The Democratic Party has spent the past four years cooking up anything they can to use as grist with which to impeach President Donald Trump. Now that Trump has been acquitted by the Senate, the mainstream media are clutching their pearls over the president&#8217;s &#8220;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/06/politics/donald-trump-impeachment-victory-lap/index.html">vindictive impeachment victory lap</a>.&#8221;
Writing at CNN, Kevin Liptak lamented how President Trump gave a victory speech on Thursday that was &#8220;vindictive and angry.&#8221;
&#8220;There was no indication he planned to adopt a new approach following the ordeal. Instead, Trump spent more than an hour bouncing between disparate injustices and angry asides,&#8221; lamented Liptak.
&#8220;The formal White House event was meant to be the final word on the impeachment saga. But few expect the ordeal to fade from view; Trump is stung and angry at being impeached by the House and his allies say it&#8217;s unlikely he&#8217;ll let it go anytime soon,&#8221; he later added.
Speaking in the White House East Room, President Trump rightly minced no words in the wake of the Democratic Party&#8217;s failed attempt to forcefully remove him from office, denouncing the leading Democrats as &#8220;dirty cops&#8221; who enacted a plan that was both &#8220;evil&#8221; and &#8220;corrupt.&#8221;
&#8220;We&#8217;ve been going through this now for over three years,&#8221; the president said. &#8220;It was evil, it was corrupt, it was dirty cops, it was leakers and liars. And this should never, ever happen to another president, ever.&#8221;
On CNN, Brianna Keilar referred to the president&#8217;s remarks as &#8220;unscripted&#8221; and &#8220;vindictive,&#8221; adding that it was &#8220;at times profane&#8221; and &#8220;angry.&#8221;
&#8220;An avalanche of grievances &#8230; It was vindictive &#8230; it was mean-spirited, it was poisonous, it was spiteful,&#8221; said Gloria Borger. Take a look:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Keiler, &quot;You have been watching the President &#8230;. with an unscripted, vindictive, at times profane, angry, rambling response to his impeachment acquittal.
Borger: &quot;An avalanche of grievances &#8230; It was vindictive&#8230;it was mean-spirited, it was poisonous, it was spiteful.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/bi0urv9Y2Y">pic.twitter.com/bi0urv9Y2Y</a>
&mdash; Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) <a href="https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/1225487462467801090?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Also at CNN, John Harwood <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnns-john-harwood-and-panel-stunned-by-dark-trump-speech-hes-in-deep-psychological-distress/">fretted over the darkness</a> of Trump&#8217;s speech, asserting that it offered a glimpse into the dark depths of his mind.
“This was a very disturbing tableau for the country. It was dark because he’s made clear that his mind is dark,” said Harwood. “This is somebody in deep psychological distress right now. Self-pitying, insecure, angry.”
“With Donald Trump, if he did it, it’s not wrong. He doesn’t recognize abstract concepts like right and wrong, like morality or immorality, like true or false, he recognizes what is good for him in the moment,” Harwood continued. “And what has happened … what Mitt Romney has done by casting that vote, what Nancy Pelosi has done, has felt very, very unpleasant to him.”
Marina Fang of <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-impeachment-acquittal-speech_n_5e3c25cdc5b6bb0ffc0c7210">HuffPost</a> referred to the moment as a &#8220;horror show in the East Room,&#8221; lamenting the president&#8217;s &#8220;improvisational ramblings that appeared more like fascist propaganda than a White House event.&#8221;
<div class="content-list-component yr-content-list-text text" data-rapid-cpos="2" data-rapid-subsec="paragraph" data-rapid-parsed="subsec">
&#8220;As the former reality television host walked to his lectern, he received a standing ovation while &#8216;Hail to the Chief&#8217; played, before launching into an unhinged riff targeting some of his favorite and most frequently mentioned subjects, listing them off in a Mad Libs-like frenzy,&#8221; wrote Fang. &#8220;The speech, which resembled his ad-libbed campaign rallies, was held in the East Room, typically reserved for more measured and sometimes somber official White House events.&#8221;
</div>

US President Donald Trump

WATCH: Media Triggered Over Trump’s ‘Vindictive Impeachment Victory Lap’

Donald Trump

Impeachment

Media

Media Bias

Donald Trump Jr. slammed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, as well as the biased way that the media has treated the Trump family, during a Fox News interview on Monday morning.
&#8220;Well listen, obviously, there&#8217;s the part where you&#8217;re watching this stuff go down to your father. But, look at me, for example, I mean, I&#8217;ve done 30 hours of testimony regarding a 20-minute unsolicited meeting, right?&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;Meanwhile, Hunter Biden is taking millions, is literally the start of the entire Ukraine hoax and they don&#8217;t even consider calling him. I mean, think about it, 30 hours in front of the House and Senate. I had senators on TV saying that this man committed treason, he must go to jail for life.&#8221;
&#8220;I mean, this isn&#8217;t even hyperbole anymore. The impeachment hoax started the day my father won the election, OK? It started — the articles were written before — during the inauguration, they were typing them, right,&#8221; Trump continued. &#8220;The Washington Post made the case for impeachment literally 20 minutes after the inauguration. This is what the Democrats have been doing from moment one, OK? When they were pushing the Russia hoax, my father was renegotiating NAFTA and he got that done.&#8221;
Later in the interview, Trump slammed Joe Biden over his struggles on the campaign trail, saying that if he can&#8217;t handle small crowds, then he will get steam rolled by his father, President Donald Trump.
&#8220;I mean, I sort of want to have Donald Trump go up against Joe Biden one-on-one for five months,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;I mean, I see Joe Biden in front of a teleprompter speaking to 20 people. He confuses which state he is in at least 50% of the time.&#8221;
&#8220;You know, this is not a one-time anomaly that they would destroy Trump for,&#8221; Trump continued. &#8220;This is a recurring theme that’s happening over and over again. So I mean, one-on-one with Trump, you can’t hide the same way. So I’d sort of love to go up against him.&#8221;
WATCH:
<iframe title="Don Jr.: Trump is delivering despite Dems&#039; &#039;unprecedented obstruction&#039;" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ALJHdyfRlqo?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
TRANSCRIPT:
<blockquote>STEVE DOOCY, FOX NEWS HOST: Very unfair to his family. You know what? We&#8217;ve got a member of his family right here.
AINSLEY EARHARDT, FOX NEWS HOST: We do. Let&#8217;s bring in Donald Trump, Jr., Executive Vice President of the Trump Organization and the son of our president. Good morning to you.
DONALD TRUMP, JR., EXECUTIVE VP OF TRUMP ORGANIZATION: Good morning, guys, how are you?
EARHARDT: We&#8217;re good.
DOOCY: Good.
EARHARDT: So, can you elaborate on that? In what way did you &#8212; was your family affected?
TRUMP JR.: Well listen, obviously, there&#8217;s the part where you&#8217;re watching this stuff go down to your father. But, look at me for example, I mean, I&#8217;ve done 30 hours of testimony regarding a 20-minute unsolicited meeting, right?
Meanwhile, Hunter Biden is taking millions, is literally the start of the entire Ukraine hoax and they don&#8217;t even consider calling him. I mean, think about it, 30 hours in front of the House and Senate. I had senators on TV saying that, this man committed treason, he must go to jail for life.
I mean, this isn&#8217;t even hyperbole anymore. The impeachment hoax started the day my father won the election, OK? It started — the articles were written before — during the inauguration, they were typing them, right.
“The Washington Post&#8221; made the case for impeachment literally 20 minutes after the inauguration. This is what the Democrats have been doing from moment one, OK? When they were pushing the Russia hoax, my father was renegotiating NAFTA and he got that done.
When they&#8217;re signing the articles of impeachment, my father signs a historic trade deal with China. That&#8217;s the difference between the do-nothing Democrats and my father. He’s actually getting things done, but he’s getting things done despite their unprecedented incoming, despite their unprecedented obstruction.
BRIAN KILMEADE, FOX NEWS HOST: Right.
TRUMP JR.: They’re not doing anything for the American people, and he’s getting it done and he’s going through his checklist one-by-one.
DOOCY: Well, you know how it works. Because the Democrats — Nancy Pelosi didn’t want to do it, but she had her super progressive —
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP JR.: Yes.
DOOCY: — left flank demanding an impeachment. She delivered on that, otherwise, you know, all sorts of members of her caucus would have been primaried by much more progressive people.
Now fast forward, she’s going to say he’s been impeached forever, but the reality is he’s going to be acquitted at four o’clock on Wednesday.
TRUMP JR.: Well, 100%, and that was it. You could see in the press conference — no, no, no, impeachment, it’s forever, it’s forever — because that’s all they got, guys. That’s literally all they got. That’s their little consolation prize because they needed that to do the things.
You know, you talk about Schiff earlier. I have no regrets. Oh really, you have no regrets? You were trying to call witnesses three days ago. What are you talking about? You blew it when you had it because you never had a case. You just had a media that was willing to accentuate your talking points, that was willing to do this as they’ve done with Adam Schiff for the last few years.
Again, I was a part of three or four of those major outrage cycles over the last three years where a CNN type, look, we got him this time because Donald Trump Jr. did this, because they got a leak from Schiff’s office as I was testifying, right?
These things were happening time and time again. There’s never a correction for the record. The intent is not to actually win. The intent is just try to manipulate the news cycle in hopes that the average American won’t do the research, in hopes that the average American won’t see through the lies. But honestly after three years of lies, you know, it’s a little bit of the boy who cried wolf with them at this point.
I’d like to see them start working with my father, get infrastructure done, lower healthcare costs, lower, you know, prescription drug pricing. All of these things that my father continues to try to work on despite their obstruction.
But I don’t think they’re capable of it, guys, because they’ve seen that Donald Trump, an outsider, can come in, can deliver, can go through the checklist of promises and deliver for the American people, and that scares these establishment-side people because they’ve never done that. They’ve had decades to do that.
That’s Joe Biden’s whole career talking about I’ve been doing this for 50 years. And what have you done? The average American can’t name a single accomplishment, but they can go through Trump’s checklist very easily.
KILMEADE: So it’s going — finally it’s going to be official. We’re going to get a result instead of speculation about reelection. 2020 begins officially today, Iowa caucus.
TRUMP JR.: Correct.
KILMEADE: The president speaking to Sean Hannity last night on the Democrats. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: I’m just going to throw out a name. Whatever comes to your mind.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: OK.
HANNITY: We’ll start with Joe Biden.
TRUMP: I just think of sleepy.
HANNITY: Hunter Biden.
TRUMP: Where’s Hunter?
HANNITY: Bernie Sanders.
TRUMP: Well, I think he’s a communist. You mentioned now Elizabeth Warren. She’s not true to it. I call her fairytale because everything’s a fairytale. That’s how Pocahontas got started. Everything’s a fairytale. This woman can’t tell the truth.
HANNITY: Michael Bloomberg.
TRUMP: Very little. I just think of little.
HANNITY: Hillary.
TRUMP: I think of email.
HANNITY: Pelosi.
TRUMP: I think she’s a very confused, very nervous woman. It’s — her worst nightmare has happened. I don’t think she’s going to be there too long either.
I think the radical left is going to take over.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KILMEADE: Well, the Pelosi aside, the others, let’s just look at the field. The word is that the &#8212; that the Trump team wants Bernie Sanders. Is that true?
TRUMP JR.: You know, honestly, guys, I don’t know that it matters. I can think of plusses or minuses —
(CROSSTALK)
KILMEADE: But he’s so different.
TRUMP JR.: — for all of them. I mean, you know, I think — I — look — I kind of want to run against a communist in Bernie, but he’s also got a very, you know, motivated base. He’s got people that are showing up —
(CROSSTALK)
DOOCY: Very.
TRUMP JR.: — for his rallies, right? There’s a viral effect sort of like what Trump had when they said we couldn’t win, so I don’t base things on that.
I mean, I sort of want to have Donald Trump go up against Joe Biden one-on-one for five months. I mean, I see Joe Biden in front of a teleprompter speaking to 20 people. He confuses which state he is in at least 50% of the time.
You know, this is not a one-time anomaly that they would destroy Trump for. This is a recurring theme that’s happening over and over again. So I mean, one-on-one with Trump, you can’t hide the same way. So I’d sort of love to go up against him.
DOOCY: Sure.
TRUMP JR.: You know and &#8212; you know, Elizabeth Warren, he’s right. I mean, her entire career, her entire life is based on a lie, whether that was school, tenure, law, you know, the universities where she’s making half a million dollars to teach a class, I mean, all based on a lie. I mean, I’d sort of like to run against that, and I’d say most of the rest of them are probably irrelevant.
DOOCY: Well, you were right about Bernie’s crowd, because they are very motivated. And again, he had the biggest crowd this weekend. They had Vampire Weekend performing and there was beer, which always brings out a crowd.
Donald Trump, Jr., we thank you very much for joining us live from West Palm Beach.
EARHARDT: Thank you.
TRUMP JR.: Thank you, guys. See you in Iowa.
DOOCY: You bet.</blockquote>

