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CBS Puffs 'Second Gentleman' Doug Emhoff, Except for the Pro-Hamas Note

Now it looks like a one-two punch with kid-gloves. Vice President Kamala Harris drew puffballs from Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe after CBS's Sunday Morning aired a soft-serve scoop of her hubby, "Second Gentleman" Douglas Emhoff. This show has been on a streak of puffball interviews with liberals this year.  CBS reporter Rita Braver offered no questions about Kamala's viral "word salads" or inquiries on why so many of her staff have quit over the last four years. There were no questions about Trump or the Republicans. This segment seemed designed just to warm up the image of Kamala and Doug.  The exchange CBS touted at the top was Emhoff denying he's an adviser to his wife. Oh come on! Nobody should believe the denials.  RITA BRAVER: I'll ask you the question that all political wives get and that is, are you also an advisor to your wife? DOUGLAS EMHOFF: No. BRAVER: No?? EMHOFF: I am her husband. She has plenty of people around her giving her advice on her role. I'm just there to support her, to be there for her. BRAVER: When she gets classified briefings, aren't you curious? EMHOFF: No. It`s surreal sometimes when I know she's in the Situation Room and I'll see something on the news, like, "Hmm, I wonder what's happening?" And then when it's not classified it could be, "Hey, you know, that might have been what was happening." Back in 2010 on this program, Jim Axelrod interviewed George and Laura Bush, and she readily admitted she was a sounding board in tough times, like after Hurricane Katrina:  AXELROD: The long knives were out, which is when the White House can be at its loneliest. How does it work, Mrs. Bush? Do you offer a point of view, criticism, when you're in the heat of it? LAURA BUSH: Sure. All of those things. But not a lot of criticism. Braver then turned to First Lady Jill Biden for her gushing over how Emhoff "connects with people." Smooch smooch. Painting by numbers, Braver touted how Emhoff's Jewish background, and avoided Emhoff's harsh attack on Trump in May as "a known antisemite, who’s had dinner with antisemites, who said there was good people on both sides after Charlottesville." BRAVER: Emhoff is not only the first second gentleman, he`s also the first Jewish person ever to be in the "big four," as the top two national couples are called. Emhoff and Harris proudly showed us a mezuzah, traditionally hung on doorposts of Jewish homes, that they placed on the Vice President`s house; and Emhoff has taken a leading role in fighting antisemitism. KAMALA HARRIS: The work that Doug is doing is really extraordinary. I mean, fighting antisemitism, especially at this moment in time when so many people are living in fear and also just, you know, concerned about what's happening in our country. EMHOFF: She said this issue found me -- HARRIS: It did EMHOFF: -- and she literally said, "And now you've got to step up." BRAVER: That was all before the October 7th Hamas attacks on Israelis. Now, Emhoff is front and center, standing in the Rose Garden with the President and Vice President.' EMHOFF (May 20): I know a lot of us are feeling alone, afraid, and in pain. There is an epidemic of hate, including a crisis of antisemitism in our country and around the world.  [To Braver] I process that to this day as a Jewish person -- the impact, the emotional, the rage, all those things that so many of us feel. Braver did not ask about pro-Hamas protests on campus or anti-Israel Democrats like AOC or Jamaal Bowman. This was the only time Braver threw a moderately challenging question -- on behalf of the pro-Hamas Palestinians:  BRAVER: What about Palestinian and Muslim Americans who say, "We`re hurting, too"? EMHOFF: All hate is bad. The work I`ve been doing has centered not only on fighting antisemitism, but fighting hate of all kinds, letting people know that a hate against one is a hate against all. That's pitch perfect with Karine Jean-Pierre talking points, always matching anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Braver ended with a question that could be seen as tricky. Have you thought about moving to California? Politicians (and their spouses) never suggest they're pondering defeat. Emhoff gave the usual "democracy is on the line" guff from the Democrats: More than a little hyperbolic? But in tune with the press corps. Second Gentleman @DouglasEmhoff to Rita Braver on @CBSSunday: “We have to win this election. Literally, our country and our world depends on us winning this election.” pic.twitter.com/F4TCl4wdAJ — Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) June 23, 2024

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NewsBusters Podcast: CNN's Profane Malice Erupts on Jake Tapper's Show

Nick Fondacaro broke a story on how debate moderate Jake Tapper's show aired a nasty hit piece that spurred a defamation lawsuit from a man named Zachary Young working to evacuate people out of Afghanistan. Internal messages show profane malice from reporter Alex Marquardt and others. It's no one's idea of idealistic investigative journalism. It sounds like Gotcha journalism. In messages found by Young's lawyers, Marquardt said he wanted to “nail this Zachary Young mfucker” and thought the story would be Young’s “funeral.” On that declaration of wanting to “nail” Young, CNN editor Matthew Philips responded: “gonna hold you to that cowboy!” When Marquardt notified Young that CNN would be publishing a story about him, and gave him only two hours to respond, he was upset when Young replied. Marquardt messaged a colleague, “fucking Young just texted.” CNN did not respond to our request for a response. A judge ruled that CNN can be sued for punitive damages, making it possible CNN could face a punishment to rival Fox News in the Dominion Voting Machines case. Young's lawyer Vel Freedman told Fondacaro: "CNN claims to be the 'most trusted name in news,' but their internal documents show that the only thing you can trust CNN to do is ignore the facts, push an agenda, and hurt innocent people. We’re looking forward to trial." Plus: On Monday morning, CNN morning host Kasie Hunt abruptly cut off Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt and ended the interview because Leavitt asserted that debate moderators Tapper and Dana Bash have an established record of bias against Trump. Why end the interview when she's unmissably correct on the facts here?  Monday's edition of The View carried Whoopi Goldberg's bizarre assertion that "The media has pretty much always been fair to each side," and "we have to tell you both sides. That's why Alyssa's here. That's why Ana's here, because we don't all think the same way." Any exposure to this show demonstrates that Alyssa Farah Griffin and Ana Navarro aren't serious Republican dissenters. Meghan McCain added real dissent and a measure of difficulty for liberal and Democrat guests.  Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts.   

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Jon Meacham's Huff and Guff: Biden Has 'Child-Proofed the Debate Stage' for Trump

Beware the liberal networks when they turn to "presidential historians" to preview a presidential debate, because the experts are dependably Democrats. On Sunday's This Week on ABC, host Martha Raddatz brought out Doris Kearns Goodwin and Jon Meacham, and she at least explained Meacham has been a Biden adviser and speechwriter. Pollster Frank Luntz rounded out the panel.  What you could expect, then, is Meacham's usual lecture about how this is not democracy on display with two sides. Democracy is behind one podium (his candidate Biden) and Autocracy has a menacing glare behind the other (Trump). One side has a statesman, and the other side has a spoiled child. The spin is that aggressive.  “What Pres Biden’s done is he has successfully child-proofed the debate stage for former President Trump who is responsible for this uncivil tone on the stage...This is not a both sides issue...We have defined deviancy down, but that is not Biden’s fault” – Jon Meacham #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/1m9m0JFio8 — Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) June 23, 2024 MARTHA RADDATZ: And, Jon, I want to go to you. As we said, you have informally been advising President Biden. It was his proposal to change the rules, early debate, muted mics, no audience. How big a difference do you think that will make? JON MEACHAM, ': I think it will be huge because it actually -- what President Biden's done is he has successfully child-proofed the debate stage for former President Trump who is responsible for this uncivil tone on the stage. Let's be very clear here. This is not a both sides issue. Martha, you've moderated debates with President Biden -- Vice President Biden in them. There has been as Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed out, we have defined deviancy down, it’s true, but that is not President Biden's fault. And I think what he has done is rendered a public service, he and his team, in bringing some constraints to the debate to actually allow there to be a conversation that is not simply performative.  American democracy is not a reality show, and Donald Trump has treated it that way for almost ten years now. So, let's not -- let's not kid ourselves here. This is a vital election. Both sides are not equally at fault. President Biden, seems to me, what he has to do is show people that he is fully in command which I believe him to be, and remind us that there is a way in which the presidency should operate, that is -- one’s dignified and decent, and delivers for the American people. Biden is eternally "dignified and decent," no matter how many times he smears Republicans, or how many times he enabled his son to make millions in foreign influence-pedding that was wasted on crack and hookers.  Raddatz then repeated "I know you're advising Biden," but asked what advice he would give Trump who "needs moderates, but he's a hard guy to moderate."  “I’m not a Democrat. I’m not a Republican.” More of the usual BS from “informal” Biden adviser Jon Meacham on @ThisWeekABC: “I have a personal...devotion to, if I may, the Constitution, the constitutional order....That’s what’s at stake here.” #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/vhaW2MW5Xl — Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) June 23, 2024 MEACHAM: I think that may win the understatement of the week award. Donald Trump's hard to moderate. I don't think President Trump would welcome my counsel, but I think you just answered the question. If he can (INAUDIBLE) to show that perhaps his illiberal, anti-democratic impulses are, in fact, in check, then perhaps that reaches people. I have to say – look, I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. I voted for candidates of both parties. He's advising the Democrat, but he's not a Democrat? Always throw a follow-up on this claim. Which Republican have you ever voted for, sir? With a secret ballot, would we ever know if he's lying? But it gets worse. Meacham says he's for the Constitution, not so much for Biden!  MEACHAM: I have a personal – as does everyone here – devotion to, if I may, the Constitution, the constitutional order that Doris has written about so beautifully for so long. That's what's at stake here. It's not just a set of policies here and policy there. This is not about marginal tax rates at this point. It's about which vision of America. And a vision of America, where we are, in fact, pursuing a more perfect union, or is it about conceding that one party, one interest, one man should be in control of everything? And it's not a choice that we faced before. Although liberals tag Frank Luntz as a Republican, he seemed incapable of offering anything but his own worries about how the debate might hurt democracy. He didn't offer any opposition to Meacham's huffy hot takes. 

FOX News

Snopes finally admits media, Democrats were wrong about Trump

The pro-Biden media have lectured incessantly that Trump should be "fact-checked in real time." Meanwhile, the "independent fact-checkers" are hailed as saviors of democracy.

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PBS Brings on Phony 'Nonpartisan' to Debunk Greg Gutfeld on 2024 Election Talk

It’s still self-evident that Donald Trump did not win the 2020 election “in a landslide” as he claimed, so that was obvious terrain for a “fact checker.” But the pro-Biden media can’t stop imagining that Trump's going to lose in 2024, and they’re accusing the right-wingers of mangling facts in advance. On Thursday’s PBS News Hour, co-host Geoff Bennett led off the show promoting a segment on “how Republican disinformation is sowing doubts about the legitimacy of the 2024 election.” Later, Bennett introduced a segment from Laura Barron-Lopez: “It's been more than three years since baseless claims about a rigged 2020 election inspired an attack on the U.S. Capitol, but the lies have not stopped.” She played a clip of Trump: “The radical left Democrats rigged the presidential election in 2020, and we're not going to let them rig the presidential election in 2024.” Where is the “lie” in that? It’s one thing to say Trump “won,” and it is another to say it was “rigged.” The media certainly did their best to “rig” it by suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop, and blaming every Covid death on Trump, and claiming in their “fact checks” that Trump was wrong to say a vaccine was almost ready. Then she added Fox News: “Much like last time, the former president has help from right-wing media.” A clip of The Five from June 13 followed. Greg Gutfeld said: “What is up the Dems' sleeve to drag that body back into the White House?” Since Trump is considered likely to win at this point, “then what do you do after you win? How do you convince anyone that's real? Have they even thought of that? Like, even the Dems behind the scenes better hope he doesn't win, because no one's going to believe it.” She left out the part where Gutfeld called Biden a "feeble ghost." They could fact-check the "ghost" part. To "fact check" this, PBS brought on David Becker of the "nonpartisan" Center for Election Innovation and Research. Becker worked for the leftist group People for The American Way. He always insists the 2020 election was the most wonderful, un-rigged election of all time. In addition, he co-wrote a book called The Big Truth with CBS reporter Major Garrett which imagined the outbreak of civil war in 2023. So let's put aside the "nonpartisan" thing...and the "fact check" thing.  Barron-Lopez asked him to "debunk" Gutfeld, saying he warned of "shenanigans." That came on June 14: "if you somehow pull this out with some kind of shenanigans, I hate to use that word so lightly, but shenanigans, you're going to deal with the public who doesn't buy the election." Becker unloaded his spiel about how the 2024 election will be super-fair. He wasn't asked about the "civil war in 2023" thing. LBL then underlined how the right-wingers are historically awful: "That spreading of disinformation by Republican politicians, Americans across social media, and right-wing media, is it worse this election cycle than previous cycles?" Of course he said yes. She also suggested "There's another big election conspiracy theory being spread by Republicans right now." That's the claim that non-citizens are being registered to vote. Again, she cited a Fox News report that 49 states are providing voter registration forms to migrants at government offices without requiring proof of citizenship. Becker "debunked" this by claiming "We know that very, very few, if any noncitizens ever actually vote."

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Scott Jennings DROPS CNN Host on Trump and Murdering, Raping Illegal Aliens

CNN can’t get enough of describing Donald Trump as racist and xenophobic. But if you say his proposals are popular? You get interrupted and debated. On CNN This Morning on Sunday, they played a clip of Trump joking around about how they should create a Migrant League of Fighters (a la WWE or MMA?) because migrants are tough guys. Democrat commentator Maria Cardona spoke for 82 seconds, ripping Trump for his "horrific racist comments and his MAGA base is as "xenophobic as he is." But when Republican commentator Scott Jennings got his turn, anchor Amara Walker started angrily objecting within six seconds: SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Two-thirds of the American people support Donald Trump's policy prescriptions for immigration right now, including a majority of Hispanics in the United States. WALKER: Well, what about his comments? I mean, do you see them as racist and xenophobic comments? I mean, he's painting migrants as, you know, being vile -- they have violent tendencies, right, and, of course, dehumanizing them to -- JENNINGS: Oh is he? Oh is he? WALKER: -- you know, being entertainment for the rest of us. Then Jennings just let the CNN host have it about all the recent violent murders and rapes from illegal immigrants who haven't been stopped as they cross the border:  JENNINGS: Is he painting them as being violent? I mean, would Laken Riley think they were violent? Would Rachel Morin think they were violent? Would Jocelyn Nungaray in Texas think they were violent? How about the girl that was raped in broad daylight in New York City? How about the girl that was kidnapped in Missouri? Yes, there are violent people in the country. And yes, Donald Trump uses colorful language. But the bottom line is immigration is killing Joe Biden's campaign right now. This is why he has a low approval rating. This is why Donald Trump is honing in on this. And people are responding to it and people are fed up with it. And if you want to call two-thirds of the country racist or xenophobic because they're in a mood right now that they want this fixed, yes, agree. By all means, go on. It's not going to work. Cardona then tried to claim those polls are wrong, that most Americans want Biden's immigration "solution."  CNN doesn't this these women's deaths are important. Before Jennings spoke on Sunday, a Nexis search showed CNN mentioned Rachel Morin TWICE since she died, on a 24-hour "news" channel. And there were ZERO mentions of Jocelyn Nungaray.

