MRC's Graham Tries To Minimize Fox News Settlement With Dominion
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center played a lot of whataboutism in the wake of Fox News deciding to pay $787 million to Dominion rather than go to trial,  and Tim Graham spent his April 19 podcast rehashing what his minions put out earlier that day -- namely, lots of whataboutism and lots of complaining that some were disappointed that Fox News didn't have to apologize to spreading lies about Dominion.It was a bit of an echo of a February podcast in which he similarly played whataboutism as lawsuit filings reveal just how deliberately Fox News lied to its viewers.

Graham's podcast guest was Dan Schneider of MRC's Free Speech America division -- you know, the one that insists that misinformation cannot be defined objectively in such a way that social media can try to counter it without being accused of "censorship." Graham did admit that "it's certainly a bad day for Fox's reputation, it's kind of a bad year for Fox's reputation." Schneider. who claims to be a lawyer, went on attack against "the left" by weirdly arguing: "If you ask any of those people what Fox did, they're not going to tell you -- it's just that Fox lied. How? What was the actual accuation? They don't know, they just want punishment of this media outlet they hate." In fact, the exact evidence has been well documented. Still, Schneider tried to minimize Fox News' actions, which even Graham felt the need to push back on, only to play whataboutism instead -- and then to admit some uncomfortable truths after all this time:

SCHNEIDER: What did Fox do that was so horrible, so horrible that was worth 7.8 or ...  Lou Dobbs tweeted out that his guest, Sidney Powell, said that she has no doubt that Dominion was able to manipulate the vote. All he did was quote that he will have a guest who says this. And that was really worth $787 million.

GRAHAM: I think most of this was them putting on guests who said things they couldn't prove. That is certainly true. Now, I would say this -- Jim Geraghty has a piece at National Review to respond to this in a sense is that, yes, Lou Dobbs on December 10, 2020, tweeted, not on air, "Cyber Pearl Harbor! Sidney Powell reveals groundbreaking new evidence indicating our presidential election came under massive cyberattack orchestrated with the help of Dominion, Smartmatic and foreign adversaries." So to me, yes, "Cyber Pearl Harbor," I mean, you could see where you'd say, well, now you're overdoing it. But wthe whole problem with all of this is, this is all the same stuff they said about Russia in 2016.

SCHNEIDER: Right. So, I don't want to sound like I am flacking for Fox, because Fox basically did the same thing that harmed Donald Trump's own re-election bid, they started reaching out to people like Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis and people who have law degrees but have never actually -- well, Sidney actually did -- was a federal prosecutor for a time, but if you ever hear her legal analysis, it is thin to say the least --  ridiculous, yes. Jenna Ellis, never -- as far as I know she's never actually practiced law, sand he spouts things that cannot be supported. But Fox and then Trump surrounded themselves with people who got them in trouble.

GRAHAM: Yes. And -- I mean -- this was the line that really made sense to me from Jim Geraghty. He said if you choose to believe the 2020 presiential election was stolen, you must believe Fox News agreed to pay $787 million to Domnion in a settlement rather than present any of that evidence.

Not only did Graham nor anyone else at the MRC raise these concerns about Powell, Ellis and the election fraud claims emanating from both the Trump campaign and Fox News -- to the contrary, it uncritically embraced those falsehoods -- it manufactured its own conspiracy theories about the election to claim it was stolen from Donald Trump. We've also documented how the MRC tried to insert Powell into its victimhood narrative after she was suspended from social media for spreading election misinformation, so it's a bit rich for Graham and Schneider to finally get around to disavowing her.

Graham went on to dismiss all of that truth-admitting, arguing that Fox News didn't suffer much "reputational damage" from the settlement because "poeple who think Fox News doesn't do news thought that before, have been thinking that for decades," while "conservatives see this as the latest attempt by the liberal media to undermine Fox News, so there's going to be a rally-around-Rupert effect." He then added: "This won't damage Fox's reuptation -- or let's put it this way: It won't damage people's reliance on Fox to try and balance out what the liberal media does."

In other words, Graham is saying that pushing the correct narratives is more important to conservatives than telling people the truth. And people wonder why anyone should trust Fox News or any other right-wing media outlet, or why the MRC whines so much when NewsGuard points out how untrustworthy right-wing media is.

That was followed by Schneider uniroinically rehashing his employer's conspiracy theory about the 2020 election, which involved buying biased polls from Trump's campaign pollster and the polling firm founded by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway to complain that not enough people knew about Hunter Biden's laptop. Graham was happy to echo that conspiracy:

GRAHAM: This is the interesting part, where they'll say we took a poll -- Geraghty says this -- you know, you take a poll and say, "did Biden legitimately win?" I think the key there is the word "legitimately." Because anybody who looks at these polls and says, if there's the risk that if these people had actually reported in real time on the Hunter Biden laptop, that this could have changed the election. Obviously, this election was in some states very close, and so, yes, it's quite possible that just by these voters not voting for Biden, whether or not they voted for Trump, could have affected the results. So I would say, did Biden win? He did, but he won, as we've tried to demonstrate, by suppressing damaging information.

Graham then went the whataboutism route once more, complaining yet again about Anita Hill and women who accused Brett Kavanaugh of untoward behavior, as well as bringing up the CNN settlement with Nicholas Sandmann.

Graham's April 21 column didn't comment much about the Fox News-Dominion settlement despite that being the news peg it was based on; instead, it was almost entirely whataboutism -- mostly whining about BuzzFeed publishing the Steele dossier (while downplaying the fact that BuzzFeed never presented the dossier as fact), huffily insisting that those who promoted the dossier have no moral standing to criticize Fox News.But if Graham is going to give a pass to Fox News' lies, what moral standing does he have to criticize others?

Newsmax Columnists Try To Defend Clarence Thomas
Topic: Newsmax

Daniel McCarthy spent an April 18 Newsmax column offering a full-throated defense of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas while also barely mentioning the ethics scandal that prompted the column:

Clarence Thomas is an unconquered American.

He refused to let the segregation and poverty into which he was born define his life. He wouldn't let racists impose limits on him.

He also wouldn't let leftists claim ownership of his mind or allegiance simply because they opposed segregation. They were enemies of freedom, too, only from another direction.

Liberals have never forgiven him for refusing their patronage and their leash.

[...]

The latest press campaign against Thomas accuses him of failing to disclose gifts from and financial deals with his billionaire friend Harlan Crow, as well as mixing up the names of companies he owns in other financial statements.

What the indignant hype leaves out, however, is that Thomas' compliance with any disclosure rules is purely voluntary. A law that cannot be enforced is at best a suggestion.

This manufactured scandal is an opportunity to dispel a liberal myth and impart a lesson about where sovereignty lies in our nation.

[...]

The Supreme Court, like the president, is not a creature of Congress or the agencies it sets up, and the check that the legislature does wield over the judiciary and the executive, impeachment, is itself checked by the people through elections.

Yet liberals know that controlling public perception is the way to direct public opinion. That's why an ideological monopoly on the media is so important — why Fox News has to be smashed and right-ish views of any kind have to be labeled hate or disinformation.

Clarence Thomas answers to no one except, ultimately, the political force of the people. The question is whether the people finally answer to the media or whether they judge for themselves and have the independence of mind that Justice Thomas exemplifies.

Michael Dorstewitz tried his hand at a defense of Thomas in his April 28 column:

Earlier this week CNN thought they had him. They tweeted, "A company related to Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, a longtime friend of Clarence Thomas who paid for lavish trips for the Supreme Court justice and his wife, had business before the Supreme Court in the mid-2000s, records show."

