April 12 post, Vazquez giddily wrote that "Twitter owner Elon Musk took the leftist U.K.-based BBC to the woodshed when the latter accused the platform of being plagued by a rise of so-called “hate speech.” Never mind, of course, that numerousstudieshaveshown an increase in hate speech on Twitter since Musk took over.
The MRC's unpaid (as far as we know) Musk PR stenography continued on other fronts as well:
Meanwhile, the MRC had little to say about the debacle Musk's attempted revamping of Twitter's blue checkmark system had become. In hyping Musk's attack on Twitter, Vazquez waited toward neer the end of his post to note that "Musk’s mockery of The Times comes as the newspaper lost its verified checkmark status on Twitter reportedly due to refusing to pay the verification fee like everyone else. Musk lambasted in response how The Times was being 'incredibl[y] hypocritical here, as they are super aggressive about forcing everyone to pay *their* subscription.'"
In fact, "everyone else" was not paying Musk for a blue checkmark, which contrary to Vazquez's assertion offered no meaningful verification -- it simply showed that someone was paying Twitter $8 a month. (Also, paying Elon for a checkmark that means nothing is not the same thing as paying for a newspaper subscription.) Meanwhile, despite announcing that legacy checmarks would disappear for people who didn't buy one would start on April 1, that didn't happen, and the only account that seemed to have lost its checkmark was ... the Times, which arguably indicates a certain level of arbitrary enforcement, something we thought the MRC hated. When those checkmarks finally did start disappearing, impostor accounts popped up, and so few people actaully paid for the checkmarks that Musk resorted to slapping them on celebrity accounts whether they paid for them or not (including dead celebrities).
Rather than offer any meaningful commentary about Musk's debacle, Vazquz bizarrely whined in an April 21 post that George Soros -- the MRC's greatestenemy -- wouldn't buy a checkmark from Musk:
Leftist billionaire George Soros is willing to spend billions of dollars to radically transform society into his own bizarre leftist utopia but he was apparently a cheapskate when it came to paying Twitter’s blue checkmark fee.
Twitter owner Elon Musk tweetedvApril 11 that April 20 would be the “final date” for removing legacy blue checkmarks from users who refuse to pay the $8 fee. Soros clearly didn’t pony up the cash and his account of roughly 388,000 followers was stripped of its blue checkmark.
To put this newfound miserly behavior into perspective, Soros transferred an enormous $18 billion of his own money in 2017 to his Open Society Foundations for the purposes of fueling a philanthropic giant that would spread his radical views on abortion, Marxist economics, anti-Americanism, defunding the police, environmental extremism and LGBT fanaticism, to name a few.
Or, perhaps, Soros understands that Musk has rendered the checkmark meaningless, since all it currently proves is that a person was suckered into to giving $8 a month to a multibillionaire and getting nothing of value in return. That would seem to make Soros a smarter investor than Musk, who wildly overpaid to buy Twitter and even admits the company is now worth less than half of the $44 billion he paid for it.
CNS Published Another Catholic Priest Who Wanted To Be A Right-Wing Activist Topic: CNSNews.com
Michael Orsi wasn't the only Catholic priest published by CNSNews.com who seemed to believe his real calling was to be a right-wing pundit. Jerry Pokorsky is a priest in suburban Washington, D.C., and as with Orsi, CNS was pleased by how he mixed Catholicism with pushing right-wing talking points. In a February 2020 column, Pokorsky complained that Catholic politicians weren't sufficiently imposing their faith on people:
By most measurements, America is the most prosperous country in the world. Yet the majority of “Catholics” in Congress support profound evils degrading marriage, confusing human sexuality, setting men against women, and mother against unborn baby – the effective destruction of the family.
Despite their talents and accomplishments, these elected professionals are “salt” that has lost its taste. They have severed themselves from the teaching of Jesus and no longer keep the world from corruption. Instead, they contribute to human degradation. Prosperity brings physical comforts, but prosperity cannot provide meaning, nor can it save.
In an October 2020 column shortly before the presidential election, Pokorsky complained that "during political campaigns, the clergy are effectively non-combatants" and declared that "the excommunication of pro-abortion politicians or the denial of Holy Communion to “those obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin” are not political acts. They are distinctly religious acts of charity, warning the public figure – and his supporters -- of threats to salvation." Pokorsky didn't explain why Catholics must be punished for not imposing their beliefs on others by law.
Pokorsky spent a February 2021 column raging against a letter by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops asking officials to address systemic racism, sounding like a right-wing politician in the process:
The bishops’ overall narrative on racism implicitly suggests a blanket condemnation of Caucasians, even implying that white people cannot ascribe racism to racial minorities. The bishops are echoing a common theme of neo-Marxist critical theory: “Racism is the oppression of a marginalized group in a society that is based on white supremacy. If you are a white person, then you naturally benefit from white privilege.” How does one repent of one’s whiteness?
It is doubtful the bishops hold this view. But it’s likely their ideological USCCB ghostwriters do, echoing the ideology of the neo-Marxist Black Lives Matter leaders who claim racism “is everywhere, it’s almost like the air we breathe.” Indeed, examples of racism are deemed so pervasive that many Catholic schools now have “diversity officers,” like KGB commissars, monitoring compliance with politically-correct views and rules.
Enough.
In a February 2022 column, Pokorsky tried to frame things like not hating LGBTQ people and mask mandates as un-Biblical:
Bureaucratic elites desire more than compliance. They want our hearts, souls, and minds. “Diversity, equity, and inclusion” training officers behave like KGB agents (or the dread “flying monkeys” in The Wizard of Oz). They monitor expressions of dissent on the job and social media and administer pedantic training modules to ensure “best practices.”
[...]
Violence and destruction are the hallmarks of most revolutions. The inimical purposes of bureaucratic consolidations are much more subtle: Buy off and replace the Ten Commandments.
The Sixth and Ninth Commandments protecting marriage must be destroyed and redefined to promote contraception and the LGBTQ agenda. The Fifth Commandment needs redefinition to mandate subsidized abortion on demand and euthanasia for those who are a drag on the economy. The Seventh Commandment protecting private property (always, of course, in the service of the common good) is replaced by the centralization of economic and social power in the hands of a few, including theft from children not yet born.
Duties to the State replace the first three Commandments, perverting the notion of “social justice.” The slogan “follow the science” really means “never question your Government masters.” The presumed infallible teachings of government replace the Fourth Commandment.
[...]
The bureaucratic revolutionary elites have revealed the tyranny of their moral relativism. Of course—as in the Soviet Union—not everyone is in the position to dissent in public. But the vocational freedom of celibates—priests and single men—give them a greater responsibility to push back. (They may find that even those strange flying monkeys celebrated when the Wicked Witch of the West melted.) Where are the fathers?
We could use old-fashioned male outrage to protect our daughters on university swim teams. Do not comply.