Donlad Trump Jr

WATCH: Donald Trump Jr. Shreds Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Media

Donald Trump Jr.

Fox News

Hunter Biden

Joe Biden

Shortly before a White House briefing call for the press on President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial on Saturday, Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley laid out the rules for media participants.
“The ground rules are as follows: Information on the call is on background and can be attributable to ‘sources on the president’s legal team.’ ‘Sources on the president’s legal team.’ And the call is also embargoed — the content on the call, rather — is embargoed until the conclusion of the call.”
Then he added: “As a reminder, you — by participating, you are agreeing to the ground rules. And with that, I’ll turn the call over to [sources on the president’s legal team].”
That’s how things work in Washington.
Reporters and the people they report on often — almost always — set out the terms of their interviews and phone calls beforehand. Big players like, say, a secretary of state, will insist on having some control over what’s for publication and what’s not. Usually, being able to move freely between on-the-record and off-the-record makes for a more open conversation.
That agreement is ironclad. Breaking the pact — for a reporter — means they’ve violated their word and their sources can no longer trust them. It’s the worst transgression a reporter can commit, and those who do it don’t stay in the business long. Word gets around quickly in Washington, D.C.
Which brings us to the bizarre tale of reporter Mary Louise Kelly, who works for the publicly funded National Public Radio.
Kelly sat down on Friday with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Before their interview, the reporter and her subject discussed the ground rules.
In a post-interview conversation, which garnered much press coverage, Kelly claimed, “I was taken to the secretary’s private living room, where he was waiting and where he shouted at me for about the same amount of time as the interview itself. He was not happy to have been questioned about Ukraine. He asked, ‘Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?’ He used the F-word in that sentence and many others. He asked if I could find Ukraine on a map. I said yes, and he called out for aides to bring us a map of the world with no writing. I pointed to Ukraine. He put the map away. He said, ‘People will hear about this.’”
But that’s not what happened, at least according to Pompeo.
In his own statement the next day, Pompeo said Kelly repeatedly lied to him about the parameters for the interview, and, by the way, wrongly identified Ukraine, instead pointing to Bangladesh on the map in question.
“NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly lied to me, twice,” Pompeo said. “First, last month, in setting up our interview and, then again yesterday, in agreeing to have our post-interview conversation off the record. It is shameful that this reporter chose to violate the basic rules of journalism and decency.&#8221;
“This is another example of how unhinged the media has become in its quest to hurt President Trump and this administration. It is no wonder that the American people distrust many in the media when they so consistently demonstrate their agenda and their absence of integrity,” he wrote.
It’s worth noting, he added, that “Bangladesh is NOT Ukraine.”
A transcript showed Kelly insisting on asking about Ukraine and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who was fired by Trump. In terms agreed to before the interview, the subject was to be solely Iran, Pompeo said.
“Change of subject. Ukraine. Do you owe Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch an apology?” Kelly said in the interview.
“You know, I agreed to come on your show today to talk about Iran. That’s what I intend to do,” Pompeo said.
The two then had a contentious exchange. Kelly claimed “people who work for you in your department” say Pompeo has not defended his staff.
“I don’t know who these unnamed sources are you’re referring to. I can tell you this. When I talked to my team here — ” Pompeo began.
“These are not unnamed sources,” Kelly interrupted.
It all went downhill from there.
Jason Rezaian, an opinion writer for The Washington Post and a CNN contributor, blasted Pompeo.
“The statement released this morning by [Secretary Pompeo] attacking [Kelly] is a shameful assault on #PressFreedom. Americans deserve a secretary of state, that is diplomatic, can answer foreign policy questions honestly, upholds our values and respects the press. This one doesn’t,” he tweeted.
But Andrew Surabian, a former special assistant to Trump turned political strategist, laid out a completely different view, and got it exactly right.
“In what universe is complaining about a reporter breaking an off the record agreement an ‘assault on press freedom?’ If [Kelly] did indeed break an off the record agreement, she should be fired [and] her colleagues should be condemning her, not holding her up as a resistance hero,” he tweeted.
Today’s journalists don’t even know the No. 1 rule of journalism: Honor your oaths. And they won&#8217;t last long in this town if they keep violating it.
&nbsp;
*Joseph Curl ran the Drudge Report from 2010 to 2014 and covered the White House for a dozen years. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on Twitter at @JosephCurl. A version of this article ran previously in The Washington Times.

President Trump Departs White House For Florida

CURL: Today’s ‘Journalists’ Don’t Even Know The No. 1 Rule Of Journalism

Journalism

Marie Yovanovitch

Mike Pompeo

National Public Radio (NPR)

Trump Administration

Ukraine

2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders&#8217; (I-VT) campaign was rocked again on Tuesday after James O&#8217;Keefe&#8217;s Project Veritas released more undercover footage exposing paid Sanders campaign staffers appearing to advocate for violence against political opponents.
The new video from Project Veritas allegedly shows Sanders campaign South Carolina field organizers Mason Baird and Daniel Taylor advocating for &#8220;extreme action&#8221; and &#8220;militancy&#8221; against political opponents and private property.
Project Veritas provided the following highlights of things that Baird said:
<ul>
<li>“I’ve canvassed with someone who’s an anarchist, and with someone who’s a Marxist-Leninist. So, we attract radical, truly radical people in the campaign … obviously that’s not outward-facing.”</li>
<li>“A lot of those people who do that kind of work, are … their politics fall well outside of the American sort of norm. So, they&#8217;re Marxist-Leninist, they&#8217;re anarchists, they&#8217;re these types of folks, and um, and they have more of a mind for direct action, for engaging in politics outside of the electoral system.”</li>
<li>“A lot of the stories we’re told in the United States about, you know, the gulags and the persecution of the Kulaks and things like that are exaggerated … we certainly don&#8217;t have, uh, a straight perspective on that stuff here in America.”</li>
<li>“We would need a federal government and a labor movement that is working together to strip power away from capitalists and preferably directing that violence towards property.”</li>
<li>“It would, it&#8217;s gonna take, you know, it&#8217;s gonna take militancy … like a militant labor movement that’s willing to … strike, and if necessary, you know, just destroy property and things like that.”</li>
<li>“… after we abolish landlords, we don’t have to kill them …”</li>
<li>“… once we break up Google, YouTube, Facebook,  nationalize these things, then that would be a huge thing forward so far as education stuff goes.”</li>
</ul>
Project Veritas provided the the following highlights of things that Taylor said:
<ul>
<li>“For me personally, I have no problem going all in on the campaign stuff because you’re planting a seed … yeah, the whole socialist thing four years ago was a whole lot more toxic than it is today …”</li>
<li>“We don’t want to scare people off, you first have to feel it out before you get into the crazy stuff &#8230; You know we were talking about more extreme organizations like Antifa, you were talking about, Yellow Vests, all that but we’re kinda keeping that on the back-burner for now.”</li>
<li>“We have all this momentum, where do we go, regardless of the outcome, after it’s all over? Change won’t come easily, regardless. Even if Bernie is elected, change will not come swiftly or easily, so the connections we make now in the campaign with people, and volunteers, it’s important we retain that regardless of the outcome. It’s unfortunate that we have to make plans for extreme action but like I said, they’re not going to give it to us even if Bernie is elected.”</li>
</ul>
The new release from Project Veritas comes after the group released undercover <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bernie-campaign-staff-bernies-a-legit-socialist-masquerading-as-a-democratic-socialist">videos</a> involving a paid Sanders campaign staffer in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bernie-campaign-staff-people-who-push-back-on-revolution-should-expect-a-violent-response">Iowa</a> and in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/another-bernie-staffer-allegedly-promotes-violence-kill-the-rich-put-republicans-in-camps">South Carolina</a> in recent weeks that showed the staffers allegedly advocating for violence against political opponents. The Sanders campaign has largely ignored media requests on the matter and even <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bernie-campaign-calls-police-on-reporters-for-asking-questions-about-his-staff-talking-about-killing-people">called the police</a> on journalists who pressed for a response from the campaign on the videos.
WATCH:
<iframe title="#Expose2020 Part IV: Two More Bernie Staffers Promote &quot;Extreme Action&quot; and Property Destruction" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4zpCVM0delQ?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders holds Town Hall In Perry, Iowa

Sanders Campaign Rocked Again: More Staff Caught Advocating Violence Against Opponents

