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

Media

Media Bias

Mike Pompeo

National Public Radio (NPR)

Trump Administration

Ukraine

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo fired back at NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly on Saturday after Kelly claimed without evidence on Friday that Pompeo yelled and swore at her after an interview he gave during which she repeatedly ignored the alleged parameters of what was going to be discussed during the interview.
NPR published a selectively edited portion of the interview on Twitter in which Pompeo was calm in answering Kelly&#8217;s aggressive line of questioning about U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Mike Pompeo — who refused a House subpoena — would be a top witness for Democrats in the impeachment trial.
He is not set to testify, but he spoke to <a href="https://twitter.com/NPRKelly?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NPRKelly</a>. She asked the secretary of state if he would defend Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch: <a href="https://t.co/1YoGWOSdqb">pic.twitter.com/1YoGWOSdqb</a>
&mdash; Morning Edition (@MorningEdition) <a href="https://twitter.com/MorningEdition/status/1220746152980766721?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
After the interview, Kelly <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20200124225755/https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1220837170484797445">claimed</a>, &#8220;I was taken to the Secretary&#8217;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, &#8216;Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?&#8217; 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, &#8216;people will hear about this.’”
Pompeo fired back in a <a href="https://www.state.gov/statement-by-secretary-michael-r-pompeo/">statement</a> on Saturday, noting that Kelly repeatedly lied to him about the interview, and that when she was presented with the map that she falsely identified Bangladesh as being Ukraine:
<blockquote>NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly lied to me, twice. 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. 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.
It is worth noting that Bangladesh is NOT Ukraine.</blockquote>
It is also worth highlighting the relevant portion of the transcript where Pompeo repeatedly told Kelly, both before and after the portion published in NPR&#8217;s tweet, that he agreed to the interview to talk about Iran, which Kelly ignored.
Below is the relevant <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/01/24/798579754/transcript-nprs-full-interview-with-secretary-of-state-mike-pompeo">transcript</a> with everything in bold representing what was included in NPR&#8217;s selectively edited clip:
<blockquote>KELLY: Change of subject. Ukraine. Do you owe Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch an apology?
POMPEO: You know, I agreed to come on your show today to talk about Iran. That&#8217;s what I intend to do. I know what our Ukraine policy has been now for the three years of this administration. I&#8217;m proud of the work we&#8217;ve done. This administration delivered the capability for the Ukrainians to defend themselves. President Obama showed up with MREs (meals ready to eat.) We showed up with Javelin missiles. The previous administration did nothing to take down corruption in Ukraine. We&#8217;re working hard on that. We&#8217;re going to continue to do it.
KELLY: I confirmed with your staff [crosstalk] last night that I would talk about Iran and Ukraine.
POMPEO: I just don&#8217;t have anything else to say about that this morning.
KELLY: I just want to give you another opportunity to answer this, because as you know, people who work for you in your department, people who have resigned from this department under your leadership, saying you should stand up for the diplomats who work here. [crosstalk]
POMPEO: I don&#8217;t know who these unnamed sources are you&#8217;re referring to. I can tell you this. When I talked to my team here –
KELLY: These are not unnamed sources. [crosstalk] This is your senior adviser Michael McKinley, a career foreign service officer with four decades experience, who testified under oath that he resigned in part due to the failure of the State Department to offer support to Foreign Service employees caught up in the impeachment inquiry on Ukraine.
POMPEO: I&#8217;m not going to comment on things that Mr. McKinley may have said. I&#8217;ll say only this. I have defended every State Department official. We&#8217;ve built a great team. The team that works here is doing amazing work around the world.
KELLY: Sir, respectfully [crosstalk] where have you defended Marie Yovanovitch?
POMPEO: I&#8217;ve defended every single person on this team. I&#8217;ve done what&#8217;s right for every single person on this team. [crosstalk]
KELLY: Can you point me toward your remarks where you have defended Marie Yovanovitch?
POMPEO: I&#8217;ve said all I&#8217;m going to say today. Thank you. Thanks for the repeated opportunity to do so. I appreciate that.
KELLY: One further question on this.
POMPEO: I&#8217;m not going to – I appreciate that. I appreciate that you want to continue to talk about this. I agreed to come on your show today to talk about Iran.
KELLY: And you appreciate [crosstalk] that the American public wants to know as a shadow foreign policy, as a back channel policy on Ukraine was being developed, did you try to block it?
POMPEO: The Ukraine policy has been run from the Department of State for the entire time that I have been here, and our policy was very clear.
KELLY: Marie Yovanovitch [crosstalk] testified under oath that Ukraine policy was hijacked.
POMPEO: I&#8217;ve been clear about that. I know exactly what we were doing. I know precisely what the direction that the State Department gave to our officials around the world about how to manage our Ukraine policy.
KELLY: Secretary, thank you.</blockquote>
Political strategist and communications specialist Andrew Surabian responded to the political Left calling Pompeo&#8217;s statement an &#8220;assault on press freedom,&#8221; writing: &#8220;In what universe is complaining about a reporter breaking an off the record agreement an &#8216;assault on press freedom?&#8217; If @NPRKelly did indeed break an off the record agreement, she should be fired &amp; her colleagues should be condemning her, not holding her up as a resistance hero.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
In what universe is complaining about a reporter breaking an off the record agreement an &quot;assault on press freedom?&quot; 
If <a href="https://twitter.com/NPRKelly?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NPRKelly</a> did indeed break an off the record agreement, she should be fired &amp; her colleagues should be condemning her, not holding her up as a resistance hero <a href="https://t.co/f9fC0pW5rm">https://t.co/f9fC0pW5rm</a>
&mdash; Andrew Surabian (@Surabees) <a href="https://twitter.com/Surabees/status/1221110246187335689?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 25, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
This report has been updated to clarify the fact that the line &#8220;NPR published a selectively edited portion of the interview&#8221; was referring to the tweet that NPR published, which went viral, and not the transcript.