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Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: GOP Convention Can Be Seen as 'Looming Threat' to Minorities

Hostile media treatment of the Republican convention in July isn't just national, but local. It's rude for Donald Trump to tell someone Milwaukee is "horrible," but it's not rude for Milwaukee to say the Republicans are horrible. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, a Gannett newspaper sent this email newsletter alert from J.R. Radcliffe:  For some in communities of color, the RNC can be seen as a looming threat Are the Republicans bringing guns and bombs? Should be picture Ronna McDaniel in a suicide vest? It looked like this: Get a load of the smear as black and Latino "community organizers" wish the Republicans were not invited to town:  Natalie Eilbert and La Risa R. Lynch spoke to people who remain frustrated and concerned that the Republican National Convention will be coming to Milwaukee in July. "It's still hard for me to get over the psychological effects of all this, knowing our first Black mayor is rolling out the red carpet for people that hate us," said Angela Lang, the executive director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities in Milwaukee. Research has shown far-right violent extremism is rising, and communities of color are feeling it. Darryl Morin, the national president of Forward Latino, agrees. He said Hispanic and Latino families were already worried that their appearance, their accents, or speaking Spanish in public would make them a target. "Because I can tell you we have not seen one hate crime victim who has told us they were stopped and asked about their immigration status before they were attacked," he said. "It just occurs and the assumption is made." These are lefties alright. Lang was with the ACLU, and Morin worked for LULAC (think of the Latino NAACP). They represent "communities of color" to lefty newspapers. They're "some people." The actual newspaper article carried the headline  'Rolling out the red carpet for people that hate us': How some feel about the RNC Reporters Natalie Eilbert and La Risa Lynch projected that Trump's sentencing four days before the convention could lead to unrest. Lang worried it could turn the event "into a powder keg."  "I don’t think I personally, up until a year ago, used the word ‘scared,'" Lang said. "But I had to pause recently and understand that I’m actually scared. And that's OK. That's not a sign of weakness." Morin talked about local hate crimes and his group's anti-Trump animus: The nonprofit supported Milwaukee resident Mahud Villalaz after a man threw acid in his face at a bus stop in 2019. The 2022 trial revealed that Villalaz's attacker espoused hateful rhetoric against marginalized groups and wrote letters to Trump calling them "parasites" and "predators." Inflammatory remarks about immigrants made at national events and spread through campaign advertisements, Morin said, can lead to hate-motivated violence. "Whenever there are comments made about people of a particular ethnicity or color or look, etc., it's automatically applied to all that share those physical traits," Morin said. The reporters also featured Rhonda Hill, founder of Race and Faith, an “interfaith anti-racist organization" , who “said some Black-led organizations are skipping town during the RNC and some of Hill’s white friends are as well. But Hill is staying put.” “To take the fearful stance and approach is already kind of conceding,” Hill said. “There is more than one way of allowing people to have their viewpoints, but that doesn’t mean I have to leave my hometown.” Later in the piece, there's a little balance. Local Republican Orlando Owens said he was more concerned about leftist and Palestinian protesters near the convention, and RNC spokesman Kush Desai said the GOP has worked with community to leader to insure a safe experience. But they didn't make the click-click copy of the email. PS: The web page for "mental health reporter" Eilbert carried these graphics: 

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CNN Host Abby Phillip Pushes Ben Carson on 10 Commandments, Will NOT Debate Pride Month

Dr. Ben Carson appeared on CNN's Late Night with Abby Philip to discuss Louisiana putting the Ten Commandments in classrooms, which CNN thinks is wildly controversial and objectionable. Phillip eventually asked Carson why Trump favors this policy when "he doesn't even try to follow" the commandments. Carson turned to the promotion of Pride Month in schools. Phillip wanted to avoid that topic entirely. Phillip wanted to stick to putting Carson on the defensive, insisting many people object to any government putting a "thumb on the scale" for Christianity, asking Carson if they should post the Five Pillars of Islam in schools. (She never mentioned Judaism and Moses.) Late in the interview, Phillip asked if the Ten Commandments were posted at any of Donald Trump's properties. Carson said he didn't know, and Phillip challenged him: "Shouldn't they be?" So it was amusing to see Phillip seek to avoid any changing of the subject to Pride promotion in public schools, insisting no state is imposing that (some red states like Tennessee are trying to prevent Pride flags in schools).     PHILLIP: So, speaking of code of conduct, Donald Trump, the former President, he said last night that he loves the Ten Commandments. He says that he loves that they are in public schools and that he urges people to read them. He is holding it up as a moral code, just as you have, as well. But it also seems to be a moral code that he doesn't follow. He doesn't even try to follow. Does that seem right to you? CARSON: I wonder, does it seem right that people put up codes? I was talking to a young lady a few weeks ago and she said in her school, they're having Pride Day and everybody must agree with it. And you can be expelled if you say something contrary to it or if you don't use the proper pronoun. I wonder if that's kind of a totalitarian attitude to take. PHILLIP: Well, I mean, I don't even want to get into the pride issue because I think that's a separate topic. The question was about -- CARSON: It's the same kind of issue, though, isn't it? PHILLIP: Well, where -- are there laws that are forcing people to put up, I don't know, I guess, pride codes of conduct on the walls? CARSON: They were forcing the kids to comply with that particular -- PHILLIP: Who was "they"? CARSON: Whether they believed in it or not. And I said, what if you don't believe in it? And she says, you've got to keep your mouth shut. PHILLIP: But who are you even referring to? Are you talking about the government? CARSON: A 12-year-old that I was talking to - no, I was talking to a 12-year-old that was what was going on at her school. PHILLIP: Okay, I'm not sure what you're referring to, but it seems like there's a difference between that and an entire state saying, we need to put up -- we are going to force the classrooms and teachers to put up a tenant [sic] of a particular religion up on the walls. In promoting Pride flags in schools, the National Education Association has a template "that explicitly says pride flags can be displayed in schools as symbols of diversity, equity, and inclusion; not as political statements." They touted a female using They/Them pronouns declaring “My identity is not political."  They also pretend "the nation’s culture wars spilled into a middle school classroom" when someone objected to Pride flags in the classroom. The "culture war" only begins when the conservatives begin to protest the Left.

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NewsBusters Podcast: Joy Reid Hates Louisiana Over the 10 Commandments

On The Reidout (aka The Freakout), Joy Reid ripped into Louisiana for requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools. The "Christian nationalists" are upsetting the "freedom from religion" crowd and they're clueless about Moses to boot. Joy had to underline, with statistics, how Louisiana is a completely backwards and racist state. Then she brought on Rachel Laser, the head of a group called Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, which is suing Louisiana with the Freedom FROM Religion Foundation and the ACLU.  A great irony emanated from this case, she said: : "It is ironic to me these are the same people who will make the argument that a pride flag in a classroom is indoctrination, but they don't think the Ten Commandments is indoctrination. I see some irony there." Before Joy Reid mocked people for objecting to the Pride flag, her leftist guest, Americans United boss Rachel Laser, argued this is Christian nationalism, and the conservative brand of Christianity. As a mom, she had a complaint: "Children. They're captive audiences in school. They're impressionable. No children should be made to feel afraid of being ostracized or bullied or like they don't fit into the in group."  Except they're forgetting to mention they cannot stand anyone who refuses to support the pride flag, which means...children should be afraid of being ostracized or bullied if they don't go along with the teacher's LGBTQ advocacy. NBC News reported in 2021 that one California teacher went viral for suggesting to her students they should pledge allegiance to the pride flag (she had removed the American flag from her classroom).  CBS Mornings offered a big story for Pride Month on the creation story of the pride flag, which ended with host Gayle King gushing "I think it’s such a beautiful symbol" and the flag “represents the full spectrum.” It recognizes a spectrum of sexual and gender preferences, but it certainly doesn't represent a spectrum of public opinion. Speaking of Pride Month, a splashy front page story in USA Today made a huge controversy out of the mayor of Great Falls, Montana declining to recognize Pride Month. "New mayor Cory Reeves said he thinks the  city should neither 'condemn nor celebrate' personal relationships." Neutrality is dissent! the paper complained Pride Month is "widely recognized in municipalities...to affirm and celebrate lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) people and their distinct cultures." Finally, NPR media reporter David Folkenflik celebrated the first scalp in his crusade to purge any Rupert Murdoch-associated journalists from The Washington Post. But he and his leftist friends aren't stopping at just one. Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen.  

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Column: Premature Progressive Panic Over The Washington Post

For weeks now, The Washington Post has been plagued by internal turmoil over some top new hires. It started with new publisher Will Lewis, a former Rupert Murdoch employee who quickly attracted “opposition research” from NPR media reporter David Folkenflik, a man who reports incessantly on Murdoch like the mogul’s a James Bond villain -- at taxpayer expense. This caused a predictable ruckus among leftists, both inside the Post and outside. Since the paper is owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, the Posties treat the newspaper like a charity and not a business. They don’t seem to care that the Post lost $77 million over the past year and had to offer buyouts to several hundred staffers to address the losses.   The subscribers were in revolt in a web chat with Post media blogger Erik Wemple. Wrote one: “What's the best way for subscribers to let Jeff Bezos know we don't like how he's hiring so many men from Rupert Murdoch's empire to be in charge of The Washington Post? Many people are simply canceling their subscriptions, but I'm wondering if we have better options.” And this one: “What is a meaningful reaction to Will Lewis as Washington Post's CEO and publisher, given the allegations of his spiking news stories as well as his choice of two White men to co-lead The Post news operations?”  Too many Caucasian chefs in the kitchen? This was only matched in intensity by grumpy liberals demanding to know from Wemple why the Post passed on that epic saga of the Alito family house flags. Folkenflik and other party-line enforcers of leftist ideology in news rooms – including the old CNN crew of Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy, as well as Washington Post veteran Margaret Sullivan – have been agitating to get these new staffers removed (some before they start) because they were ruining staff morale. They’re treating Lewis & Co. like New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet, who was deposed by a “news room” revolt because he published a guest essay by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton.  But Bezos put out a memo that suggested no one is going anywhere and pledged to maintain "the quality, ethics, and standards we all believe in." For his part, Politico media writer Jack Shafer wasn’t buying the panic that the Post could soon become a “right-wing tablet.” He said “douse that thought with flame retardant. None of the new Lewis crew seem to tilt that way.” But everyone can get territorial in mass communications, just as the Left tore their collective hair out over Elon Musk taking over Twitter. It’s simply implausible that the Post will stop reading like a partisan rag, always highlighting scandalous Republicans and aggressively downplaying anything damaging or divisive to Democrats. The Post under the new publisher recently described an explicitly pro-Hamas protest surrounding the White House as “largely peaceful,” despite the smoke bombs and vandalism of statues. This is still the media outlet that splashes a colorful feature across the top of the Style section on how “Jill Biden works the senior circuit.” Reporter Kara Voght touted Jill on the campaign trail with her “singsongy voice honed from decades of teaching” and “sinewy calves” from “pounding the pavement in trendy On Cloud running shoes.” Voght didn’t score an interview with the First Lady, so instead she ran a pile of gushy quotes from Biden voters. "To see her be a pillar of her family is inspiring," said one fan in Green Bay.  At the Post, that translates into maintaining "the quality, ethics, and standards" of a promotional Democratic Party broadsheet. 

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NewsBusters Podcast: Brian Stelter Rips 'Made-Up' Clips of Biden Goofs, 'Information Pollution'

Brian Stelter is back on CNN again, claiming that somehow the videos showing Joe Biden bumbling are somehow sometimes “made up.” CNN host Abby Phillip asked Stelter on Monday about what's being "deceptively characterized" in Biden's public appearances. Stelter claimed: "This is a real problem. This is not some made-up fiction. The videos are oftentimes made up, but the problem is real." Stelter argued tough Biden ads slamming Trump as a convicted criminal are no match for "ugly Instagram reels and New York Post covers." He wonders if "information pollution isn't more powerful than the old fashioned, traditional ways of communicating." Elite journalists don't worry about those reliable sophisticates that watch their programs. They worry about voters who don't watch them, who don't know their names, are beyond their influence. These less-committed voters exchange memes and watch Instagram reels and TikTok videos. He tries to say hey, it could be all ages in the demographics, but the Democrats are worried about their natural base of young people and minorities. Remember that Democrats are always more panicked about their chances than they ever admit in public. Journalist roundtables at CNN and elsewhere suggest that short clips underlining Biden's bumbles are somehow "fake," or automatically misleading, because they offer a strong perception of failing. But despite what Stelter implied about full context, CNN and all the other pro-Biden networks are not in the habit of running entire 40-minute speeches by Biden. They choose small clips, which they believe are in context. But here’s the rub. When Biden bumbles and gaffes, those clips are rarely shown. Instead, the pro-Biden networks select 15 seconds where they believe Biden sounds in command, in a messaging groove. So how is that less out of context than the bumbles? It's somehow authentic because it makes Biden look good.  There's new jazzy theme music today, as we approach the fourth anniversary of this podcast. Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you click for the show.

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Column: The 'Cheapfake' Video Claims of Pro-Biden Bedwetters

President Biden’s greatest personal vulnerability in his re-election campaign is the perception that he’s mentally deteriorating and won’t be able to finish a second term (when he’d be 86). So it’s not surprising that the pro-Biden media are feverishly defending Biden when videos suggest he might be losing it. They’re clearly pre-dreading the presidential debate. In April, a Pew Research Center poll showed 65 percent had little or no confidence in Biden’s physical fitness as president, and 62 percent said the same for mental fitness. A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll showed voters preferred Trump 42-23 on “mental sharpness.” This deeply upsets leftist journalists, who insisted President Trump was mentally unstable on a regular basis when Trump was in the White House. But now that Republicans are spreading videos of Biden looking like a failing geezer, they’re all furiously “fact checking” and throwing “Pinocchios.” Start with a video from a skydiving demonstration at the G-7 summit in Italy. Biden appeared to be wandering away from European leaders to look at something behind him. It turns out he was giving two thumbs-up to a skydiver behind him. But what everyone saw was the leaders of Italy and France trying to discreetly rush and turn Biden around for photographs. It looked like they had “orders” to keep Grandpa on track.   PolitiFact claimed it was “False” to say Biden “wandered off” (the cheeky New York Post headline was “Meander In Chief”). Washington Post “fact checker” Glenn Kessler’s article carried the hot headline “‘Cheapfake’ Biden videos enrapture right-wing media, but deeply mislead.” Kessler could have awarded Two Pinocchios (“Significant omissions and/or exaggerations”) but careened into ruling Four Pinocchios, for “Whoppers.” This isn’t fact-checking. It’s spin-spoiling. “Morning Joe” spent several days raging against the G-7 video, with Mika Brzezinski quoting a distraught Democrat strategist: “The lie sprinting the 100-meter dash and the fact check is taking a stroll on the beach.” Watching European leaders try to “rescue” Biden from meandering is now a “lie.” Mika and Joe didn’t touch video of Barack Obama grabbing Biden’s wrist to lead him off stage at a Hollywood fundraiser. TV networks and video producers love to make political trouble over bad “optics.” It’s obvious too much can be made of video clips. Too much can be made of verbal stumbles. Watching how someone slurps on their bottled water can only mean so much. But wow, all the media shoes have switched to the other feet. Four years ago – on June 13, 2020 -- President Trump tentatively tiptoed down a ramp at the Air Force Academy commencement, leading to an anti-Trump feeding frenzy of “growing health concerns.” On one day (June 15), NewsBusters found CNN and MSNBC spent nearly 51 minutes analyzing the video with medical experts and trying to inflict damage on perceptions of Trump’s fitness. Now with Biden, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace decried “a growing and insidious trend in right-wing media” to take “highly misleading and selectively edited video” of Biden and question his fitness. But four years ago, Wallace offered entirely the opposite spin – 12 and a half minutes on June 15, 2020 raising questions about Trump’s tiptoeing, trolling for “any [conspiracy] theories about why he went to the hospital earlier this year and any connection between his struggle to hold a water glass with one hand, and that walk down the ramp?” This is not a double standard. It’s simply a Democrat standard. Sing consistently from the DNC song sheet. This is the sound of left-wing cable “news.”

