Third-Party Concern-Trolling At The MRC

The Media Research Center fretted that efforts to put a third-party candidate on the presidential ballot weren't getting traction -- but censored the fact that those efforts were being driven by pro-Trump interests.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 7/26/2024

On Thursday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The ReidOut, host Joy Reid opened the show panicking over the centrist group “No Labels” and the news that they are laying the groundwork to run a centrist third party ticket in the upcoming 2024 presidential election. This apparently frightened Reid who lashed out and fear mongered over what will happen if No Labels manages to take enough votes away from President Joe Biden in the November election and reelects Donald Trump. As you can imagine, it was a completely unhinged prediction of the “end of democracy” in the United States. 

“They’ve been openly flirting with recruiting moderate Democratic Senator Joe Manchin who just happens to also be a co-chair. He has not said if he will run for president as a centrist,” Reid said angrily.

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What Reid fails to understand is that third party bids traditionally hurt Republicans just as much as Democrats, if not more. In 1992, independent presidential candidate Ross Perot was widely believed to have cost Republican President George H.W. Bush a second term against the perverted Bill Clinton. 

Nicholas Fondacaro did some as part of his usual hate-watching of “The View” in a July 2023 post:

Over the weekend, Senator Joe Manchin (WV) sparked fear in Democrats after he was announced as the headline speaker for a New Hampshire event put on by the No Labels Party, a group looking to launch a third-party run for the White House. ABC’s The View was in full-blown panic on Monday (the day of the event), as they lashed out at the No Labels Party for threatening President Biden’s reelection. This comes after The View had previously called for the Republican Party to be broken up.

“But there’s been a lot of debate around the No Labels Party which is planning to run their own presidential ticket if Democrats and Republicans don’t come towards the middle,” moderator Whoopi Goldberg announced at the top of the show.

But Goldberg, in particular, was vehemently against No Labels attempting to run in the middle in 2024. “Well, I think it’s, you know, now is not the time to try the experiment,” she chided. “You should have talked about this four years ago if you thought this was something we should be thinking about, because now it’s going to be a breakneck race, and that’s not the way to do this.”

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But as NewsBusters had previously reported, The View’s called for a third party when the goal was to harm Republican election efforts.

The same day, P.J. Gladnick huffed:

Wow! No Labels is irking all the right (or is wrong?) people. Why? Because as MSNBC contributor and Dean of the [Bill?] Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas, Victoria DeFrancesco Soto worried on Monday’s edition of MSNBC’s Jose Diaz-Balart Reports, that group could jeopardize Joe Biden’s re-election chances.

Soto’s shtick is that America has a two party system and how dare a third party jeopardize the chances of the Democrats remaining in power.

Mark Finkelstein groused in a post the following day:

Biden dead-ender Joe Scarborough is on guard for anything that might jeopardize his guy’s re-election prospects.

So when Joe Manchin, the Democrat senator from West Virginia, yesterday floated the possibility of a third-party presidential run, Scarborough was quick to lead the charge against him on today’s Morning Joe....with his usual F-words for Trump.

When, teasing the news at the top of the show, Mika Brzezinski mentioned Manchin’s musings, Scarborough twice interrupted with a skeptical, “come on, man.”

Tim Graham rehashed much of this in a July 2023 column:

Polls show that voters are not thrilled at the prospect of a Trump vs. Biden rerun in the 2024 presidential election. That makes the idea of a fresh third-party candidate more interesting. One might think the media would enjoy a curveball, but there’s one big problem. Democrats think a third party ticket would sink Joe Biden.

The “No Labels” group held an event in New Hampshire on July 17 with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and former Gov. Jon Huntsman (R-UT). They like the idea of a bipartisan presidential ticket, one Democrat and one Republican. There’s more than enough establishment Republicans who hate Trump enough to run on a bipartisan ticket.

