MRC Plays Whataboutism To Defend Trump's 'Vermin' Attack
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center will defend Donald Trump no matter how extreme he becomes. So when he started ranting about his opponents being "vermin," the MRC quickly rushed to his defense and whined about the critics. Mark Finkelstein did thte latter in a Nov. 13 post:

Calling Donald Trump a "fascist" is Joe Scarborough's stock in trade. He works it into his spiel almost as often as he brings up the fact that he once was a Congressman.

But "fascist" apparently no longer suffices to express the depths of Joe's disdain for the Donald. On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough declared that Trump has gone "full-on Hitler." Trump's sin was vowing to root out "vermin," his term for "radical-left thugs."

Trump = Hitler? Hitler—who carried out history's greatest genocide of Jews?

Trump, the man who delivered on the failed promise of preceding presidents to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem? The man behind the Abraham Accords, by which several Arab states opened diplomatic relations with Israel? Trump, the man with a Jewish daughter and son-in-law, and Jewish grandchildren? That's Hitler?

Alex Christy recently looked at a year of media coverage and crowned Scarborough as the media's "King of Nazi Analogies." That didn't even count the use of "fascist." Joe's streak continues.

Surely Scarborough is aware that the scourge of antisemitism in America lies largely on the left. With the chanting on campus, on American streets -- even in the halls of Congress in the person of Rashida Tlaib -- of "From The River to The Sea," effectively a call for the destruction of the Jewish state.

Finkelstein didn't mention that his employer has its own affinity for Nazi analogies ("digital brownshirts," anyone?).

Curtis Houck was similarly quiet about the MRC's love of Nazi analogies in a post the same day complaining that Trump's analogy was pointed out:

On Tuesday, ABC’s chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl’s third anti-Trump book hits shelves and will send Resistance types into further episodes of collective hyperventilation over Trump and the GOP as threats to national security who must be crushed in 2024. Karl hawked the book on Monday’s Good Morning America and lashed out at voters for “not” having “paid much attention to what” Trump’s “doing and saying,” including his “Third Reich” rhetoric.

Tired of Winning: Donald Trump at the End of the Grand Old Party is likely to be another bestseller and only further underline the liberal media’s symbiotic relationship with Trump of shrieking about him (as well as his supporters) but dismissing and ripping any legitimate Republican who’d give him a run for his money in 2024.

[...]

“[T]his is a very dark, dark thing. We heard him refer to his opponents just the other day as vermin — using — using language out of the Third Reich,” he added.

Stephanopoulos interjected partway through with — wait for it — Trump-Hitler comparison, saying Trump’s engaging in “Adolf Hitler talk.”

Karl continued, warning Trump would “eliminate and annihilate his enemies and get retribution” and that his “hardcore base” believes him when he said his enemies as “coming after me because their real target is you and I’m standing in the way.”

Ignoring the dozens of campaign emails, videos from Trump himself, and an entire record of four years in office, Karl hilariously claimed Trump “doesn’t really have a policy agenda so much as a — as an agenda of getting revenge on his enemies and insisting on loyalty.”

Despite referencing "dozens of campaign emails, videos from Trump himself, and an entire record of four years in office," Houck quoted from none of them to show Trump cares about policy instead of revenge. And he's certainly not going to mention the video in which Trump says, "I am your retribution."

Clay Waters complained in a Nov. 15 post that a historian pointed out the Nazi parallels in the "vermin" remark:

The Monday evening PBS NewsHour starred recurring guest, New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, using Trump's talk of leftist "vermin" at a rally on Veteran’s Day to compare the former president to Hitler. (With the far-left’s public anti-semitic behavior of late, some are cheekily tempted to ask if being compared to Hitler is a good thing or a bad thing on the left.)

Ben-Ghiat likened Trump to fascists three times along with similar unseemly comparisons.

[...]

(If Ben-Ghiat truly thinks she's in danger of fascist political prosecution by Trump, she certainly doesn't seem concerned.)

My colleague Mark Finkelstein pointed out that President Trump actually moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and drove the Abraham Accords, by which several Arab states opened diplomatic relations with Israel and was a staunch ally of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In other words, Trump's the worst Hitler ever.

Tim Graham went for 25-year-old whataboutism in his Nov. 15 podcast:

Everyone from PBS to Rachel Maddow on CBS is freaking out over Donald Trump promising to root out the “vermin” from the radical left. Out came the allegedly nonpartisan historians like Ruth Ben-Ghiat to explain that Trump sounds almost exactly like Hitler. It doesn't matter that as president, Trump implemented a range of policies that were pro-Israel. They have to spread that "beware the authoritarian" messaging. They just can't let go...even if it helps Trump. Even if Trump wants them to trash him.

But they can’t find outrage when leftists described Republicans as a “crazed swarm of right-wing locusts.” That reduction of the GOP to insects came from NAACP leader Julian Bond in a National Press Club speech in 1998.

Mr. Bond said: "[Reagan] brought to power a band of financial and ideological profiteers who descended on the nation's capital like a crazed swarm of right-wing locusts bent on destroying the rules and the laws that protect our people from poisoned air and water, and from greed."

Did anyone think Julian Bond was some kind of dehumanizing authoritarian? No. It wasn't a story to them, only to The Washington Times and some conservative news-busters.

It says something about how desperate the MRC is to defend Trump no matter what that Graham had to go back 25 years to find something equivalent, and he could only find a policy official, not a presidential candidate.

Whwen Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman stated that Trump "has to be eliminated" -- in context, he's clearly talking about eliminating Trump from politics, not killing him -- Jorge Bonilla used the remark (and Graham's ancient whataboutism) to downplay Trump's rhetoric in a Nov. 20 post:

It wasn’t that long ago that the media went into high dudgeon over Trump’s use of the word “vermin”, and went out of their way to elicit comparisons to Hitler. But this standard seems to cut in only one direction. “A crazed swarm of right-wing locusts”, is how one speaker referred to Republicans a generation ago. No one clutched their pearls or went for the fainting couch. But no such deference for Trump.

Bonilla didn't deny, however, that it was accurate to compare Trump's rhetoric to Hitler.

Houck returned for even more ancient whataboutism in a Nov. 22 post:

With the chyron reading “Breaking News; Fears Grow Amid Trump’s Embrace of Authoritarianism”, supposedly objective and nonpartisan Washington Post journalist Carol Leonnig had a cartoonish claim of her own, huffing that “it was clear that Donald Trump…was not the president for all Americans” in contrast to “all of them before Donald Trump” who “made an effort to unite the country, to try to – even though they may have been elected by one party’s faithful or another, still tried to encourage and enable and kind of, in essence, charm the other side”.

