WND's Cashill Has A Meltdown Over Soccer, Pushes COVID Conspiracy Theory
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill and co-host Loy Edge spent their Nov. 9 podcast raging about how soccer is purportedly sissifying America. Cashill declared: "Why have we let ourselves be invaded -- you know, the first stage, and we have the WHO, we have the World Economic Forum, we have the globalists -- the early stages of the movement was the insertion of soccer into our high schools, grade schools, college, neighborhoods." He then agreed with Edge that soccer was "a breeding ground for future Antifa  movements" and "back-doored their way into our institutions." Edge sneered that "these guys normally wouldn't have been on a sports team. They weren't jocks by any stretch of the imagination." Cashill then identified another part of the conspiracy: "they probably measured their pitch in meters."

Cashill then mocked the idea of penalty kicks being a lot of the scores made in soccer: "Imagine an NBA game ... and at the end of regulation time it's 0-0, right, and they have an overtime, it's still 0-0, and they say, OK. get out your best five free-throw shooters, we'll get out our best five free-throw shooters. ... And then you call this -- you have your propaganda arm call this the greatest game in the world, the game that attracts the greatest amount of viewers in the world, right? And I think we're all being tricked. I think it's all a giant way -- one subtle, sneaky way of taking over our country."

Cashill offered his suggestion for improving the game: "make the goals bigger," since goalies have gotten bigger since the game was formed.

Cashill and Edge then went on a long digression about baseball, which included Cashill claiming that most of the racist hate letters Henry Aaron received as he approached breaking Babe Ruth's home run record were written by the KGB. That led to a sub-digression into COVID vaccine conspiracy theories:

CASHILL: When he was still alive -- and his ending was tragic. You know how that was. You know about that?

EDGE: I don't remember.

CASHILL: It was like a day after he got his jab.

EDGE: Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. Boy, this show's not gonna air. Maybe he was, you know, jabbed, criticized by some people and died.

CASHILL: I mean, it could be a coincidence, but something tells me --

EDGE: Like it always is.

In fact, Aaron died of natural causes at age 86, not from the COVID vaccine.

Cashill and Edge eventually got back to soccer, with lots of whining about the "toxic" Megan Rapinoe. Cashill then derided women who think they can impress men by being into sports, insisting that the "don't just quite get it." He then claimed that female sports commentators can only do one thing "halfway well" is "on-the-field intervews which are brief and short and not in very much depth. The problem is they're talking to people who are sometimes two feet taller. In the booth they never sound quite right, in my humble opinion. ... They don't just get the rhythm of talking to men."

MRC's Jean-Pierre-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch, Year-End Edition
Topic: Media Research Center

Curtis Houck started winding down the Media Research Center's in hating White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a Dec. 22 post covering two press briefings, beginning with touting Mrs. Peter Doocy (as Houck calls her on his Twitter account):

With Tuesday and Thursday serving as the final White House press briefings of 2023, we had everything from questions at the border — which was a focus of the year’s first briefing — to more pro-Hamas idiocy.

Starting with Thursday, the best exchange came when the Fox Business Network’s Hillary Vaughn battled the National Security Council’s John Kirby over the latest flare-up in the seemingly never-ending Biden border crisis.

Vaughn started with the simple question of whether President Biden had “seen photos and videos from the past week of the sea of people crossing into this country illegally” beyond being briefed.

When Kirby demurred, Vaughn called out the administration’s pro-illegal immigration policies, such as giving illegals nearly a decade to mill about the country before a judge will hear their asylum claims: “Some illegal border crossers are being given court dates in 2031. What are they supposed to do here for seven years?”

Kirby took a page from his far-more-inept colleague, Karine Jean-Pierre, by punting to Homeland Security since he’s “not in a position to — to talk about specific cases like that”.

Vaughn kept pressing, pointing out Biden seems to be creating this crisis “for the next president” and if he believes it’s a problem to allow people to put down roots here before presumably being deported if their asylum claim is denied.

[...]

In the seat usually occupied by Vaughn’s husband, Peter Doocy, their colleague Rich Edson also had a simple question Kirby answered with a whole lot of nothing: “How successful would you say the administration’s efforts to stem root flow, to get to the root causes of migration have been?”

Houck finished out the year with a few briefing-related summary items. The first, on Dec. 26, lashed out at journalists who didn't follow pro-Israel narratives:

For decades, the liberal media have always had a soft spot for Hamas. Heck, even the Associated Press’s Gaza bureau shared a Gaza City high-rise with the barbaric Islamists. In the days following Hamas’s animalistic reign of terror on October 7, some in the White House press corps pestered National Security Council’s John Kirby during briefings with Hamas talking points.

Kirby, while a longtime Democratic administration apparatchik, showed serious fortitude to not only push back on, but utterly demolish many of their galling takes while reminding them that Hamas’s inhumanity on October 7 started this war.

Houck left out the part where the AP said it did not know Hamas was in the building and that Israel refused to provide evidence that Hamas was there, which puts the lie to his "soft spot for Hamas" claim and making it seem he approves of the death of journalists who don't push his approved narratives. Furthe, Houck portrayed questions about Israel's actions or that showed concern about civilians in Gaza as being "for Hamas."

A Dec. 28 post attacked questions by "stooges" from "the left":

On Tuesday, we took a look back at six moments from the past year when the questions inside the White House’s Brady Press Briefing Room skewed in favor of Hamas and against Israel. This time, we’re going to serve up six more times journalists showed their far-left bona fides, except this one will be more of the traditional sense as this summary touches on gun control and race.

This list focused on questions asked by journalists, so we left this one out as an honorable mention as, on April 24, the entire press corps – left, right, and center – failed to bat an eye when Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed during government spending negotiations that Republicans purposefully wanted to “fill our cities with smog,” “give asthma to our children,” and let oil companies use chemicals that’d “melt bones.”

Houck's final piece was a Jan. 1 post in which he summarized "the 12 best moments – battles, beatdowns, and hardballs – from 2023, the first full year of the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre’s term at the podium." Unsurprisingly, most of those questions were from biased right-wing reporters, whom he refused to give an ideological tag as he did with the purportedly "far-left" reporters.

Newsmax Columnist Complains That Haley Fought The Confederacy
Topic: Newsmax

Jeff Crouere's Nov. 20 Newsmax column attacking Nikki Haley isn't as extreme as that of fellow Newsmax columnist Paul du Quenoy -- who demanded that people not vote for Haley becuase she purportedly hates men -- but Crouere is mad that that Haley worked to erase symbols of insurrrectionists and traitors to the U.S.:

One issue that is important to many conservative voters is preserving our nation’s history. Conversely, liberals want to erase our history in the name of fighting "racism."

As Governor of South Carolina in 2015, Haley became a national political figure when she successfully pushed for the removal of the Confederate flag from the state house grounds. This was done in response to the murders of African American churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina by a racist killer.

Haley said she was "proud" of her actions, which catapulted her political career.

While removing the Confederate flag did not make South Carolina a more racially unified state, it did inspire other politicians to pursue similar actions.

Haley started a national movement which has continued to this day. A recent report by the far-left group, Southern Poverty Law Center, noted that 482 Confederate "symbols" have been removed since the murders in Charleston. Yet, countless other monuments of previous U.S. Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, and Founding Fathers, have also been removed across the country.

To protect our history, President Trump signed an executive order on June 26, 2020 to prevent "American Monuments, Memorials and Statues "from being vandalized or removed."

Crouere offered no evidence that Haley had any non-Confederate monument or statue removed, nor did he explain why getting right of Confederate monuments is a bad thing. Arguably, Confederate statues and monuments are not covered under Trump's order since they are not, but definition, "American." 

The rest of Crouere's column is boilerplate right-wing talking points, largely focused on how Haley is allegedly "in sync with the big military and business powerbrokers and is extremely comfortable with big government."