Mary Louise Kelly Mike Pompeo

NPR Reporter Claims Pompeo Yelled At Her. Pompeo Fires Back With Scathing Statement.

Actor Adam Driver — who stars in three films all releasing within weeks of each other, including &#8220;Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker&#8221; — reportedly walked out of a recent interview with NPR over what one journalist has described as a &#8220;reluctance that amounts to a phobia.&#8221;
As reported by <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/adam-driver-walks-out-of-npr-fresh-air-interview-over-marriage-story-clip">The Daily Beast</a> Tuesday, Driver&#8217;s interview earlier this month with NPR&#8217;s &#8220;Fresh Air&#8221; was derailed when host Terry Gross cut to a clip of Driver singing &#8220;Being Alive&#8221; from the musical &#8220;Company&#8221; in his much-lauded new Netflix film &#8220;<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7653254/">Marriage Story</a>,&#8221; co-starring Scarlett Johansson.
Gross&#8217;s production team knew in advance that Driver strongly prefers not to see or hear himself perform, so they encouraged the actor to remove his headphones. Driver did — but then he also took it a step further, by walking out of the interview altogether, leaving the production team flummoxed.
<div class="teads-inread xs-screen">
&#8220;Danny Miller, Fresh Air’s executive producer, confirmed that Driver left during a break in the interview &#8216;while we were playing back a clip from the film,'&#8221; The Daily Beast reports. &#8220;The star actor recorded his end of the interview from NPR’s New York studios, while Gross was in Fresh Air’s base at WHYY-FM in Philadelphia.&#8221;
&#8220;We don’t really understand why he left,&#8221; Miller told the outlet in an email. &#8220;We were looking forward to the interview — Terry thinks he’s a terrific actor, he was a great guest when he was on [Fresh Air] in 2015 — so we were disappointed that we didn’t have a new interview to share with our listeners about Marriage Story.&#8221;
Though Driver reportedly recorded in New York, the disruption resulted in the whole interview being dropped. Driver&#8217;s walkout ended up causing NPR a bit of headache as they&#8217;d announced the big interview in advance and were forced to rerun another interview in its place.
As Daily Beast notes, Driver has made clear in the past, including to &#8220;Fresh Air&#8221; back in 2015, that he &#8220;hates&#8221; to see or hear himself performing because he has &#8220;a tendency to try to make things better or drive myself and the other people around me crazy with the things I wanted to change or I wish I could change.&#8221;
In a profile piece on Driver for The New Yorker published in October, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/28/adam-driver-the-original-man">Michael Schulman</a> describes Driver&#8217;s &#8220;phobia&#8221; about watching or hearing himself perform:
<blockquote>The first time Driver saw himself in “Girls,” on Dunham’s laptop, he was mortified. “That’s when I was, like, I can’t watch myself in things. I certainly can’t watch this if we’re going to continue doing it,” he said. Many actors decline to watch themselves, but for Driver that reluctance amounts to a phobia. In 2013, he watched the Coen brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis,” in which he has one scene, singing backup on a folk song called “Please Mr. Kennedy”: “I hated what I did.” He swore off his own movies, until he was obliged to sit through the première of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” in 2015. “I just went totally cold,” he recalled, “because I knew the scene was coming up where I had to kill Han Solo, and people were, like, hyperventilating when the title came up, and I felt like I had to puke.”
The directors I spoke to sympathized with Driver’s aversion. “I think he’s rightly concerned that he would become conscious of himself in a way that would be harmful to his acting,” Soderbergh said. When I spoke to Baumbach, he was still “in a discussion” with Driver about watching “Marriage Story.” Spike Lee told me that Driver did see “BlacKkKlansman,” at Cannes (“It was very, very happy”), but Driver corrected the record: he had hidden out in a greenroom and returned for the closing bow.</blockquote>
While Driver&#8217;s &#8220;Marriage Story&#8221; is getting almost universal praise from critics, currently enjoying a <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/marriage_story_2019">95%</a> on the Tomatometer, the early reports on &#8220;The Rise of Skywalker&#8221; are a little less enthusiastic, as expressed by USA Today&#8217;s Brian Truitt.
&#8220;[&#8216;The Rise of Skywalker&#8217;] definitely tries to wrap up nine movies — a LOT happens — and does so in often funny, sometimes surprising, emotional and bombastic fashion. Not the best [‘Star Wars’] but one with great new characters, cool twists and a fantastic group dynamic,&#8221; he wrote on Twitter.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/is-rise-of-skywalker-any-good-here-are-the-early-reactions">Is ‘Rise Of Skywalker’ Any Good? Here Are The Early Reactions.</a>
</div>

