NEW ARTICLE -- WND Profiles In COVID Misinformation: McCullough And Malone, Part 2 Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily continued to give space to Peter McCullough and Robert Malone to spread more misinformation about COVID and vaccines -- and to complain that their misinformation was being called out for what it is. Read more >>
MRC Takes Tucker Carlson's Fox News Firing Hard Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center -- fans of everything Fox News -- particularly loved Tucker Carlson, so much so that it would dedicate entire posts to transcribing what he said. Here are a few examples of its Tucker stenography in recent months:
Note how the MRC feels so close to Carlson that it's quite comfortable identifying him by only his first name in headlines.
The MRC would also defend Carlson as well from any criticism, as shown in a Feb, 26 post by Mark Finkelstein hining that Carlson was called a "bomb-throwing whack job" and a March 23 post by joke policeman Alex Christy lashing out at a discussion on "The Daily Show" in which Carlson was called a "world-class asshole." Neither writer made an effort to prove those assertions wrong.
So when Fox News abruptly fired Carlson on April 24 and killed his TV show, the MRC was shocked (and, apparently, fearing the loss of easy clickbait). Curtis Houck declared the event to be part of "one of the more bizarre and consequential days in modern cable news" along with the firing of CNN's Don Lemon the same day, and he had nothing but gushy things to say about the guy:
Carlson’s ouster gripped social media and conservative circles Monday, leaving many baffled by Fox’s decision to oust the most-watched cable news host, who had not only a weeknight primetime show Tucker Carlson Tonight (which averaged 3.3 million viewers in 2022), but a daytime show on its streaming network Fox Nation called Tucker Carlson Today, and an investigative series Tucker Carlson Originals.
A Fox News spokeswoman broke the news in a statement: “FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”
The statement concluded by revealing Carlson would not be given a farewell show and instead the timeslot will be filled by a placeholder show Fox News Tonight and helmed on a “rotating” basis by various “FOX News personalities until a new host is named.”
[...]
Going back to Carlson, it’ll remain an open question as to why Carlson was unceremoniously axed (so long as no further reporting is provided). Last week, Fox News agreed to a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems and avoid trial over its “false” coverageabout the aftermath of the 2020 election.
Carlson’s final segment will go down without much fanfare as he ended Friday’s show by bringing in Pennsylvania pizza deliveryman Tyler Morrell to eat pizzas from the shop, Coco's Pizza in Delaware County, and discuss Morrell’s heroic action to trip up an alleged car thief.
Carlson wrapped by teasing the latest episode of Tucker Carlson Originals and telling viewers he’d be back on Monday: “That’s it for us, for the week....And we’ll be back on Monday. In the meantime, have the best weekend with the ones that you love and we’ll see you then.”
That was followed shortly after by a post from Tierin-Rose Mandelburg raging at anyone who dared to criticize Carlson:
The left has a tendency to marvel when the right seems weak. Typical for those who have no moral backbone.
Moments after Fox News and Tucker Carlson broke up, numerous celebrities posted in celebration. Though no confirmation as to why the split took place, Hollywood elites used it as an opportunity to bash Carlson and Fox News itself.
Mandelburg didn't rebut any of the criticism of Carlson; instead, she concluded by huffing:
The irony is that while the left was busy cheering Carlson not working with Fox News anymore, one of their own, Don Lemon, was fired from CNN.
All this to say, celebrities and much of the left are so dedicated to harassing, bashing and being evil towards others that at this point, it’s simply all they seem to know.
That's right -- the person whose paycheck depends on her harassing, bashing and being evil towards anyone who's not heterosexual and, in particular, is transgender is whining about other people being mean.
Nicholas Fondacaro lashed out at more Carlson critics:
With news breaking during their Monday show that Tucker Carlson was out at Fox News, the liberal and faux-conservative cast members of ABC’s The View celebrated the development by doing the wave and leading the audience in singing goodbye. One of the ladies even praised God.
As they were coming back from a commercial break late in the show, moderator Whoopi Goldberg broke the news. “Welcome back. Word has just come down that Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways,” she said as the audience erupted into cheers and applause.
“They thanked him for his service to the network as a host and as a prior contributor,” she read from the Fox News Media statement as she stood up and instructed the rest of the cast to do the wave with her.
[...]
Racist co-host Sunny Hostin then sarcastically gloated that, “I don’t think anyone likes to celebrate the demise of someone’s career” and quickly suggested Carlson was singularly “responsible for the degradation that we see somewhat of our democracy in this country.”
Then, speaking “as a faithful person,” the self-proclaimed devout Catholic thanked God for Carlson no longer having his gig at Fox News. “Look at God! Look at God!” she proclaimed.
For her part, co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin declared it “a good day for the Ukrainians” because Carlson was “the biggest purveyor of pro-Russian talking points” and “Russian propaganda hardest hit” by the departure.
“Karma doesn't lose anyone's address,” Hostin bragged, with Goldberg adding: “No. Well, it may misplace the address, but it doesn't lose it.”
The next day, Finkelstein groused that a commentator said Fox News want to be spoon-fed by hosts like Carlson -- then actually tried to defend Carlson's pro-Putin stance on Russia's invasion of Ukraine:
The late, great Rush Limbaugh often made a point of refuting the liberal-elite notion that his listeners were "mind-numbed robots" who took all of their political marching orders from El Rushbo. He insisted"You may learn some things, but in terms of your core beliefs you had ’em long before I came along. You’re just now having them reinforced."
On today's Morning Joe, George Conway of the disgraced Lincoln Project echoed that robotic line as he commented on Tucker Carlson's abrupt departure from Fox News. Said Conway:
That's the appeal of him to the MAGA base. Because they want to, they want to make things simpler for themselves. They don't want to think for themselves.
Democracy is complicated. Democracy is messy. Democracy is diversity. We don't like that, these people who watch Fox News. And Tucker appeals to that.
Not just the authoritarian streak, but also, you know, the great replacement theory. He wants to gin up, gin up the right, you know, with racism.
It's true that Carlson has been a critic of Biden's Ukraine position. But Conway overstated things in saying Carlson believes that it is up to Putin to define the situation there. On the first anniversary of Russia's invasion, Carlson wrote that limited objectives were reasonable:
To push Russia back to where it was a year ago before it invaded Ukraine . . . seemed like a reasonable and measurable objective."
Today, Scarborough sounded like the Biden campaign announcement, that the Democrats were for freedom and democracy, while Tucker and Trump were autocrats who liked Putin.
Of course, Carlson wasn't just "a critic of Biden's Ukraine position" -- he was enough of a supporter of Russia that his rants were played onRussian state TV. (And Russian propagandists offered him a job following his Fox News firing.)
