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As Gas Prices Dropped, MRC Forced To Adjust Its Anti-Biden Narrative

Thu, 1 Feb 2024 20:27:18 -0500

Because it's the Media Research Center's job as a right-wing activist group to talk down the economy when a Democrat is president, it unsurprisingly labored to blame President Biden for higher gas prices earlier this year, despite offering no evidence to support the claim. When one commentator pointed out that Biden has little control over gas prices, Alex Christy complained in an Aug. 8 post:

As President Biden prepares to travel to Arizona to declare a new national monument around The Grand Canyon, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell used her Tuesday show to lament how people’s basic needs to heat their homes and not break their wallets over gas prices have hurt his ability to cut back on fossil fuels. Mitchell and Politico White House editor Sam Stein also insisted that those gas prices have nothing to do with those high gas prices as he’s just a bystander to world events.
[...]
As Mitchell tells it, Biden had nothing to do with those high gas prices. She also does not explicitly mention the reason for the increased supply of natural gas to Europe, but the move came so that the Europeans could continue to have heat in the winter months as they seek to move away from Russian energy sources. If geopolitical realities and basic standard of living concerns force the U.S. and Europe to increase their reliance on fossil fuels, maybe that says something about the desire to move on from them.
[...]
You can do something about lower gas prices or appeal to your base. You can help the Europeans disentangle themselves from Russian blackmail or appeal to your base. For MSNBC, those, apparently, are difficult choices.
Christy, of course, is appealing to his employer's right-wing base by suggesting that Biden has total control over oil prices.

Ana Schau used an Aug. 11 post to complain that a CNN report focused on "'core inflation' that removed some of the most relevant factors, such as the cost of energy and food, from the final number to bring it to a place that looked better," though she was forced to concede that "These statistics showed that, in fact, gas prices were the only thing that had gone down, and that by enough to shift the average to a good-looking spot."

An Aug. 31 post by Craig Bannister, taken from the dessicted right-wing blog that used to be the MRC's "news" division CNSNews.com, served up some RNC-approved (and cherry-picked) graphics to attack Biden's economy, including gas prices:

While gas prices held steady under Pres. Donald Trump (down four cents a gallon), they’ve surged 53.1% in the first 31 months of Pres. Joe Biden’s term. From January 2021 to July of this year, the average price of a gallon of gas (all grades) has increased from $2.42 to $3.71, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
By August 28, that cost had risen another 24 cents, to $3.95 a gallon, bringing the increase under Biden to more than a dollar and a half per gallon.

Bannister offered no evidence that Biden and Biden alone is responsible for gas prices.

A Sept. 13 post by Joseph Vazquez complained that the New York Times called out exactly what he was doing -- cherry-picking bad inflation numbers to attack Biden:

The New York Times treated an expected spike in inflation as a problem because … Republicans could potentially pounce on the development to criticize President Joe Biden. Yes, the leftist rag actually did that.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a report Sept. 13 at 8:30 a.m. showing that inflation came in hotter than expected in August with a 3.7 percent spike year-over-year. A glaring statistic showed that gas prices spiked a whopping 10.6 percent in August, significantly contributing to the overall inflation rate.
[...]
[Reporter Jim] Tankersley tried to throw Biden a lifeline before the BLS report dropped by gaslighting readers. “Prices at the pump remain well below their peak in June 2022, when a gallon of gas cost more than $5 on average.”
Of course, nowhere in his propaganda did Tankersley mention that the average gas price was $2.49 cents per gallon when former President Donald Trump left office, according to economist Stephen Moore. “No matter [how] you slice or dice it, the cost of filling up is about $20 higher today than under Trump,” Moore summarized in an Aug. 16 New York Post piece.

Meanwhile, gas prices were falling, so the MRC needed to adjust the narrative to make that somehow a bad thing. When Republican Rep. Tim Scott tried lecture NBC's Lester Holt about how gas prices supposedly work, Jorge Bonilla tried to boost him n a Nov. 8 post:

Holt tried, he really tried. Take note of the claim. “The idea”, said Holt, of increasing production isn’t enough to decrease prices. Scott folded that premise upon Holt’s head, Inception-like, by correctly pointing out that markets respond to the perception of confidence created by regulatory certainty.
We know this is true because of what happened to the price of gasoline after Election Night, 2020. The record reflects that it began to INCREASE based on the regulatory uncertainty that came with Biden’s election. And it really began to spike after Inauguration Day, 2021, the day he signed the executive order to tighten domestic energy production.