Scott Lively Keeps Title Of Putin's Favorite WND Columnist
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Scott Lively is Vladimir Putin's favorite WorldNetDaily columnist for a reason, and he demonstrated his fealty to Putin again in his Nov. 2 column:

I have never been afraid to show my respect for Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom I believe is the most competent, effective and law-abiding head of state on the five-member U.N. Security Council. I've weighed and rejected the various claims made against him over the past 20 years as fairly obvious war propaganda, and have admired his calm and measured prosecution of the current war in Ukraine that NATO forced upon him.

Putin's leadership in preserving and promoting true marriage, the natural family and gender normalcy against the LGBT global war-of-conquest is the unrivaled model for the world and the only real hope for a rollback of that truly satanic and literally existential threat to humanity. If Russia falls to that agenda, the entire world will drown in its own moral sewage just like America's groomer-targeted schoolchildren in the deep blue cities are doing. All our other disputes will be moot because we will have lost the favor of God.

As someone who has done missionary work in Ukraine and worked shoulder to shoulder with Ukrainian Christian coworkers around the world in the culture-war battles against the LGBT agenda, I deeply deplore the staggering human losses the poor Ukrainian people have suffered in their tragic role as cannon fodder proxies for the U.S./U.K. aggressors. But the blame for that falls squarely on those who orchestrated the very long campaign of encroachments and provocations against Russia, repeatedly broke negotiated settlements such as the Minsk accords, and deliberately sabotaged the French and German brokered peace agreement of March 2023 (and Nord Stream 2). High on the American segment of that list of evil elites are Obama, the Clintons, the entire inner circle of the present Obiden administration and their many allies in the "controlled opposition" wing of the GOP.

Nah, those deaths had nothing to do with Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine -- it was far-off countries who are somehow to blame. And Russia also played a role in breaking the Minsk accords. It has also since been revealed that the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline was apparently done by Ukrainian forces, not other countries. Lively then argued that Putin was playing a "dangerous game" even as he cheered Putin's alleged revival of a "Russian Orthodox Empire":

Vladimir Putin's dangerous game – perhaps more accurately characterized as a tightrope walk over the pit of hell – is his attempt to balance the realpolitik variables of geopolitics vis-a-vis the BRICS alliance/NATO showdown while managing the risks of overly empowering his Islamic political and military allies. As an heir to the Christian Byzantine Empire whose wondrous capital, Constantinople (now Istanbul), was wrested from them by Muslim warlords centuries ago, today's newly revived Russian Orthodox Empire should know better than most the consequences of underestimating Muhammad's religion-of-conquest, literally founded on militarism.

Ignoring all the carnage Putin has created in invading Ukraine, Lively declared:

If by God's mercy we avert the descent into the global collapse/reset I write so much about, and also restore Trump to the White House in 2024, I believe there is a very good chance Trump and Putin will together walk the world back from the brink of global Marxism, kill the "climate change" canard, restore traditional values and establish a healthy balance of superpowers that will respect national sovereignty and sweep all the shattered pieces of the globalist one-world dictatorship into the dustbin of history.

Admittedly, that's a Yuuge IF.

When a readers called Lively out on his love of Putin, he devoted his Nov. 6 column to responding to the criticism. First, he played dumb by effectively denying that Putin has a habit of poisoning his political enemies:

She said: "So, you admire a man who kills or nullifies those who have run against him? Really Mr. Lively!"

I replied: Do you have actual proof of that, or are you just parroting the talking points of the war-propagandists? If you're reading WND, you're likely a fairly well reasoned conservative. If so, my question back to you is, "Do you believe these same sources about all the other lies they spin, or do you spend half your time debunking them like I do?" Never trust narratives based on only one side of an issue, especially where counter-evidence/counter arguments are deemed meritless without investigation and are actively suppressed.

She replied: "It has been in the news. As well as those who were attacked with plutonium. Their hospitalization is well-documented."

I responded: That's all it takes for a conviction in your eyes? J6 has been in the news too. Do you believe the media in those cases?

Of course, Lively made no effort to actually disprove her claim about Putin poisoning people -- he simply muddied the issue with a blanket claim that you can't beleive the media. When the reader pointed out that Putin is "a dictator and a no-goodnik. … I still maintain Putin is no one to be admired. After all he wants to resurrect the Soviet Union," Live argued that Russians love authoritarianism and handwaved Putin's documented suppression of political dissent because participants in the Captiol riot were held accountable for their actions (and, hey, Putin may not even know about that suppression):

I replied: Well, admittedly Russia is a more autocratic society than ours, but that's the way they like it. I've done three mission trips there and studied that firsthand. That mindset has almost certainly saved them from the "regime change" our side so hypocritically specializes in orchestrating in the non-submissive nations of the world. Putin wisely expelled all the Soros-connected organizations from Russia several years ago, but apparently "our side" left enough assets behind to keep trying anyhow. I strongly suspect that's who tried to launch the anti-war effort the Russian government quickly suppressed.

Putin may or may not have had a hand in that, but I suspect only a minor one at most because much of the rest of the Russian government is considerably more hardline than he is and would have needed no prompting from above. Indeed, the most common criticism of Putin inside Russia is that he's too soft and too pro-Western in his views and actions. God help us if Putin leaves the presidency before the current season of world crisis is resolved.

However, if you're going to take the Amnesty International line of reasoning on the internal dissent topic, you first have to admit that J6 proves that our system is more broken than theirs since we now have more political prisoners incarcerated than Russia does, and we're supposedly the "gold standard" for human rights.

Lively then argued that Putin's dictatorship is better than the Soviet Union version:

The reason the Soviet Union was evil and deserved dismantling was its godless communist ideology. Putin's Russia is now overwhelmingly anti-Marxist Orthodox Christian. During my 50-city speaking tour of the former Soviet Union in 2006-2007, I saw that amazing transformation still in progress everywhere. Much of the rusting ruins of the ugly utilitarian infrastructure was still there –what the people deridingly called "Sov-Dep" (Soviet depredation) alongside new and modern communities and commercial centers to rival anything in the West – adorned by countless gorgeous new and reclaimed Orthodox churches and cathedrals. Even then they had become fully capitalist and largely re-Christianized.

Lively then went further, effectively siding with the enemy:

The Reagan/NATO deal with Russia that made Glasnost possible was the firm promise of no further eastward expansion. "Not one inch" was the operative phrase, which was violated almost immediately after the dismantling began. Meanwhile, the "democratic" value system the Russians abandoned their international partnership for steadily morphed into the LGBT freak show America, the U.K. and EU are now using all of our collective international power to impose on the world, backed by an autocratic punishment of dissent increasingly getting as harsh as anything the KGB ever did.

Understandably, Russia wants a restoration of its superpower status as a counterbalance to the U.S., and that explains both the BRICS alliance and the proxy war in Syria. The broader geopolitics of that is too multi-faceted and complex to tackle in the remaining space I have, but suffice it to say that de facto one-party power in the U.S. has done nothing but increase corruption, and the same seems to be true on a global scale under U.S. hegemony. A little competition, especially by a power firmly grounded in traditional family values, will almost certainly move the world in a healthier direction, so long as it doesn't trigger nuclear war.

The column ended with a brief discussion of whether events in the region foretell a war between Gog and Magog as prophesized in the Bible.

NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC Flips Over Elon Musk, Part 18: An Anti-Semitic Meltdown
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center decided that the best person it could find to defend Elon Musk's rage that the Anti-Defamation League showed how anti-Semitism has grown on Twitter since he bought it was ... racist cartoonist Scott Adams. Read more >>

MRC Promoted Bogus Claim That Photojournalists Embedded With Hamas
Topic: Media Research Center

Nicholas Fondacaro loves spreading lies -- we just documented him lying that a Palestinian Instagram influencer was a "crisis actor." A couple days before he started that lie, he repeated another one in a Nov. 8 post:

On Wednesday, HonestReporting drew attention to what they described as “ethical questions” stemming from the fact that local Gazan photojournalists affiliated with the Associated Press, CNN, the New York Times, and Reuters followed Hamas terrorists through their breaches in the border fence and into Israel during the October 7 terrorist attack. This led to accusations that these journalists were “embedded” with the terrorists and that they were given advanced notice of the attack.