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Remember this: Democrats were fine with a third-party candidate in the race in 1992, when Ross Perot took more voters from President Bush than he did from Bill Clinton. Clinton won with 43 percent of the vote, and journalists pretended that was a mandate. Their position on a third-party challenge is situational. It’s entirely about who benefits.  

Manchin told the crowd in New Hampshire that he would never run to be a spoiler, that he would only run to win. Everyone running as a third-party candidate should say that, but with disapproval of Trump and Biden as high as it is, one could imagine a three-way nail-biter. On the other hand, if polling suggested such a strange scenario, it’s easy to predict our Democrat media outlets would fiercely dig into the opposition research on whoever decided to threaten their incumbent.  

All of these writers failed to mention, however, that No Labels has indisputable links to right-wing activists, as the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin documented:

Despite the group’s insistence on keeping its backers secret, dogged reporting has found strong connections to Republicans. Mother Jones followed the money. It found that CEOs of some major corporations have forked over substantial money to No Labels. And while the No Labels donor list does include a few rich people who have given to Democrats, it tends heavily toward those “who contributed millions of dollars to Republican causes, such as past GOP presidential candidates and super-PACS connected to Republican congressional leadership,” Mother Jones reported.

One of the donors “provided a big chunk of political cash to Donald Trump,” according to the article. “No Labels supporters, who mostly made contributions of $5,600 to its 2024 project, appear to favor conservative candidates, though many have played both sides of the aisle, financing Republican and Democratic politicians,” Mother Jones found.

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Mother Jones’s David Corn has found that No Labels is associated with some significant Republican-aligned outfits. Its online fundraising is run by Anedot, founded by a failed 2014 GOP congressional candidate. Anedot handles the cash for right-wing organizations, Corn writes, such as “Focus on the Family, the Susan B. Anthony List (a prominent foe of reproductive rights), the Thomas More Society (a conservative Catholic group that supported Trump’s election deniers), the Reformed Theological Seminary (which is ‘committed to the Bible as God’s inerrant Word’), and the International Alliance for Christian Education.”

No wonder the MRC wants a third-party candidate so badly — it thinks such a candidate would hurt Biden more than Trump.

As primary season drew closer, the concern-trolling heated up again, particularly involving Joe Manchin. Jorge Bonilla wrote in a Nov. 9 post:

U.S. Senator Joe Manchin’s announcement today that he is not running for re-election sent shockwaves throughout the Acela Media, worried about the imperilment of both the Democrats’ Senate majority and the Biden presidency. But that panic was most palpable on ABC, which ran wild quotes against a Manchin run.WATCH as ABC’s Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce dials the fear to 11:

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In all honesty, the other networks covered the Manchin news with the same furrowed brow and the same concern over what may befall the Democrat Senate majority and the Biden White House. But only ABC-Disney went to the effort of producing graphics indicating that Manchin’s potential White House aspiration is “perilous to democracy”.

And that, in and of itself, this suggestion that additional candidacies in a democratic election (whether Manchin, RFK, or Cornel West) “threaten democracy” is downright Orwellian.  

Manchin doesn’t threaten democracy but he may, in theory, pose a threat to Joe Biden. And that’s why the partisan Acela Media, most emblematically ABC, are in a collective panic. 

Bonilla failed to mention how Fox News covered this news, which tells us that he knows the third-party effort is designed to help Trump and that the right-wing channel likely fawned over it as much as he did.

Nicholas Fondacaro again incorporated this concern-trolling into his daily hate-watch of “The View” in a Nov. 10 post:

West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin announced on Thursday that he would not be seeking reelection and instead hinted that he might make a third-party run for president. The liberal ladies of ABC’s The View took the possibility very seriously on Friday and openly worried about how Manchin could hurt President Biden’s reelection chances, and how he was always the “problem child” in the Democratic Party.

“So, politically now, we have to talk because Senator Joe Manchin – remember him from West Virginia,” Friday moderator Joy Behar asked as if he was a nobody. “He has a lot of people wondering if power in D.C. will shift for the right because yesterday he announced he’s going to end his tenure as the Senate’s worst Democrat. He’s right there with that other – Kristen [sic] [Kyrsten] Sinema,” she announced.