2020 Election

Bernie Sanders

Communism

Democratic Party

James O'Keefe

Project Veritas

Socialism

South Carolina

Violence

It is rather a surprise to learn that we are all going to die from a viral pandemic, considering that we have all already died from swine flu, bird flu, SARS, and that one time when four people had Ebola. Nonetheless, if media reports are to be believed, we are on the verge of yet another planet-wide outbreak. This time, the imaginary global destruction will happen courtesy of the coronavirus.
Back in realityville, the coronavirus has infected 2,700 people, or about .00003% of the global population. Almost all of the cases are in China, where the death toll has reached 82. The majority of these deaths were people who had the misfortune of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/world/asia/coronavirus-victims-wuhan.html">already being old and sick</a> before they contracted the virus, compounded by the disadvantage of living with China&#8217;s &#8220;<a href="https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/ticking-time-bombs-chinas-health-care-system-faces-issues-of-access-quality-and-cost/">ailing&#8221;</a> health care system. Outside of China, there have been around 50 cases, none of them fatal. So far, five people in the United States have been diagnosed and none have died. Of the approximately 327,000,000 people in the U.S., approximately 326,999,995 do not have the coronavirus. There is no good reason to think that the latter number will significantly shrink, as the infected people pose a &#8220;<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/01/24/799208865/a-second-u-s-case-of-wuhan-coronavirus-is-confirmed">low risk</a>&#8221; to the public, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Still, none of this has stopped the media from printing <a href="https://www.cnn.com/asia/live-news/coronavirus-outbreak-01-27-20-intl-hnk/h_76586a6e47e65a67a3c18ccf644ae736">scary graphics</a> showing how the disease you almost certainly will not contract will affect you if it does, giving <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/chicago-confirms-coronavirus-case-heres-how-to-stay-safe-165352163.html">tips</a> on how to &#8220;stay safe,&#8221; putting terrifying things in their <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/26/containing-new-coronavirus-may-not-be-feasible-experts-say/">headlines</a> like &#8220;containing new coronavirus may not be feasible, using the word &#8220;<a href="https://nypost.com/2020/01/25/inside-the-horrific-inhumane-animal-markets-behind-pandemics-like-coronavirus/">pandemic</a>&#8221; to describe something that is not actually a pandemic, running fantasy <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/scientist-who-simulated-the-global-impact-of-a-coronavirus-outbreak-says-the-cats-already-out-of-the-bag-and-chinas-efforts-to-contain-the-disease-unlikely-to-be-effective-2020-01-24">simulations</a> to show what might happen in a &#8220;hypothetical&#8221; worst-case scenario, and urging the public to &#8220;<a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article239657838.html">protect</a>&#8221; itself.
I don&#8217;t mean to spoil the twist ending, but here&#8217;s how to protect yourself from the coronavirus if you live in America: Do nothing special at all. Carry on with your life. Wash your hands. Avoid ingesting the bodily fluids of strangers, as much as possible. Do all of the normal things you would do to maintain a healthy life. Media reports indicate that face masks are an &#8220;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-face-masks-not-entirely-effective-2020-1">ineffective</a>&#8221; way of preventing the spread of the virus. What the reports forget to mention is that it would be a sign of delusional paranoia if a person in the United States went around wearing a mask for fear of a disease that almost nobody in this hemisphere actually has.
I am not downplaying the significance of this illness. For people who live in China, especially in or near Wuhan, this is a very real public health emergency. But many parts of the world are plagued by many illnesses that either rarely make it onto our shores, or are easily contained and treated when they do. <a href="http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/03/tb-us-all-time-low-global-decline-small">Tuberculosis</a> still kills millions across the globe while comparatively few die from it in this country. <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180315091833.htm">Meningitis</a> is a major killer in Africa but claims only a few hundred lives annually in the United States. For all the lumps our health care system takes, deserved and undeserved, the fact is that we generally don&#8217;t die from a great many diseases that kill a great many people elsewhere on Earth. And that is why the relatively high mortality rate of the coronavirus is not proof that the disease itself is significantly deadlier than garden-variety pneumonia. All we know is that it is potentially deadlier in Wuhan, where every disease is potentially deadlier.
If you&#8217;re a U.S. citizen looking for a disease to worry about, I could suggest more relevant options. The common flu, for example, <a href="http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/04/us-flu-still-elevated-dropping-deaths-high-57000">killed 57,000 people</a> in the U.S. alone last year, which is actually significantly lower than the death toll the year before. That&#8217;s a body count nearly 1,000 times higher than the current figure for the coronavirus. And we&#8217;re talking about U.S. deaths, in this case. True, most people who die of the flu are either very old or very young. But the same is the case for the coronavirus. Even the aforementioned tuberculosis and meningitis are more reasonable candidates for public panic. Pretty much any disease would be, considering the current death toll for the coronavirus in America is zero. If that number jumps from zero to one, or three, or even fifteen, there still would be no reason for panic. The media wants you to panic because panic means clicks, and clicks generate revenue. Don&#8217;t fall for it. Again.

Office worker tearing up papers and screaming out

WALSH: The Media Wants You To Panic Over The Coronavirus. Don’t Fall For It. Here Are The Real Facts.

Health

Bryan Dean Wright

INTERVIEW (Part II): Former CIA Officer On What The ‘Deep State’ Looks Like If A Democrat Wins In 2020, And What Can Be Done To Recover

Deep State

James Clapper

James Comey

INTERVIEW (Part I): Former CIA Officer Explains The Shocking Details And Dangers Of The ‘Deep State’

The news media, which never tires of cake-related controversies, spent some time last week ginning up outrage towards a Christian school in Louisville, Kentucky. According to the headlines, the stodgy bigots over at Whitefield Academy expelled a 15-year-old student for the crime of eating a multi-colored birthday cake.
The headlines were breathless and unanimous:
<a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=11&amp;ved=2ahUKEwiUrP3c8pLnAhVPSN8KHSYnDwAQFjAKegQIAhAB&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Freligion%2F2020%2F01%2F15%2Frainbowcakewhitefieldacademy%2F&amp;usg=AOvVaw16WHM_dWE0BANQg_rOvYae">Christian school expels teen after she posed with rainbow birthday cake, mother says.</a>
<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/whitefield-academy-kentucky-christian-school-expels-15-year-old-over-rainbow-cake-mom-says">Kentucky Christian School Expels 15-Year-Old Over Rainbow Cake, Mom Says.</a>
<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/01/14/kentucky-christian-school-expels-girl-gay-rainbow-cake-mom-says/4468374002/">Christian school expelled student over a &#8216;gay&#8217; rainbow cake, family says.</a>
<a href="https://nypost.com/2020/01/15/teen-expelled-from-christian-school-after-rainbow-shirt-cake-photo/">Teen expelled from Christian school after rainbow shirt, cake photo.</a>
<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/christian-school-whitefield-academy-expels-teen-girl-rainbow-sweater-birthday-cake-violate-christian-values/">Christian school expels teen for rainbow sweater and birthday cake that violate &#8220;Christian values.&#8221;</a>
And so on.
Some of the headlines include the &#8220;mother says&#8221; qualifier, while others simply assert the family&#8217;s claims as objective fact. But in either case, the point is to paint the school as clear villains in the situation.
Here&#8217;s how the body of the CBS report, linked above, frames the story:
<blockquote>A teenager from Kentucky celebrated her 15th birthday last month by blowing out the candles on a rainbow cake while wearing a rainbow sweater. After her mother posted a photo from her birthday party on Facebook, the teen was expelled from her Christian high school.
<div class="ad-wrapper">
<div id="mpu-plus-top-right-rail" class="ad-mpu-plus-top-right-rail lazypreload lazyloaded" data-ad="mpu-plus-top-right-rail" data-ad-unit="&quot;mpu-plus-top-right-rail&quot;" data-google-query-id="CMmu34P0kucCFdIchwodfTsOaw">
<div id="google_ads_iframe_/8264/aw-cbsnews/us_4__container__">Kayla Kenney was a freshman at Whitefield Academy, a private Christian school in Louisville, until she was expelled last week. Her mother said the school called her daughter&#8217;s sweater and cake &#8220;lifestyle violations.&#8221;</div>
</div>
</div>
Kenney&#8217;s mom, Kimberly Alford, told the Louisville Courier-Journal that she received an email from Whitefield Academy&#8217;s head of school, Bruce Jacobson, expelling her daughter. He wrote that the picture she posted on Facebook &#8220;demonstrates a posture of morality and cultural acceptance contrary to that of Whitefield Academy&#8217;s beliefs.&#8221;
While the rainbow flag is a symbol of LGBTQ rights, Alford said when she ordered the cake, the design was described as having &#8220;assorted colors&#8221; and was not meant to have a deeper meaning.</blockquote>
Already, even without any more information than what the media has deigned to provide, a thoughtful person should be extremely skeptical. It is not a simple or easy process to expel a student. At a private school, the expulsion comes with a financial cost. You aren&#8217;t just kicking the student to the curb, but her tuition alongside her. Why would a school go through that trouble and absorb that cost over something as trivial as a cake? And if they do issue expulsions so easily, shouldn&#8217;t there be dozens of other stories of students getting tossed out for similarly arbitrary reasons? There are almost always two sides to a story like this. Could this be the exception where the first version of the story, as presented by a partisan for one side of the dispute, is entirely accurate and faithful to the facts? Maybe. But probably not.
<iframe title="Another Media Narrative Falls Apart | The Matt Walsh Show Ep. 408" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4u2ETYGS0Z8?start=359&#038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Social media is not a place for this sort of healthy skepticism, so thousands of people hopped on the outrage train and issued angry tweets about the stupidity and pettiness of this school, in particular, and Christian schools, in general, and Christians, in general. And then, after the reputation of Whitefield Academy had been sufficiently injured, the train moved on and the media lost interest. The outrage mob always descends like a tornado, rips everything to shreds, and dissipates as quickly as it formed. By the time the other side of the story is presented, nobody cares any longer.
Predictably, the other side of the story in this case, <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-rainbow-cake-girl-what-the-media-are-hiding/">as reported by Rod Dreher over the weekend</a>, paints a very different picture from the one offered by the family and the media. After looking at the student&#8217;s social media posts, talking to insiders at the school, and reading the school&#8217;s public statements, Dreher reports that the student was allegedly a perpetual troublemaker who had been given numerous warnings about her behavior. She also allegedly promoted the LGBT lifestyle both at school and in her social media posts. The rainbow cake and sweater were a part of this pattern — and by far not the most egregious example of it — and it is this pattern of flouting the rules and violating school policy that got her expelled. The apparently purposeful trolling she did with the cake may have been the last straw, but it is dishonest to report that it was the only straw.
School principal Dr. Bruce Jacobson, while limited in his ability to defend his actions due to confidentiality concerns, <a href="https://www.wave3.com/2020/01/15/whitefield-academy-defends-decision-expel-student-after-picture-rainbow-sweater-birthday-cake/">explained</a> in a letter to parents that the student had been specifically warned &#8220;that any further promotion, celebration, or any other actions and attitudes that are counter to Whitefield’s philosophy would not be tolerated.&#8221; I suppose you could choose to believe that the rainbow cake and sweater weren&#8217;t intended to promote or celebrate anything, and didn&#8217;t have any &#8220;deeper meaning&#8221; at all, as the mother contends, but Dreher&#8217;s report makes that extremely hard to believe. From his piece:
<blockquote>When Alford says her daughter “is no angel,” and confirms that she has had “disciplinary issues,” she’s understating matters. My understanding is that Kayla Kenney had a long, specific list of repeated infractions — bullying, disrespecting teachers, vaping in school (as Alford acknowledges), and so forth. Part of what she has allegedly done is promoting LGBT consciousness in the school, including aggression on that front. I’m trying to be delicate here, but I can tell you that she has transgressed against other students on this front, to promote bisexuality. For example, she allegedly drew rainbows and wrote slogans like “bi pride” on other kids’ papers, and gave at least two different girls the impression that she was sexually harassing them. Kayla has been presenting herself as gay on her Instagram account.</blockquote>
Granted, many people will feel that expelling a student for promoting the LGBT lifestyle isn&#8217;t any better than expelling her for eating a cake. But one&#8217;s personal feelings about Christian teaching on homosexuality are irrelevant. This is a private Christian school. In that role, it understandably seeks to advance Christian teaching on all matters, including sexuality. If you do not agree with those teachings, if you think those teachings are barbaric and bigoted and so on, you are quite free to attend any other school. Nobody forced this student&#8217;s parents to enroll her in this particular academic institution. Louisville is not some outpost in the wilderness with no other schools around for hundreds of miles. This family must have had many options. They chose the one place where waving a gay flag will get you into trouble. They gave this place their money. They signed an agreement swearing to follow its rules. And then, apparently, they decided they didn&#8217;t like the rules anymore. Whose fault is that? Not the school&#8217;s, as far as I can tell.

