WND's Root Thinks Democrats Are 'Playing For Satan'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Wayne Allyn Root began his Nov. 24 WorldNetDaily column ranting about "open borders" and the Biden administration releasing funds to Iraq for it to pay for electricity from Iran (which, in turn, can be used by Iran only for humanitarian purposes). Then he got really bizarre:

The thing is ...

We know exactly who is doing these terrible, evil, unimaginable things to America – Joe Biden (and his boss Obama) and the Democrat Party [sic].

Why would anyone allow this? Why would anyone commit both these heinous acts at the same time? Let's really think about this.

Are they crazy? Mentally insane? Suicide bombers? Communist traitors?

Or could they be "on the take"?

Are Democrats being bribed billions of dollars into offshore accounts to allow our enemies to poison our population, collapse our economy, murder our own people and destroy the greatest nation in world history?

I'm thinking they're all getting big bribes from Iran. And even bigger bribes from the Mexican Drug Cartels. And the biggest bribes of all from China. They've sold us out. Et tu, Brute?

There is only one other explanation.

Could Biden (and his boss Obama) and the leadership of the Democrat Party be taking orders from the devil himself? Is this Satan's vision the Democrats are carrying out? Is Satan in charge? Are we in "end times"?

It's time to really look at what is happening and why. There really is no other rational explanation for the madness of the people running our country.

Democrats must be insane, evil, self-hating suicide bombers; communist traitors; corrupt, bribed and playing for our enemies; or playing for Satan.

These horrifying choices are the only way to explain what is happening to America.

Only God and Donald J. Trump can save us now.

Root really had to invent all sorts of horrible stuff about Democats in order to make readers think that an amoral criminal like Trump would be an improvement.

UPDATE: Bob Unruh previewed Root's column in a Nov. 21 "news" article, cheering that he "openly is asking whether Satan is in charge of the Democrat party [sic]."

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

A Jan. 8 Media Research Center post by Bill D'Agostino was all about whining that White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre largely declined ot answer biased quesions from right-wing reporters about purported Biden "scandals":

In the second half of 2023, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre answered only two questions about the scandals facing the President Joe Biden. That brings the yearly total to a paltry eight such questions that Ms. Jean-Pierre answered across 75 White House briefings.

MRC analysts examined official White House transcripts of every briefing Jean-Pierre conducted in 2023, recording every question she was asked about one of three major scandals faced by President Biden — his alleged mishandling of classified documents as Vice President, the corruption allegations against the Biden family, and the mysterious bag of cocaine found in the West Wing.

Of the 337 scandal-related questions that White House reporters asked, Jean-Pierre provided a definitive answer to just eight of them (2.37 percent). This figure tracks very closely with our findings from the first half of 2023, in which the Press Secretary answered only six out of 252 questions (2.38 percent).

Yes, the MRC apparently still believes that the handling of classified documents is a "scandal" only for Biden, even though he fully cooperated with authorities when it was revealed, while Donald Trump acted egregiously to deceive the authorities to the point that Mar-a-Lago had to be raided in order to retrieve them (which, of course, the MRC tried to defend).D'Agostino, meanwhile, is notgoing to discuss the hypocrisy of his complaint; we don't remember the MRC complaining when Trump's final press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, routinely refused to answer questions about things she didn't feel like talking about.

Because an MRC "study" -- however lame and hypocritical -- must be amplified, D'Agostino appeared on his boss Tim Graham's podcast that day, where he "discuss[ed] the consistency of KJP's stonewalling, and his generous definition of an actual answer." There was no indication in the writeup whether the two discuss McEnany similar aversion to answering questions.

Curtis Houck spent his writeup of the Jan. 10 post whining about Hunter Biden making House Republicans look bad when he showed up at a hearing where they talked about arresting him for not showing up before their committee, hyping more biased questions by his mancrush, Peter Doocy:

Wednesday’s White House press briefing saw a predictable drop-off in hardballs on the latest Biden administration scandal of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin going MIA for days with what he later revealed were a series of hospital stays for prostate cancer. Thankfully, there were a smattering of questions about Hunter Biden’s latest D.C. stunt as he appeared in-person for a House Oversight Committee hearing to discuss holding him in contempt of Congress.

Fox’s Peter Doocy was in the thicket of it. After two questions about whether President Biden cares more about illegal immigrants than Americans since a New York City school briefly went virtual to serve as a shelter, Doocy asked the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre to be honest: “And — and Hunter Biden on Capitol Hill today. How big of a headache is that for you?”

Jean-Pierre played up the “private citizen” excuse, arguing he’s “not a member of the White House, as you know, and I just don’t have anything else to share.”

Doocy really got to the heart of the matter with his next statement: “But the last time he was on the Hill, you said the President was certainly familiar with what his son was going to say.”

Jean-Pierre confirmed she said that, but didn’t go any further as Doocy interjected with this scorcher: “So, the official line that President Biden does not help him with his business deals, but he does help him skirt congressional subpoenas?”

This left the press secretary incensed: “That is not even true. That — that is a jump that is — that is incredibly disingenuous in that question.” Doocy countered she should then “help us out”, but Jean-Pierre insisted she was by saying she didn’t “have anything else to share.”

Interestingly, Houck didn't dispute that Doocy was acting like a jerk -- but he was apparently cool with it since Doocy got his boss' (and the MRC's) ight-wing talking points in.

Houck served up more Doocy-fluffing in a Jan. 12 post touching on briefings from the previous two days:

When you have the Fox News Channel and CNN asking the same thing this week during White House press briefings, that’s a bad sign for any administration. Such was the case as, on Wednesday and Thursday, CNN’s M.J. Lee and Fox’s Peter Doocy pressed the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre where has Joe Biden been this week as he wasn’t seen in public on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.

Lee asked on Wednesday a simple question: “[C]an you tell us what the President is up to today?”

[...]

A day later, Doocy reupped these concerns: “President Biden has not had any events at the White House in the new year, and he’s been kept from public view for three full days now. Why?”

This time, Jean-Pierre more or less admitted that Biden needed a few days off: “The President had a three-day swing, went to four states in the new year.”

[...]

Doocy’s other question was intriguing, but drew a filtered statement about how “proud” Team Biden is of “taking...rules very seriously”: “There’s an item in Axios that President Biden was advised by the White House Counsel to stop giving big-dollar donors tours of the Oval Office. While he has been out of view of the public for the last three days, has he given any wealthy campaign donors tours of the Oval Office?”

Houck also gave some love to another Fox employee, Edward Lawrence of Fox Business, for spouting his partisan talking points on inflation.

Newsmax's Reagan Mad That Pope Won't Hate Transgender People As Much As He Does
Topic: Newsmax
Michael Reagan began his Nov. 25 Newsmax column by raging that Pope Francis doesn't viciously hate transgender people like he does:

The satirical The Babylon Bee, not surprisingly, had the best analysis of the latest shocking "innovation" to emanate from the Pope Francis papacy: "Men Pretending To Be Women Go To Lunch With Man Pretending To Be Catholic."

New Ways Ministry — where the "ways" evidently don’t include Christianity as it’s been practiced for centuries — had a glowing description of the event, "Pope Francis welcomed a group of transgender women, with whom he has formed an ongoing relationship, to a luncheon at the Vatican last week marking the church’s World Day of the Poor."

The Associated Press had more detail regarding the guess list, specifically "one notable group of luncheon guests: trans women from just outside Rome, many of whom are sex workers and migrants from Latin America."

So, under this papacy it’s no longer "go and sin no more,” rather it’s go have another helping!

Reagan then denied the humanity of transgender people:

It’s no surprise the AP and New Ways Ministry refer to these creatures as "women," since both organizations have been captured by the secular culture, but for the pope to play along is breathtaking.

Instead of offering dinner and applause, the pope should have offered mental health counseling and a pathway out of the sin and degradation of prostitution.