Was Leonnig in a coma during, say, Obama’s Lawrenceville, Kansas speech? Or Woodrow Wilson with the Espionage and Sedition Acts? Or Bill Clinton’s vicious spin team led in part by current ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos?

Menendez went to McCaskill with more fear-mongering and stoking of divisions, huffing that Trump (and thus his supporters) just wrong, but “the threat from within” with his supporters representing possible actors in “domestic violence extremism”.

“He is the one stoking fear. He is the one stoking violence around this country,” she added.

Houck is so marinated in right-wing grievance-mongering that we're supposed to know what he means by dropping a reference to "Obama’s Lawrenceville, Kansas speech" without explanation. And since there is no town in Kansas named Lawrenceville (though there is one named Lawrence), we still don't know what he's talking about.

A Nov. 24 post by Waters complained that a couple of New York Times reporters "played along with Democratic scaremongering over Trump and his “vermin” insult," but doesn't explain why there shouldn't be any. Graham used a Dec. 4 post to whine that a TV host pointed out that Ron DeSantis refused to condemn Trump's "vermin" remark despite being asked multiple times to address it:

On Sunday, NBC Meet the Press host Kristen Welker displayed an interview taped on Saturday with Gov. Ron DeSantis. She repeatedly demanded the candidate denounce Donald Trump for his use of the term "vermin" to describe communists, fascists, and "radical left thugs" in America. She asked six times to try and force an answer, implying Trump sounded like a Nazi. DeSantis said he wasn't playing the media game on this.

[...]

After Welker's performance, she turned to her panel of pundits for their analysis. Stephen Hayes of The Dispatch hit DeSantis for "how small he felt in response to those questions." Tim Alberta of The Atlantic said "He seemed defensive, jumpy in that interview. He almost gives the vibe of a guy who sort of knows that the end could be near."

Graham didn't dispute that analysis of DeSantis, nor did he explain why the "vermin" remark shouldn't be criticized, or even offer a defense of DeSantis' "media game" evasion.

Newsmax Lets Giuliani Bloviate About Losing Defamation Lawsuit
Topic: Newsmax

Newsmax didn't have a lot to say about the defamation lawsuit two Georgia election workers filed against Rudy Giuliani -- it published a wire article in August when a judge found him liable for defaming the women, and an article a few days later let Giuliani portray it as among the "ridiculous lawsuits" he faces. But when Giuliani was ordered to pay $148 million to the women for defaming them, Newsmax finally had to devote some attention to the story involving the guy for whom it's running a legal defense fund.

It ran a Dec. 15 wire article on the verdict, but it rewrote the original AP article to give greater prominence to Giuliani's whining that the “absurdity of the number merely underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding” and added a statement from him to Newsmax that "It bore no resemblance to a trial in a country with the rule of law. Newsmax also trotted out a Republican congressman to denounce the verdict later that day, as Michael Katz wrote up:

A jury's verdict that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani must pay $148 million to two former Georgia election workers who claim he defamed them was "pathetic" and Newsmax on Friday.

The workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, sued Giuliani for defamation regarding the 2020 election that they said upended their lives with racist threats and harassment. Giuliani was helping former President Donald Trump contest his narrow loss to Joe Biden in Georgia in that election.

"It's just ridiculous, the amount," Burchett told "Eric Bolling The Balance." "I read what he was accused of, but $148 million, that's just pathetic. Everybody knows that. They're just trying to ruin folks.

"This is a political game within our court system. It's so political that our own Justice Department hasn't even lifted a finger to look at Hunter Biden when the $30 million that have flowed through that family, their crime family, and probably not paid any taxes on it. I don't know if Rudy Giuliani is guilty or not, but it's not in the hundreds of millions of dollars guilty. I just find that offensive."

Newsmax also had on Giuliani himself that day to rage about the verdict, as Eric Mack dutifully wrote up in a Dec. 16 atticle:

Vowing to appeal the $148 million defamation damages verdict delivered Friday, Rudy Giuliani told Newsmax the "absurd" amount shows the trial is bigger than the two claimants, as Biden lawyers are actually seeking to silence former President Donald Trump.

"It's not a trial," Giuliani told Friday night's "Greg Kelly Reports," just hours after the ruling. "I never had a trial.

"This is way beyond them. And my desire to move on with this case, it's really to save the republic. Trials like this do not happen in a country that's ruled by law. Trials like this happen in a country that's ruled by a regime, which is what the Biden machine is, it's a regime.

"And this is not the only desecration of justice in this regime. It's one of many. It has to stop."

Giuliani, Kelly and Mack all failed to mention that the reason Giuliani "never had a trial" is that Giuliani refused to take part in the trial process. He failed to take part in the discovery process despite repeated efforts and court orders to get him to, and he effectively conceded that he made defamatory statements about the women. Giuliani has no one but himself to blame for how things turned out, but Kelly and Mack won't discuss that fact. Instead, they let him spout a conspiracy theory that the Bidens were behind all this:

"Also, the lawyers here were Biden lawyers. These women could not have afforded these lawyers. Is it a coincidence that the chief lawyer worked with Hunter Biden and represented the crooked Burisma?

"Who's the guy who revealed that? Who? Me. Why do you think they're coming after me? Because if it wasn't for me, nobody would know about Joe Biden."

The ties to President Joe Biden and Hunter Biden are far too direct to be coincidental, according to Giuliani.

Neither Kelly nor Mack pushed back on those claims.

Mack got another article out of Giuliani's appearance on Kelly's show in which he actually touched on some of the relevant issues:

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani set up the basis for his appeal of the $148 million defamation ruling against him Friday, saying the Democrat, anti-Trump judge forced excessive personal discovery of his finances and ruled against him for failing to comply fast enough with the unusual request.

"How can you not be so sad for the country?" Giuliani told Friday's "Greg Kelly Reports" on Newsmax hours after the jury verdict ruled on the amount and not Giuliani's guilt or innocence. "Here I am in the District of Columbia: The first time I came here I got goose bumps; I'm going to leave here thinking that this District of Columbia court is a fascist court."

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, appointed by former President Barack Obama in 2010, in August found Giuliani civilly liable for two Georgia election worker's claims of "defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, civil conspiracy, and punitive damage" before the trial began because he did not turn over personal financial documents in a timely manner to the defense.

"I knew when she was assigned to the case, I knew we were dead," Giuliani told host Greg Kelly. "I didn't realize we were that dead.