Back to the original claim Conway made, Finkelstein played whataboutism:
If ever there were a viewership that slavishly follows the pronouncements of TV hosts, it's that of MSNBC, where Conway is a regular. The likes of Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, Joy Reid, et. al, set the agenda for liberal groupthink. Heck, many viewers apparently even take Joe Scarborough seriously! But not all: on Twitter, Scarborough was trending last night when when lefties were mad that Chris Hayes was replaced by a Scarborough softball interview with Bill Clinton.
He didn't actually prove any of that, of course. Finkelstein's soft treatment of Carlson's pro-Russia stance tells us he's a true Tucker believer and dead-ender -- you know, like the rest of the MRC.
WND Columnist Blames Nashville Massacre On Sex Education In Hungary Topic: WorldNetDaily
Carole Hornsby Haynes -- a self-proclaimed "education analyst, curriculum specialist, historian, and classical pianist" who wants you to know she has a Ph.D. -- used her March 31 WorldNetDaily column to attack the alleged transgender status ofthe perpetrator of a gun massacre at a school in Nashville, starting with the unfounded smear that all transgender people are mentally ill:
How could this shy young woman from a Christian family turn into a calculating, transgender terrorist, killing six? It's not surprising that she was under care for an emotional disorder. Transgender individuals are almost four times as likely as cisgender people to have a mental-health condition, including mood and anxiety disorders, PTSD, schizophrenia, personality disorders, autism, substance use disorders and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorders.
The study to which she links also noted that "Improved social support in childhood among transgender persons may be a critical mental illness in adulthood as described in this article" -- in other words, social stigma of the kind Hornsby Haynes is apparently endorsing contributes to mental illness among transgender people.
She then went way into the weeds to blame the massacre on sex education in, um, Hungary:
Although the public is bewildered by this national trend toward transgenderism and homosexuality, history provides the answer as to why.
The origins of radical sex education date back nearly a century to a Marxist program implemented in Hungarian public schools in their quest to destroy Christianity and the family in Western Europe. The curriculum included sex lectures and graphic instructional materials about free love and sexual intercourse. Students were encouraged to ridicule and reject Christian moral ethics, monogamy, and parental and church authority. Hate was turned toward parents, clergy and all dissenters.
The program was a huge success. Continued exposure to atheism, radical sex education and rebellion against authority turned Hungarian students into bullies, thieves, murderers, sex predators and sociopaths who disrespected authority.
Hornsby Haynes linked an article she wrote in 2019 from which she pulled much of this attack, and went on to identify the person who introduced sex education in Hungary, from which all of this purportedly comes, as Georg Lukacs.You may not be surprised to learn that this attack appears to be less than factual.
Lukacs was a Marxist philosopher who who spent more time in Berliln and Moscow than he did in Hungary. His actual direct influence on education, though, appears to have been limited: he was a "People's Commissar for Education and Culture" in the Hungarian Soviet Republic, which controlled the country for a few months in 1919 before collapsing; communism didn't return to Hungary again until after World War II, and he became critical of Hungary's links to the Soviet Union.
If one guy on Reddit is to be believed, the portrayal of Lukacs' sex education plan as extreme comes from research Victor Zitta, who relied on historians with an anti-Semitic bent who would be prone to smear Jewish intellectuals like Lukacs. Other historians say the sex education was much more tame.
Factual inaccuracy wasn't about to stop Hornsby Haynes from continuing to blame education, of course:
Nearly all states have dropped their bans against the teaching of LGBT propaganda in public schools, leaving only Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Louisiana. So it's not surprising that Hale had an emotional disorder and transitioned to a "male." She attended Tennessee public schools from 2006-2014 where she was subjected to far left-wing indoctrination, LGBT curriculum and the discrediting of Christianity.
Hardening schools with armed security is not going to stop school shootings that are a consequence of the moral decay of our nation. American public schools are churning out students who exhibit the same characteristics found in Hungarian youth after implementation of a radical sex curriculum – violent, murderers, sociopaths, sex predators and God-haters. The Communist goal of creating student hatred for America, our Founding Fathers, Christianity and American capitalism has been achieved.
Looks like Hornsby Haynes wants to impose her own form of propaganda in schools.
Newsmax Columnists Freaked Out Over Trump Indictment Too Topic: Newsmax
Just as Newsmax freakedout about Donald Trump's indictment, its columnists did too. Larry Bell treated Trump as a victim in his April 6 column:
Apart from — and in addition to — torching America’s foundational fair justice and democratic electoral systems, the transparently political prosecutorial persecutions of Donald Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg have inflamed to an inferno, one destined to backfire on the perpetrating arsonists.
The obvious agenda has been to keep Trump’s unabashedly unfettered persona in the compliant media forefront to distract and deflect public attention away from a previously unthinkable siege of domestic and foreign Democratic Party-Socialist policy disasters.
[...]
First, don’t imagine for a moment that the current sham Manhattan court case which George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley describes as a "legal slurpee" — satisfying for liberals but there’s nothing there — will possibly lead to a disqualifying felony conviction.
Despite all the brouhaha regarding 34 "felony charges" in Bragg’s grand jury indictment, there are exactly zero that would even warrant legitimate misdemeanor beefs in part due to long-expired statutes of limitations.
Bell's column carried a laughabledisclaimer stating that "The following article has been authored by a non-lawyer, and does not constitute a legal opinion; nor does it consitute an endorsement for any candidate, or political party, by Newsmax" -- as if Newsmax hasn't made clear it's completely in the tank for Trump.
Josh Hammer served up a ridiculous historical comparision in an April 7 column:
The Roman historian Suetonius described Julius Caesar as timid and noncommittal as he initially approached the Rubicon River — a shallow and narrow waterway that, at the time, demarcated the boundary between Cisalpine Gaul and Italy proper — in January 49 B.C.E.
In fact, the historian ultimately attributed Caesar's decision to cross the waterway, precipitating a four-year civil war and ultimate Caesarian dictatorship, to the supernatural. Prior to crossing, again according to Suetonius, Caesar uttered the now-infamous phrase: "The die has been cast."
While we cannot know for certain whether New York County, New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg's catastrophic decision to successfully indict and arraign a former president of the United States was partially attributable to an intervening apparition, we can reasonably conclude that the actions of this past week have cast a most woeful die for the trajectory of our decadent, declining republic.
The 34-count formal indictment of former President Donald Trump, laughably meritless on the legal merits and scandalously imprudent on the broader political judgment, represents a genie that cannot, and will not, ever be returned to its bottle.
Much ink has already been spilled on the glaring legal deficiencies in Bragg's case, which ought to be evident to any competent first-year law student and which had led Bragg's predecessor Cyrus Vance Jr., U.S. prosecutors and — in the not-so-distant past — Bragg himself to eschew prosecution.