Pope Francis is embracing heresy and rejecting God’s divine plan that created two immutable sexes: man and woman.

He is endorsing the secular view that God can make mistakes. Francis is endorsing body mutilation. And Francis is rejecting the clear evidence of science.

Worse, he is misleading confused Catholics by endorsing sexual practices the Bible clearly forbids and welcoming unrepentant sinners inside the church.

Reagandidn't explain why itis "heresy" to not spew hate at transgender people.He then whined when Francis asserted that the church should care about people instead of offering the hate-spewing that Reagan demands:

The Pope says, "When I say "everyone, everyone, everyone," it’s the people.

"The church receives people, everyone, and does not ask what you are.

"Then, within the church, everyone grows and matures in their Christian belonging. It’s true that today it’s a bit fashionable to talk about this. The church receives everyone."

But Christianity isn’t a numbers game. The denomination with the largest attendance doesn’t win. Christianity is a soul saving crusade and telling sinners the truth goes against our culture.

Pope Francis current indulgence of sexual sin is as dangerous and damaging as the selling of indulgences was in the past.

There is no accommodation with this culture where orthodoxy survives.

Reagan closed by stating: "We’ve quoted Auron MacIntyre before and he is particularly apt in this instance. He warns, 'Progressivism will hollow out your religion and wear its skin like a trophy.'" MacIntyre is a right-wing podcaster who thinkts there should be statues of Richard Nixon and Kyle Rittenhouse, so maybe he's not much of an authority on anything.

WND's Cashill Quick To Blame Black Students For School Violence Despite Lack of Evidence
Topic: WorldNetDaily

With his burgeoning obsession with the alleged criminality of black people, Jack Cashill is swiftly turning into WorldNetDaily's new Colin Flaherty, the race-baiter who saw "black mobs" everywhere (even when they were white or non-human). Cashill's Nov. 22 column, though, began by invoking the "Charlottesville lie" lie:

When candidate Joe Biden launched his 2020 presidential campaign, he offered events at Charlottesville, Virginia, as his rationale for running.

Biden specifically cited Trump's allegedly racist reaction to a 2017 dust-up in Charlottesville, shamelessly misrepresenting Trump's comments about the violent clash.

As we've repeatedly noted when his WND compadres tried to similarly whitewash what happened in  Charlottesville and Donald Trump's "very fine people" response to it, the group that was protesting the removal of a Confederate statue and Robert E. Lee park renaming was American Warrior Revolution, which considers itself a militia and later effectively blamed liberal counterprotester Heather Heyer for her own death in getting mowed down by a car driven by white supremacist James Fields Jr. In other words, there wasn't much actual "misrepresenting" going on.

Cashill went on to hype a sick-out by teachers at Charlottesville High School, allegedly because of incidents of student violence -- which, of course, Cashill was quick to blame on black students, despite have no actual evidence to support the claim:

The night before the sudden Friday shut down, CHS counselor David Wilkerson took to Facebook to describe the mayhem that unfolded in the school on Thursday.

"Today, we had roving bands in search of the next fight, multiple fights from which to choose, and hundreds of kids filming and cheering," Wilkerson wrote.

"We are infantilizing the kids who have neither the personal discipline nor the support from home to make healthy decisions and setting them up for horrific consequences in the near future."

CHS is about 25% African American. The absence of any references to race, and the evidence from school fight videos elsewhere, leads the savvy reader to infer that the instigators are black.

Cashill didn't explain why he thinks only black people are violent.

This then morphed into a promotion of his new book seeking to absolve white people of a racist motive in fleeing cities in the 1960s -- which has been endorsed by the white nationalists at VDARE -- and more lashing out at Michelle Obama:

This racially driven madness may be new to Charlottesville, but it is now new to inner-city America. As I document in my book "Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America," chaos has been the norm in many city schools for at least 60 years.

When Michelle Obama was ready to start elementary school in 1969, for instance, her parents, Fraser and Marian Robinson, refused to send her to shiny new Dulles Elementary School just a block away.

From the Robinsons' perspective, the problem wasn't the school building. It was the school's students, many of whom came from nearby housing projects.

Committing a Class C misdemeanor, the Robinsons used the address of Marian's sister in Chicago's middle-class South Shore neighborhood to enroll both Michelle and her brother, Craig, at Bryn Mawr Elementary, a 15-minute drive from Parkway Gardens.

[...]

Ignoring her own experience, in 2019 Michelle condemned a largely white audience for the sin of "white flight." Said Michelle, "I wanna remind white folks that y'all were running from us, and y'all still runnin'."

Among the things that unnerved white people, Michelle imagined, were "the color of our skin" and the "texture of our hair."

The posting of school fight videos online is making it harder and harder for race-baiters like Michelle to ignore the racial problems they and their political allies have helped nurture.

The graphic nature of these videos also make it harder for Michelle and her friends in the media to blame racial turmoil on people who flee to avoid it.

Cashill didn't explain why he thinks only black people must be held responsible for "racial turmoil."

NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Lingering Case of Stelter Derangement Syndrome
Topic: Media Research Center
Months after Brian Stelter left CNN, the Media Research Center was still attacking him any time he showed up in the (non-right-wing) media. Read more >>

Strike Three: MRC's Latest Attack On NewsGuard Again Filled With Bias, Shoddy Work
Topic: Media Research Center

For the third year in a row, the Media Research Center has issued a so-called study purporting to attack NewsGuard as having a political bias against right-wing websites. And unsurprisingly, it's as loud and lame as the first two. Jiseph Vazquez huffed in a Dec. 12 post:

Internet traffic cop NewsGuard has gotten worse. A new MRC Free Speech America analysis shows the notorious leftist media ratings organization is more biased against the right than ever before.

MRC Free Speech America investigated NewsGuard for a third year in a row, finding that its 0/100 ratings scale has once again overwhelmingly favored left-leaning outlets over right-leaning ones. “NewsGuard is just another leftist group trying to censor conservatives,” said MRC President Brent Bozell. “We have the proof.”

Using the media list provided by AllSides that classifies publications based on their “right” to “left” bias, MRC researchers determined that NewsGuard provided a stellar average “credibility” rating of 91/100 for “left” and “lean left” outlets (e.g. The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, Vox). At the same time, it dinged “right” and “lean right” outlets like Fox News, the New York Post and The Daily Wire with an outrageously abysmal average score of 65/100.The latest analysis denotes a 26 point disparity.

NewsGuard’s rating for right-leaning outlets in particular was worse than the still-low 66/100 average rating it slapped on right-leaning media across the prior two MRC studies released Jan. 6, 2023 and Dec. 13, 2021.

First of all, AllSides is a right-leaning organization that promotes the MRC's work, so its list is a bit suspect, given how it places most mainstream media outlets on the "left" side of the ledger and still lists Newsweek as in the "center" despite its undeniable move to the right. And of course, the disparity in group scores is not, in and of itself, evidence of bias, and Vazauez makes little attempt to prove that it is. Indeed, he follows that by rehashing old grievances about how the media handled Hunter Biden's laptop (ignoring that the New York Post did not offer any independent corroborating evidence to prove the laptop's authenticity, making it easy for non-right-wing media to dismiss the story as an October surprise by a pro-Trump rag) and complaining yet again that "NewsGuard still gives leftist outlet BuzzFeed a perfect 100/100 score despite the expired site continuing to host the widely discredited Steele dossier (ignoring the fact that BuzzFeed never claimed the dossier was accurate).

Vazquez's unprofessional bias is splayed throughout his so-called study, such as when he ranted about "NewsGuard’s perfect scores for blatantly liberal outlets like the explicitly left-wing New York Times"; by contrast, he refused to identify the New York Post as "blatantly conservative" and "explicitly right-wing." He also portrayed coverage of the Israel-Hamas war and related protests over it as being between "anti-Iksrael media" and "right-leaning media" -- a ridiculous comparison -- going on to whine that non-right-wing media coverage didn't adhere to right-wing narratives. That's another sign this is a political hit job, not a serious piece of "media research."