Actually, we don't know that -- Bonilla is simply taking refuge in the correlation-equals-causation fallacy, and he offered no actual proof to bolster his assertion. And Bonilla is certainly not going to tell his readers that U.S. oil production has increased under Biden.

When another news report noted the lower gas prices, Bonilla had a conniption in a Nov. 29 post:

The pro-Biden media is doing its level best to mitigate the effects of inflation on the everyday finances of the American public: case in point, this weird report on the national gas price average.
Watch as anchor Lester Holt cheerfully frames today’s national gas price average as inflation relief:
[...]
God forbid, what happens to gas prices if OPEC cuts production or if the Biden administration’s deal with the Maduro dictatorship in Venezuela lapses due to noncompliance? Does NBC issue a correction for pretending that commodity speculation is news?
More than anything, the report comes off as “Bidenomics” propaganda without that word, which journos openly lament “isn’t working”, ever being uttered.
Also unsaid: the reason gas prices got so high in the first place. Rhymes with Schmidenomics.

Um, wasn't Bonilla trying to portray "commodity speculation" as news by claiming without evidence that the mere election of Biden caused gas prices to increase? And if Biden deserves blame for higher gas prices -- and Bonilla offered no evidence that he was solely responsible -- shouldn't he also get credit if prices go down? Bonilla probably doesn't want to get into that.

Bannister returned with revised cherry-picked charts in a Dec. 15 post that had to acknowledg that gas prices have gone down since his earlier propaganda effort.

Newsmax Columnist Thinks Discredited Russian Agent Will Help Take Down Hunter Biden

Thu, 1 Feb 2024 18:04:44 -0500

Gavin Wax wrote in his Nov. 28 Newsmax column:

With the prosecution of Donald Trump and his supporters in full effect, the deep state is ripping the mask off and going full Soviet-style totalitarian in preparation for the 2024 presidential election.
Foreign affairs are becoming messier and jumbled, with long-standing political alliances breaking down and the situation at hand becoming exceedingly difficult to navigate. The confusion only empowers the corrupt interests who are using the chaos to tighten their iron-clad grip upon the world.
Former Ukrainian MP Andriy Derkach is one whistleblower with the credibility to cut through this fog.
Derkach has released damning evidence of influence peddling by President Joe Biden in Ukraine, offering the receipts showing the blackmailing of corrupt former President Petro Poroshenko to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. He also produced evidence of alleged shadow income given to the Bidens from Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky.
Derkach stands out among other whistleblowers because of his credibility with the Ukrainian people, as a member of parliament for decades.

Wax's evidence for this is an anonymously written story at 21st Century Wire, a conspiracy and conjectiure site with with an affinity for Russia. And therein lies the issue with Wax's column: Derkach is actually a Russian agent who fed misinformation to Rudy Giuliani with the goal of disrupting the 2020 eleciton. In 2022, U.S. authorities charged Derkach with financial fraud and money laundering. That link to Russia means it's highly unfortunate that Wax is trying to tout Derkach's alleged "credibility with the Ukrainian people," given that Russia is currently waging war on Ukraine. Also, Shokin was fired because he wasn't doing his job of prosecuting corruption, not because he was.

But don't worry about any of that, Wax says, because Derkach is really a victim of the "deep state" and did absolutely nothing wrong:

The U.S. Treasury Department levied economic sanctions against Derkach in Sept. 2020 while Trump was still in office. The deep state smeared him as a Kremlin agent without evidence, and he suffered significant hardships as a result.
His Ukrainian bank accounts were shuttered, and his U.S. visa was canceled. Coordinated attempts to shut him down remain, with the 2020 presidential election around the corner as more sanctions are inflicted upon Derkach that Biden is in office, and internal barriers are holding back deep state overreach.
In 2022, Derkach was charged with treason for "undermining Ukraine's relationship with the United States” as part of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s crackdown against dissent. The persecution of Derkach mirrors what is happening with President Donald Trump and his supporters.

Wax made no effort to actually disprove any of the charges against Derkach, or even that it was a "smear" to point out his links to the Kremlin. Instead, he concluded by huffing that "Derkach’s work will be vindicated, and the final stakes can be driven through the Russian collusion narrative. This is the great hope of any America First activist, as Derkach is the key to foiling the deep state’s agenda in 2024." In fact, there was plenty of evidence to support the narrative, and the investigation was ruled to have been justified.