Neither Bell nor Hammer can't actually know anything about the merits of Trump's indictment, given that all of the evidence has not yet been revealed.
Michael Reagan whined about the indictment in his April 11 column:
Additional proof that you can kill two birds with one stone. Or in this instance, one indictment can accomplish two political goals. Pipsqueak District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his comical indictment of Donald Trump is a big crowd pleaser among rabid leftwing voters.
Bragg "The Man Who Indicted Trump" will never have to pay for a drink again.
Or buy his own dinner, although in the long run that could be a real problem for him.
For feverish leftists this lame indictment is so much better than some stodgy Senate impeachment trial because it has fingerprints and the potential for more zany jurors.
[...]
Trump energizes the Trump base.
Then he polarizes every last member of the Democratic Party and he alienates independents and swing voters. The GOP’s path to presidential victory is razor thin at best.
With Trump as the nominee, it vanishes.
Trump deserves our sympathy. He's not been treated fairly.
Yes, the indictment is an outrage. But the best response for the country we love is not to give Trump the nomination because the left is picking on him.
That is exactly what they fervently want us to do.
The response that will hurt the left the most is to pick a nominee that has the best chance of beating Biden and the rest of the country wreckers that stock his administration.
The 2024 election may be our last chance.
Don’t throw it away.
Bell Returned to attack the indictment again in his April 14 column -- though, again, he cannot possibly know all the evidence behind it:
Never underestimate a targeted victim's ability to fight back.
Although Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s contrived charges against Donald Trump proves you can indict one, Democrats are the ones most likely to suffer acute indigestion served up by 2024 voters hungry for change from a two-tier Orwellian animal farm justice system.
Recent surveys indicate that a large segment of the population recognizes the case as being full of unsavory and otherwise thoroughly distasteful political malarkey.
Bell then played whataboutism by referencing various alleged scandals involving Democrats that were hyped by right-wing media -- though, oddly enough, in part to insist that voters don't care about such things. Still, Newsmax slapped a disclaimer on his column laughably insisting that "The following article does not constitute support for any political candidate and/or political party, on the part of Newsmax."
NEW ARTICLE -- CNS' War Against Nancy Pelosi: To The End, And Beyond Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com continued to attack Nancy Pelosi even after she stepped down from House leadership -- and kept it up until CNS was shut down. Read more >>
MRC Mixes Homophobia, Transphobia In Rant About Chasten Buttigieg Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Tierin-Rose Mandelburg mixed in homophobia with her usual transphobia in a March 16 post:
On March 16, The View hosted none other than Chasten Buttigieg, the "husband" of Transportaion Secretary Pete Buttigieg, to dish about fatherhood, his gayness and especially, his support for transgender youth.
This gave "s**t show" a whole new meaning.
Amid conversation about challenges of raising a set of twins with his husband, Joy Behar jumped in to switch the topic to the “larger issue” of “what’s going on” where “politicians across the country are trying to restrict gay and trans rights, everything from Florida's so-called don't say gay bill to banning drag shows. There's a war against transgender people.”
Naturally, the other harpies nodded or let out audible notions of agreement. Buttigieg said, “I think it's an extremely dangerous time.”
He's right. It's a dangerous time to be a confused teenager, with the culture telling you that, if you had a bad day you might be in the wrong body, and a whole industry eager to sell you life-altering surgeries and medications and calling it “gender-affirming health care.”
In addition to putting "husband" in scare quotes, Mandelburg hatefully called Chasten "Mrs. Buttigieg." Also, "the culture" is not making people transgender. Mandelburg continued to rage:
He started harping on book bans. He insisted that kids were “extremely vulnerable” and banning books for them to read was a “calculated choice” to make kids the “enemy.”
WHAT? Kids are not the enemy. Kids, like he said, are the vulnerable ones who need to be taught truth and taught to love the God-given body they were blessed with. The enemies are groomers who want to sexualize children, confuse them about sexuality, and subject them to harmful chemicals and surgeries with irreversible damage. The enemy is the ideology that preaches there is no normal.
That’s what’s dangerous.
It seems Mandelburg's idea of children being "taught truth" is indoctrination that anyone who's not exactly like them is evil and must be outcast from society and treated with hate and contempt. In other words, she wants to force an ideology on children that's arguably more dangerous than the so-called "ideology" of accepting people's differences -- and transphobes like Mandelburg believe kids really are the enemy.
Going back to the topic of "book bans" for a second, its important to recognize that the titles weren’t being removed for frivolous reasons. Books that were being taken from school libraries were the ones that teach five-year-olds how to masturbate, or the ones that tell vulnerable kids to keep secrets from their parents, or teach about anal sex. THOSE were the things being removed because they were prime ways for adults to groom kids.
She identified no book that "teaches five-year-olds how to masturbate," nor did she explain why secrets shouldn't be kept from parents who would mistreat or reject a child if that secret was known.
Mandelburg concluded with more anti-trans hate and demands for forced conformity:
As a segue, Buttigieg added a plug for his own book claiming that he hopes it "gets into hands of kids and are looking up to politicians and saying do I have a place in this country, do I belong here? My answer to them is, yes, you do.”
Certainly they do, but most especially as the kids they were born to be, not some fictitious version of themselves that they’re told is real and that's what kids should be taught.
It’s not a surprise that Buttigieg and The View ladies are so “all-in” for transgender youth but the danger lies in the fact that this is the garbage the viewers hear and see and may, in turn, start to believe.
Of course, Mandelburg has made it more than clear that transgender people don't belong anywhere -- and that all she believes is hatred toward others who aren't exactly like her.
WND Promotes Yet Another Bogus Study Attacking COVID Vaccines Topic: WorldNetDaily
An anonymously written April 2 WorldNetDaily article claimed:
A new report on COVID, and the shots that were used against it, has revealed a stunning human toll from those "medications": 26.6 million injured, 1.36 million disabled and 300,000 dead.
Nor is the economic loss easier to accept: $150 billion.
And these are from the shots, not the COVID-19 virus itself, a coronavirus that likely came out of a lab in Wuhan, China, that was doing experiments on how to make those viruses more lethal, and more easily spread.
The estimates are from Phinance Technologies, which explained, "The SARS-CoV-2 virus outbreak and the political and societal process that started unfolding in its wake will be looked at in retrospect as one of the most important moments in modern history. The waves of fear that the invisible threat posed to each and every individual united them in the acceptance of a solution to the problem."
It continued, "The monolithic solution that corporate, regulatory and societal leaders came up with was a novel inoculation technology using mRNA to instruct our body cells to produce a particular section of the virus (spike protein) that the body could build defenses against. This technology was previously forbidden to be used in human subjects in several international bio-ethics treaties."