Vazquez also gave right-wing outlets space to complain about their relatively low ratings -- but he offered few specific examples to explain why they were so low. He did cite one instance, though, which comes off as whiny nitpicking (prefeaced by more whining):

The Heritage Foundation, one of the most prominent think tanks in the U.S. also received NewsGuard’s ire, getting hit with a 69.5/100 score. “The political hacks from NewsGuard claim they’ll help you decide what news outlets you can trust. In reality, you shouldn’t trust anything from this overtly biased organization,” said The Heritage Foundation Communications Director Rob Bluey. “Thanks to MRC, we now have proof that left-leaning outlets fare better than their conservative counterparts.”

One of NewsGuard’s nonsensical quibbles was The Heritage Foundation’s repudiation of the $80 billion earmarked in Biden’s extremist $749 billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) towards hiring 87,000 new Internal Revenue Service “agents.” NewsGuard split hairs by arguing that the onerous Biden bill simply allows the IRS to hire “86,852 full-time employees — not all audit agents, as the article suggested.” The headline of The Heritage Foundation’s article was “Fact-Checking Team Biden on Who Those 87,000 New IRS Agents Would Audit,” but NewsGuard didn’t disclose that The Heritage Foundation did note in its piece how “Calculations conservatively assume that only 57.3% of the Treasury Department’s estimated 86,852 new IRS agents (49,754 in total) would be assigned to enforcement.” In other words, The Heritage Foundation did specifically note that not all of the new “agents” would serve in auditing functions.

Of course, the fact that Vazquez referred to the Inflation Reduction Act as "extremist" further shows his disqualifying bias. He does seem to hint that Heritage showed its own inaccuracy in referring to "87,000 New IRS Agents" in the headline, but the article continued to refer to all 87,000 as "agents" throughout, and no evidence is provided to back up its alleged "calculations" about which new hires would be doing what.Further, that statement didn't appear until theh 13th paragraph and wasn't mentioned at all in the bullet-point "key takeaways" at the top of the piece, further showing the shoddiness of Vazquez's defense.

Vazquez, however, failed to discuss how Fox News was exposed as knowingly lying to its viewers about election fraud thorugh evidence released in the Dominion lawsuit -- resulting in a $787 million settlement with Dominion -- and how that blatant dishonesty may have affected its NewsGuard score. He was also silent about how Fox News quietly deleted a false story about a Gold Star family purportedly having to pay for a soldier's remains to be returned to the U.S. after being killed in Afghanistan without issuing a public retraction or apology. Instead, he defended Fox News by portraying its reporting on an incident involving the bombing of a hospital in Gaza to be "much more accurate" than the purportedly "anti-Israel" media. If Vazquez can't even bring up the biggest news-fraud story of the year, it shows how worthless this "study" is.

Vazquez refused to give NewsGuard an opportunity to respond to any of his bad-faith partisan attacks. He closed by rehashing his earlier screed demanding that NewsGuard not receive any federal contracts -- again showing the manufactured hit-job nature of his so-called study.

Meanwhile, what better place to promote such a wildly biased and flawed study than on the very accuracy-challenged right-wing outlets it's defending? That's what MRC chief Brent Bozell did in running to Fox Business, as Luis Cornelio dutifully transcribed in a Dec. 13 post:

MRC President and Founder Brent Bozell delivered a scorching rebuke of self-anointed internet traffic cop NewsGuard following the release of another report exposing the media ratings firm’s extreme leftist bias.

Speaking to Fox Business host Stuart Varney on Wednesday, Bozell highlighted an MRC Free Speech America report that exposed NewsGuard’s ratings as being disproportionately harsher to right-leaning media. “You've got this group … that calls itself, ‘objective,’” Bozell said of Newsguard, which gave left-leaning media an average credibility rating of 91 percent, while rating right-leaning media only an average of 65 percent.

Bozell ripped the legacy media for decades of tilted coverage under the guise of objectivity. “For years and years and years, the media has been telling the American people that they were objective,” Bozell told Varney on Varney & Co. The reality, Bozell warned, “They were left wing.”

Bozell blasted NewsGuard as a “new way to attack conservatives.” Indeed, MRC released a scathing report — for the third year in a row — that found NewsGuard provides consistently better ratings to leftist media on average while generally slapping down the scores of right-leaning media.

One can assume Varney and Bozell did not discuss how Fox News trashed its reputation for objectivity and accuracy by lying to its viewers. Meanwhile, MRC executives Tim Graham and Dan Schneider ran to Newsmax to spout the same talking points, transcribed in a Dec. 14 post by Catherine Salgado:

MRC’s Dan Schneider joined Newsmax to highlight explosive MRC research on how ratings firm NewsGuard has become more biased than ever.

For the third year in a row, MRC Free Speech America exposed NewsGuard’s worsening bias against right-leaning media. MRC researchers used the AllSides Media Bias Chart to analyze that NewsGuard provided a stellar average “credibility” rating of 91/100 for “left” and “lean left” outlets while slapping a low average of 65/100 on “right” and “lean right” outlets. MRC Free Speech America Vice President Schneider and NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham went on Newsmax’s The Chris Salcedo Show to discuss NewsGuard’s real goals: choking off right-leaning media’s ad revenue and promoting leftist narratives. 

Schneider began, “NewsGuard, for years, has been silencing conservatives, directing ad revenue to liberals instead, choking off the life blood of conservative media outlets.” Schneider analyzed how NewsGuard’s gambit to silence the right was based on its overarching “zeal to defeat Donald Trump and any other conservative who wants to stand for basic American principles.”

Similarly, Graham and Schneider did not bring up how Newsmax is currently being sued by both Dominion and Smartmatic for the false claims it made about those companies in promoting falsehoods about election fraud in 2020.

Salgado concluded by whining that "NewsGuard targets free speech — it is not an objective arbiter of truth," despite the fact that none of the MRC's partisan attacks actually prove this beyond its empty right-wing ranting.

Newsmax Columnist: Sure, Trump Would Be A Dictator ... Like George Washington And The Romans
Topic: Newsmax

With the 2024 U.S. presidential election fast approaching and Donald Trump leading Joe Biden in the polls, the media's hysteria is reaching astronomical levels.

The Economist Magazine recently named Trump as the biggest danger facing the world in 2024, while The New York Times and Washington Post breathlessly warn that he is running on a nakedly authoritarian platform.

Of course, authoritarianism, like so many other such terms these days has been rendered all but meaningless, as it now simply describes anything the political left opposes, or which threatens their power.

But as evidence, the media cites Trump's plans to mass deport illegal immigrants, reshape the federal bureaucracy, lock up violent criminals and deranged lunatics, and teach patriotism again in American schools.

[...]

Furthermore, despite the media's characterization, what Trump is proposing is hardly out of line with past American leaders, including those enshrined upon Mount Rushmore.

The father of the nation himself, George Washington, would likely have handled today's mass illegal immigration much in the way that Trump is proposing with large scale deportations, as indeed did another great American general turned president, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Nor is what Trump is proposing unlawful; to the contrary, much of what he seeks is merely the enforcement of existing laws, which the current administration refuses.

But given the growing direness of the situation, there is also a significant segment of Americans today that view more extraordinary measures as necessary and warranted to correct the madness destroying their great nation.

In that respect, there are those that do perhaps desire for Trump to become a dictator, though in the original Roman sense.

When Rome was gravely threatened, it would empower a single individual, a "dictator" to assume full powers to set things right again.

This emergency lever was pulled when the usual political mechanisms, much like today, proved inadequate.

It also came with an expiration date, a set term, after which the appointed dictator had to step down and relinquish his powers.

In a sense, that is precisely what Trump is offering Americans.