MRC Freaks Out Over Non-Heterosexual People In Macy's Parade

Thu, 1 Feb 2024 14:50:39 -0500

Part of the Media Research Center's Thanksgiving meltdown included freaking out that the idea that non-heterosexual people would be allowed to (gasp!) take part in a parade. Chief MRC transphobe Tierin-Rose Mandelburg raged in a Nov. 14 post:

Gone are the days in which I look forward to Thanksgiving morning, still in my jammies, fasting to save room for turkey and pie and curled up watching the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. That tradition ends this year.
The 2023 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is reportedly going to feature a “non-binary and transgender extravaganza.” In response, more than 20,000 people and counting have signed a petition slamming the iconic parade for its propagandistic shift.
Macy's presently has two "gender non-conforming" performers in the lineup. Non-binary singer Justin David Sullivan will be there to represent his new role as May in the Broadway production of “&Juliet.” Another Broadway star, Alex Newell, who goes by he/she/they, is supposedly also going to be featured during the parade.
The petition by One Million Moms (OMM), a conservative advocacy group created by the American Family Association, encourages people to say “NO” to the parade and the involvement by these two individuals, Daily Mail reported.
“The non-binary and transgender extravaganza on display this Thanksgiving will be brought to you by Macy’s during their annually sponsored Thanksgiving Day Parade. Unless they are forewarned about it, this year’s holiday parade will potentially expose tens of millions of viewers at home to the liberal LGBTQ agenda,” the petition began.

Needless to say, nothing of that sort actually happened. THe parade has always featured actors from Broadway musicals, and that's what they're doing with Sullivan and Newell (who is in the musical "Shucked"). And despite rMandelburg aging about "trannies" in her headline, neither Sullivan or Newell is transgender; nonbinary does not equal transgender, even in Mandelburg's fevered imagination.

Mandelburg also failed to explain how, exactly, merely existing as someone who is not heterosexual equates to pushing the "liberal LGBTQ agenda"; instead, she continued that fact-free narrative: "This isn’t the first time the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has pushed the leftist narrative. In 2021, Kim Petras, a transgender pop star, was spotted on a float during the parade."

All Mandelburg is doing here is cranking out right-wing outrage stenography -- numerous other right-wing outlets have also promoted the OMM petition. And she's grossly overstating the issuewith her headline claim that the parade is "all about trannies" -- never mind that she didn't identify a single transgender person taking part in the parade.

That's the kind of inaccurate, mindless right-wing clickbait that continues to discredit the MRC.The fact that she didn't write any further about this issue after the parade tells us her outrage was all for show.

WND's Cashill Ignores Inconvenient Facts To Fuel His Obama Obsession

Thu, 1 Feb 2024 17:54:55 -0500

Jack Cashill's Obama derangement continued in a Dec. 27 column, in which he (and a friend) accused Barack Obama of plagiarizing another book for his memoir, then demanded that his fellow right-wingers give him credit for manufacturing the accusation:

Two weeks ago in this space I documented the good company in which Harvard President Claudine Gay finds herself as an aspiring plagiarist.

Harvard worthies Doris Kearns Goodwin, Laurence Tribe, Charles Ogletree and Fareed Zakaria have all been forced to wear the Scarlet P just in the last 20 or so years.

One Harvard plagiarist, however, has managed to escape scrutiny, at least from the mainstream media. But then again, former President Barack Obama escaped scrutiny on all fronts in his miraculously "scandal free" White House years.
Although I have documented Obama's perfidy in the past, I raise the issue again, not only because the subject is in the air, but also because others on the right have been raising it without attribution.
If I might offer friendly advice to my allies and imitators, it is wise to avoid even the appearance of plagiarism when scolding others as being plagiarists.

I worry less about credit for myself than for my informal research associate, Shawn Glasco. It was Shawn who first alerted me to Obama's pillaging of Kuki Gallman's 1994 memoir, "African Nights," for his 1995 memoir, "Dreams from My Father."

Cashill's alleged proof of this is merely circumstantial, of course, based on words that allegedly appear in both works:

Shawn Glasco, who has no Pulitzer Prize and no access to the president, figured out on his own how Obama likely got the Kenya chapter finished.
Instead of going to Africa, Obama may have spent his six-week leave from his law firm copying passages from "African Nights"

Glasco found scores of phrases and words in Obama's"Dreams" that also show up in "African Nights": Baobab (a tree), bhang (cannabis), boma (an enclosure), samosa (a fried snack), shamba (a farm field), liana (a vine), tilapia (a fish), kanga (a sheet of fabric), shuka (decorative sashes).