In an October 2022 column before the midterm elections, Pokorsky followed CNSnarratives in attacking Catholic politicians like President Biden and Nancy Pelosi for not forcling all Americans to adhere to Catholic doctrine, sneering they were like the hated tax collectors of old: 'Yet, all of those people listed above are potential tax collectors. All they would have to do is say with sincerity, 'O God be merciful to me, a sinner,' and make a good Confession. May an ordinary—not a 'devout Catholic'—priest be at their bedsides before they cross the threshold to eternity."
Pokorsky served up a right-wing rant in his Dec. 15 column:
The toxic politics of America and the incompetency and malice of the mainstream media have ruined our trust. We don’t know the facts because they don’t provide them or lie.
The lies are numerous and numbing: the Russia hoax, mendacious COVID narratives, the “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter riots, the refusal on Woke grounds to cover the Waukesha slaughter, the January 6 “insurrection,” the border security fraud, transgender advocacy that disguises the horror of genital mutilation, the Biden and Pelosi claim of devout Catholic status, and so on.
Adding insult to injury, U.S. military policymakers have now gone woke. According to a Heritage Foundation report, “Wokeness in the military is being imposed by elected and appointed leaders in the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon who have little understanding of the purpose, character, traditions, and requirements of the institution they are trying to change.”
Institutionalized lies provide the context for another futile war -- supported by Hollywood clichés, the Washington establishment, and a mendacious media. With policies set in secret by elites, most political, religious, and media establishments are dutifully executing operations supporting objectives they struggle to articulate.
Pokorsky then attacked the U.S. for suppoting the "oligarchs" in Ukraine and fighting a "proxy war" against Russia:
In part, negotiations are in deep freeze because meddling Americans have kept the Zelensky government on financial life support, with a thriving illegal arms trade. As Ukraine freezes, reports indicate that most Ukrainian oligarchs rest comfortably in elegant European hot spots.
The US hasn’t officially sent in troops (a secret contingent of Special Forces personnel counts only in terms of body bags). We won’t raise the rainbow flag of victory and probably won’t receive Russian POWs. Look at the bright side. The reluctance to send troops saves our guys from the ignominy of using a POW intake form that asks: What is your gender assigned at birth? What are your preferred pronouns?
Political elites in both parties and the experts and Hollywood stands proudly in a virtue-signaling posture with Zelensky and his oligarchs. Let’s stand, instead, with ordinary Ukrainians and not the inexplicable American proxy war.
By contrast, Pokorsky had little bad to say about Russia beyond noting that "The Russians aim to win big, possibly with widespread death and destruction" and seemingly lamenting that "many Russians are reportedly upset with their leadership for pursuing only half-measures instead of winning the war." It makes you wonder whose side he's on.
MRC Suggests Biden's Daughter Is Like A Porn Star Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center executive Tim Graham's lingeringcase of Jill Biden Derangement Syndrome -- who has committed the offense of being a nice person who is nothing like Melania Trump -- has apparently extended to Ashley Biden, daughter of Joe and Jill. Graham spent an April 10 post ranting that she was featured in a magazine:
The fashion magazine ELLE is a routine stop for Democrats getting a glitzy publicity shoot, often wearing expensive fashions while liberal journalists pile on the glamour. Ashley Biden, the only child of Jill and Joe Biden, has been extremely reluctant to grant interviews, but has decided that now is the time to be celebrated as one of the very best Bidens. On the cover, it only says "Ashley Biden Speaks Out."
[...]
Meanwhile the captions sell expensive fashions. So the social worker is promoting "Dress by Brandon Maxwell, $3,295" and for casual wear, "Jacket, Altuzarra, $1,995; Denim Trousers, Loro Piana, $1,350."
Graham complained that "Ashley's stolen diary is briefly discussed, but not what's in it," but he didn't comment further on the fact that, as noted in a blockquote, it was "stolen and sold to" the right-wing activists at Project Veritas, which has resulted in criminal charges.
The same day, Graham ran to Newsmax to complain about this, which also involved the host bringing up that Stormy Daniels got a profile in Vogue magazine, which Graham asserted was because "they all thought Stormy Daniels would be the downfall of Trump." (Graham didn't mention that the charges of falseifying business records Trump had been indicted on a week or so earlier were based on the hush money he paid to Daniels.) They all whined that Melania Trump didn't appear in any of these fashion magazines despite, Graham asserted, "how fashionable she was."
The NewsBusters tweet promoting this appearance, however, seemed to liken Ashley Biden to Daniels. On In retweeting a post from Graham promoting how he noted that "ELLE is currently puffing Ashley Biden. She's just a down-to-Earth gal, pictured in $1,350 "denim trousers." the NewsBusters tweet added: "Stormy Daniels Chic doesn't make any sense unless you're out to Get Trump."
Looks like Graham needs to have his Ashley Biden Derangement Syndrome treated along with the Jill Biden variation. Maybe his therapist can give him a volume discount.
WND's Farah Wants To Deport George Soros Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
The indictment of Donald Trump has prompted WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah to make another one of his periodic declarations that George Soros' American citizenship should be revoked. He ranted in his April 3 column:
George Soros is destroying America – its institutions, its traditions, its freedoms, brick by brick.
With a $1 million donation to the PAC the supported Alvin Bragg's campaign for Manhattan district attorney, Soros did the most damage ever. He stepped on the gas in his political war with our country in the most visible way to date. This time I hope Donald Trump, as the 47th president of the United States makes him pay the price for it.
It's one I proposed when Donald Trump first became president. He must consider it seriously when he again becomes president in January 2025.
What should he do? He should revoke George Soros' fraudulent dual citizenship and deport him.
This is necessary for reforming election practices in the U.S., as well as generally fighting the radical left.
Are we going to make American great again? With this puppeteer of the left gone, we won't have opposition to that goal – not as much anyway.
Farah repeated the same talking points he issued in making the same demand last year -- it's unclear how Soros got his dual citizenship and getting busted for securities violations should be sufficient cause for revoking it -- and he repeated attacks taken from an issue of WND's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine dedicated to bashing Soros. He concluded by ranting further:
So, again, I ask: Why is this man permitted to retain U.S. citizenship? Why did he achieve it in the first place?
Is it only the money – so much of it he uses to spread strife and division within the nation?
If we're going to clean things up in America, we should start by giving this guy an unceremonious boot.
Again, we'll give Soros himself the last word: "Revoking citizenship as a form of punishment is wrong and undermines the rule of law." Farah had nothing to say about that.
MRC's Tantrums: Cover Hunter, Not Trump! Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's desperation to defend Donald Trump from being held accountable for his actions led to no fewer than four bouts of Hunter Biden Derangement Syndrome, demanding that the media cover him and not Trump. Kevin Tober complained in a March 19 post:
Continuing the week-long trend of the leftist media ignoring each and every new revelation in the rapidly growing scandal surrounding the Biden family’s corrupt overseas business dealings, the March 19 Sunday shows all blatantly ignored this latest Biden scandal in favor of a familiar media spectacle: Donald Trump.
The four liberal Sunday talk shows, which consist of ABC’s This Week, CBS's Face the Nation, NBC’s Meet the Press, and CNN’s State of the Union spent a combined 46 minutes and 46 seconds obsessing and sometimes gleefully reporting on the news that former President Donald Trump could be indicted over his involvement with former porn star Stormy Daniels.