Four years to clean up America; four years without the restraints of running for reelection; four years of not being beholden to outside donors or special interests; four years to simply do what needs to be done to address the nation's problems.

After which like the ancient Roman Cincinnatus, Trump would retire into the sunset, and a long well-deserved rest at Mar-a-Lago with the blessing of a grateful nation.

It's an attractive offer to many and one given how closely America was patterned after Rome that is not without some precedent.

-- Lee Steinhauer, Nov. 30 Newsmax column

MRC's Toto Loves Celebrities Spouting Right-Wing Views -- But Attacks Those Who Deviate From The Narrative
Topic: Media Research Center

Despite the fact that right-wingers regularly lecture their followers to ignore celebrities talking about politics, Christian Toto gave a platform to one in his Nov. 11 Media Research Center column:

No one held Gavin Newsom’s feet to the fire quite like Adam Carolla did a decade ago.

The podcaster grilled the future governor repeatedly during their 2013 exchange, turning every Newsom comment on its head in real time.

And no one will ever repeat the feat. Why?

Gov. Newsom knows better than to sit behind “The Adam Carolla Show” microphones again. He’d rather wear a red MAGA hat and play 18 holes with the 45th president.

Plus, no mainstream reporter will do what Carolla did. The news media supports both Newsom and his fellow Democrats.

None of that stopped Carolla from slamming Newsom for his revisionist history over the recent pandemic.

Carolla stopped by “The Megyn Kelly Show” for a fiery hour-plus conversation. The two explored Hamas’ defenders, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ BootGate and more.

Toto didn't mention that the interview -- done when Newsom was lieutenant governor of California and was promoting a new book -- also included Carolla going on a racially tinged tirade arguing that there was somenthing "flawed" about blacks and Latinos because many don't have checking accounts or ATM access, going on to blame the problem on the usual right-wing shibboleth of single-parent households. Instead, Toto touted how Carolla pushed old right-wing grievances about pandemic lockdowns, cheering that Carolla called Newsom "a sociopathic, tyrannical dictator and no one should listen to a God-d*** word this idiot says.”

But even a celebrity repeating right-wing talking points gets attacked if there's not total and absolute fealty to the narrative.In his Nov. 25 column, Toto praised actress Juliana Marguiles for speaking out against anti-Semitism in a USA Today op-ed, yet attacked her anyway because she also said "I jump at the chance to march in Black Lives Matter protests":

Full stop.

Let’s set aside how the “mostly peaceful” BLM protests caused billions in property damage.

Does Margulies realize how some Black Lives Matter groups responded to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks?

[...]

Can’t Margulies and one of the largest newspapers in the country see why name-checking BLM in this article is a profoundly bad idea?

Another explanation? Neither Margulies nor the USA Today editors knew about BLM’s ghastly affection for Hamas. The BLM Chicago image generated some media attention, but a Google News search for those key words show most mainstream news organizations ignored the shocking news story.

It’s inexcusable either way.

Toto seems not to understand that there's no overarching Black Lives Matter organization -- it's a decentralized movement -- that issues unified messaging, let alone one that ordered protesters cause property damage, as he appears to insinuate; indeed, he offers no evidence that any person convicted of property damage was acting on BLM orders.

Toto is simply repeating lazy right-wing talking points instead of doing any sort of research to see if they have any basis in fact. One might call that inexcusable.

Toto did find a celebrity who was fully on message the following week, however, devoting his Dec. 2 column to cheering actress Mayim Bialik for criticizing women's organizations for being siient on alleged atrocities being committed in the war between Israel and Hamas.

What any of this has to do with Toto's supposed main job of reviewing movies is anyone's guess, other than him desperately trying to parlay that arguably lightweight endeavor into becoming a right-wing pundit.

WND's Zumwalt Raged Over Removal Of Confederate Monument At Arlington Cemetery
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily columnist James Zumwalt has been fretting over the impending removal of a Confederate monument in Arlington National Cemetery for a while how. He huffed in a March 29 column:

With wokeism protesting any memorialization of those who fought for the Confederacy during our American Civil War, a magnificent memorial in Arlington National Cemetery is, like the Buddhas of Bamiyan, being slated for demolition. More than a century old, the 32-foot-high Confederate Memorial was enthusiastically promoted by an earlier Congress, three U.S. presidents and veterans on both sides after the conflict. It was specifically embraced to symbolize a unified America in the aftermath of the War Between the States.

The Confederate Memorial was actually the brainchild of Union veteran and U.S. President William McKinley; it was President William Howard Taft who spoke at the laying of its cornerstone; and it was President Woodrow Wilson who spoke at its 1914 dedication, alongside both Union and Confederate veterans. Almost half a century after a war that had so divided America, claiming 750,000 lives and the maiming of over a million more, this memorial recognized a nation's reconciliation and reunification.

Designed and constructed by Confederate veteran and internationally renowned Jewish sculptor Moses Ezekiel, he, along with three other Southerners, lie buried at the monument's base, thus serving as their headstone. It is a grave marker also for 462 other Confederates whose graves are arranged in concentric circles around it. Such a burial arrangement is an integral part of the memorial, exactly as Congress, three presidents and veterans from both sides intended.

Those today planning the memorial's destruction lack any appreciation for the emotions at play in 1914 or for the artistic value it offers. Hypocritically, woke activists, demanding those who fought for the South more than seven generations earlier be banned to the dustbin of history for failing to grasp 21st century values, fail to grasp the emotional needs existing in 1914 to honor all who served to help reunify a divided nation. They are committed to the memorial's destruction at a cost of over $100 million.

As we pointed out when fellow WND columnist Carole Hornsby Haynes tried to defend the memorial, the cemetery's own website states that "The elaborately designed monument offers a nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery," and that the only two African-American figures are stereotypical -- a "mammy"-type figure and an enslaved man following his owner to war. Zumwalt's evidence that the removal would cost "over $100 million" was a tweet by a pro-monument group that said nothing about cost.

As the removal date drew near, Zumwalt spent his Dec. 8 column lashing out at Sen. Elizabeth Warren for supporting the removal and other signs of needlesslyu honoring the Confederacy:

Unless a federal judge takes the appropriate action, on De. 18 the demolition of the 109-year-old Confederate Reconciliation Memorial located at Arlington National Cemetery will begin.

The word "reconciliation" was included in the memorial as it was the intention of our 25th U.S. president, William McKinley, and his peers who had fought on the side of the Union to demonstrate the post-Civil War healing of war wounds with those who had fought for the Confederacy. The country had suffered an ideological split during that conflict but, like a bad marriage in which the parties separated only to realize later they needed each other and returned to their union, the memorial was commissioned as a testimonial to the reconciliation of North and South.

As has been reported, the destruction of the memorial, "will desecrate the graves of almost 500 Confederate soldiers and family surrounding the memorial in concentric circles who, by 1901 law, are American soldiers entitled to the same respect and dignity as any American soldier who has ever lived." In the mind of Sen. Warren, honoring those who fought for the South is insensitive as they should eternally be condemned for having honored the institution of slavery. This is contrary to the sentiment of McKinley who observed, "Every soldier's grave made during our unfortunate civil war is a tribute to American valor."

As the cemetery's website also suggested, the word "reconciliation" in the memorial's name is meaningless because it was not accompanied by the granting of civil rights to black people. Zumwalt then tried to engage in a little Civil War revisionism:

Warren and Austin ride their high horses trumpeting slavery as the main focus of the war, but such trumpeting demonstrates a lack of understanding about history and about what caused those on both sides to fight. At war's end 17 senior commanders – nine from the North and eight from the South – gave farewell addresses to those who had served under them. Those addresses were assembled in "The Last Words" – a book authored by historian Michael R. Bradley – a work that clearly destroys slavery as the "single cause myth." While the moral issue of slavery has long been given as a common explanation for why the American Civil War was fought, it was the economics of slavery, along with political control of that system and states' rights, that were mainly responsible.