Mack didn't explain how that discovery request was supposedly "unusual," nor did he question the fact that Giuliani apparently failed to comply with all discovery requests, not just that one. Instead, he let Giuliani whine in the third person that ""The jurors never saw a single defense from Giuliani" without explaining that the reason that happened is because Giuliani absolutely refused to provide one.

When Freeman and Moss brought a new action against him seeking a gag order to stop him from continuing to defame them, Giuliani whined about that in a Dec. 18 Newsmax TV appearance:

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Newsmax on Monday the new federal lawsuit seeking a permanent gag order against him is "un-American."

Giuliani joined "Rob Schmitt Tonight" to talk about the second lawsuit brought against him by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, days after they won a $148 million defamation lawsuit against him.

"That sounds kind of un-American, doesn't it? That's prior restraint," Giuliani said.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on Monday, seeks to "permanently bar" Giuliani from "persisting in his defamatory campaign against the plaintiffs."

Schmitt did not apparently ask why Giuliani could not simply shut up and not defame the women further.

When Giuliani filed for bankruptcy a few days later in a ploy to avoid having to pay the women, Newsmax ran a wire article, then invived him on TV to whine some more:

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Newsmax on Thursday that he had to "protect myself" and other "normal creditors" in the wake of a $148 million defamation judgment against him, saying, "I'm destroyed."

Giuliani appeared on "Rob Schmitt Tonight" hours after filing the petition in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

"I'm very hopeful the entire case is going to be reversed but I can't be sure of that," Giuliani told Schmitt.

Further, Giuliani took issue with Judge Beryl Howell's ruling on Wednesday to dissolve the standard 30-day grace period for enforcement of judgment. The judge said her ruling was due to "several considerations" citing the "risk that Giuliani may attempt to conceal and dissipate [his] assets" during the 30-day period.

Schmitt apparently did not ask Giuliani about the possibility he might hide assets or ask any challenging questions about the defamation to which he admitted.

Meanwhile, Nesmax has given Giuliani a show on its streming channel, Newsmax2, called "America's Mayor Live," where he ramble at will, so he's got a little money coming in to help pay off that defamation judgment, not to mention his other legal issues.

MRC Continued To Heather Liz Cheney
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Reesarch Center's Heathering campaign against Liz Cheney as she promoted her new book continued in a Dec. 6 post by Tim Graham:

Taxpayer-funded National Public Radio was aggressively competing to be the most interview spot for Liz Cheney on Monday's Morning Edition. Anchor Leila Fadel was every bit as promotional as say, Asma Khalid was with Kamala Harris a year ago. Cheney is now in the pantheon of Democrat heroes. The headline was a typical repetition of Liz's message: 

Democracy is at stake if Trump is reelected, Liz Cheney warns in her new book

Fadel surely enjoyed the idea of ripping House Republicans as spineless traitors to the Constitution:

[...]

Fadel asked small, facilitating questions to let Cheney spool out her story of the rotting of the Republicans: "What was it that stripped away that unanimity [after January 6]?" And: "What's at stake here for the country?" Then came the obligatory question about if she's a Republican, which nobody should imagine at this point, not with how the liberal media are spoon-feeding her:

As usual, Graham refused to offer any sort of fact-based rebuttal to anything Cheney said -- he just whined that she was given in platform to say it. He repeated his attack in a post the next day on a different interview:

NewsHour? Many nights, you couldn't tell the difference. Co-host Amna Nawaz interviewed Liz Cheney on Thursday, and she was just like NPR's Leila Fadel in merely facilitating all of Cheney's Republican-ripping talking points from her new book. Republican tax dollars are used to trash Republicans on "public" broadcasting. 

The segment's online headline was just a PR echo: Liz Cheney’s ‘Oath and Honor’ spotlights dangers of a potential 2nd Trump presidency. Nawaz's questions were fluffy softballs:

There was no mention of the fluffy softballs Graham's boss, Brent Bozell, tossed to Ron DeSantis in a gushfest a month earlier. It's as if Graham has a double standard on the issue.

Graham did actually attempt a substantive response regarding one exchange. When Cheney pointed out that Republicans were too scared to vote for Trump's impeachment, Graham huffed in response:

Neither Nawaz nor Cheney was going to explore how there were ten House Republicans who voted for the second impeachment of Trump days before he left office. Only two of them are still in the House. Some of them left to make big book deals and draw love on PBS.

The example Graham provided of a Trump-criticizing Republican who "drew love" on PBS? Adam Kinzinger. Graham did not explain why no Republican should have voted for Trump's impeachment.

When Cheney appeared on "The View," Nicholas Fondacaro had a huge meltdown in a Jan. 10 post:

With the calendar finally reading “2024,” the realization and panic seemed to be really setting in for the liberal cast of ABC’s The View. During an interview with former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, which spanned most of the Wednesday show, moderator Whoopi Goldberg and co-host Sara Haines literally begged Cheney to launch a third party and/or run third party in order to stop former President Trump from possibly beating President Biden, if he won the GOP nomination.

After returning from a commercial break, Goldberg immediately floated the idea of Cheney finding a “smart” Democrat to start a third party with. “I have felt for a long time that there's no reason why you can't find somebody smart on the left and somebody smart on the right and put them together and make that the new party,” she opined.

Faux conservative Ana Navarro quipped that a “Cheney/Goldberg” ticket could be in the works. Goldberg shot it down, saying that running for office wasn’t for her, but pressed Cheney on the idea and claimed elections would be outlawed if Trump was elected again:

Note that Fondacaro focused solely on irrelevant third-party discussions and ignored the substance of what Cheney said, which even he conceded "spanned most of the Wednesday show." That's how desperate the MRC is to smear Cheney for not marching in lockstep with its fellow Trump-lovers.

More WND Columnists Freak Out Over Removal Of Confederate Monument At Arlington Cemetery
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Even more WorldNetDaily columnists had meltdowns over the removal of a Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. Jim Darlington attempted a little Civil War revisionism in a Dec. 19 column:

Amazing! Now we are waiting to see if reason prevails or will the autocrats of our "Rich Men North of Richmond" drive the final nail into the coffin of both national and racial unity? Thankfully a stay of execution has been granted by a Trump appointed judge for the planned destruction of the Reconciliation Monument crafted by the Jewish sculptor Moses Ezekiel – a great monument meant to celebrate America's national reunification after the War Between the States and honoring those who fought and died on both sides. Why would the government desecrate Arlington National Cemetery and do such violence to our history?

Those advocating for such destruction claim that they only to want an end to racism, and to honor the South is to affirm racist values.