The time breakdown that each show spent on the Trump news is as follows: This Week (13 minutes 14 seconds), Face the Nation (7 minutes), Meet the Press (6 minutes 10 seconds), and State of the Union(22 minutes 22 seconds).
In contrast, these Sunday shows spent no time at all on the news that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) acquired the bank records of Hunter Biden’s business associates.
[...]
Unfortunately, today’s media with the exception of Fox News and a few other outlets, serve no other purpose than being the Democrat Party’s [sic] PR agents.
Translation: Tober is very happy and grateful that Fox News is serving as a PR agent for the Republican Party.
Tober returned to complain a week later that non-right-wing Sunday shows still were not promoting Republican propaganda:
For the second week in a row (March 26), the four liberal Sunday roundtable shows ignored the rapidly growing scandal surrounding the Biden family’s corrupt overseas business dealings, even as new details continued to unravel. Instead, of reporting on the hard evidence in the federal Hunter Biden probe (and other alleged crimes and corruption surrounding the Biden family), they spent considerable airtime speculating and debating about a possible indictment of former President Trump by Alvin Bragg, the Soros-backed district attorney in New York City.
The four liberal Sunday talk shows, which consist of ABC’sThis Week, CBS's Face the Nation, NBC’s Meet the Press, and CNN’s State of the Union, spent over an hour (63 minutes and 53 seconds) of combined time on the possible Trump indictment story.
[...]
The fact that the Sunday shows continued to ignore the Biden story while harping on a week-old Trump story with no new substantive information shows their efforts to deflect for the Biden administration.
Tober didn't explain why he didn't think the possibility of a former president facing a criminal indictment wasn't newsworthy -- or why Republican specuation about a non-politician's possible indictment is.
After news of Trump's indictment broke, Geoffrey Dickens took the indignation stick, continuing to be mad that it was considered news and Republican ranting over Hunter Biden wasn't in a March 31 post:
Shhh! Nothing to see here! The Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks continue to bury the Hunter Biden probe and the growing scandals surrounding the Biden family’s corruption, including the House Oversight Committee’s revelations that Hunter, the President’s brother Jim and Hallie Biden (widow of son Beau) received payments from a Chinese energy firm — something President Joe Biden firmly denied.
However, their voracious appetite for covering the various investigations (Stormy Daniels, Mar-a-Lago documents, January 6th) surrounding former President Donald Trump remains unsatiated.
Beginning with the House Oversight Committee’s breaking of the Hallie Biden news through the evening of Trump’s indictment, MRC analysts tracked the glaring double standard.
Over 14 days (March 16-March 30) ABC, NBC, CBS filled their evening, morning and Sunday roundtable shows with over 272 minutes (4 hours, 32 minutes, 56 seconds) of Trump investigation coverage compared to ZERO seconds spent on Biden family corruption stories. On average, network audiences saw almost 20 minutes per day of Trump investigation stories.
The Big Three (ABC, NBC, CBS) networks are trying to play magician again, hoping their audiences stay so focused on former President Donald Trump that they don’t notice how they’ve used a sleight of hand trick to completely hide the Biden family corruption stories.
Despite the House Oversight Committee digging up new dirt on President Joe Biden and his clan, the broadcast networks continue to censor revelations that Hunter, the President’s brother Jim and Hallie Biden (widow of son Beau) received payments from a Chinese energy firm. Most recently they whistled past more incriminating news on Biden’s improper handling of classified documents.
However, they remain obsessed with covering the various investigations (Stormy Daniels, Mar-a-Lago documents, January 6th) surrounding former President Donald Trump.
Beginning with the House Oversight Committee’s breaking of the Biden family receiving payments from payments through the day after Trump’s arrest in New York, MRC analysts tracked the glaring double standard.
Dickens concluded by huffing: "It’s striking how the networks have completely disappeared any mention of the most recent Biden family scandals while at the same time obsessively reporting on the Trump investigations. The contrast is truly stunning." He didn't mention that no actual evidence of Biden wrongdoing has been released -- even Fox News has called out oversight committee head Jamnes Comer for not producing anything meaningful to back up his Biden-bashing claims -- and he again failed to explain why Trump's indictment was not newsworthy.
Newsmax Pushed Anonymous Attack Over Biden Not Attending Coronation Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax peddled a dubious, anonymous attack on President Biden in an April 3 article by Eric Mack:
President Joe Biden reportedly will not attend King Charles' coronation next month because he is deemed "too old" to make two transatlantic trips in a month, according to an insider.
Instead, first lady Jill Biden and "high-profile representatives" might be sent in order to avoid the appearance the U.S. president is snubbing the royal family, sources told The Telegraph.
President Biden, 80, is making an April 11 trip to Northern Ireland, and as the oldest U.S. president ever elected, there are concerns he is too old to handle two long trips in a month's time.
"The guy is 80," a source told The Telegraph. "They space out his big bursts of activity quite considerably. They did that too with Trump, and he was younger. When Biden does something like the State of the Union address, we didn't see much from him in the following 48 hours. They don't like to push him around the world too much."
Mack didn't mention that the Telegraph has a right-wing bias, which would make it more prone to attacking Biden, so there's little reason to take the word of an anonymous source at face value.
Mack also failed to tell his readers that there's a historical precedent for Biden not attending: As we pointed out when a WorldNetDaily columnist lashed out at Biden, no U.S. president has ever attended the coronation of a British monarch.Mack did hint at this but got the reasoning wrong: "The late Queen Elizabeth's coronation in 1953 was not attended by President Dwight Eisenhower. A U.S. president's attendance might have been rejected to avoid overshadowing the coronation event."
WND Pushes Another Capitol Riot Conspiracy Theory Topic: WorldNetDaily
It's been more than two years since the Capitol riot, and WorldNetDaily is still trying to whitewash it or build conspiracy theories around it to protect Donald Trump and his right-wing supporters (like WND). Bob Unruh did the latter in a March 14 article:
The congressional certification of Joe Biden's win in the 2020 presidential race was accomplished in the dark of night after the so-called "riot" happened at the U.S. Capitol and members of Congress reconvened.
Now a report on the Conservative Treehouse website explains it had to happen that way – no matter what any supporters of President Trump may or may not have done that day.
The short explanation is that since there were multiple motions pending before Congress on challenges to the election results, had the event proceeded routinely, they would have been considered, and Congress would have been required to debate them.
The results could have been catastrophic for Joe Biden.
In order to dispense with those motion without having them considered, Congress had to be in an "emergency" session, which was provided for by the reaction to the protesters at the Capitol, the report explains.
[...]
Cited is longtime Conservative Treehouse reader "Regitiger" who offered the analysis that suggests a "federal government motive to create a J6 crisis that permitted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to trigger an emergency session and avoid the 2020 election certification challenges."
Those challenges were known about well in advance of that day, and even if they had been voted down, could have provided a legal standing for subsequent judicial cases, the report said.