In the subsection titled “AP: Photojournalists or Infiltrators?,” HonestReporting identified four photojournalists with various ties to Western liberal media outlets who somehow found themselves among the chaos of the invasion of Israel that was a shock to everyone but those who planned it. The reporters of note were “Hassan Eslaiah, Yousef Masoud, Ali Mahmud, and Hatem Ali.”

“What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas?” HonestReporting wondered. “Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and The New York Times, notify these outlets?”

The answer was obvious to Free Beacon contributor Noah Pollak, who posted on X (formerly Twitter): “Important expose by @honestreporting: Photographers working for AP, CNN, NYT, and Reuters were EMBEDDED with Hamas on 10/7 and accompanied the terrorist group into Israel. They knew the attack was coming, and participated in it.”

Fondacaro followed up with a post the next day noting that the media outlets in question denied having any advance knowledge of Hamas' attack. But he didn't tell readers the truth: that the allegation was a lie.

The Associated Press reported that HonestReporting admitted it never had any evidence to back up its claims of embedding; it insisted it was merely asking "legitimate questions" and that despite its name, "we don’t claim to be a news organization." But because the lie serves the MRC's anti-media narratives, not only did it stay silent about the lie being exposed, it chose to perpetuate the lie. Curtis Houc, ranted about the lie being called out in a Nov. 10 post:

On Thursday night, CNN sent out its cartoonishly pathetic senior media reporter Oliver Darcy to do what he dubbed “Shooting Down a Smear” in the wake of HonestReporting’s bombshell alleging Gaza freelance journalists for CNN and The New York Times as well as Associated Press and Reuters embedded with Hamas terrorists during the group’s animalistic October 7 terror attack.

[...]

Touting the outlets “strongly pushing back against the report from the staunchly pro-Israel media watchdog, HonestReporting, that claimed photographers for the news outlets were present during the initial attack,” Darcy insinuated there’s nothing further to see since the AP and CNN “severed ties with the freelance photographer Hassan Eslaiah”.

The former conservative reporter pointed to an AP story doing damage control and doing what the liberal media do when targeted, which is try to smear and maim those who criticize them:

When Darcy cited the AP takedown of the lie, Houck whined with out evidence that "Darcy and the AP were a tad misleading":

HonestReporting published a statement Friday morning that, while they “unequivocally condemn calls for violence or death threats aimed at bona fide media workers” and disagree with arguments that there’s no distinction between terrorists and journalists, “HonestReporting stands behind the legitimate questions we asked media outlets in our recent expose.”

Back to CNN from the night prior, the dictatorial dweeb bemoaned that “the damage had already been done” in that “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu...used HonestReporting’s story to give credence to the false notion that newsrooms were aware of the terror attack prior to it taking place” with a member of his war cabinet saying terrorists and those who stood as “idle bystanders...are no different”.

Actually, Houck is the one who's being a tad misleading here, having deliberately omitted the fact that HonestReporting admitted it never had any evidence to back up its claims.

Houck promoted the lie  again in another Nov. 10 post promoting an interview NewsNation host Leland Vittert (a former Fox News personality) did with IDF spokesman Jonathan Conricus:

After alluding to the HonestReporting bombshell about Gaza freelancers, he asked Conricus for his reaction whenever he “see[s]...that the stories that Israel puts out and then the...same validity given to information coming from Hamas in American media.”

Conricus acknowledged journalists shouldn’t be threatened before hitting the nail on the head that Gaza journalists “report what Hamas allows them to report...and, if they don’t prove correctly, according to the Hamas message page, then they” and their families “face consequences.”

He even called them “compromised”:

[...]

Vittert spoke from experience on that issue: “I dealt with it myself. I mean, I — I worked with stringers in Gaza as well. And you had to — you had to sort of — ba — try — try and figure out what was Hamas propaganda and what were they really trying to tell you.”

Houck did not indicate whether Vittert and Conricus discussed whether journalists who cooperated with the IDF are "compromised" because they report only what the IDF allows them to report.

This also spread to an interview MRC executive Dan Schneider did with far-right writer Sara Carter, as detailed in a Nov. 10 post by Tom Olohan:

Liberal media photojournalists employed by CNN, Reuters, The New York Times and The Associated Press have been accused of embedding with Hamas during the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks against the nation of Israel. According to NewsBusters, on Nov. 8, The Associated Press, CNN, The New York Times and Reuters have all responded to HonestReporting's story with reactions ranging from cutting ties with the photojournalists in question to defending their work. You can read NewsBusters' reporting on their statements here.

Schneider commented on these atrocities in his interview with Carter. “[T]these photojournalists were embedded with the Hamas terrorists before the attack began,” Schneider explained. “They knew the attack was going to commence. They did not warn anybody that the attack was going to commence.” 

Schneider also predicted that there will be consequences for the journalists involved in attacks. “I think we’re going to see big lawsuits by the families of the murdered victims and the injured victims against AP, CNN, [The] New York Times and Reuters at a minimum for paying these, their own photojournalists kept silent about what was about to happen,” said Schneider

Carter agreed, also calling for lawsuits. “I certainly hope so. I hope every single family that is connected and has lost a loved one or has a loved one who has been taken, or who was harmed in any way shape or form or had to flee their home or has family in the United States, I hope there are multiple lawsuits across the board, targeting these news agencies,” Carter said.

No mention, of course, that the story was a lie. The narrative, however bogus, is more important than the truth, remember?

Newsmax Writers Try To Spin Eleciton Results In Va.
Topic: Newsmax

Things did not go well for Republicans in off-year elections in Virginia, and Newsmax struggled a bit to figure out how to spin it. A Nov. 8 column by John Gizzi admitted that one casualty of the election was Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin's presidential ambitions:

Two years after his dramatic capture of the Virginia governorship, Glenn Youngkin already was being boomed as a late-starting candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 — speculation about which he did little to dampen.

But on Tuesday, after his party failed miserably in a drive backed personally by Youngkin to capture the state senate — the Old Dominion State governor's dreams of a White House bid seemed to have evaporated.

Worse, Youngkin even lost Republican control of the lower House of Delegates to the Democrats.

The governor now faces two years of a legislature with Democrat [sic] majorities in both houses and thus very capable of thwarting his conservative agenda on issues ranging from abortion to taxes.

Indeed, later that day, an article by Solange Reyner confirmed that Youngkin "says he won't be running for president in 2024 after Republicans narrowly lost both state legislative chambers in Tuesday's election."

Pro-Trump pollster Jim McLaughlin, meanwhile, admitted that Republicans messed up by obsessing over abortion in a Nov. 8 Newsmax TV appearance:

Virginia's Republicans "made a mistake" by going on defense against Democrats' General Assembly campaigns that focused on abortion rights instead of going on offense on issues that the voters "really care about," said Jim McLaughlin of McLaughlin and Associates, who is also a pollster for former President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign.

"There's no question that Republicans underperformed in Virginia, but I saw one analysis that said the Democrats outspent them by almost $8 million," McLaughlin said on Newsmax's "National Report" about Tuesday's election, in which Democrats in Virginia won full control of the General Assembly.

McLaughlin acknowledged that "every race is different," but said that in Virginia and other places, making the race a "referendum on abortion" hurt Republican candidates.

Gizzi, however, returned for a Nov. 14 column in which he tried to spin results as not so bad after all:

In the week since elections in Virginia, the national press has made much political hay about the outcome — in which Democrats control both houses of the state legislature and are sure to lock horns with Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

To no one's surprise, Youngkin has since ended widespread speculation he would jump into the GOP presidential sweepstakes. Moreover, there is now ubiquitous analysis that the governor's support of a ban on abortion 15 weeks before birth — reasonable by virtually all standards but used as a "dog whistle" by many Democrat candidates to charge a Republican-ruled legislature would ban abortions under all circumstances.

But in the end, were the results in the Old Dominion State were a "wipeout" for Republicans? Hardly.

[...]