Actually, several Confederate states specifically cited slavery as a reason for leaving the Union in their secession statements. Still, Zumwalt huffed that "Warren will never understand the bond of respect, despite the ideological differences, that existed between North and South."

Zumwalt used his Dec. 20 column to dishonestly liken the removal of the Confederate memorial to the Taliban's destruction of centuries-old Buddha statues carved into a rock face in Aghanistan's Bamilan Valley:

Twenty-two years after the Bamiyan Massacre by the Taliban, the U.S. is on the verge of committing its own massacre that will eradicate an important part of our history. In fact, had it not been for a last-minute restraining order issued by a federal judge, that massacre would now have been completed.

The architect of this massacre is Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who proclaimed during her failed presidential campaign she supported removing all Confederate symbols from federal land if she were elected. Fortunately, she had to drop out of her campaign, but that did not deter her from seeking the eradication of any honors bestowed upon Confederate veterans that were memorialized upon federal lands. She sponsored legislation in 2020 to this end, which was later passed with the help of 41 Republican House members who apparently were more concerned about elections than our history.

Zumwalt then tried an appeal related to the sculptor:

Interestingly, the architect the war victors engaged to design the memorial was noted sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel – a Confederate veteran and the first Jewish graduate of Virginia Military Institute. One would think there should currently be some sensitivity to the appropriateness of removing this historic memorial by a respected Jewish architect due to the astonishing wave of antisemitism triggered by the Gaza war. Of course, this appears to be of no concern to Warren as she recently criticized Facebook for censoring pro-Hamas posts.

In fact, Ezekiel's descendants have endorsed the removal of the sculpture, pointing out that it's "a relic of a racist past," and that it should be put in a museum "that makes clear its oppressive history.” Nevertheless, Zumwalt continued to smear Warren as Taliban-like for wanting to address oppressive history:

Warren and the Taliban obviously drink from similar glasses of ideological extremism. The Taliban's contains an elixir of religious zeal that blinds them from accepting any culture and religion other than their own. Meanwhile, Warren's contains an elixir of progressivism, blinding her to the destructive impact she will have on our history. Sadly, she denies veterans who served on both sides during our Civil War the memorialization in history they sought in honor of America's reunification in the aftermath of that divisive conflict.

A few days later, the bronze section of the monument was removed from its pedestal and his currently in storage as its ultimate fate is decided.The granite base will remain in place to avoid disturbing graves.There is still no evidence that the removal cost the $100 million Zumwalt claimed it would.

MRC Keeps Up Loud And Lame War Against NewsGuard
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's loud and lame war against NewsGuard has continued apace. Joseph Vazquez wrote a Nov. 21 screed demanding that NewsGuard be barred from government contracts, regurgitating his employer's bogus claim that NewsGuard is "biased" against right-wing media:

Leftist internet traffic cop NewsGuard is the farthest thing from being the unbiased media referee it purports to be. It is a government-funded operation designed to attack right-leaning media by going after their advertiser funding.

There are at least five core reasons why Congress should strip funding from NewsGuard in the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) since it received a $750,000 federal grant from the Department of Defense. The state funding of a leftist, so-called journalism gatekeeper that deceptively bills itself as “apolitical” is case in point. Such efforts by the government to censor media it does not approve of through the funding of a private organization is on its face unconstitutional. Moreover, NewsGuard’s inherent bias against right-leaning media and rubber-stamping of left-wing publications, its financing by special interests that compromise its objectivity, its apparent legitimization of communist Chinese government propaganda and its open celebration of its collusion with government make it little more than an Orwellian Ministry of Truth of the first magnitude. 

Couple all that with the MRC’s analysis across two studies on NewsGuard’s media ratings and “Nutrition Labels” showing how the so-called media ratings firm is nothing more than a leftist political tool intended to silence the right and the problem becomes all too clear. It’s time for America’s legislators to finally take action.

Vazquez went on to screech "five core reasons why Congress should ensure that NewsGuard doesn’t receive another cent in taxpayer dollars" that rehashed many of its old, lame attacks, then bizarre=ly claimed that it's unconstitutional for it to get funding:

In particular, the government is prohibited from censoring speech protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. These are basic, obvious, principles which the Biden administration has blatantly disregarded in its unlawful arrangement with NewsGuard, under contract to do the dirty work of government censorship. 

An even more fundamental maxim is that what cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. The Biden administration and its minions at NewsGuard are violating constitutional rights; this needs to be stopped.

Vazquez failed to explain what constitutional right protects liars and misleaders or why it is "unlawful" to point out those who lie and mislead, nor did he detail why it is "unconstitional" to do so. He went on to whine that NewsGuard identified those who spread misinformation about COVID and its vaccines, alleging a conflict of interest because it has received funding from a group in which one participant received funding from vaccine-maker Pfizer:

The [Washington] Times noted that The Daily Sceptic, another publication whose skepticism of vaccines drew the ire of NewsGuard’s web traffic monitors, got its score dinged down to a failing 37.5/100. “The site gets 1.8 million views every month, [Daily Sceptic Editor-in-Chief Toby] Young said, but its advertising has dried up since NewsGuard’s blacklisting.” NewsGuard’s “Nutrition Label” for the site updated Aug. 23, 2023, also openly defended Pfizer without disclosing the apparent conflict of interest.

You don't have work for NewsGuard to know that the Daily Sceptic, a British website, is unreliable -- others have documented the false and misleading COVID-related claims it has made, and Media Bias Fact Check called the website "a far-right biased quackery level pseudoscience website that frequently publishes false and misleading information regarding covid-19 and science in general." In short, Vazquez is dishonestly trying to give credibiliy to a thoroughly discredited conspiracy site, claiming that he merely offers "skepticism of vaccines" when it actively lies to and misleads readers.

Vazquez also rehashed an old complaint that NewsGuard rated "Chinese state propaganda to be more credible than American publications" but, of course, is devoid of any details surrounding that claim, including tyhe fact that one of the right-wing webistes he tried to defend, Newsmax, is currently being sued by Dominion and  Smartmatic over false claims it made about election fraud after the 2020 eleciton. He concluded by ranting: "Why would the federal government proceed to continue funding any outfit that considers communist agitprop to be more credible than U.S. media?" He didn't explain why known liars and misleaders deserve better rankings simply for being American, and he didn't prove that any of those sites deserved to be treated as credible by anyone outside his right-wing bubble.

Luis Cornelio also uncritically peddled the corporate line in a Nov. 22 post:

Members of the Free Speech Alliance and pro-free speech allies are calling on Congress to once and for all ensure that the Biden administration is prohibited from unconstitutionally funding Ministry of Truth operations like leftist internet traffic cop NewsGuard.

MRC and others signed the four-page letter addressed to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), urging congressional leaders to keep Rep. Richard McCormick (R-GA)’s free speech amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The amendment effectively bars the Department of Defense from contracting and funding infamous leftist tech entities like NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) which are intent on crushing right-leaning media entities. 

Signed by 36 pro-free speech advocates, the letter drew attention to disturbing revelations miring both NewsGuard (which received a $750,000 payout from the Department of Defense in 2021) and GDI which is also funded by government entities, including the Department of State.

Like Vazquez, Cornelio failed to back up his claim that NewsGuard is "leftist" with any sort of credible evidence.

Unsurprisngly, the letter begins with the dishonest statement that "Our federal government never should have spent time and taxpayer money on censoring conservatives," despite a complete lack of proof that anyone is "censoring" conservatives solely for being conservative or even that NewsGuard is doing the purported censoring.

The list of signatories includes a little corporate padding -- not only is it signed by MRC chief Brent Bozell, he's joined by Dan Schneider of MRC division Free Spoeech America and Bozell's son David, who operates the meme factory ForAmerica out of the MRC's headquarters. It also includes representatives of a few low-reliability right-wing outlets: One America News Network, ConservativeHQ and the Western Journal. Also, Brigitte Gabriel (not her real name) of the anti-Muslim ACT for America is for some reason identified as "Lady Brigitte Gabriel."