Unruh is in stenography mode here, so he's not going to even ettempt to do any critical analysis of a conspiracy theory forwarded by writers hiding behind fake names on a right-wing website. Instead, he simply parroted the discredited claims they made, such as "Why didn’t House Speaker Nancy Pelosi secure the Capitol Hill complex, and why did she deny the request by President Trump to call up the national guard for security support? Why did the FBI have agent provocateurs in the crowd, seemingly stimulating rage within a peaceful crowd to enter the Capitol building?" In fact, Trump issued no request for Pelosi to deny, and "agent provocateurs" is an apparent reference to Ray Epps, and WND can'tstopclinging to this never-proven conspiracy theory.
NEW ARTICLE -- Out There, Exhibit 84: The MRC's Watergate Complex Topic: Media Research Center
Fifty years after the scandal that brought down Richard Nixon, the Media Research Center wants you to believe that the real victim was ... Nixon. And an MRC executive served up a fond farewell to the sleazy G. Gordon Liddy. Read more >>
MRC Tried To Attack Wis. Court Candidate Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center gave a little attention earlier this year to an election for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat -- almost entirely to attack the liberal-leaning candidate. Mark Finkelstein took the first shot in a Feb. 25 post:
This was political kabuki theater at its transparent worst.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court balance could tip leftward in a general election in April. On his new Saturday Showon MSNBC, Jonathan Capehart invited on the liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz. The clear intent was to signal to voters and donors how she would vote on key issues before the court, notably abortion.
[...]
Capehart might as well have had a flashing screen graphic: "Vote/Donate To Protasiewicz! She'll strike down Wisconsin law restricting abortion!!!" Even The New York Times has reported "Judge Protasiewicz has pioneered what may be a new style of judicial campaigning. She has openly proclaimed her views on abortion rights (she’s for them) and the state’s legislative maps (she’s against them)."
Protasiewicz also condemned the "extremism" of the current court, which has a conservative majority. She wants to get back to "normal." Because, you know, there's nothing more "normal," and non-extreme, than supporting abortion up to the moment of birth with no restrictions!
Finkelstein didn't mention that Protasiewicz's opponent, Dan Kelly, has a long history of right-wing activism -- even having declared that abortion "involves taking the life of a human being" -- and had been endorsed by Wisconsin anti-abortion groups (even as he laughably insisted his politics didn't matter).
Alex Christy bashed a temporary "Daily Show" host for endorsing Protasiewicz in a March 30 post:
Comedy Central The Daily Show temp host John Leguizamo fulfilled show creator Lizz Winstead’s dream of using the show to promote abortion on Wednesday as he campaigned for liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Janet Protasiewicz. Leguizamo would also accuse Republicans of stealing the state legislature because conspiracy theories about stolen elections are apparently okay when liberals are the ones peddling them.
The election will determine the ideological balance of the court, as Leguizamo explained, “All right, let's move on to Wisconsin because they're about to have an election for the state supreme court that's hugely important, and not just for there, but for the whole goddamn country. And it's a little complicated to explain why in a short time, but fortunately, I'm a Latino New Yorker and I can talk very fast… So, let me break it down for you in my new segment: ‘A New York Minute.’”
[...]
It’s not a great endorsement of Protasiewicz’s legal philosophy that Leguizamo wants people to vote for her because she’ll give them policies liberals can’t win through regular elections.
Christy overlooked the fact that Republican gerrymandering of thet state legislature effectively rigged the system and made it difficult to pass policies supported by a majority of state residents.
Kevin Tober issued a more direct attack on Protasiewicz in an April 3 post:
On Tuesday, Wisconsin voters will decide the ideological balance of the state Supreme Court for the first time in fifteen years. This election will have national implications on everything from abortion to gun rights to election integrity. Despite this, both the national and local media in Wisconsin have refused to look into the soft-on crime record of the Democrat candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Janet Protasiewicz.
A recent email exchange between Dan Curry of Restoration News, part of the non-partisan political action committee Restoration of America PAC (ROA), and Corrinne Hess, a political reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, showed how uninterested the leftist media are in covering any unfavorable stories having to do with Democrats.
Tober is being highly dishonest by portraying ROA as "non-partisan" -- Restoration PAC is indisputably a right-wing organization funded by billionaire Richard Uihlein that pushes right-wing causes. Restoration PAC funded a different PAC that spent more than $2 million on ads supporting Kelly and attacking Protasiewicz. Despite Tober's framing that the Journal Sentinel was "uninterested" in what the Restoration PAC guy was peddling, the more simple and obvious explanation is that the paper was choosing not to cozy up to a partisan activist who had other means (and the money) to push his narrative.
Tober made sure to include his own attack line as well: Unsurprisingly, Protasiewicz was also being backed by liberal billionaire George Soros." Like the MRC's attempts to link DA Alvin Bragg to Soros, this isn't as clear-cut as he'd like you to believe; a Soros PAC donated money to a PAC supporting Protasiewicz, which is not the same thing as Tober's insistence that Soros donated directly to her campaign.
After Protasiewicz won the election, Luis Cornelio spent an April 5 post in a full anti-Soros rage (to the point that he had problems spelling her name correctly):
George Soros’s scheme of funneling millions of dollars to overhaul America’s judicial system seems to be paying off, with Wisconsin becoming his latest return on investment.
Judge Janet Protasiewicz, a Soros-tied leftist candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, won the April 4 election, effectively establishing a Democrat majority on Wisconsin’s highest court for the first time in 15 years, the Associated Press reported April 5.
Wisconsin campaign finance filings, first revealed by Fox News on March 28, show leftist mega-donor George Soros funneled $1 million to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin on February 22, marking the largest donation to the party between Feb. 7 and March 20 alongside Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D), who also reportedly donated $1 million.
There was no mention of the money supporting Kelly's campaign coming from the likes of billionaires like Uihlein.
Cornelio then touted how "Protasiewciz’s [sic] opponent, Dan Kelly —a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice —conceded the election but not before slamming the Soros-tied leftist candidate as a “serial liar” and raising the alarm about what’s to come in Wisconsin" -- even though he immediately contradicts himself by quoting Kelly as saying that "I do not have a worthy opponent to which I can conceit [sic]." Cornelio unsurprisingly concluded by repeating his employer's talking points on tying Bragg to Soros.
We've shown how WorldNetDaily has been despserately trying to turn "QAnon Shaman" insurrectionist Jacob Chansley into a victim by hyping cherry-picked and misleadingly edited video showing him acting peacefully that was aired by then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Peter LaBarbera found another piece of cherry-picked video to promote for a March 16 article:
Newly-released police bodycam footage from Jan. 6 shows Trump supporters obeying cops leading them out of the Senate chamber, with some even thanking the police — further eviscerating the Democrats' "deadly insurrection" J6 narrative.
The footage came to light due to the sentencing trial of Jacob Chansley, the infamous horned J6 protester dubbed the "QAnon Shaman" by the media. Chansley is shown in the video thanking the police officers who are clearing ralliers out of the Senate chamber in the U.S. Capitol building.