Both books feature women "wrapped" in their kangas and "dressed" in "rags." The women in both books wear shukas, head shawls, head scarves and goatskins, and they balance baskets on heads graced with "laughing" smiles.

Men in both books spearfish in "ink-black" waters and hunt by torchlight. Elephants are seen "fanning" themselves, birds "trill," insects "buzz," weaver birds "nest," and monkeys "mesmerize."

The books share a veritable Noah's ark of additional fauna: crickets, crocodiles, starlings, dragonflies, cattle, lions, sand crabs, vultures, hyenas, "herds of gazelle," and leopards that can hold small animals "in their jaws."

Cashill doesn't seem to realize that Pulitizer Prizes aren't given out for partisan speculation.

In his Jan. 3 column, Cashill tried to claim that Obama was "guilty of insurrection" by allegedly making sure Donald Trump's Russian ties were investigated:

According to the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, no person shall be eligible to hold federal office who "shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion."

Although all parties know the "insurrection or rebellion" clause refers specifically to recently completed Civil War, the Department of Justice argues for a much more elastic definition, all the better to hang Donald Trump with.

Yet if there were one president guilty of insurrection in recent years, that president would have to be Barack Obama. In late 2016 and early 2017, Obama knowingly conspired with others to subvert the presidency of Donald Trump.
Thanks to the zealous note taking of his once and future factotum, Susan Rice, we have documentation of this flagrant act of sedition.
[...]
"President Obama began the conversation," wrote Rice, "by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities 'by the book.'"

The "issue" in question was the framing of Donald Trump for collusion with Russia. Obama had to know by this time that the collusion accusation was spawned by the Clinton campaign.

Cashill conveniently omits that there was no "framing: actually needed, given that the 2016 Trump campaign met dozens of times with Russian operatives and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort gave internal polling data to another Russian operative. But Cashill would rather rant about the Steele dossier:

In 1974, Nixon campaign aide Donald Segretti made "dirty tricks" a household phrase. The nation was scandalized that Segretti would send fake letters using the letterhead of presidential candidate Edmund Muskie. For his dirty tricks, Segretti served four months in prison.

For hers, the mother of all dirty tricks, Hillary Clinton walked away without even a scolding. The Steele dossier proved to be the most consequential dirty trick in American political history.

There is no "book" that justifies what Comey and pals did in the weeks immediately following this meeting while Obama was still president.

In fact, an internal watchdog in the Trump-led Justice Department found in 2019 that the Russia investigation was justified and did not act with political bias, and that the Steele dossier as not a factor. But who cares about facts when there is a conspiracy theory to peddle?

MRC's Hunter Biden Derangement, Tax Charge Edition

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 22:06:06 -0500

There are few things that the Media Research Center hates more than Hunter Biden daring to defend himself. When Hunter faced the possibility of a closed-door hearing with House Republicans -- who have a penchant for dishonestly leaking excerpts of the testimony that don't hold up when the full tranascript is later released -- Alex Christy spent a Nov. 29 post complaining that Jimmy Kimmel made that point:

ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel expressed his concern with Hunter Biden possibly going before the House Oversight Committee on his Tuesday show claiming Republicans’ desire for a closed-door hearing will lead them to “make stuff up” because “they’ve seen no evidence that Joe Biden had anything to do” with Hunter’s business operations.
Kimmel actually began with a rare joke about Hunter himself, “Hunter Biden may be heading to Congress. He said—Hunter said he is willing to testify before the House Oversight Committee, but only if it is televised. He wants to do it in public, preferably nude, in a hot tub, smoking an unfiltered cigarette with a hooker.”
However, Kimmel quickly shifted to the substance of the matter and, like Hunter’s legal team, demanded a televised hearing, “but his legal team wants him to testify out in the open, but Republicans don’t want that. They don't want it on TV. They're like, ‘If we don’t do this behind closed doors, how are we supposed to make stuff up?’"
If the positions were reversed, Kimmel would probably accuse Republicans of wanting the hearing televised so they could get their 30 seconds of fame by confronting Hunter and putting the clip on the internet while fundraising off it.
As it is, Republicans are seeking to deny Democrats the opportunity to get their own 30 second clips that would end up on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Christy was silent on the fact that Republican dishonesty on leaked testimony has been well documented.

The same day, Curtis Houck whined that non-right-wing media outlets aren't obsessing over this as much as he is:

Tuesday saw a possible monumental twist in the Hunter Biden saga as Biden said he would be willing to comply with a House Oversight Committee subpoena and testify publicly (even though the committee currently wanted a private deposition) about his life of ruin, corruption, and allegations of malfeasance involving his father, the current President.
But like most Biden scandals, it barely received any attention on the flagship morning and evening news programs on ABC, CBS, and NBC, with only 31 seconds on Tuesday’s CBS Evening News.

