Tag Archives: fake news

When Media Lies Are Exposed

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Yesterday Red State posted an article about the media’s reaction to the Inspector General’s report which vindicated President Trump and former Attorney General Barr in the clearing of Lafayette Park.

The article reports:

To quickly recap, per the report, “the evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow the contractor to safely install the antiscale fencing in response to destruction of property and injury to officers occurring on May 30 and 31. Further, the evidence showed that the USPP (U.S. Park Police)did not know about the President’s potential movement until mid- to late afternoon on June 1—hours after it had begun developing its operational plan and the fencing contractor had arrived in the park.”

Among the reporters most heartbroken by the news were NBC News’ anchor Chuck Todd and network correspondent Ken Dilanian (known in some circles as “Fusion Ken” for reasons explained here), both of who appeared to be shell-shocked at the news and at times confused by the findings.

The article includes a few videos showing the disappointment of the newscasters that President Trump was not guilty of clearing the park for a ‘photo op,’ as they so enthusiastically reported. Please follow the link above to see the videos. They are enlightening.

This is a glaring example of the media trying to tell a story that is false. I wonder how many people believed the story, formed an opinion of President Trump based on the story, and then voted against President Trump i n 2020. An independent media would have had at least a few reporters telling a different story or questioning the story being told.

About Those Polls

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The American Thinker posted an article today about some recent polls showing President Biden’s approval rating and Americans’ opinions about his speech before Congress. The number reported by our mainstream media are very misleading.

The article reports:

Opinion polls are a well-known and effective method of shaping opinion. These methods have been well described and include sampling whoever answers the phone versus likely voters, the latter being a practice of Rasmussen Reports in their high accurate presidential opinion polls. Oversampling Democrats is another fraudulent way to produce a poll result favoring the DNC media agenda.

President Biden last week addressed Congress, at least those select few members invited to listen to Sleepy Joe propose new spending in excess of $4 trillion, an amount larger than what the federal government takes in annually through already-confiscatory taxes.

Despite most or all members of Congress, as well as the president and vice president, already being vaccinated, the sparse audience was wearing masks and sitting at least six feet apart. If fully vaccinated, why were the attendees acting as though they were not? If the government message is that the vaccine works and everyone should take it, why are the top government leaders sending the opposite message?

The article explains how to skew a poll:

The last figure was the sum total of the three main legacy television networks – CBS, ABC, and NBC, plus Fox News. Nielsen reports the audience from more sources at 26.9 million. Either way, Biden drew considerably less of the audience that Trump did in his first congressional address and far less than in Trump’s final address, even when cable media are included. As the Last Refuge noted,

That’s over a 60% decrease in viewership.   No crowds ever attended his rallies.  There was no crowd at his installation.  There are no views for his on-line speeches.  The audience for his regular speeches are non-existent.  Virtually no viewers at home.  An empty chamber for his speech,… and yet we are to believe he received 81 million votes.

At least China Joe beat the Oscars, which had only 9.85 million viewers, down 58 percent from last year’s all-time low. Perhaps the woke leftists in Hollywood and the White House are not as popular as CNN believes they are.

Back to the poll, commissioned by CNN, conducted by SSRS Opinion Panel: The sample was 589 respondents, only slightly more than the size of the U.S. Congress. Of those surveyed, 45 percent identified as Democrat compared to 23 percent as Republican, a two-fold difference.

Is it any wonder that seven out of 10 gave the speech a thumbs up? They should have saved money and just surveyed the CNN newsroom, getting the same or an even more favorable result.

All Americans need to do their own research. When a poll comes out that seems odd, look up the poll and see who was polled. That’s how you spot fake news.

Another Example of Fake News

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BizPacReview posted an article yesterday citing some erroneous reporting by NBC News’ Kelly O’Donnell and CNN’s April Ryan. Both women reported that President Trump did not offer an Air Force plane to President-elect Biden to arrive in D.C. for his inauguration. That is simply not true.

The article reports:

’Donnell tweeted: “Arriving on a private charter aircraft with a generic paint job instead of the customary use of an Air Force plane for an incoming president is among the many courtesies not extended to the new president by the departing one.” The tweet is still posted and has not been deleted.

April Ryan took to a similar tactic: “The Bidens have landed at Joint Base Andrew’s and being welcomed! What is striking how Donald Trump is in his feelings. He did not offer a military plane for the Biden’s to fly to DC as traditionally done by the outgoing president!” Again, the tweet is still up and not corrected.

The article notes:

Media outlets such as TMZ and The Daily Mail ran with the fake story and gleefully pointed out how petty Trump is. Except he’s not.

TMZ reports: “Donald Trump’s pettiness apparently knows no bounds because Joe Biden isn’t getting what Trump himself got … a government aircraft taking him to D.C. for his inauguration.”

The Daily Mail jumped in too and even their title was cringeworthy: “How petty can you get? Biden and family arrive in DC on a charter plane after Trump REFUSES them government jet – as Joe cries during a heartrending speech about son Beau.”

…“A White House official, meanwhile, said the Biden team did not ask for a government plane to bring Biden to DC. The official said the administration explained to the Biden team what the options were. But aides to Biden explained they preferred to fly on private aircraft, the official added.”

Once again, reporting fake news and using unnamed sources is considered journalism.

Celebrities such as Tim Matheson chimed in spreading the fake news even further after buying into the false narrative from April Ryan: “Low class from start to finish. Jealousy and deceit plus those little hands.”

It’s a pretty safe bet that we will never have unity in America as long as the media tells lies about people who don’t agree with their political philosophy.

 

When Fake News Is Forced To Apologize

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Yesterday The Daily Wire reported that Newsweek was forced to issue a retraction of statements it made about possible Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. The attack on Judge Barrett was probably only a portent of things to come. It was a lie, but that won’t matter to many people who want to oppose her nomination because of her stand on abortion.