Fondacaro then noted that co-host Sarah Haines “touted the idea of the No Labels Party” — but failed to disclose that the the No Labels movement is largely funded by right-wingers.

Bonilla returned for a Nov. 12 post complaining again about more criticism of Manchin's third-party effort:

The Acela Media have gone into howling conniptions over the idea that U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) might run for president in 2024. The latest instance of such howling comes via Politico’s Jonathan Martin who, on ABC’s This Week, fretted over a potential GOP takeover of the Senate as a result of Manchin’s retirement, before saying that it is “imperative” that President Biden talk him out of entering the 2024 race.

WATCH as Martin urges Biden to summon Manchin and Mitt Romney to the White House and do a little “democracy”:

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As I mentioned earlier this week, it is outright Orwellian to suggest that individuals exercising their right to run for office as “imperiling democracy”. The idea that Biden should pull everyone into the Oval Office and talk them out of running has that same Orwellian tinge, and further clarifies that the Acela Media care less about actual democracy than they do about power. Power for Democrats, and the preservation of their access to it.

Graham spent his Nov. 13 podcast ranting about all this:

Whether it’s elected Democrats (Jim Clyburn) or media Democrats (Jonathan Martin), it’s considered “imperative” to ward off dangerous third-party campaigns for president. Anyone not voting for Biden is electing Trump. If you could imagine yourself voting for Sen. Joe Manchin on a “No Labels” ticket, you’re electing Trump. If you vote for the Green Party, you’re electing Trump.

The supposed guardians of democracy don’t really like much democracy. You have to vote for Biden even if he “simply does not have the capacity” to campaign! 

A Nov. 14 post by Bonilla groused that Manchin was asked about the third-party stuff:

The media effort to stop a potential presidential run from Democratic Senator Joe Manchin (WV) was an all-hands-on-deck “imperative” Tuesday evening. The latest member of the Acela Media to try to deflate the Manchin balloon was CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell.

WATCH as O’Donnell cuts right to the heart of the matter and asks Manchin: “Wouldn’t you be helping to elect Donald Trump?” 

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In this Orwellian media environment, up is down, good is bad, and democracy is anti-democratic if it poses a threat to the current regime. After all, can democracy really be democratic if it helps elect Donald Trump? The answer, increasingly, seems to be a resounding NO.

The fact that a third party would likely help Trump is the only reason Bonilla and his MRC co-workers continue to hype it. If the MRC genuinely cared about third-party challenges, it would not have stopped promoting Robert Kennedy Jr. as a candidate when he switched from Democrat to independent.

Indeed, it was only when a third-party candidate might divert votes from Donald Trump that it raised any objection. A Jan. 10 post by Fondacaro shows he suddenly soured on third-paraty runs if they involve Republicans like Liz Cheney -- whom the MRC despises for holding Donald Trump accountable for his actions in inciting the Capitol riot -- might run:

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.

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Their desire for Cheney to run third party was dripping with hypocrisy. Back in July, The View was viciously against the idea of a third-party campaign from the No Labels Party, because it could harm Biden. And in November, they lashed out at Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) because there were rumors he was thinking of running third party.

Fondacaro didn’t say whether that hypocrisy was any different from his own. Nevertheless, he flip-flopped in a Jan. 29 post while accusing “The View” of flip-flopping:

The View’s back-and-forth position on the need for third parties could give viewers a serious case of whiplash. On Monday’s episode, the ABC hosts proved themselves to be hypocrites yet again when they suddenly weren’t for the existence of third-party candidates in the 2024 presidential race. This outcry against third parties came the same month they literally begged former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney to run third party to hurt former President Trump. This time, they feared for President Biden.