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NewsBusters Podcast: Alex Wagner Whines About Biden Debate In Advance

The panic over President Biden's debate performance in 10 days has already broken out.  On Friday night, MSNBC host Alex Wagner whined that Donald Trump will be held to a much lower standard than Biden during the debates. Journalist Susan Glasser agreed, saying the MAGA base doesn't hold Trump "accountable" like...well, hostile leftist Democrat journalists. Do they hold Biden accountable on MSNBC? If they did, it would be to satisfy viewers further to the left than Biden. They are upset that Donald Trump's voters don't judge Trump in the same way that leftist MSNBC hosts judge Trump. They expect all voters to accept their wisdom and agree with it entirely. They grew more upset over the weekend when video of a Hollywood fundraiser showed former president Barack Obama leading Biden off the stage like he needed guidance.  On Sunday's State of the Union show, CNN host Jake Tapper fed Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) softballs about the anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary mass shooting as they mark the 10th anniversary of that horrible day. But earlier, Tapper asked Sen. Murphy if it was appropriate for President Biden to criticize the Supreme Court as "out of kilter" with public opinion. Murphy claimed Clarence Thomas is a grifter and Samuel Alito is "openly displaying affiliation with political causes in public." As if Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn't flaunt her politics in public?  NPR keeps obsessing over the Alitos and their use of flags around their homes. On Saturday, their show It's Been a Minute obsessed over flags, and Republican threats to burn the gay "Pride" flag. NPR has obsessed far more over the Alito flags than they did over the assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. NPR never offered one feature on Nicholas Roske being arrested with weapons in Kavanaugh's Maryland neighborhood.  Instead, NPR media reporter David Folkenflik is actively investigating a Rupert Murdoch-associated journalist taking the editorial reins of The Washington Post. Folkenflik, and allies like Brian Stelter and Margaret Sullivan, want Will Lewis purged before he can barely get started.  Listen to the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

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Byron Donalds Explains to Blinkered NBC Host How Biden Weaponized DOJ Against Trump

On Sunday's Meet the Press, fill-in host Peter Alexander lectured Rep. Byron Donalds that there is "no evidence" President Biden had "anything to do" with the Manhattan DA  Alvin Bragg cooking up 34 felony counts against Donald Trump. The name "Matthew Colangelo" -- the man who was Biden's #3 Justice Department official who joined Bragg's team -- rarely surfaces as "evidence" to NBC. Donalds calmly and methodically explained to NBC's Biden reporter/repeater how the Justice Department has been weaponized to interfere in the 2024 election with belated prosecutions that could have happened years ago. But first, there was the Bragg probe, and Donalds asserted that was election interference, which is why he and Speaker Mike Johnson and others believe the Supreme Court should "step in."  “Let me also explain this one.” @RepDonaldsPress to @MeetThePress host @PeterAlexander who asserted: “To be clear, Joe Biden, there is no evidence he had anything to do with this case...Why is it appropriate for Donald Trump to call for prosecuting his political opponents?” #MTP pic.twitter.com/fa7TfYM57m — Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) June 16, 2024 PETER ALEXANDER: And to be clear, Joe Biden, there is no evidence that he had anything to do with this case. The Manhattan DA, as you know, began this investigation in 2018, before Joe Biden was even his party's nominee. I want to ask you about specifically what we've been hearing from Republicans and from Donald Trump claiming the Democrats are illegally weaponizing the Justice Department against Mr. Trump. Why is it appropriate for Donald Trump, then, to call for prosecuting his political opponents, including President Biden? DONALDS: Well, let me also explain this one. Now, what he did say was, is that we have always had this kind of gentleman's agreement that you do not go after the political leaders of the – of the oppositional party. When Donald Trump was president, he didn't – he didn’t have his attorney generals go after Hillary Clinton when she did violate the Espionage Act. He did not give that order. They did not go and prosecute Hillary Clinton. But now you have a situation where main justice has weaponized the Justice Department to go after Donald Trump. You have Jack Smith, who's chasing down Donald Trump on – on violating the Espionage Act, but at the same time, Robert Hur knows that President Biden has violated the Espionage Act. Robert Hur is not prosecuting Joe Biden....Jack Smith is trying to prosecute Donald Trump. Donalds called that "two-tiered justice." So Alexander robotically moved on to the next Biden/DNC talking point:  ALEXANDER: The Biden Justice Department obviously is also prosecuting Democrats. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Henry Cuellar of Texas right now. They just prosecuted Hunter Biden as well. So is it only weaponization when it is Republicans that are being prosecuted? DONALDS: That's not true, and that's not even the same thing we're talking about here. What you've got to understand is – ALEXANDER: But they've prosecuted both Democrats and Republicans, so I think Americans would say is that equal justice? DONALDS: – Bob Menendez. First of all, Bob Menendez has gold bars with his name engraved on them from a foreign country. So that's what Bob Menendez's situation is. Henry Cuellar's situation just got into investigation. But it is without a doubt that these legal cases were all brought in the middle of a presidential election for one purpose, and that is to criminalize Donald Trump. That is to polarize Donald Trump. That is to persecute Donald Trump. That's the only reason why you even bring these cases in the timeframe that they're being brought. Alexander repeated: "And again, there's been a series of cases against Democrats as well." He rounded out the White House publicist packet by telling Donalds an FBI agent on the Hunter Biden probe received an explicit voicemail from a Trump backer that said in part, "You can ride but you can't hide” and “we'll hunt you down and slaughter you like the traitorous dogs you are." He asked Donalds to repudiate that violent threat, and Donalds did. 

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NPR Reporter Rips Trump After Hunter Verdicts: 'Heads I Win, Tails You Cheated'

Taxpayer-funded National Public Radio wasn't hiding its partisan stripes on the day of the guilty verdicts for Hunter Biden. On The NPR Politics Podcast, NPR senior political correspondent Mara Liasson said there was "no evidence" of Hunter and the Bidens taking millions from foreign influence-peddling. She said with Donald Trump, "all criticism is confession" when he complains about a weaponized Justice Department. She summarized his criticism as "Heads I win, tails, you cheated." The headline for the show came straight from the DNC messaging:  Trump attacks the DOJ as "rigged." It just convicted Hunter Biden of three felonies. NPR White House correspondent Asma "I Love Kamala" Khalid turned to Liasson with the soft soap that "the president's son has been through a series of personal trials since the death of his older brother Beau Biden" and it's "no doubt weighing on President Biden himself." Then Liasson threw out the obligatory points about Hunter talks to his dad every day, his brother died of brain cancer, and his mother and older sister died in a car crash when he was little, all the violins. The Bidens are "very close."  LIASSON: But Joe Biden has been very, very clear. As a father, he loves his son and supports him, but he also respects the judicial system. And he said he was going to accept the verdict no matter what it was, and he would not pardon his son if he was found guilty, which is a huge contrast, obviously, to Donald Trump, who has spent the last number of months trying to destroy people's faith in the justice system and say that any verdict against him, including the 34 felony counts where he was found guilty, is a witch hunt and a political perversion of justice. Then Khalid nudged Liasson to trash Trump some more: "Already, we've seen that the Trump campaign has put out a statement on this all." Liasson spewed the preposterous line that there's "no evidence" the Bidens have raked in millions from abroad:  LIASSON: Yes. He put out a statement saying that this Hunter Biden trial is just a distraction, and he said there were actually big, real crimes from the, quote, "Biden crime family, which has raked in tens of millions of dollars from China, Russia and Ukraine." There's no evidence of that. But it sounds like the Trump campaign understands that this guilty verdict for Hunter Biden is not going to be something that's going to have a major effect on the campaign. So they're intimating that there are worse crimes somewhere out there, but we still haven't gotten any evidence of that. One can argue the Biden influence-peddling is not a crime, but it's just silly to say there's "no evidence" of an influence-peddling mountain of millions. Later, NPR Justice Department reporter Carrie Johnson -- who often sounds like an unofficial publicist for Attorney General Merrick Garland, said the Republican charges that Team Biden "somehow colluded" with Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg are "without evidence." No mention of Matthew Colangelo going from the Biden DOJ to Bragg's team of Trump prosecutors.  As the show's headline suggested, they made the point that Biden's DOJ has also indicted Sen. Bob Menendez and Rep. Henry Cuellar in corruption probes. Khalid asked Liasson, "given the evidence, why do we continue to hear these sort of partisan-based attacks on the Justice Department?" Liasson argued Trump's Justice Department was weaponized -- no counterpoint of Trump's DOJ appointing special prosecutor Robert Mueller, and emphasized Trump won't allow an independent Justice Department if he wins again: LIASSON: He has talked about taking revenge on his political enemies using the Justice Department to do that. So you could say that all criticism is confession. And this is exactly what he tried to do in the first term. He promises he'll do it in the second term. And he is trying to destroy people's faith in basic democratic institutions. That's his modus operandi for free and fair elections. He doesn't believe in the peaceful transfer of power. And the justice system - if it returns a verdict against him, it is, by definition, corrupt. It's kind of like, heads I win, tails you cheated. NPR is partially sponsored by your taxpayer dollars. Transcript below:  The NPR Politics Podcast June 11, 2024 ASMA KHALID: Mara, the president's son has been through a series of personal trials since the death of his older brother, Beau Biden. This has all been, no doubt, weighing on President Biden himself. In fact, just a bit ago, we got word that he has headed himself back to Wilmington, where his son has been on trial. MARA LIASSON: Yeah. Well, it's clearly weighed on him. He has issued several statements throughout this trial, talking about his love for his son, his support for him, his admiration for how he's dealt with his sobriety. And he reportedly talks to his son every single day on the phone. They're very close. Of course, when Hunter was young, his mother died in a car crash that injured him and his little brother, killed his sister. So this is a family that has suffered a lot of tragedy. His older brother, Beau Biden, died from brain cancer. And this is a family that's very close. But Joe Biden has been very, very clear. As a father, he loves his son and supports him, but he also respects the judicial system. And he said he was going to accept the verdict no matter what it was, and he would not pardon his son if he was found guilty, which is a huge contrast, obviously, to Donald Trump, who has spent the last number of months trying to destroy people's faith in the justice system and say that any verdict against him, including the 34 felony counts where he was found guilty, is a witch hunt and a political perversion of justice. ASMA KHALID: Yeah. I want to talk more about the political ramifications, but let's take a quick break, and we'll be back in a moment. [Break] And we're back. And Mara, I want to ask you about the broader political campaign ramifications because, already, we've seen that the Trump campaign has put out a statement on this all. MARA LIASSON: Yes. He put out a statement saying that this Hunter Biden trial is just a distraction, and he said there were actually big, real crimes from the, quote, "Biden crime family, which has raked in tens of millions of dollars from China, Russia and Ukraine." There's no evidence of that. But it sounds like the Trump campaign understands that this guilty verdict for Hunter Biden is not going to be something that's going to have a major effect on the campaign. So they're intimating that there are worse crimes somewhere out there, but we still haven't gotten any evidence of that.   ASMA KHALID: Carrie, the former president, Donald Trump, has alleged that the Justice Department has been weaponized against him. Do you see this trial as blunting any of that criticism? CARRIE JOHNSON: Well, the facts are these. You know, this Justice Department has investigated the current president, Joe Biden - brought no charges - has investigated the former president, Donald Trump - two indictments pending against him in the federal system. This Justice Department has convicted now the son of President Biden, and yet I don't think that's going to make much difference in the political conversation. MARA LIASSON: And what's more than that, the Department of Justice has indicted two Democratic members of Congress, Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Congressman Henry Cuellar of Texas. It's hard to - when the Trump campaign says, this Justice Department has been weaponized against Donald Trump, well, it sure seems to go after a lot of Democrats, too. CARRIE JOHNSON: You know, it does. And the attorney general, Merrick Garland, is basically a soft-spoken guy. He's a man of few words, right? We don't hear him going out there and talking all the time. But in the last month or so, I've noticed a marked change in his demeanor and his willingness to try to get into this conversation because he thinks it's wrong, and it's dangerous to politicize the Justice Department. Threats are all the way up against prosecutors and federal agents and judges. The attorney general has basically said there are these baseless conspiracy theories that DOJ is going after people because of their politics or their last name. He says there's no evidence of that. And, in fact, the attorney general actually wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post today, saying that the people who are accusing the Justice Department of politicizing the justice system are themselves doing that to reach a desired partisan outcome. And we should note, all of this is happening at the same time the Republican-led House of Representatives is considering contempt charges against Merrick Garland as early as tomorrow. This is over the Justice Department's refusal to hand over audiotapes of President Biden's interview with the special counsel, Robert Hur. DOJ has handed over the written transcripts, but people like James Comer and Jim Jordan - the leaders of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees - want those audiotapes. The White House thinks they want them to make campaign ads for President Trump and against President Biden. Biden, of course, has asserted executive privilege over those tapes. Garland is not going to turn them over. And it's quite possible that, by the end of the week, the attorney general will be cited in contempt of Congress over this whole issue. So the Justice Department, unfortunately, is right in the mix of politics in this election year, just as it was in 2020 and in 2016, and I don't see a way out of that right now. ASMA KHALID: You know, Mara, you were just describing that there were also a number of Democrats facing charges here. So given the evidence, why do we continue to hear these sort of partisan-based attacks on the Justice Department? MARA LIASSON: Because it serves Donald Trump's political purposes. Don't forget he's been talking about weaponizing the Justice Department for eight years. He tried to weaponize the Justice Department when he was the president. He asked his attorney general to open a lot of investigations into his political adversaries, and they did open the investigations. But grand juries wouldn't indict them. There just wasn't enough evidence. But he has also said that if he is the president again, the Department of Justice will no longer be a quasi-independent agency. It will work for him. He has talked about taking revenge on his political enemies using the Justice Department to do that. So you could say that all criticism is confession. And this is exactly what he tried to do in the first term. He promises he'll do it in the second term. And he is trying to destroy people's faith in basic democratic institutions. That's his modus operandi for free and fair elections. He doesn't believe in the peaceful transfer of power. And the justice system - if it returns a verdict against him, it is, by definition, corrupt. It's kind of like, heads I win, tails you cheated. CARRIE JOHNSON: And speaking of conspiracy theories, Donald Trump and many of his allies on Capitol Hill and elsewhere have been arguing without evidence that the Justice Department somehow colluded with the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, to bring the case that resulted in Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts in New York earlier this year. The Justice Department just sent a letter to House Republicans saying it scoured all the emails from the inauguration of Joe Biden onward, of senior department leaders - found no correspondence with the Manhattan district attorney about that case against Donald Trump. So there's no evidence there either. But I don't think we've heard the end of that talking point yet from the Trump campaign, either.