A slice of rainbow cake

WALSH: Media Claims A Christian School Expelled A Student For Her Rainbow Birthday Cake. Now The Truth Has Come Out.

Christianity

Fake News

Homosexuality

Kentucky

LGBT

The only people that were really going to watch President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate were reporters and die-hard Trump haters privileged enough to not have to work.
So, naturally, journalists “are up in arms,” as The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/19/business/media/senate-impeachment-trial-media.html">reported</a>, about not getting free rein inside the Capitol building during the impeachment trial, which they themselves baited House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) into starting. As the Times noted, however, Republican Senate leadership hasn’t even written down the rules for coverage yet, but reporters don’t need much to get them outraged at Republicans.
“Even sedate C-Span is aggrieved, calling on the Senate to allow its television crews to document the trial, instead of the government-controlled cameras that — as was the case during Bill Clinton’s trial 21 years ago — will limit what viewers see and hear inside the Senate chamber,” the Times reported.
NPR <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/01/17/797126423/reporters-battle-new-restrictions-in-trying-to-cover-senate-impeachment-trial">reported</a> that the “restrictive new ground rules” that confine reporters “to small cordoned-off sections in areas where unrestricted access was typically standard.” Reporters also will not be allowed to walk with senators for interviews even if the senator wants to talk. Finally, reporters will not be allowed to “approach senators for interviews in the halls surrounding the Senate chamber.”
The Times painted the rules as a threat to the free press and, of course, democracy itself.
“There’s long been this understanding that we both serve the same people at the end of the day, and that it’s a mutually beneficial relationship,” Sarah Wire, a Los Angeles Times reporter, told The New York Times. “Senators want to talk to us because they know we’re communicating their message to their voters back home.”
Senators don’t need reporters to communicate their message to voters. They have their own platforms to do this. The press is no longer some gatekeeper to information, no matter how much they like to tell that to themselves.
The Times suggested the reason for the restriction may be valid due to the presence of Chief Justice John Roberts, who will be presiding over the trial.
“Typically, reporters’ movements in the Capitol are limited when high-profile people visit, like Vice President Mike Pence,” the Times contended.
Impeachment proceedings began after the media reported a “whistleblower” raised serious concerns over a phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. The whistleblower claimed Trump demanded a quid pro quo from Zelensky in exchange for U.S. aid. Pelosi announced they would start an impeachment inquiry soon after news of the whistleblower’s complaint broke. A day later, the White House released the transcript of the phone call, which showed no such quid pro quo.
Democrats then started claiming Trump bribed Zelensky into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden, who is running for president, and his son, Hunter for their Ukraine dealings while the elder Biden was part of the Obama administration. Bribery, however, was not included in the articles of impeachment that Pelosi sent to the senate nearly a month after the House of Representatives voted on the allegedly urgent threat to our nation.

Trump

Senate To Limit Press Coverage Of Impeachment Trial That Almost No One Was Going To Watch Anyway

U.S. Senate

When and how did President Donald Trump come up with the decision to have Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani killed? That’s the question the media seems to have been asking for the past week &#8212; and so far, they’ve come up with wildly different answers.
Using the oh-so-tired “anonymous sources” trick, media outlets have reported everything from Trump wanted Soleimani dead back in 2017 to suggesting it was actually Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who pushed for the killing. Here are the four completely contradictory narratives the media have “reported,” all based on anonymous officials:
Trump Made The Decision Just Days Before Soleimani’s Death And Officials Were ‘Stunned’
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/04/us/politics/trump-suleimani.html">The New York Times</a> and others all claimed a day after Soleimani’s death that anonymous “Pentagon officials” were “stunned” by Trump’s decision to kill the Iranian general. Pentagon officials allegedly presented Trump with multiple options in “the chaotic days leading” to Soleimani’s death. One of those options was to kill Soleimani. The anonymous officials said this option was presented as an extreme to make the other choices look better. Trump, according to this narrative, rejected killing Soleimani but days later told officials to go ahead. The officials who allegedly spoke to the Times were not quoted, yet their claims allowed the Times to once again bash Trump.
It Was Pompeo’s Idea
The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/killing-of-soleimani-follows-long-push-from-pompeo-for-aggressive-action-against-iran-but-airstrike-brings-serious-risks/2020/01/05/092a8e00-2f7d-11ea-be79-83e793dbcaef_story.html">reported</a> that anonymous officials said it was Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence who urged Trump to approve Soleimani’s killing, and that the secretary of state had been trying to convince Trump for months to retaliate against Iran using the military.
“Pompeo first spoke with Trump about killing Soleimani months ago, said a senior U.S. official, but neither the president nor Pentagon officials were willing to countenance such an operation,” the Post reported.
Trump Actually Authorized Soleimani’s Killing 7 Months Ago
NBC <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-authorized-soleimani-s-killing-7-months-ago-conditions-n1113271?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma">reported</a> Monday that “five current and former senior administration officials” told the outlet that Trump actually authorized the killing of Soleimani seven months ago. Trump alleged authorized the killing on the condition that he “would have final signoff on any specific operation,” as if that would ever need to be said. The outlet also reported that when Trump authorized the attack – allegedly seven months ago – in the event that Iran’s escalating aggression killed an American.
One of the anonymous officials told NBC that “a number of options presented to the president over the course of time,&#8221; and that it was “some time ago” that Trump’s aides added killing Soleimani to the list of potential responses.
NBC also added in that former national security adviser John Bolton, along with Pompeo, urged Trump to authorize the killing, again, months ago.
Trump Wanted To Kill Soleimani Back In 2017
The Washington Post, who previously reported that Pompeo was the driving force behind the killing of Soleimani, now <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/killing-of-soleimani-reflects-an-aggressive-national-security-team-not-inclined-to-curb-trump/2020/01/12/a83f5346-333c-11ea-898f-eb846b7e9feb_story.html">reported</a> that it was actually Trump who wanted to kill the Iranian general – back in 2017.
“As a presidential candidate in 2015, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9puLBIX48M">Trump in an interview didn’t seem to have heard of Soleimani</a> or the paramilitary Iranian Quds Force he led. But within five months of taking office, Trump was raising the possibility of killing him — an idea he would bring up several times again in the months and years to follow,” the outlet reported.
So, which is it? Maybe it’s all of them.
<a href="https://twitter.com/aghamilton29/status/1216544840533475328?s=11">H/t AG</a>

President Trump

Media, Using Anonymous Sources, Have Presented 4 Separate Narratives Surrounding Trump And Soleimani