However, CNN’s story destroyed that claim once they got past the headline, admitting that "Crow’s name does not appear in a caption of the case," and "neither Crow nor his company were involved in the matter or discussed it with Thomas."

As a final clincher, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

In fact, the CNN article stated only that Crow's office claimed that Crow was not involved in the case or discussed it with Thomas -- which is not a proven fact, making it much less of a claim destroyer than Dorstewitz would have you believe.Dorstewitz then whined that Thomas was compared to another former Supreme Court justice with ethics issues:

Three days later The Hill ran an opinion piece comparing Thomas to a former high court member.

"Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas showed the way," the column explained. "Caught in the midst of a financial scandal, Fortas did the decent thing and resigned rather than continue to embarrass the court and himself. This is one precedent that Thomas, a notorious iconoclast, should follow."

But the two situations aren’t remotely similar. Fortas accepted $20,000 annual cash payments from a man under investigation for securities violations.

Thomas has a wealthy friend who is not under investigation and with no case pending before the court. He invites Thomas places and the two exchange gifts.

Dorstewitz concluded by gushing that "it must be fun being Clarence Thomas. It’s fun just watching him release one of his trademark booming, infectious laughs as he drives the liberals crazy. And that’s another fun part — driving them crazy."

WND Defends Trump Over Indictment, Smears Prosecutor As Stalinesque
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily had been building up outrage over the possible indictment over Donald Trump, and when that happened, the outrage went to a whole new level. Bob Unruh's March 30 "news" article on the indictment simply parroted pro-Trump talking points:

Former President Donald Trump is accusing President Joe Biden of "political persecution" and "election interference at the highest level in history," following news that a Manhattan grand jury has indicted Trump on a questionable charge that most legal experts, including lifelong Democrats like Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, have condemned as a totally "political" prosecution.

Previously, federal investigators and federal election investigators, even the Manhattan DA himself, all tossed out the complaint as unworthy of prosecution.

But Democrats, desperately clawing at anything to use against Trump as he runs for the 2024 presidential victory, pushed DA Alvin Bragg, a far leftist whose campaign was funded by billionaire extremist George Soros, to go after a claim about a "hush money" payment to a former stripper to keep quiet about an alleged affair.

Such payments are not illegal, but Democrats are alleging the payment was a campaign contribution to Trump's 2016 campaign.

Without this odd and controversial combination of claims, the allegations would have been dead in the water.

Democrats hope they can exploit a legal case against Trump as they promote the mentally declining octogenarian Joe Biden for another term in the White House.

However, polls show that Trump might actually benefit from the publicity and outrage, and experts in the law have concluded that Trump, even under indictment, still could be elected.

Democrats have a deathly fear of Trump as a candidate because of the success of his first "Make America Great Again" term, when he literally vaporized much of Barack Obama's "accomplishments."

Their concern, with reason, is that Trump would do the same to Biden's agenda.

An article by Unruh the next day touted pro-Trump "constitutional expert" Jonathan Turley criticizing the indictment, even though it "still hasn't been released, so few people know what it actually contains now." Unruh followed that a couple hours later by hyping a vicious smear of the prosecutor, Alvin Bragg:

Alvin Bragg, the far-left Manahattan district attorney who obtained a grand jury indictment of President Trump, probably over a payment and a nondisclosure agreement with a stripper over an affair both have denied happened, is being accused of adopting the promise that was made, back in the day, by Stalin's secret police chief.

Margot Cleveland, a longtime veteran of the federal court system and now a senior legal correspondent at The Federalist, identified that chief as Lavrentiy Beria and his promise as, "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime."

Never mind that, again, neither Cleveland nor Unruh actually knew what was in the indictment at this point.

Peter LaBarbera attacked Bragg as well in an alleged "news" article while touting how Trump has Republican support despite his apparent criminality:

With his politically-driven grand jury indictment of Donald Trump, Manhattan's George Soros-backed District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, has done what only a hard-left, Trump-hating Democrat could do: quickly unite most major Republican leaders behind the former president.

There are some exceptions: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's silence on the Trump indictment has been deafening. And former Arkansas governor and potential longshot presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson says Trump should "step aside," calling the indictment a "huge distraction" that is bad for Republicans and bad for America.

Even as he rails publicly against the "witch hunt" against him, Trump reportedly is cooperating with Bragg's office "to coordinate his surrender to the Manhattan D.A.'s Office for arraignment on a Supreme Court indictment, which remains under seal," CBS reported. He likely will not be handcuffed, and the process will take place Tuesday afternoon, after which Trump will return to Mar-a-lago.

LaBarbera offered no proof that Bragg is "hard-left" or that he hates Trump any more than he does any other criminal.

Unruh cheered intimidation of Bragg by right-wing members of Congress in an April 3 article:

It's no secret that leftist billionaire George Soros has been donating, sometimes heavily, to the campaigns of leftist district attorneys who, once they are in office, impose their own bias regarding justice.

They decline to prosecute certain crimes, they decline to seek prison terms for convicts, they work to arrange early release for those already in jail.

Significantly, in most cases, they allow crimes to skyrocket in their jurisdictions, to the point businesses and residents are seeking to move out.

Now Republicans in the U.S. House have come up with a response to the agenda: To strip those officials of their legal immunity.

According to a report from Just the News, Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., said liberals tried to remove the qualified immunity that protected police officers from lawsuits previously.

Now it's time for that move to target prosecutors.

"I think you're going to have to look at prosecutorial misconduct and whether or not prosecutors in this country should be exempt from liability," he said during an interview on the "Just the News, No Noise," television program.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy already has said Congress will do something to punish Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a far-left activist who took a misdemeanor complaint that multiple jurisdictions had concluded provided no evidence for a prosecution to file what apparently is a felony against President Trump.

Again, the indictment still had not been made public at this point, so Unruh could not possibly know the evidence behind it.

Joe Kovacs offered a Trump-friendly narrative about Trump's arraignment on April 4, where he deemed that the most important event of the day was Trump trying to pull an alpha-male move:

Donald Trump "definitely glared" at Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who indicted the former president Tuesday on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with his alleged role in hush-money payments toward the end of his 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump vocally pleaded "not guilty" to all counts before Judge Juan Merchan, an avowed Democrat whose daughter has reportedly worked for Kamala Harris.

"It is not just about one payment," said Bragg.

Jake Gibson, a federal law-enforcement producer for Fox News, said after Tuesday's arraignment : "I think it's worth noting, President Trump definitely glared at the D.A. Bragg when he left.

"He seemed to get up, look around the room. .. and then lock his eyes on Alvin Bragg."

Following the arraignment, Kovacs served up more Trump stenography:

On the heels of his arraignment Tuesday in New York, former President Donald Trump addressed America from his Florida home at Mar-a-Lago, saying "our country is going to hell" and that the 34 felony counts against him "should be dropped immediately."

"Now there's radical election interference on a scale never seen before in this country," Trump said.

"I never thought anything like this could ever happen in America."

[...]

Trump specified that criminal as the "radical George Soros-backed prosecutor Alvin Bragg" who the former commander in chief says "campaigned on the fact that he would get President Trump ... at any cost before he knew anything about me."

Kovacs made no attempt to fact-check anything Trump said, demonstrating that he's not much of a reporter or editor.