Much has been made in the press about many School Board candidates in Virginia endorsed by the pro-parents rights Moms for Liberty group falling short of an across-the-state sweep. There was considerable coverage devoted to the defeat of Meg Bryce, a daughter of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, losing a bid for the Albemarle County School Board to Allison Spillman, a liberal and mother of five (one of whom her campaign brochure describes as "a proud member of the LGBTQ community").

But another conservative, pro-family group, the Middle Resolution, endorsed 28 winning School Board candidates throughout the state.

Only 7 Middle Resolution-backed candidates lost.

All told, November 7 was not a day Virginia Republicans want to remember. But it wasn't a bad day, either.

Gizzi's only glimmer of hope was that Repubilcans appeared to have won a seat in the state Senate, though Democrats would still hold a three-seat advantage.

The Persistence Of Stelter Derangement Syndrome At The MRC
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center went into full-scale Stelter Derangement Syndrome when Brian Stelter released a new book about Fox News. When the sales numbers came in, that derangement quickly became gleeful schadenfreude, as Tim Graham exhibited in a Nov. 28 post:

Colby Hall, the founding editor of left-leaning Mediaite.com, reports that Brian Stelter's new Fox-trashing book Network of Lies is selling well below expectations, like a Disney blockbuster. It's a dud! 

Published on November 14, Stelter’s book sold 3,807 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen BookScan. Those numbers are down 82% from his previous book about Fox (Hoax), which saw first-week sales of 20,832 in August 2020, according to ookScan.

Mediaite has learned that Stelter’s latest will not make the New York Times bestseller list. As of publishing, it is currently ranked 6,638th on Amazon’s Best Sellers list, despite his numerous appearances on cable news and several podcasts, including Mediaite.

Stelter has been on CNN and MSNBC and PBS and NPR and NewsNation and Univision and a plethora of podcasts to plug his "epic saga" -- we're still waiting for the NewsBusters Podcast, come on, pal -- but it's not moving the needle.

Graham didn't mention that despite all his mocking, Stelter's book still had better first-week sales than Chadwick Moore's fawning biography of Tucker Carlson, which sold just 3,227 copies. (You will not be surprised to learn that right-wingers have manufactured a conspiracy theory about this.) Instead, he complained that the New York Times published a positive review of Stelter's book, though he did not question thedid accuracy of either the review or the book.

That was followed by an even more shadenfreude-filled Nov. 30 post by Bill D'Agostino claiming to note "9 Tiny Things That Still Outnumber Brian Stelter’s Failed Book Sales." He too did not mention that Stelter's book outsold Moore's bio of Carlson.

A Nov. 30 post by Graham whined that Stelter appeared on MSNBC to point out how Trump did try to block the merger of CNN's parent with another company because it aird things critical of Trump and is threatening MSNBC's parent for doing the same thing:

On Wednesday night's All In on MSNBC, host Chris Hayes brought in Brian Stelter to address the latest Trump outburst on his Truth Social account threatening Comcast and MSNBC for their left-wing propaganda: "our so-called government should come down on hard on them and make them pay for the illegal political activity. Much more to come, watch."

There's nothing there defining what is "illegal" in all of MSNBC's propagandizing. But it certainly allows MSNBC to feel good about their "defending democracy" credentials. Hayes warned Trump's "whining" could turn into "real punitive action."

Hayes and Stelter talked up how the Trump Justice Department sought to block AT&T's merger with Time Warner in 2017, which went through in 2018. The top antitrust official at the time said he never spoke to Trump or his aides about AT&T, but the liberals only believe the Justice staff is independent when Democrats are running it. 

You know liberal media outlets are involved when liberals love a merger of mega-corporations. Before long, AT&T dumped Warner's media assets like CNN to Discovery.

Graham then went on a whataboutism tear, whining that Stelter questioned the reach of right-wing influencers "after January 6," but he left out the part where those right-wing influencers helped incite a violent insurrection.

Nicholas Fondacaro added a little Stelter derangement to his own Nov. 30 post as part of his daily hate-watch of "The View":

The sales of Brian Stelter’s latest anti-Fox News book were so low that he made an appearance with the liberal ladies of ABC’s The View on Thursday in an attempt to bump up his numbers. Of course, there were the usual back-slapping conversations for him going after one of their mutual hate objects, but Stelter also had sweet nothings to proclaim the cast: falsely claiming the show was home to truthful conversations.

[...]

As they were nearing the end of the second segment with Stelter, Farah Griffin finally got around to admitting “have a handful of very good reporters like Trey Yingst, Jennifer Griffin, people who cover actual news.” Lamenting: “And it's so hard for those journalists that they have to be next to basically people espousing propaganda.”

Stelter called Fox News “a very uncomfortable environment” for them and suggested that that was why The View was better. “[W]e should advocate to have a truthier, healthier environment. That’s why I love this show! Your guys are louder than the liars!” he praised.

The MRC concluded 2023 with one final reminder of how Stelter lives rent-free in their collective heads: One of its year-end awards is named "The Brian Stelter Memorial Award for Worst Quote of the Year." Never mind that Stelter isn't dead, or that all he has done is write a book telling the truth about Fox News.

WND's Cashill Still Trying To Defend Derek Chauvin Over Killing George Floyd
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill, it seems, can't stop running to the defense of Derek Chauvin as part of his longtime race-baiting defense of white people who kill black men (see: George Zimmerman and a cop in Kansas City). Cashill used a Nov. 1 column to cheer others playing the same game as him on Chauvin:

Giving credit where it's due, popular podcasters Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly recently ignored the media taboo and openly addressed the railroading of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and his three colleagues.

As refreshing as their discussions were, both Carlson and Kelly seemed unaware of a critical bit of exculpatory information that was first revealed more than two years ago.

At that time, no one at their level in the media dared address the obvious injustice unfolding in Minneapolis.

As the world knows, the four officers were imprisoned for their respective roles in the death of chronic felon and drug abuser George Floyd in May of 2020.

Cashill again rehashed his earlier claim that local medical examiner Andrew Baker caved to political pressure to state in an autopsy report that Floyd died of neck compression despite stating that wasn't the case in a preliminary report -- which ignores the fact that Baker testified under oath that he faced no pressure to change anything in Floyd's autopsy report and that the change was due to his learning more about the effects of neck compression -- the method Chauvin used to incapacitate Floyd -- Cashill concluded by huffing: "No justice, no peace."

Cashill hyped a fellow Chauvin defender inhis Nov. 29 column -- after, of course, serving up a llittle performative outrage over Chauvin getting stabbed in prison:

Not satisfied with sentencing an innocent man to prison for 22 years, the federal government has found new ways to punish former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin.

That includes a near fatal stabbing of Chauvin on Friday, Nov. 24, in a federal prison in Arizona and the inexplicable refusal to alert Chauvin's mother about the incident.

There is no evidence that the feds planned this attack or encouraged it, but their failure to anticipate it at the end of a two-week stretch in which Chauvin was continuously in the news raises eyebrows.

On Nov. 13, Chauvin filed a motion in federal court claiming he never would have pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights charges in 2021 if he had been aware of the theories of William Schaetzel, a recently retired Kansas forensic pathologist.

Chauvin is asking Peter Cahill, the judge who presided over his trial, to order a new trial or, at the very least, an evidentiary hearing.

On Nov. 16, producer Liz Collin released a new documentary, "The Fall of Minneapolis," which makes a powerful case for the innocence of Chauvin and his three colleagues.

On Nov. 20, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to entertain a prior appeal on grounds that Chauvin could not get in a fair trial in fear-soaked Minneapolis.

Although the major media blew off Schaetzel's research and Collin's documentary, major figures in the conservative media did not. Megyn Kelly, Jesse Watters, Tucker Carlson and Greg Gutfeld among others paid attention. So did the millions of Americans who have seen the movie.

Meanwhile, one reviewer pointed out that "The Fall of Minneapolis" is about "throwing a lot of victim-blaming, blame-shifting, and other nonsense at the wall to see what sticks" and pushes "the Orwellian notion that what every one of us has seen with our own eyes is not what really happened. Mostly, it makes arguments that have already failed in court, in some cases multiple times"; for example, the film doesn't reference "Chauvin’s extensive history of use-of-force complaints, some of which involved choking."