The article reports:

Newsweek magazine has issued a major correction to an article smearing potential Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, accusing the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge of belonging to a Catholic sect that “inspired” the novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Initially, Newsweek claimed that “People of Praise,” a charismatic Catholic group to which Barrett reportedly belongs, “served as inspiration for Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale,” adding that female members are forced to report to spiritual superiors known as “handmaids” and that the group stresses that “men have authority over their wives.”

The article continues:

The problem? People of Praise’s “handmaids” are little more than spiritual advisors, according to sources familiar with the 1,700-member group that spoke to The Daily Wire. And as National Review Online’s David Harsanyi points out, Barrett’s partner’s “authority” must be severely limited, given that her “knuckle-dragging misogynistic religious fanatic husband has only let the poor woman out of the house twice. Once, to serve a 15-year stint as a law professor at a highly prestigious university,” and the other to serve on the 7th Circuit.

Deeper than that, though, it turns out Newsweek’s story is actually completely wrong based on information from Atwood herself, which Newsweek points out in its “correction.”

The article notes that the author has also stated that the group was not the inspiration for the book:

“Correction: This article’s headline originally stated that People of Praise inspired ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. The book’s author, Margaret Atwood, has never specifically mentioned the group as being the inspiration for her work,” the note read. “A New Yorker profile of the author from 2017 mentions a newspaper clipping as part of her research for the book of a different charismatic Catholic group, People of Hope. Newsweek regrets the error.”

“The clipping includes a spokesperson for the People of Hope sect based in Newark, New Jersey saying, ‘We’re all Roman Catholics. We differ in the sense that we are a Charismatic group, which would mean that we have prayer meetings, during which there is raising of hands, singing and speaking in tongues,’” the outlet notes. “People of Praise has never had a presence in the state of New Jersey.”

How many people have read the article but are unaware of the correction?

As Declassification Of FISA Warrants Continues…

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The Federalist posted an article today listing seven things that we have learned about Operation Crossfire Hurricane as documents are being declassified. None of these things make our intelligence-gathering communities look good. I am going to simply list the seven things. Please follow the link to the article to read the details. They are chilling:

Here is the list:

1. The FBI Always Intended to Spy on the Trump Campaign

2. FBI Failed to Brief Trump About Its Page Suspicions

3. The FBI Spied on the Trump Administration

4. Rep. Adam Schiff Is a Rotten, No-Good, Two-Faced Liar (his attacks on Devin Nunes were based on information he knew to be false).

5. FBI Relied Solely on Fake News to Support Portions of the FISA Applications

6. The Special Counsel Pushed Pathetic Intel Too

7. Oh, the Sweet Irony

As I previously stated, please follow the link to read the entire article.

Countering Fake News

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Unfortunately many in the media have decided to use the coronavirus pandemic to bash President Trump rather than to help deal with the problems created by the crisis. That has caused some government agencies to periodically make statements calling attention to the false reporting that is going on. Yesterday The Epoch Times posted an article about one such event.

The article reports:

The Department of Defense issued a rare denial to an anonymously sourced media report claiming that military intelligence allegedly warned about the CCP virus pandemic as early as November 2019.

ABC News cited anonymous officials on April 8 to claim that the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) released a report in November 2019 that detailed concerns about a potential outbreak. The NCMI issued a statement in response to the article saying the report doesn’t exist.

“As a matter of practice, the National Center for Medical Intelligence does not comment publicly on specific intelligence matters. However, in the interest of transparency during this current public health crisis, we can confirm that media reporting about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November of 2019 is not correct. No such NCMI product exists,” Shane Day, director of the NCMI, said in a statement.

The article also notes:

Trump banned travel to China on Jan. 31, ten days after the United States confirmed its first case of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

Sam Faddis, a former CIA operations officer, told The Epoch Times that the idea that the highest levels of the U.S. government were repeatedly warned about a pandemic and “collectively” ignored it is “ridiculous.”

I wonder how many people who saw the initial charge saw the response from the Intelligence Community that it was false. Somehow I don’t think the mainstream media made that a major story. Therein lies the problem. The segment of our population that relies on the mainstream media has been fed a bunch of lies about how President Trump has handled this crisis. This makes them less likely to listen to him in the crisis. That seriously undermines our government and creates divisions which make it harder for Americans to work together. The mainstream media is largely responsible for knowingly tearing at the fabric of our society. It is truly a shame that they cannot be trusted to report events honestly.

 

Fake News Isn’t Helping Anyone

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Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted pictures that CBS News aired as pictures of New York City hospitals. The pictures were actually pictures of Italian hospitals.

These are the pictures:

Showing this picture while discussing the coronavirus in New York City was both irresponsible and misleading.

Unfortunately there is a lot of fake news being reported in the mainstream media right now. Be careful who you believe.

A Small Update On Some Of The Fake News You Are Hearing

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PJ Media posted a list today of the top ten lies the news media has told about President Trump’s response to the coronavirus. Please follow the link to the article to read the details–I am simply posting the list:

10. Trump downplayed the mortality rate of the coronavirus

 

 9. Trump lied when he said Google was developing a national coronavirus website

 8.  Trump ‘dissolved’ the WH pandemic response office

 7. Trump ignored early intel briefings on possible pandemic

 6. Trump cut funding to the CDC & NIH

 5. Trump ‘muzzled’ Dr. Fauci

 4. Trump didn’t act quickly and isn’t doing enough

 3. Trump told governors they were “on their own”

 2. Trump turned down testing kits from WHO

 1. Trump called the coronavirus “a hoax”

The sources for this misinformation vary. The sources include MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Politico, Joe Biden, and Michael Bloomberg. If you are still depending on these sources for accurate reporting, you are being mislead. The article at PJ Media lists the source for each lie, so you can see where the lies came from.