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NewsBusters Podcast: Wandering Biden's G-7 Journalistic Secret Service

Anti-Biden social-media accounts shared video of Joe Biden turning around and seemingly wandering off at the G-7 summit, and the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni worked to turn him around like Jill Biden does. The pro-Biden media were furious that the "Murdoch Media" was spreading this clip mocking the "Meander In Chief." (That was the New York Post headline.) The "mainstream" crew pro-Biden media acts like a journalistic Secret Service, protecting the reputation of Democrats from a negative narrative.  MSNBC's Morning Joe struck its usual Downward Facing Dog yoga pose, attacking "cheap fakes" and "vicious lies," as if the video was fake news: "Even critics were saying that he did a strong job, very good job representing the United States,” they claimed. This is the same program where Scarborough said "F-you if you can't handle the truth. This version of Biden -- intellectually, analytically -- is the best Biden ever!" The Stelteresque reporters at the Daily Beast had the headline "White House Rips Desperate Murdoch Press Over Deceptive Biden Video." They were just promoting the tweets of press aide Andrew Bates and going after this idea that Murdoch media – like the Wall Street Journal article on Biden Slipping – are pushing fake news that Biden’s a geezer doing too much geez-ing On NBC Friday morning, White House reporter Gabe Gutierrez shared the news that Pope Francis would meet with President Biden, who he described as a "devout Catholic" NBC missed this story from The Washington Post: "Biden presses to keep reproductive rights in G-7 agreement." The story began:  President Biden, whose reelection campaign is centered on mobilizing voters on abortion rights, has been waging a behind-the-scenes battle here to ensure that abortion access and reproductive rights are part of a global agreement among the world’s leading democracies. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a hard-line conservative, has been intent on changing language that was included in last year’s Group of Seven communiqué to exclude mentions of abortion or reproductive rights, according to officials familiar with the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters. In the Trump years, anonymous sources trashed Trump in the liberal papers. In the Biden years, anonymous sources are used to help underline re-election campaign objectives.  Finally, we discuss Pope Francis meeting with a gaggle of comedians, including Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Rock, and...Whoopi Goldberg. These are not "devout Catholics." The Catholic League had the receipts.  Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts: 

Politics – The Daily Signal

Maddow and Stelter Concoct Crazy Theories on Trump’s Revenge

Forever earnest Brian Stelter tweeted out his late-night appearance on CNN with Abby Phillip.

“MSNBC’s [Rachel] Maddow is right to be thinking aloud about the possible repercussions of a second Trump term,” he typed. “Other media types and political veterans are doing the same thing. What might “retribution” look like? What are the pressure points that Trump could target?”

In a softball email interview with Maddow, CNN’s Oliver Darcy warned about the MAGA crowd: “… Some of his extremist allies even talking about jailing their fellow Americans. You’re one of his most notable critics on television. Are you worried that you could be a target?” It’s like he doesn’t know Peter Navarro is in jail, and Steve Bannon is scheduled for jail over refusing to testify to the Pelosi-Picked Panel on January 6.

Maddow implied something about Donald Trump’s campaign promise of mass deportations: “For that matter, what convinces you that these massive camps he’s planning are only for migrants? I’m worried about me—but only as much as I’m worried about all of us.”

Trump and his closest lieutenants have openly talked a big game about taking revenge on anti-Trump media outlets, so that concern is legitimate. It’s the crazy talk about prison camps for cable-news hosts that sounds cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. But Stelter thinks it’s right to “be thinking aloud.”

That’s the pattern of the anti-Trump media. Since 2015, they have constantly “thought aloud” about the wildest conspiracy theories. Trump is a Russian agent. Trump paid Moscow hookers to urinate on a bed the Obamas used. Trump is Hitler, or Mussolini, or whatever autocrat you can find. Trump will kill millions more people than Hitler, Stalin, and Mao combined. (Stelter rolled out the red carpet for that last insanity on his CNN show. Even PolitiFact couldn’t avoid flagging that.)

Right now, the anti-Trump, pro-Biden media is projecting panic about a second term, and imagining nothing about what a second Biden term would look like—especially whether Biden’s mental decline will reach a crisis point.

But wait—consider the first half of Stelter’s interview with Phillip. She played a series of clips of conservatives complaining about top Justice Department official Matthew Colangelo joining the Manhattan district attorney’s prosecution of Trump. How hard is it to connect dots here? Easier than the nonexistent “pee tapes” CNN promoted.

Stelter said this amazing thing: “I think they’re trying to make sense of a complex world. Conspiracy theories help simplify complexity. But they do so by taking shortcuts. And in the real world, in real life, with real-world thinking, there are no shortcuts. These guys are trying to take shortcuts, trying to use code words and buzzwords and propaganda in order to satisfy an audience by taking shortcuts. And there are no shortcuts in this real, complex world.”

This is coming from Stelter, who also touted on X his fanciful New Republic article imagining everyone but Fox and Newsmax is banished from the White House. That article was a nut pie of conspiracy theories.

Finally, the irony of Stelter imagining IRS audits or White House media access bans under Trump ignores the fact that Stelter and his pal Darcy have openly campaigned for Fox News and other conservative outlets to be deplatformed from television. It’s not about “freedom of speech, but freedom of reach.” It’s not frightening that Stelter has written two books attacking Fox News as a poisonous presence on TV. Because the conservative media is never “news.” CNN and MSNBC are “news.”

Their crazy conspiracy theories are treated as facts, and conservative facts like Colangelo’s connections become crazy conspiracy theories.

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Verdict in Hunter gun trial won't put an end to desperate pro-Joe Biden spin

It's more obvious than ever that media elites loathe former President Trump but treat the Biden family like they're close friends who they want to surround and protect.

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Column: Maddow and Stelter Concoct Crazy Theories on Trump's 'Revenge'

Forever earnest Brian Stelter tweeted out his late-night appearance on CNN with Abby Phillip. “MSNBC's Maddow is right to be thinking aloud about the possible repercussions of a second Trump term,” he typed. “Other media types and political veterans are doing the same thing. What might "retribution" look like? What are the pressure points that Trump could target?” MSNBC's @Maddow is right to be thinking aloud about the possible repercussions of a second Trump term. Other media types and political veterans are doing the same thing. What might "retribution" look like? What are the pressure points that Trump could target? pic.twitter.com/4M5hUAXUBB — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 12, 2024 In a softball email interview with Maddow, CNN’s Oliver Darcy warned about the MAGA crowd: “Some of his extremist allies even talking about jailing their fellow Americans. You're one of his most notable critics on television. Are you worried that you could be a target?” It’s like he doesn’t know Peter Navarro is in jail, and Steve Bannon is scheduled for jail, over refusing to testify to the Pelosi-Picked Panel on January 6. Maddow implied something about camps for Trump’s campaign promise of mass deportations: "For that matter, what convinces you that these massive camps he’s planning are only for migrants? I’m worried about me — but only as much as I’m worried about all of us." Trump and his closest lieutenants have openly talked a big game about taking revenge on anti-Trump media outlets, so that concern is legitimate. It's the crazy talk about prison camps for cable-news hosts that sounds cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs. But Stelter thinks it's right to "be thinking aloud." That's the pattern of the anti-Trump media. Since 2015, they have constantly "thought aloud" about the wildest conspiracy theories. Trump is a Russian agent. Trump paid Moscow hookers to urinate on a bed the Obamas used. Trump is Hitler, or Mussolini, or whatever autocrat you can find. Trump will kill more millions of people than Hitler, Stalin and Mao combined. (Stelter rolled out the red carpet for that last insanity on his CNN show. Even PolitiFact couldn't avoid flagging that.) Right now, the anti-Trump, pro-Biden media is projecting panic about a second term, and imagining nothing about what a second Biden term would look like -- especially whether Biden's mental decline will reach a crisis point.  But wait -- consider the first half of Stelter's interview with Phillip. She played a series of clips of conservatives complaining about top Justice Department official Matthew Colangelo joining the Manhattan DA's prosecution of Trump. How hard is it to connect dots here? Easier than the nonexistent "pee tapes" CNN promoted. Stelter said this amazing thing: "I think they're trying to make sense of a complex world. Conspiracy theories help simplify complexity. But they do so by taking shortcuts. And in real world, in real life, with real world thinking, there are no shortcuts. These guys are trying to take shortcuts, trying to use code words and buzzwords and propaganda in order to satisfy an audience by taking shortcuts. And there are no shortcuts in this real complex world." This is coming from Stelter, who also touted on Twitter his fanciful New Republic article imagining everyone but Fox and Newsmax is banished from the White House. That article was a nut pie of conspiracy theories. Finally, the irony of Stelter imagining IRS audits or White House media access bans under Trump ignores the fact that Stelter and his pal Darcy have openly campaigned for Fox News and other conservative outlets to be deplatformed from television. It's not about "freedom of speech, but freedom of reach." It's not frightening that Stelter has written two books attacking Fox News as a poisonous presence on TV. Because the conservative media is never "news." CNN and MSNBC are "news." Their crazy conspiracy theories are treated as facts, and conservative facts like Colangelo's connections become crazy conspiracy theories. 

Politics – The Daily Signal

The Hunter Verdicts Won’t Stop the Desperate Pro-Biden Spin

The nation’s most self-impressed journalists, the ones who strangely self-identify as “mainstream,” could not bring themselves to treat the Hunter Biden trial as comparable in any way to Donald Trump’s trial in Manhattan. Treating Hunter as a significant “news” subject gives them the creeps, like they’ve been drafted into Rupert Murdoch’s army.

So it’s a little shocking the Hunter trial gained about half as much coverage as Trump’s—at least through the first eight days of coverage. On the ABC, CBS, and NBC morning, evening, and Sunday interview shows, Trump’s trial drew more than 174 minutes, while Hunter’s trial drew 85 minutes. (By the Trump trial’s end, they filled the air with 640 minutes.)

It’s less shocking to notice the difference in tone. Trump’s trial was a “criminal” trial about “hush money.” On April 25, fill-in CBS anchor Margaret Brennan announced, “The former president faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business documents related to a so-called hush money payment to a porn star.” Other stories fussed that Trump was bullying and threatening witnesses and court staff.

Hunter Biden stories were loaded with empathy. On June 3, ABC’s Terry Moran relayed: “President [Joe] Biden released a statement standing by his only surviving son, saying in part ‘I have boundless love for my son.’” CBS reporter Norah O’Donnell echoed him that night on “the president’s only surviving son.” On June 10, NBC fill-in anchor Tom Llamas began: “For the first time, the child of a sitting president facing a potential criminal conviction. Right now, a jury deliberating the fate of Hunter Biden, the sole surviving son of the president.”

Hunter Biden is 54 and network anchors refer to him as a “child.”

The contrast in tone tells you that the media elites loathe Trump but treat the Biden family like they’re close friends who they want to surround and protect. There was a sense of glee when Democrats began crowing about Trump the “convicted felon.” Then came the sorrow that they only had 11 days to celebrate before the president’s son drew the same label.

Then came the stubborn facts. Conservative outlets like the New York Post were more interested in how prosecutors based their case on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the court verified it as evidence. CBS never mentioned this. ABC gave 10 seconds, and NBC offered 30 seconds acknowledging the laptop’s use in court. None of them revisited their 2020 performance, when they all robotically regurgitated the Biden campaign spin that the laptop was “garbage” carrying the “earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

Prosecutors not only mined the laptop but used Hunter’s addiction memoir “Beautiful Things” against him. That was quite a backfire, after the pro-Biden networks (and their affiliated comedians like Jimmy Kimmel) gushed over Hunter’s memoir as “catharsis” for the 50-something child. Back in 2021, CBS donated 25 minutes of airtime to syrupy interview segments with the addict. Maybe “donated” is the wrong word since CBS-affiliated Simon & Schuster published the book.

These guilty verdicts will not affect the pro-Biden media’s incessant efforts to tout the Biden family as a selling point for the Democrats. They couldn’t stop talking after the verdict about how the first lady was in the courtroom almost every day, and how the president scores points with voters when he talks about how much he loves his “only surviving son.”

They will keep spinning in desperation that Hunter Biden‘s epic crack-and-hookers binges somehow make the Bidens more sympathetic to Americans with addicts in their family. Journalists were given cocaine-powdered lemons, and the lemonade they are making is a heady brew. But not everyone wants to drink it.

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NPR Treats Hunter's Verdict as Much Less Important Than Alito, Secretly Taped

Taxpayer-funded National Public Radio didn't think Hunter Biden's three guilty felony verdicts were a big deal. NPR.org has an online listing of story order on their news programs. On Tuesday night, All Things Considered put the Hunter Biden verdicts at....number nine. Guess what was #1. “Secret audio raises new questions about Supreme Court Justice's impartiality.” This drew six minutes and 11 seconds. The Hunter Biden guilty verdicts lasted 3:52. NPR reporter Ryan Lucas recounted all the family hugs and hand-holding, but left out ANY Republican commentary. Co-host Mary Louise Kelly oozed: "A woman who describes herself as a documentarian and liberal activist secretly recorded audio of two Supreme Court justices at an exclusive gala. Lauren Windsor released the edited audio on X and shared it with Rolling Stone." You KNOW someone's seriously leftist when they're "liberal" to NPR. Naturally, media reporter David Folkenflik was brought on: FOLKENFLIK: Right now she's operating in a kind of - well, shall I say, a bit of a cowboy mode. It's almost as though she sees herself as an antidote to James O'Keefe, the conservative, really right-wing provocateur who used undercover videos. He often went after sort of ancillary figures to try to discredit larger institutions or liberal figures. In her case, she's really gone after folks who are really at the top, in this case, of the federal government and also, in some ways, the conservative establishment, if you think about these two justices. To his credit, Folkenflik suggested this was an ethical issue, that NPR wouldn’t stoop to this. He did NOT recall for his listeners that O’Keefe staffers punked NPR in 2011, leading to several resignations. But how is Windsor the "antidote"? She's the opposite, but she's doing the same apparently poisonous thing. There's definitely a dishonesty in secret recordings, especially when people pretend to be something they're not. But it's rich for NPR to pose as guardians of judicial propriety, when NPR reporter Nina Totenberg and her pal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg broke all the rules about ethics together.  Then came Wednesday's Morning Edition, which was even worse. The first two features, which lasted more than 11 minutes were on secret-mic interviews with conservative justices Alito and John Roberts. Hunter Biden was listed at...number seventeen! Lucas did less than four minutes again.  And #12 was White House PR: "Biden administration announces a plan for removing medical debt from credit reports." PS: Tuesday's PBS NewsHour also turned to NPR's Lucas for his version of events. Then White House reporter Laura Barron-Lopez lied about Joe Biden's involvement with Hunter Biden's clients.  Laura Barron-Lopez on @PBS: GOP "repeating baseless accusations against President Biden, claiming that he was involved in his son's business dealings overseas, which there has been NO EVIDENCE to support those claims...from former President Trump, as well as other Republicans." pic.twitter.com/2TnfsNIGF3 — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) June 13, 2024 A campaign spokesperson for President Trump issued a statement, saying — quote — "This trial has been nothing more than a distraction from the real crimes of the Biden crime family. Biden's reign over the Biden family criminal empire is all coming to an end on November 5," again repeating baseless accusations against President Biden, claiming that he was involved in his son's business dealings overseas, which there has been no evidence to support those claims from President — from former President Trump, as well as other Republicans. PPS: It's amusing that once NPR's show listing went into the archives, Hunter's verdict didn't show up any more on a shortened list, but dental therapy and "One woman's summer of pleasure in Paris" did. 

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NewsBusters Podcast: The Media Let No One Say Joe & Jill Biden Are Bad Parents

The network newscasts and national newspapers greeted the Hunter Biden verdicts with sappy pictures and talk of "family turmoil." The Washington Post lamented the trial "put on national display the first family’s pain, heartache and regrets." The New York Times called it "a shattering blow for the Biden family in the middle of an unforgiving presidential election campaign," with Hunter's struggles "made painfully public." No one can be allowed to say that Joe and Jill Biden are bad parents, enablers of bad behavior. Hunter Biden is 54, and the network anchors still called him a "child" of the president, which is a bit of a stretch. No one wants to blame the parents after all this time, but clearly Joe Biden's help for Hunter's influence-peddling business brought money to this son, which then went to drugs and hookers.  On their front pages, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post all put color pictures of the president hugging Hunter or Hunter holding the First Lady's hand outside the courtroom to put a warm family spin on the bad day. The New York Post featured Joe hugging hunter, but the big headline was "FIRST FELON." Politico's PM Playbook played up "deep pain" for Biden: The result is “sure to be a source of deep pain for the president, who has long worried about the impact of the case on his only surviving son,” our colleagues Betsy Woodruff Swan and Josh Gerstein write from Wilmington. “The president fears not only that his son may be incarcerated, but also that the case could imperil his sobriety.” The Washington Post had a second story on the front page by Matt Viser with that take, the personal pain! Headline: “for the president a personal toll, if not a political one.” Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts.  