Given WND's history of publishingbogusattacks on COVID vaccines, you will not be surprised to learn that this study is bogus too. Health Feedback documented how the study assumed correlations equaled causation and used flawed or inadequate datasets, summarizing:
In summary, claims that vaccination cost billions to the economy due to injuries and disabilities are inaccurate and based on a flawed analysis by Phinance Technologies. The analysis showed no causal association, relying exclusively on detecting correlations. The analysis also used datasets inadequate to their objective and research actually points to COVID-19 vaccination being associated with economic benefits, not the opposite as claimed by [Edward] Dowd.
COVID-19 vaccines substantially reduce the risk of dying from COVID-19, and serious side effects are very rare. Excess deaths among working-age adults in 2021 and 2022 were driven by COVID-19 and other factors, not vaccination. Faulty logic underlies claims that vaccines caused mass disability and economic harm.
WND doesn't want you to know any of this -- its editorial agenda is to malign COVID vaccines no matter what the truth is -- so it will not update its article to tell readers the study has been debunked.
MRC's Transgender Hate Rolls On Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's rage againsttransgender people has continued unabated.A Feb. 20 post by Clay Waters complained that a news segment on anti-transgender laws didn't include any transphobes:
NPR's big story on Monday's Morning Edition was “Florida bans gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Parents raise concerns,” by Melissa Block. She's a former morning anchor turned “NPR special correspondent covering gender issues." Block’s completely one-sided seven-minute story included a portrait of teenager Liz Bostock, “[a]ssigned male at birth.”
With a soft, celebratory focus on activist mothers, happy "trans kids," and virtually no dissenting voices aired or inconvenient facts raised, it’s a perfect encapsulation of the liberal media’s harmful attitude that children can be born in the wrong body, an error that needs irrevocable surgical and-or chemical fixing that can result in permanent sterilization.
NPR used the bizarre term "gender-affirming care" describe gender denial....five times in seven minutes. The teenager started receiving puberty blockers last August. "It's been amazing," said her mother.
A Feb. 24 item by Brad Milmouth weirdly insisted that a CNN host who called out anti-transgender politicians was actually "promot[ing] transgender surgery for underage teens":
On Tuesday's The Lead show, CNN host Jake Tapper did his part to promote transgender surgery for underage teens as he devoted a segment to fretting over Idaho's push for a state ban. Republicans only stood for "cruelty" and "meanness" that is somehow against God.
Teenage transgender activist Eve Debitt and father Michael Debitt were given an extremely sympathetic forum to complain about the Idaho legislature's actions with no serious consideration of the view that such surgery causes irreversible harm through amputation.
Tim Graham served up his own whine on March 4 that transphobes aren't getting included enough in stories on anti-transgender legislation:
The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and federal funding for TV public-affairs programs, insisted on “strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature." The CPB and PBS have ignored this language ever since.
On Wednesday, the PBS NewsHour aired an 11-minute segment under the headline “Parents concerned as new state laws restrict rights of transgender children.” They summarized it on Twitter: "Republican legislators are advancing bills restricting doctors and other providers from offering transition-related health care for minors."
Anchor William Brangham began with a medley of permissive parents who lobbied against Republicans who oppose so-called "gender-affirming care" for kids, from puberty blockers to amputation surgeries. Then he conducted an interview with radical transgender activist Erin Reed, which made it nearly unanimous -- on a subject that is clearly "of a controversial nature." Reed fights dirty, comparing GOP opposition to "genocide."
The conservative or Republican view was aired for 48 seconds, and then Reed was allowed to shoot it down, with no rebuttal.
We don't recall Graham ever complaining that Fox News gave short shrift to "the liberal view" then attacked it with no rebuttal.
The MRC's chief transphobe, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, raged at a transgender child in a March 6 post:
Two words that should never appear in the same sentence but so often do these days: “trans” and “kids.”
“Real Housewives” star Heather Dubrow posted on Instagram for International Son’s day in honor of her “son” who was once her daughter. As a result, numerous blue checks praised the “inclusivity” and “celebration” of the child's deep confusion.
Dubrow posted a photo of the beach with the word “ACE,” her “son’s” name, etched into the sand for International Son’s Day on March 4th.
[...]
Unironically, most trans kids don’t grow up healthy, happy, confident or independent like Dubrow said. Many of them deal with the life-long side effects of the mutilation they had done. Most can’t have kids naturally, can’t breastfeed, deal with depression and even thoughts of suicide. Last year, 82% of trans-identifying people considered suicide.
Mandelburg didn't mention that the study noted that "Interpersonal microaggressions made a unique, statistically significant contribution to lifetime suicide attempts" -- meaning that transgender people are being driven to suicide in part because of haters like her.
On a similar note, Waters returned for a March 11 post complaining that one TV host raised the possibilty of "real-world violence" against transgender people as the result of anti-trans legislation: "How do 'we know' anything of the kind about how state legislation leads to 'real-world violence,' besides from the rhetoric of the most extreme trans-activists?"
A March 13 post by Mandelburg twisted President Biden's words to bizarrely portray his speaking out against anti-trans laws as an endorsement of child mutilation:
Perhaps it’s opposite day.
On Monday’s segment of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, President Joe Biden spoke with gay man and former White House staff member in the Obama era, Kal Penn, where he admitted that he thought restricting kids from getting their private parts mutilated was “sinful.”
The pair began speaking about gay-marriage and Biden’s efforts to keep it legal. Biden said his stance was “simple” after talking about his “epiphany” with homosexuality when he saw two men locking lips in high school.
Penn also asked about the transgender population, specifically transgender youth who are dealing with, so-called “regressive state laws.”
“Transgender kids is a really harder thing,” he began. “What’s going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, close to sinful. I mean it's terrible what they're doing.”
In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis is spearheading laws that would prohibit kids from receiving dangerous surgeries and drugs to change their gender. DeSantis recognizes that there are two genders and that children are not mature enough to make such life altering decisions. While his laws are evidence of him looking out for children's best interests, the left is twisting it into an anti-LGBTQ campaign by the Republican Governor.
Mandelburg pushed the right-wing narrative that a failure to sufficiently hate transgender people is making people transgender:
Obviously Biden is not a fan of such a move. "It’s not like a kid wakes up one morning and says, ‘You know, I decided I want to become a man' or 'I want to become a woman' or 'I want to change.' What are they thinking about here? They are human beings. They love. They have feelings. They have inclinations that are... It just, to me, is, I don’t know is, it's cruel,” the president said in the clip.
Well, he was right that kids don’t wake up and just choose to be a different gender. More often than not, they are conditioned or indoctrinated into believing that is their reality. Whether it’s their teachers who shove LGBTQ propaganda to them in schools or parents who agree to let their kids live a delusion, Biden is failing to recognize that kids don’t know better. Kids trust adults and if adults tell them that getting life altering surgery is good, then they’ll do it.