Meanwhile stay safe, and be careful who you listen to.

This Is Not Helpful To Anyone

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Breitbart reported the following yesterday:

A Democrat-aligned Super PAC announced on Tuesday that it will spend $5 million on negative ads targeting President Trump’s response to the coronavirus.

Why not spend $5 million on encouraging people to take precautions to avoid getting the virus or to help those most impacted by the financial distress caused by the virus?

The article continues:

Acronym owns the technology firm Shadow, Inc., which was responsible for developing the infamous app used in the chaotic Iowa caucuses. Notably, the firm’s founder and CEO, Tara McGowan, “worked for Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign and previously served as the digital director for NextGen America, a progressive organization founded by presidential candidate Tom Steyer,” as RealClearPolitics noted.

Acronym is funded by the “liberal dark money group” New Venture Fund, which is “part of a larger group called Arabella Advisors, which provides philanthropic guidance and manages four nonprofits,” according to the nonpartisan ethics watchdog group Americans for Public Trust. Those also include the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Windward Fund, and Hopewell Fund.

The financial web, however, goes far beyond those connections. The political group American Bridge, which was founded by David Brock — a close ally of the Clintons and founder of Media Matters for America — is also involved in the overarching efforts to spread misinformation on President Trump’s response to the coronavirus and further politicize the crisis.

“American Bridge’s network of nonprofits received funding in 2018 from New Venture Fund, as well as another Arabella group called Sixteen Thirty Fund,” Americans for Public Trust reports.

The Post notes that American Bridge has been running political advertisements on Trump’s response to the crisis in key swing states — Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. According to the Post, the group signaled that more was coming, including an ad focusing on “‘Trump’s incompetence,’ including ‘clips of Trump himself downplaying the crisis.’”

“Our job is to hold Donald Trump accountable, and we have no plans to let up, particularly with a focus on economic issues as we’ve done to date,” American Bridge President Bradley Beychok said, according to the outlet.

He added that the group is “not going to give him [Trump] a pass for bungling the government’s response to this pandemic.”

This PAC is not helping anyone. At a time when reliable information is critical, this group, along with their allies in the mainstream media, are spreading fake news. I posted three stories (here, here, and here) in the past week that cited misreporting by the media regarding the coronavirus. All three stories were inaccurate and framed in a way to make either the President or the Republicans look bad. At a time when Americans need to work together to get through a crisis, spending $5 million on a political hit-job is not constructive.

 

This Is Not Helpful To Anyone

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The Washington Examiner posted an editorial Monday about some recent reporting by the New York Times. The New York Times posted an editorial about the President’s comments and handling of the Wuhan flu that was totally misleading. This is not helpful at a time when the country needs facts that help us work together, not lies that separate us.

The editorial notes:

A New York Times editorial board member has graduated from not understanding basic arithmetic to telling lies on social media about the White House’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The New York Times’s Mara Gay tweeted Monday afternoon, “Trump told governors this morning they are on their own: ‘Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves,’ Mr. Trump told the governors during the conference call, a recording of which was shared with The New York Times.”

The editorial at The Washington Examiner notes what was actually said:

President Trump did not tell the governors they are on their own. He told them they can streamline their respective responses by taking specific actions at the state level. He also made sure to tell them they have the support of the White House.

Obviously the message in what was reported is very different than what was actually said.

The editorial at The Washington Examiner concludes:

The note that Gay shared with her more than 72,000 followers includes a link to the New York Times’s collection of live updates on the COVID-19 virus. That collection includes the relevant portion of Trump’s remarks to governors.

It reads: “Mr. Trump told a group of governors that they should not wait for the federal government to fill the growing demand for respirators needed to help people diagnosed with coronavirus.”

Trump told them specifically, “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves.”

“We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves,” he said, according to the New York Times. “Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.”

This is nowhere near what Gay’s tweet suggested the president had said to the governors. There is no other way to characterize her tweet than to call it “fake news.” It is intentionally false information, disseminated broadly on social media with the explicit intent of misleading people. The only real difference between Gay’s tweet and the sort of stuff the Russians pumped onto social media during the 2016 presidential election is that Gay is an American citizen.

Fake news in a time of crisis is not only misleading–it is dangerous.

The Washington Post And The Truth

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Yesterday Paul Mirengoff posted an article at Power Line Blog about a recent article in The Washington Post. The article totally misrepresented what President Trump said at the recent press conference held at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The article reports:

In this article (the article in The Washinton Post),David Nakamura of the Washington Post ridicules Trump’s presser. That’s okay with me. Aspects of Trump’s performance invited ridicule.

Unfortunately, Nakamura also provides a false account of the substance of Trump’s remarks. The headline of his story asserts that “Trump second-guess[ed] the [medical] professions.” In the body of the story Nakamura goes further, claiming that the president “repeatedly second-guessed. . .the actual medical professionals standing next to him.” (Emphasis added)

Trump did no such thing. In fact, he did the opposite. He deferred to the medical professionals.

Nakamura cites no example of second-guessing. I watched the full presser and heard none.

The article concludes:

Nakamura also fails to note that Trump lavishly praised the U.S. medical experts dealing with the coronavirus outbreak. He called them the best experts in the world, and said that public health officials in other countries are relying heavily on them.

Trump made this statement repeatedly, so Nakamura couldn’t have missed it. He chose, however, to exclude it from his story. Why? Almost certainly because it didn’t fit Nakamura’s claim that Trump is “second-guessing the professionals.”

Nakamura is serving up fake news, and not for the first time.