NEW ARTICLE: The MRC Plays Politics With A Tragedy
Topic: Media Research Center
After a train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in Ohio, the Media blamed Pete Buttigieg for being gay, falsely accused the Biden administration of racism and even attacked ESG policies -- anything but calling out the railroad itself. Read more >>

Michelle Induces Another Fit Of Obama Derangement Syndrome At The MRC
Topic: Media Research Center

Barack Obama hasn't been president for years, yet the Media Research Center continues to suffer outbreaks of Obama Derangement Syndrome. This happened again when Michelle Obama appeared on TV to promote a book, and Alex Christy whined about it in an April 20 post:

Former First Lady Michelle Obama reignited her book tour on Wednesday as she stopped by NBC’s The Tonight Show for an interview with host Jimmy Fallon, who was espicially interested in one specific chapter.

Fallon led Obama with more of a statement than a question when he reported, “There’s also a chapter dedicated to, ‘When they go low, we go high.’”

After Obama recalled, “Well, people still keep asking me, “you still mean that?,” Fallon continued, “But, that was -- that was an epic line. That was just -- it just - it stuck in everyone's head… Did you realize how powerful that would be years after you--?”

Recently, Obama went low by insisting that racism wouldn’t let her wear her hair in a way she may have preferred while she was first lady.

[...]

All in all, Obama spent 20 minutes on The Tonight Show including two interview segments one pre-recorded segments where she and Fallon surprised people at a book store.

As we've noted, right-wingers like Christy would have absolutely caused a controversy if Michelle Obama had changed her hair in the White House, and it's not racist or "going low" to point that out.

The same day, another interview with Michelle Obama sent Curtis Houck into a full ODS rage:

After having teased former First Lady Michelle Obama’s appearance all week, Thursday’s CBS Mornings lived up to the embarrassing hype with an astounding nine teases plus 14 minutes and 20 seconds over two segments prostrating themselves over the ground she walked on, led by co-host, Democratic donor, and Obama family friend Gayle King (neither of which was, as usual, disclosed to viewers). All told, democracy died in a lack of journalism.

King couldn’t even get a second beyond welcoming viewers to the show before reminding them Obama would be there. After the Eye Opener, King exclaimed they were “very excited because we’ve got a very special guest in the show today” after having “tour[ed] the country” and “spreading the word about her book.”

She added the title of her second book was The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times and remarked, “And boy, don’t we have some uncertain times right now.” Co-host Nate Burleson agreed, gushing, “And her light shines bright.”

Two teases later, King swooned over how Michelle was so highly anticipated at CBS that, in a move she claimed has never happened before, “a techician came to me and said, ‘how does Mrs. Obama like her room temperature?’”

The second part was even dumber as King called over a staffer to relay how this woman’s mom had chided her for planning to wear jeans in the presence of Obama[.]

[...]

King pivoted to her second book and gushed over “the difference between the two books because Becoming was a best-selling novel, over 12 million sold. Drop the microphone, thank you so much.”

“So when you started writing the second one, did you feel pressure that I have to top that, or I want to make another bestseller,” she asked.

Obama explained she wasn’t contractually obligated, but did anyway due to “the last few hard years of being in quarantine, dealing with COVID, all the political uncertainty” and thus “had a lot of time on my hands to just sort of stew and to mull over questions that young people...would ask about managing life in uncertain times.”

[...]

King’s final question was eye-rolling: “What gives you joy these days, Michelle Obama? What are you looking forward to?”

And because they couldn’t get enough, the show ended with King thanking Obama.

Tim Graham rehashed all of this for his April 21 podcast:

Meanwhile, Michelle Obama drew typical goop about her line "when they go low, we go high" and whether she would please her superfans by running for president someday. NBC late-night host Jimmy Fallon hailed her "epic line," but Michelle Obama has certainly gone low over the years, including in convention speeches. CBS morning host Gayle King gushed all over her, as usual, as you might expect, since they have vacationed together. But Mrs. Obama had a gaffe when she claimed America’s the only country with "unfettered access to firearms." Many felons, domestic abusers, and mental health patients don't get access.

In fact, many right-wingers oppose red-flag laws that would keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, "mental health patients" and other people deemed to be dangerous.

WND Touts Ridiculous 'Late Exit Poll' Claiming Kari Lake Won
Topic: WorldNetDaily

An anonymous WorldNetDaily writer stated in a March 17 article:

The idea that the 2020 and 2022 elections across American were clean, accurate and without fault took another broadside this week when a poll confirmed that Republican Kari Lake got 51% of the vote for governor in Arizona, while Democrat Katie Hobbs got 43%.

Only Hobbs was installed as governor in an election result that still includes many unanswered questions.

Also, the poll showed that voters chose Abe Hamadeh and Mark Finchem, both Republicans – even though Democrats were declared winners in those political races.

The details were reported by the Arizona Sun Times.

The results come from Rasmussen Reports and College Republicans United, which released results from their "late exit” poll.

The report said, "Women voted for Lake over Hobbs by a 49 to 43 percent margin. Similarly, Arizonans have a more favorable view of Lake than Hobbs. Over 50 percent view Lake positively; 30 percent find her 'very favorable,' and 21 percent 'somewhat favorable.' In contrast, Hobbs’ favorability is at 44 percent, with 25 percent viewing her as 'very favorable' and 19 percent as 'somewhat favorable.'"

Yeah, no. As the Washington Post explained, the Rasmussen poll is "a flawed poll from a deeply partisan company that very obviously conflicts with reality":

The firm has always leaned right but, in recent years has adopted an aggressively partisan position that’s apparent in the question it asks. Its focus on “likely voters,” even well before actual elections, seemed to lead it to weight its results in a way that advantaged Republicans. But now the firm trumpets its partisanship explicitly, perhaps hoping that other right-leaning groups will bring it sponsored polls to conduct.

[...]

Speaking to Bannon, Rasmussen’s Mitchell explained how they came to the conclusion that, actually, Kari Lake did win her race.

“A lot of pollsters, ones with maybe less courage, would really use those results to weight the poll to match the outcome of the elections,” he said, “and then bury the questions and pretend that they never even asked them. And, you know, to be honest, these results were just so unbelievable that we had to report out.” Instead of weighting the responses to the results, he said, they weighted it to exit polls.

“What we found,” he added later, “is that voters told us that just four months ago they elected Kari Lake as the governor of Arizona by 8 points.”

[...]

Beyond questions about the accuracy of exit polls — which are themselves weighted to election results, mind you — consider what those exit polls found. There were more Republicans who turned out than Democrats, which Mitchell says is roughly the weighting they used. But a plurality of voters were independents, and they preferred Hobbs by 7 points. Among Republicans, meanwhile, the exit polls from Edison Research show that about 1 in 11 also preferred Hobbs, twice the rate at which Democrats voted for Lake.

In Rasmussen’s results, independents voted for Lake by 14 points while 1 in 6 Democrats and Republicans crossed party lines to support the other candidate. This is simply not credible, even setting aside the fact that we know what actually happened.

WND is not going to tell you any of this, of course -- it cares only what the poll says because it advances the correct pro-Lake narratives, and it doesn't matter that neither it nor those narratives have no basis in reality.

How Has Matt Palumbo Been Spreading Guo Wengui's Propaganda?
Topic: Newsmax

We've documented that over the past couple of months, interests linked to shady Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui have paid right-wing writers to crank out pro-Guo propaganda in the wake of his arrest on fraud charges, and then paid to publish those writings at right-wing websites like Newsmax and Gateway Pundit. Walker Bragman and OptOut Media have reported how Guo interests have recruited several right-wing writers who were given prompts and drafts they could turn into pieces for paid publication on right-wing websites.