The video shared on Twitter by "D. Scott" (@eclipsethis2003) hit social media on Tuesday and conservatives responded with outrage, with many saying the liberal J6 narrative is collapsing before their eyes. D. Scott's March 14 tweet reads: "Newly released video footage captured by body-worn police cameras has shown a new perspective of the clearing of the Senate chamber from Jan. 6. The footage was presented as evidence during Jacob Chansley’s sentencing [hearing] and was finally made public today."
[...]
Chansley himself is shown in footage, saying to the officers as he approached the door, "Thank you for your patience. We really appreciate it." It was Fox News Tucker Carlson's airing of previously unseen J6 footage of a cooperative Chansley being led around inside the Capitol by police that engendered a new wave of outrage and skepticism among conservatives toward the Democrat-run Jan. 6 Committee and the "insurrection" narrative it attempted to sell to the public (in part through cherry-picked videos).
Of course, the video LaBarbera is hyping was cherry-picked. By contrast, prosecutors pointed out that these selectively edited videos "did not show Chansley, who was sentenced to 41 months in prison for his actions on January 6, facing off with officers for half an hour outside the Senate chamber or when Chansley refused to be escorted out of the Capitol by an officer and only left after being forcibly removed," adding: "Chansley was not some passive, chaperoned observer of events for the roughly hour that he was unlawfully inside the Capitol. ... He was part of the initial breach of the building; he confronted law enforcement for roughly 30 minutes just outside the Senate Chamber; he gained access to the gallery of the Senate along with other members of the mob (obviously, precluding any Senate business from occurring); and he gained access to and later left the Senate floor only after law enforcement was able to arrive en masse to remove him.”
When Chansley was moved to a halfway house a couple weeks later, Bob Unruh tried to credit those videos in a March 30 article:
Security video of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, shows Jacob Chansley, 35, the "QAnon Shaman," being escorted into the Senate that day by security officers in the building.
Now, after his lawyer charged that the government deliberately had withheld exculpatory information about his client, Chansley has been released from a federal prison and moved to a halfway house.
[...]
Chansley was a key part of many of the videos of the Jan. 6 events at the Capitol, when hundreds protested what they saw as an unfair – even stolen – election, with his costume of helmet and such.
He pleaded guilty in September 2021 to civil disorder and violent entry and was given 41 months in prison.
The report explained, "Bureau of Prison records confirmed that Chansley is in the custody of the Residential Reentry Management field office in Phoenix, with a release date set for May 25."
[Chansley attorney Albert] Watkins decline[d] to attribute a reason for the decision.
"This was a decision of the US Bureau of Prisons," he said.
The report pointed out federal guidelines allow for reduced time for good behavior, "but under those guidelines Chansley would have expected to serve at least 35 months and 22 days of his 41-month sentence."
Watkins had argued only weeks ago that Chansley should be freed based on video publicized by Fox News host Tucker Carlson that showed him not breaking into the Senate, but actually being escorted there by security officers in the Capitol.
In fact, Watkins also admitted that "It was a decision which was part of an established protocol in place since well prior to the release of the videos" -- meaning the videos played no role whatsoever.
MRC Hypocritically Complains Again About Labeling Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is having another labelingmeltdown. Bill D'Agostino whined in a March 24 post:
Television broadcast networks tend to slap a “far-right” label onto anything even remotely conservative, often referring to Republican members of Congress, fringe conspiracy theorists, and outright domestic terrorists with identical terminology for all three. Yet these same networks refuse even to acknowledge the existence of a “far-left,” — and in fact, since the 2022 midterms, they have not applied that label to any group or individual even a single time.
An MRC study found that between November 9, 2022 (the day after the 2022 midterm elections) and March 21, broadcast networks ABC, CBS, and NBC used such labels as “far-right,” “extreme right,” and “ultraconservative,” a total of 101 times on their flagship morning and evening shows, as well as their Sunday political talk shows. During that same period, analysts found only one instance in which a journalist used an equivalent “far-left” label.
[...]
Across all three broadcast networks, the totality of airtime the fringe left received since November was limited to that single vague reference.
Meanwhile, “far-right” and similar labels were applied to a very wide array of individuals. Republican members of Congress were by far the most heavily labeled group (38 times), followed by general references such as “the far right,” or “extreme rightwing Twitter users,” (19 times). There were 12 instances of labeling for the administration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 11 cases for the Oathkeepers, 10 cases for the radical German group that attempted a coup in late 2022, and five for the supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. All others were labeled only once or twice.
But just as the MRC did with Benjamin Netanyahu's government in Israel and Republicans who opposed Kevin McCarthy as House speaker, D'Agostino made no attempt to dispute the accuracy of the"far-right" label -- as per MRC procedure, he's just mad that the label was reported at all. And, of course, this performative outrage is utterly hypocritical, since he and his co-workers love to promiscuously throw around the "far-left" label at pretty much anything it thinks isn't conservrtive enough. Here are the people and things the MRC has labeled as "far-left" in just the first four months of this year:
By contrast, when the MRC uses the term "far-right," it's usually in the context of complaining that others use it, not to put that label on people or groups. Of course, D'Agostino playedhypocritical whataboutism on that too:
There is no arguing that far-right extremists exist in the U.S. and abroad. Rather, what’s at issue here is the media’s inability to acknowledge extremism on the left. It seems that whenever they do bother to report on the misdeeds of far-left actors, they meticulously avoid ideological labels.
If the MRC can't apply "far-right" to the extent it uses "far-left," it has no standing to complain about how others use labels. This is why no legitimate media critic takes the MRC seriously -- they care about partisan politics, not journalism.
Bill Donohue Lies Again That Soros Was A 'Nazi Collaborator' Topic: CNSNews.com
Last year, we caught dishonest Catholic Bill Donohue spreading the malicious lie that George Soros was a Nazi collaborator. Well, he went there again in his April 10 CNSNews.com column, which began by complaining that Soros' critics were being called out for invoking anti-Semitic tropes in attacking him:
George Soros has been one of the most prominent philanthropists serving the radical left-wing agenda for decades. Everyone knows it, yet there is a coordinated effort of late to bail him out, saying his critics are “anti-Semites,” looking for a “boogeyman.” His allies are particularly miffed about reports that Soros is funding criminal-friendly district attorneys across the nation.
Here’s a recent sampling of efforts to brand Soros’ critics as anti-Semitic. In the last 19 days, the following news stories were written with that objective in mind.
[...]
Not one of these persons who made the charge that Soros’ critics are driven by anti-Semitism quoted even one person to make their case!
Donohue failed to link to any of the articles he complained about, nor did he disclose the context in which this was discussed.We can assume, however, that it involves the attempts by Donald Trump and right-wing activists to link Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg to Soros -- after all, the Media Reserach Center similarlywhined about this narrative being called out.
Indeed, Donohue went on to declare any district attorney who could be linked to Soros money to be "corrupt," adding: "He gave Alvin Bragg $1 million when he was running for DA in Manhattan in 2021." But that's not quite true; as we documented when the MRC complained it was called out for getting this wrong, Soros gave $1 million to the group Color of Change, which had pledged a few days earlier to spend that amount to help elect Bragg; it ultimately spent only half that amount, and the campaign itself raised much more than that pledge, though Bragg was far outspent (yet still won) by an opponent who was largely self-funded. Donohue crowed that he copied this from his new book; it looks like it will need to be reprinted to correct this error.