Newsmax Still Being A Good Benefactor To Rudy Giuliani
Topic: Newsmax

Newsmax has been a staunch supporter of Rudy Guiliani -- even starting a legal defense fund for him and giving him his own show on Newsmax's streaming channel -- and it continues to have his back even as he continues to ruin his life by running his mouth. A Nov. 10 column by Mark Schulte, for instance, played the Giuliani greatest-hits card:

Since the recent Newsmax interview with the indomitable Republican fighter Rudy Giuliani occurred 30 years after his election as mayor on November 2, 1993, in which he narrowly unseated the serially incompetent Democratic Mayor David Dinkins (I voted for Rudy), a recounting of several of the former mayor’s greatest achievements is timely.

Between Jan. 1994 and Jan. 2002, Mayor Giuliani made the nation’s largest city great again, as annual murders plunged a phenomenal 66%, between Dinkins’ last year in office in 1993 when there were 1,927, and Giuliani’s last year in 2001, with 649.

[...]

During Giuliani’s first term between 1994 and 1997, murders averaged 1,123, or a remarkable 46% decline.

Former Mayor Giuliani’s second historic achievement is the city’s robust 9% population growth, between 1990 when it was 7,323,000, and the 8,008,000 in 2000.

By contrast, NYC’s population in 2022 was 8,336,000, or a puny 4% increase in 22 years.

[...]

Rudy Giuliani’s third historic accomplishment occurred in 1995, when he evicted arch-Palestinian terrorist Yasser Arafat from a Lincoln Center concert, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the U.N.

Unquestionably, Rudy Giuliani ranks as one of NYC’s greatest mayor during the last century, alongside Fiorello La Guardia (1934-1945), whose mother, Irene Luzzatto-Coen, hailed from a prominent Sephardic Italian-Jewish family.

Newsmax has also given Giuliani ample space on its TV channel to spout right-wing opinions about the issues of the day:

• Giuliani to Newsmax: Dems Have 'Evil Attachment' to Iran
• Giuliani to Newsmax: Biden 'Held Up' Israel Strikes for Weeks
• Giuliani to Newsmax: Shocked at Pro-Palestinian Protests in NYC
• Rudy Giuliani to Newsmax: 'No Way' Hunter Biden Will Testify
• Giuliani to Newsmax: Bitter Christie Has 'Gone Off the Rails'
• Rudy Giuliani to Newsmax: Trump Has Experience to Turn US Around
• Giuliani to Newsmax: Hunter Biden Can't Testify Without Lying
• Rudy Giuliani to Newsmax: Hunter 'Indictment Is a Sucker Indictment'

Note that a number of those involve Giuliani attacking Hunter Biden. That's because Hunter filed a lawsuit against Giluiani over his dissemination of the contents of Hunter's laptop. A Sept. 26 article by Jeffrey Rodack summarized the lawsuit. That was followed by an Oct. 4 TV appearance in which Giuliani not only whined about the lawsuit but touted his own lawsuit against President Biden because he said during a 2020 presidential debate that Giuliani was acting like a Russian pawn (whichNicole Wells promoted in an article earlier that day):

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, calling President Joe Biden the "biggest liar we've ever had in the White House" insisted on Newsmax that he must pay damages for referring to him as a "Russian pawn" during remarks made in the final 2020 presidential debate against then-President Donald Trump.

"I can calculate, honestly, millions of dollars in damage," Giuliani told Newsmax's Greg Kelly on Wednesday night about the lawsuit he filed against the president earlier in the day.

[...]

"[Trump's] Rudy Giuliani, he is being used as a Russian pawn," Biden said at the time. "He is being fed information that is Russian, that is not true."

Giuliani's lawsuit claims that Biden knew his remarks would discredit and marginalize the former mayor, who was a Trump attorney, and that Biden falsely depicted him "to our nation as a liar."

Of course, Giuliani ranted about Hunter too:

Giuliani's lawsuit comes after Hunter Biden filed a lawsuit against him and another attorney, claiming that they caused "total annihilation" of Biden's digital privacy regarding the laptop that was reportedly left at a Delaware repair shop.

"Now, here's how I know he was lying," said Giuliani. "We only had the solid proof of that recently, and that's because the FBI validated that hard drive back in December of 2019."

Giuliani's complaint about his reputation being besmirched by Biden is ironic given his enthusiasm for spreading malicious false claims about others. More on that soon.

WND Touts Highly Dubious Poll On Alleged Election Fraud
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Bob Unruh wrote in a Dec. 12 WorldNetDaily article:

It was the Guardian that reported some months ago that more than 40% of Americans "still do not believe that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 president election."

And then it editorialized, "despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud."

Now, it appears, there's evidence.

According to a report from Rasmussen Reports, "more than 20% of voters who used mail-in ballots in 2020 admit they participated in at least one form of election fraud."

President Trump long has charged that the election was rigged and stolen from him. Evidence that appeared after the fact suggests he's right, because of the undue influence of Mark Zuckerberg's $400-plus million given to officials who often used that extraordinary funding to recruit Joe Biden voters.

Further, the FBI decided to interfere in the election, with its warning to media companies to suppress accurate reporting on the scandals in the Biden family that were revealed in a laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a repair shop.

A subsequent polling suggested that interference alone could have cost President Trump the election.

Now, according to Rasmussen, a polling, in conjunction with the Heartland Institute, confirmed "21% of Likely U.S. voters who voted by absentee or mail-in ballot in the 2020 election say they filled out a ballot, in part or in full, on behalf of a friend or family member, such as a spouse or child, while 78% say they didn’t."

The report continued, "Thirty percent (30%) of those surveyed said they voted by absentee or mail-in ballot in the 2020 election. Nineteen percent (19%) of those who cast mail-in votes say a friend or family member filled out their ballot, in part or in full, on their behalf. Furthermore, 17% of mail-in voters say that in the 2020 election, they cast a ballot in a state where they were no longer a permanent resident. All of these practices are illegal, Heartland Institute officials noted."

In addition to failing to accurately point out that both Rasmussenn and the Heartland Instituteare right-wing organizations whose biased results can't reasonably be trusted, Unruh ignored the nunerous holes in the study, as the Washington Post's Philip Bump pointed out when Trump similarly hyped it:

Yes, you read that correctly. The claim is that fully one-fifth of those who cast a mail-in ballot three years ago committed fraud. Where does this noncredible assertion originate? From Rasmussen’s purported survey of 1,085 “likely U.S. voters.”

Rasmussen has long offered results that skew more favorably to Republican candidates. (This is generally attributed to its focus on “likely voters,” a designation it defines that holds little meaning a year before an election.) In recent years, Rasmussen has fallen into the pugilistic pattern of so many other prominent voices on the right, elevating falsehoods about the 2020 election and, more disconcertingly, frequently conducting polls centered on “proving” rhetoric from the right-wing culture war.

[...]

This instantly fails the smell test. A fifth of voters said they voted in a state where they no longer live? About 6 in 10 Americans have never moved out of the states in which they were born. Half of the rest, we are meant to believe, committed an obvious form of election fraud three years ago.

Without, I’ll add, being detected by any authority or by any of the thousands of people who, eager to prove Trump right, have been looking for examples of fraudulent voting. Those professional and amateur sleuths have also somehow not found evidence showing that 1 in 12 absentee voters — millions of people! — were offered cash for their votes. This would seem like it might leave a trail.

Unruh also ignored the fact that, given Rasmussen's right-wing bias, the poll "suggests that a lot of this 'illegal' voting presumably resulted in ballots cast for Trump," as Bump also noted. Bump concluded: "To assume that there was rampant fraud because a partisan pollster generated numbers showing that an incredible — or rather, noncredible — number of voters 'remember' having done things that violate the law is ridiculous."