Iran

Qassem Soleimani

In the aftermath of the death of Qassem Soleimani last week, the torching of the <a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/12/iraq-protests-iran-consulate-karbala-najaf.html">Iranian consulates in Najaf and Karbala</a>, Iraq, and the Saturday death of Abbas Ali Al-Sa&#8217;edi, the pro-Iranian Hashd Al Sha’abi commander in Karbala, there are clear indications that the Iranian and Iraqi people are losing their fear of the mullahs of Iran. There is a lot of YouTube video of Iranians in the streets of Tehran and elsewhere, and a particularly neat one of Iranian students <a href="https://twitter.com/Imamofpeace/status/1216401446674919424">refusing to walk </a>on an American and an Israeli flag.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Here’s the most beautiful thing you will see today! Students at Beheshti University in Tehran refuse to walk on the US &amp; Israeli flags painted on the ground. They chant, “Basij [the IRGC paramilitary] forces, you are responsible for killing the people.” | <a href="https://t.co/dskKJeDa18">pic.twitter.com/dskKJeDa18</a>
&mdash; Mike (@Doranimated) <a href="https://twitter.com/Doranimated/status/1216328831239360512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 12, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
This is a prelude to understanding President Donald Trump’s <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1216114167108849665">tweet to the Iranian people</a> on Saturday and the sure knowledge that he’s outpaced newspapers, radio, and TV alike in understanding what regular people understand regardless of what language they speak. Then there is the absence of coverage of the event by what has been called the “mainstream media” — although the mainstream appears not to be following them. Google results mid-morning Sunday — in order of appearance, with sources — show you who cared:
<ul>
<li>Trump Persian Tweet to Iranian People: I “Stand with You.” (Heavy.Com)</li>
<li>Trump tweet in Farsi “the most liked Persian tweet’ in history of Twitter (Washington Examiner)</li>
<li>Trump’s support for Iranian protestors breaks a Twitter record, something the MSM ‘will not report’ (TheBlaze)</li>
<li>Trump Persian Tweet to Iranian People: I &#8220;Stand With You…” (Schooltips.com)</li>
<li>Trump tweet in Farsi &#8220;the most liked Persian tweet&#8221; in… (enmnews)</li>
<li>Donald Trump Tweets in Persian to Pump Up Iranian Protests (CNN)</li>
<li>President Trump’s Tweet in Farsi is Most Liked Persian Tweet… (Gateway Pundit)</li>
<li>Trump Tweets Support for Iranian Protesters — in Persian (Legal Insurrection)</li>
<li>Trump Tweets Support for the ‘Brave and Suffering’ of Iran (PJ Media)</li>
</ul>
See a pattern?
With the exception of the snarky CNN headline, most are smaller outlets and all are openly supportive of the president’s decision to tell the Iranian people that we are not their enemy and we support their struggle against their government.
The Iranian people appear to appreciate that.
So where is The New York Times? Where is The Washington Post? The Los Angeles Times?
The Post had a few presidential tweet stories. In May, there was one about how the president’s tweets “put the Middle East <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/05/20/trump-places-middle-east-knife-edge/">on a knife edge</a>.” There were a few  in June and July — specifically, about one tweet the Iranian government called &#8220;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/irans-top-diplomat-says-white-house-statement-on-tehran-attack-is-repugnant/2017/06/08/a7604a62-4c1b-11e7-a186-60c031eab644_story.html">repugnant</a>.&#8221; The New York Times did some “analysis” of Mr. Trump’s tweets: &#8220;<a href="https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrCmnriRBteySUAKhUPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTEycXY1bDdiBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDQjg0OTJfMQRzZWMDc3I-/RV=2/RE=1578874210/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fwww.nytimes.com%2f2019%2f11%2f02%2fus%2ftrump-twitter-takeaways.html/RK=2/RS=Ex5huSGSJj_rBkAbLi_kwJBlmas-">Trumps Twitter Presidency</a>&#8221; and an opinion piece that claimed the tweets proved the president to be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/14/opinion/trump-twitter-racism.html">a &#8220;raging racist.&#8221;</a>. Those were the nice ones.
You get the point.
And sure, by the time you read this, someone in the MSM will have figured out that the tweet was important — not only for what it said, and not only for the apparent joy it brought to the Iranians who read it, liked it, and retweeted it, but because Donald Trump has figured out a way to talk to people without their government or media intervening.
Oh, wait. That’s what he’s been doing with the American people from the beginning of his presidency — letting people hear directly from the man they elected. Americans have often taken that for granted: After all, most of us have unfettered Internet and we can log onto WhiteHouse.gov if we want to know what the president said last night in Arkansas. But this is why the president has 70 million Twitter followers.
And here, perhaps, is the source of MSM unhappiness with Donald Trump. It isn’t only what he does as president; sometimes they even approve of that. It is resentment that he skips them — and denigrates them — just as much as they skip over his agenda and denigrate him. It has long been the position of newspapers, radio, and television that the American people need a filter for what happens — and that they are the filter. They are the way to understand the world. Walter Cronkite was that for millions of people in the 1960s. Tom Friedman, with fewer than a million followers (even adding the 44 million of his employer, The New York Times), isn’t that.
And no one is likely to be that again. Not in the United States. And not even in a country where the government manages and manipulates the media and the official pronouncements. Not even in Iran.
There’s a new day out there. President Trump gets it.
&nbsp;
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/">The Jewish Policy Center</a> in Washington, and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly.

Twitter iPhone

BRYEN: Trump Tweets For Liberty In Iran

Foreign Policy

Islam

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

Middle East

Muslims

Tom Brokaw anchored NBC&#8217;s &#8220;Nightly News&#8221; for 22 years. He was, while on the air, a mostly fair and balanced journalist (but since his retirement he&#8217;s shown a decidedly liberal bent).
Still, in his heyday, Brokaw appeared to seek out both sides of the story. He was a fan of Ronald Reagan and delivered one of the eulogies at the funeral of former First Lady Nancy Reagan.
But he doesn&#8217;t think today&#8217;s media is doing the job at all nowadays – and that it might even be “destructive.”
“I think the most extraordinarily powerful tool and the most destructive development in modern life is the current media,” the anchor told <a href="https://artfulliving.com/tom-brokaw-interview/">Artful Living</a> in an interview.
Brokaw, 79, said it&#8217;s hard these days for people to figure out what&#8217;s true and what&#8217;s false.
“Everybody has a voice – and I think it’s great for people to have a voice – but there’s no way to verify what’s true and what’s not. It has no context; it’s just a 24/7 rage about what’s pissing people off across the board from the Left to the Right,” he told the magazine.
“It could be a unifying factor, but it’s a dividing factor, frankly. And that really troubles me as much as anything. I don’t know how we get beyond that. I don’t know what leader can come along and say, ‘Look, we’re all in this together. We’ve got to find a way to work together,’” he said.
While in private life Brokaw is clearly liberal, he said the current state of Washington is not good for Democrats or Republicans.
“This is obviously the most unsettling time I’ve ever experienced in national politics, and I’m not saying that just from an ideological point of view. I’m not saying that as a Democrat or a Republican. I’m saying that as a journalist and as a citizen and as a grandfather,” he said.
Brokaw, though, said former president Ronald Reagan pulled off the task of unifying America.
“Ronald Reagan was the best example of that in my lifetime. I was not a huge fan when he first started running, not for president, but for governor of California. Then I saw how skilled he was as governor at putting together that big, big state,” Brokaw said. “When he ran for president, I said, ‘Watch; he knows how to put people together.’ He had a really core set of beliefs, but he also had an engaging way about him. He had been a movie star.”
&#8220;He knew how you had to win people with your personality and how you went about your life. They would be for you or against you, and he had people for him. He also had the courage to have a really good staff. My friend Jim Baker was his chief of staff,&#8221; Brokaw continued.
But Brokaw said, “We don’t have a Reagan out there now who can pull it together. Bill Clinton also had that capability, by the way, but then he got tangled up with Monica [Lewinsky], which took a fair amount out of his résumé.&#8221;
He then laid out what America needs next.
&#8220;We need people who see the presidency as a coveted prize, but who understand that the objective is to bring the country together for common goals, and to outline those goals in a way so people can see why it’s important that we do this. And when we do it; everybody gets credit; everybody gets a part of it,&#8221; he said.

Today &#8211; Season 67

Brokaw: Today’s Media Destructive, Divisive:  ‘I Don’t Know How We Get Beyond That’

Tom Brokaw

On Tuesday, NFL defensive end J.J. Watt hit an ABC News affiliate for its allegedly sexist reporting on soccer star Kealia Ohai, who is Watt&#8217;s fiancé.
&#8220;Houston Dash trade J.J. Watt&#8217;s fiancee to Chicago,&#8221; a headline from ABC13 Houston said.
&#8220;This headline is trash,&#8221; Watt quote-tweeted the post.
&#8220;Kealia Ohai (which is her name by the way, since you didn’t even bother to mention it) is incredible entirely on her own merit and deserves to be treated as such,&#8221; he continued.
Watt added, &#8220;Be better than this.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
This headline is trash. Kealia Ohai (which is her name by the way, since you didn’t even bother to mention it) is incredible entirely on her own merit and deserves to be treated as such. Be better than this. <a href="https://t.co/82GMrYOv9U">https://t.co/82GMrYOv9U</a>
&mdash; JJ Watt (@JJWatt) <a href="https://twitter.com/JJWatt/status/1214547782121512961?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 7, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Kealia Ohai was traded to the Chicago Red Stars earlier this week. As noted by <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jj-watt-critiques-headline-calling-kealia-ohai-jj-watts-fiancee-2020-1">Business Insider</a>, the soccer standout was a three-year captain for the Houston Dash before the trade. She&#8217;s also been part of the U.S. women&#8217;s soccer national team in the past.
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Extremely excited to be a Red Star!! Can’t wait to get to work <a href="https://twitter.com/chiredstarsPR?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@chiredstarsPR</a> <a href="https://t.co/cPHaRUjeHD">pic.twitter.com/cPHaRUjeHD</a>
&mdash; Kealia Ohai (@KealiaOhai) <a href="https://twitter.com/KealiaOhai/status/1214252280435920897?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 6, 2020</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;Ohai moves on from a 13-loss Houston squad that ranked third to last in the NWSL standings,&#8221; <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jj-watt-critiques-headline-calling-kealia-ohai-jj-watts-fiancee-2020-1">Business Insider</a> reported Tuesday. &#8220;Her new team, conversely, made the league&#8217;s championship game for the first time in franchise history in 2019.&#8221;
Hours later, Watt&#8217;s hit on the news station promoted an apology from ABC 13.
&#8220;Hi JJ, Our sincere apologies,&#8221; the outlet directly replied to Watt&#8217;s post. &#8220;We 100% agree with you. Kealia Ohai is a soccer superstar who deserves her own headlines.&#8221;
&#8220;We are sad to see her go. She is going to be a force in Chicago! We’ve loved doing stories on her many talents and accomplishments over the years,&#8221; the station added.
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Hi JJ, Our sincere apologies. We 100% agree with you. Kealia Ohai is a soccer superstar who deserves her own headlines. We are sad to see her go. She is going to be a force in Chicago! We’ve loved doing stories on her many talents and accomplishments over the years.
&mdash; ABC13 Houston (@abc13houston) <a href="https://twitter.com/abc13houston/status/1214604107601862657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 7, 2020</a></blockquote>
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The headline for the ABC 13 piece covering the trade has since been changed: &#8220;Houston Dash star Kealia Ohai traded to Chicago.&#8221;
Aside from his obvious athletic talent, Watt has made headlines for his charitable giving and fundraising, particularly in Texas. The football star donated and raised tens of millions of dollars for hurricane victims in Houston, for example.
&#8220;In 2017, Watt raised more than $40 million to help residents of Houston rebuild following Hurricane Harvey,&#8221; <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hero-nfl-star-jj-watt-will-use-profits-from-his-reebok-shoe-line-to-fund-honor-flight">The Daily Wire</a> reported in November. &#8220;Conscious that he was using other people’s money alongside his own, Watt gave an update on the Hurricane Harvey fund back in August, telling <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/08/29/texans-jj-watt-hurricane-harvey-funds-homes-built-meals-houston">Sports Illustrated</a> that the money &#8216;helped rebuild more than 1,183 homes in the Houston area. More than 971 childcare centers and after school programs have also been rebuilt and recovered with the money, which have helped more than 108,000 kids, and over 239 million meals have been distributed to victims of the hurricane.'&#8221;
Watt has also worked to help United States veterans, pledging to use the proceeds from his Valor 2 shoe line with Reebok to fund Honor Flight.
Honor Flight, as noted by The Daily Wire, &#8220;is best known for honoring World War II veterans — a mission that grows in urgency every day as the generation that fought in World War II slowly passes away — but they’ve now expanded to help veterans of the Korean and Vietnam Wars.&#8221;
Honor Flight&#8217;s mission is “to show our nation’s veterans the appreciation and honor they deserve,” the group&#8217;s website outlines.
The shoe itself was designed by Watt in honor of his grandfather, a Korean War veteran.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hero-nfl-star-jj-watt-will-use-profits-from-his-reebok-shoe-line-to-fund-honor-flight">Hero: NFL Star JJ Watt Will Use Profits From His Reebok Shoe Line To Fund Honor Flight</a>

JJ Watt And Kealia Ohai

‘TRASH’: J.J. Watt Hits Media For Alleged Sexist Headline About Fiancé Kealia Ohai