Adam Driver

‘Star Wars’ Star Walks Out Of NPR Interview Over ‘Phobia’

Hollywood

Star Wars

NPR has provided another example of the left-leaning media outlets claiming there is “no evidence” to back up Republican claims, even when the same phrase is not used when Democrats make similar claims.
On Sunday, NPR published <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/11/10/777300611/skeptics-urge-bevin-to-show-proof-of-fraud-claims-warning-of-corrosive-effects?utm_source=facebook.com&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=npr&amp;utm_term=nprnews&amp;fbclid=IwAR2q7VYzsqWt4is_yUMjz8pqOr3xGtSHTOXKymMubnaPpBX9f6Kdz9o_1EM">an article</a> about Gov. Matt Bevin (R-KY) claiming election fraud led to his loss. While promoting the article on social media, NPR wrote: “Without providing evidence, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin questioned the election&#8217;s legitimacy. And he isn&#8217;t the first politician to do so. Elections specialists worry that unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud erode confidence in democracy.”
The article is almost entirely about Bevin’s claims, which is fine. NPR glosses over major cases of candidates claiming voter fraud for election losses. The outlet mentions then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s claims about “rampant voter fraud” even though he won his election. Scott and President Donald Trump are the only named politicians in the article that raised doubts about the election. The article does not mention Stacey Abrams at all, even though she has been on a year-long tour of the country claiming she actually won the governor’s race in Georgia last year. NPR wrote a single sentence alluding to her loss, saying, “Democrats also have continued to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/30/did-racially-motivated-voter-suppression-thwart-stacey-abrams/">blame the results</a> of the Georgia gubernatorial election on election administration issues that they say suppressed turnout.”
NPR employed the “without providing evidence” trick after Bevin made his claims. The outlet struck a different tone when covering Abrams, a Democrat. As pundit Stephen Miller <a href="https://twitter.com/redsteeze/status/1194244354564509696">pointed out</a>, NPR did not make the “no evidence” claim when covering Abrams’ non-concession speech.
“In a fiery speech, Stacey Abrams insisted this was no normal concession, decrying what she called “deliberate and intentional” voter suppression by Brian Kemp that she believes led to this result in Georgia’s governor race.”
Abrams has not provided any evidence to support her claims of voter suppression. In fact, voter participation had doubled in Georgia since the state’s 2014 gubernatorial election. Yet Abrams is not called out on her constant claims to the contrary.
Bevin has said there were “a number of significant irregularities” in the Kentucky gubernatorial election last week. He said his team was working on getting “affidavits &#8212; and other information that will help us to get a better understanding of what did or did not happen.&#8221;
The “no evidence” claim from NPR comes just after Politico employed <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/politico-claims-no-evidence-exists-that-ukraine-colluded-with-clinton-campaign-dnc-in-2016-dismissing-earlier-reporting">a similar tactic</a> to criticize Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. On Friday, Politico reported that “No evidence has emerged to support” Giuliani’s claims that Ukrainian officials worked with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee to undermine Trump. In January 2017, however, Politico had reported on just such evidence.
The “no evidence” qualifier has been used repeatedly by left-wing media outlets during the Trump administration. Outlets such as CNN include it in news chyrons to mislead viewers about what Trump officials have said. Other media outlets use it while ignoring context and important information that backs up the claims in order to give the false impression that the Trump administration is somehow more dishonest than any other previous administration. Had Fox News used this tactic under the Obama administration, these outlets would have gone apoplectic.

Stacey Abrams

NPR Strikes Different Tone When Writing About Matt Bevin’s Election Fraud Claims Than Stacey Abrams’