But was the Civil War fought over the question of slavery? As a "Yankee" who moved to Alabama, I've had to try and consider the contrary points of view. I think that for the Northerners, it's true enough. Many were willing to fight against the thoroughly demonized Southern slavers. Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had flown off the shelves, sure enough. But I wonder if it holds true of the Southerners, that preserving slavery was enough for them to fight and die for?

[...]

Was the continuation of slavery a matter of pride for all Southerners? Maybe not. Less than 5% of them actually held slaves, and the keeping of those slaves very negatively affected the wages of the rest of Southern workers. Did Southerners see the condition of slaves, who, at least from their perspective, were fed and housed, as necessarily worse than the conditions of similar numbers of factory workers up North, who were paid less than it cost to live decently, were often under-fed and forced to live in violent and dangerous slums (sort of like the slaves' descendants do now)?

In fact, several Confederate states specifically cited slavery as a reason for leaving the Union in their secession statements, meaning that, yes, the Civil War was largely, if not entirely, about slavery. Darlington concluded by ranting that theremoval of the monument was the work of a "usurping regime,"' whatever that means:

In the end, the continuation of slavery benefited a small wealthy minority of Southerners, but a fear of the possible consequences, of its discontinuation, permeated the society as a whole.

In the end, the emancipation of the slaves was something the North celebrated and the South came, sometimes grudgingly, sometimes gladly, to accept. But the wish to become, again, the United States of America became universal.

The intended removal of the Reconciliation Monument is an assault on our unity as a nation, and yet one more declaration by the present usurping regime in Washington of the intention to divide and destroy us.

Actually, it's the monument itself that is a symbol of division and destruction, not its removal.

A Dec. 21 column by Mike Pottage invoked the monument's removal -- but didn't use the word "Confederate" to describe it -- in ranting about Democrats:

The Democratic Party has a history of calling off elections and seizing control of government. It did so in 1861 as 11 states went off on their own, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. The confrontation is called "the Civil War." Then, Democrats were all about "states' rights." Today, Democrats prefer the term "insurrection." What is important for people to note is the fact it was the Democratic Party then, and today it is the same Democratic Party, running away from constitutional order and plunging the nation into chaos.

Setting aside the obvious voter disenfranchisement in Colorado, Democrats of the mid-1800s were fixated on race. Nothing much has changed.

The most important aspect of the post-Civil War era was "reconciliation." And today's Democrats are roaming about Arlington National Cemetery at this very moment overseeing the removal of the "Reconciliation" monument, a symbol of one nation reunited. Why destroy unity in favor of disunity?

If enough voters figure this out, the Democratic Party will find itself on a pathway to suicide. Democrat voters ultimately may choose the nation over the party.

Both Darlington and Pottage made a point of calling the monument a "reunification" monument when it really wasn't: 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. It was also pointed out that the monument carries an inscription of the Latin phrase "Victrix causa diis placuit sed victa Caton" ("The victorious cause was pleasing to the gods, but the lost cause to Cato") that "construes the South’s secession as a noble 'Lost Cause.'" That doesn't sound very reconciliatory.

WND also ran a couple outside articles on the monument's removal and a brief injunction against it.

MRC Surprisingly Knocks NewsNation's Performance At Fourth GOP Debate
Topic: Media Research Center

As far as the Media Research Center is concerned, the loser of the fourth Republican presidential debate was ... NewsNation, the channel that aired it. That's a surprise, considering how much the MRC is desperate to tell you how wonderful and purportedly unbiased NewsNation is (despite that fact that it features former Fox News figures both on camera and behind the scenes). The first shot at NewsNation was paired with a move from the MRC's DeSantis Defense Brigade in a Dec. 6 post by Nicholas Fondacaro:

NewsNation was the new kid on the block in the television news space, and Wednesday was their first go at hosting a presidential debate. The moderators were NewNation's [sic] Elizabeth Vargas, The Washington Free Beacon editor-in-chief Eliana Johnson, and Sirius XM podcaster Megyn Kelly. While NewsNation claimed not to have an agenda, it was hard to see it as the first question and a series of audio/visual mishaps all seemed to go against one of the Republican candidates in particular.

Unfortunately, things didn’t start well as Kelly kicked off the debate with a long-winded fastball at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pressing him to get out of the race[:]

[...]

When DeSantis went to answer the question, the NewsNation control room had apparently messed with his microphone and had him sounding like a colony of bees in a vacuum cleaner. Some may argue that it was just an accident since he was the first to speak. But that issue should have been worked out in a pre-debate walkthrough when they hooked up the candidates and adjusted their audio levels.

There was another snafu almost 10 minutes later where, as DeSantis was going after former Ambassador Nikki Haley and Black Rock, the camera started shaking wildly (both incidents are included in the video accompanying this piece). DeSantis had already spoken and had not moved, so camera adjustments shouldn’t have been necessary. Again, that’s usually worked out in walkthroughs.

Those were the only noticeable audio/visual issues during the debate.

Jorge Bonilla weighed in with his own NewsNation complaint in a post a couple hours later:

Tonight was NewsNation’s first foray into hosting a presidential primary debate, and then running a post-debate analysis special. No small feat for what amounts to a brand new network. And with that, comes the opportunity for self-congratulation. Which, unfortunately, did not happen off-air.

Watch as the all-star panel headed by Chris Cuomo effusively congratulates itself on a job well-done:

[...]

In fairness, congratulations are in order. But it wasn’t like the event went off without a hitch, as our friend Nick Fondacaro pointed out. The start of the debate was marred by technical glitches that could have been averted with a walkthrough. Or one more walkthrough. But NewsNation recovered and delivered a more substantive debate with a better panel asking more of the kinds of questions you’d expect in a Republican primary debate (unlike the Reagan Library fiasco).

From there, it was on to praising candidates for dutifully reciting right-wing talking points. A post by Tom Olohan cheered how "presidential candidate Nikki Haley called for a TikTok ban citing rampant antisemitism on the app." He made sure not to mention that Twitter/X, run by MRC fave Elon Musk, also has an anti-Semitism problem, some of it spread by Musk himself.

Alex Christy went into Defense Brigade mode to defend DeSantis over a reference to an older Republican president:

To close out the Wednesday GOP Presidential Debate, the Washington Free Beacon’s Eliana Johnson asked the candidates which former president they would draw inspiration from and for his choice, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis selected Calvin Coolidge. For some reason, PolitiFact decided to fact-check this.

DeSantis argued, “When Calvin Coolidge was president, "the country was in great shape," but PolitiFact claimed it is more complicated. On one hand, PolitiFact notes, “Coolidge’s reputation has risen in the past two decades, especially among conservatives, who value his record of balanced budgets, low taxes, light regulation and limited government. Biographer Amity Shlaes, who chairs the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, wrote that, under Coolidge, Americans began buying cars and electric appliances, and patents "increased dramatically.”