Tim Graham spent a Dec. 2 post whining even more at the idea that Hunter defending himself could possibly be seen as a good thing:

On CNN’s The Chris Wallace Show on Saturday morning, they talked about Hunter Biden, but it was framed as Hunter making Republicans look dumb.
Wallace began: "Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. The president's embattled son Hunter Biden taking on House Republicans this week, agreeing to testify in their impeachment inquiry, but only if it’s in public. House Republicans quick to reject the offer, calling for Hunter to testify first in private."
After a soundbite of Rep. James Comer, Wallace then asked leftist podcaster Kara Swisher: "Kara, did Hunter Biden outsmart House Republicans, saying sure I'll testify -- in public?" The screen also asked 'DID HUNTER BIDEN OUTSMART HOUSE REPUBLICANS?'
Swisher agreed: "Yes, I thought it was brilliant actually, because he's a somewhat appealing character. People will get to see him for the first time rather than the cartoon and now they have to say 'no we don't want to see you,' and after all this time, we have to see Hunter Biden."
That's a weird flex, because Hunter Biden did a weird round of interviews when his addiction memoir Beautiful Things came out in 2021.

Graham didn't give CNN credit for having conservatives on the panel, though he eagerly quoted those conservatives portraying Hunter defending himself as a "stunt."

After Hunter faced new tax-related charges, Christy came back in a Dec. 8 post to complain that someone pointed out the charges disprove right-wing claims that the Department of Justice has bee "weaponized":

New York Times correspondent and author Michael Bender joined Friday’sCNN This Morning to react to Hunter Biden’s latest indictment on tax evasion where he proceeded to memory holed the IRS whistleblowers who alleged he received preferential treatment in order to proclaim that in “a normal world” these latest charges would debunk the idea that the Justice Department has been weaponized.
Host Poppy Harlow began with more of a statement or observation than a question, “Michael, this is a complete collision course between, you know, the political system and the legal system. What's fascinating is for both the president's son and for the former president, all at the same time.”
Bender concurred, but on the political ramifications, he accused Republicans of living in some sort of fantasy land, “normally the American people are less likely to penalize a candidate for his family's charges, and you would think, in, maybe, a normal world, all these charges against Hunter Biden might take some steam out of the Republican argument that Joe Biden has weaponized the Justice Department against his -- against his political enemies but, you know, the keyword there, in a normal time.”

Christy didn't explain how these charges don't disprove the right-wing "weaponization" narrative.

Graham returned to serve up his own complaint in a Dec. 8 post that the charges were being questioned:

While ABC, CBS, and NBC dryly and seriously addressed the new Hunter Biden indictment on tax charges in California, MSNBC’s Morning Joe didn't discuss the new Hunter indictment until a half-hour had elapsed, and then they implied this shouldn’t have happened.
Co-host Willie Geist walked legal analyst Lisa Rubin through all the reasons not to prosecute. Hunter repaid the tax debt, “maybe not by him specifically, but they were repaid.” And not in a timely manner, Rubin added, but “Hunter’s tax liability has been cleared."
Rubin then explained that back when Hunter’s plea deal collapsed, she told the MSNBC anchor that other people would have never been prosecuted for this, so the fact that these charges are added “shows me that there is a two-tiered system of justice, it just doesn’t go the way Donald Trump thinks it does."
[...]
They're so energetically doing Democrat Talk that they can't acknowledge that all of Hunter's millions came from selling access to his father. Joe Biden obviously knew his son was selling access. He cooperated with it, and met with his clients. next? [Jonathan] Lemire then made a speech that this indictment is "not a coincidence." (Like Biden's Justice Department is working with Republicans?)

Graham didn't explain that it's entire possible there could bepartisan DOJ holdovers from the Trump years who would act against Hunter the way he accuses DOJ operatives of acting against Trump.

Houck served up a Dec. 8 coverage time-count post (that oddly excluded Fox News), adding: "While the liberal media seem increasingly comfortable with throwing Hunter overboard, they’ve made sure to continue sheltering his father, President Joe Biden."

Nicholas Fondacaro grumbled in his own Dec. 8 post:

First son Hunter Biden got an early Christmas gift from Special Council David Weiss in the form of a brand new federal indictment on felony tax charges. That didn’t sit well with MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell, who opened her eponymous show on Friday by lamenting that Weiss “quoted gritty details from Hunter's own memoir to build his case,” how it was bad “optics” for White House, and that it could hurt President Biden’s 2024 chances.