Football

Sexism

The January 2 death of Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, has prompted consternation from some press and policymakers. Killed in Baghdad by a U.S. drone strike, Soelimani was <a href="https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1212907536833220608" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1212907536833220608&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578428303467000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHpilSf6fYHToY3HKxO7dBDmtZp5g">described</a> by The Washington Post as a “revered military leader” and by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) as a mere “<a href="https://nypost.com/2020/01/03/ilhan-omar-and-ted-cruz-clash-over-qassem-soleimani-strike/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://nypost.com/2020/01/03/ilhan-omar-and-ted-cruz-clash-over-qassem-soleimani-strike/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578428303467000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF5c-YWQiOrhhfuX94tA4Xym2dK6w">foreign official</a>.”
In fact, he was an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/raphael-irans-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps-is-a-modern-day-nazi-ss">arch-terrorist</a> responsible for the murders of thousands of people — including hundreds of American servicemen and women, many of who were murdered and maimed by Iranian-created explosive devices.
Pundits and reporters alike have claimed that Soleimani’s death has led to Iran threatening the U.S. But they have it backwards. Tehran has been threatening the U.S. for years — a fact the media have often ignored or obfuscated.
Indeed, in the days prior to his death, Soleimani and the Shiite militias under his command had <a href="https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2049534/statement-by-the-department-of-defense/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2049534/statement-by-the-department-of-defense/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578428303467000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHMa9PkrZSmYC2xW8fYZ1vNbQ9jUQ">murdered</a> an American contractor and attacked the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
Iranian belligerence long predates the Trump administration.
Ever since its founding in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has consistently called for “death to America.” <a href="https://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/anti-american-statements" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/anti-american-statements&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578428303467000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEEZcg3ZcJ_BHvO4a6GXbjKkZW9QA">Anti-Americanism</a>, like anti-Semitism and imperialism, is a core tenet of the regime’s Islamist <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=TAPs_r81AqQC&amp;q=ideology#v=snippet&amp;q=ideology&amp;f=false" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://books.google.com/books?id%3DTAPs_r81AqQC%26q%3Dideology%23v%3Dsnippet%26q%3Dideology%26f%3Dfalse&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578428303467000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFH0wn8HiHGON8co_qZTpuMYlgB5g">ideology</a>. For four decades, Iran has sought to make good on its threats, kidnapping and <a href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/why-the-cia-killed-imad-mughniyeh" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/why-the-cia-killed-imad-mughniyeh&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578428303467000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF0l1yNTe6i7IbJDBOyLddUXtGEuA">torturing</a> Americans, bankrolling terrorist groups — Sunni and Shiite <a href="https://twitter.com/SeanDurns/status/1139190702016028672" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/SeanDurns/status/1139190702016028672&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578428303467000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGU6Zm_QmKHPkTTArPeNB3gCvB7Cg">alike</a> — that attack Americans, and murdering <a href="https://taskandpurpose.com/iran-killed-us-troops" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://taskandpurpose.com/iran-killed-us-troops&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578428303467000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHx1UBKlC8CMU6EHLKorW4JQceemA">our troops</a>.
Yet Western media have frequently minimized Iran’s open hostility. In December 2015, for example, The Hill <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/defense/262616-house-panel-supports-bill-to-directly-arm-the-kurdish-peshmerga" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thehill.com/policy/defense/262616-house-panel-supports-bill-to-directly-arm-the-kurdish-peshmerga&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578428303467000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEhsPzIt_VMhKvJstZpG-Q8vfPvCg">noted</a> that “powerful Iran-backed Shiite militias” had “threatened to attack U.S. forces in Iraq in response to U.S. legislation” granting Kurdish forces the means to defend themselves from ISIS. Most major U.S. news outlets <a href="https://blog.camera.org/archives/2015/12/wheres_the_coverage_iran_threa.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://blog.camera.org/archives/2015/12/wheres_the_coverage_iran_threa.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578428303467000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHTc8EeHpMz_Vr-OyEIX9PwyMANtw">ignored</a> Iran’s gangster-like behavior.
Similarly, on November 26, 2016, an Iranian ship threatened a U.S. military helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz. The incident was profiled in a brief Reuters report at the time that noted that “a small Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard vessel pointed its weapon” at a U.S. Navy MH-60 helicopter. However, The Washington Post, USA Today, and other prominent newspapers <a href="https://blog.camera.org/2016/12/_iranian_ship_threatens_us_hel.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://blog.camera.org/2016/12/_iranian_ship_threatens_us_hel.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578428303467000&amp;usg=AFQjCNE0_4WHsusjl8wTHte1QcPg22dz-A">failed</a> to cover it.
In 2014 and 2015 — while the Obama administration was engaged in negotiations with Iran over its illicit nuclear weapons program — the regime was ramping up its cyber war. As one New York Times report <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/world/middleeast/iran-hackers-cyberespionage-state-department-social-media.html?_r=0" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/world/middleeast/iran-hackers-cyberespionage-state-department-social-media.html?_r%3D0&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578428303467000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFp2L3zAElm6sm6U5J29ebbrNo5Lw">detailed</a>, American officials and private security groups “say they see a surge in sophisticated computer espionage by Iran, culminating in a series of cyber attacks against State Department officials.” The attacks, the Times admitted, were “nothing new, having begun in the latter years of the Bush administration and proceeded since then to target U.S. agencies, banks and citizens.” The report pointed out that Iranian cyber attacks transitioned in 2014 from attempting to disrupt, degrade, and destroy targets to “spear phishing for espionage.”
“Beginning in May 2014,” the report said, “researchers found evidence that Iranian hackers were targeting Iranian dissidents, and later policymakers, senior military personnel and defense contractors in the United States, England, and Israel.”
Perhaps most alarmingly, Iranian terrorists have sleeper cells in the U.S., Canada, and Europe — a fact that many in the press have overlooked. On April 17, 2018, several intelligence officials told Congress that Iranian agents tied to the terror group Hezbollah had been discovered. Hezbollah is a Lebanese-based terrorist organization completely <a href="https://www.camera.org/article/hezbollah-backgrounder-2016/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.camera.org/article/hezbollah-backgrounder-2016/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578428303467000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEjhvF0zS7Zt41jYdK4uzRmtUqDKA">funded and controlled</a> by Tehran. Prior to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks by al-Qaeda, Hezbollah had murdered more Americans than any other terrorist entity.
Although the majority of analysts testified that Iranian proxies like Hezbollah pose a threat to the U.S. homeland, many news outlets failed to report their testimony, as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) <a href="https://blog.camera.org/archives/2018/04/iran_has_sleeper_cells_in_the.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://blog.camera.org/archives/2018/04/iran_has_sleeper_cells_in_the.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578428303467000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGQAjDE6ZIZXfOysiC3aF94CQ8Paw">noted</a> at the time.
U.S. law enforcement even arrested two Hezbollah operatives, Samer El Debek and Ali Mohammad Kourani, indicting them in May 2017 for “casing targets for possible future terror attacks.” Both were members of Hezbollah’s External Security Organization (ESO), also known as Unit 910. ESO is tasked with carrying out terrorist attacks and other operations, such as money laundering and drug smuggling, throughout the world. As he later told investigators, Kourani had been recruited into the ESO in January 2008.
The two Hezbollah operatives — both naturalized U.S. citizens — underwent military training in Lebanon and procured explosives, night-vision goggles, and drone technology. El Debek reportedly scoped out potential targets, including New York’s John F. Kennedy (JFK) and La Guardia International Airports, and the U.S. Armed Forces Career Center in Queens, New York. As the terror analyst Matthew Levitt detailed in a June 14, 2019 Foreign Policy <a href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/hezbollah-isnt-just-in-beirut.-its-in-new-york-too" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/hezbollah-isnt-just-in-beirut.-its-in-new-york-too&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578428303467000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHixgr6xY7xcaKSjhb7wujvP4nm8w">article</a>, before he was convicted, Kourani’s trial showed that Iranian sleeper cells were far more active in the U.S. than previously thought. Yet this revelation, and the trial itself, received little press attention.
In 2007, Iranian proxies <a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-113hhrg85689/html/CHRG-113hhrg85689.htm" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-113hhrg85689/html/CHRG-113hhrg85689.htm&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578428303467000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHk7Z2JVKGcDEDoxTj36OEqYh53hA">planned</a> to blow up the fuel tanks at JFK International Airport, but were thwarted by authorities. In another foiled plot, Iranian-backed operatives <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-men-charged-alleged-plot-assassinate-saudi-arabian-ambassador-united-states" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-men-charged-alleged-plot-assassinate-saudi-arabian-ambassador-united-states&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578428303467000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF1Cfv2ScXLiMfmDDtw32fuLU4avw">planned</a> to blow up a Washington, D.C. restaurant in 2011 in order to murder a Saudi dignitary. Yet these facts were conveniently ignored in numerous reports on the potential fallout from Soleimani’s death.
Iran itself has openly broadcast its ambitions, holding rallies and marches calling for death to both “the Great Satan” (the U.S.) and “the little Satan” (Israel). In 2017, an Iranian filmmaker <a href="https://apnews.com/6343bea57e224da8b6e30f46a994415f" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://apnews.com/6343bea57e224da8b6e30f46a994415f&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578428303467000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGnAbpF-sOXW-wLoqVf-iUDgimOag">released</a> a 90-minute movie depicting the destruction of U.S. Naval forces by Tehran. In the film, a character that closely resembles Soleimani leads a single vessel against more than a dozen American warships. When a U.S. commander orders him to surrender or die, he replies: “General, I am not a diplomat, I am a revolutionary!”
But Iran’s threats are no mere fantasy. And the threat posed by the Islamic Republic warrants honest and complete media coverage.
&nbsp;
The writer is a Senior Research Analyst for the Washington D.C. office of CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.