On the other, "Coolidge’s hands-off approach appeared to be reasonably popular with Americans. But the Roaring ’20s ended abruptly with the Great Depression five months after Coolidge left office. This sequence of events has been hard for historians to ignore: A periodic survey of historians currently places Coolidge 24th in the ranking of presidents, just below average."

That survey PolitiFact cites also ranks Franklin Roosevelt as the nation’s third greatest president which says more about the people doing the ranking than FDR.

[...]

Was Coolidge a perfect president? No, none of them have been, but the economy performed great during his tenure and he understood the limits of the power of the office which is more than can be said of the current president. Most importantly, however, is that which president Ron DeSantis considers to be a worthy role model for his own presidency is an opinion.

Christy did not explain why an opinion can't be fact-checked.

From there, it was on to the usual complaining that non-right-wing media weighed on the debate. Tim Graham grumbled that CNN said nice things about Haley:

CNN came out of the NewsNation Republican debate with a typical flourish: Republicans are seriously evil. Analyst Van Jones, who had a cup of coffee in the White House in the earliest days of President Obama, compared Nikki Haley to "Wonder Woman fighting off like a mob of like, supervillains."

CNN host Kaitlan Collins thought DeSantis had a good debate, but there was a lot of yelling crosstalk, and "I think the most notable point was Chris Christie at the end saying picture Election Day and saying Donald Trump will not be someone who's voting on that day because he is going to be a convicted felon."

CNN has been savoring that idea for five years now.

Curtis Houck whined that the elephant who wasn't in the room was talked about:

Following the fourth 2024 Republican presidential debate, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC shrugged Thursday morning not only at the notion they matter, but showed varying degrees of rage over the fact that the debate helmed by NewsNation’s Elizabeth Vargas, SiriusXM’s Megyn Kelly, and the Free Beacon’s Eliana Johnson wasn’t dominated by questions about Donald Trump and instead beset with pesky policy issues (like, say, the economy and Israel).

ABC’s Good Morning America was disgusted. Co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos falsely claimed Trump only came up from “time to time” and was “hardly mentioned after [he] said he would govern like a dictator on the first day”.

[...]

Stephanopoulos then condescendingly added that “[i]t’s hard to think how much these debates even matter any more.”

Karl again gushed over his former ABC colleague: “Chris Christie, I thought, had a significant moment there, several significant moments. He’s clearly comfortable in being somebody who is not only not afraid to offend Donald Trump. He is not afraid to offend Donald Trump’s supporters, Donald Trump voters.”

On CBS Mornings, socialist co-host Tony Dokoupil had the same talking points, lamenting “most of [Trump’s] Republican rivals” were “reluctant to criticize him” and whining the four candidates who actually showed up to face questions “spent a lot of time slamming each other, more time doing that than criticizing” Trump.

Again, Houck's sole evidence that Dokoupil is "socialist" is that he did a single segment on income equality four years ago (the accuracy of which Houck did not dispute).

Christy then moved to comedy-cop mode to grouse in a Dec. 8 post that Seth Meyers didn't have anything nice to say about the debate:

An annoyed Seth Meyers reacted to the Wednesday GOP presidential debate on the Thursday edition of Late Night on NBC by claiming that “no one gives a [bleep]” and that the four debaters were all a bunch of “blowhards.”

Citing current polling, Meyers wondered what the whole point was before sarcastically conceding that maybe he should give the non-Trump candidates some credit, “Now, in fairness, I shouldn't be so glib I may disagree with these people, but they've stepped up to take on the responsibility of leadership, and who knows? Maybe there's a chance they'll beat Trump and become the nominee. So, I do think we should at least listen to what they have to say.”

Meyers then played a clip of Megyn Kelly opening the broadcast, “Welcome to the fourth and final—” but Meyers cut the clip short, “Just kidding. No one gives a [bleep].”

Claiming his dismissal was justified, Meyers continued, “Why should I-- why should I act like any of these people are actually running against Donald Trump when they won't even act like they're running against Donald Trump. They spent the whole debate fighting with each other like pigeons fighting over a French fry in the parking lot of a restaurant that is owned by a much bigger pigeon. In case you missed it -- sorry because you missed it, here's a quick recap of all these dweebs taking shots at each other.”

[...]

Of course, Republican candidates are going to try to tailor their message in a way that appeals to Republican voters and running around sounding like Seth Meyers is not the way to victory.

Christy didn't explain how the need for a Republican candidate running against Donald Trump to say how he or she would be different from Trump equates to "sounding like Seth Meyers."

WND's Lively: 'We All Know It's True' That Black Men In Big Cities Are 'Excessively Violent' Criminals
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Scott Lively started out his Nov. 20 WorldNetDaily column with a little racist ranting:

In my last column, "Why the Palestinians refuse to civilize," I put the Israel/Hamas conflict in its proper perspective as the inevitable fruit of cultural Marxism's division of all humanity into oppressors and the oppressed, with the Palestinians achieving the collective status of "most oppressed" after decades of painful and careful cultivation of that image and, thus far, winning the all-important propaganda war among the brainwashed American policy-setters with its grand prize of the right to punish and plunder their "oppressors" without limit. Today I am coining the term "Oppression Theology" to define this phenomenon more precisely as as form of Secular Humanist religious dogma and show how it functions domestically.

Sunday here in Memphis my day started with breaking news – delivered right to my cellphone in the form of a "bolo" emergency alert – that an armed and very dangerous mass murderer was on a rampage, with three killing sites already behind him. We later learned that it was a family affair, and the multiple victims were the man's relatives by blood and marriage. He was an African-American man, as are (vastly disproportional to their numbers as a minority) a high plurality if not strictly the majority of excessively violent criminals in Memphis and frankly all the deep blue cities. It's strictly verboten to point this out, but we all know it's true.

Lively offered no evidence of how we all supposedly "know it's true." He continued ranting anyway:

The problem with inner-city African-Americans isn't the "African" part as so many racist-types insist, but the "American" part, because America's Africans have been stewed and steeped in the "victim/plunder" marinade of Cultural Marxist "Oppression Theology" more than any other faction of our "multicultural" society. (After multiple African missions, I know the African-Africans are not naturally like that.) The poisonous "critical race theory" being forced upon America's schoolchildren emphasizes a "white privilege" narrative painting all whites as inherently oppressive regardless of their overt actions and paints all blacks as inherently oppressed regardless of their personal successes. 