Cashill again repeated his evidence-free claim that Baker was "under pressure" to change Floyd's autopsy report, which he claimed "gave Minnesota's radical black attorney general, Keith Ellison, the excuse he needed to charge Chauvin with murder." Meanwhile, his new pathologist hero Schaetzel -- who didn't examine Floyd's body but merely read autopsy reports -- is claiming that Floyd may have had a paraganglioma, a tumor that allegedly produced a surge of adrenaline that might have killed Floyd. That sounds a lot like the dubious "excited delirium" defense that officers originally cited as an excuse to subdue Floyd.

Cashill weighed in more on Cashill's prison stabbing in his Dec. 6 column -- and, of course, had a conspiracy theory to spread:

Having long ago decided to ignore all inconvenient news, the major media yielded serious coverage of the prison stabbing of Derek Chauvin to the intrepid independent investigator Maryam Henein.

As Henein reports, the man who stabbed Chauvin 22 times on "Black Friday" in an Arizona prison is a 52-year-old con named John Turscak. Don't let the name fool you.

The half-Croatian Turscak is serving a 30-year sentence for crimes committed while leading a Los Angeles faction of the Mexican Mafia in the 1990s.

As even the major media acknowledge, Turscak was an FBI informant. The intel he provided federal investigators led to the indictments of 40 or so of his former colleagues.

Henein, by the way, is a conspiracy theorist who spread many falsehoods about COVID and promoted fraudulent treatments. Cashill offered no reason why anyone should trust Henein given her track record. Instead, he continued to whine thatothers weren't buying into his own conspiracy theories:

In its scant coverage of the stabbing, the New York Times is quick to remind its readers, "Mr. Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who is white, murdered Mr. Floyd, who is Black, during an arrest on a South Minneapolis street corner in May 2020."

Although race had nothing to do with Floyd's death, nor for that matter did Chauvin's restraint of Floyd, the Times puts race front and center in its coverage, capitalizing the "B" in Black and lowercasing the "w" in white.

Not surprisingly, the Times has not seen fit to cover the potentially game-changing new documentary on the Chauvin case, "The Fall of Minneapolis." According to Liz Collin, producer of the film, not even the local Minnesota media will review the film or discuss its findings.

Still, Cashill had a conspiracy theory to keep alive:

With only three years left to go before his release, the question remains as to who or what prompted Turscak to attack Chauvin.

According to the document Turscak signed with the FBI, the agreement between the Bureau and him "shall continue as long as the FBI deems that TURSCAK's services are required."

Given the rush of narrative-eroding information released in the month before the stabbing, one has to wonder whether someone in power thought it a useful time to require "TURSCAK's services."

Of course, Cashill never apologizes when his narratives get eroded -- you know, when his conspiracy theories get debunked, which happens a lot.

UPDATE: Cashill also talked about Chauvin on his Nov. 2 podcast, in which he repeated parts of this and complained Chauvin is a victim of "Jacobin justice," huffing that the Floyd case "sent four innocent men to prison" because of "mob fury." Cashill and co-host Loy Edge then manufactured a conspiracy theory that left-wingers want to undermine local police.

MRC Spreads Palestinian 'Crisis Actor' Lie
Topic: Media Research Center

Media Research Center writer Nicholas Fondacaro is a very prolific liar. He launched another one in a Nov. 10 post:

In the same week that four other major American news outlets had to answer for utilizing dubious sources with connections to Hamas for their reporting on the Israel-Hamas war, MSNBC seemingly tried to one-up the rest by promoting a video put out by Saleh Aljafarawi, a known Hamas-linked propagandist and crisis actor. On her eponymous show Friday afternoon, Chris Jansing treated him as though he was an innocent civilian brutalized by Israel.

Aljafarawi has been dubbed “Mr. FAFO” and “Mr. Pallywood” (a combination of Palestinian and Hollywood) on social media by those who call him out. He posts his propaganda videos to his Instagram account which has over three million followers. He’s pretended to be a Hamas fighter in a music video, a radiology tech in a hospital, a foster father, a member of the press, and a rescue worker, among other roles. He even put out a video of himself praising Hamas rockets that were launched at Israeli civilians.

But that didn’t stop Jansing from elevating a video of him purportedly at the al-Shifa hospital running around with “blood” on his hand.

[...]

MSNBC regular Malcolm Nancy [sic] was among the first to call out the network for promoting Aljafarawi’s propaganda. “I LITERALLY JUST SAW @MSNBC JUST FEATURE THIS SAME GUY AT AL-SHIFA HOSPITAL SCREAMING WITH BLOODY HANDS. PRODUCERS! FFS CHECK YOUR SOURCES. HE IS FAKE!!! #PunkedAgain,” he wrote in all-caps on X (formerly Twitter).

“‘Content creator/Actor’ Yes for HAMAS,” he scolded one of his commenters. “People are so ridiculously ready to excuse a dedicated HAMAS propaganda player they refuse to believe their own eyes.”

But as commentator Matt Binder documented, Aljafarawi is not a "crisis actor," nor has he pretended to be one. He's a prolific poster on Instagram. Binder pointed out that Aljafarawi appears to be in many different places in Gaza because Gaza isn't that big -- and also that videos that have been claimed online to be Aljafarawi being a "crisis actor" aren't him at all. Others have pointed out that a collage of images purporting to be of Aljafarawi are doctored, taken out of context or lack evidence to back the claims.

In other words, Nance is lying and Fondacaro chose to repeat his lie without bothering to fact-check first. But Fondacaro is so committed to the lie that he repeated it a few hours later:

If you’re on X (formerly known as Twitter) and follow the Israel-Hamas War, you’re likely aware of the man we’re about to speak of. Saleh Aljafarawi, dubbed “Mr. FAFO” and “Mr. Pallywood,” is a KNOWN Hamas-linked social media influencer and crisis actor. But those easily researchable facts were of no interest to ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News on Friday as they all, much like MSNBC did, treated his content as though it was a legitimate source of news from Gaza.

[...]

CBS was the most brazen in flaunting the video. Correspondent Debora Patta used the part of the video that featured Aljafarawi. “Reeling in stunned disbelief, this man shouts, 'They bombed the hospitals,'" she breathlessly translated for him. “Nearby, a young girl breaks down hysterically, ‘my mom, my father, my brother.’”

“Their one place of refuse, now a blood-soaked battleground,” she lamented. Meanwhile, it was yet another Gaza-launched rocket that fell short.

Over on ABC and NBC, correspondents Matt Gutman and Keir Simmons (respectively) both used arguably deceptively edited versions of Aljafarawi’s video. They edited down the video to take him out of it completely and only used the portion with the little girl.

Aljafarawi was very much a highly recognizable figure that had emerged from the conflict, so it’s suspicious that they used the part he was not visible in.

Note Fondacaro's lie that Aljafarawi is a "KNOWN ... crisis actor." If Fondacaro had bothered to do any research at all before posting,he would have KNOWN that Aljafarawi is NOT, in fact, a "crisis actor."

Alex Christy parroted Fondacaro's "known crisis actor" lie in a Nov. 11 post: "Just on Friday, ABC, NBC, CBS, and MSNBC got caught using footage from a Palestinian propagandist and known crisis actor." Curtis Houck also repeated the lie in touting a right-wing congressman spouting Fondacaro's falsehood in a Nov. 14 post:

On Monday’s edition of Senator Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) podcast The Verdict, Cruz and co-host Ben Ferguson had a lengthy segment praising the work of NewsBusters and associate editor Nick Fondacaro for exposing the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, NBC for using dubious footage from a known pro-Hamas crisis actor named Saleh Aljafarawi.

“I want to show part of this propaganda. NewsBusters found that ABC, CBS, and NBC elevated a Gaza video from a known propagandist influencer. This guy — we’re going to show you all the different jobs that he has,” Ferguson began just prior to the 25-minute mark.