Iran map

DURNS: The Media Have Long Ignored Iran’s Threats

Islamic State (ISIS)

Leftism

Progressivism

Radical Islam

Comedian Ricky Gervais catered to no audience last night when he let his mouth run wild in a no-holds-barred opening monologue at the Golden Globes, during which he roasted the roomful of celebrities for their yearly routine of hypocritical virtue-signaling.
“If you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a political platform to make a political speech,” Gervais told the crowd. “You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything, you know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So, if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your God — and f*** off. OK?”
Gervais simultaneously roasted corporations like Apple and Amazon for producing supposedly &#8220;woke&#8221; creative content while doing business in authoritarian countries like China.
“Apple roared into the TV game with ‘The Morning Show,’ a superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing — made by a company that runs sweatshops in China,&#8221; Gervais said. &#8220;Well, you say you’re woke but the companies you work for in China — unbelievable. Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service you’d call your agent, wouldn’t you?”
Naturally, segments of the American media did not exactly embrace everything Gervais had to say that night. Indeed, Gervais was immediately blasted for cruelly repeating &#8220;right-wing talking points&#8221; to score cheap laughs.
&#8220;Here&#8217;s my Ricky Gervais problem: The idea that celebrities are not only pampered babies but hypocrites who cause the problems they make speeches deploring and should therefore shut up and act/sing/be grateful is a right-wing talking point, and an especially stupid one,&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/MarkHarrisNYC/status/1214209277772156928?s=20">tweeted</a> Mark Harris of Vanity Fair.
&#8220;It&#8217;s not an act of speaking truth to power or of bravery to attack celebs on that front — it&#8217;s a tired way of scolding people into silence because you don&#8217;t like what they&#8217;re saying, and saying that he&#8217;s &#8216;calling out&#8217; the hyper-privileged is just the same thing in a new guise,&#8221; he continued in the tweet thread. &#8220;You&#8217;ll never go broke ending a night scowling at celebrities and saying, &#8216;Get drunk, do your drugs, f*** off,&#8217; which I think were his last words on the show. There will always be people to say, &#8216;Yeah! You tell &#8217;em!&#8217; But tell &#8217;em what? &#8216;F*** off&#8217; isn&#8217;t a stance. It&#8217;s a tantrum.&#8221;
&#8220;Anyway: There were celebrities who used their stage time to say valuable things coherently last night, and others who said valuable things incoherently, and others who talked about themselves. I don&#8217;t think yelling at any of them is of great interest. Peace,&#8221; he concluded.
Over at the Los Angeles Times, Lorraine Ali lamented how Gervais&#8217; trollery disrupted the sober mood at the Golden Globes.
&#8220;The [Golden Globes] mood was already sober thanks to an impeachment, threat of war with Iran and Australian bush fires. The last thing anyone needed was Ricky Gervais there, telling them they sucked,&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/LorraineAli/status/1214069393174323201?s=20">tweeted</a> Ali.
Sam Adams of <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2020/01/ricky-gervais-golden-globes-opening-monologue-jokes-ranked-meanness.html">Slate</a> went into even more detail by ranking the jokes in Gervais&#8217; opening monologue according to their &#8220;dickishness.&#8221;
&#8220;Going into the Golden Globes, the biggest question was not who will win the night’s biggest awards but how much of a jerk Ricky Gervais would be,&#8221; wrote Adams.
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NBC&#8217;s &#8220;77th Annual Golden Globe Awards&#8221; &#8211; Red Carpet Arrivals

Media Trashes Ricky Gervais For Telling Hollywood To ‘F*** Off’

Golden Globes

Hollywood

Political Correctness

Ricky Gervais

Some commentators used to call it President Donald Trump’s “superpower.” For whatever reason, no matter the quality of the opposition research hurled into the public eye about then-candidate Trump or President Trump, it would just not seem to stick. &#8220;Teflon Don,&#8221; they have called him. For a day, maybe even a week, his poll numbers would drop — but for nearly an entire term, he has nonetheless hovered at around <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_approval-6179.html">45% favorability</a>. Ultimately, he has seemed <a href="https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/06/15/trumps-superpowers-have-their-limitations/">“immune to the sort of gaffes that typically wound other politicians.”</a>
But as the Democratic Party presidential primary rages on, it has become clear that President Trump doesn’t have a superpower at all. The game of politics has simply changed from that which we were accustomed. In the previous era, where politicians were polished and consumers of political debate were competent, politics amounted to a game of gaffe avoidance. The first one to give up the act was clearly the less competent contender, so we voted for the other guy.
Times have changed. Pseudo media outrage has made nothing outrageous anymore. Hyper-partisan reporting out of Washington and New York has deemed quality reporting increasingly irrelevant. Between that and an ever-changing social media landscape, people simply have shorter memories than in the past. Things only matter as they are happening and are quickly deemed ephemeral or meaningless. Brett Kavanaugh was only an alleged rapist until his U.S. Supreme Court nomination could no longer be defeated. Net neutrality only killed people until it didn’t. And so forth.
With the media’s malpractice and the general populace&#8217;s consumption of their product, the important stories that matter are often overlooked. As such, it often seems that nothing that is actually helpful comes from our frenetic, never-ending news cycle.
Let&#8217;s then return to Trump’s ‘superpower,’ which is not actually exclusive to him at all. If it were exclusive, for instance, then gaffe machine former Vice President Joe Biden would not still be the frontrunner for his party&#8217;s 2020 presidential nomination. He would be long gone by now. But despite all his manifold gaffes, he stays at the top with the hypocritical ‘anti-1%’ one-percenter, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
It’s quite clear that the non-charismatic and, frankly, not particularly talented Joe Biden does not have any such &#8220;superpower.&#8221; Certainly, no charisma has helped him remain at the top, yet there he remains. The lesson to learn for voters, then, is that President Trump’s steadfast base of support and &#8220;teflon&#8221; status is the new norm — and is likely not specific to him.
Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) made the mistake of thinking that bad press does sticks in our generation. He gave up his Senate seat for no reason. Not only did he make a mistake — <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/454135-al-franken-says-he-absolutely-regrets-resigning">he knows he did</a>. Governor Ralph Northam (D-VA), clearly more in tune with our political age, successfully weathered the storm and now is being affirmatively <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-ralph-northam-came-back-from-the-political-dead/2019/12/27/941e4a46-282b-11ea-b2ca-2e72667c1741_story.html">supported</a> by the Left for having done so. By the time Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was <a href="https://time.com/5680759/justin-trudeau-brownface-photo/">busted</a> for the same offense as Northam, no one seemed to care.
In a world where nothing sticks to anybody and memories are short, in a world where journalists are so gutless that they will <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2020/01/01/the-media-is-lying-about-the-attacks-on-the-embassy-in-baghdad/">lie about events that led to the death of Americans</a> while also brutally under-reporting about the<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/"> Afghanistan Papers</a>, politics is different. In many ways, actually, it’s much simpler.
Welcome to our new world, appropriately ushered in with the start of a new decade. Where the candidate who jumps into the race with the most name recognition and resources will nearly always hold on to his/her base, where the primary debates are rendered essentially meaningless, and where we don’t even force our politicians to act anymore.
They don’t need to, after all, because nothing sticks, nothing matters, and even if something significant does happen, it will be neglectfully reported anyway.
&nbsp;
Elliot Fuchs is a political consultant and writer. You can follow him on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/Elliot_Fuchs">@Elliot_Fuchs</a>.

Artificial intelligence brain network

FUCHS: The Short Memory Of Our Modern Politics

Al Franken

Brett Kavanaugh

Justin Trudeau

After a long lifetime of following the news, I can’t help being struck by how good it all is. Stock market soaring, jobs abundant, shoppers with money to spend. The Saturday before Christmas was the country’s best retail day ever, as in ever. And, while journalists and other Democrats continually predict disaster overseas, the ISIS caliphate has been erased, terrorists are being blown up, and trade deals are being made without a major war or depression in sight.
Sure, there are the usual crises, tragedies, and long-term problems in the offing – we ain’t in heaven yet. Still, here in this corner of the earth, life seems unusually good.
And not just here either. In a much-noticed article in the British Spectator, Matt Ridley declared the 2010’s the best decade in human history. Twenty-eight percent of all the wealth ever created was created in the last ten years. Extreme poverty around the world was halved. Child mortality was reduced by a third. Life expectancy went up. Use of resources went down. The number of free countries: up. The number of deaths from pollution and weather: down. In the immortal words of Titothe Cat: If this is torture, chain me to the wall.
But while all this good news managed to break through during the slow Christmas season, don’t count on seeing too much of it. The old expression “If it bleed, it leads” is not just journalistic cynicism, it’s a response to human nature. Because good news is temporary, but death is permanent, we’ve evolved to pay close attention to threats and danger.
The science guys call this “negativity bias.” As John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister recently explained in the Wall Street Journal: “bad health or bad parenting makes much more difference than good health or good parenting. A negative image… stimulates more electrical activity in the brain than does a positive image. The pain of criticism is much stronger than the pleasure of praise. A single bad event can produce lifelong trauma, but there is no psychological term for the opposite of trauma because no good event has such a lasting impact.” Or as the great sportscaster Vin Scully put it: “Losing feels worse than winning feels good.”
This means that good news is no news. It’s bad business. John Fund points out in a piece for the Fox News website: “In 2014, the Russian news site City Reporter decided to cover only good news and silver linings for an entire day. It lost two-thirds of its normal readership that day. When I was growing up in California, a businessman in my hometown launched ‘The Good News,’ an unrelentingly cheerful weekly paper that found subscribers in 50 states and 10 countries. But it went broke in 16 months.”
Still, when it suits their relentlessly left-wing bias, our mainstream news media can overcome good business practice. We all remember how the scandal-ridden Obama administration was “scandal free” to the media, and how eight years of sluggish growth and low-paying part-time jobs was reported as if it were some kind of economic miracle.
But when Republicans are in power, screw that, every day’s a disaster. Anyone who watches network news or reads the New York Times these days would think we were living in the End Times.
“Why is America So Depressed?” asks writer Lee Siegel in a Times op-ed. Commenting on the shocking rise in American depression and suicide over the last ten years, Siegel writes, “this mental carnage is occurring at a time when decades of social and political division have set against each other black and white, men and women, old and young. Beyond bitter social antagonisms, the country is racked by mass shootings, the mind-bending perils of the internet, revelations of widespread sexual predation, the worsening effects of climate change, virulent competition, the specter of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, grinding student debt and crises in housing, health care and higher education.”
The question is: if one stopped reading the New York Times, how many of these problems would instantly improve or simply disappear? Will the decade of American depression and suicide – which occurred in tandem with all the global good news – continue now that President the Donald has put America First and turned the sluggish Obama economy around?
If Americans start to cheer up over the next year or so, we will have cause to wonder if America’s suicidal funk was simply the result of eight years of incompetent Democrat governance, Obama anti-Americanism, and the smiley-face lies of a collusive press.

The New York Times.