He went on to huff that "No doubt there are anti-Semites who have attacked Soros, but it is scurrilous to tar all his critics as bigots. Soros is guilty as charged." Then he spread that nasty lie again:
One final note. Soros knows a personal thing or two about anti-Semitism. As a young man he became a Nazi collaborator. In a “60 Minutes” interview, he admitted that he hung around as property was confiscated from his fellow Jews. In the interview with Steve Croft [sic] he said that he never regretted his participation in the process. When asked if this was difficult, Soros said, “Not, not at all. Not at all.” Stunned, Kroft said, “No feeling of guilt?” “No” came the reply. This was because, according to him, he was not the one actively doing it, but rather was more of a spectator.
As has beenrepeatedly documented, Soros was a teenager in Nazi-occupied Hungary when Soros' father arranged to have his son pose as the nephew of a Hungarian official whose job it was to inventory the property abandoned by Jews who fled the country that the Nazis appropriated, playing no other role beyond helper. As any reasonable person might expect, Soros has no regrets about doing what he needed to do to survive the Nazis.
Once again, Donohue is effectively declaring that he fervently wished that the Nazis has killed just one more Jew. Not a good look.
MRC Went Into Trump Defense Mode On Arraignment Day Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center did a lotof ranting about Donald Trump's impending (and then actual) indictment and thedistrictattorney who charged him. When the day of Trump's arraignment came on April 4, the ranting ramped up. Curtis Houck hit all the required talking points -- Bragg-bashing, Biden whataboutism -- in complaining about that a former president facing a criminal indictment is somehow consindered newsworthy:
Since Thursday evening, the media profession somehow found a way to even further embarrass itself by taking a steroids-induced trip back to 2015 and 2016 with wall-to-wall Trump coverage in light of his indictment by Soros-backed Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg on charges related to the infamous 2016 payments to Stormy Daniels.
As such, a litany of stories that have significant bearing on the country have been ignored and one story has been reporting that the Chinese spy balloon did, in fact, gather intelligence on some of our country’s most sensitive military installations. ABC and CBS have shown zero interest in highlighting this, ignoring it on their flagship Monday evening and Tuesday morning news shows.
Tim Graham whined that NPR was committing the offense of covering news, with an added fit of Hunter Biden Derangement Syndrome:
On Monday night's All Things Considered newscast, co-host Mary Louise Kelly covered the indictment of Trump as a serious conundrum for the media. She was pandering to the leftist audience, angered that Trump will probably get away with all this again, that he's just milking this indictment for fame and fortune and another Republican nomination for president. Kelly brought on NPR vice president and executive editor Terence Samuel to think out loud about how the coverage might disappoint the audience.
Samuel promised they would "flood the zone," as they say. "And what we have now is we have two reporters in the courtroom. We have two reporters outside the courtroom because the world is completely different now, and we will have to update that story as it's happening online in our newscast....It is constant and ongoing. We want to be authoritative. We want to be complete. And we're going to be relentless."
Now for conservative critics of NPR, Terence Samuel is infamous for proclaiming in 2020 that the Hunter Biden laptop was "not really" a story, a "pure distraction" that NPR shouldn't cover. They never wanted to be "complete" on that subject. None of that came up in this conversation, obviously.
When commentators on a couple of networks raised questions about the charges against Trump -- despite the fact that all the evidence has not been made public -- Kevin Tober spun: "You know the charges against former President Donald Trump by the corrupt Soros-backed prosecutor Alvin Bragg are in trouble when even ABC and NBC are skeptical about their legal standing. ... The case is in serious jeopardy if this is the way two of the three liberal broadcast networks are covering these charges against Trump." Tober returned later to defend Trump and inject the "Soros-backed" talking point:
During MSNBC’s special live coverage of former President Donald Trump’s speech where he gave his initial reaction to the Soros-backed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charging him with 34 counts of falsifying business records, co-host Stephanie Ruhle had a diva-like tantrum over Trump daring to fundraise off the controversy. Ruhle should check her emails because this writer has received dozens of fundraising emails from Democrats since Trump’s indictment Tuesday.
Ruhle has no problem with being a hypocrite. Instead, she lashed out at Republicans for claiming this ordeal was good for Trump: “right-wing media has been saying scandal after scandal this is great for Trump. It is never great for Trump politically.”
“It's a win-in-one-place and one-place-only: fundraising,” Ruhle claimed. She then went into meltdown mode over how Trump has solicited donations:
[...]
No understanding the difference between a grift and fundraising for a presidential campaign. Ruhle cried that for Trump “this is always about the grift and fundraising.”
Why can't it be both? Tober didn't ask that question.
Call it their Super Bowl, the greatest day of their lives, or the pinnacle of their careers. Either way, CNN went wall-to-wall Tuesday with coverage of former President Trump’s arrest and arraignment on charges by far-left, Soros-backed Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg in relation to payments made to Stormy Daniels. and, as such, CNN’s coverage showed a network relapsing back to its Trump-centric days of 2015 and 2016 with imbecilic hot takes masquerading as expert analysis.
NewsBusters suffered through Tuesday afternoon so you didn’t have to and below represents ten moments (in chronological order) from the embarrassing display of CNN’s non-existent status as a news organization.
CNN is "non-existent" as a news organization? Doesn't that description more accurately apply to Fox News, which actually lied to its viewers about election fraud?
Ther MRC's coverage on April 5 started with a post from Mark Finkelstein cheering that "the former lead prosecutor of Robert Mueller's Russia-Russia-Russia investigation of Trump" raised questions about Trump's prosecution despite the fact that, again, not all of the evidence has been made public. Clay Waters complained that right-wing attacks on Bragg and his prosecution were called out, complete with 25-year-old whataboutism and an upgraded smeaer of Soros to an "international billionaire":
National Public Radio’s media reporter David Folkenflik, who has been on an anti-Fox News kick of late, went off on “right-wing media’s” “apocalyptic” coverage criticizing the legal case against Donald Trump and their attacks on Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who has brought charges against Trump involving payments to former porn star Stormy Daniels.
Earlier, Trump and his conservative defenders were baselessly accused on Friday’s PBS NewsHour of both racism (Bragg is black) and anti-Semitism (for accurately pointing out Bragg’s campaign for district attorney was funded by left-wing international billionaire George Soros).
[...]
Left out of these agitated takedowns were any sense of historical context – such as when media outlets like NPR and PBS went “apocalyptic” and “extreme” in defense of Democratic president Bill Clinton when he was supposedly persecuted by special counsel Kenneth Starr for lying under oath about his own hushing up of his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Go here for a taste of the way the press reacted to Starr’s attempt to follow the rule of law in pursuit of a president accused of sexual misconduct. It’s safe to say Alvin Bragg won’t be getting the Starr treatment.