The media this week is trumpeting a study that makes a shocking claim: One in every 16 women say their first sexual experience was rape. As NPR <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/09/16/761201571/tip-of-the-iceberg-1-in-16-women-report-first-sexual-experience-as-rape">notes</a>, this is just &#8220;the tip of the iceberg.&#8221; The one-in-16 figure — over 6% of all women between the ages of 18 and 44 — could even be an &#8220;underestimate,&#8221; we&#8217;re assured.
News reports on this study have, of course, tied these revelations to the #MeToo movement. We are meant to come away with the impression that America is chock-full of rapists, and millions upon millions of women have fallen victim to the millions upon millions of predators lurking behind every corner. A closer look at the data, however, reveals a drastically different picture. There is no reason to artificially inflate rape statistics — rape is horrible enough, and far too common already — but this study does just that.
Here&#8217;s the key portion of the NPR report (emphasis mine):
<blockquote>About 6.5% women — an estimated 3.3 million nationwide — said that their first sexual experience was rape.
The average age of most victims was about 15 when they were assaulted. The average age of their partner, or the assailant, was 27, Hawks notes. This suggests a &#8220;major power discrepancy&#8221; and, possibly, a difference in physical size as well, she says.
More than 26% said they were physically threatened during the encounter, 46% said they were physically held down. Over half (56%) of them said they were verbally pressured into having sex, and 16% said that their partner threatened to end the relationship if they didn&#8217;t have sex. These forms of coercion were not mutually exclusive.
&#8220;The definition of rape is any sexual encounter that&#8217;s unwanted or nonconsensual,&#8221; Hawks says. &#8220;And when a [woman or girl] is coerced into having sex that she doesn&#8217;t want to have, that is still considered a rape.&#8221;</blockquote>
There is quite a lot going on in these few paragraphs. First, NPR misquotes the study&#8217;s <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2751247">findings</a>. The average age of most &#8220;victims&#8221; was actually 15.6 and the average age of the &#8220;assailant&#8221; was six years older, which would make him 21 rather than 27. More to the point, &#8220;verbal pressure&#8221; has been lumped together with physical force. Dr. Laura Hawks, the primary author of the study, broadens rape to include &#8220;any sexual encounter that&#8217;s unwanted.&#8221; The &#8220;or&#8221; in the phrase &#8220;unwanted or nonconsensual&#8221; makes it clear that a sexual act could be in every sense consensual — meaning, both partners actively and affirmatively agree to participate in it — and yet rape still may have occurred.
This is madness.
Traditionally, rape hinges entirely on consent. The Department of Justice <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/blog/updated-definition-rape">defines</a> it with precise detail: &#8220;The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.&#8221;
Now, it is understood that verbal consent is not always legitimate consent. A child is not capable of consenting, no matter what they say, because they lack the psychological and emotional faculties to make that sort of decision. For a similar reason, you cannot get consent by drugging someone. That&#8217;s one of the reasons why &#8220;unwanted&#8221; does not and cannot enter into the definition of rape. A rapist cannot be excused by arguing that the victim really &#8220;wanted it.&#8221; The only question we need to ask is this: Did you have sex with someone who did not or could not consent? If so, you&#8217;re a rapist. If not, you aren&#8217;t.
A man who pressures a woman to have sex by threatening to end the relationship might be a jerk, but he&#8217;s not a rapist. The woman, if she is a mentally competent adult, can still make her own choice. She is not being forced to do anything. She can decline the man&#8217;s advances and she can terminate the sexual act at any time. Her situation, however unpleasant, cannot be compared to a woman who is physically held down against her will and violated. If she decides to go through with it, the sex may be unloving and transactional, but it is still consensual. She may regret it afterwards. She may feel used (she was). She may want to leave him (she should). But none of this, in itself, makes it rape.
And this new definition of rape wouldn&#8217;t just make everyday jerks and bad boyfriends into rapists; it would turn any man who has ever used any form of persuasion — flattery, sweet talk, and so forth — into a sex criminal. In all of those cases, it could be argued that the woman didn&#8217;t really want to, wasn&#8217;t really into it, and thus was raped. Any wife that has ever had slightly begrudging or unenthusiastic sex with her husband is now a sexual assault survivor. Dr. Hawks is right: By this definition, the actual percentage of &#8220;rape victims&#8221; is way, way higher than 6%.
To make matters worse, the standard is inconsistently applied. If a man who convinces a woman to have sex is a rapist, isn&#8217;t a woman who seduces a man also a rapist? Aren&#8217;t strippers coaxing money out of men&#8217;s pockets now rapists? Aren&#8217;t prostitutes strutting on the street corner rapists? Isn&#8217;t any woman who uses emotional pressure of any kind to extract any concession or compromise out of a man now guilty of assault? It&#8217;s true that men can be manipulative in getting what they want out of a relationship — and it&#8217;s true that what they often want is sex — but women have been known to employ their own forms of manipulation to achieve their own ends. If the man is a rapist, so is she. Coercion, pressure, and manipulation is far from a one-way street, as anyone familiar with male-female relationships well knows.
And this is all to say nothing of pressure and coercion in other contexts. By this standard, isn&#8217;t an effective salesman who convinces people to buy things they don&#8217;t want now a thief? Isn&#8217;t the homeless beggar guilt-tripping quarters out of people&#8217;s pockets now guilty of emotional robbery? Isn&#8217;t persuasion of all kinds, in all contexts, problematic at best — and violent assault, at worst?
This is what happens when coherent definitions are broadened into ambiguous, incoherent, all-encompassing concepts. Before long, everyone is a rapist and everyone is a rape victim. The word no longer means anything. And the real victims — of which there are many — are left high and dry.

couple in bed.jpg

WALSH: Media Trumpets Study Claiming That All ‘Unwanted’ Sex Is Rape. That Is Insane And Dangerous. Here’s Why.