KLAVAN: Good News Is No News

White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham called out the media and Democratic Party on Friday over the way that they responded to the Trump-approved airstrike that killed Iranian terrorist Qasem Soleimani.
Soleimani, leader of Iran&#8217;s Quds Force, which is a designated terrorist organization, was killed on Thursday in an airstrike as he was traveling in an convoy as it was leaving Baghdad International Airport.
Grisham, who made the remarks on Fox Business Network’s &#8220;Lou Dobbs Tonight&#8221; with host Lou Dobbs, called out The Washington Post and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/PressSec?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PressSec</a>: &quot;The media and the Democrats aren&#39;t happy along with the rest of this country that our president [<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a>] took the bold action to kill a murderer. We should all be very proud today, and we should all be very happy that American lives were saved.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/jZBSHr9WzM">pic.twitter.com/jZBSHr9WzM</a>
&mdash; Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) <a href="https://twitter.com/SteveGuest/status/1213278033089585152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 4, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Transcript from White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham&#8217;s interview:
Dobbs: Good to have you with us. The president is to be congratulated, the administration, and the national security team in particular for taking out a man who is responsible for hundreds and hundreds of American lives being lost in Iraq and the spread of state-sponsored terrorism from Iran. Your thoughts tonight, the mood in the White House and within the administration.
Grisham: Well, certainly it&#8217;s a great day for our country, because of the president&#8217;s decisive action thousands more American lives and other lives will be saved. This man, this terrorist was brutal, and not only was he responsible for hundreds of deaths of Americans, but thousands of horrible injuries to Americans and others. He wasn&#8217;t going to stop targeting Americans. That&#8217;s something to think about. The president, you know, he knew there was imminent danger. We had good Intel that there was imminent danger and that Americans were going to be killed and so he took the bold and often times hard action that he had to as president knowing that he was going to save lives and save lives then and in the future too.
Dobbs: And to hear the Democrats, at least many of them, tell it, this was an imposition on a stable world order in the middle East that only President Trump seems to be able to affect. I mean, it&#8217;s outrageous what I have heard today in the course of the morning, earlier, from the Democratic leadership. It&#8217;s as if they are completely unhinged.
Grisham: Well, they are. You know, I continue to be so disappointed by these Democrats. No matter what this president does, it is not good enough. The Democrats should be happy along with the rest of this country that American lives were saved, and instead they were complaining that they weren&#8217;t notified. You know, time is of the essence when things like this are going down and the president does have constitutional authority to protect Americans when they are in danger. Also, I would say that, you know, Schumer was complaining that he wasn&#8217;t briefed, and then when he got briefed today, he was complaining that it wasn&#8217;t good enough and he still had questions.
Dobbs: I think Chuck Schumer was born complaining and I wouldn&#8217;t expect any quick change in his behavior. It is also I think a good case could be built, it would be utterly irrational of the Trump Administration to brief the very people who are trying to unseat him, remove him from power, to overthrow his presidency and to have done everything in their power to do so. I mean, I just can&#8217;t understand why a neutral voice in this &#8212; say in the national media &#8212; isn&#8217;t saying what are the Democrats talking about? And why would they expect anything other than to be found untrustworthy by the president of the United States?
Grisham: Well, I&#8217;m going to say because there is no mutual voice in the media right now. You know, the Washington Post talked about Soleimani as the most revered military leader. Again, we&#8217;re getting into, you know, he was a terrorist. He was a murderer. Watching cable news today, it was like they were hoping for retaliation. You know, they are like scaring the American public for ratings. I don&#8217;t understand why, again, the media and the Democrats aren&#8217;t happy along with the rest of this country that our president took the bold action to kill a murderer. We should all be very proud today, and we should all be very happy that American lives were saved.

Stephanie Grisham

Stephanie Grisham Slams Media, Democrats For Their Response To Trump Killing Terrorists

Democrats

Terrorism

On Thursday, Washington Post Media Critic Erik Wemple <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/26/rachel-maddow-rooted-steele-dossier-be-true-then-it-fell-apart/">slammed</a> far-left MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, claiming that she &#8220;seemed to be rooting&#8221; for the veracity of the now-infamous Steele Dossier before the document&#8217;s credibility ultimately &#8220;fell apart.&#8221;
&#8220;Name a host on cable news who has dug more deeply into Trump-Russia than MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow,&#8221; Wemple wrote. &#8220;She’s read hundreds, maybe thousands, of court filings; she’s read the plume of literature on Russia-Trump; and she’s out with a new book on the bane of petro-states: &#8216;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525575472/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=slatmaga-20&amp;creative=9325&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;creativeASIN=0525575472&amp;linkId=2a858da9155bc9edba3471d6ec9df3bb" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="36">Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth</a>.'&#8221;
Wemple, entering the realm of full-on snark, then excoriated Maddow&#8217;s self-obsessed &#8220;Russianist phase.&#8221;
&#8220;As part of her Russianist phase, Maddow became a clearinghouse for news increments regarding the dossier,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;Just days after BuzzFeed published the dossier in its entirety, she reported on the frustration of congressional Democrats with then-FBI Director James B. Comey, who was declining to divulge whether his people had opened an investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.&#8221;
Wemple systematically walked the reader through a timeline of Maddow&#8217;s on-air reporting from 2017–2018, during which Maddow repeatedly glommed onto snippets of left-leaning reporting to tendentiously give off the impression to MSNBC viewers that the dossier was something other than the salacious rumormongering that Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General has since confirmed it indeed was.
Wemple continued to describe the release of former DOJ Special Counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s eponymous report on 2016 Russian electoral interference as a &#8220;kick in the derrière&#8221; for those who were invested in the Steeler dossier&#8217;s overarching narrative of nefarious Trump-Russia collusion.
&#8220;The release of the Mueller report in April provided a kick in the derriere for backers of the dossier. 
Wemple wrote. &#8220;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/24/what-steele-dossier-said-vs-what-mueller-report-said/?tid=lk_inline_manual_40" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="116">As Glenn Kessler pointed out in The Post</a>, the central allegation of the dossier — an &#8216;extensive conspiracy between campaign team and Kremlin, sanctioned at highest levels and involving Russian diplomatic staff based in the U.S.&#8217; as well as an &#8216;agreed exchange of information established in both directions&#8217; — found no corroboration from Mueller’s investigation, even though the special counsel’s team was charged with probing just this matter.&#8221;
But Maddow didn&#8217;t seem to care for the Mueller&#8217;s report dismissal of the dossier, Wemple opined.
&#8220;Several days after the Mueller report emerged, Maddow addressed not the dissonance between Mueller and the dossier, but a point of possible corroboration,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;In perhaps its most famous allegation, the dossier claimed that Trump had rented a suite at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow and &#8217;employed&#8217; prostitutes to perform a perverted ritual for him. It suggested that there were tapes of the show, the better to amass kompromat against Trump. A <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Muelller-Report-Redacted-Vol-II-Released-04.18.2019-Word-Searchable.-Reduced-Size.pdf#page=32" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="130">footnote</a> in the Mueller report, noted Maddow, bore a possible connection to this part of the dossier.&#8221;
Wemple concluded by comparing the relative merits of the &#8220;case for Maddow&#8221; and the &#8220;case against Maddow,&#8221; and concluding that the latter is &#8220;far stronger.&#8221;
&#8220;The case against Maddow is far stronger,&#8221; Wemple stated. &#8220;When small bits of news arose in favor of the dossier, the franchise MSNBC host pumped air into them. At least some of her many fans surely came away from her broadcasts thinking the dossier was a serious piece of investigative research, not the flimflam, quick-twitch game of telephone outlined in the Horowitz report. She seemed to be rooting for the document.&#8221;
Ouch.

Rachel Maddow

Washington Post Media Critic Blasts Rachel Maddow Over Steele Dossier

2016 election

Department of Justice

Michael Horowitz

Russia

According to a <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P-kHdorcZUzIbQHm0IG61PtLx8OguRTI/view">Hill-HarrisX survey</a> released on Thursday, fewer Americans actively trust the media and more Americans actively distrust the media than when the same survey was taken just one month ago.
The title of The Hill’s piece on the survey, “Poll: More independent voters trusting of news stories,” is somewhat misleading once one digs into the data.
The survey asks the question: “Do you mostly believe or mostly do not believe the news stories that are reported in the media?”
In <a href="https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/470528-poll-41-percent-believe-most-news-stories-but-not-certain-sources">November</a>, 11% of self-identified independents answered that they “almost always believe what is reported in the media.” Only 6% said the same in the survey released on Thursday.
In November, 16% of independents stated that they “almost never believe what is reported in the media,” while in Thursday’s release, that number ticked upward to 18%.
In those categories, trust in the media among independents appears to have dwindled as distrust has grown. There are two other categories where trust appears to have increased – with a caveat.
While in November, 36% of independents said that they “believe most news stories, but do not trust certain sources,” 44% said the same in the December survey. That’s an 8% jump, which is statistically significant, as it falls outside the survey’s margin of error, which is +/- 3.1 points.
In another category, trust in “sources” and distrust in overall “news” show a mixed result.
37% of November’s independents said that they “do not believe most news stories, but do trust certain sources,” while 31% said the same in December.
These are interesting answers because they don’t simply deal with the nature of trustworthiness in news broadly, but in specific sources of news. In our increasingly polarized political and cultural climate, it might be trust in a particular organization or individual dispensing information that trumps the information itself.
Let’s look at how Republicans and Democrats answered these questions.
In November, 17% of self-identified Republicans said that they “almost always believe what is reported in the media,” while only 11% said the same in December. In November, 30% of Republicans said that they “almost never believe what is reported in the media,” while 35% said the same in December.
This, of course, shows an overall increase in media distrust among Republicans.
When it comes to sources, it was a mixed bag for Republicans, with the number of respondents who “believe most news stories, but do not trust certain sources” tracking from 24% in November to 28% in December, but the number of respondents claiming that they “do not believe most news stories, but do trust certain sources” moving from 29% down to 26%.
Polling for Democrats indicates more broad trust in the media overall. 22% of Democratic respondents in November said that they “almost always believe what is reported in the media,” and in December, 23% said the same.
In November, only 5% of Democratic respondents said that they “almost never believe what is reported in the media.” In December, that number ticked up to 6%.
59% of Democrats polled said that they “believe most news stories, but do not trust certain sources” in November compared to 50% in December. 13% said that they “do not believe most news stories, but do trust certain sources” in November compared to 21% in December.
Of course, all of this is a snapshot in time of two representative but different groups of Americans. While many of the numbers did see changes that fell outside the margin of error, others remained fairly flat.
While surveys such as these certainly identify a problem, the questions that must be asked if such a problem is going to be solved are:
<ol>
<li>Why don’t Americans trust the news media?</li>
<li>What can be done so that Americans can trust the media?</li>
<li>Who bears the greatest burden for fixing the problem?</li>
</ol>
According to an early-2019 survey by <a href="https://www.journalism.org/2019/06/05/many-americans-say-made-up-news-is-a-critical-problem-that-needs-to-be-fixed/">Pew Research</a>, more Americans believe that politicians (57%) and activist groups (53%) are responsible for creating false news than journalists (36%) and the public (26%).
In the age of social media, there is a certain level of culpability that rests on politicians, activists organizations, and even the public (who share false information on various platforms without first fact-checking), but the choke point is and will always be journalists.
Check out the November survey <a href="https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/470528-poll-41-percent-believe-most-news-stories-but-not-certain-sources">here</a>, and the December survey <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P-kHdorcZUzIbQHm0IG61PtLx8OguRTI/view">here</a>.

Trump.

POLL: Trust In The Media Decreases Among Independents…Or Does It?

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