So upset was the MRC by Biden's "Daily Show" interview that Alex Christy complained about it the next day.
Christy returned for a March 25 post in which he groused that commentator Jonathan Capehart portray right-wing concern about "parental rights" as all about hating transgender kids (which he didn't rebut) and tried to lamely tried to respond whe Capehart called out "rabble-rousing parents" who are actually just targeting transgender kids: "It is not “rabble-rousing” to say that boys are boys and girls are girls and that teenagers should not be given hormone treatment, but it is rabble-rousing to say that they should."
How Is The MRC Fearmongering About Soros Now? Topic: Media Research Center
When the Media Research Center wasn't busy trying to tie George Soros to the district attorney prosecuting Donald Trump for financial crimes (and loudlydenying it was leaning into anti-Semitic tropes by doing so), the Media Research Center was attacking Soros in all the usual ways. Here's what the MRC has done in the field of Soros-bashing since the beginning of the year, when we last checked in:
We've already noted how the MRC has lashed out at a Soros-funded group for accurately pointing out how Elon Musk is pushing Twitter rightward, and how it tried to scapegoat a Soros-linked prosecutor for dropping a charge against a man who later perpetrated a massacre even though the charge dropped was carrying a concealed weapon without a permit, something right-wing gun-lovers like the MRC endorse (shades of what it would later do to Bragg).
It wouldn't be the MRC if there wasn't at least one wacky attack on Soros, and Gabriela Pariseau oblliged in a Feb. 17 post accusing Soros of hypocrisy for pointing out Donald Trump's narcissism:
Leftist billionaire George Soros railed against former President Donald Trump and called him a narcissist. Yes, America’s most notorious self-absorbed billionaire is whining about “narcissism.”
Soros delivered a climate alarmist speech at the Technical University of Munich where he took time to lambast Trump as “a deeply flawed character, a confidence fixer whose narcissism grew into a disease.” Soros admitted that his "hope for 2024" is that the Republican vote would be split between DeSantis and Trump as a third party presidential candidate resulting in an overhaul of the Republican Party. “That would lead to a Democratic landslide and force the Republican party to reform itself. But perhaps I may be just a little bit biased." More than a little biased indeed. This is the same Soros who once claimed he saw himself as “some kind of god,” made it his goal to “become the conscience of the world,” and told The New York Times in 2019 that he was working to “bend” the “arc of history” in the “right direction.” Soros is “narcissism” personified.
MRC Business previously reported in its recent three-part series on Soros that the conceited billionaire even admitted that he “always harbored” an “exaggerated view” of his “self-importance,” in his magnum opus The Alchemy of Finance (1995).
Soros is certainly vying to be the “conscience of the world,” and he’s bought himself influential access to nearly every sphere of the political scene imaginable.
Note that Pariseau did not dispute anything Soros said about Trump -- she simply attacked Soros for saying it. She also seemed not to realize that Soros admitting to his narcissism shows he has a more healthy and realistic view of himself than Trump, who is far too narcissistic to ever admit such a thing. Pariseau instead endeavored to find more alleged Soros crimes:
In Soros’ latest speech, he targeted Trump’s encouragement that states pass stronger election integrity legislation and accused the former president of trying to “ensure that his party will remain in power indefinitely.” His disdain for election integrity is unsurprising considering Soros was part of a $59 million effort to boost the dubious practice of mass mail-in voting prior to the 2020 election. He later coordinated with fellow leftist billionaire and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar to weaponize millions in cash through the leftist group Way-to-Win ’s donor collaborative, Valiente Fund, in a campaign to recruit Latino voters “for victory in the November [2022] midterms.”
In fact, "election integrity" is little more than a right-wing narrative to make voting more restrictive in an claimed attempt to stop purpored election fraud that really doesn't exist -- indeed, Trump has been pushing that narrative to advance his false claims that the 2020 presidential eleciton was "stolen" from him.And calling mail-in voting "dubious" is also a right-wing narrative (also lacking factual justification) with a goal of restricting the practice because more Democrats than Republicans make use of it. Finally, get-out-the-vote efforts are not against the law, they're not evil, and Republicans do the same thing.
Pariseu concluded by huffing: "Soros is in no position to be complaining about 'narcissism.'" If she can't or won't admit Trump's narcissism, she's in no position to criticize Soros.
MRC Desperately Puts Pro-Musk Spin On NPR Standing Up To Musk's Threats Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center absolutelyloved it when Elon Musk, seeking to generate some desperate clickbait after getting caught not giving right-wing hate and extremism a totally free pass, arbitrarily labeled NPR's Twitter feed as "state-affiliated media." When Musk dialed the label back a bit to "government-funded media," the MRC's Luis Cornelio fretted that it was a "fake news victory."
Whwen Musk completely reversed himself and dropped such labeling not just for NPR but for all similar media organizations -- even the ones that were clearly state propaganda, somehing the MRC insisted NPR was but could never prove -- a dejected Cornelio lamented even more in an April 25 post headlined "CAVING?"
Twitter 2.0 appears to be caving to leftist pressure by removing the “government-funded” labels it slapped on taxpayer-financed outlets like NPR.
Twitter owner Elon Musk initially supported labeling government-funded media labels for the outlets that receive funds from the government. Still — after pressure from the left — Twitter has removed labels that accurately described NPR and other news organizations as “government-funded.” NPR even actively promotes on its website how “[f]ederal funding is essential to public radio's service to the American public and its continuation is critical for both stations and program producers, including NPR.”
This is not the first time Twitter 2.0 caved to the left. Earlier this month, Musk slapped NPR with a “state-affiliated media” label but switched gears after left-wing backlash.
Cornelio didn't mention that Musk dropped the label for indisiputable state propaganda, not just NPR -- or that an official with Russian state media outlet RT praised Musk for doing so. Instead, he whined that people defended NPR:
NPR President and CEO John Lansing threw a hissy fit over Musk’s move by barring the company from publishing its news on Twitter, The Washington Post reported. “We were disturbed to see last night that Twitter has labeled NPR as 'state-affiliated media,' a description that, per Twitter's own guidelines, does not apply to NPR,” Lansing said. NPR opted to quit Twitter after the Twitter labels.
Even White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre rushed to defend NPR journalists at an April 5 press conference, claiming they “work diligently to hold public officials accountable and inform the American people.” “The hard-hitting independent nature of their coverage speaks for itself,” she decried. CNN’s Kaitlan Collins similarly defended NPR. “That’s not obviously NPR,” Collins said in reference to the definition of state-affiliated media. “NPR does great journalism.”