The American news media gave up the illusion of fairness a long time ago. I believe that false reporting such as in The Washington Post is one of the main reasons the country is so divided. Americans who read The New York Times and The Washington Post have not seen a fair representation of President Trump. They are not acquainted with either the economic numbers or the efforts to deal with the coronavirus that began in January. They are reacting to second-hand gossip that they are reading in the newspaper. People who don’t read those newspapers have a much better grasp of the Trump administration and its accomplishments that those who do. The conflict between fact and bias is one source of the current division in our country. We got along much better when we had a more neutral news media.

Don’t Trust What You Read On Twitter

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Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article about a tweet by CNN’s Joe Lockhart .

This is the tweet:

There’s only one problem with the tweet–it is totally made up.

The article at The Gateway Pundit reports:

After his tweet went viral with thousands of retweets and 10’s of thousands of ‘likes’ with ‘conservative’ WaPo blogger Jennifer Rubin retweeting it, Lockhart admitted he made up the entire conversation.

“Ok maybe I made up the convo, but you know that’s exactly what they’re thinking.” Lockhart tweeted.

After major backlash from thousands of people calling Lockhart out for his lies, he pulled a Schiff and claimed it was just satire and parody.

This is what all Democrats do when they get caught lying and fabricating conversations.

Note that in the tweet Lockhart is saying that the Senators don’t know incriminating information against President Trump because they watch Fox News. Think about that for a minute–CNN, known for its fake news has reported stories that are totally false. The reporting on Fox News–particularly Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham has consistently proved to be true. What about the people who watch CNN and have no idea that everything Fox News has reported for the past two years has turned out to be true? How does that compare to the truthfulness of CNN? The false reporting of CNN and other biased media outlets bears much of the responsibility for the divisiveness currently found in America.

This May Be The Only Way To Deal With Fake News

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Yesterday Power Line Blog posted an article about Nick Sandmann and his lawsuit against CNN.

The article reports:

Nick Sandmann is an innocent kid who was waiting for a bus with a group of his fellow high school students in Washington, D.C., when he was accosted by an Indian activist who, accompanied by a gang of his followers, aggressively and obnoxiously beat a drum in his face. Sandmann committed the apparently unpardonable sin of standing still in the face of this activist onslaught, which caused him to be viciously smeared by media outlets like CNN and the Washington Post. Happily, Sandmann’s family retained a good lawyer and has sued several of the media outlets that lied about him.

Now the first domino has fallen: CNN has settled Sandmann’s case against it:

CNN agreed Tuesday to settle a lawsuit with Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann.

The amount of the settlement was not made public during a hearing at the federal courthouse in Covington, Kentucky.

Sandmann’s lawsuit sought $800 million from CNN, the Washington Post and NBC Universal. Trial dates are still not set for Sandmann’s lawsuit against NBC Universal and the Washington Post.

The amount of the settlement has not been disclosed, which is evidently not unusual in this type of court case.

The article concludes:

In this instance, I am pretty sure that it was CNN, one of the main malefactors, that didn’t want the world to know how much it paid Sandmann as a result of its pathetically biased reporting. Now Sandmann’s lawyers can use CNN’s contribution, likely in the mid six figures, to fund their ongoing battle against the Washington Post, NBC and any others who slandered the boy. That is how the system works, and in this case, it appears to be working for the good.

This may actually be the only way to deal with fake news.

Wisdom From The Mayor Of Livermore California

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The article I am referring to is from June 2018, but it is still totally relevant. Linked in posted an article on June 16, 2018, about the success and popularity of President Trump. Obviously that popularity does not extend to the media, but it does extend to the thousands of people who attend his rallies. The article is written by Marshall Kamena, a registered Democrat who is the Mayor of Livermore, California.

The article notes:

My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum. They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.”

Here’s my answer: We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency.

We tried statesmanship.

Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain?

We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney?

And the results were always the same. This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.

I don’t find anything “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper” about Barack Obama’s lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party.

I don’t see anything “dignified” in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks.

I don’t see anything “statesman-like” in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent.

Yes, Obama was “articulate” and “polished” but in no way was he in the least bit “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper.”

The article continues:

The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety.

With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America ’s first wartime president in the Culture War.

…Trump’s tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do. First, instead of going after “the fake media” — and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri — Trump isolated CNN.. He made it personal.

Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as “the most powerful weapon of all.”… Most importantly, Trump’s tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position. … They need to respond.

This leaves them with only two choices. They can either “go high” (as Hillary would disingenuously declare of herself and the fake news would disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery. The problem for CNN (et al.) with the former is that, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve. It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive.

Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obama’s close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers & Bernardine Dohrn), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright’s church.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is extremely insightful!

Creative Editing Totally Changes The Meaning Of What Was Said

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A website called The BL posted an article on Saturday that illustrates how the media can edit or take out of context a quote in order to change its meaning. The statement in question is the one being cited by Democrats to support their charge of ‘abuse of power’ leveled against President Trump.

The article reports:

As Breitbart News points out, CNN legal analyst and former Attorney General Elie Honig cited the clip edited in two special broadcasts explaining the case of the impeachment inquiry against Trump, one broadcast on Thursday and the other on Friday, Dec. 6.

In addition, MSNBC presenter and political commentator Chris Mathews played a similar video of Trump’s words on Wednesday during the “Hardball “program. And MSNBC host Joe Scarboroug again quoted the clip edited on “Morning Joe” on Thursday.

The problem is that the quote was totally taken out of context.

The article reports the context:

In the original video, the president explains, “Look, Article II, I would be allowed to fire Robert Mueller. Assuming I did all of the things, I said I want to fire him. Number one, I didn’t. He wasn’t fired.”

“Number one, very importantly but more importantly, Article II allows me to do whatever I want. Article II would allow me to fire him. I wasn’t going to fire him. You know why—because I watched Richard Nixon firing everybody and that didn’t work out too well,” the president explains in the clip, as picked up by Breitbart News.

Context matters. How many Americans have heard the fractured quote and believed it without having any idea of what was actually referenced? The press is obviously not doing its job of keeping Americans informed. Instead they are spouting propaganda to fit their own agenda.