Crime

Rape

Sexual Assault

Citing constitutional protections against inflicting &#8220;cruel and unusual punishments&#8221; on criminals, a panel of three judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that the State of Idaho must pay for the male-to-female gender reassignment surgery of an inmate sentenced to 10 years in prison for sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy. In response, Republican Gov. Brad Little vowed to make sure taxpayer money is not diverted to the sex offender&#8217;s surgery, particularly because the treating physician and multiple mental health professionals maintain that it is not medically necessary.
The <a href="http://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendments/amendment-viii">Eighth Amendment</a> of the Constitution states that &#8220;[e]xcessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted&#8221; on criminals. That amendment, a three-judge panel ruled Friday, requires the State of Idaho to pay for the $20,000 to $30,0000 sex reassignment surgery for Adree Edmo, a biological male convicted of sexually abusing a 15-year-old at the age of 22 and who claims to identify as a female.
Edmo began serving time in a male prison in 2012. In 2017, Edmo <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/appeals-court-hears-case-idaho-inmate-s-suit-gender-confirmation-n1006736">sued</a> the state, claiming the state&#8217;s refusal to pay for the controversial and costly surgery was &#8220;cruel and unusual punishment.&#8221;
Last December, Federal District Judge B. Lynn Winmill sided with Edmo, ruling that the state should fund the surgery, a ruling the state appealed. On Friday, the panel agreed with Winmill, concluding that prison officials were &#8220;deliberately indifferent to Edmo&#8217;s gender dysphoria, in violation of the Eighth Amendment,&#8221; as reported by <a href="https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/post/state-must-provide-gender-confirmation-surgery-idaho-inmate-adree-edmo#stream/0">Boise State Public Radio</a>. Prison officials, the panel wrote, have not provided for what the judges say are Edmo&#8217;s &#8220;medical needs&#8221; due to the &#8220;extreme suffering&#8221; caused by gender dysphoria.
Edmo, who is due for release in early 2021, has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a condition in which a person identifies as the opposite of his or her biogical sex. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/08/23/753788697/court-says-idaho-must-provide-gender-confirmation-surgery-to-transgender-inmate">NPR </a>notes that Edmo reportedly twice attempted &#8220;self-castration.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/post/idaho-transgender-inmate-surgery-postponed-until-appeals-court-decision#stream/0">Boise State Public Radio</a> quotes a senior attorney with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, who insists that &#8220;every major and mental health association&#8221; agrees that sex reassignment surgery is &#8220;medically necessary&#8221; in cases of severe gender dysphoria.
The state, which has 90 days to appeal the decision, has countered that Edmo&#8217;s sex reassignment surgery is not a medical necessity. The state&#8217;s Republican governor agrees.
In response to the 9th Circuit&#8217;s ruling Friday, Gov. Little made clear in an interview with BSPR that he intends to do what he can to block public funds from being diverted to meet Edmo&#8217;s demands. &#8220;We cannot divert critical public dollars away from the higher priorities of keeping the public safe and rehabilitating offenders,&#8221; said Little.
The governor also underscored that medical professionals who have worked with Edmo disagree with the panel&#8217;s conclusion that the surgery is necessary. &#8220;The hardworking taxpayers of Idaho should not be forced to pay for a convicted sex offender&#8217;s gender reassignment surgery when it is contrary to the medical opinions of the treating physician and multiple mental health professionals,&#8221; the governor said.
If the ruling stands, BSPR notes, the sex offender &#8220;will be the first transgender inmate in the nation to receive sex reassignment surgery through a court order,&#8221; a development that &#8220;could have a ripple effect in western states and potentially across the nation.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50065/womens-groups-trans-athletes-males-competing-james-barrett">Women’s Groups On Trans Athletes: ‘Males Competing In Women’s Sport Is Blatantly Unfair’</a>