Cornelio then huffed, "The evidence of NPR’s left-wing, pro-Democrat talking points is endless" -- which disproves that it's state-controlled media, because if it were it would have offered Republican propaganda when Donale Trump was president.He then cited as anexample of this a correcpondent who " dubbed the Wuhan laboratory leak story one of the “biggest conspiracy theories” about COVID-19" -- which means that the narrative is nothing more than a right-wing talking point and certainly not a search for truth (and he didn't explain how, exactly, how the narrative is "left-wing").
When Musk tried to coerce NPR into tweeting again by threatening to give its Twitter handle to someone else -- even though NPR had not met Twitter's own standards for abandoning an account handle, which is based on logging into the account, not tweeting -- Cornelio misleadingly framed it ina May 3 post as NPR being "triggered" by Musk instead of the reality that Musk threatened NPR:
Twitter owner Elon Musk managed to trigger the leftist, taxpayer-funded NPR — again.
Musk pledged to transfer the username of NPR’s main Twitter account (@NPR) to a different organization or person with the same acronym according to email correspondence between Musk and NPR reporter Bobby Allyn. Musk’s comment came as a response to NPR’s hissy fit decision to abruptly quit Twitter after being accurately labeled as “government-funded.”
“So is NPR going to start posting on Twitter again, or should we reassign @NPR to another company?" Musk allegedly said in a Tuesday email. “‘Our policy is to recycle handles that are definitively dormant,’” Musk wrote in another email to NPR. “‘Same policy applies to all accounts. No special treatment for NPR.’”
Actually, Musk is the one who's throwing a hissy fit, but Cornelio won't tell you that, nor will he mention that there's no evidence NPR has abandoned its handle based on longstanding Twitter guidelines. Instead, he quoted a fellow MRC employee bizarrely claiming that Musk is trying to execute a power play (never mind that it violates Twitter corporate policies) and tried to insult the NPR reporter for pointing out facts:
MRC Free Speech America & MRC Business Director Michael Morris reacted to Musk’s actions against NPR. “I think what Musk is really doing here is putting a thumb on NPR to pressure it to reveal the true nature of its government funding,” he said. “If Musk does take @NPR’s handle, he shouldn’t give it back until NPR comes clean. #DefundNPR.”
Allyn further complained that journalists are no longer able to differentiate between what is “real and what is fake” now that blue check marks are available for all Twitter users, not just the elite.
“By recently making ‘verified’ blue checks available for purchase, Musk has created a turbulent social media landscape, blurring the lines for users between what is real and what is fake on one of the most influential social networks,” he wrote.
Allyn topped his child-like tantrum off by praising Twitter 1.0. (Yes, the same platform that muzzled a sitting president and colluded with the government to censor information amid the COVID-19 pandemic).
“For most of its 17-year history, Twitter has had rules that maintained a certain level of order and offered both individuals and organization some control over their presence on the platform,” the reporter claimed.
Yikes, cry more.
It's highly unlikely that Allyn or anyone else at NPR is crying over this situation -- that would be Musk, who is losing content because of his own impulsiveness and insistence on generating right-wing clicks and trying to own the libs ahead of sound business practices.But Cornelio won't tell you that either.
CNS Hid That Columnist Was Arrested On Charges Of Incest, Sexual Misconduct Topic: CNSNews.com
In the four months before its shutdown, CNSNews.com published 33 columns by Michael Letts, whose bio describes him as "CEO and founder of In-VestUSA, a national grassroots non-profit organization helping hundreds of communities provide thousands of bulletproof vests for their police forces through educational, public relations, sponsorship, and fundraising programs." (It also published threeadditionalcolumns before that.) Letts invoked the usual right-wing talking points -- attacking President Biden, praising police, gushing over Elon Musk and defending guns chief among them. But he also ventured into conspiracy theory territory, as in this March 14 column:
Tucker Carlson played some of the video footage viewed by the House of Representatives’ January 6 Committee. Not surprisingly, it showed the opposite of what the Democrats have been saying about the events of January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C.
It was not a Republican insurrection hell-bent on overthrowing the government. It was closer to a maze created by Democrats to create an impression of insurrection probably so they could stop the certification of the 2020 election results.
Carlson aired video of the riot recently that turned the narrative about the what happened that day on its head.
While it did show some violence and chaos, it also presented Capitol Police opening doors and ushering people into the U.S. Capitol. It displayed citizens wandering peacefully through the halls and taking pictures.
It showed the police escorting the QAnon shaman, a protestor who wore what looked like a buffalo headdress, through the halls and even trying doors to find a way to let him into the Senate chambers.
Another video disclosed a police officer who was supposedly killed after being battered by a fire extinguisher walking around fine with no signs of distress after he was supposed to have been killed.
As we've documented, the footage Carlson aired was also cherry-picked and misleadingly edited -- prosecutors pointed out that the footage of Jacob Chansley, the "QAnon Shaman," ignored that that he spent the previous half-hour resisiting arrest, and the head of the Capitol Police said that if the officer in question, Brian Sicknick, had "not fought valiantly for hours on the day he was violently assaulted, Officer Sicknick would not have died the next day."
Still, Letts concluded by ranting that "These are private citizens who government officials maliciously slandered. Congress itself should also take action against those members of the committee for withholding evidence in an investigation. The real criminals here are not the people, but the Democrats in government."
In the final column CNS published by him before its shutdown, on April 12, Letts bizarrely asserted that "Today, in the wake of the Nashville shooting in a Christian school that left six people dead, Democrats and many mainstream media outlets are blaming nine-year-old children for the shooting. Why? Because their Christian faith doesn’t support the gender ideology agenda, and the murderer was transgender."
But here's what CNS has censored about Letts: He was arrested three years ago on charges of incest and sexual conduct with a minor. As the Associated Press reported:
Michael Allan Letts sexually abused a relative from the time she was 10 until she turned 17, Richland County deputies said.
Letts was arrested Wednesday at the completion of the investigation which began when the victim came to authorities in January, deputies said in a statement.
Letts, 56, was charged with incest; second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor between 11 and 14 years of age; second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor under 16; and third-degree criminal sexual conduct.
The AP added that "Letts is founder and CEO of In-Vest USA, which raises money for bulletproof vests for police forces that can’t afford them," which makes it clear that this is the same person as the CNS columnist.
A search of court records in Richland County, S.C., shows that the charges against Letts remain pending; he was freed on a $100,000 surety bond, and has since obtained a consent order from the court to allow him to travel. Additionally, there was a charge of shoplifting filed against Letts in 2022; that case remains pending as well, and he was released on a $2,125 personal recogizance bond. We found no statement at either Letts' personal website or the In-Vest website regarding his arrest, and a Google search indicates he has made no public statement about it.
Letts' column-writing seems to be an effort to bury news of his arrest with his own work. Another work in that effort appears to be a softball September 2021 interview with a writer who posts at Medium who did little than feed Letts generic questions about leadership and copy-and-paste Letts' bio from the In-Vest website (which claims that he had been given "the title His Excellency Count, Sir Michael A. von Letts, Chevalier, Knight of Honour of the Imperial Teutonic Order, by the Republic of Germany") while failing to mention his arrest.