One of thse writers is Matt Palumbo, who works for right-wing radio host Dan Bongino and is trying to make a name for himself by writing books on hot-button subjects; as his bio on the propaganda articles states, "Matt Palumbo is the author of The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros (2021), Dumb and Dumber: How Cuomo and de Blasio Ruined New York (2020), Debunk This! Shattering Liberal Lies (2019), and Spygate (2018)." He also happens to have a new book coming out later this year bashing fact-checkers, published by Bongino's Liberatio Protocol operation.

Palumbo also has quite the body of pro-Guo propaganda, though he's reluctant to admit it (he blocked ConWebWatch when we asked him about it on Twitter). The earliest example of his we could find at Newsmax was a March 30 piece that blamed the arreet of Guo (who also uses the names Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok) on the CCP and played whataboutism over it:

All eyes have been on New Federal State of China Founder and anti-CCP dissident Miles Guo following his arrest on March 15, 2023. The arrest represented the culmination of years of targeting of Guo by the CCP. Guo was previously forced to flee from China to America for his personal safety after exposing the CCP’s 13579 plan to unleash a bioweapon, and the CCP has been fighting ever since to have Guo sent back to China.

Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, a Biden-appointee who previously worked at CCP-linked Paul Weisslaw firm, has urged the judge presiding over the case, Judge Katherine Parker, to deny Guo bail. This is despite Williams making no such demand when he announced charges against Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. New York state, and New York City in particular, are jurisdictions where violent criminals routinely are let out of jail without bail.

For backup of his claims, Palumbo linked to two propaganda articles by him that were posted at Gateway Pundit, one of which called calling Guo's arrest the "Collusion of the Century" and the other similarlyplaying Bankman-Fried whataboutism and complaining that Guo "could remain behind bars for entirely politically motivated reasons."

Guo propaganda articles at Gateway Pundit are credited as being paid for by "NewNoah," while the propaganda articles at Newsmax are listed as being paid for by "Token Team," which just so happens to be the name of a company that had partnered with Newsmax a few years earlier to accept cryptocurrency as payment for ads.

Other Palumbo propaganda pieces published at Newsmax include:

• Bombshell: Miles Guo's Arrest Intended to Stop Him from Testifying in Pras Michel Trial
• Anti-CCP Dissident Miles Guo Be Held Without Bail After Allowing It for Sam Bankman-Fried
• Push to Take Down Miles Guo
• Government Documents on Seized Assets of Anti-CCP Dissident Guo Wengui/Miles Guo Implodes Their Case
• Guo Wengui/Miles Guo Named "Victim No. 1" in NY CCP Police Station Bust
• Madoff and Wolf of Wall Street Are Granted Bail While Guo Wengui Languishes In DOJ Gulag
• 912 Group Revelations Raise Question About CCP Infiltration of U.S. Media to Target Wengui/Miles Guo
• Incompetence or Deliberate? Government's Claims in Yanping Wang's Case (Wang, also known as Yvette Wang, is a Guo assistant who is facing similar charges as Guo)

One of these propaganda pieces didn't age very well, however. Palumbo wrote in a May 9 piece:

On Friday April 5th, during a campaign stop, Republican Congressman George Santos visited the Darlington Mansion in New Jersey, which serves as the headquarters of the New Federal State of China, a social movement founded by Guo Wengui (also known as Miles Guo).

Guo is currently being detained without bail ahead of trial in New York, which is virtually unprecedented in a state with such lax bail laws. When it comes to the CCP’s infiltration of U.S. society, Congress has had all eyes on TikTok and none on the suspected CCP’s infiltration of our courts, media, and more. Following years of warnings that the CCP had set up their own police stations on U.S. soil to monitor American citizens and Chinese dissidents, recent arrests in New York confirmed it. Dozens of officers of China’s national police force were charged in connection to running an elite task force called the “912 Special Group.” The 912 Group is named after September 12th, the day that Guo filed for asylum in the U.S. after fleeing CCP persecution.

Santos is the first member of Congress to give the persecution of Guo, the public enemy number one of the CCP, the attention it deserves.

[...]

Through his advocacy for Guo, Santos also draws attention to the wider issues at stake regarding the CCP’s plans for world domination. Santos highlighted the CCP's systemic human rights violations, including its persecution of religious and ethnic minorities, suppression of freedom of expression, and its aggressive expansionist policies. By shedding light on these abuses, Santos brings the plight of countless individuals suffering under the CCP's oppressive rule to the forefront of discourse. “I’ve done a lot of soul searching. And I will not stop until Miles Guo is free and is given a trial. And I will not stop until the CCP is eradicated from this planet.,” Santos said. “These are the commitments I make to every American. That if you care for freedom, this is an issue I care about, because the true goal of the CCP is world domination. That’s not a conspiracy theory, that’s a fact,” he added before mentioning the CCP’s crimes against Taiwan and Hong Kong.

[...]

For America to remain a beacon of liberty - the CCP and its influence must be crushed, and Santos is now the only member of Congress making that a central issue.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, this article came out the same day it was revealed that Santos would face 13 federal criminal charges involving fraud and perjury. Oops!

CNS Pushed Anti-Transgender Narratives In Its Final Weeks
Topic: CNSNews.com

In its final weeks, CNSNews.com dutifully spread right-wing anti-transgender grievances and talking points. Craig Bannister huffed in a March 3 article:

Hershey’s is airing an advertisement featuring a biological male who identifies as a woman, in celebration of International Women’s Day.

Fae Johnstone, a “2SLGBTQIA+” transgender “woman” is featured in the ad airing nationwide in Canada. “Limited-edition Hershey's SHE bars will be available nationwide in four unique wrappers in both a 1.55-ounce standard bar and a 4.4-ounce XL bar, while supplies last,”Pennsylvania’s Fox 43 reports.

"My name is Fae Johnstone, I’m the executive director of ‘Wisdom to Action.’ We can create a world where everyone is able to live in public space as their honest and authentic selves," Johnstone declares in the ad.

A few days later, Bannister touted a stunt from right-wingers triggered by the Hershey promotion:

“Thanks to Jeremy’s Chocolate, you can stop eating chocolate that hates you,” Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing says, touting the success of his new non-woke candy bars, responding to an advertisement by Hershey celebrating International Women’s Day – featuring a biological male.

“As long as corporations and institutions across America continue to alienate half the country, The Daily Wire will continue building alternatives. Stop giving your money to woke chocolate companies that hate you,” Boreing said.

In the first 36 hours on the market, Boreing reportedly sold three hundred thousand of his “chocolate binary” bars. A four-pack of the 1.5 once bars goes for $27.96, but is currently on sale for $24.99, or about $6.25 per par.

Bannister spent a March 9 article whining that a transgender woman received a "women of courage" award at the White House:

First Lady Jill Biden presented a “women of courage” award to a biological male on Wednesday, during a White House ceremony celebrating International Women’s Day.

Alba Rueda, a biological male who identifies as a woman, was among the recipients of the “International Women of Courage” award, at the annual event hosted by the First Lady and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Rueda, who serves as Argentina’s Special Envoy for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, was one of 11 “extraordinary women” honored with the award.

In an apparent follow-up, Bannister used a March 24 article to repeat a right-wing rant about transgender women receiving awards:

“Nothing says ‘we respect women’ like elbowing them out of their own awards to laud a man who makes a mockery of womanhood,” Elle Purnell, assistant editor for The Federalist, says.

In her article, published Friday, Purnell chronicles the stories of nine biological men who have usurped “Woman of the Year” honors from biological females.