Adree Edmo

Court Orders Idaho To Pay For Sex Offender’s Trans Surgery; Governor Refuses

Transgender

As The Daily Wire reported this week, NPR has issued a &#8220;<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/memmos/2019/05/15/723678750/guidance-reminder-on-abortion-procedures-terminology-rights">Guidance Reminder</a>&#8221; instructing journalists on which words and phrases they should avoid, and which they should employ, when reporting on the abortion issue. NPR suggests that reporters steer clear of words like partial-birth abortion (&#8220;intact dilation and extraction&#8221; is the suggested alternative), abortion clinics (&#8220;medical or health clinic that performs abortion&#8221;), abortion doctor (it is recommended that we refer to doctors who &#8220;operate clinics where abortions are performed&#8221;), unborn baby (&#8220;fetus,&#8221; obviously), and pro-lifers (&#8220;abortion rights opponents&#8221;). Journalists are also cautioned not to use other apparently loaded phrases like &#8220;fetal heartbeat.&#8221; The point is, at every turn, to utilize language that will make abortion seem as clinical and sanitized as possible while making pro-lifers seem as crazy as possible.
While I respect NPR&#8217;s steadfast commitment to distortion and partisanship, I tend to think that these codewords only make the abortion conversation more confusing. That, of course, is precisely the goal. Pro-aborts always want to talk about abortion in a way that will not encourage anyone to actually think about abortion. As a pro-lifer myself, but more importantly as someone who values honesty and clarity, I take the opposite approach. If we are going to talk about killing babies, we should be frank and straightforward about it. Our language should highlight the essence of abortion, not distract from it.
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ApzXCOyRP7E" width="480"></iframe></div>
With that in mind, I have decided to offer my own Guidance Reminder.
Here is my longstanding guidance:
(1) &#8220;Fetus&#8221; simply means &#8220;offspring&#8221; in Latin. If you are going to insist on &#8220;fetus,&#8221; you might as well insist on &#8220;akachan,&#8221; which is &#8220;child&#8221; in Japanese. In your effort to avoid using the word &#8220;baby,&#8221; you are basically still using the word &#8220;baby,&#8221; just in a different language. But even the word &#8220;baby,&#8221; or &#8220;unborn baby,&#8221; might not be the best choice. That&#8217;s why I have been advocating that we refer to the unborn as &#8220;undocumented infants.&#8221; After all, the only difference between an infant in the womb and an infant outside of the womb is a birth certificate.
(2) &#8220;Intact dilation and extraction&#8221; sounds like something your dentist might do. It is probably not an appropriate term to describe a procedure where a fully developed, viable, and living infant child is pulled from the womb feet first, until just his head remains in the birth canal, and then executed via suction tube to the base of the skull. &#8220;Partial-birth abortion&#8221; doesn&#8217;t quite capture it, either. In place of both of these euphemisms, I suggest &#8220;cervical infanticide.&#8221; Partial-birth abortion is, literally, the killing of an infant as it passes through the cervix.
(3) &#8220;Reproductive rights&#8221; is a misnomer. Nobody is challenging a woman&#8217;s right to reproduce. Reproduction has nothing to do with this debate at all. Scientifically speaking, reproduction occurs at conception. I have been in the hospital for the births of three children and I don&#8217;t remember anyone shouting, &#8220;look, she&#8217;s reproducing,&#8221; as the baby emerged from the birth canal. That&#8217;s because birth and reproduction are not the same. A woman who avoids conception either through abstinence or birth control has failed to reproduce, and thus has exercised her reproductive rights. A woman who gets an abortion is killing a child that has already been produced. Thus she cannot be exercising her reproductive rights, which are now irrelevant to the question. Instead she is exercising her &#8220;parental murder rights,&#8221; which is the phrase I suggest we employ henceforth.
(4) &#8220;Abortion doctor&#8221; is a problematic term because it includes the word &#8220;doctor.&#8221; I agree with NPR that we should discard that terminology, though their recommendation for a replacement is absurd. I suggest that the term &#8220;medical mercenary&#8221; be used from now on. This makes it clear that these are professionals ostensibly in the medical field whose only job is to destroy life. By definition, doctors treat and cure. That is what they swear to do in the Hippocratic Oath. Abortionists do not treat any diseases and do not cure anyone of anything. They kill. They are paid to kill. They are mercenaries.
(5) &#8220;Planned Parenthood&#8221; is technically the name of an actual organization, so you might be able to justify using it. But it is so ironic, so divorced from what Planned Parenthood actually does on a daily basis, that it seems like we are complicit in a lie just by calling the company by its name. I think &#8220;Margaret Sanger&#8217;s Killing Field&#8221; might be an apt alternative.
(6) &#8220;Pro-choice&#8221; is a completely ridiculous phrase, as it would seem to suggest that the &#8220;pro-choice&#8221; person is somehow in favor of all choices. Being &#8220;pro-choice&#8221; is like being &#8220;pro-shooting.&#8221; Plenty of people are pro-gun, but their opinion about the wisdom of shooting a gun will depend entirely on why the gun is being shot, and in what context, and at what target. It&#8217;s the same thing with choices. Nobody thinks that all choices are good choices. Nobody thinks that we should have the right to make literally any choice we want. All of that depends on the nature of the choice, and especially on whether that choice might directly harm another human being.
So, when someone says they are &#8220;pro-choice,&#8221; they do not mean that they are pro-choice. They mean that they are pro-one-particular-choice-which-specifically-in-this-case-involves-the-direct-killing-of-an-innocent-human-being-who-also-happens-to-be-the-child-of-the-person-making-the-choice. Perhaps that is what we should call &#8220;pro-choicers&#8221; from now on. It&#8217;s a bit wordy, but at least it&#8217;s honest.

WALSH: NPR Gave ‘Guidance’ On What Words To Use When Discussing Abortion. I’ve Got Better Suggestions.