Christy huffed in a Dec. 9 post: "With Hunter Biden being charged with multiple tax-related felonies, the cast of Friday’s PBS NewsHour wanted to emphasize what it considered the main takeaway “the indictment does not in any way implicate President Joe Biden.” He then ranted about "all the evidence that Joe was involved in those ill-gotten gains that he said doesn’t exist," though the MRC post he offered as proof failed to demonstrate that any of it was creidible evidence.

A Dec. 10 post by Jorge Bonilla complained that an ABC panel discussion "threatened to veer into 'a father’s undying love' territory, but it only took former DOJ spokesperson Sarah Isgur 39 seconds to bring the discussion back into focus." He censored the fact that Isgur is a conservative activist who was a DOJ spokesperson in the Trump administration. Bonilla also groused that the panel discussion didn't get into "the firing of Victor Shokin," but failed to disclose that Shokin (a prosecutor in Ukraine) was fired because he wasn't doing his job of prosecuting corruption, not because he was.

Newsmax Cut Back Further On Debate Coverage, Again Touted Candidate Who Wasn't There

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 18:06:12 -0500

Newsmax somehow managed to care even less about the fourth Republican presidential debate than it did the first three. There were a few preview articles, all of which were wire articles:

There were only a few articles on the content of the deabte itself:

Insults Fly as Final GOP Debate Descends Into Chaos
Nikki Haley's Momentum Makes Her a Target at Debate (wire article)
Takeaways From Fourth Republican Presidential Debate (wire article)

Newsmax's original debate-related coverage was focused more on trashing the debate itself and touting the candidate who wasn't there (though it did let Ron DeSantis make a TV appearance to tout his "momentum" after the debate, which didn't age terribly well considering he'd drop out of the race a month or so later). Michael Katz did some creative math in a Dec. 7 article to bash the debate's ratings:

The fourth Republican presidential primary debate hosted by NewsNation on Wednesday suffered the worst ratings of all GOP debates this cycle, with the upstart network drawing only 1.6 million viewers.
The debate also aired on NewsNation's sister network CW, drawing an additional 2.5 million viewers, giving a total audience of 4.1 million, Nielsen reported.
Even with the combined number, the NewsNation debate had the lowest rating of any network hosting a GOP debate this year.
Just last month, the NBC-hosted Republican debate drew 7.5 million viewers. NewsNation also witnessed a huge drop of 68% in audience from Fox News' first GOP debate held in Milwaukee on Aug. 23. Fox drew 12.8 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

Katz then took a couple shots at NewsNation itself:

The liberal NewsNation channel, formerly WGN America, has been struggling since its inception in 2021.
It drew just 60,000 viewers for a total day in 2023 — down 35% from last year — making it the lowest-rated cable news channel.

In fact, NewsNation is very much right-leaning, not "liberal."

A column by John Gizzi proclaimed Trump the debate's winner despite not bothereing to show up:

Wednesday's Republican presidential debate, the fourth of the year, was by far the best, a group of experts who spoke to Newsmax agreed.
The group said that each of the four candidates shined at different times in the Tuscaloosa, Alabama, forum. But they also agreed that, as in the past three debates, former President Donald Trump was the winner simply by not being there.

A Dec. 9 article by Eric Mack let Trump bash the debate as well:

The lowest-rated GOP primary debate yet in "history" has left a trail of woe and losers, according to former President Donald Trump.
Trump mocked the low ratings of NewsNation and his primary challengers and even took a new shot at Megyn Kelly, who he temporarily suggested had come around.
"So many people are asking what I thought of history's lowest rated 'presidential' debate, & how would I rate the players," Trump wrote on Truth Social early Saturday morning. "It's so easy to be a critic, but who on this subject would be better than me."
Not only were the host and the moderators lowly rated in Trump's review, but the candidates were anything but worthy, he added.

When the Republican National Committee decided not to be invnolved in any further debates, a Dec. 9 article by Sandy Fitzgerald tried to frame it as beingdue to "dwindling ratings for the contests," not the more logical explanation that one candidate absolutely refused to participate, and that it was "giving broadcast rights to networks seen as hostile to former President Donald Trump, including Fox, NBC, and NewsNation," despite it being nonsensical to call Fox News "hostile" to Trump.

Did Cashill Get A Buddy To Write Fawning Review Of His Book For A Right-Wing Website?