Staunchly racist and anti-Semitic co-host Sunny Hostin feared for a repeat of 2016, saying she “just learned today” about how then-Green Party candidate Jill Stein had impressive enough margins that some say it harmed then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton:

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Faux conservative Ana Navarro recalled “when Ross Perot was a spoiler for George Herbert Walker Bush.” According to her hysterical take, the world couldn’t afford Trump getting elected president again because he’s not only an “existential threat to democracy” but also “to the universe!”

“There’s a lot of credible people who we know who’ve left No Labels now, including my husband, including Larry Hogan,” she touted.

As usual, Fondacaro failed to tell his readers that No Labels is largely funded by right-wingers. And, yes, Fondacaro still thinks Hostin is “staunchly racist” because he doesn’t understand how metaphors work and is “anti-Semitic” because she merely talked about the Israel-Hamas war.

(Yes, serial liar Fondacaro is still spreading those micaceous and hateful lies about Hostin. We can assume her lawyers are compiling all this for a future defamation lawsuit against him and the MRC.)

Tim Graham was in full concern-trolling mode in a Feb. 2 column, complaining that Gail Collins, “partisan Democrat columnist” for the New York Times, discussed third-party efforts:

Then Collins brought up “the dreaded No Labels people,” who might run Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.). She wrote “the idea of Joe Manchin as president is pretty terrifying, but in the real world, the most No Labels could do is take votes away from Biden.”

Collins can’t acknowledge the irony of the Democratic Party trashing anyone who would want to participate in democracy by running for president. She noted how Phillips found some state Democrat parties have refused to allow anyone but Biden on the primary ballot. She didn’t mention Semafor.com reported on a conference call organized by the “center-left Democratic group Third Way” and “progressive” Move On talking about playing dirty with third-party candidates.

A Feb. 6 post by Kathryn Eiler complained that ABC’s George Stephanopoulos queried former Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie about running as a third-party candidate:

Though Christie did not concede to the host’s point, and instead brought up alternatives such as the No Labels organization, Stephanopoulos again interjected that a third-party group like No Labels would “drain more from Joe Biden than Donald Trump.”

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In addition to waiving off the third party as indirectly pro-Trump, Stephanopoulos also seemed to nervously query, asking in so many ways if Christie had put his name on the ballot, if he had been nominated by No Labels, or if he had “closed the door” to reinserting himself into the election.

Eiler didn’t mention that the funding of No Labels shows its desire to drain votes from Biden.

Graham spent a Feb. 28 post complaining that Chuck Todd noted the failure of a serious third-party effort for the 2024 election:

Don’t look now, but deposed Meet the Press host Chuck Todd has unleashed another grand political analysis. Last month, Chuck was having deep thoughts about Trump while touring a Nazi museum in Germany. Now he’s absolutely certain that third parties just won’t matter in the 2024 presidential race, because of....abortion. The headline?

Chuck Todd: Why the third party window may have closed for 2024

Chuck acknowledges that a chunk of voters in both parties aren’t happy with their nominee, even if both think the Other Party’s candidate is beatable.

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He underlines that it’s difficult for third parties to gain access to ballots in many states — without mentioning the Democrats aggressively put up ballot barriers — no Democrat challengers to Biden and no third-party challengers to Biden. Then they insist Donald Trump is unfit for the ballot. And forget your No Labels threat: 

Graham offered no proof that only Democrats “aggressively put up ballot barriers” to third-party candidates, and he yet again censored the fact that No Labels gets funding from right-wingers.

Mark Finkelstein tried to make a big deal out of Symone Sanders discussing the mess third-party candidates could play n a presidential election, downplaying the threat in an April 13 post by claiming she doesn't understand how the Electoral College works: "the only way that Sanders' nightmare scenario could come to pass would be if one of the third-party candidates actually won a state, or one of Nebraska or Maine's districts. And not even the most fevered conspiracy-mongers have suggested that RFK, Jr., let alone Cornel West or Jill Stein, have any hope of pulling off such a miracle."