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Column: The Hunter Verdicts Won't Stop the Desperate Pro-Biden Spin

The nation’s most self-impressed journalists, the ones who strangely self-identify as “mainstream,” could not bring themselves to treat the Hunter Biden trial as comparable in any way to Donald Trump’s trial in Manhattan. Treating Hunter as a significant “news” subject gives them the creeps, like they’ve been drafted into Rupert Murdoch’s army. So it’s a little shocking the Hunter trial gained about half as much coverage as Trump’s -- at least through the first eight days of coverage. On the ABC, CBS, and NBC morning, evening, and Sunday-interview shows, Trump’s trial drew more than 174 minutes, while Hunter’s trial drew 85 minutes. (By the Trump trial’s end, they filled the air with 640 minutes.) It’s less shocking to notice the difference in tone. Trump’s trial was a “criminal” trial about “hush money.” On April 25, fill-in CBS anchor Margaret Brennan announced, “The former president faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business documents related to a so-called hush money payment to a porn star.” Other stories fussed that Trump was bullying and threatening witnesses and court staff. Hunter Biden stories were loaded with empathy. On June 3, ABC’s Terry Moran relayed: “President Biden released a statement standing by his only surviving son, saying in part ‘I have boundless love for my son.’” CBS’s Norah O’Donnell echoed him that night on “the President’s only surviving son.” On June 10, NBC fill-in anchor Tom Llamas began: “For the first time, the child of a sitting president facing a potential criminal conviction. Right now, a jury deliberating the fate of Hunter Biden, the sole surviving son of the president.”  Hunter Biden is 54 and network anchors refer to him as a “child.” The contrast in tone tells you that the media elites loathe Trump, but treat the Biden family like they’re close friends who they want to surround and protect. There was a sense of glee when Democrats began crowing about Trump the “convicted felon.” Then came the sorrow that they only had eleven days to celebrate before the president’s son drew the same label. Then came the stubborn facts. Conservative outlets like the New York Post were more interested in how prosecutors based their case on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the court verified it as evidence. CBS never mentioned this. ABC gave 10 seconds and NBC offered 30 seconds acknowledging the laptop’s use in court. None of them revisited their 2020 performance, when they all robotically regurgitated the Biden campaign spin that the laptop was “garbage” carrying the “hallmarks of Russian disinformation.” Prosecutors not only mined the laptop, but used Hunter’s addiction memoir Beautiful Things against him. That was quite a backfire, after the pro-Biden networks (and their affiliated comedians like Jimmy Kimmel) gushed over Hunter’s memoir as “catharsis” for the fifty-something child. Back in 2021, CBS donated 25 minutes of airtime to syrupy interview segments with the addict. Maybe “donated” is the wrong word since CBS-affiliated Simon & Schuster published the book. These guilty verdicts will not affect the pro-Biden media’s incessant efforts to tout the Biden family as a selling point for the Democrats. They couldn't stop talking after the verdict about how the First Lady was in the courtroom almost every day, and how the president scores points with voters when he talks about how much he loves his "only surviving son." They will keep spinning in desperation that Hunter Biden’s epic crack-and-hookers binges somehow make the Bidens more sympathetic to Americans with addicts in their family. Journalists were given cocaine-powdered lemons, and the lemonade they are making is a heady brew. But not everyone wants to drink it.

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CNN Mourns the Hunter Biden Verdicts, Trump-Beat Reporter Slams Trump for No 'Compassion'

In the aftermath of the three Guilty verdicts for Hunter Biden on Tuesday morning, CNN sounded mournful about the news, and sounded like the only people worth discussing were Bidens, like they're a sympathetic royal family like the Kennedys. There was an empathy overload. You could have gotten a little sloshed if you drank every time they touted how First Lady Jill Biden was in the front row of the courtroom nearly every day.  It only turned negative when they turned over the mic to CNN reporter Kristen Holmes, whose beat is the Trump campaign. She noted that the Trump campaign put out an early statement, then withdrew it quickly in favor of a Truth Social post from the former president.  Holmes claimed "many Americans" find the Biden family sympathetic, but that meanie Donald Trump doesn't!  In verdict aftermath, CNN's Trump-campaign correspondent Kristen Holmes dumps on Trump for not being sympathetic to Hunter's addiction issues, despite addiction in his own family. "Many Americans find this case to be sympathetic," Trump is not one of them. pic.twitter.com/5CmvyqErUy — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) June 11, 2024 A lot of the coverage was repetitive. Holmes repeated her patter in the next hour, because she insisted it was "really significant" spin: Trump has shown "little or no sympathy" for Hunter and Joe Biden, despite losing a brother to alcoholism. He hasn't "shown any compassion" for the Biden family. At low points like these for the Bidens, CNN can turn to a former Biden White House communications director like Kate Bedingfield to offer the most florid spin about how none of this is damaging for the Bidens. They're going to be just fine!  THIS is why CNN hired Biden's Communications Director as an "analyst," so she can spew about Hunter's "eloquence" and how everyone remembers Joe's love-my-son talking points in the debates. No pushback. Biden also said in the debate.that the Laptop was "a bunch of garbage." pic.twitter.com/B1WYvCzyas — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) June 11, 2024 The most slavishly pro-Biden opinion is encouraged, while the conservative CNN analysts are rare. Scott Jennings wasn't on the set right after the verdicts, but he tweeted something that would have curled Bedingfield's hair: "The most important thing about the Hunter trial is the laptop was proven real. Joe Biden, his campaign, & dozens of Democratic luminaries & media outlets were willing to lie about it and/or censor it despite knowing it was real. The amount of credibility burned is staggering." Instead, CNN viewers were "treated" to Biden biographer Evan Osnos of the leftist magazine The New Yorker, which just had a gleeful cover of Trump putting his tiny hands in handcuffs. There is no joy in Biden-ville now.  CNN's Wolf Blitzer urges Biden biographer (sounds authorized) Evan Osnos to recount his son Beau's death, and the other Biden tragedies, which are endlessly recited in pro-Biden media outlets. It connects him with other Americans, they say. pic.twitter.com/npdeZOARsP — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) June 11, 2024 Even if it sounds tragic that Beau's death from brain cancer sent the family into a tailspin of drug use and adultery and sketchy gun purchases, no one on CNN was wondering why was it then that the Bidens decided this was a great time for Joe to run for president again? 

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NewsBusters Podcast: Morning Mika Rips Fox News For Deciding Trump's NOT a Dictator

On 'Morning Joe,' Mika Brzezinski ripped Fox News for deciding Trump is not a dictator-in-waiting. He only joked with Sean Hannity about being a "dictator" on Day One. Trump is insane, she said, and "loves dictators and wants to be one." So you have to vote for Biden because only he "endorses democracy."  “One on the right who promises to be a dictator, who promises to exact retribution on anybody who made him angry or held him accountable. And one on the left who, again, you may not agree with his policies and his legislation, even though he has accomplished more than most modern, if not all modern American presidents, he endorses democracy, agrees with democracy. He wants to preserve our democracy. There is the choice. We've heard it a million times.” It's bad enough that Ronald Reagan sort of ended the Cold War, but even Bill Clinton and Barack Obama might have a beef.  From there, Mika went on a tear against Fox News.  MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Yet on Fox News, I watched a segment about whether or not Trump would be a dictator. After running a number of soundbites of people concerned about things he has said, because he promises to do things that are like acts committed by a dictator or even says he will be one, and then some person on the right who says, there is no proof he said it. Then a soundbite of Sean Hannity asking him, would you be a dictator, Trump not answering the question, and then the host saying, "there, it's settled. He's not going to be a dictator, we'll be right back". I have to say it, so many people are influenced by what they watch on Fox News, and they're not giving a clear picture. Yet, moving forward, is it not clear, the picture? Am I crazy? Because I have eyes. I see one person who doesn't seem at all sane, who love dictators and wants to be one, and another who is getting a little older but, quite frankly, doing quite well on the world stage under pretty tough circumstances. Answering questions on his own with no teleprompter and sounding just fine, thank you. Finally, we discuss how the networks aided Biden by playing up how he'd visit a cemetery for American fighters in World War I in France that Trump allegedly skipped because he called American war dead "suckers" and "losers." That was the claim from The Atlantic magazine, which has showily endorsed Trump's opponents in the last two elections. ABC's press-secretary wannabe Mary Bruce concluded: "Trump denies ever saying that, but Biden often repeats the story an example of the stark differences between them." It doesn't matter if anyone can prove the comments were actually uttered.  Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts.   

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This Lame Media Outlet MANGLED Trump's 'I Don't Care About You' Joke -- As He Predicted!

Donald Trump loves to make jokes during his rallies, especially about the press. At Sunday morning’s hot and sunny rally in Las Vegas, Trump joked about losing voters to heatstroke, and the press reaction: "By the way, isn't the breeze nice. Do you feel the breeze? I don't want anybody going on me. We need every voter. I don't care about you. I just want your vote. I don't care." His supporters laughed as he then said, "See now, the press will take that, and they'll say, 'He said a horrible thing.'" Like clockwork, the clickbait hacks at Newsweek (and then the aggregators at MSN.com) posted the headline: Donald Trump Jokes to Las Vegas Rally Attendees: 'I Don't Care About You' This website is a desiccated shell of its former weekly-magazine self. This headline was actually an improvement from the first one! As the article now admits, they left "jokes" out in the original:  Donald Trump to Las Vegas rally attendees: "I don't care about you" https://t.co/4WTGg774nJ pic.twitter.com/ju8vKZMMMu — Newsweek (@Newsweek) June 9, 2024 Reporter Natalie Venegas began: “Amid high temperatures at Donald Trump's campaign rally in Las Vegas on Sunday, the former president made a quip about the heat affecting his attendees by stating that he needed their votes, adding, "I don't care about you." They ran a video tweet from Acyn Torabi from the Trump-trashing Meidas Touch squad: Trump: Do you feel the breeze? I don't want anybody going on me. We need every voter. I don't care about you. I just want your vote. I don't care. pic.twitter.com/IirvQs123c — Acyn (@Acyn) June 9, 2024 Then they ran more Trump-trashing Twitter commentary: In response to Trump's comments, some took to X, formerly Twitter, to criticize him on Sunday. Democrat and X user Harry Sisson wrote ,"WOW! Trump just went MASK OFF and said 'We need every voter. I don't care about you. I just want your vote. I don't care.' You hear that, America? Trump doesn't care about you at all. He just wants you to vote for him. Disgraceful." Democratic Pennsylvania state Representative Malcolm Kenyatta simply wrote: "He's finally telling the truth." Reiterating Kenyatta's remarks, progressive political commentator Luke Beasley posted to X, "He finally said the truth." At least Newsweek mentioned at the end that the Trump campaign took precautions for attendees, with bottled water and misting fans and tents, including at least one with air conditioning. But MSN and Newsweek got the trashy headline they wanted! 

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Whitewashing Washington Post Touts Nasty Pro-Hamas Protest as 'Largely Peaceful'

While the networks mostly skipped over Saturday's nasty pro-Hamas demonstrations outside the White House, The Washington Post filed a story Saturday evening, but the word "whitewash" came to mind. "The demonstration and march remained largely peaceful. A D.C. police spokesperson said the agency had not made any arrests, while the U.S. Park Police did not respond to an inquiry on arrests." Despite smoke bombs, vandalizing statues, overt celebration of Hamas, and crazy talk about "vampirical" universities, the headline was bland: "Thousands circle White House to demand Biden enforce Gaza ‘red line’." The picture at the top of the story cast the protesters as possessing the moral authority as the opponents of "genocide." Reporter Meagan Flynn's introduction was vaguely promotional:  Thousands of demonstrators surrounded the perimeter of the White House in a sea of ' fabric Saturday, saying they were drawing a red line for President Biden and calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. On the same day that Gazan officials said at least 210 Palestinians were killed in a refugee camp, the demonstrators — many of whom had arrived on buses from more than two dozen cities — marched to chants of “Free Palestine!” while holding signs that said “Genocide is our red line” and “Israel bombs, your taxes pay.” While marching, they held a seemingly unending strip of red fabric around the entire perimeter. There were no ideological labels -- no "liberal," no "leftist," not even a "progressive." There was a "pro-Palestinian" in the copy, but there were no "anti-Israel," which certainly fit. "Genocide" was used in three quotes. “If Joe Biden’s red line was a fiction … and it was designed to make us become quiet, instead of that, we are going to become louder,” said Brian Becker, a leader of the ANSWER Coalition, one of the organizers of the march. “Only we can be the red line against genocide.” Becker and his ANSWER Coalition are Marxist-Leninists, which you could see from its official Liberation Store -- a curious choice for communists. The word "Hamas" only appeared once in the piece:  For Mohammad, a leader in the Palestinian Youth Movement who addressed the demonstrators before the march, it’s personal. His aunts and uncles are in Rafah, not far from where an Israeli strike killed dozens of people at a tent camp. His parents and other family are in North Gaza. He remembers the first call he got from his family members after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that ignited the deadly war. “They told me, ‘We go to sleep knowing we might not wake up in the morning. The sun rises and we hope Gaza is still there,’ " recalled Mohammad, who did not share his last name for safety reasons. The word "graffiti" only appeared once, in a caption to a photo of a child examining "pro-Palestinian graffiti." Flynn posted one tweet on the event, with a bland ten-second video which underlined the "largely peaceful" company line:  Thousands of demonstrators have surrounded the perimeter of the White House, marching to a chorus of Free Palestine pic.twitter.com/YejsyDyr5V — Meagan Flynn (@Meagan_Flynn) June 8, 2024 There's an interesting contrast to the Post coverage of the annual "March for Life" protest against abortion in January. This year, the trio of Post reporters called the protesters "antiabortion" five times and "abortion opponents" three times. But Flynn's story never called these protesters "anti-Israel," or "Israel opponents," which they clearly are, with all the "genocide" talk. 