Abortion

In a &#8220;guidance reminder&#8221; issued amid the national firestorm over state abortion laws, NPR has provided a reminder for journalists about how to report on abortion in a way that counters the pro-life stance at every rhetorical turn.
In a &#8220;<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/memmos/2019/05/15/723678750/guidance-reminder-on-abortion-procedures-terminology-rights">Guidance Reminder: On Abortion Procedures, Terminology &amp; Rights</a>,&#8221; NPR Supervising Senior Editor of Standards and Practices Mark Memmott makes painfully clear on which side of the argument NPR stands. Memmott begins by warning journalists not to use the phrase &#8220;fetal heartbeat&#8221; because it can give an embryo too much developmental credit (and because it is &#8220;their term&#8221;):
<blockquote>
One thing to keep in mind about this law and others like it: Proponents refer to it as a &#8220;fetal heartbeat&#8221; law. That is their term. It needs to be attributed to them if used and put in quotation marks if printed. We should not simply say the laws are about when a &#8220;fetal heartbeat&#8221; is detected. As we&#8217;ve reported, heartbeat activity can be detected &#8220;about six weeks into a pregnancy.&#8221; That&#8217;s at least a few weeks before an embryo is a fetus.
</blockquote>
This terminology problem addressed, Memmott them moves on to instructing journalists not to ever use the &#8220;opponent&#8221;-preferred phrase &#8220;partial-birth abortion,&#8221; or to refer to the procedure as &#8220;rare&#8221;:
<blockquote>
Use the term intact dilation and extraction to describe the procedure, or a procedure known medically as intact dilation and extraction; opponents call it partial-birth abortion. On the latter, it is necessary to point out that the term partial-birth is used by those opposed to the procedure; simply using the phrase so-called partial birth abortion is not sufficient without explaining who&#8217;s calling it that. Partial-birth is not a medical term and has no exact parallel in medical terminology; intact dilation and extraction is the closest description. Also, it is not correct to call these procedures RARE &#8212; it is not known how often they are performed.
</blockquote>
Likewise, it&#8217;s forbidden to use the term &#8220;late term abortion&#8221; because it &#8220;conveys the sense that the fetus is viable when the abortion is performed.&#8221; Instead, Memmott explains, journalists should say &#8220;a certain procedure performed after the first trimester&#8221;:
<blockquote>
Nor is it accurate to use the phrase LATE TERM ABORTION. Though we initially believed this term carried less ideological baggage when compared with partial-birth, it still conveys the sense that the fetus is viable when the abortion is performed. It gives the impression that the abortion takes place in the 8th or 9th month. In fact, the procedure called intact dilation and extraction is performed most often in the 5th or 6th month &#8212; the second trimester &#8212; and the second trimester is not considered &#8220;late&#8221; pregnancy. Thus &#8220;late term&#8221; is not appropriate. As an alternative, call it a certain procedure performed after the first trimester of pregnancy and, subsequently, the procedure.
</blockquote>
Also forbidden: &#8220;abortion clinic,&#8221; which Memmott explains NPR never uses. &#8220;We say instead, &#8216;medical or health clinics that perform abortions.&#8217; The point is to not to use abortion before the word clinic. The clinics perform other procedures and not just abortions.&#8221;
Another term that must not be used: &#8220;abortion doctor,&#8221; for example when referencing late term abortion doctor Dr. George Tiller, who was shot by an anti-abortion extremist: &#8220;Do not refer to murdered Dr George Tiller as an &#8216;Abortion Doctor.&#8217; Instead we should say Tiller operated a clinic where abortions are performed. We can also make reference to the fact that Tiller was a doctor who performed late abortions.&#8221;
Memmott then turns to Joe Neel for some more &#8220;guidance&#8221; on two of the most important terms: &#8220;unborn&#8221; and &#8220;baby,&#8221; words frequently uttered by &#8220;antiabortion groups.&#8221;
<blockquote>
The term &#8220;unborn&#8221; implies that there is a baby inside a pregnant woman, not a fetus. Babies are not babies until they are born. They&#8217;re fetuses. Incorrectly calling a fetus a &#8220;baby&#8221; or &#8220;the unborn&#8221; is part of the strategy used by antiabortion groups to shift language/legality/public opinion.
</blockquote>
The memo closes with notes reminding all journalists never to use the term &#8220;pro-life&#8221; &#8212; which contains two positive terms and thus must not be associated with those who want to protect the unborn. Instead, we&#8217;re told, we should call pro-lifers &#8220;abortion rights opponents,&#8221; successfully casting them as those who &#8220;oppose&#8221; &#8220;rights.&#8221; We can also describe their views as &#8220;anti-abortion rights,&#8221; again casting them as &#8220;anti-rights.&#8221; Journalists should also not use the descriptor &#8220;pro-choice,&#8221; NPR reminds us. Instead, they should be described with the more positively framed terms &#8220;abortion rights supporters&#8221; or &#8220;advocates of abortion rights.&#8221;
<blockquote>
On the air, we should use &#8220;abortion rights supporter(s)/advocate(s)&#8221; and &#8220;abortion rights opponent(s)&#8221; or derivations thereof (for example: &#8220;advocates of abortion rights&#8221;). It is acceptable to use the phrase &#8220;anti-abortion rights,&#8221; but do not use the term &#8220;pro-abortion rights&#8221;. &#8230; Do not use &#8220;pro-life&#8221; and &#8220;pro-choice&#8221; in copy except when used in the name of a group.
</blockquote>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47517/georgias-pro-life-governor-mocks-c-list-celebs-amanda-prestigiacomo">Georgia&#8217;s Pro-Life Governor Mocks &#8216;C-List Celebrities&#8217; Over Abortion Boycott</a>