This has, of course, created a de facto victim-based "black privilege" in our society – including both 1) the right to plunder the assets of the oppressors in the form of presumed eventual high-dollar reparations (with increasingly widespread shoplifting and looting considered by many just a deserved advance against future payments), and 2) the right to disregard any aspects of the law and customs of the oppressor's society with impunity (including most obviously here in Memphis the traffic laws). These problems are compounded wherever the Soros machine has installed its agents in the criminal justice system: "Justice" is simply redefined to serve the social goals of "Oppression Theology," which means no prosecution, no punishment and, sadly, no protection for black neighborhoods from home-grown thuggery.

Sounds like a guy who misses the days when white people had all the privilege. He then tried to work gay people into his conspiracy theory:

The next most victimization-empowered class of Americans are the "gays" whose spokesman "Michael Swift" explained the victim-plunder mentality most eloquently in his classic essay "The Gay Revolutionary" (which Congressman Bill Dannemeyer read into the Congressional Record back in 1987.)

"This essay is an outré, madness, a tragic, cruel fantasy, an eruption of inner rage, on how the oppressed desperately dream of being the oppressor. We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses. … Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. … The family unit – spawning ground of lies, betrayals, mediocrity, hypocrisy and violence – will be abolished. … All churches who condemn us will be closed."

There are an additional 15 paragraphs here, if you have the stomach for it, ending with this: "We shall be victorious because we are fueled with the ferocious bitterness of the oppressed who have been forced to play seemingly bit parts in your dumb, heterosexual shows throughout the ages. We too are capable of firing guns and manning the barricades of the ultimate revolution. Tremble, hetero swine, when we appear before you without our masks." This essay was called "satire" at the time, but history proves it was deadly serious – even a blueprint for "gay" victim/plunderers. [Emphasis added]

In fact, the essay was satire then and now, as the "Michael Swift" byline should denote (an allusion to Jonathan Swift of "A Modest Proposal" fame). The essay was a reaction to homophobes like Lively, who nevertheless unironically treat the satire with utmost seriousness -- though he doesn't explain why oppressed poeple, as gay people were in the 1980s, have no right to be bitter and should just take their oppression in stride.

Lively concluded by trying to tie this all together with Marxism, somehow:

Black Lives Matter is a joint venture of elite-controlled blacks and "gays," run by a pair of black openly Marxist lesbians. As I've always said, "The lives of black people matter very much but 'Black Lives Matter' is an evil Marxist cult whose far-left agenda destroys black families and their neighborhoods."

Importantly, all these victim/plunder armies are tools controlled by a globalist social-engineering elite with a heavy emphasis on breaking stalwartly self-reliant Judeo-Christian America as the necessary prerequisite to global Marxist government. I was onto BLM as an agent provocateur in this plan all the way back in 2014 as I explained in my article "Bad Moon on the Rise: Bill Cosby, Ferguson and Obama." I bolstered my case in "The Cosby Conspiracy" in 2021 with additional evidence.

Look around, America. What is the common denominator on display among all these forces breaking America down? It is, as Swift admitted, "the ferocious bitterness of the oppressed" – the fruit of Cultural Marxist religious fanaticism. We must accept this is spiritual warfare and act accordingly.

Both of those columns float the conspiracy that Cosby's history of sexual assault was exposed --or in Lively's words, "was being deliberately taken down by Obama" -- because he spoke out against violence after the police-caused death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

MRC's Anti-Abortion Extremist Would Force Woman To Carry Non-Viable Fetus
Topic: Media Research Center

The next time an anti-abortion activist tells you they're not about forcing women to give birth, we need simply point to the Media Research Center's resident anti-abortion extremist, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg. She demanded that a Texas woman be forced to give birth to a fetus that would likely not survive outside of the womb (if it didn't die inside the womb first, that is) and might jeopardize the woman's life and future fertility in a Dec. 8 post:

Kate Cox learned at 20 weeks gestation with her baby that the child had a fetal abnormality. Rather than allowing the child to grow to full term and giving it the best chance at life, Cox wants to kill her child. A Texas judge, surprisingly, is allowing it to happen.

Cox, a 31-year-old Dallas woman and mom of two and one on the way (for now) learned that her baby in the womb developed a rare fetal abnormality. Her unborn daughter was diagnosed with Trisomy 18, which oftentimes results in a fatal outcome either just before or right after birth however, that isn’t always the case. 

Nonetheless, Cox, who is past the limit for abortion in Texas, is suing the state so that she can obtain an emergency abortion as she doesn’t want a child with issues. As the lawsuit states, the baby girl “likely” has “an umbilical hernia; a twisted spine likely due to spina bifida, a neural tube defect; clubbed or ‘rocker-bottom’ foot; intrauterine growth restriction; and irregular skull and heart development.”

The lawsui also alleges that there would be risks for Cox during the delivery process, as there all with all childbirth processes but that if any of those risks resulted in actual harm, her chances for more pregnancies in the future could be at jeopardy[.]

Mandelburg's headlline screeched, "Judge Permits Mother to Illegally Dismember Her 20-Week-Old Preborn Daughter." But if the woman has gone through the legal process to obtain permission from a judge to get the procedure, it's not illegal. Given that the goal of anti-abortion extremists is to shame women for having abortions no matter how necessary and eliminating as many exceptions as possible -- and that their logical endpoint is to punish and imprison any woman who has ever had one -- Mandelburg cited her fellow activists to play the shame-and-punish card:

As of now however, Ken Paxton, Texas AG, insisted that he’d prosecute any doctor who performs an abortion on Cox as an abortion at this point in pregnancy in the state is illegal. 

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life tweeted the following about Cox’s case.

“This is eugenics and selfishness,” Hawkins wrote and then added what Cox may be thinking “I know my child may die after birth (which by the way many children with Trisomy 18 survive for years after) and I don't have to have to watch my child die in front of me, so I'm going to pay someone to kill her now.”

I’d like to think that Cox was an exception but as of now, that’s not how it looks. Just a few days after Cox issued her lawsuit, a woman in Kentucky asked a judge to grant her the same exception. “Two test cases for what could become a widely utilized strategy to access abortion care in post-Roe America,” an X user noted.

At this time there have not been reports indicating whether Cox has terminated her daughter’s life or not.

Mandelburg made no attempt to justify her anti-abortion absolutism and how she apparently hopes Cox will be harmed or killed by the nonviable fetus she would force her to carry. She's also no medical expert and has never examined Cox, so she has no basis to insist that the fetus is viable and that Cox would not be harmed.