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 13:21:57 -0500

Woody Cozad wrote a fawning review of WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill's book "Untenable" (you know, the one that's beloved by the white nationalists at VDARE) for the right-wing Manhattan Institute's City Journal website:

Our well-intentioned government—named the “Good Intentions Paving Company” by financial analyst James Grant—always seems to find itself scrambling to explain how its latest scheme for a better world has delivered us into an even lower circle of hell. Bureaucrats to the core, they’ve even developed a one-step procedure for dealing with this task: blame it on the people. The term “white flight” is a product of this procedure.
A principal benefit of this system is that the Paving Company doesn’t have to ask people—in this case, the whites who took “flight”—why they fled. It must be because they were fleeing from nonwhite people, and fleeing from nonwhite people is racist. Why would you bother consulting racists about their motives?
Untenable, punctures this familiar white flight narrative. Cashill’s subtitle promises the “true story of white ethnic flight from America’s cities.” Cashill has learned a thing or two from his fellow descendant of Irish refugees, Ronald Reagan: damn the statistics, tell the stories. In fact, let people tell their own stories. In this book, they finally get the chance to do so.
Decades on, few have bothered asking white ethnic residents why they left the neighborhoods where they had met and married spouses, raised families, made their livings, drank beer together, cheered the home team, and gone to the movies. They (or their forebears) hadn’t left Ireland, Germany, Italy, or Poland lightly. It took poverty, starvation, tyranny, and decades of suffering, in many cases, to get them to our shores. We’re expected to believe that they dropped the fruits of a lifetime’s effort in America and decamped for the suburbs solely because some black families bought houses a few blocks away.
This certainly isn’t the story the white ethnics tell in the pages of Untenable. Their reasons for leaving boil down to two things: the rise of crime and the collapse of schools.

Which, of course, are being blamed on black people, despite Cozad's refusal to say it out loud. So, yes, there's racism involved -- why else would VDARE endorse the book?

Cozad's end-of-review bio describes him only as "a lawyer in Missouri" who has held other minor state offices and was once chairman of the state Republican Party. However, he's a lot closer to Cashill than City Journal chose to disclose. He's worked on numerous projects with Cashill: he chaired a panel about the business of law in Kansas City that Cashill moderated, he appeared in an anti-evolution video called "The Triumph of Design" that Cashill directed, and a 2017 column by Cashill touted how Cozad popped up in a Netflix video made by Robert Reich.

Seems like Cashill got a buddy of his to write a positive review of his book for a right-wing website. Doesn't seem very honest of him.

NEW ARTICLE: Adjusting Speakers At The MRC

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 12:12:33 -0500

The Media Research Center tried to blame everyone but hard-right Republicans for the ouster of Kevin McCarthy as House speaker -- then downplayed the far-right extremism of his replacement, Mike Johnson. Read more >>

MRC Plays Whataboutism To Defend Trump's 'Vermin' Attack

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 22:06:57 -0500

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

Calling Donald Trump a "fascist" is Joe Scarborough's stock in trade. He works it into his spiel almost as often as he brings up the fact that he once was a Congressman.
But "fascist" apparently no longer suffices to express the depths of Joe's disdain for the Donald. On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough declared that Trump has gone "full-on Hitler." Trump's sin was vowing to root out "vermin," his term for "radical-left thugs."
Trump = Hitler? Hitler—who carried out history's greatest genocide of Jews?
Trump, the man who delivered on the failed promise of preceding presidents to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem? The man behind the Abraham Accords, by which several Arab states opened diplomatic relations with Israel? Trump, the man with a Jewish daughter and son-in-law, and Jewish grandchildren? That's Hitler?
Alex Christy recently looked at a year of media coverage and crowned Scarborough as the media's "King of Nazi Analogies." That didn't even count the use of "fascist." Joe's streak continues.
Surely Scarborough is aware that the scourge of antisemitism in America lies largely on the left. With the chanting on campus, on American streets -- even in the halls of Congress in the person of Rashida Tlaib -- of "From The River to The Sea," effectively a call for the destruction of the Jewish state.