CNS is not the only ConWeb site that has published Letts' columns; Newsmax and WorldNetDaily have as well. But neither have published as many in such a short period of time as CNS did.
MRC Joke Policeman Unironically Complains Of Others Being Joke Police Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Alex Christy complained in a March 17 post:
Comedy Central’s The Daily Show claims to be a comedy show, but temp host Kal Penn and husband of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Chasten Buttigieg, turned it into the joke police on Thursday while condemning a recent joke told by former Vice President Mike Pence at Pete’s expense.
Penn set the table by reporting, “At the Gridiron Dinner in Washington, D.C., that’s a dinner where politicians are known to make humorous speeches—”
After Buttigieg interrupted to add “they try,” Penn continued “They try, yes. Vice President Mike Pence made a joke about your husband taking paternity leave and he referred to it as ‘maternity leave’ and when I saw that, my biggest reaction was, really? You're just going to recycle a 1998 joke that’s, like, been around forever, but what was your reaction?”
If Penn found the joke boring, that would be one thing, but Buttigieg insisted it was much worse, “I mean, I think ‘joke’ is being generous.”
The real joke here is that Christy's main job at the MRC is to be a joke policeman, heaping disdain on late-night comedy shows that make too much fun of right-wingers like him. Here's a sample of what he has written since the beginning of this year, with a particular focus on Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers (with a little Jimmy Kimmel for good measure):
Christy has determined that any joke that doesn't align with his right-wing ideology is not funny and, must therefore be condemned. Seems like he needs to step away and spend some time taking classes at joke police academy if he wants to keep his certification.
WND's Farah Responds To Trump Indictment With Racism, Conspiracy Theories Topic: WorldNetDaily
Given the size of the freakout WorldNetDaily had over the indictment of Donald Trump, it stands to reason that WND's biggest Trump fanboy, editor Joseph Farah, would be freaking out just as bigly. Indeed, Farah's March 31 column began with a bizarre racial attack, accusing district attorney Alvin Bragg (who is black) of "shucking and jiving" over the indictment:
What was all this shucking and jiving about for the last few weeks?
President Donald Trump was about to be indicted. Then he wasn't. Then he was.
What was going on in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office, I wonder. Who was he talking to besides his fairy godmother, George Soros? Was he seeking permission from Merrick Garland or Joe Biden? Did he know what kind of furor he would set off by criminally indicting a U.S. president for the first time in history?
And what are these 30-something counts he was putting together for release next week? Were they something the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York and the Federal Election Commission haven't seen before? They decided against bringing charges. In fact, two of Bragg's own attorneys quit his office when he began talking about indicting Trump.
You would think he was trying to disgrace himself by going ahead finally with his wicked plans. Or maybe he had to get permission. Maybe it's just part of a devious plot to further weaponize the government, as if we could imagine that.
And why is so brazen to turn down a subpoena to testify to the House Judiciary Committee?
There's something very strange about the timing of it all. Trump is growing in popularity since announcing his bid for the presidency. Does Bragg think this is going to make him less of a political threat?
Despite not seeing any of the evidence, Farah ranted that Trump is innocent:
They're just going to stay on him. To date they haven't found ANYTHING! He's as clean as a hound's tooth. They keep throwing stuff at him, and he acts like the Energizer Bunny. Hey, maybe this guy just loves his country. Have they ever thought of that?
Nevertheless, these are gravely dangerous times in America. Most of us just can't wait to get Trump back in office; it won't come fast enough. We just have to live through the next few months. The country can't take much more punishment and oppression.
Of course, nobody feels it like Donald Trump. He should have one job to do – run for president! He's never taken his sight off that. How can a man go through all of this?
Just pray for him – and anybody who can afford to give him some money along the way, encourage him that way.
Trump is a very wealthy man who does not need anyone to donate money to him.
Farah repeated discredited election fraud conspiracy theories to defend Trump in his April 5 column headlined "Trump was right about EVERYTHING!":
You can see it for yourself now. It's perfectly obvious to all of us. Donald Trump accurately called the stolen election in 2020, what followed in the Capitol "insurrection" and all that followed in America ever since. Just look at the Big Picture. Just watch how the Democrats changed their tactics and became tyrants.
That's right. In case someone hasn't noticed yet, the odds are they are actively considering another Big Steal in 2024 – or worse. They are actively building a police state, an authoritarian nightmare. It's their only option to retain power.
First, they tried to sell the claim that 2020 was just another election – with Joe Biden receiving some 80 million votes – without even campaigning! Then they created, manufactured, dreamed up the Capitol sham. Next came the raid on Mar-a-Lago. Then Alvin Bragg's gambit. And there are other states and jurisdictions set to wage lawfare against Trump this year. They'll potentially be able to tie him up, not giving him time to campaign this year – or worse.
Nothing they do now would surprise me.
What they know is that Trump seriously threatens their New World Order, their Great Reset. They've already got the fake media in their pocket, Big Tech censors in place, unlimited money interests set up, the Deep State machinations. They have New York, California, Illinois and a few other clueless states they can count on. We have Donald Trump's real popularity – up to 72% in some polls.
[...]
"2024 is the final battle," said President Trump in Waco, Texas, recently. "That's going to be the big one. You put me back in the White House, their reign will be over, and America will be a free nation once again."
We all need to back Trump now – our best hope for the future in the natural world. May God bless him, and may God bless America.
Only a dead-ender like Farah would think a corrupt, amoral man like Trump is "our best hope for the future in the natural world."
for his April 6 column, Farah cherry-picked quotes by President Biden to invent a reason why he had not spoken out on Trump's indictment: "Hint: It's because he's in on the plot to stay in the shadows for once, now that others are carrying the ball."
MRC's Jean-Pierre-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch (Sans Doocy) Topic: Media Research Center
Curtis Houck sounded much more like a PR flack for Kevin McCarthy than the "media researcher" he's supposed to be in his writeup of the April 21 White House press briefing:
Prior to the weekend, more Hunter Biden headlines, and Monday’s media tsunami regarding Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon, there was Friday’s White House press briefing and it began with a rant from White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre ghoulishly claiming House Republicans want to “fill our cities with smog,” “give asthma to our children,” and allow oil companies to use chemicals that would “melt bones.”
This rant represented no basis in reality, but not one White House reporter stepped up to the plate to condemn this, including the front row of NBC’s Peter Alexander, ABC’s Mary Bruce, CBS’s Nancy Cordes, Reuters’s Steve Holland, CNN’s Kevin Liptak, and Darlene Superville of the Associated Press. There wasn’t even an installment of Doocy Time to call this out.