Cruz and Ferguson then played the full video that the networks would use Friday night and, on a second view, Cruz walked viewers (and listeners on the audio-only side) through the video, including multiple people with “red liquid” that they want to portray as blood, but there’s “no visible wounds” on Aljafarawi or a young girl.

[...]

Ferguson then read from Fondacaro’s piece about who Aljafarawi really is before the co-hosts put on-screen a collage of the roles Aljafarawi has played over the course of the war:

Meanwhile, PolitiFact pointed out that there's no actual evidence to prove this particular video was faked. Remember, the MRC doesn't care about the truth; they care much more that their narratives get traction in right-wing media.

Perhaps realizing he had been caught spreading a lie, Fondacaro hilariously de-escalated things a bit in another Nov. 14 post:

During an appearance at the Global Women’s Summit put on by The Washington Post on Tuesday, CBS News president Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews boasted about her organization’s new fact-checking unit “CBS News Confirmed” which was allegedly supposed to be able to identify and call out images and video that were meant to misinform the public. But as NewsBusters reported just last week, CBS Evening News promoted a video out of Gaza created by a known Hamas-linked propagandist and alleged crisis actor.

[...]

But as NewsBusters reported, CBS was the most brazen evening newscast last Friday in flaunting a video from Saleh Aljafarawi, a known Hamas-linked social media influencer and alleged crisis actor, who was dubbed “Mr. FAFO” and “Mr. Pallywood” online.

But who was the person who "alleged" that Aljafarawi is a "crisis actor"? Fondacaro. Did he apologize for his lie? Of course not.

Luis Cornelio complained that YouTube called out Cruz's parroting of Fondacaro's lie in a Nov. 21 post:

Anti-free speech YouTube targeted a video from Sen. Ted Cruz’s popular podcast where the lawmaker praised a report from MRC’s NewsBusters about fake videos depicting alleged victims in the Gaza Strip.

YouTube placed a contentious age restriction banner on the Nov. 14 episode of The Verdict podcast. During the show, Cruz and co-host Ben Ferguson highlighted a study by NewsBusters that exposed ABC, CBS and NBC for using dubious footage from Saleh Aljafarawi who has gone viral over accusations of being a crisis actor in the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip. “This video may be inappropriate for some users,” YouTube inexplicably warns potential viewers, before asking users to log in and “confirm” their age—but wait, there’s more.

Yes, Cornelio is actually claiming that YouTube putting an age restriction on Cruz's video is "censorship." Needless to say, Cornelio refused to admit that his co-worker is a liar.

(Catherine Salgado put this on her Dec. 5 list of the "WORST Censorship of November," despite the fact that only the most deluded partisans think an age restriction on a video is "censorship." She also claimed that Aljafarawi was "accused of being a crisis actor in the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip" while not disclosing that those making the accusation are her co-workers.)

As Fondacaro's "crisis actor" fizzled with people continuing to debunk it, he devoted a Dec. 2 post to bashing PolitiFact's debunking, weirdly headlined "PolitiFact Comes to the Defense of THAT Hamas Influencer You’ve Seen:"

You might not know his name but you’ve probably seen his face. Saleh Aljafarawi is a known Hamas-linked influencer who has been all over social media where he praises Hamas, pretends to be a journalist, hospital worker, and pretty much anything to get sympathy for Palestinians. But despite what was known about Aljafarawi, PolitiFact came to his defense on Thursday to quibble over his being described as a “crisis actor” by those who know his connection to Hamas.

PolitiFact decided to assign “Spanish misinformation reporter” Marta Campabadal Graus the task of aiding Aljafarawi because Gaza influencers were totally in the Spanish media sphere. And she gave the accusations that he was a “crisis actor” a “false” rating.

“PolitiFact’s review of Aljafarawi’s social media accounts and background did not reveal evidence of him being a ‘crisis actor’ or faking the scene at the hospital,” she proclaimed, ignoring his connection to Hamas and without providing evidence that the hospital scene was real.

It's not a "quibble" to get basic facts right, of course. Fondacaro made clear, declarative claims about Aljafarawi that were proven false, as well as a claim about a video of his that are unproven at best. So rather than admit he lied and correct the record, Fondacaro hastily tried to change the narrative to assert that is a a "Hamas propagandist":

But while Campabadal explored his social media accounts, she didn’t make the obvious connection that he’s a Hamas propagandist. “The ‘freedom fighter’ image of Aljafarawi with a gun was taken from a music video that was deleted a few weeks ago. In the music video, he was posing as a singing Hamas fighter,” she admitted.

But the fact of the matter was that he would have needed to get all the gear and weapon he was wearing in the video from Hamas since they controlled that kind of stuff.

As Soch Fact Check noted, that video was first posted in July -- three months before the war started. (It has now been deleted from Aljafarawi's account.) That means Fondacaro is lying again by suggesting it was posted after the war started.

This is the way the MRC works -- spread a lie, don't acknowledge that the lie has been debunked, then move on to the next lie. Fondacaro has learned well from his employer.

Newsmax Continued to Dabble In Ray Epps Conspiracy Theories
Topic: Newsmax

Newsmax appears not to have pushed Ray Epps conspiracy theories as much as, say, WorldNetDaily, but that doesn't mean it didn't dabble in them. It did some of that early on, and has continued to dip its toe into them. A Dec. 31, 2022, article by Eric Mack hyped Donald Trump's invoking of Epps conspiracy theories:

Buried in the release of the House Jan. 6 Select Committee transcripts is the interview with Ray Epps, the un-indicted man who was urging supporters of then-President Donald Trump to "go into the Capitol" the day before and the day of the protest.

The unusual interview featured anti-Trump Reps. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., tossing Epps softball questions, if not treating him like they were his defense lawyers, according to some conservative critics on Twitter.

It caught Trump's eye, too.

"The Unselect Committee doesn't explain Ray Epps, Sullivan, or the 'other' ringleaders," Trump posted early Saturday morning on Truth Social. "Gee, I wonder why?"

"Sullivan" was a reference to the panel's report omitting the references to Jason Sullivan, who independently urged supporters to protest at the Capitol days before Jan. 6, 2021, according to The New York Times.

Mack further attacked Epps by cherry-picking responses from his deposition:

Epps' responses were framed to suggest he had no involvement in the breaching of the Capitol.

"What I meant by 'orchestrate,' I helped people get there," Epps responded.

Earlier in the transcript, Epps had suggested he was there to watch Trump's speech and look after his son Jim, but reality is neither happened and Epps never tried.

Epps broke away from Jim, never attended the speech, and according to video, was nearby urging people to the Capitol and pointing the way.

Epps told the committee he was "proud" to have been there, although he left immediately when the breach of the Capitol had begun. This has led to suspicion that he might have started the lawlessness but left when it reached a dangerous crescendo.

"Yeah, I took credit for it, but I didn't know what I was taking credit for," Epps told an interviewer whose name was redacted in the transcript.

"'Orchestrating' is the wrong word," Epps would say later in the interview, adding his wife scolded him for using that word.

Mack further whined that "Early this year, the House committee rejected claims Epps was a 'fed,'" boasting it brought him in for this interview," but he offered no proof to the contrary.

When Epps ultimately was charged -- blowing up the conspiracy theory that he was a "fed" -- Mack leaned into it anyway in a Sept. 19 article:

After years of consternation among former President Donald Trump's supporters, the Justice Department has brought a charge against the man that urged Jan. 6 protesters to "go into the Capitol."

Ray Epps was charged Tuesday with a count of disorderly or disruptive conduct on restricted grounds, court records show.

There was no attorney listed in the court docket in the criminal case filed in Washington's federal court. The Associated Press' messages seeking comment from an attorney representing Epps in his lawsuit against Fox were not immediately returned Tuesday.

Epps was featured by Republicans and conservative media as having been an alleged face of the Jan. 6 protest, urging Trump speechgoers to storm the Capitol during the debate of election fraud allegations.