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HUH? CBS Host Margaret Brennan Flummoxed at Public Support for Mass Deportations

The TV networks take public opinion polls, and sometimes they're quite upset at what they find. On Sunday's Face the Nation on CBS, host Margaret Brennan was flummoxed at how a strong majority of Americans support mass deportations. Brennan thinks that's wildly impractical. She doesn't seem to think it's wildly impractical to allow all of these people untrammeled entry into America.  CBS News polling guy Anthony Salvanto explained: "We tested that in a general way in principle. Would you support a new government program that would deport all people living in the U.S. illegally? And that finds majority favor. That finds six in 10. It's strongest among folks who are MAGA. It's strongest among Trump supporters, but also from some Democrats as well." CBS’s @MargBrennan flummoxed by poll showing 62% support deporting all undocumented immigrants. Biden has deported “more people in the past year than any year since 2010” and “it doesn’t seem practical...to round up children...So what exactly do people think they’re supporting?” pic.twitter.com/UqHHAC1hkA — Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) June 9, 2024 MARGARET BRENNAN: So, unpack that a bit, because this 62 percent of Americans favor deporting all undocumented immigrants. So, Homeland Security says that President Biden has already deported or repatriated more people in the past year than any year since 2010. And then, depending on the details of what's talked about on the campaign trail, some of what Mr. Trump talks about could be illegal. It doesn't seem practical, in some sense, to round up children. And then we know that the courts have questioned whether local authorities would have the ability to do it, and federal authorities don't have the resources. So what exactly do people think they're supporting? Translation: What on earth are you bumpkins thinking? Why aren't you deferring to Experts in Washington? The CBS pollster said this was about a direction and not the small details: SALVANTO: Well, when you measure public sentiment on this or really just about any policy, you're getting a sense of direction. You're getting broad brushstrokes. But those kinds of details, well, that's often up to the legislatures and the courts later on. We tested even the idea of, should local law enforcement be involved in this? And a lot of folks do say yes. Again, the details of that, the specifics, you're not going to pick that up in an aggregate public opinion. BRENNAN: They weren't tracking the Supreme Court decisions. SALVANTO: Undoubtedly not. But, look, it does tell you, though, for the viewer watching this campaign, that what we're seeing here connects to whether it's the courts, the – what some people say is the politicization of the courts, these ideas of mass deportations, et cetera, we are in a different era, in which a lot of folks say the system as a whole is not working. And all of these, if you connect the dots through them, are part of that reaction against it, which explains some of that general sentiment for some of these policies. BRENNAN: It's really just kind of a: "Do something." SALVANTO: Do something. President Biden and his allies in the leftist media haven't wanted to "do something" to stop untrammeled illegal immigration, and they don't appreciate how public opinion has turned on their policy.

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NBC Sanitizes Pro-Hamas Protest Outside White House; ABC, CBS, PBS Skip It

None of the Saturday night newscasts mentioned Hunter Biden at all, and most of them failed to report the breaking news of thousands of pro-Hamas protesters demonstrating outside the White House. They were not fans of President Biden, describing him as an enabler of genocide. Twitchy has a roundup of video and commentary. ABC, CBS, and NBC all dutifully publicized President Biden's state dinner in Paris. No Republicans were heard.  Hundreds of anti-Israel protesters are gathering in DC to “surround” the White House to protest Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war. “Hey Joe Biden, you’re a sellout! Pack your bags and get the hell out!” pic.twitter.com/2MIkk1z1fa — Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) June 8, 2024 ABC, CBS, and PBS couldn't manage to locate this Saturday afternoon pro-Hamas hootenanny, despite smoke bombs, vandalizing statues, overt celebration of Hamas, and crazy talk about "vampirical" universities. Don't worry: The Washington Post called it "largely peaceful." NBC Nightly News offered a sanitized ten seconds:  On Saturday's 'NBC Nightly News,' White House reporter Kelly O'Donnell does the Stenographer to Power bit, pushing Biden's ceasefire proposal. NBC includes 10 seconds of the radical pro-Hamas protests today, but wow, it looks Mostly Peaceful! No Hunter Biden news. pic.twitter.com/ADXrTS7bgV — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) June 8, 2024 CBS did locate protesters in DC: for Gay Pride!  On Saturday's 'CBS Evening News,' they noted the "glitzy state dinner" for Biden and Macron in Paris included Salma Hayek and Pharrell, but they did NOT note the radical pro-Hamas protesters outside the White House. They DID tout the DC 'Gay Pride' parade, though. pic.twitter.com/EIXzCEw0Ji — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) June 8, 2024 Two of the networks found time to recycle the old slime from The Atlantic from 2020 -- no one has audio or video -- that President Trump called American war dead in Europe "suckers" and "losers." CBS even briefly displayed a Biden campaign ad. The 'CBS Weekend News' had no Hunter Biden news tonight, but Ed O'Keefe did work in slimy old liberal claims from the 2020 campaign that Trump said some war dead were "suckers" and "losers." Trump denied it, Ed said, but Biden never forgets it. pic.twitter.com/weEeiEfcvx — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) June 8, 2024 Trump adamantly denies saying it, but the networks don't need a Fact Check. Like Biden publicists, they just repeat that Biden repeats the unproven story often.  On ABC's Saturday "World News Tonight," no Hunter Biden mention, but Mary Bruce recycles "reports" that Trump called the US war dead "suckers" and "losers." "Trump denies ever saying that, but Biden often repeats the story an example of the stark differences between them." pic.twitter.com/cqiDCF6Ofg — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) June 9, 2024 ABC did find time Saturday to report a lawsuit against Cold Stone Creamery is going forward because its pistachio ice cream didn't have pistachios in it.

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NewsBusters Podcast: Zero Seconds for the Biden Family Business

As Hunter Biden is tried on gun charges in Delaware, MRC Director of Media Analyisis Geoffrey Dickens joins the show to remind us how scoops about the Bidens (Joe, Hunter, Uncle Jim) in the New York Post and Politico are persistently ignored by ABC, CBS, and NBC. Perhaps the most brazen omission in the last few months is ignoring that the House Republicans charged that Hunter Biden lied to Congress under oath at least three times during his testimony back on February 28. At the time, reporters underlined the view that the House Republican investigation was a "sham" and that Hunter got the best of the Republicans that day. So omitting the GOP belief that the president's son lied under oath was predictably buried.  Other stories with juicy details were left on the cutting-room floor. Politico reported that the president's brother James Biden was cutting deals with businessmen in Qatar, the Mideast country that's presently hosting the leaders of the terrorist group Hamas. How many Americans know who James Biden is? People who watch network news to stay informed would be clueless.  We learned that in 2021, the CIA blocked federal investigators from interviewing Hunter Biden’s “sugar brother” Kevin Morris, according to IRS whistleblowers. Morris's daughter is now complaining publicly about Hunter Biden taking all of her father's money. In 2017, Hunter Biden used his dad’s appearance at a Sandy Hook school-shooting memorial event to coordinate a previously unknown meeting between the former vice president and a Chinese business partner, newly unveiled texts showed. No matter how embarrassing these stories could have been, the networks steered clear of them. Time after time, they drew ZERO seconds.  Enjoy the podcast below,   

Politics – The Daily Signal

Time Magazine Betrays Its Tilt in Biden, Trump Interviews

Does Time magazine really matter anymore?

It still has a circulation of more than 1 million, but that is one-third of what it was in 2012. Does anything it reports still resonate, or is it like a tree that collapses unheard in the solitude of the woods?

Time just secured an interview with President Joe Biden, when Biden has granted very few interviews to print news outlets. Time gained access to Donald Trump in April, and the first thing you notice when you compare the two interviews is the length.

At the top of the transcripts, Time claims the Biden transcript is a “28 minute read,” while Trump’s is listed as 83 minutes. Time’s “fact check” of the Trump interviews (“21 minute read”) is almost as long as the Biden interview.

Another noticeable tilt is the agenda of questions. Biden’s questions were overwhelmingly about foreign policy. There are three on inflation, three on immigration, and three on Biden’s age. There were zero questions on Hunter Biden and the Biden scandals. There were zero questions on the Trump trial or the Trump prosecutions.

Did Team Biden put any conditions on which questions could be asked? It’s a fair question, considering how selective they’ve been in handing out interviews.

By contrast, by my count, Time asked Trump 11 questions about the Trump prosecutions (and “revenge” for them), five questions about Jan. 6, two about potential political violence in 2025, four on fighting the “Deep State,” three on his “dictator for a day” joke, and four on whether he’d seek to overturn the 22nd Amendment and seek a third term.

On top of that, Trump drew 14 questions on abortion policy and six on crime. It’s obvious from the Time transcripts that they consider Trump’s opinions on domestic issues to be much more controversial—and even extremist—than anything Biden advocates.

The rest of the media picked up on Trump’s abortion answers, and Biden didn’t have to provide any abortion answers.

Even the age questions to Biden were timid softballs, and Biden’s answer—suggesting he could take his interviewer Massimo Calabresi in a fight—was taken as a joke. Calabresi told CNN’s Jake Tapper it was “lighthearted” and “quite funny.” Biden responded to a follow-up about voter concerns with his usual spin: “Watch me.” Calabresi confessed it might be a “stock answer.” So, why not push through it? Why not ask, “Everyone’s been watching you, that’s your problem”?

Time could have asked Biden why his team refuses to release audio of his interview with stolen-documents special counsel Robert Hur, with the fear Republicans will exploit the audio in advertising. But Time pretends Hur is a nobody and that Biden’s stolen documents should already be forgotten. Hur refused to prosecute Biden, and Jack Smith just keeps prosecuting Trump.

It looks a bit rigged.

By contrast, Trump’s interviewer Eric Cortellessa lectured him: “I just want to say for the record, there’s no evidence that President Biden directed this prosecution against you.” Trump rejected that: “I always hate the way a reporter will make those statements. They know it’s so wrong.” Time, like other slavishly pro-Biden outlets, refuses to acknowledge that Biden’s No. 3 Justice Department official Matthew Colangelo resigning to join Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s team of Trump prosecutors shreds the “no evidence” lie.

The Democrats running Time are hyperbolically raising fear that a president using the Justice Department might go after his political opponents, while somehow being blind and deaf enough to ignore that Biden is using the Justice Department to go after his political opponents. They can’t believe anyone would object to their shamelessness.

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We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

The post Time Magazine Betrays Its Tilt in Biden, Trump Interviews appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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Carville Lectures the Press to Crack Down Harder on Republicans: 'F**k Objectivity!'

Let's be blunt: pro-Biden media outlets really don't care at all about what we think or what evidence we bring of their bias. Instead, Democrat journalists care most about how Democrats tell them how to report on things.  Our former colleague Jason Cohen at the Daily Caller reports that the cartoonish Cajun James Carville blasted the "professional center" in the news media and proclaimed "F**k objectivity" as this year's motto -- well, any year's motto since 2015.  Carville's "Politics War Room" podcast is co-hosted by Al Hunt, former Washington Bureau Chief of The Wall Street Journal and spouse of longtime PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff. Hunt told Carville that listeners wanted to know if the press should describe Donald Trump as the "disgraced former president." Another asked how Walter Cronkite or Peter Jennings would have handled the verdict.  Hunt spoke first, saying hey, I spent almost 20 years running Washington bureaus, and it's an “outright lie” that the prosecution of Trump was orchestrated by Biden! Then Carville spoke:  CARVILLE: So this is the basic question. People say, you know, Trump is going to be the Republican nominee and we got to cover it, and Biden’s the Democratic nominee and we cover this. And if there’s something bad about Biden, of course, we’ve gotta print it. But if something comes up that is, can’t say good about Trump, but more favorable to him, like the Elie Honigs and the Fareed Zakarias of the world [!], that’s one way to look at it. We just tell the truth and let the people decide. Or, at times when the country is in great peril or the moral imperative is so significant, you don’t do that. He compared the current era to World War II, somehow comparing Trump to Japanese war commander Hideki Tojo. Then he cited the civil rights movement, where "one side was correct and one side was God-awful wrong." Let's forget that the wrong side were Southern Democrats, James!  Carville laid into New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn, who recently claimed it's not his newspaper's job to defeat Trump, it's Joe Biden's job. Uh-oh!  CARVILLE: Now you have Joe Kahn, the new editor or publisher, whatever he is at The New York Times, saying, ‘We’re just going to cover this down the middle. We’re going to cover what it is.’ I don’t think that’s the role of the news media at a time when the entire Constitution is in peril. I don’t have anything against slanted coverage. I really don’t … I would have something against it at most other times in American history, but not right now. Fuck your objectivity! The real objectivity in this country right now is we’re either going to have a Constitution or we’re not.” And everything else, from Hunter Biden’s gun application to Judge Merchan’s, I don’t know, $35 contribution, to all of the bulls--t that the professional center feels like they got to put out. I can’t tell you that these are bad people. They’re extremely naive people who have no idea what’s at stake here in this election. As usual, the "stakes" require the most blatant partisanship that can be mustered by the press. "So I think we need slanted coverage, more slanted coverage and I think we got to recognize the threat that this guy and the MAGA, not just him, the entire MAGA movement, from [Justice] Alito and Trump on down is a serious, it's a clear, serious and present danger to the existence of the Constitution in the United States. And I mean that," he continued. Al Hunt  pushed back on Carville's use of the term "slanted," arguing, "we need fair coverage, and not false equivalency." Carville cast the two candidates as "A guy who’s lost a step against a career criminal who would end the Constitution."

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Column: TIME Magazine Betrays Its Tilt in Biden and Trump Interviews

Does Time magazine really matter anymore? It still has a circulation of over one million, but that is one-third of what it was in 2012. Does anything it reports still resonate, or is it like a tree that collapses unheard in the solitude of the woods? Time just secured an interview with President Biden, when Biden has granted very few interviews to print news outlets. Time gained access to Donald Trump in April, and the first thing you notice when you compare the two interviews is the length. At the top of the transcripts, Time claims the Biden transcript is a “28 Minute Read,” while Trump’s is listed as 83 minutes. Time’s “fact check” of the Trump interviews (“21 Minute Read”) is almost as long as the Biden interview. Another noticeable tilt is the agenda of questions. Biden’s questions were overwhelmingly about foreign policy. There were three on inflation, three on immigration, and three on Biden’s age. There were zero questions on Hunter Biden and the Biden scandals. There were zero questions on the Trump trial or the Trump prosecutions. Did Team Biden put any conditions on which questions could be asked? It’s a fair question, considering how selective they’ve been in handing out interviews. By contrast, by my count, Time asked Trump eleven questions about the Trump prosecutions (and “revenge” for them), five questions about January 6, two about potential political violence in 2025, four on fighting the “deep state,” three on his “dictator for a day” joke, and four on whether he’d seek to overturn the 22nd Amendment and seek a third term. On top of that, Trump drew 14 questions on abortion policy and six on crime. It’s obvious from the Time transcripts that they consider Trump’s opinions on domestic issues to be much more controversial – and even extremist – than anything Biden advocates. The rest of the media picked up on Trump’s abortion answers, and Biden didn’t have to provide any abortion answers. Even the age questions to Biden were timid softballs, and Biden’s answer – suggesting he could take his interviewer Massimo Calabresi in a fight – was taken as a joke. Calabresi told CNN’s Jake Tapper it was "light-hearted” and “quite funny.” Biden responded to a follow-up about voter concerns with his usual spin: “Watch me.” Calabresi confessed it might be a “stock answer.” So why not push through it? Why not ask “everyone’s been watching you, that’s your problem”? Time could have asked Biden why his team refuses to release audio of his interview with stolen-documents special counsel Robert Hur, with the fear Republicans will exploit the audio in advertising? But Time pretends Robert Hur is a nobody, and Biden’s stolen documents should already be forgotten. Hur refused to prosecute Biden, and Jack Smith just keeps prosecuting Trump. It looks a bit rigged.  By contrast, Trump’s interviewer Eric Cortellessa lectured him: “I just want to say for the record, there’s no evidence that President Biden directed this prosecution against you.” Trump rejected that: “I always hate the way a reporter will make those statements. They know it’s so wrong.” Time, like other slavishly pro-Biden outlets, refuses to acknowledge that Biden's number-three Justice Department official Matthew Colangelo resigning to join Alvin Bragg’s team of Trump prosecutors shreds the “no evidence” lie. The Democrats running Time are hyperbolically raising fear that a president using the Justice Department might go after his political opponents, while somehow being blind and deaf enough to ignore that Biden is using the Justice Department to go after his political opponents. They can't believe anyone would object to their shamelessness.