Also note that Unruh has embellished his falsely about money from a Mark Zuckerberg-funded foundation used to fund election operations in 2020 was "often used ... to recruit Joe Biden voters." Unruh offered no evidence that any of that money was specifically used to "recruit Joe Biden voters," let alone much of it, as he claims. In fact, any election office could have received the money, and indeed more Republican-dominated jurisdictions than Democratic-donimated ones accepted the money.

Unruh's investment in that lie continues to discredit WND.

NEW ARTICLE: The MRC Lies To Stop Scrutiny Of Disinformation, Part 2
Topic: Media Research Center
Spearheading a falsehood-filled campaign to stop a proposed government "disinformation governance board" wasn't enough for the Media Research Center -- it continues to smear and lash out at the woman who was to run it. Read more >>

MRC Can't Stop Denying That Univision's Trump Interview Was A Puff Piece
Topic: Media Research Center

When we last left off, the Media Research Center's Jorge Bonilla was trying to insist that Univision's softball interview of Donald Trump (which he won't admit it was) was a great thing -- but somehow also meaningless because he has to keep up the narrative of Univision being left-wing reprobates. But as the criticism of the softball interview continued to grow, other MRC writers felt the need to weigh in. Jeffrey Lord spent his Nov. 25 column complaining about the critics, with a dash of whataboutism:

The Hispanic network Univision is getting whacked by liberals. Why? Because they had the temerity to sit down for an interview with the former President of the United States who also happens to be the leading-by-a-lot candidate for the 2024 GOP nomination.

That would be, of course, Donald Trump.

[...]

Univision was created to model the left-leaning American broadcast networks. Which are nothing if not leftist propaganda machines. Univision was specifically designed, according to its ex-president, to be a Spanish-language version of those left-wing propaganda networks. 

And now? Now the new leadership of Univision chose to arrange an interview with…..Republican former President Donald Trump. Ohhhhhh, the horror.

On top of which Blaya accuses Univision and Trump of spreading -- you guessed it -- propaganda. As if he's never watched an American network slobber over Barack and/or Michelle Obama.

[...]

It is not news to note that Democrats view the Hispanic community not as a diverse, thoughtful community but rather as the political property of progressives. In which  contrary thought to the progressive mindset is not allowed. Univision, in that mindset, was built to be on the liberal plantation. And with this Trump interview the network had the audacity to step off of that plantation.

The all-American holiday season is now officially upon us. Serious politics will emerge once past the Christmas rush.

Lord ignored the fact that much of the criticism comes from the softball nature of the interview, not that it was done at all.

Bonilla returned for a Nov. 26 post whining that longtime Univision anchor Jorge Ramos pointed out the softball nature of the interview:

It was a matter of time before Univision senior anchor and Special Editorial Advisor to the CEO Jorge Ramos weighed in on the controversy surrounding Televisa’s interview of former President Donald Trump. And, in a manner similar to his own interactions with Donald Trump, he made it all about himself.

The Trump interview happened nearly three weeks ago, but the Ramos response ran on Ramos’ website during a holiday weekend. Was The New York Times pitched but not interested? Or did Ramos wait for the holiday to drop his column? Weird timing.

The column, titled “The Danger of Not Confronting Trump”, wastes no time in going to the heart of the matter, which is Jorge Ramos.

When Ramos pointed out that he has never interviewed Trump but was limited to asking a couple questions at a 2015 campaign stop in Iowa, Bonilla huffed that it was "a performative confrontation" -- as if Peter Doocy and other right-wing reporters don't do the same in the White House briefing room. Meanwhile, Bonilla still wouldn't admit that the crux of the issue was that it was a softball interview, and he again tried to insist that it means nothing to his designated anti-Univision narrative:

The media’s narrative surrounding the Televisa interview of Trump is not one of a corporate parent trying to restore balance to a property gone horribly wrong that has lost significant trust within its own viewing cohort, but of Univision’s brave struggle for editorial independence. But again, and so we’re crystal clear, by “independence” we mean the independence to remain a repository of Democrat [sic] talking points. Nothing else.

When actor John Leguizamo used a "Daily Show" segment to point out the softball nature of the interview, Bonilla again ignored that salient criticism and clung even harder to his Univision-is-evil narrative in another Nov. 26 post:

Leguizamo, who last made news by race-whining over actor John Franco’s casting as Fidel Castro, saw fit to post a video somewhere and call for a boycott of Univision over its deviation from its normal editorial standards, which is to be a reliable Democrat talking point regurgitator. And now, we suffer this obnoxious rant which aired on the desiccated husk of The Daily Show.

The media ran with Leguizamo’s initial video, oohing and aahing at these calls to counter an editorial shift THAT NEVER HAPPENED. There is no shift at Univision. There may be the perception of a shift, but there is no actual shift. And the fact that the media continue to amplify denunciations of a nonexistent shift means that none of these people that supposedly care so much about Univision ever even watch Univision. In fact, the Venn diagram of people who saw Leguizamo’s dopey rant and watch Univision regularly is two circles, a thousand miles apart. The woke anglos in the studio whooped and hollered, but no one who might actually be affected by an editorial shift at Univision actually saw any of this nonsense.

In the end, this is just a tantrum meant to create the illusion of an editorial shift. Don’t believe the hype of a shift unless Jorge Ramos and President of News Daniel Coronell either tender their resignations or are the subjects of a press release wishing them all the luck in their future endeavors.

Bonilla was still cranking out performative outrage at anyone daring to point out the softball Trump interview. He played whataboutism in a Dec. 4 post:

There’s been a lot of recent Acela Media and Professional Latinx outrage over 2024 presidential candidates doing what they perceive to be softball interviews with Spanish-language media. Case in point, the kerfuffle over former President Donald Trump’s interview with TelevisaUnivision. Not surprisingly, they don’t share the same concern for President Joe Biden’s interview with a radio network owned and operated by the foundation previously overseen by his campaign manager.

[...]

This interview of Joe Biden aired just before Thanksgiving on a radio network owned and operated by the family of his campaign manager, as the left were still in full meltdown mode over the Trump-Univision interview. This whining is not about “disinformation”, but about the left’s perceived loss of monopoly power and control over what Spanish-dominant audiences see and hear as news content.

Note that Bonilla still refuses to admit the Trump interview was softball-laden, conceding only that it was "perceive to be" a softball interview (while ignoring that this perception is correct).

When Univision President of News Daniel Coronell defended the Trump interview, Bonilla hyped it another Dec. 4 post (while, of course, still clinging to the corporate anti-Univision narrative):

Coronell defends both the style and substance of an interview, and explains the history behind the interview. He explains Enrique Acevedo’s approach to the interview, which was to get full answers from Trump. Coronell also addresses the issue of Joe Biden’s ads.

The record reflects, with crystal clarity, that we are no fan of Coronell. Much of Univision’s descent into open partisanship happened under Coronell’s watch, and I don’t think that a one-shot interview with Trump will suddenly undo years of institutional decay. The left are making much ado about nothing.

The whole episode is a reminder that the left only care about having the power to decide what news and information Hispanics see and hear. The perceived loss of control, although having no basis in fact, is what triggered the left's manic outcry over this interview. 

We publish Coronell’s remarks here because they are relevant to the controversy, they address critics’ concerns, and are therefore in the public interest. Furthermore, the Acela Media parachuting into this story wouldn’t even know where to begin to look for Coronell’s remarks. You’re welcome.

More than a month after the interview, Bonilla was still at it, this time raging in a Dec. 12 post at a New York Times article on the interview:

The idea that the onetime home of Walter Duranty should be taken seriously on anything pertaining to an editorial shift, or concern over an editorial shift at any other media outlet, is laughable. But, alas, here we are. The Old Grey Lady is the latest to weigh in on the Acela Media’s collective panic over Univision’s interview of former President Donald Trump specifically, and over a perceived editorial shift at Univision generally.