The MRC continued to write up any little thing that could be considered to be pro-Trump:
Graham summed up the day's bias in his podcast (bolding his):
The media's Trump obsession overflowed on Arraignment Day in New York City. They loved analyzing Trump's grumpiness in photographs taken in the court room, but they didn't love the substance of the actual indictment once it was widely released. The legal analysts expressed concerns that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg didn't explain how misdemeanors could be promoted into felony counts, and there could be problems with the statute of limitations.
NewsBusters Associate Editor Nick Fondacaro joins the show to discuss all the video tweets we put out to analyze the events. At first, analysts like CNN's Jamie Gangel were excited to note from photographs that Trump looks like "he's in custody. He's in their control. I think this is very striking." But then lawyers who hate Trump -- like his former appointee John Bolton -- announced on CNN "I'm extraordinarly distressed by this document...This is even weaker than I feared it would be."
It was especially funny when Rachel Maddow announced MSNBC would be running no live coverage of Trump's speech in Florida, because it's the usual routine of "lies" and "grievances" about his "perceived enemies" (like he has none). But then she says MSNBC is such a serious news network: "there's a cost to us as a news organization of knowingly broadcasting untrue things."
Needless to say, Graham didn't mention that he didn't really didn't want to talk about the fact that Fox News had been recently exposed as knowingly broadcasting untrue things to its viewers.
Newsmax Flip-Flops On Carlson, Stops Criticism To Woo Him And His Viewers Topic: Newsmax
After Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Newsmax repeatedly called out Fox News for not being as pro-Ukraine as it should have been -- and, in particular, host Tucker Carlson for his pro-Putin attitudes. That criticism largely faded away in recent months; a Feb. 27 column by Allan Ryskind criticized Carlson's stance on Russia and Ukraine, though he framed it around praise for him:
Where would conservatives be without Tucker Carlson?
Though clearly a man of the right, he takes on conventional political wisdom espoused by all sides. He's pro-family, pro-marriage, pro-God, a deadly enemy of the cultural left.
Every week he takes on the Leviathan, causing federal bureaucrats to quake. And he's outspoken against those who seem eager to involve us in useless foreign wars. It's hard to think of a crusade Tucker pursues that most conservatives don't endorse, or, at the very least, take seriously.
Still, many of his loyal fans aren't happy with how he has dealt with the Ukrainian issue. His opposition to sending American troops to "save Ukraine" is what the overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens believe. (And Ukraine's leaders assure us aren't needed.)
But Tucker frequently teams up with Fox News contributor Tulsi Gabbard, Hawaii's Democrat former House member, to verbally abuse any and all who think military or economic aid should be given to the Ukrainian resistance.
[...]
Tucker is surely right to fear that the U.S. may be involved in a war with Putin and Xi no matter what we do to confront them. But he has to ask himself this question honestly: Can any credible historian point to a single time in history that any nation that dismantled its military arsenal and abandoned its military alliances while two of its most deadly, brutal, and expansionary foes were on the march?
A March 8 article did note a text from Carlson released as part of the Dominion lawsuit stating that he "passionately" hated Donald Trump. The tide continued to turn, however, in a March 13 column by Deroy Murdock, who gushed that "My Fox News colleague Tucker Carlson last week refuted multiple lies that Democrats and their dinosaur-media bodyguards have trafficked since Jan. 6, 2021." That praise ignored the fact that the footage Carlson aired to manufacture that narrative was cherry-picked and misleading.
But when Carlson was fired from Fox News last month, Newsmax wanted you to forget it had ever critricized him at all. After an initial wire story on his departure as well as an unusually balanced article on the departure by Eric Mack, Newsmax took a two-prong approach: bashing Fox News for dumping their highest-rated host (with an eye toward luring those viewers away from Fox to Newsmax's TV operation) and touting what a great guy Carlson is (with an eye toward luring Carlson to be a host). The boss himself set the tone in an April 24 article:
Christopher Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax issued the following statement following Tucker Carlson's departure from Fox News:
"For a while Fox News has been moving to become establishment media and Tucker Carlson's removal is a big milestone in that effort," Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy said. "Millions of viewers who liked the old Fox News have made the switch to Newsmax and Tucker's departure will only fuel that trend."
Political author Dick Morris on Monday said that with Tucker Carlson out at Fox News, Newsmax is now the number one network for conservatives.
Speaking on Carlson's departure, Morris says, "The obvious fact is that Newsmax has won — has won."
"Newsmax is now the sole conservative voice in media," Morris told "American Agenda" during his appearance. "And Fox News can talk about that, but by firing Carlson, they have decidedly moved to the left and to the center."
[...]
"The other big win here," Morris says of Carlson's departure, "is Donald Trump because Newsmax covers all of Trump's rallies. Fox News did not cover any of them because [News Corp Owner Rupert] Murdoch hates Trump. Because when Trump was President and Murdoch was the media boss, Trump didn't let him run the country — didn't let him call the shots."
Numerous articles over the next couple days served up some combination of those two talking points:
And because Newsmax is effectively the Trump News Network, Donald Trump was allowed to comment too:
The ouster of Tucker Carlson at Fox News has left former President Donald Trump "shocked," but perhaps the libertarian just needs "free rein," Trump told Newsmax on Monday.
"Well, I'm shocked, I'm surprised," Trump told "Greg Kelly Reports" in an exclusive interview just hours after the news broke. "He's a very good person, a very good man, very talented, as you know, and he had very high ratings."
Mack surprisingly noted that Carlson had bashed Trump as released in the Dominion lawsuit filings:
Trump told Kelly he had seen Carlson come around after some reports of a distaste for the former president.
"But I think Tucker's been terrific; he's been, especially over the last year or so, he's been terrific to me," Trump said.
"Maybe he left because he wants to be given his free rein. He wants free rein maybe, but I was surprised by it."
In several messages revealed in the lawsuit, Carlson suggested he had distaste for Trump at the time, but feared the network was losing viewers among the former president's fans, particularly to Newsmax.
Newsmax very much knows on which side its extremist bread is buttered, and it isn't afraid to cater to those viewers.
WorldNetDaily eagerly swallowed Tucker Carlson's narrative of a peaceful Capitol riot based on cherry-picked video that he got from Kevin McCarthy, despite the fact that people who actually know about the riot pointed out the cherry-picked editing.When Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell pointed out Carlson's dishonest portrayal of riot events, Peter LaBarbera rushed to attack in a March 7 article:
Conservative reaction is now pouring in after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said it was a "mistake" for Fox News to allow Tucker Carlson to use the newly released Jan. 6 tapes to depict the events that day in a way contrary to the view of Capitol law enforcement.
"It was a mistake in my view for Fox News to depict this in a way that's completely at variance with what our chief law-enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks," McConnell said Tuesday.
McConnell's statement circulated widely on social media and was used by left-leaning media who have slavishly echoed the Democrats' "insurrection" narrative for more than two years to level their own attacks on Fox News and Carlson. Conservatives pushed back against the Kentucky senator and hailed Carlson for exposing the Democrats' J6 "insurrection" claim.
[...]
Missing in McConnell's statement was any mention of Carlson's key findings, especially that the newly exposed footage undercuts the Democrats' and media's mantra that Jan. 6 was a "deadly insurrection" inspired by Trump.