USA Today is the most recent organization to bestow a biological male with an award for women, Purnell notes at the beginning of her piece:

An April 10 article by Bannister touted a right-wing darling bashing transgender people: "The American Left ran out of human rights and civil rights to fight for, so they created the transgender movement, presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy says." Bannister also joined his fellow Media Research Center employees and other right-wingers in being triggered that a transgender woman was allowed to drink beer in another April 10 article:

Bud Light has been staying off social media, ever since a backlash began on April 1, when biological male and transgender “influencer” Dylan Mulvaney revealed a gift from Bud Light: a picture of his face on a can of the product.

The controversy and social media backlash began after Bud Light began celebrating the one-year anniversary of the man identifying as a woman, by creating the Bud Light trans-cans and a video of Mulvaney in a bathtub.

[...]

The transgender promotion prompted calls for a boycott of the beer, and even some celebrities protested the Bud Light trans-cans:

Conservative rock singer Kid Rock used several Bud Light cases for target practice in a viral video.

“I will be deleting all Anheuser-Busch products from my tour hospitality rider. I know many other artists who are doing the same,” Multi-Platinum Grammy-Winning Country singer Travis Tritt announced on Twitter.

An April 14 article by Bannister featured the maker of Bud Light trying to appease haters like him:

On Friday, Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth issued a vague statement, two days after it was reported that the beer company had lost more than $5 billion since a stunt that revealed its branding partnership with transgender “influencer” Dylan Mulvaney.

“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer,” Whitworth says in the statement, which does not specifically cite the controversy, which erupted two weeks earlier on April 1, and does not name Mulvaney.

The statement expresses support for “military, first responders, sports fans and hard-working Americans everywhere” and “the values upon which America was founded.”

CNS was shut down six days later.

MRC's Reaction To Fox News-Dominion Settlement: A Lot Of Whataboutism
Topic: Media Research Center

As the trial date for Dominion's defamation lawsuit against Fox News drew ever nearer, the Media Research Center still insisted on playing whataboutism. Tim Graham did exactly that for his April 17 podcast:

CBS's Sunday Morning spent nine minutes promoting the dangers Dominion's lawsuit posed to Fox News. It sounded quite similar to a 60 Minutes piece on the same theme last October. But would CBS find it just as newsworthy when Dan Rather sued CBS in 2007 over his phony-documents story? Would anyone be interested in the juicy documents exposing CBS as "corrosive"? Back then, the liberal media professed no interest in this, and the suit was dismissed. Rather wasn't the scapegoat. He was responsible for his mess.

Graham continued that whataboutism by whining that NPR's David Folkenflik creating an information silo and "building a business on serving an ideological base, as if that's not the model for NPR." There was apparently no mention of the fact that Fox News was doing that very same siloing by trying to censor news about the Dominion lawsuit on its own channel.

When Fox News decided the next day -- the day the trial was to start -- to settle with Dominion for a whopping 787.5 million, the MRC suggested this was a victory of sorts and complained when others suggested Fox News hadn't suffered enough. Kevin Tober whined in an April 18 post:

On Tuesday, CNN Tonight co-host Alisyn Camerota took to the airwaves during The Lead With Jake Tapper to bemoan that Fox News Channel was able to settle out of court in the Dominion lawsuit for about half of the original $1.6 billion lawsuit without publicly apologizing. She declared that this was a “victory for Fox” and that this was “the best outcome that Fox could ever have hoped for.” 

Discussing Fox’s settlement shortly after the news broke, Tapper asked Camerota if she was surprised by the outcome. “I haven't been surprised by any of this. Nor am I surprised by the settlement. I predicted there would be a settlement all along because Fox doesn't want to air its dirty laundry in a court case,” Camerota exclaimed.

She then huffed that the settlement was “half of what Dominion asked for.” Camerota wasn’t satisfied with Fox having to cough up the better part a billion dollars to Dominion, because “It's chump change for Fox. They make more than a billion dollars a year.”

Tober then personally attacked Camerota, followed by a fit of whataboutism:

It’s obvious that Camerota and the rest of CNN was extremely bitter because in their eyes, Fox wad now saved from embarrassing details that could come out if the lawsuit went to trial. 

As a former Fox News host, Camerota clearly has a grudge against her former employer. Wouldn’t you feel the same if you ended up at a low rated network like CNN after working at a ratings powerhouse like Fox? 

On top of that, CNN was also being extremely hypocritical. You’ll recall that the network settled with Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann after smearing him as a racist for out of context footage taken during the 2019 March for Life rally. CNN pretended that they never botched the story despite settling.

As we've noted, it's entirely likely that Sandmann received little more than going-away money from CNN, which did not have to issue an apology under the settlement. He also didn't mention that Sandmann's lawyer was L. Lin Wood, who went on to prove his incompetence by going full QAnon and spouting election fraud conspiracy theories.

Mark Finkelstein complained that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough brought up his own history of being defamed in the media:

Joe Scarborough is notorious for dragging his background as a former Congressman into the Morning Joe conversation at every opportunity. So much so, that his self-centered obsession has become something of a running joke on the show. 

In a variation on his solipsism, Scarborough turned much of Morning Joe's discussion today of the settlement of Dominion's defamation case against Fox News into yet another chance to air his grievance against Donald Trump for having suggested that Scarborough could be responsible for the death of a former congressional aide of his.

[...]

Perhaps Scarborough's account is accurate. But could it also be that the various lawyers informed Scarborough that he'd be subjected to intense cross-examination about his personal life — in particular, the circumstances that led to his sudden resignation from Congress.

Finkelstein didn't elaborate on what kind of scandal Scarborough is purportedly hiding. Perhaps he should in order to avoid a defamation lawsuit of his own.

Bill D'Agostino also groused that it was argued that Fox News didn't suffer enough (with added whataboutism, of course):

On Tuesday Dominion Voting Systems settled its lawsuit against Fox News, sparing the media company from six very uncomfortable weeks in court. The settlement was a heartbreaking development for the leftwing media, who had been preparing eagerly to cover every moment of the court proceedings.

Talking heads complained that in agreeing to settle out of court, Dominion had cost Americans an opportunity to learn the full extent of Fox’s alleged malfeasance. They also griped that the terms did not require Fox to formally apologize to Dominion.

[...]

Over the last 24 hours we’ve heard many impassioned statements about the importance of truth in journalism. And obviously, yes, the truth is the cornerstone of proper journalism. But when those statements come from CNN and MSNBC, it winds up looking like a bunch of TV personalities crammed in a glass room, flinging stones at the walls.

D'Agostino provided no evidence that CNN or MSNBC engaged in a systematic campaign to lie to its viewers the way Fox News did.

When the co-hosts of "The View" raised concern about how Fox News' lies might affect members of the military who watch the channel, Nicholas Fondacaro flew into a rage:

In the wake of Fox News’s defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems on Wednesday, the vicious liberals of ABC’s The View lashed out and bashed America’s brave men and women in the armed services for daring to watch Fox News on base, even going so far as the call them “racialized” dangers to the country.

During their opening segment where the cast whined about the settlement and said the $787.5 million payout was not enough, co-host Joy Behar proclaimed that “If Rupert [Murdoch] wanted to maintain any integrity, he would fire Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson – what’s his name, Sean Hannity.”

Specifically targeting Carlson, Behar called him “a sick pathological liar that cannot be controlled.” And rhetorically sneered at his viewers, suggesting, “His audience likes to be lied to.” “You know that song; tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies,” she began to crudely sing.