Getting Tough On Fake News

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The Washington Examiner reported yesterday that Representative Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, has filed a $435 million defamation suit against CNN over a story that alleged Nunes met with a fired Ukrainian prosecutor in an effort to dig up dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Representative Nunes was traveling overseas at the time referenced in the allegation and can prove that he did not meet with the fired prosecutor. However, that did not stop CNN from airing the story. It would have been nice if they had checked their facts. Unfortunately there are now a number of Americans who accept this lie as fact. That is a problem for a representative republic–when the news is not reporting the truth, the voters do not have the correct information to vote intelligently.

The article reports:

“Giuliani associate willing to tell Congress Nunes met with ex-Ukrainian official to get dirt on Biden” — was published Nov. 22. It was based on the words of Joseph Bondy, the attorney for Ukrainian-born Lev Parnas, who worked closely with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani in pursuing allegations of Ukrainian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election as well as allegations of corruption in Ukraine involving Biden’s son Hunter. Parnas is currently under indictment on campaign finance charges.

CNN reported that Bondy said Parnas was “willing to tell Congress” that in December 2018, Nunes traveled to Vienna to meet with Viktor Shokin, the top Ukrainian prosecutor who was famously fired in 2016 under pressure from the United States, represented by Biden, who said Shokin did not do enough to prosecute corruption in Ukraine. CNN cited congressional travel records showing Nunes and a few aides traveled to Europe between Nov. 30 and Dec. 3, 2018.

Quoting Bondy, the CNN report said, “Mr. Parnas learned from former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Victor Shokin that Nunes had met with Shokin in Vienna last December.”

The article includes pictures showing where Representative Nunes was on those dates. The article also includes the following:

Nunes did travel between Nov. 30 and Dec. 3. The lawsuit says that on those dates, Nunes was in Libya and Malta. Nunes traveled to Libya to “discuss security issues with General Khalifa Haftar,” the suit says. In Malta, Nunes “met with U.S. and Maltese officials, including Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, and participated in a repatriation ceremony for the remains of an American World War II soldier missing in action,” according to the suit.

It is unlikely that Representative Nunes will win the lawsuit because the libel laws covering public figures are very strict, but the lawsuit is important because it illustrates the carelessness (and bias) of some of our news networks.

Does Anyone Actually Believe This?

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Fake News was slander before it became a reality. Currently what is said on some news programs is just plain scary. The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about some recent comments made on CNN.

The article reports:

The former chairman of the Psychiatry Department at Duke University said some absolutely shocking things about President Donald Trump while appearing on Brian Stelter’s CNN show ‘Reliable Sources‘ this week, including saying that he “may be responsible for many more million deaths” than Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong.

The wild segment was supposed to be about the trend of having psychiatrists who have never met the president making psychological evaluations on him, but it went way off the rails.

The insanity began when Stelter allowed Dr. Allen Frances to go on a rant about how it is an “insult” to the mentally ill to compare them to the president, but that the nation is mentally ill for electing him.

“Well, I think ‘medicalizing’ politics has three very dire consequences. The first is that it stigmatizes the mentally ill. I’ve known thousands of patients, almost all of them are well-behaved, well-mannered good people. Trump is none of these. Lumping that is a terrible insult to the mentally ill and they have enough problems and stigma as it is,” Allen said.

“Second, calling Trump crazy hides the fact that we’re crazy for having elected him and even crazier for allowing his crazy policies to persist,” Frances continued. “Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin, Mao in the last century. He may be responsible for many more million deaths than they were.”

The host of the show responded:

Stelter claimed that he didn’t hear what Frances was saying because he was distracted by technical difficulties.

“I agree that I should have interrupted after that line. I wish I had heard him say it, but I was distracted by tech difficulties (that’s why the show open didn’t look the way it normally does, I had two computers at the table, etc). Not hearing the comment is my fault,” Stelter tweeted.

The former chairman of the Psychiatry Department at Duke University said some absolutely shocking things about President Donald Trump while appearing on Brian Stelter’s CNN show ‘Reliable Sources‘ this week, including saying that he “may be responsible for many more million deaths” than Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong.

The wild segment was supposed to be about the trend of having psychiatrists who have never met the president making psychological evaluations on him, but it went way off the rails.

The insanity began when Stelter allowed Dr. Allen Frances to go on a rant about how it is an “insult” to the mentally ill to compare them to the president, but that the nation is mentally ill for electing him.

“Well, I think ‘medicalizing’ politics has three very dire consequences. The first is that it stigmatizes the mentally ill. I’ve known thousands of patients, almost all of them are well-behaved, well-mannered good people. Trump is none of these. Lumping that is a terrible insult to the mentally ill and they have enough problems and stigma as it is,” Allen said.

“Second, calling Trump crazy hides the fact that we’re crazy for having elected him and even crazier for allowing his crazy policies to persist,” Frances continued. “Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin, Mao in the last century. He may be responsible for many more million deaths than they were.”

The host of the show responded:

Stelter claimed that he didn’t hear what Frances was saying because he was distracted by technical difficulties.

“I agree that I should have interrupted after that line. I wish I had heard him say it, but I was distracted by tech difficulties (that’s why the show open didn’t look the way it normally does, I had two computers at the table, etc). Not hearing the comment is my fault,” Stelter tweeted.

Does anyone actually believe this?

 

Lies That Create Political Unrest

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“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Joseph Goebbels

Dennis Prager posted an article at Townhall today about the lies the media has consistently repeated about President Trump. Unfortunately, those Americans who rely on the mainstream media believe these lies.

The article notes:

The president of the United States, Donald Trump, never said there were “fine” Nazis or Ku Klux Klansmen.