Mack weirdly didn't elaborate any further about Epps' "lawsuit against Fox," whic, of course, is about Fox spreading the lie that he was a "fed."

Theodor Bunker did explain it, though, in a Sept. 20 article on Epps entering a guilty plea:

Ahead of the hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gordon denied claims that Epps had been a federal informant, saying he wanted to enter into the record because of the "unusual nature of the case" that Epps "was not before, during or after" Jan. 6, 2021 "a confidential source or an undercover agent for the government, the FBI, DHS or any law enforcement."

Epps has filed a lawsuit against Fox News for spreading "destructive conspiracy theories," and his attorney said on Wednesday that "Today's hearing and the plea agreement reached with the Department of Justice is further proof of that. It is also powerful evidence of the absurdity of Fox News' and Tucker Carlson's lies that sought to turn Ray into a scapegoat for January 6."

Mack brought up Epps again in a Nov. 9 article discussing Jack Smith's case against Trump:

Special counsel Jack Smith's case will attempt to tie former President Donald Trump to the Jan. 6 plot to "go into the Capitol" – as pushed by Ray Epps on Jan. 5, 2021 – arguing it was a plot to stop the certification of Joe Biden's Electoral College victory.

[...]

This week's filing contains no reference to Epps, who has denied working for the FBI, but admitted in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview the night before Tucker Carlson was fired this spring that it was a mistake to text on Jan. 6 that "I orchestrated it," as revealed by the anti-Trump House Jan. 6 select committee.

That Democrat-run committee ended before 2023, when Republican leadership was set to take over.

Trump has publicly the Epps "I orchestrated it" text, saying, "Gee, I wonder."

But Gaston's filing suggests there is evidence of the plot to enter the Capitol, without mentioning Epps, who is on video on the streets of Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5 urging demonstrators, "We have to go into the Capitol."

Some Trump supporters shouted back "No!" and repeatedly chanted "Fed! Fed! Fed!" suggesting Epps was working for the government in opposition to Trump's desire to have Congress debate the allegations of election fraud in key battleground states and have Vice President Mike Pence send the constitutionally contested Electoral College votes back to state legislatures for review after Jan. 6.

The Constitution has language that requires Congress to confirm the president-elect by the specific date Jan. 6.

When Epps was sentenced to probation for his actions, Newsmax relegated it to a Jan. 9 wire article that pointed out in the headline that Epps the "target of conspiracy theories and noted that he "was driven into hiding by death threats" because "Fox News Channel and other media outlets amplified conspiracy theories that Epps, 62, was an undercover government agent who helped incite the Capitol attack to entrap Trump supporters."

WND Whines That Nashville Massacre Isn't Considered A 'Hate Crime' Against White People
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily isn't just exploiting the alleged manifesto by the Nashville shooter to smear all transgender people as wannabe massacre commiters. It also wants to use it to whine about poor, oppressed white people. Bob Unruh complained in a Nov. 13 article:

The shooter who gunned down three children and three adults earlier this year at the Covenant school in Nashville said, in her manifesto, she hated the victims' white skin, their light features, their "privilege," their "fancy schools," their "mop yellow hair" and the fact they were "cr*ckers."

But two key federal law enforcement agencies have refused to recognize the murders as a hate crime.

It's according to a report at the Federalist.

The publication reported it asked "the nation’s top federal law enforcement agencies, which had access to the notebook [shooter Audrey Haley's manifesto] ever since March 27, if either had plans to classify the shooting as an anti-white hate crime or political violence spurred on by the proliferation of left-wing racism in schools and government, the DOJ ignored the request and the FBI claimed it did not have a comment."

That, the report noted, "sharply contrasts how both department and agency have treated other race-based shootings."

For example, "When a gunman in Buffalo, New York, opened fire in a grocery store, killing 10 in 2022, the DOJ used the shooter’s racist social media posts as justification to deem the act 'a hate crime and an act of racially-motivated violent extremism' worthy of several federal hate crime charges. The Justice Department extended the same treatment to Dylann Roof and the Texas mass shooter who killed 23 people at an El Paso Wal-Mart."

"Yet when it comes to investigating the Nashville shooting, which was rooted in the shooter’s disdain for people based on their skin color, as a hate crime against white Christians, the DOJ and FBI refuse," the report noted.

Note that Unruh is so sloppy that he couldn't even spell Audrey Hale's name correctly. He'salso repeated right-wing narratives about the massacre (while making sure not to reference the fact that Hale' possesion of guns made the massacre possible).Meanwhile, o thers have pointed out that those calling for the massacre to be a hate crime have voted against anti-hate crime laws. Ineeed, the Federalist has repeatedly lashed out at hate-crime laws.

Of course, Unruh failed to tell his readers about any of that. He's a stenographer, after all, not a journalist, and all he did here was rewrite a right-wing opinion piece and present it as "news."

NEW ARTICLE: Watching Over Wonky Whistleblowers
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center loves narrative-advancing whistleblowers like Devon Archer and Gal Luft, to the point that it will work hard to ignore questions about their credibility -- and their criminality. Read more >>

MRC's Stelter Derangement Syndrome Flared Up As He Promoted His New Book On Fox News
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's fall outbreak of Stelter Derangement Syndrome had on gotten started when Brian Stelter released a book critical of Fox News (which is forbidden at the MRC). The MRC's chief Stelter Derangement Syndrome sufferer, Tim Graham, who had a whataboutism-laden metldown over the book in a Nov. 10 post (though he still had to concede that Stelter's reporting was accurate on how Fox News lied to viewers):

Brian Stelter’s second book raining fire on Fox – Network of Lies – is coming out next week, but he appeared on MSNBC’s Alex Wagner Tonight on Thursday night to promote it. Somehow, in the seven-plus minutes of Fox-bashing, they didn’t discuss Stelter’s old network CNN having its freelancer literally kissed by a Hamas terrorist. That’s an inconvenient truth for Mr. Facts First.

Instead, MSNBC put on screen Stelter’s hot quote that “Fox is the black widow at the center of the web of lies that pervert American politics.” You can’t call CNN “fake news,” but you can compare Fox to a dangerously venomous spider.

Stelter’s book is in part a compilation of all the frantic internal communications over a short period when Fox aired embarrassing segments spreading wild conspiracy theories about Trump winning in a landslide. Some of those texts are explicit acknowledgments that this was fake news.

So let’s fast forward to the part where Stelter and Wagner address the current status of Fox and Trump.

Wagner asked “Does Fox, I mean, is all forgiven? And to what do you feel like Fox feels like it needs to actively curry favor with Trump? I ask that because it's interesting in and of itself. But because there's going to be January 6, 2025?”

This, on the network that hires their program hosts right out of the Biden White House public relations department, from Psaki to Symone. That illustrates a close relationship between a president and a network.

[...]

Wagner and Stelter won't discuss all of the misinformation that CNN and MSNBC uncorked in the Trump years, from the years of spreading Russian collusion conspiracy theories to the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop, falsely dismissed as Russian disinformation. "Networks of Lies" could describe that period for them.

Remember that Graham gave a pass to Fox News for telling those lies -- something he would never have done if CNN or MSNBC had done the same thing -- because it wouldn't hurt the channel with its core audience.

The next day, Alex Christy complained that Stelter plugged his book at his old employer and, like his boss, hurled whataboutism rather than respond to what Stelter said:

Brian Stelter returned to CNN on Friday when he joined The Source host Kaitlan Collins to continue his book tour and, just like old times, bash Fox News as the GOP's agenda setter while ignoring how the rest of the media helps set the left's agenda.

Collins noted that Rupert Murdoch is set to step down and wondered “How different does his media empire, not just Fox, but everything, look after that?”

After going on about the future of media more generally, Stelter eventually got to the specifics of Fox, “It's almost as if the energy has moved away from him. Although I think it's important to note, Fox is still the beating heart of the GOP. And that's where, for better and for worse, the narratives are still set.”

As opposed to the rest of the media, where narratives set for the left.

[...]