Shifting her ire to our service members, Behar warned that “Fox is broadcasted on military bases.” She tried to couch her demand to censor Fox News on military bases by repeatedly shouting: “Those are tax-funded facilities. They should not be broadcasting lies to our military. We are paying for that.”

“Those boys and girls are going out there, defending this country, risking their lives, and they’re being fed lies on a regular basis! That needs to be changed immediately!” she insisted, urging the elimination of their right to watch what they want.

Fondacaro didn't explain why Fox News must be allowed to feed lies to people, nor did he explain that members of the military are subjected to military policy, which does not necessarily include the ability to be able to watch channels that feed them lies. Instead, there was even more whataboutism with Fondacaro huffing that the show "continued to proudly be a home for 2016 election lies."

WND's Root Demands Revenge Over Trump Indictment
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily was already not taking a potential indictment of Donald Trump well, and it continued not to do so. Wayne Allyn Root ranted in his March 25 column:

Here is the problem in America right now.

The Democrats are evil, radical, nasty, vile, low-down, dirty skunks. If this were a street fight, they'd kick you in the groin and then shoot you in the back. They play for keeps. They have no rules. As their hero Saul Alinsky said, "The ends justify the means."

Dirty Democrats will do anything to destroy this country, economy, military and the great American middle class. They can't wait to introduce socialism mixed with communism (the use of banning, silencing, false arrests, FBI raids, brainwashing and propaganda) and turn us into a Third World craphole.

They've proven all of this is true with the looming indictment and arrest of former President Donald Trump on "trumped up" charges. They've proven Democrat district attorneys funded by George Soros, combined with Democrat judges and Democrat grand juries, in a deep blue city, filled with liberal loonies and thugs with "Trump Derangement Syndrome," can indict a ham sandwich (as the saying goes).

He followed that with a demand that Republicans manufacture crimes to indict Democrats on:

I'm looking for a few brilliant, ambitious, conservative, patriot DAs and attorneys general around the country with cojones – willing to do the same exact thing to Democrats as Democrats are doing to Trump.

Here is what red city DAs and red state AGs must do:

– Indict, arrest and perp walk Hillary Clinton for her crimes. Including the same supposed crime as Trump: campaign finance violations. She used campaign funds to frame Trump for Russian collusion. Hillary has already admitted guilt. Her campaign paid a $115,000 fine.

Now it's time to indict her in Texas for her crimes. Or Florida. Or Alabama. Or any red city or state with cojones.

The problem there is that campaign law is federal, not state, and it's extremely unlikely that any state-level violation can be plausibly identified. Nevertheless, his hit list continued:

– Indict Obama. He illegally spied on Trump's presidential campaign and then on the Trump White House. That's treason. Any red state DAs or AGs willing to indict, arrest and perp walk Obama? Why not? He's a real criminal. He's a traitor to our country.

– Indict Bill Clinton. He paid off Paula Jones to cover up an affair. It's about sex … it's beyond the statute of limitations … and it's not a local issue in Texas or Florida. Perfect! It matches this Trump indictment. Extradite Bill to Texas for arraignment.

– Indict George Soros for conspiracy to overthrow USA by funding the open borders invasion and funding woke, Marxist DAs who have unleashed a crime wave upon our once-great nation.

Indict Eric Holder. He was never prosecuted or punished in any way for committing "Contempt of Congress."

– Indict Mark Zuckerberg for using $400 million of "Zuckerbucks" to rig and steal the 2020 election.

– Indict Nancy Pelosi for committing fraud and entrapment upon thousands of peaceful protesters on Jan. 6.

– Indict Dr. Anthony Fauci for mass murder. Do I need to say a thing?

– Indict Hunter Biden. For at least 100 federal crimes, including bribery and extortion of foreign governments, on behalf of President Joe Biden.

– Of course, indict Hunter's dad for being "the Big Guy." Evidence shows Biden extorted money from China and Ukraine as vice president. He betrayed the citizens of America and disgraced his office. And to top it off, I'm betting he committed tax evasion – the same crime as Al Capone. All that money went into offshore accounts. I guarantee you he didn't pay taxes.

– Lastly, indict Biden, Kamala and Mayorkas. For dereliction of duty, reckless endangerment and treason for intentionally leaving the border open and encouraging the illegal foreign invasion of the United States of America.

Trump did nothing wrong. But these are all REAL crimes, serious crimes, treason. It's time for red city DAs and red state AGs to step up and indict all these dirty Democrat traitors.

It's time to go nuclear. You want a war? We're gonna give you a war. It's time for balls, cojones and big boy pants. Two can play at this game.

Needless to say, Root offered no proof that Trump "did nothing wrong," or that the prosecution he demands of his political enemies would be seen as anything other than political retaliation.

Following Trump's indictment, Root played the ultimate victim card in his April 9 column by likening the alleged "persecution" Trump is facing to that of Jesus:

This is not normal. This is a communist takeover of the United States. This is a communist "colour revolution." And at the center of it all is the persecution of former President Donald J. Trump.

And it's all happening during the week of Easter and Passover. Remind you of anything?

No, Trump is NOT Jesus Christ. He is human. He is not a god. I know that. But Democrats don't seem to know it. They treat him like Jesus. They persecute him like Jesus.

And for the same reasons, too: Trump threatens the status quo; he threatens the government; he threatens the deep state and D.C. swamp; he threatens their gravy train; and he threatens their lock on power and control.

Also, like Jesus, Trump fights on behalf of the little guy or gal who feels powerless.

Also, like Jesus, Trump's persecutors (Democrats) are so clueless and ignorant that they just persecuted, arrested and arraigned in court an innocent man during the same week that Jesus Christ was arrested, tried with false witnesses and crucified unjustly by an evil, tyrannical government to retain their power and please a bloodthirsty mob.

[...]

Finally, arresting Trump serves one more function: It's a WMD – a "weapon of mass distraction." Democrats need to hide what's right in front of your eyes. They don't want you to notice what they've produced:

Terrible inflation; mass layoffs; a crumbling economy; bank failures; a wide-open border with millions of dangerous illegal aliens invading America; an exploding national debt; Social Security is now bankrupt; vaccine deaths and injuries are exploding because of Biden's OSHA mandate; violent crime, theft, drugs and homelessness have exploded in every big city; transgender ideology is poisoning your children in failing schools; and we are on the verge of World War III with China, Russia and Iran.

All we'll see and hear about for the next two years is Trump indictments, Trump arrests and Trump trials 24/7. Mission accomplished. Weapon of mass distraction. This is propaganda – the hallmark of communism.

Trump is first; we are next. If they can bully, demonize and destroy Trump, nothing will stop them. We are all serfs and slaves forevermore.

How fitting this is all happening Easter week.

Root's statement that "Trump is first; we are next" reads a bit like the "He is greater than I" Christian slogan. That suggests that he really is ascribing divinity to Trump -- something WND has long tried to do.

MRC's Philbin Mad That 'Grease' Prequel Has Blacks, Gays In It (Also: Did We Get Him Fired?)
Topic: Media Research Center

Following on his complaint that there weren't enough white people in the new "Peter Pan & Wendy" movie (also, there were girls among the Lost Boys), Matt Philbin spent an April 10 Media Research Center post complaining that the new "Grease" prequel series has a nonbinary character in it (also, black people):

Next time somebody complains about the lack of ideas in Hollywood, shut them up quick with five powerful words: Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies. It takes amazing creativity to rehash a musical movie from 1978 that’s set in 1958, and lard it up with all the obsessions and social diseases of 2023. 