This is one of the two great lies of our time — the other being that all Trump supporters are racists — and perhaps in all of American history. I cannot think of a lie of such significance that was held as truth by so many Americans, by every leading politician of one of the two major political parties and disseminated by virtually the entire media.

The major news media need to understand these are important reasons that half of America considers them frauds. And we get no pleasure from this fact. The reason we don’t recoil when the president labels the mainstream media “fake news” is that we know the charge is true. Has one major media news outlet yet apologized to the American people for preoccupying them for nearly two years with the lie of “Trump collusion” with Russia? Has one Democrat? Of course not. Because with regard to the Trump-Russia collusion issue, the news media were never driven by a pursuit of truth; they were driven by a pursuit of Trump.

…By remarkable coincidence, this week’s PragerU video is titled “The Charlottesville Lie.” It proves the president never said Nazis were fine people. When Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides,” he was referring to people demonstrating in Charlottesville for and against tearing down a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, not to Nazis and antifa.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It illustrates the lies the American people have been told since President Trump came down the elevator.

President Trump is not dividing the country–a left-wing media that fails to tell the truth has fueled the division with its constant attacks. How many Americans believe that the President colluded with Russia to win the election? How many Americans are aware of the roots of the Russia investigation? How many Americans will be shocked by the coming declassification of documents related to that investigation? How much of that declassification will the mainstream media report? The answers to those questions illustrate what is actually going on.

Fact-Checking The Lies

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I really hate being lied to. I also hate it when a source that should be reliable lies to me in order to convince me to take a stand on an issue. Unfortunately that has become a way of life for some of the mainstream media. The latest example illustrates that there might be some panic associated with having an attorney general who believes in the rule of law involved in the Epstein case.

The Gateway Pundit reported today:

The Fake News Liberal Media claimed that AG Bill Barr’s father worked with Jeffrey Epstein as a school teacher and therefore AG Barr should recuse himself from the Epstein case.  Of course, it’s just another liberal lie.

The article then goes on to report the actual facts:

The fake news New York Times reported in February 1974 that Bill Barr’s father had resigned from the elite school

…The far left Daily Beast reported that Epstein did work at the school but he didn’t work there until after the summer of 1974 –

 

 AG Bill Barr’s father couldn’t have worked with Epstein at Dalton School because he wasn’t even there when Epstein worked there.  He resigned months earlier.

So I guess there is no reason for Attorney General Barr to recuse himself. But how many people are mistakenly going to believe what they heard on the news? This sort of reporting is a threat to our republic–misinformed voters can be manipulated to vote any way a dishonest media wants them to vote.

When The Truth Arrives, Will The Public Believe It?

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The mainstream media hates the phrase ‘fake news,’ but the problem is that it often applies to what they report. Even if the news is not fake, it can be distorted in a way that leaves a totally false impression. Yesterday Breitbart reported one such example.

CNN’s Jim Acosta tweeted the following:

Well, that’s a little misleading.

The article further reports:

As Breitbart News’ John Binder reported, foreign nationals seeking asylum in the U.S. evade immediate deportation after claiming credible fear in 88 percent of cases, according to the Department of Justice. Yet, only 50 percent of the foreign nationals who evade immediate deportation by claiming credible fear end up filing for asylum status following there released into the country.

That is a direct quote from the article. The editor missed the fact the last few words should read, “following their release into the country.”

The tweet by Jim Acosta leaves you with a very unfavorable opinion of President Trump and his view on immigration. I strongly suspect that is by design. This is the kind of poison the mainstream media has spewed against President Trump for the last two-plus years. My question is this–if it turns out that the Russia investigation was in fact a failed coup (which I believe it was), are Americans going to be willing to face the truth after hearing two-plus years of hate speech and misreporting against President Trump.

 

Bad Day at Black Rock

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Below is a guest post by Raynor James, an eastern North Carolina resident who has followed the debate on North Carolina House Bill 184 very closely:

Tuesday, April 3rd was a sad day in the North Carolina House of Representatives.

Let me tell you about it. Dale Folwell is North Carolina’s Treasurer. He’s a very popular fellow for all the right reasons. He did a good job when he served in the North Carolina General Assembly. He got North Carolina’s unemployment insurance out of debt to the Federal Government when he served in Governor McCrory’s administration, an accomplishment that continues to save North Carolina’s employers significant sums annually. He’s known as a problem solver.

North Carolina’s State Health Plan (which pays for medical expenses of current and retired state employees) is seriously underfunded and is projected to be bankrupt by the year 2023.When Dale Folwell was elected Treasurer, many who voted for him expected him to solve the Plan’s problems as its administration was in the Treasurer’s portfolio.

Enter HB-184 which if implemented will tie the Treasurer’s hands and not allow corrective action to be taken while a committee studies the situation.

HB-184 was debated on the floor of the House April 3rd. Let’s look in on how some conservative House members tried to kill the bill.

First, Representative Michael Speciale offered two amendments to the bill. Representative Speciale’s first amendment would give the Treasurer a vote on the study committee and would make it impossible to expand the size of the committee (something that is sometimes done when the “powers that be”don’t like the direction a committee seems to be taking).

That amendment passed by a vote of 106 to 5.

Representative Speciale’s second amendment would remove Section 2 from the bill. Section 2 requires that Blue Cross-Blue Shield continue to be used during the study period.

It also prevents the Treasurer from switching the Plan to using referenced based pricing for medical services to the Plan during the study period.That amendment failed by a vote of 88 to 23.

During debate on HB-184 itself, Representative Larry Pittman cited a memo from the Plan’s Board of Trustees that projects that the plan will be out of money in 2023, and said that we can’t wait on a two year study. He talked about how hospital groups were groaning about how burdensome the Treasurer’s planed payment changes would be on them [tie pricing of medical services to 172% of the average Medicare pays for the same service], and pointed out how well funded many hospitals are. In support of his assertion, Representative Pittman mentioned that the hospital at East Carolina has given $10 million dollars to fund a stadium.