The plan spearheaded by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) would only, among other things, roll spending back to 2022, ax new spending for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and impose additional work requirements for certain welfare programs. So, yes, Republicans would be going back to the dark, old days where bones were melted and cities were filled with smog in....2022?
Jean-Pierre had been hawking Biden’s “bold climate and environmental justice agenda” when she argued it “could not stand in starker contrast to the dangerous proposals MAGA House Republicans are putting forward.”
Citing a pants-on-fire chart behind her, she declared McCarthy’s “ransom note” would mean the party wants “to kill jobs, fill our cities with smog, and give asthma to our children.”
“The proposal would repeal the Inflation Reduction Act’s green energy tax credits,” she continued, “sending thousands of jobs back to China” and “make it easier for oil companies to use toxic chemicals that cause severe burns, damage people’s eyes, and quite literally melt bones.”
Houck offered no actual evidence anything Jean-Pierre said was wrong -- he just mocked her and repeated similar mocking from his fellow right-wingers.
Houck spent his writeup of the April 24 press briefing whining that everyone was talking about Fox News firing Tucker Carlson and nobody was talking about Hunter Biden, and that a right-wing reporter asked about an old story:
While media observers, Twitter, and cable news viewers were lighting their hair on fire Monday over the monumental shakeup with CNN firing Don Lemon and Fox News axing Tucker Carlson, the Biden White House held its near-daily press briefing and there were a few moments that slipped under the radar, including one about Hunter Biden.
The New York Post’s Steven Nelson took advantage of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan serving as Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s crutch for the day and asked about an April 11 revelation from a former Obama-Biden official that alleged Sullivan — then a top Biden aide — called for support to the Ukrainian gas industry just after Hunter Biden signed on with Burisma.
Houck's April 27 briefing writeup was heavy on the right-wing scandal du jour (let's call it "Questiongate"):
Thursday’s White House press briefing featured an embarrassing performance by the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre as she tried to defend and explain away an infamous photo captured of President Biden holding a card Wednesday afternoon with the name of a reporter he called on (Courtney Subramanian of the Los Angeles Times) and a typed-out question that was close to the one she asked.
Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich brought it up, but treaded carefully: “The LA Times said that their reporter did not submit any questions in advance of yesterday’s press conference, so, to people who saw that pocket card, can you explain how that ended up there and why the President needed something like that?”
Jean-Pierre thanked Heinrich for bringing it up and, sure enough, had comments. She insisted “[i]t is entirely normal for a president to be briefed on reporters who will be asking questions at a press conference and issues that we expect they might ask about” and thus “it is not surprising” to hear the White House anticipated questions about 2024 and semiconductors.
Adding that press briefings also serve as a way of gleaning what reporters are interested in, Jean-Pierre proclaimed: “[W]e do not have specific questions in advance. That's not something that we do. And in fact, I would point out the questions that was asked was different than what it was on the card that you all saw.”
After she insisted such preparation was done in order to shape the news coverage, the Daily Caller’s Diana Glebova wasn’t having it: “How are the reporters decided?”
Jean-Pierre actually replied, explaining the White House “reach[es] out to a number of reporters who — who were going to — who we know are going to be at the press conference and that's what we did yesterday and also...who has not gotten a question in a while.”
Houck censored the fact that both of these reporters work for right-wing outlets -- thus demonstrating their bias -- or that it's standard procedure for presidents and other officials to be briefed on what reporters are likely to ask them at a press briefing.
Michael Dorstewitz spent his April 7 Newsmax column cheering Elon Musk's partisan stunt of arbitrarily labeling NPR's Twitter feed as "state-affiliated media," citiing as evidence that NPR ignored the story of Hunter Biden's laptop:
NPR is partially-funded by taxpayer dollars, but most importantly it only seems to “hold the powerful accountable” when “the powerful” happen to be conservatives or Republicans. They generally carry water for Democrats, as they demonstrated in the closing days of the 2020 presidential election.
What should have been an October surprise that would have assured then-President Trump’s reelection, never made it off the starting block. The New York Post’s stories of Hunter Biden’s “Laptop From Hell” were banned from Twitter as “disinformation.”
But legacy media such as NPR did all they could to ignore it, and NPR appeared proud of its decision.
“Why haven’t you seen any stories from NPR about the NY Post’s Hunter Biden story?” NPR asked on Twitter. “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”
They wouldn’t even try to confirm or rebut what should have been the biggest news of the 2020 election cycle.
As we've pointed out, the New York Post -- a biased right-wing, pro-Trump newspaper -- refused to provide no independent verification of the story at the time that would have overcome reasonable concerns about partisanship, instead demanding that people take this story hyped by anti-Biden partisans at face value. Dorstewitz is simply mad that a dubious "October surprise" was justly ignored by media outlets that actually care about reporting facts.
Dorstewitz then complained that White HOuse press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre vouched for NPR's editorial independence: "In other words, to make its case that it’s not a government mouthpiece, NPR cites praise from the White House and the Pentagon. They could have made their case better by citing complaints from the government."
He went on to whine that it was accurately pointed out that George Soros had not directly donated any money to Trump-prosecuting district attorney Alvin Bragg but cheered that "Twitter fact-checked the fact-checker and added context to Kessler’s claim" by noting that Soros donated to a group that help elect Bragg -- which, again, is not the direct contribution Bragg-haters claimed it was. He conlcuded by gushing:
None of this would have been possible had billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk not purchased Twitter and turned it around.
It’s always refreshing when someone has the courage to state the obvious: that “the emperor has no clothes.”
And it makes no difference whether it’s a little boy that says it while enjoying a royal parade, or it’s a social media platform pointing out the obvious prejudices of legacy news.
Either way, it’s always fun.
Yes, Dorstewitz would think that right-wing bias and stunts are "fun."
The Media Research Center -- fans of everything Fox News -- particularly loved Tucker Carlson, so much so that it would dedicate entire posts to transcribing what he said. Here are a few examples of its Tucker stenography in recent months:
Carole Hornsby Haynes -- a self-proclaimed "education analyst, curriculum specialist, historian, and classical pianist" who wants you to know she has a Ph.D. -- used her March 31 WorldNetDaily 
Just as Newsmax 
The Media Research Center's Tierin-Rose Mandelburg mixed in homophobia with her usual transphobia in a March 16 
An anonymously written April 2 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center's 
When the Media Research Center wasn't busy 
The Media Research Center 
In the four months before its shutdown, CNSNews.com published 33 columns by 
The Media Research Center's Alex Christy complained in a March 17 
Given the size of 
Curtis Houck sounded much more like a PR flack for Kevin McCarthy than the "media researcher" he's supposed to be in his writeup of the April 21 White House 
Michael Dorstewitz spent his April 7 Newsmax 