When the co-hosts on "The View" pointed out this anti-abortion extremism applied to Cox's case, Nicholas Fondacaro objected in another Dec. 8 post:

Well, on Friday, co-host and pro-choice radical Sara Haines suggested that pro-lifers should stop receiving life-saving medical treatments because it was “God’s will” that they die, and that they were hypocrites for doing so.

Haines’s hate-filled attacks against pro-lifers came in response to the recent abortion court ruling in Texas. “Yeah, and this example should be one of the easy ones, because this actually also risked her future fertility and she wants to grow her family more and, of course, the baby is going to pass, all those things,” she said.

“[I]t's also not a universal truth when life begins,” she falsely proclaimed.

Despite being a mother herself, and her claims that she wanted to be a minister at one point in her life, Haines whined about people describing pregnancy as “a miracle” and “God’s will.”

Her swipes at pro-lifers grew more disturbing and dangerous as she declared that pro-lifers were hypocrites for receiving life-saving treatments for cancer and other ailments instead of just dying as part of “God’s will”:

[I]f it's God's will on the way in, it should be God's will on the way out too. That brings into question are you taking heart attack medication? Are you treating your cancer? Are you dying when you said you should? Because if we’re going to argue about life in, then let's be honest about life out. Don't go to the hospital if you're hurting because it is God's will. Like, I don't like the inconsistencies and the hypocrisy when people weaponize religion on this issue.

Receiving cancer treatment to extend one’s life is not going against God’s will. Butchering an unborn baby out of convenience was. If one received treatment and still passed away, that’s God’s will. Haines’s comments also betrayed her profound ignorance of the pro-life approach to end-of-life care and being opposed to medically assisted suicide, which is a closer analogy to abortion.

Fondacaro censored the fact that Cox's fetus was deemed by medical professionals to be non-viable, presumably so he could malicious ly smear Cox as being a bloodthirsty whore in "butchering an unborn baby out of convenience."

After the Texas Supreme Court blocked the judge's ruling, Cox went out of state to have an abortion. Mandelburg returned in a Dec. 11 post to smear and shame Cox for undergoing a necessary procedure:

Last week a judge in Texas ruled that a 31-year-old mother of three could dismember her innocent baby in the womb after finding out the baby had Trisomy 18. As of Monday, a Texas supreme court blocked the judges ruling and halted the murder. 

Kate Cox learned at 20 weeks gestation that her baby had a fetal abnormality. Rather than giving her child a chance at life, as many children with trisomy 18 end up surviving, Cox sought an emergency abortion insisting that she didn’t want to take any risks by delivering her baby.

Cox, fearful of her chance to have more pregnancies in the future, pleaded for a judge to allow her to have a dilation and evacuation abortion where a provider will reach up, grab the baby girl’s arms and legs and pull them off, one by one. It would be a brutal, gruesome and painful death for the little baby girl.

Again, Mandelburg has never examined Cox, so she cannot possibly know anything about Cox's health and that of her fetus. She concluded by ranting that Cox was somehow being lied to by following normal medical advice:

Ultimately, the story of Kate Cox is heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking that her baby was diagnosed with a medical struggle but it's also heartbreaking that she’s being fed lie after lie that’s convinced her that dismembering her baby is not only an option but a good option. 

Prayers go out to Cox for clarity on truth and her innocent child for safety and sanctity.

The only liar we see here is Mandelburg. She doesn't want prayers for Cox -- she wants to shame and punish her for defying anti-abortion extremists like her and doing what was best for her health and not subjecting a fatally deformed fetus to more agony. She's mad that she couldn't inflict more state-mandated agony on her.

NEW ARTICLE: WND Boosts The Conspiracy Theory President (Until It Doesn't)
Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily didn't start taking a hard look at Robert Kennedy Jr.'s policies until he decided to run for president as an independent candidate instead of a Democrat -- though it still has a sweet spot for his anti-vaxxer activism. Read more >>

MRC Smears Musk Critics As 'Digital Brownshirts' Again
Topic: Media Research Center

Despite its self-proclaimed hatred of Nazi analogies, the Media Research Center has no problem busting them out when doing so suits its partisan agenda. Thus, Catherine Salgado hauled out the "digital brownshirts" smear yet again in a Jan. 3 post:

The anti-free speech Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) has a slew of plans to crush speech in the new year.

CCDH, which has a long history of pressuring tech companies and government officials to silence conservative voices (including the Media Research Center), is not taking a break. It published its goals for 2024 on Tuesday, which included a plan to fight the lawsuit X owner Elon Musk’s has launched against the anti-free speech group and flagging alleged “disinformation” and “hate speech” for censorship going into the 2024 U.S. election. CCDH also boasted about its role in the passage of European pro-censorship legislation. The group has shown such a disdain for free speech that MRC President and Founder Brent Bozell previously called the non-profit “digital brownshirts.”

According to the new release, CCDH has many plans this year, which include “Producing brand new groundbreaking research on public health, kids, climate denial, reproductive rights, and of course countering hate speech and disinformation amid elections everywhere.” This appears to describe a goal to interfere in the election, along with CCDH’s usual radical pro-abortion and climate alarmist agenda.

Salgado offered no meaningful evidence that any of those positions are "radical." In whining about it being "climate alarmist," she simply linked to the group's 2021 report listing right-wing climate deniers -- a list that happens to include the MRC, which of course loudly whined about being included in the report while failing to substantively refute anything the CCDH said about it.

She also complained that the CCDH would fight the lawsuit Elon Musk has filed against it for exposing the hate and lies spread on Twitter/X:

The CCDH also vowed it would “Keep fighting back against Elon Musk’s X Corp ridiculous lawsuit against us.” Musk launched the so-called “ridiculous” lawsuit arguing that CCDH has falsely accused X of promoting hate speech and attempting to sabotage free speech.

Nonetheless, the group accused Musk of profiting off “the hateful anti-LGBTQ+ grooming narrative” and other supposed “hate and misinformation.”

Salgado did not explain how any of the things CCDH is fighting do not qualify as "hate and disinformation," nor did she offer any evidence that trying to stop hate and disinformation is "censorship." Instead, she whined that "While CCDH also tried to claim positive goals such as protecting teens and children online, the group’s track record shows blatant leftist bias trying to undermine free speech and enforce a certain ideology." Again, she didn't explain how fighting hate and disinformation is an "ideology," or why her own efforts to smear anyone trying to stop hate and disinformaiton as "censors" is not part of her own right-wing ideology.

And, of course, Salgado refused to justify her "digital brownshirts" smear in the face of her employer denouncing such Nazi insults -- which leaves the possibility that the MRC remains petulantly butthurt that the CCDH called out its misinformation.