Representative Pittman asked that members not pass the bill and added that when Treasurer Folwell had requested info from the hospital groups, they had sent him the schedules he asked for with page after page blacked out. “They might as well have slapped him in the face and spit on him,” Representative Pittman said.

He continued by saying passage of the bill would hurt both members of the Plan and taxpayers who pay the freight and pointed out that members of the Plan are also taxpayers, so they get hit two ways.

He stated that Dale Folwell is “competent” and “honest” and renewed his request by saying, “Defeat this bill.” Representative Michael Speciale said, “We’re told that if we don’t pass this bill, the sky will fall; we’ll lose our rural hospitals.” He went on to say that they’d heard the same thing when he was trying to get rid of the CON [Certificate of Need] laws [which did not pass] and shortly thereafter they closed one of the hospitals in my district.”

“I hear fake news ads” [on the topic of rural hospitals closing if HB-184 doesn’t pass] when I drive in my district.”

Representative Speciale went on to say that Dale Folwell got the people together who are opposing him [mainly large hospital groups] and asked how much waste, fraud, and abuse there is in the system. The answers they give him ran from 12% to 25%, so he took a middle number and asked them to figure out how they could reduce costs by 15% and said that they needed to get together again as soon as that was done.

After that meeting, Treasurer Folwell tried to set follow up meetings, and time after time he was stonewalled.

Representative Speciale continued, “Now we’re faced with $33 to $36 billion dollars in unfunded liabilities. If we don’t allow him to cut costs, how are we going to cut costs because it’ll be on us!”

“Dale Folwell has increased what would be going into rural hospitals. He’s compromised, but they won’t budge an inch.If we do not pass this bill, then the hospital lobby will sit down and talk to him. Let the state Treasurer do what he was elected to do. Throw the politics aside and vote NO!

Representative Keith Kidwell said, “For the last 10 years, health care costs have gone up and up. We asked Treasurer Folwell to handle it. Let’s not bobble him,or we’ll be faced with taking $235 million to $509 million [dollars] from the general fund to deal with the problem AND $1.1 billion will be added to the unfunded liability.”

“HB-184 will cost us a ton of money!” “Cut through partisanship and look at the numbers! We HAVE to block this bill!’

In spite of those eloquent pleas and others, too, HB-184 passed 75 to 36, and it will now be sent to the North Carolina Senate where it is hoped that wiser voices will prevail.

If you’d like to hear the whole debate, you can go to the NC General Assembly website at which NC House sessions are archived.

Thank you, Raynor. This is a picture of what is going on in the North Carolina state legislature. President Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex. What we see here is the result of intense lobbying by the healthcare-industrial complex. We need to stop this bill.

Comparing Apples To Apples

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Most of us understand that the media is biased and slants its articles accordingly. The challenge for voters is to look past the obvious to make sure what they are reading is actually true. One recent example of misrepresenting a basic fact is the way the Trump tax cuts are being reported.

On February 13th The Daily Signal posted an article illustrating the fake news regarding the tax cuts.

The article includes the following tweet:

The article explains the problem with her statement:

This is simply the latest episode in a long-running campaign to demagogue tax cuts that let the vast majority of Americans keep more of their hard-earned money.

Some of the biggest cuts are actually being enjoyed by the lowest-income Americans. A typical family of four got a $2,917 tax cut this year.

…So what’s the complaint about?

In an early sample of tax returns, the IRS has reported that average refunds are down $170 from last year and that they hadn’t changed much from 2017, the year before.

But this is not relevant, for two reasons.

First, the sample of tax returns cited by the IRS is very small, and some analysts expect refunds will actually go up this year.

But second, and more importantly, tax refunds have nothing to do with the size of anyone’s tax cut. A refund is what you get back if you’ve paid too much in taxes throughout the year. Your tax cut is the drop in total taxes you owed to Uncle Sam last year. The two are not connected.

Employers across the country already gave us our tax cuts by withholding less money from our paychecks every pay period. Americans saw a bump to their paychecks in February 2018.

Of course, withholding is never perfectly accurate, so your refund or tax payment at the end of the year is simply a last-minute adjustment. But that refund does not cancel out the overall bump in take-home pay due to the tax cut.

Do you remember when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the tax cuts “monumental, brazen theft,” or when former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers predicted the tax cuts would kill 10,000 people every year? This most recent round of hysteria is just more of the same.

Be prepared for more false stories as the 2020 election grows closer.

Misleading The Public About International Affairs

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NBC News posted an article today about the relationship between President Trump and the nation of Turkey.

The article reports:

As Trump administration officials presided over the second day of an international conference in Warsaw dominated by calls to ratchet up pressure on Iran, one longtime U.S. ally and NATO member was noticeably absent — Turkey.

Snubbing the gathering in Poland, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday attended a rival conference in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where he planned to meet his Russian and Iranian counterparts to work out a final settlement of the war in Syria.

The dueling summits illustrate President Donald Trump’s struggle to forge a united front against Iran, and reflect Turkey’s drift away from Washington as it finds common ground with Moscow and Tehran, experts and former officials said.

These three paragraphs are totally misleading and paint a negative picture of President Trump’ foreign policy that is totally inaccurate. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan became President of Turkey in 2014. He had previously served as Prime Minister from 2003 to 2014. As he moves Turkey in the direction of an Islamic State, it is only natural that his friendly relationship with America would deteriorate rapidly.

On July 28, 2014, The Jerusalem Post reported:

Harold Rhode, a senior fellow at the New-York-based Gatestone Institute and a former adviser on Islamic affairs in the office of the American secretary of defense, told The Jerusalem Post in an interview on Sunday that the real issue in the ongoing conflict is that Turkey and Qatar are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in their goals.