[...]

As with the other pieces, this article conveys the left’s sense of mourning over an ongoing Hispanic shift away from the Democrat Party. Is Univision’s shift real? As I’ve stated before, personnel is policy, and it’s hard to imagine Univision completely shifting to the center with the personnel that are currently in place- chief among them Jorge Ramos. 

Univision’s so-called shift may come down to that old Michael Jordan proverb: “Republicans buy sneakers, too”. It turns out that they also buy ads.

Once more, Bonilla absolutely refused to admit the Trump interview was a puff piece and insisted that its existence doesn't change the anti-Univision narrative he's paid to spout.

Newsmax Still Parroting False And Biased Attacks Against NewsGuard
Topic: Newsmax

Newsmax continued its parroting of right-wing attacks against website-rating service NewsGuard witha Dec. 9 article by Eric Mack featuring another right-wing outlet complaining that their shoddy work was called out:

The Biden administration could not get around the First Amendment in silencing dissent, but it has effectively found a way through the State Department paying NewsGuard to defund conservative media, according to a trio of researchers from the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER).

The First Amendment is "is so clear that only a politician could manage to miss the point," AIER senior researchers Phillip Magness, James Harrigan, and Ryan Yonk wrote in the New York Post this week.

[...]

The Post and AIER have been targeted by NewsGuard — founded by Steven Brill, a Democrat activist and donor, in 2018. Newsmax has reported it has been, too.

NewsGuard's rankings have since been used by advertising agencies to target and block conservative media from obtaining advertising revenue.

The complaints from Mack and AIER are generalized as to subject but don't get too deep into specifics,  suggesting that it's simply playing a partisan game rather than engaging in any sort of good-faith criticism.

A Dec. 13 article -- which was later deleted from the Newsmax website without explanation, though it lives in the Internet Archive -- featuring one of NewsGuard's most dishoenst critics, the Media Research Center (which posted its own version of the segment):

NewsGuard, the ensorship giant self-tasked with rating media outlets on reliability, has “for years been silencing conservatives, directing ad revenue to liberals instead,” said Dan Schneider, vice president of Media Research Center’s Free Speech America.

The biased company has been "choking off the life blood of conservative media outlets, all because of their zeal to defeat Donald Trump and any conservative that wants to stand for basic American principles," he told Newsmax.

“NewsGuard has one standard, that is defeat conservatives, promote liberals,” Schneider said Wednesday during an appearance on Newsmax TV’s “Chris Salcedo Show.”

Media Research Cente [sic] on Tuesday released a study that found that NewsGuard “overwhelmingly favored left-leaning outlets over right-leaning ones.”

Using AllSides, an organization that classifies media outlets by their “right” to “left” bias, “MRC researchers determined that NewsGuard provided a stellar average ‘credibility’ rating of 91/100 for ‘left’ and ‘lean left’ outlets (e.g., The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, Vox),” wrote MRC researchers. Meanwhile, “right” and “lean right” outlets, such as Fox News, the New York Post, and The Daily Wire, were given “an outrageously abysmal average score of 65/100.”

Schneider also criticized left-leaning news outlets for covering up the Hunter Biden probe “because he’s part of the Biden bribery scandal.”

“This is how Joe Biden and his family have been making money for a long time. And NewsGuard is covering for it. NewsGuard is not going to go back and re-rate all those media outlets that said the Hunter Biden laptop was a hoax. … Their bias is so extreme that the left is willing to give our taxpayer dollars, millions of our taxpayer dollars, to NewsGuard and other outlets just like it.”

Newsmax did not allow anyone from NewsGuard to respond to Schneider.

A Dec. 11 article by Mark Swanson hyped a Republican attack on NewsGuard:

House and Senate Armed Services committees last week concluded their negotiations on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and House Republicans have won a significant victory opposing woke censorship programs that impact Pentagon recruiting.

The Democrat-led Senate has agreed with Johnson’s demand the annual defense spending bill not allow Pentagon dollars to be spent with ad agencies that use "misinformation" media monitors.

Left-wing groups such as NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) have been used by major advertising agencies to block military recruitment ads on many conservative media outlets.

The new NDAA provision expressly prohibits any advertising agency the Defense Department contracts with from using services that engage in "determinations of misinformation."

The new law would also require the Pentagon to inform the House and Senate Armed Services committees any time the recruitment division directly contracts with NewsGuard, GDI or a similar entity.

Swanson did let NewsGuard respond -- though it took him three days to update his story to include that response -- but he continued to attack the group anyway, engaging in nitpicking over Hunter Biden's laptop:

In an email to Newsmax, NewsGuard disputed that it “was not a ‘vocal advocate’” of claims that the Hunter Biden’s laptop “represented Russia misinformation.”

However, the New York Post reported that NewsGuard CEO [Steve] Brill was a leader in declaring the Hunter Biden laptop story a “hoax.”

Also, NewsGuard’s board adviser, General Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA, was a principal advocate for asserting the laptop was Russian disinformation, and was one of 51 signatories to a now discredited letter made public in October 2020 making such a claim.

Despite the false claims about the laptop being a “hoax,” neither Brill nor NewsGuard has offered a retraction.

swanson offered no evidence that either Brill or Hayden were speaking on behalf of NewsGuard when they made those statement, and he failed to disclose that the New York Post offered no independent verification of the laptop at the time it introduced the story on it that would have addressed reasonable concerns about its authenticity.

Newsmax parroted the MRC again in a Dec. 14 article by Michael Katz:

NewsGuard, the left-wing media ratings group, continues to target conservative news outlets, a new study by the Media Research Center (MRC) finds.

In its annual review of NewGuard's rankings, an MRC Free Speech America study found that for the third year in a row NewsGuard continues to significantly outrank liberal and far-left news outlets over conservative ones.

"NewsGuard is just another leftist group trying to censor conservatives," MRC President Brent Bozell said in a statement. "We have the proof."

Note that Katz put a "left-wing" label on NewsGuard but no ideological label on the MRC despite its  clear right-wing bias.

Katz did let NewsGuard repsond -- then let the MRC respond to the response:

"The analysis in question is highly flawed, relying on a cherry-picked sample of just 66 ratings out of more than 9,500 NewsGuard has issued, less than 0.7%.," NewsGuard's Matt Skibinski told Newsmax.

"In fact, NewsGuard's apolitical process has resulted in many conservative publications outscoring similar left-leaning publications and vice versa — for example, The Daily Caller outscores The Daily Beast, The Daily Wire outscores the Daily Kos, and FoxNews.com outscores MSNBC.com."

MRC told Newsmax that these "outscores" have not always reflected the rankings for conservative media like The Daily Caller, The Daily Wire, and Fox News.

It also noted that outspoken conservative critics of NewsGuard, like Newsmax and The Federalist, have also been targeted for extremely low scores.

Neither Katz nor the MRC offered evidence that NewsGuard downgrades a media outlet solely for criticizing it. Swanson returned to tout another right-wing attack on NewsGuard in a Dec. 21 article:

Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis announced a consumer protection bill Thursday that would prevent state agencies from using taxpayer funds to contract with media censorship companies like NewsGuard.

Florida HB 939 mirrors similar federal legislation that moved to strike the Pentagon from contracting with advertising agencies that use NewsGuard to blacklist conservative publications.

"We've got state agencies throughout Florida trying to reach the public to provide critical services, and we need to make sure advertisers who partner with the state are doing their very best to reach the specific groups," Patronis said in the announcement.

"NewsGuard's technology, however, is working its way into the advertising world, and effectively blacklisting media outlets who don't measure up to their ratings."

The legislation comes on the heels of Patronis' letter to NewsGuard in March, warning then he would "not hesitate to use the full force of my office to shed light on the organization you're running."

Swanson is lying by calling NewsGuard a "media censorship companies," and later in the article he falsely called NewsGuard "far-left."