Stelter wasn’t buying the idea that Trump and Fox are distancing themselves from each other, “In a primary, he would argue that. But come general election, they'll be in Trump's corner.”

And CNN, and the rest of the media, will be in Biden’s corner.

Grahamm returned for an attempted gotcha in a Nov. 16 post on Stelter's appearance on NewsNation, where host Dan Abrams tried to get Stelter to unquestionly buy into Israeli propaganda:

Ex-CNN host Brian Stelter is ubiquitous on liberal TV networks and podcasts right now, selling his latest Fox-frying book Network of Lies, but one TV interview really stands out. He appeared on Tuesday night's Dan Abrams Live, and instead of delighting in the Fox hatred, Abrams pressed him on a raft of challenging media questions. Stelter stumbled throughout, but the most embarrassing part was claiming no host at CNN was partisan.

Stelter could have pointed at himself. But he thinks he and Jim Acosta were just "truth telling."

Up first? Abrams asked about the petition of Israel-hating journalists insisting news accounts must smear Israel as guilty of "genocide," "apartheid," and "ethnic cleansing." Stelter said these are "progressive writers" who might not be in news rooms, but they should push their "standards and practices" squad to explore it. Abrams shot back that "genocide" is not reality, but Stelter wouldn't commit. I wouldn't sign it, he said, but he wouldn't condemn it as not factual.

"That's a cop-out answer," Abrams said.

Graham continued to portray Stelter as the idiot for not biting on Abrams' gotcha questions:

Then came the one that drew the most attention. Who is the most partisan host on Fox? He said Maria Bartiromo, and Abrams said she's become a "fringe player." What about MSNBC? Stelter noted he was on Joy Reid's show, and she said Trump has an "authoritarian streak," which Stelter agreed on. But he tried to say she has a "point of view," a "perspective," not a bias. What about CNN? Abrams said CNN is the most dishonest network in denying it's biased. "Do you think there are any people on CNN who are overtly biased, whatever word you want to use that isn't offensive?" 

"I really truly don't," he said, "and they fired me!" He said feel free to send him comments at his email (bstelter@gmail.com). What about Jim Acosta? Stelter said "I think Jim is telling the truth, I really do!"

Graham said absolutely nothing about the content of Stelter's book other than to whine that is "Fox-frying." He whined further in a Nov. 19 post:

Taxpayer-funded PBS and NPR loathe Fox News like all leftists do, and both promoted ex-CNN host Brian Stelter's second Fox-bashing book Network of Lies. On Thursday, PBS NewsHour anchor Amna Nawaz ran Stelter through his usual talking points about Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, but concluded with the Big Picture, as reporters panic about how their coverage of Donald Trump won't prevent his re-election:

[...]

Stelter thinks there's someone out there who hasn't heard their incessant Trump warnings: "I would like to see the coverage amped up quite a bit on that front in order to help people who are not news junkies. I feel like I know what's going on, but most people are tuned out right now about the 2024 election. It's time to tune in."

On Tuesday's Fresh Air talk show on NPR, Stelter blabbed for more than a half-hour on the same points. Host Terry Gross mocked Tucker Carlson's exit: "Well, if Lachlan is focused on advertising, I mean, Tucker Carlson's extremism cost the network a lot of money. A lot of the sponsors pulled out. They had to rely on My Pillow (laughter) for - as a primary sponsor." 

As opposed to NPR, where we are the involuntary sponsors.

Graham's whataboutism continued: "It's funny sometimes that NPR people ask what Fox News shows are like, as if they have never seen it for a minute in their lives." As if the hate-watching of non-right-wing media the MRC does to cherry-pick clips could be consider real viewing.

Newsmax Was Surprisingly Balanced In Reporting Musk's Anti-Semitic Controversy
Topic: Newsmax

Newsmax offered surprisingly balanced coverage of Elon Musk's war with the ADL because it pointed out the spread of anti-Semitism on Twitter (well, X) after Musk took it over. Then Musk was credibly accused of endorsing anti-Semitism. Mark Swanson served up another surprisingly balanced account of that in a Nov. 16 article (though he did lean a bit into trying to do cleanup for Musk):

Elon Musk was replaced as a speaker in Thursday's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit a day after he sided with a social media post widely viewed as antisemitic.

Officially, Musk dropped out due to a "schedule change" and was replaced by former Secretary of State John Kerry. However, the 11th-hour swap came in the aftermath of Musk agreeing with a Wednesday post on X that said Jewish communities spread "hatred against whites."

"You have said the actual truth," Musk replied, later clarifying that he doesn't believe "all Jewish communities" hate whites. But Musk did rail against the Anti-Defamation League.

"The ADL unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel. This is because they cannot, by their own tenets, criticize the minority groups who are their primary threat," Musk weeted.

He added, "I am deeply offended by ADL's messaging and any other groups who push de facto anti-white racism or anti-Asian racism or racism of any kind."

On Thursday, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt took to Musk's X platform to accuse him of validating antisemitic theories, in this case, the theory that Jews encourage the influx of minority populations into the U.S. to thin out white majorities.

"At a time when antisemitism is exploding in America and surging around the world, it is indisputably dangerous to use one's influence to validate and promote antisemitic theories," Greenblatt posted.

Newsmax published a wire article noting the White House's condemnation of Musk's tweet, followed by an article by Nicole Wells offering another balanced approach: "Though [Musk] later suggested he was referring mainly to the Anti-Defamation League, the tech billionaire did not delete his original reply." Meanwhile, Eric Mack helped Musk do a little cleanup in a Nov. 22 article:

Democrats and liberal activist group Media Matters have attacked X owner Elon Musk, alleging he is profiting from a platform for free speech, including for antisemites, but Musk is undercutting their narrative.

"X Corp will be donating all revenue from advertising & subscriptions associated with the war in Gaza to hospitals in Israel and the Red Cross/Crescent in Gaza," Musk wrote Wednesday on X.

His pledged support for the state of Israel comes after Democrats in Congress wrote him Tuesday alleging X is profiting from premium accounts that glorify violence against Israelis.

In the letter to Musk and X chief executive Linda Yaccarino, the lawmakers noted reports from nonprofit organizations that showed people with X Premium accounts "glorifying barbaric acts of violence against Israelis" on the platform.

That was followed by more damage-control stenography from Jim Thomas in a Nov. 24 article:

Elon Musk is set to visit Israel next week to express support for the residents of Gaza, the New York Post reported.

According to Hebrew-language media, Musk, the Space X mogul and owner of the X — formerly Twitter — social media platform, plans to meet with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit.

Musk has been embroiled in past controversies, drawing criticism recently for a post on X in which he appeared to endorse an antisemitic conspiracy theory alleging that Jews were involved in facilitating mass migration to the West, according to The New York Times.

In recent months, Musk clashed with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a civil rights organization combating antisemitism in the U.S. Musk threatened legal action against the ADL, accusing the group of dissuading advertisers by asserting that X harbored neo-Nazi and antisemitic content.

That was joined, though, by a wire article the same day noting that "Elon Musk-owned social media company X could lose as much as $75 million in advertising revenue by the end of the year as dozens of major brands pause their marketing campaigns." That was followed by a Nov. 26 wire article noting Musk's actual meeting in Israel.

An anonymously written Nov. 29 article noted Musk's tepid apology and vulgar insult of advertisers who quit Twitter over the repeated controversies:

Elon Musk, addressing the mainstream media on Wednesday after an earlier post on X was dubbed antisemitic by many critics, apologized Wednesday for his “dumbest” ever social media interaction.

At the same time, though, he blasted advertisers leaving his platform because of rising antisemitism on X.

“I don’t want them to advertise,” he said at the New York Times DealBook Summit in New York, reported by CNN Business.

“If someone is going to blackmail me with advertising or money go [expletive] yourself. ... Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience, that’s how I feel” he added.

The anonymous writer didn't note that it took 12 full days for Musk to issue that apology, and that the offending tweet was still live. A Nov. 30 article by Wells noted that X CEO Linda Yaccarino "seemed to support Musk's feelings on" his vulgar diss of advertisers.