According to the Daily Mail and Fox News Digital, a “new woke TV show based on 'Grease' will reportedly feature a new song about White supremacy, with lyrics about the exclusion of those ‘Jewish, Asian, brown or Black, single woman or gay, on the wrong side of they.’" 

Yep. Pink Ladies is supposedly a prequel set at Rydell High four years before the story of Grease. So, early to mid 1950s. Was “gay” in common usage then or did it still mean “lighthearted?” Well, never mind. It sounds like anachronism is the least of this thing’s problems.

The “stated purpose” of the show is to explore "sexual orientation, gender expression and racial identity." Do lefties know how to have fun or what? According to the Daily Mail, "Family favorite tunes will be re-sung alongside new musical numbers including one about white supremacy, while the 1950s student population at Rydell High School will be re-filled with a varied mix of LGBT and black high schoolers unseen in the 1978 hit."

And there’s a (wait for it!) transgender storyline! “Gender nonconforming nonbinary trans actor Ari Notartomaso … plays Cynthia," described as "a non-binary tomboy who struggles to fit in alongside her multicultural band mates." 

Wow. I’m sure they all end up embracing and enjoying some Bud Light (introduced 1982).

That last swipe, of course, is a reference to the trasnphobic right-wing freakout over Dylan Mulaney drinking a beer. Philbin didn't explain why he's apparently demanding historical reality in a show in which characters spontaneously break out into song.

An interesting aside: Our post on Philbin's racism-tinged complaint about the "Peter Pan" movie appeared on April 15. A few days later, Philbin -- who was the MRC's managing editor for its "Culture" division -- was gone from the MRC; his final post was April 19, a transphobic rant about Dylan Mulvaney. Did our pointing out his racism have anything to do with his abrupt departure? We wonder...

Of course, it's entirely possible that Philbin got the ax as part of a cost-cutting effort, since his departure occurred around the same time the MRC shut down its "news" operation, CNSNews.com, resulting in the firing of at least six other people. But we'll take credit for it anyway. (Which then raises the question of how the MRC could have ignored Philbin's racism for more than a month before we highlighted it.)

Meanwhile, Philbin has been reduced to being a "contributor" at right-wing website RedState, the kind of freelance gig from which nobody can make a living -- yes, Philbin's right-wing hate is apparently so toxic that even Fox News wouldn't take him as part of the parade of MRC staffers who went through that revolving door.

Philbin is slowly learning that hate and homophobia may get right-wing clicks, but it ultimately doesn't pay (also, that the MRC is not terribly loyal to its employees).

NEW ARTICLE: Still More Catholic Than The Pope
Topic: CNSNews.com
The uber-Catholics who ran CNSNews.com continued to lash out at anyone -- even Pope Francis -- it deemed not to be right-wing enough or who failed to sufficiently hate LGBT people. Read more >>

MRC Censors Taibbi's Bad 'Twitter Files' Reporting, Split With Musk
Topic: Media Research Center

Elon Musk stenographer Matt Taibbi had a rough April. First he came out on the losing end ("smoked like a salmon," as one observer noted) of a contentious interview with MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan in which he was called out for falsehoods in his "Twitter files" stories (you know, the selectively edited "files" Musk gave to hand-picked writers like Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger) and his refusal to criticize Musk for censoring content in India at the apparent request of government officials. The interview ended up exposing and destroying the entire "Twitter files" narrative.

Shortly afterward, he split acrimoniously with Musk because Twitter was blocking links to Substack -- where Taibbi had an account and which had just announced a Twitter-esque platform of its own -- complete with back-and-forth allegations about who was telling the truth , Musk posting (and then deleting) screenshots of said feud, and Musk shadow-banning Taibbi's tweets, and ultimately, Taibbi removing his "Twitter files" tweets from Twitter. (It got so bad that not only did Musk reportedly stop following Taibbi's Twitter account, he also stopped following accounts of Shellenberger and another early "Twitter files" stenographer, Bari Weiss.)

Because the Media Research Center is a part of Musk's PR operation, you read nothing about this at any major MRC outlet. Instead, there was an April 9 post by Tim Graham that touted Taibbi opining about somethjong else entirely:

One article hotly circulating in conservative media circles is Matt Taibbi's breakdown of MSNBC's complete collapse of journalism standards under Trump in a piece titled "Eat Me, MSNBC." 

Taibbi begins by describing a January 13, 2017 appearance on the Chris Hayes show to talk about the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory in its infancy. His opponent was Malcolm Nance.

That's right -- Graham and Taibbi are commiserating about six-year-old stories. Graham didn't mention that Taibbi's post began with noting that he was about to be interviewed by Hasan -- indeed, there's no mention of Hasan at all -- which suggests that Taibbi's post was intended to be a prebuttal of sorts in case the MSNBC interview went south for him (which it did). Instead, Graham tried to insist that Taibbi was not a right-wing hack despite pushing right-wing narratives:

Leftists can claim that Taibbi switched sides, and it's certainly true that all his fans now are largely on the right. But if people cared about journalistic accuracy first and ideology second, they'd do more to consider how much the "mainstream" media distorted the 2016 election throughout most of the Trump presidency.

Graham, of course, is much less concerned about journalistic accuracy when right-wing outlets like Fox News are the ones not engaging in it.

Hasan's interview with Taibbi finally got (briefly) mentioned by the MRC a couple weeks after the fact -- in an April 21 column by Jeffrey Lord complaining that a Democratic congresswoman reminded Taibbi that false testimony to Congress (based on errors in his "Twitter files" work) could be considered perjury. Lord declared that this was a "threat" and that Taibbi had simply made a "typo" (it was actually much more), going on to uncritically repeated a claim from the right-wing Daily Caller that the claim was based on a "debunked allegation" by Hasan, then rushed to impose the tired right-wing victimhood narrative on the situation:

Taibbi’s offense? As Fox News reported, Taibbi had merely made a typo in a Tweet, in which he cited an MSNBC journalist, which Taibbi corrected. And note? The irony here is that Taibbi is famous as a left-leaning journalist. No matter.

[...]

They want to threaten a journalist with jail, have the government “regulate” Fox - read: silence - or simply set about “trashing (‘redecorating’) the offices of legislators who resist” their policy proposals. 

[...]

For silencing both conservative media and conservatives anywhere, using government when possible or flat-out threats of violence if needed. They are, in fact, the real threat to democracy.

If the whole Elon Musk Twitter files episode has revealed anything it is the massive degree to which the U.S. government colluded with lefties running Twitter to silence conservatives, whether former President Trump or just Joe Average. Whether it is conservatives on social media or college campuses or in Hollywood or on woke corporate boards (hello, Budweiser) and more, the instinctive response of those on the Left is not to debate it is to silence.

Lord didn't actually discredit anything Hasan said in that interview, nor did he mention that Taibbi split with Musk over his censorship of Substack links.

CNS Continued Its Musk-Fluffing Until The End
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com did a lot of Musk-fuffing as he pursued Twitter, and that continued right up until CNS' demise last month. Craig Bannister unironically wrote in a March 7 article:

“If an organization portrays itself as balanced, but is not, it should be labeled to inform the public,” Twitter Owner Elon Musk said Monday, when asked about reports that CNN staff had previously been ordered not to investigate the origins of COVID-19.