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

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

On Tuesday, ABC’s chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl’s third anti-Trump book hits shelves and will send Resistance types into further episodes of collective hyperventilation over Trump and the GOP as threats to national security who must be crushed in 2024. Karl hawked the book on Monday’s Good Morning America and lashed out at voters for “not” having “paid much attention to what” Trump’s “doing and saying,” including his “Third Reich” rhetoric.
Tired of Winning: Donald Trump at the End of the Grand Old Party is likely to be another bestseller and only further underline the liberal media’s symbiotic relationship with Trump of shrieking about him (as well as his supporters) but dismissing and ripping any legitimate Republican who’d give him a run for his money in 2024.
[...]
“[T]his is a very dark, dark thing. We heard him refer to his opponents just the other day as vermin — using — using language out of the Third Reich,” he added.
Stephanopoulos interjected partway through with — wait for it — Trump-Hitler comparison, saying Trump’s engaging in “Adolf Hitler talk.”
Karl continued, warning Trump would “eliminate and annihilate his enemies and get retribution” and that his “hardcore base” believes him when he said his enemies as “coming after me because their real target is you and I’m standing in the way.”
Ignoring the dozens of campaign emails, videos from Trump himself, and an entire record of four years in office, Karl hilariously claimed Trump “doesn’t really have a policy agenda so much as a — as an agenda of getting revenge on his enemies and insisting on loyalty.”

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

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

The Monday evening PBS NewsHour starred recurring guest, New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, using Trump's talk of leftist "vermin" at a rally on Veteran’s Day to compare the former president to Hitler. (With the far-left’s public anti-semitic behavior of late, some are cheekily tempted to ask if being compared to Hitler is a good thing or a bad thing on the left.)
Ben-Ghiat likened Trump to fascists three times along with similar unseemly comparisons.
[...]
(If Ben-Ghiat truly thinks she's in danger of fascist political prosecution by Trump, she certainly doesn't seem concerned.)
My colleague Mark Finkelstein pointed out that President Trump actually moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and drove the Abraham Accords, by which several Arab states opened diplomatic relations with Israel and was a staunch ally of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In other words, Trump's the worst Hitler ever.

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

Everyone from PBS to Rachel Maddow on CBS is freaking out over Donald Trump promising to root out the “vermin” from the radical left. Out came the allegedly nonpartisan historians like Ruth Ben-Ghiat to explain that Trump sounds almost exactly like Hitler. It doesn't matter that as president, Trump implemented a range of policies that were pro-Israel. They have to spread that "beware the authoritarian" messaging. They just can't let go...even if it helps Trump. Even if Trump wants them to trash him.
But they can’t find outrage when leftists described Republicans as a “crazed swarm of right-wing locusts.” That reduction of the GOP to insects came from NAACP leader Julian Bond in a National Press Club speech in 1998.
Mr. Bond said: "[Reagan] brought to power a band of financial and ideological profiteers who descended on the nation's capital like a crazed swarm of right-wing locusts bent on destroying the rules and the laws that protect our people from poisoned air and water, and from greed."
Did anyone think Julian Bond was some kind of dehumanizing authoritarian? No. It wasn't a story to them, only to The Washington Times and some conservative news-busters.

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

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

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

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

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

With the chyron reading “Breaking News; Fears Grow Amid Trump’s Embrace of Authoritarianism”, supposedly objective and nonpartisan Washington Post journalist Carol Leonnig had a cartoonish claim of her own, huffing that “it was clear that Donald Trump…was not the president for all Americans” in contrast to “all of them before Donald Trump” who “made an effort to unite the country, to try to – even though they may have been elected by one party’s faithful or another, still tried to encourage and enable and kind of, in essence, charm the other side”.
Was Leonnig in a coma during, say, Obama’s Lawrenceville, Kansas speech? Or Woodrow Wilson with the Espionage and Sedition Acts? Or Bill Clinton’s vicious spin team led in part by current ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos?
Menendez went to McCaskill with more fear-mongering and stoking of divisions, huffing that Trump (and thus his supporters) just wrong, but “the threat from within” with his supporters representing possible actors in “domestic violence extremism”.
“He is the one stoking fear. He is the one stoking violence around this country,” she added.

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

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

On Sunday, NBC Meet the Press host Kristen Welker displayed an interview taped on Saturday with Gov. Ron DeSantis. She repeatedly demanded the candidate denounce Donald Trump for his use of the term "vermin" to describe communists, fascists, and "radical left thugs" in America. She asked six times to try and force an answer, implying Trump sounded like a Nazi. DeSantis said he wasn't playing the media game on this.
[...]
After Welker's performance, she turned to her panel of pundits for their analysis. Stephen Hayes of The Dispatch hit DeSantis for "how small he felt in response to those questions." Tim Alberta of The Atlantic said "He seemed defensive, jumpy in that interview. He almost gives the vibe of a guy who sort of knows that the end could be near."

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