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CNN's Oliver Darcy RAGES at 'Infernal' Wall Street Journal on Biden 'Signs of Slipping'

CNN's Oliver Darcy was furious in Wednesday night's "Reliable Sources" um, "newsletter," with his email headline attacking "The Journal Infernal." You're writing from a rung in Hell if you've written anything that could help Trump the orange Satan. This isn't the editorial page. This is the news section. Darcy began:  The Wall Street Journal owes its readers — and the public — better. The business broadsheet published and hyped a story Wednesday declaring that "behind closed doors," President Joe Biden has shown "signs of slipping." The story questioned Biden's mental acuity, playing into a GOP-propelled narrative that the 81-year-old president lacks the fitness to hold the nation's highest office. But an examination of the report reveals a glaring problem: Most of the sources reporters Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes relied on were Republicans. In fact, buried in the story, the reporters themselves acknowledged that they had drawn their sweeping conclusion based on GOP sources who, obviously, have an incentive to make comments that will damage Biden's candidacy. That's not completely accurate. Linskey and Hughes explained in their story: This article is based on interviews with more than 45 people over several months. The interviews were with Republicans and Democrats who either participated in meetings with Biden or were briefed on them contemporaneously, including administration officials and other Democrats who found no fault in the president’s handling of the meetings. Most of those who said Biden performed poorly were Republicans, but some Democrats said that he showed his age in several of the exchanges.  Not only that, but the Journal reporters noted Team Biden was riding hard on the Democrats to stay "on message." The White House kept close tabs on some of The Wall Street Journal’s interviews with Democratic lawmakers. After the offices of several Democrats shared with the White House either a recording of an interview or details about what was asked, some of those lawmakers spoke to the Journal a second time and once again emphasized Biden’s strengths.  Darcy complained that former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was prominently quoted, and that in a previous story, it was reported McCarthy said the opposite about Biden's sharpness. But readers can judge Republicans as having a partisan interest, and also suspect that Democrats aren't as willing to go on the record. But Darcy is crying foul about the whole media:  It is difficult to imagine that the newspaper, or any outlet, would run a similar story declaring that Trump is "slipping" behind the scenes based on the word of top Democratic figures — despite the fact that the Democratic leadership has demonstrated a much stronger relationship with the truth in recent years than their Republican counterparts. More broadly speaking, The Journal's piece pointed to a continued problem roiling the news media as it covers the 2024 election. Trump is permitted to fall asleep in court and make nonsensical public statements on a routine basis without any serious questions raised about his mental acuity. Meanwhile, Biden is judged on an entirely different standard. This different-standards lament is especially hilarious coming from the "Reliable Sources" team, since Darcy's old colleague Brian Stelter routinely attacked President Trump as mentally unfit and unhinged. He infamously brought on Trump-hating psychologists who insisted he was crazy and would end up killing more than Hitler, Stalin, and Mao combined.  This quote in 2017 is especially amusing, since the people quoted in it are now the ones trashing the Journal, who have insisted "F-You, Biden's at his best ever!" “Look at the New York Daily News this morning. A column calling the President a madman. Saying that he is truly unhinged....Eugene Robinson’s column in The Washington Post. People are saying we have to talk about his health now before it’s too late. Eugene Robinson saying: ‘How long are we going to pretend that President Trump is fully rational? How long are we going to ignore the signs he’s dangerously out of control?’ And here is MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough raising the same point...That’s the question. I’m going to ask you, Jeff Greenfield. Is now the time?”— Host Brian Stelter on CNN’s Reliable Sources, December 3, 2017.

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NewsBusters Podcast: After the Trump Verdict, NPR Flogs Fox with Folkenflik

> On Twitter (or X), NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep promised a diversity of viewpoints on the morning after the Trump trial verdict. It turned out Hugh Hewitt (and four lefties) were interviewed. Four to one is "diversity." It's better than nothing, and one leftist responded by tweet-screeching that "overt fascist" Hewitt was allowed to "lie with impunity" by Inskeep. The most laughable part of NPR is when it starts breaking out its analysis of Fox News, as they did after the verdict, and of course they turned to the network’s resident Fox flogger, David Folkenflik.On Friday night's All Things Considered and again on Sunday morning on Weekend Edition -- he said Fox "stacked the deck" and created a "30-mile buffer for Trump." Fox treats Trump vs. Democrats as Good vs. Evil. FOLKENFLIK: You know, with few exceptions in conservative media - think of the Daily Wire, Federalist, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit - you know, this insulates Trump from having to grapple among his base or people who are leaning conservative with revelations of the trial and repercussions of the verdict - little sense that Trump has agency here. They're told to see him as a victim of political persecution. They hear his fight is their own fight. You know that old Fox slogan - we report, you decide? It's MIA, missing in action, here. These people lack any introspection. As if NPR is we report, you decide? NPR isn’t putting a buffer around its listeners? NPR doesn’t present left vs. right as good vs. evil? As if NPR doesn’t suggest they represent Democracy, and the Republicans are Autocracy? Well, Autocracy begins with not letting your opponents speak, and NPR specializes in not letting opponents speak much. On Tuesday's All Things Considered, for example, they refused to consider Republicans speaking on taxpayer-funded airwaves on Biden's new border policy or the Merrick Garland hearing. The Garland story only quoted Garland touting his own integrity. The Biden story had Biden and a Democrat pollster! Reporter Franco Ordonez was asked to describe what the Trump campaign said, but then he placated his audience by adding "That said, these are some of the toughest measures by a Democratic administration." On Sunday, it was more of the same with Folkenflik. This verdict was a "sober moment," a "moment for reflection," and conservatives flunked.  Fox offered "an embrace of an us versus them rhetoric, no desire to have her audience wrestle with the implications of this, that Trump's own actions may have put him and landed him in this position." Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Politics – The Daily Signal

Beware When Leftist Journalists Use Founders to Attack Trump

When the elected Democrat district attorney of Manhattan and his 12 (likely Democrat) Manhattan jurors convicted Donald Trump on artificially inflated felony counts of business accounting, you could count on leftist journalists to try to make it the Most Historic Event Ever.

We’re not even sure it won’t all be reversed on appeal. But “historic” is their word of choice … when they like the result.

In 1999, when Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath about sex with an intern named Monica Lewinsky, Geraldo Rivera was furious on the “Today” show: “It was a spiteful action, an action that they performed absolutely in violation of the framers’ intent. It was a legislative coup d’etat.”

Impeaching Trump twice was never a “coup” to NBC News. But the worst part of that spectacle was leftist activists like Rivera trying to speak for the framers of the Constitution. He was implying it wasn’t just a revolting result but revolting in the eyes of James Madison and the rest. The Left reveres nothing about the Founders, routinely denouncing them as a racist, sexist, capitalist patriarchy.

This regrettable citation of the Founding Fathers happened again with the Trump trial, and again in this case, the American revolutionaries were placed on the side of the Democrats.

George Stephanopoulos began his commentary on “This Week” with the second president: “In 1774, John Adams said representative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of liberty. Two hundred and fifty years later, the heart and lungs of liberty are facing what may be the ultimate stress test.” It’s John Adams vs. Trump.

The front page of the June 3 New York Times was topped with an editorial—labeled “News Analysis”—from its White House correspondent Peter Baker. He picked Patrick Henry as the Trump opponent.

“The revolutionary hero Patrick Henry knew this day would come,” Baker began. Henry “feared that eventually a criminal might occupy the presidency and use his powers to thwart anyone who sought to hold him accountable.” In Henry’s words, “Away with your president, we will have a king.”

Never mind that historians pointed out Henry was inveighing against the Constitution before it was ratified. Baker channeled the Democrat line: “The notion that 34 felonies is not automatically disqualifying and a convicted criminal can be a viable candidate for commander in chief upends two and a half centuries of assumptions about American democracy.”

Inside the paper, the headline over Baker’s essay was “If a Felon Becomes President, Can Anyone Limit His Power?” The text box underlined the theme again: “Revival of a long-ago fear that a U.S. leader could try to be a king.” All that followed was the argument ad infinitum that Trump’s second term would result in “unfettered abuses of authority.”

What Baker and Stephanopoulos refused to understand was that this rhetoric of a president abusing authority can also be applied to President Joe Biden. On CNN, Scott Jennings mocked Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., on how Biden ruthlessly ignored the courts and the Congress in offering $165 billion in student loan “forgiveness” to win younger voters.

“You’re a member of Congress,” Jennings told Auchincloss. “Does it not offend you that the president of the United States is usurping your authority?” The eventual answer was no.

The Democrats and their media enablers use “history” to establish how there is a “right side,” and that is their leftist agenda. Undercutting democratic norms and coequal branches of government is admirable when the ends justify the means. The Founding Fathers are just yellowed paper puppets in their relentless power games.

COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

The post Beware When Leftist Journalists Use Founders to Attack Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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LOL at AP: Oh No, Joe Biden's 'Shifted Far to the Right on Immigration'

President Biden's newly announced pseudo-crackdown on illegal immigration caused the Associated Press to worry if it would help him: "Will Biden’s new border measures be enough to change voters’ minds?" AP reporters Jill Colvin, Stephen Groves, and Adriana Gomez Licon wrote Biden addressed "a major liability for his reelection campaign by taking executive action to significantly restrict asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border." But the labeling was comical:  Biden has shifted far to the right on immigration since his winning campaign four years ago, when he criticized Trump’s immigration priorities and promised he would restore asylum protections. Biden's almost Full MAGA?? And yet, when you are "far to the left" of Trump on border control, you're merely an "immigration advocate" to the AP linguists.  Sue-Ann DiVito, a 61-year-old realtor from the Philadelphia suburb of Jenkintown who became an immigration advocate during the Trump administration, says Republicans have been successful at spreading anti-immigrant messages in communities like hers, making some of her friends who are Democrat worry about the high number of people arriving in the U.S “I think that’s why we see people who would normally support immigrants are now more quiet,” DiVito said. The AP article ends with the "immigration advocate" warning that whatever Biden does on the Border, Trump will be "a million times worse."  Surprise! Sue-Ann is a Democrat donor.  At least the AP trio acknowledges the polling on immigration is brutal for Biden -- 56 percent of Americans say Biden’s presidency has hurt the country on the issue of immigration and border security, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in April. That’s far higher than the number (37%) who said the same about Trump’s time in office. Even among Democrats, only about 3 in 10 say that Biden’s presidency has done more to help the country on immigration and border security, while about the same share say it has hurt.  Hispanic adults are also more likely to think Trump’s presidency helped the country with immigration and border security, compared to Biden’s. About half of Hispanic adults in March said that Biden’s presidency had done more to hurt the country on immigration and border security — a potentially alarming number as Trump’s campaign works to chip away at Democrats’ advantage with Hispanic voters. Hence, he had to disappoint the radical left open-borders crowd:  “President Biden had no choice. He saw what was going on at the border. The numbers were higher than ever in terms of people trying to come here to seek asylum, and he knew he had to do something,” said Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist. The radicals were quoted, if not exactly labeled, to highlight splits among Democrats:  Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said she was “profoundly disappointed.” During a news conference with immigration advocates outside the Capitol, Jayapal pushed the administration to take action that would provide relief for immigrants already in the U.S.

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Column: Beware When Leftist Journalists Use Founding Fathers to Attack Trump

When the elected Democrat D.A. of Manhattan and his 12 (likely Democrat) Manhattan jurors convicted Donald Trump on artificially inflated felony counts of business accounting, you could count on leftist journalists to try to make it the Most Historic Event Ever.  We’re not even sure it won’t all be reversed on appeal. But “historic” is their word of choice….when they like the result. In 1998, when Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath about sex with an intern named Monica Lewinsky, Geraldo Rivera was furious on the Today show: “It was a spiteful action, an action that they performed absolutely in violation of the framers' intent. It was a legislative coup d'etat.” Impeaching Trump twice was never a “coup” to NBC News. But the worst part of that spectacle was leftist activists like Geraldo trying to speak for the framers of the Constitution. He was implying it wasn’t just a revolting result, but revolting in the eyes of James Madison and the rest. The Left reveres nothing about the Founders, routinely denouncing them as a racist, sexist, capitalist patriarchy. This regrettable citation of the Founding Fathers happened again with the Trump trial, and again in this case, the American revolutionaries were placed on the side of the Democrats. George Stephanopoulos began his commentary on This Week with the second president. “In 1774, John Adams said representative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of liberty. Two hundred and fifty years later, the heart and lungs of liberty are facing what may be the ultimate stress test.” It’s John Adams vs. Trump. The front page of the June 3 New York Times was topped with an editorial – labeled “News Analysis” – from their White House correspondent Peter Baker. He picked Patrick Henry as the Trump opponent. “The revolutionary hero Patrick Henry knew this day would come,” Baker began. Henry “feared that eventually a criminal might occupy the presidency and use his powers to thwart anyone who sought to hold him accountable.” In Henry’s words, “Away with your president, we will have a king.” Never mind that historians pointed out Henry was inveighing against the Constitution before it was ratified. Baker channeled the Democrat line: “The notion that 34 felonies is not automatically disqualifying and a convicted criminal can be a viable candidate for commander in chief upends two and a half centuries of assumptions about American democracy.” Inside the paper, the headline over Baker’s essay was “If a Felon Becomes President, Can Anyone Limit His Power?” The text box underlined the theme again: “Revival of a long-ago fear that a U.S. leader could try to be a king.” All that followed was the argument ad infinitum that Trump’s second term would result in “unfettered abuses of authority.”   What Baker and Stephanopoulos refused to understand was that this rhetoric of a president abusing authority can also be applied to President Biden. On CNN, Scott Jennings mocked Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.) on how Biden ruthlessly ignored the courts and the Congress in offering $165 billion in student-loan “forgiveness” to win younger voters.   “You're a member of Congress,” he told Auchincloss. “Does it not offend you that the president of the United States is usurping your authority?” The eventual answer was no. The Democrats and their media enablers use “History” to establish how there is a “right side,” and that is their leftist agenda. Undercutting democratic norms and co-equal branches of government is admirable when the ends justify the means. The Founding Fathers are just yellowed paper puppets in their relentless power games. 