LaBarbera even defended one Republican senator caught running away from the riot he helped provoke:
Curiously, McConnell also failed to defend his fellow Republican colleague in the Senate, Josh Hawley of Missouri, by not mentioning Carlson's revelation that the Democrat-run J6 Committee had used its selective release of Capitol surveillance footage to make Hawley look like a coward.
As Carlson explained on his show Monday night, one of the J6 Committee hearings showed a clip of Hawley running out of the Capitol building, seemingly alone, thus making it appear as if Hawley was fleeing like a frightened chicken from the building. At the time, that potentially doctored clip actually drew derisive laughter from many attending the committee hearing, including reporters, as it purposely humiliated Hawley, one of the few GOP senators who supported Donald Trump's challenge to what Trump said was a "rigged" election.
However, the new footage aired by Carlson, thanks to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy opening up the full 41,000 hours of video footage, shows many legislators and their staff running out of the same Capitol exit, amidst the chaos, with Hawley actually one of the last people shown in the video clip to run out of the building.
In other words, even though Carlson's critics are accusing him of "cherry-picking" J6 footage to support his own, allegedly "conspiratorial, undemocratic" narrative, the popular Fox News anchor is actually exposing the cherry-picking done by the Democrats and the now-expired J6 Committee to sustain their overwrought "deadly insurrection" narrative.
LaBarbera omitted the fact that Hawley's fleeing was newsworthy and irrelevant to the "cheery-picking" accusation because he displayed a raised fist in a show of solidarity toward a crowd of Trump supporters shortly before the riot.
WND's columnists bought into Carlson's bogus narrative too, starting with editor Joseph Farah in his April 7 column:
They lied!
That was the conclusion of Tucker Carlson's review of 40,000 hours of the so-called "insurrection" at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It was a sham. A not-so-clever ruse. Are you surprised?
The media establishment, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, every Democrat in Congress, Big Tech – they all lied to the American people. It wasn't an "insurrection" after all.
Five cops were not killed; only Ashli Babbitt was murdered by a deranged Capitol policeman. Most of the "protesters" were peaceful, cameras revealed. They were taking pictures, mostly, as they were ushered into the building by the police.
Jacob Chansley, a Navy veteran and the man dubbed as the "QAnon Shaman," never posed a threat. He was escorted, instead, by three to nine policemen. He prayed for them, the tapes revealed, which should make you wonder why he's serving four years in jail now for his role in the kerfuffle.
[...]
One person who became a household name was Officer Brian Sicknick, whom the media alleged was "attacked" by the mob and for days falsely claimed was hit in the head and murdered by Trump supporters with a fire extinguisher. Yet Sicknick was seen on one of the newly released videos, after his supposed murder, walking normally while guiding Trump supporters out of the building as he wore a helmet. He later died of a reported stroke unrelated to Jan. 6 events.
As we've documented, prosecutors pointed out that the Chansley footage ignored that part of the initial breach of the Capitol, repeatedly confronted law enforcement and surrendered only after enough law enforcement arrived to take him down, and that officials agree that what happened to Sicknick during the riot led to his deadly stroke the next day. Also, the police officer who killed Babbitt was not "deranged" -- that would be Babbitt, a domestic terrorist who was part of a violent mob trying to crawl through a broken window inside the Capitol and reasonably posed a threat to law enforcement.
Laura Hollis used her March 9 column to criticize right-wing writer Andy McCarthy for seeking "a happy middle ground between the factions warring over Fox News host Tucker Carlson's access to (and coverage of) 41,000 hours of video footage taken on that day":
McCarthy's criticisms of Democrats are, in essence, "Tsk, tsk – see? We told you guys you should have had a bipartisan committee," and "Democrats' narrative about Jan. 6 has been a bit overwrought."
I enjoy reading McCarthy, respect his expertise and generally appreciate his analyses of legal issues. But he's missing the larger point here.
It's not merely that the "mythmaking" of J6 has been used as an excuse to smear half the country as "domestic terrorists," weaponize the Justice Department against irate parents at school board meetings, sic the FBI on pro-lifers praying at abortion clinics and create a new bogeyman – "white Christian nationalism" – as the greatest threat facing the republic.
It's that the J6 manipulation is just one of many instances of Democrats flat-out lying to the American people for political gain.
[...]
The point Andy McCarthy's NRO editorial misses is that the J6 hysteria is not merely unfortunate political hyperbole; it is part of an ongoing scheme to deceive the public and deflect attention away from the behavior of Democrats that legitimately threatens the health, stability and prosperity of our country and its people.
Tucker Carlson is unintimidated by those like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer who object to the release of the J6 video footage to the public, accusing them of spreading "panic" and "fear."
Jack Cashill used his March 15 column to suggest that the Capitol riot should be treated as a sort of indepenence day based on Carlson's cherry-picked footage:
On Jan. 10, 2021, I submitted an article to another publication titled "President Trump Takes a Hit for the Team." The article appeared on Jan. 12 of that year minus only the last sentence.
It read as follows, "If we the people refuse to apologize, refuse to back down, refuse to submit, January 6 may one day be celebrated as a mid-winter 4th of July."
I understood the publisher's prudence. At the time we all labored under the belief that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick had been struck dead by a fire extinguisher-wielding "insurrectionist."
That, of course, proved to be a lie, one of many. As Tucker Carlson showed last week, the helmeted Sicknick was captured on video doing his job a half-hour or so after his alleged murder.
[...]
The Democrats excite themselves by comparing January 6 to Sept. 11, 2001, or even Dec. 7, 1941, but a more apt point of comparison might be July 14, 1789.
On that steamy day, Parisian rioters stormed the Bastille. Although they behaved far worse than the January 6 crowd – they actually killed people – the French subsequently made July 14 their national holiday.
America doesn't need another national holiday in January. What we do need, once the rot is cleared, is a day of truth and reconciliation. And January 6 is as good a day as any.
Given all the falsehoods and conspiracy theories he has promoted over the years, Cashill is the one who could stand to face a little truth and reconciliation.
When it wasn't gushing over Elon Musk for arbitrarily putting a false "state-affiliated media" tag on NPR's Twitter feed, the Media Research Center was doing PR for Musk in other ways as well.Joseph Vazquez cheered Musk spouting the MRC's narrative against so-called "liberal media" in an April 3 post:
Michael Orsi
Media Research Center executive Tim Graham's 
The indictment of Donald Trump has prompted WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah to make another one of his 
The Media Research Center's 
Newsmax peddled a dubious, anonymous attack on President Biden in an April 3 
It's been more than two years since the Capitol riot, and WorldNetDaily is still trying to whitewash it or build conspiracy theories around it to protect Donald Trump and his right-wing supporters (like WND). Bob Unruh did the latter in a March 14 
The Media Research Center gave a little attention earlier this year to an election for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat -- almost entirely to attack the liberal-leaning candidate. Mark Finkelstein took the first shot in a Feb. 25 
We've shown
The Media Research Center is having another 
Last year, we caught dishonest Catholic Bill Donohue 
The Media Research Center did 
After Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Newsmax 
WorldNetDaily 