Speaking of hypocrisy, Nicholas Fondacaro hypocritically played it in a Jan. 9 post:

He’s back!

On Tuesday, ousted CNN host Don Lemon announced that he would be attempting to break out of his newfound obscurity and irrelevance with a new show on X (formerly Twitter). The X Business account also said that in addition to Lemon, former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), and veteran sports commentator Jim Rome would also be getting shows. But Lemon’s willingness to jump at a new gig on X had a strong dose of hypocrisy since he’s previously been very critical of the platform and owner Elon Musk.

“I've heard you... and today I am back bigger, bolder, freer! My new media company's first project is The Don Lemon Show. It will be available to everyone, easily, whenever and wherever you want it, streaming on the platforms where the conversations are happening,” he boasted in a post.

[...]

But Lemon’s excitement for his new show on X was steeped in hypocrisy seeing as, during his time at CNN, he had flaunted an obvious disdain for the platform and its new owner.

In December of 2022, Lemon had a bit of a meltdown when then-Twitter banned a handful of far-left journalists after they doxxed Musk’s location by sharing the location and traveling information of his private jet. Lemon described< the punitive actions the platform undertook as “madness” and “crazy.”

Lemon also didn’t seem to think the platform was a bastion of free speech at the time, asking: “Is it a free speech issue or is Elon Musk just on a power trip right now?”

Of course, Musk was and is on a power trip. Meanwhile, being the liar that he is, Fondacaro couldn't be bothered to justify his claim that any of the reporters were "far-left"-- they actually all worked for mainstream media operations -- and he didn't disclose that the creator of the jet-tracking account was a fan of Musk who used publicly available information to track his jet. Fondacaro also censored the fact that Musk backtracked on his own promise to leave the tracking account alone -- so much for Musk's dedication to "free speech."

Given Musk's longtime enthusiasm for suspending (or shadowbanning) the Twitter/X accounts of any journalists who don't fawn over him the way the MRC does, he appears to be the hypocritical one for giving Lemon a platform. But Fondacaro isn't going to mention that either -- or that he and his employer would be more than happy to censor Lemon and for Musk to ultimately deny him a platform.

WND's Brown Melts Down Over Polygamy, Doesn't Explain Why It's His Business
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Michael Brown's Dec. 1 WorldNetDaily column began by rehashing a three-year-old column he wrote complaining that a TV show about people looking for a house to but featured a "throuple" -- a man and two women in a committed relationship. This led to a rant about a poll showing that more people think polygamy is acceptable:

What struck me this week was a Gallup report from 2020 indicating that acceptance of polygamy had reached 20% – meaning, 1 in 5 Americans. Back in 2006, that number was 1 in 20 Americans. That's quite a jump!

Commenting on this on the Gallup website, Frank Newport wrote in June 2020, "what fascinates me as much as anything else is the trend on polygamy. When Gallup first included polygamy on the list in 2003, 7% of Americans said it was morally acceptable, and that fell to 5% in 2006. But over the past decade, this percentage has gradually increased – moving into double digits in 2011, reaching 16% in 2015, and this year, at 20%, the highest in our history. In short, there has been a fourfold increase in the American public's acceptance of polygamy in about a decade and a half."

As of 2022 and 2023, the number had risen even further, to 23%, meaning almost 1 in 4 Americans felt that polygamy was morally acceptable. But there is no slippery slope. Of course!

I could cite many more examples, but at this point: 1) It would be redundant. 2) It would make this article into a small book. 3) You don't need me to cite polls and statistics; all you need to see is the societal embrace of Drag Queens reading to toddlers. That alone proves the point.

How did Brown get from polygamy to "Drag Queens reading to toddlers"? He didn't epxlain. He also didn't explain why how other people live their lives is any of his business, or why toddlers care about who is reading to them. Instead, he cheered that his fellow right-wing haters are involved in "pushback":

The good news is that, as many of us also predicted, the radical left has overplayed its hand and a moral, cultural pushback is at hand.

The bad news is that it's a lot harder to climb up a mountain than to slide down it.

On other hand, with God's help, all things are possible.

Meanwhile, It's apparently not possible -- not even with God's help -- to change Brown's judgmental, hate-filled attitudes toward anyone who's not as far-right as he is.

MRC Freaked Out Over Thanksgiving Being Critiqued
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center really hates it when anyone offers commentary about Thanksgiving. Geoffrey Dickens huffed in a Nov. 22 compilation post:

It’s that wonderful time of year when families get together to enjoy turkey, football and most importantly to express gratitude for all they’ve been blessed with. Of course the liberal media want you to use that day of giving thanks to instead lecture your conservative family members about America’s atrocities. 

Over the years the MRC has tracked liberal journalists’ hatred of this very American holiday and how they’ve tried to ruin it for everybody.

Dickens went on to cite what he called "some of the most egregious examples of lib journos attempts to wreck Thanksgiving." Of course, none of these people were actual "journos": rather, they were TV hosts or commentators.

Tim Graham huffed in a Nov. 23 post:

The radical leftists at The Nation can be counted on to be the Debbie Downers of Thanksgiving. In a feature they mysteriously called "The Debate," two native American activists both argue that the holiday is grievously wrong and it should be a day for "centering the Indigenous perspective." The headline:

Should America Keep Celebrating Thanksgiving?

Sean Sherman argues that we need to decolonize Thanksgiving, while Chase Iron Eyes calls for replacing Thanksgiving with a “Truthsgiving.”

Needless to say, Graham didn't even bother to respond to any of the arguments advanced in the piece -- he was more content to make sure the writer was labeled as "leftist."

The same day, Mark Finkelstein ranted about an editorial cartoon:

On this day of Thanksgiving, the Boston Globe has rendered itself the newspaper equivalent of the crotchety liberal uncle at the table, perhaps with one too many celebratory libations under the belt, spewing his political bile.

As its cartoon du jour, the Globe chose the one you see here: a vengeful Trump on his way to the tree stump, axe at the ready, to dispatch the turkey. And in turn, the turkey is regretting having rejected Biden because of his age.

For the record, not only is the cartoon utterly not in keeping with the spirit of the day, it is also ahistorical. Just like Biden and presidents before him, Donald Trump also pardoned turkeys during his time in the White House. But it's neatly in line with Joe Scarborough wildly claiming Trump will "execute" enemies if he gains a second term.

The truly vengeful actor in this scenario is the cartoon "artist" Christopher Weyant himself.

It's strange that Finkelstein got all bent out of shape over a cartoonist being "vengeful" when Trump has built his entire presidential campaign around seeking revenge on anyone who has ever criticized him (including, presumably, the cartoonist).

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."