Of course, such a label would have applied to CNS as well,  given how its mission statement (falsely) claimed to "fairly present all legitimate sides of a story." Bannister also hyped Musk trolling a congressman in a March 9 article:

When Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted a condemnation of Fox News airing January 6, 2021 video from the U.S. Capitol, Twitter Owner Elon Musk replied to Schumer by retweeting a viral video clip of the footage - to ask the New York Democrat if he wanted it deleted.

“Do you want us to remove this video?” Musk replied to Schumer Wednesday, including a video clip tweeted by @StevenVoiceover, in which the narrator pretends to be a tour guide for the “insurrection” inside the Capitol.

The selected scenes included in the video clip are those of seemingly peaceful trespassers, not violent insurrectionists trying to overthrow the government.

As we've noted, such cherry-picked video ignores the reality of what happened that day. The next day, Bannister touted a Republican congressman sucking up to Musk:

“God bless Elon Musk,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said, when asked if he had a message for the billionaire who, after his purchase of Twitter, allowed two demonstrably liberal journalists to publish “The Twitter” files, exposing the censorship of conservatives that took place under the social media platform’s previous ownership.

On Friday, Jordan tweeted a video clip from his appearance of “The Benny Show,” in which Host Benny Johnson asked the congressman what he had to say to Elon Musk:

“You’ve now held multiple hearings about Twitter. What is your message to Elon?” Johnson asked.

“God bless him. God bless Elon Musk for standing up for the First Amendment – and recognizing how important that is to the greatest country ever, protecting those freedoms,” Rep. Jordan replied.

“I think, what a service he has done for the country,” Jordan added.

CNS' coverage of the February hearing was highly biased and incomplete (more evidence for that label Musk wants). Bannister attempted to do more of that regarding the March hearing:

This week, Rep. Jordan took part in a House subcommittee investigation of the “weaponization of the federal government,” with regards to Twitter. During the hearing, Democrats attacked, and tried to discredit, the two publishers of The Twitter Files: progressive journalist Matt Taibbi and former California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Michael Shellenberger.

One Democrat, Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands), accused Taibbi and Shellenberger of being right-wing shills for conservatives. Democrats also bucked the First Amendment by trying to pressure the two witnesses to reveal their sources – which Rep. Jordan later condemneW. d in a Fox News interview:

Given that Musk was obviously their source, it was absurd for them to claim any sort of privilege by not acknowledging that. Also note that Bannister offered misleading descriptions of Taibbi and Shellenberger -- "progressive journalist," "former California Democratic gubernatorial candidate" -- to suggest there's some kind of balance when, in fact, both writers have indisputably moved to the right and are simply Musk's servile stenographers.

CNS continued its own brand of Musk PR:

• ‘That’s Absurd,’ Musk Tells BBC Reporter Who Claims Twitter’s Hateful Content Rising – But ‘Can’t Name a Single Example’
• Sen. Ted Cruz Asks ‘Why is This a Controversial Statement?’ by Elon Musk (this would be his transphobic statement that “Any parent or doctor who sterilizes a child before they are a consenting adult should go to prison for life”)
• Musk: Inflation is Caused by Govt Issuing More Money, So Why Not Make Everyone a Trillionaire? They Tried That in Venezuela
• Musk: With Birth Control and Abortion We Don't 'Procreate,' But We Need to Make 'Civilization Go Onward'

CNS also echoed its Media Research Center parent in cheering Musk's trolling of NPR by arbitrarily labeling its Twitter feed as "state-affiliated media." Managing editor Michael W. Chapman cheered the decision in an April 5 article, purporting to add context:

Examples of other "state-affiliated media" on Twitter include Sputnik (Russia state-affiliated media), RT, People's Daily (China state-affiliated media), and Periodico Granma (Medios afiliados al gobierno, Cuba).

Chapman cannot plausibly argue that NPR is anything like those fully state-controlled outlets, and, indeed, he made no effort to -- he was doing Musk PR, after all. Instead, he quoted other right-wingers, including a couple of his fellow MRC employees (not that he disclosed that conflict of interest, of course) cheering Musk's trolling.

When Musk trolled another media outlet, Patrick Goodenough cheerfully wrote about it in an April 18 article:

A widening controversy over Twitter’s decision to label media outlets that receive government funding took a new twist Monday night when the platform changed its label for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to “69% Government-funded Media.”

Twitter had previously labeled CBC “70% Government-funded Media,” which in turn was a change from the original “Government-funded Media” label that had drawn sharp complaints from the broadcaster.

Drawing attention to the most recent label change, Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeted, “Canadian Broadcasting Corp said they’re ‘less than 70% government-funded’, so we corrected the label.”

The same day, CNS published a column by right-wing writer Joe Schaeffer insisting that the $100 million the federal goernment provides toward public broadcasting equals "100 million reasons why NPR is journalistically compromised in its reporting on the ruling establishment in Washington."

Two days later, the MRC abruptly shut down CNS, for which it has yet to offer an explanation, let alone publicly acknowledge.

MRC Whines That Pro-Trump Channel Busted For Spreading Lies
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center is always eager to help a fellow right-winger play victim, and Luis Cornelio was happy to oblige in an April 4 post that suggested a conspiracy theory under the headline "INTERFERENCE":

Anti-free speech Big Tech platform YouTube slapped RSBN with a seven-day ban the day prior it was scheduled to cover former President Trump’s NYC arraignment.

The Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN) slammed YouTube for blocking the media outlet’s ability to live-stream its on-the-ground coverage of Trump’s Tuesday arraignment. With over 1.5 million YouTube followers, RSBN is one of the largest pro-Trump networks in the nation.

Trump appeared before a Manhattan courtroom and pleaded not guilty to 34 dubious felony charges related to alleged hush payments. The charges were filed by Soros-backed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg who made prosecuting Donald Trump and his organizations a “number one issue” of his campaign in 2021.

RSBN will feature its live stream on its official website. 

RSBN’s account was temporarily banned after reportedly violating YouTube’s “elections misinformation” policies, according to a statement the outlet shared on Twitter. “On Monday, RSBN said it received a notice from YouTube informing us that due to content violating their ‘elections misinformation’ policies, the platform has removed several videos. These include President Trump’s most recent rally in Waco, Texas, his remarks at CPAC, and our exclusive sit-down interview with him at Mar-a-Lago.”

Note how Cornelio hit all the corporate right-wing talking points the MRC has beenusing to defend Trump: the charges are dubious, Bragg is owned by Soros. Also note that Cornelio refused to describe RSBN as biased, stating only that it's "pro-Trump" -- if the MRC agrees with your bias, you can't possibly be biased.

Cornelio also gave space to an RSBN offical to laughably reframe what his channel does as offering "conservative opinions that counter the left’s narrative" and that it would continue to "give a voice to his millions of supporters as political persecution continues." Yes, only in the right-wing media bubble is calling out lies considered "political persecution." meanwhile, a more honest media outlet told the full story that Cornelio wouldn't:

Media watchdog group Media Matters supported YouTube’s decision but said it was a long time coming for an organization that regularly comes close to violating the platform’s misinformation policies.

“YouTube has allowed Right Side News Broadcasting to routinely violate its terms of service by broadcasting election lies as it uses the platform to build a mainstream audience,” MMFA Vice President Julie Millican told Gizmodo. “RSBN is a megaphone for insurrectionists and gleefully flaunts YouTube’s rules by airing election conspiracies while advertising its Rumble page where it promises ‘Trump Exclusives’ with ‘No Censorship.’”

Neither Cornelio nor RSBN offered an explanation of why RSBN continues to spread known lies, or why RSBN should not face any consequences for lying to its viewers or for violating reasonable YouTube policies.