“[Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan has been associated with the Muslim Brotherhood long before he was prime minister,” Rhode said.

It should now be clear to all that Erdogan “is now out of the bag,” Rhode said, adding that US President Barack Obama does not speak to the Turkish leader anymore despite previously describing him as one of his closest friends among the world’s leaders.

“Erdogan is doing whatever he can to help Hamas,” he said, asserting that it will only hurt the Palestinian people in the end.

On January 7, 2019, Clare Lopez posted an article at the Center for Security Policy that stated:

As National Security Advisor John Bolton heads to Turkey today for discussions about President Trump’s announced decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syrian battle spaces, he might question Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about his expressed intent to re-establish the Ottoman Empire and how Erdogan calculates U.S. policy in the region to figure into that ambition.

He might cite from Erdogan’s February 2018 assertion that “modern Turkey is a ‘continuation’ of the Ottoman Empire,” or ask exactly what Erdogan meant when, in November 2018 he declared that “Turkey is bigger than Turkey; just know this. We cannot be trapped inside 780,000 kilometers [Turkey’s total area].” He might perhaps ask also what exactly Erdogan meant by threatening the U.S. with an “Ottoman Slap,” in reference to American support for Kurdish forces fighting against the Islamic State.

Then there was the November 2018 “International Islamic Union Congress,” held in Istanbul. Headed by Erdogan’s chief military advisor, Adnan Tanriverdi, the event’s participants endorsed the aim of “unity of Islam” through establishing the “Confederation of Islamic Countries.” It was not entirely clear how or if such a “Confederation” would differ from a Caliphate or Islamic State.

Clearly, U.S. objectives for the region are not the same as Turkey’s.

I don’t think President Trump is the problem in our relationship with Turkey.

Putting The Fox In Charge Of The Hen House

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Yesterday Breitbart reported on the latest attempt by Microsoft to end the plague of fake news. It’s a valiant effort.

The article reports:

Without consulting with its users, Microsoft has installed an establishment media browser extension, purportedly designed to rate the accuracy of news websites, as a default extension on mobile versions of its Edge browser. In practice, it creates a news blacklist by warning users away from sites including Breitbart News, The Drudge Report, and the Daily Mail.

Actually all three of those sources have a better track record than many of the news sources that Microsoft has labeled as reliable.

The article cites some examples:

The website of the conservative-leaning British newspaper The Daily Mail, which has the third-highest circulation in the U.K., is also given a “red” rating. Newsguard says the site “fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability.”

WikiLeaks, which has never had to retract a story due to false or misleading information, is also given a “red” rating.

Among the websites given a “green” rating is BuzzFeed, which was recently humiliated for publishing alleged details about the ongoing Mueller investigation that were contradicted by the speial prosecutor himself. BuzzFeed did not retract the story, and even led with it on its frontpage … after Mueller contradicted it.

But in Newsguard’s view, BuzzFeed “regularly corrects or clarifies errors.”

Many of the websites that recently fed the fake news feeding frenzy against students of Covington Catholic high school in Kentucky, who were falsely accused of taunting a left-wing Native American agitator, are also given a “green” rating. These include CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. 

Also “green” — Media Matters, the Clintonite Democrat website that regularly publishes hit-jobs against conservative media publications and personalities.

Rolling Stone, the magazine infamous for publishing a hoax rape allegation against members of a University of Virginia fraternity in 2015 is also given a “green” rating. Newsguard says the outlet has “consistently published well-researched, factual information about contemporary American culture.”

Some left-wing sources are given “red” ratings by Newsguard. However, they tend to be on the anti-establishment side of Democratic politics: ShareBlue and the Daily Kos, for example, both have “red” ratings. Salon and the Huffington Post, however, do not.

Obviously, to anyone who actually pays attention to accuracy in the media, the best way to use this list is to regard those news sources marked in red as reliable and those news sources marked in green as fake news. The past histories of each group support that theory.

Rules For Radicals In Action

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Rule number 13 of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals is, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” That is currently what the mainstream media is doing to the students of Covington High School in Kentucky. The students are being targeted because they are pro-life, Catholic, go to private school, and support President Trump. A full viewing of the video shows that they were simply waiting for a bus while being harassed by a racist group and rudely treated by an elderly native American. I can pretty much guarantee that if Nathan Phillips had done what he did to the Covington High School students to a group of New York City students, the invasion of their personal space might have been handled very differently.

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article illustrating how this works.

The article cites the media’s bringing up a previous story that has already been proven false:

Nevertheless, the media jihad continues, and that includes NBC shamelessly running a debunked and deceptive smear story that had been reported on and debunked all the way back in May.

NBC’s deliberately misleading headline reads: “Gay valedictorian banned from speaking at Covington graduation ‘not surprised’ by D.C. controversy.” The story accuses “Covington” (I’ll explain the quote marks in a bit) of “banning” a speech that was to be given by an openly gay student.

The article then explains the problem with the story about the graduation speech:

  1. NBC News does not concede the fact that Bales submitted the speech late, instead framing it only as an allegation — an excuse from the diocese.
  2. Nowhere does NBC News reveal that Bales’ speech was a Parkland-inspired diatribe about gun control.
  3. Christian Bales was not a student at Covington High School.
  4. Christian Bales graduated from Holy Cross High School, a completely different high school.
  5. If his speech had been approved, he would have given it at Holy Cross High School, not at Covington High School.
  6. Holy Cross High is run by the same Catholic diocese as Covington High, but they are two completely different schools.
  7. NBC News bombards the story with more than a dozen references to “Covington” but goes out of its way to obscure the fact Bales attended a completely different school…

Since Covington High School is the target of the current media attack, the fact that the incident happened at a different high school is not relevant to the media. This is how fake news works, and this is how Rules for Radicals are implemented.