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Editors' Pick: Facts Underline Team Biden Pushed Bragg's 'Criminal Trial' of Trump

The "independent fact-checkers" have repeatedly pounced on Donald Trump claiming Biden and his team are behind Alvin Bragg's prosecution, especially CNN's Daniel Dale, who was a triggered Tigger on this accusation.  Margot Cleveland at The Federalist offers some hard facts for the pro-Biden media to face in an article headlined "Joe Biden’s Fingerprints Are All Over The Criminal Prosecutions Of Donald Trump." At least Dale would feint toward Bragg relying on prosecutorial help from Matthew Colangelo, who came over from being the #3 official in Biden's Justice Department. But Team Biden's involvement came much earlier:  As I previously reported, the incestuous relationship between the Manhattan D.A.’s office and Team Biden began as early as mid-February 2021. Then, “Bragg’s predecessor, District Attorney Cyrus Vance, arranged for private criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Mark Pomerantz to be a special assistant district attorney for the Manhattan D.A.’s office.” As The New York Times reported at the time, Pomerantz was to work “solely on the Trump investigation” during a temporary leave of absence from his law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison. “But even before being sworn in as a special assistant to the Manhattan D.A., Pomerantz had reportedly ‘been helping with the case informally for months.’” Even Democrats’ most reliable Old Grey Lady (of the evening) acknowledged, “the hiring of an outsider is a highly unusual move for a prosecutor’s office.” Soon after the Manhattan D.A. hired Pomerantz, two of his colleagues, Elyssa Abuhoff and Caroline Williamson, also took leaves of absence from Paul, Weiss to serve as special assistant district attorneys on the Trump investigation. “For a law firm to lend not one but three lawyers to the Manhattan D.A.’s office seems rather magnanimous, until you consider Paul, Weiss’s previous generosity to Joe Biden.” Imagine a pro-Trump law firm was volunteering time inside a public prosecutor's probe of Biden or Hillary Clinton. Would CNN suggest you couldn't link it to Trump? Cleveland notes the Paul,Weiss firm were also shoveling campaign cash:  As I previously reported, during Biden’s first run for the White House, “the law firm hosted a $2,800-per-plate fundraiser for about 100 guests.” Brad Karp, the chair of Paul, Weiss, also topped the list of Biden fundraisers, bundling at least $100,000 for the then-candidate. At the time, Karp wrote in an email: “As someone who cares passionately about preserving the rule of law, safeguarding our democracy and protecting fundamental liberties, I’ve been delighted to do everything I possibly can to support the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris ticket.” Biden’s relationship with Karp continued after his election, with the president including Karp and his wife at a state dinner with the Australian prime minister. Karp and his fellow Paul, Weiss lawyers continue to fund Biden’s re-election campaign. In fact, Biden’s connection to the firm is so strong Bloomberg branded Paul, Weiss the “Biden-Era N.Y. Power Center.” The pro-Biden law firm collaborated with the pro-Biden media to make sure Trump stayed on the path to indictment and conviction: But for Paul, Weiss lending Pomerantz to the Manhattan D.A.’s office to control the Trump investigation, the former president likely never would have been charged. According to Pomerantz, Bragg had decided “not to go forward with the grand jury presentation and not to seek criminal charges,” indefinitely suspending the investigation. Pomerantz made those claims in the resignation letter he tendered to Bragg in early 2022, which was deliberately leaked to The New York Times. “Pomerantz’s letter and his claims that Bragg had suspended the Trump probe triggered a political firestorm, which the Manhattan D.A. sought to quell by telling the public the investigation was ongoing.” Soon after, Bragg capitulated, hiring Biden’s high-ranking DOJ lawyer, Colangelo, who proceeded to indict and convict Trump.

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NewsBusters Podcast: LOL! Media Claim 'No Evidence' the Trump Trial Was Partisan

Reporters might admit the Trump convictions are a "political gift" for the Democrats, but they still claim there's "no evidence" the prosecution was political -- and especially, that anyone could claim Biden and his administration were behind it. The networks strongly suppressed the painfully obvious notion that Democrats are prosecuting Trump to damage his re-election chances. In a piece puffing up Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, Washington Post reporter Shayna Jacobs wrote: "Some thought the case was weak. Others — namely the defendant and his allies — continue to insist without offering evidence that it was a politically motivated attack on Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in this year’s presidential election." The paragraph right before it noted Bragg was an elected Democrat. An Associated Press "fact check" by "news verification reporter" Melissa Goldin concluded: "Throughout the trial Trump has said, without evidence, that the indictments were politically orchestrated by Democratic President Joe Biden and his administration in an effort to keep him out of the White House. But Biden and his administration have no control over this prosecution. The case was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a state-level prosecutor." Even that doesn't acknowledge Bragg is an elected Democrat, and it doesn't mention former Biden Justice Department official Matthew Colangelo joining Bragg's team to get Trump. It also happened on TV. ABC's George Stephanopoulos exploded at Trump lawyer Will Scharf when he insisted Biden was involved. CBS analyst John Dickerson lamented on Friday morning: “But when you say things like Joe Biden is behind this, for which there is no evidence, that sows doubt, and we have a really, really recent example of what happens when you sow doubt in the system, people take matters into their own hands.” (Translation: January 6 riot.) The networks also attacked Trump by associating him with violent messages on social media. On PBS NewsHour, reporter Laura Barron-Lopez announced "I was working with Advance Democracy, a nonprofit investigative group that tracks far-right social media." The group is run by Democrat Daniel J. Jones, a former Dianne Feinstein staffer who was also associated with Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm Hillary Clinton hired to create the phony Steele Dossier.  NBC reporter Ryan J. Reilly also played masquerade in an online report: "Advance Democracy, a nonprofit that conducts public interest research, said there has been a high volume of social media posts containing violent rhetoric targeting New York Judge Juan Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg..." You know a group is on the Left when the media refuse to label them accurately. Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Like and share! 

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'Meet the Press' Has ONE Decent Hunter Biden Question, Jeffries Has Ludicrous Answer

On Sunday's Meet the Press, after a typically contentious, extremely interrupt-ious interview with a Republican -- in this case, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) -- substitute host Peter Alexander interviewed House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) about the Trump trial, and then there was a single question on the Hunter Biden trial. Jeffries claimed that it was okay for President Biden to proclaim "my son has done nothing wrong," which is laughably false.  It was the usual "loving father" defense, as if that excuses the lying, just as Joe Biden claims he never discussed business with Hunter, which is also preposterous and a proven Pants on Fire lie. At least Alexander puts a little spin on the ball with a quote from The Wall Street Journal editorial page:  PETER ALEXANDER: Sir, let me ask you about another question that we'll be watching and will make headlines this week. Hunter Biden, the president's son, goes on trial for gun charges beginning tomorrow. President Biden said last year, quote, "My son has done nothing wrong." The Wall Street Journal, as you see here, the Editorial Board said at the time, quote, "That's a highly inappropriate message from a president. He's essentially telling prosecutors that they are wrong to bring an indictment because Hunter is innocent of any criminal behavior." Why was it appropriate for President Biden to publicly comment on his son's case? REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES: President Biden commented as a loving father, as I would hope any loving father would do. Hunter Biden of course is entitled, as was Donald Trump, to the presumption of innocence and to a trial by a jury of his peers. And this Justice Department is going to proceed in that fashion, present the facts and the law. And then we'll all have to wait for a determination that is made by a jury as to Hunter Biden's guilt or innocence. That was it! Alexander quickly moved on to Israel and Hamas. "Fact-based" reporters don't point out that Hunter Biden has done many things wrong, starting with the crack cocaine and hookers.  A few questions earlier, there was an amusing demonstration of how robotic Hakeem Jeffries can be with his "extreme MAGA Republican" talking point. Four times in one answer, and five times overall! Alexander asked if Democrats should be concerned that Trump will use the Guilty verdicts to become stronger. JEFFRIES: Extreme MAGA Republicans are going to continue to lie for Donald Trump. President Biden and Democrats are going to continue to solve problems for hard-working American taxpayers. Extreme MAGA Republicans will continue to lie for Donald Trump. PETER ALEXANDER: Sir, those – REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES: President Biden and Democrats are going to work on delivering real results as has been the case for the last three and a half months. And we're going to see that extreme MAGA Republicans will continue to lie for Donald Trump and present no real vision for dealing with the issues of importance to the American people. That's a contrast. And I'd rather be on President Biden's side of that contrast than on the extreme MAGA Republican side. On the fifth one, Jeffries asked: "Can the extreme MAGA Republicans point to a single issue where they've actually made progress for the American people? A single issue? They cannot."

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CNN Pundit Scott Jennings Thwacks Democrat on Biden's Student-Loan Erosion of Law

The Democrats are unloading some impressive cognitive dissonance in touting themselves as the defenders of the rule of law while Biden boasts of ignoring the courts (and Congress) in single-handedly forgiving $167 billion in student-loan debt. On CNN's State of the Union on Sunday, CNN analyst Scott Jennings went after young Rep. Louis Auchincloss (D-Mass.) on which part of the judicial system we "have to respect" after the Trump trial. Auchincloss claimed "What Joe Biden said was we have to respect the integrity of the judicial system. When you contrast that with what Speaker Mike Johnson said, which was I'm basically going to lean on my Supreme Court friends to overturn this -- a gross abuse of the separation of powers -- I think that law and order contrast is actually quite sharp for the American public." Biden knows something about "gross abuse of the separation of powers"! Jennings went to work:    AUCHINCLOSS: It's 5 percent have to see this wedge now of one party upholds law and order, and one party is out there voting against border security legislation and trying to defund the FBI. JENNINGS: I'm a little surprised to hear you invoke the respect for the justice system, because, within a 24-hour period, Joe Biden says we have to respect the judicial system, absolute respect. And yet he tweets in the centerpiece of all of his speeches right now is, the Supreme Court tried to stop me, but I did it anyway on student loans. So I'm just wondering which part of the judicial system do we have to respect? Which ones are good and which ones are bad? AUCHINCLOSS: So, just as a point of law here, the Supreme Court ruled that his use of the HEROES Act in 2003 was illegal. He did not use the HEROES Act of 2003. BAKARI SELLERS: Correct. AUCHINCLOSS: He used a different legal mechanism... JENNINGS: He just kept going. AUCHINCLOSS: ... because he upheld the Supreme Court's ruling and found another legal manner. JENNINGS: You're a member of Congress. Does it not offend you that the president of the United States is usurping your authority? Sellers jumped in to say "I would argue that the offense here probably is Donald Trump." A little later, Auchincloss offered a KJP-style answer to Jennings as host Kasie Hunt touted the "progressives" thinking Biden hasn't been rough enough on Trump:  HUNT: But on this -- on this thing, on this convicted felon thing, there are -- there are progressives in your party saying he's not going far enough, he's not hitting it hard enough. What do you think? AUCHINCLOSS: Because the president has a sense of responsibility to the integrity of the judicial system to say, first and foremost, right out of the gate, we must uphold the rule of law. And that contrast, the actions are going to resonate louder than the words.

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Media Use Conspiracy Theories To Attack Justices

The Liberal media have bombarded the Supreme Court justices with crazy conspiracy theories to undermine a conservative toehold in government The latest is the silly flag controversy.

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Liberal media use conspiracy theories to attack these Supreme Court justices

The Liberal media have bombarded the Supreme Court justices with crazy conspiracy theories to undermine a conservative toehold in government The latest is the silly flag controversy.

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Column: Smearing Alito and Thomas as Racist Insurrectionists

It’s hard to believe, but our “news” media think Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s wife hanging a flag upside-down outside their home for a few days is a much more serious matter than an attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022. That story was quickly squashed. Start with taxpayer-funded National Public Radio, which never managed to produce a single feature story on the foiled Kavanaugh assassination, but has provided multiple stories in the Alito Flag Frenzy. They use fake-neutral headlines like “Flag displays at Justice Alito’s homes concern judicial watchdogs.” Make that “Democrat law professors.” NPR Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg, who tried to strangle the Clarence Thomas nomination in the crib, couldn’t muster any concern for Kavanaugh’s safety, but found the time for Alito-flag coverage. The idea that this slavish pal of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was going to furrow her brow about the bias of judges was a laughable matter. Everyone with political eyes can see that the media are toeing the Democrat line that a Supreme Court with a conservative majority must be discredited. Forget all of their bleatings that Trump was undermining confidence in government. “Objective” reporters always undermine confidence in government when conservatives have a toehold.  The latest decision they hated was an Alito opinion in a 6-3 ruling that the South Carolina legislature could move a sizable number of black voters out of the competitive 1st Congressional District into the black-majority 6th District. The majority ruled that this was a political gerrymander, which is legal, and not a racial gerrymander, which is illegal. But they ruled against the NAACP, so there was hell to pay. On “All In with Chris Hayes” on May 23, the host lamented the decision and brought in MSNBC’s regular extremist Elie Mystal to concoct a theory on Alito’s majority opinion. “The throughline between the Alito flag story, the Clarence Thomas coup story, and their wives, and what we saw today from the Supreme Court in this gerrymandering decision,” he said, “is that they don’t want black people’s votes to count equally.” As for Thomas, forget that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has a white husband, you’re only a sellout if you’re conservative. “I mean, he ain’t married to Ginni Thomas for nothing all right...like that’s what the man thinks.” He claimed Thomas does not think the 14th Amendment “can be used to protect the voting rights of black people.” On the Left, black voting rights translate into the ability to elect Democrats. That’s not the right to vote at all. It’s the right to be represented by a Democrat. If you don’t agree with that principle, you’re in favor of “diluting” black votes.  In Mystal’s conspiracy brain, “when people like Alito and Thomas support the insurrection, what are they saying? They’re saying that Trump won -- lost the election but won the white vote...won the white vote by a lot.” He claimed they think white votes are “the only votes that matter.” This character assassination of Alito and Thomas as racist insurrectionists is considered weighty legal analysis on MSNBC. On the Left, anything that disturbs their domination of government is an “insurrection,” which is why they endlessly associate every conservative with the January 6 riot as much as they can. They are the ones who can’t stand dissent and an actual democracy where conservatives disturb their dreams of complete dominance. 

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Column: Overdoing the Coverage of the ‘Hush Money Criminal Trial’

The Democrats want to run for office on the issue of "Democracy," because they think the Republicans are somehow opposed.  They never sound stranger than when they warn that a re-elected Donald Trump will use the powers of government for revenge on his political enemies. They can't grasp the fact that many voters see a vast conspiracy of partisan prosecutors trying to convict and imprison Trump before the election as a way of ending Trump's political career forever. That can be seen as revenge for Trump defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016. The media elite endlessly promote these prosecutions, implying each of them could be politically lethal, but somehow none of them are. They have promoted elected Democrat Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg's trial as a "hush money criminal trial." Putting the word "criminal" next to "Trump" is one of their favorite tactics.  Curtis Houck at NewsBusters examined every story and mention of this Trump trial for 38 days, starting with the morning of jury selection on April 15, on ABC, CBS, and NBC -- their morning and evening newscasts and Sunday politics programs. The three networks offered 573 minutes and 25 seconds of breathless coverage. ABC dominated the competition with almost 237 minutes of coverage in its three formats. The  incessantly negative tone was set by ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos, who worked as a spin controller for Bill Clinton, who was himself a tornado of scandals. NBC aired 199 minutes, and CBS came in third with 138 minutes of coverage. "CBS Mornings" host Gayle King expressed her worry "that the audience just hears white noise when they hear all these cases running together." They sound frantic and upset that the audience won't accept all of their must-vote-for-Biden energy. One reason this sounds like white noise is that the networks aren't fair and balanced on ethical messes. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) faced a corruption trial starting with jury selection on May 13, but in the NewsBusters study period, there was only 7 minutes and 56 seconds of Menendez coverage. That's 72 times less than the Trump trial. ABC spent nearly four hours on the Trump trial, but only gave Menendez's trial 23 seconds.  This pattern doesn't bode well for the start of the Hunter Biden trial on June 3 for illegal gun possession. Republicans can see that the networks are national messaging machines for the Democrats. Independents and Democrats can see that if they're paying attention to the pattern. The media seek to damage the Republicans, and perform damage control for their allies.  Too often, the newscasters seem to be offering not political news, but the political weather -- and for Trump, it's always dark and....Stormy. It almost doesn't matter if any of these prosecutions are successful. The Mueller investigation wasn't successful in "getting" Trump. But it succeeded if the goal was to rain constantly on Trump's parade. For his entire presidency and post-presidency, Trump's coverage is routinely 90 percent negative, and a big reason is all this prosecutorial aggression.  The same pattern can be observed with congressional hearings. The Pelosi-picked panel that investigated January 6 was rewarded with live coverage of every minute of their propagandistic presentations. But when the Republicans took the gavel from Pelosi, their  oversight hearings into Joe Biden's ethical problems didn't get live coverage. Often, they drew zero coverage. The contrast is so obvious that no one with a television should attempt to argue that the media are objective, or nonpartisan, or fair.  This is just the latest sordid spectacle that reaches back to Richard Nixon and Watergate, through Ronald Reagan and Iran-Contra, and even George W. Bush and the scandal of inaccurate intelligence on Iraq. The so-called "first draft of history" in the liberal media is a fire-breathing editorial that cannot be trusted.