NPR Reminds Journalists How To Report On Abortion In An Anti-Pro-Life Way

Publicly funded NPR attempted to produce a heavy-hitting fact check on claims made by President Trump in his well-received State of the Union Address Tuesday &#8212; but the &#8220;fact check&#8221; ended up checking the factuality of some claims he never made.
As pointed out by outlets on the Right, including the <a href="https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1092997767818084352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1092997767818084352&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Fdougp-3137%2F2019%2F02%2F05%2Fthis-is-embarrassing-nprs-fact-check-on-trump-applauding-record-number-of-women-in-congress-is-pathetic%2F">Federalist</a> and <a href="https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2019/02/05/this-is-embarrassing-nprs-fact-check-on-trump-applauding-record-number-of-women-in-congress-is-pathetic/">Twitchy</a>, NPR&#8217;s &#8220;fact check&#8221; on Trump&#8217;s correct assertion that we have &#8220;more women serving in Congress than in any time before&#8221; suggested that he was claiming that he and the Republican Party were the reason &#8212; an assertion he didn&#8217;t even hint at.
&#8220;FACT CHECK: President Trump praised the record number of women in Congress, but that&#8217;s almost entirely because of Democrats, not Trump&#8217;s party,&#8221; NPR declared in a tweet promoting its big &#8220;fact check&#8221; of Trump&#8217;s second SOTU.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
FACT CHECK: President Trump praised the record number of women in Congress, but that&#8217;s almost entirely because of Democrats, not Trump&#8217;s party. <a href="https://t.co/cbixnX8mnk">https://t.co/cbixnX8mnk</a> <a href="https://t.co/GBppTBkZTI">pic.twitter.com/GBppTBkZTI</a>
&#8212; NPR Politics (@nprpolitics) <a href="https://twitter.com/nprpolitics/status/1092994652599451649?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Here are some excerpts from <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/02/05/690345256/fact-check-trumps-state-of-the-union-address#women-congress-34">NPR&#8217;s fact-checking blog</a> on this section of Trump&#8217;s speech, which demonstrates how much effort the organization put into trying to find something to decry.
&#8220;All Americans can be proud that we have more women in the workforce than ever before,&#8221; said Trump.
NPR&#8217;s response: That&#8217;s true, but more men are also in the workforce&#8230;
<blockquote>
There are more women in the labor force than ever before, but then, <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=mT7z">there are also more men in the labor force than ever before</a>.
Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate for women &#8212; the share of women who are working or looking for work &#8212; <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=mT4z">has leveled off and started to drop</a>, after decades of growing. While the level for men is falling as well, the two have never come close to converging.
This has led economists to dig into what is keeping women from working. <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/es_10192017_decline_womens_labor_force_participation_blackschanzenbach.pdf">One 2017 paper from the Brookings Institution</a> found that while some factors are likely affecting women and men alike, more access to paid leave and affordable child care could help more women get into the workforce.
</blockquote>
&#8220;And exactly one century after Congress passed the Constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote, we also have more women serving in Congress than at any time before,&#8221; announced Trump, to applause by women, including Democratic women, in the chamber.
NPR&#8217;s &#8220;fact check&#8221;: Yes, but Democrats are to thank, not Republicans (and there still aren&#8217;t enough women in Congress)!
<blockquote>
There are more women in Congress than ever before, but that is almost entirely because of Democrats, not Trump&#8217;s party. The number of Republican women in the House has, in fact, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/01/20/686659187/republican-congresswoman-warns-gop-leaders-of-gender-crisis">fallen from 23 in the last Congress to 13 in this one</a>.
Altogether, there are 127 women in Congress, up from 110 in 2018. But even with that large jump, women remain hugely underrepresented on Capitol Hill &#8212; <a href="http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/current-numbers">less than 1 in 4 </a>members of Congress is a woman. (Meanwhile, women are <a href="http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/resources/genderdiff.pdf">the majority of voters</a>.)
</blockquote>
&#8220;As part of our commitment to improving opportunity for women everywhere, this Thursday, we are launching the first ever government-wide initiative focused on economic empowerment for women in developing countries, to build on &#8212; thank you,&#8221; Trump continued, to more applause.
NPR didn&#8217;t bother checking that.
While the Democrat-sympathisizing media has predictably attempted to protray Trump&#8217;s speech as misleading and divisive, an overwhelming percentage of viewers responded positively to it. Both CNN and CBS News found that over three-quarters of viewers approved of his speech and CBS found that about the same percentage agreed with his comments on his big agenda items.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43113/americans-overwhelmingly-approve-trumps-speech-james-barrett">Americans Overwhelmingly Approve Of Trump&#8217;s Speech. Check Out How The Big Networks Report It.</a>

NPR ‘Fact-Checks’ Trump Claim About Women In Congress; There’s Just One Big Problem

Democratic Party

Donald Trump

Republican Party

NPR thought it had a scoop on Friday, following on the heels of the Manafort plea deal and spurious Guardian report that the former Trump campaign chair met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange just as he was joining the campaign.
NPR&#8217;s Philip Ewing reported that Donald &#8220;Trump Jr.&#8217;s 2017 Testimony Conflicts With Cohen&#8217;s Account Of Russian Talks&#8221; (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181130161841/https:/www.npr.org/2018/11/30/672188201/trump-jr-s-2017-testimony-conflicts-with-cohen-s-account-of-russian-talks">original archived here</a>), heavily suggesting that the president&#8217;s son lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee about his father&#8217;s business negotiations involving Russia. Taking just a small snippet of an exchange between Trump Jr. and Senate Judiciary members, Ewing makes it look like the president&#8217;s son would be in as much trouble as President Donald Trump&#8217;s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who just pled guilty to lying about discussions between Trump and Moscow about potentially building a Trump Tower there. Here&#8217;s how NPR categorized the exchange:
<blockquote>
Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2017 that although there had been negotiations surrounding a prospective Trump Tower in Moscow, they concluded without result &#8220;at the end&#8221; of 2014.
&#8220;But not in 2015 or 2016?&#8221; Trump Jr. was asked.
&#8220;Certainly not &#8217;16,&#8221; he said. &#8220;There was never a definitive end to it. It just died of deal fatigue.&#8221;
Trump&#8217;s account contrasts with the new version of events given by Cohen on Thursday in <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181130161841/https:/www.npr.org/2018/11/29/671864979/trump-moscow-real-estate-talks-continued-into-presidential-run-documents-show">a guilty plea in federal court</a>. In that new version, Cohen says the discussions with at least one Russian government official and others in Moscow continued through June 2016, well into Trump&#8217;s presidential campaign.
</blockquote>
But the Federalist&#8217;s Mollie Hemmingway <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/30/npr-blatantly-lies-about-donald-trump-jr-s-2017-senate-testimony/">looked into the testimony</a> and found that if one were to look even just a sentence or two before what NPR shared, one would see Trump Jr. was talking about a different set of negotiations, which also fizzled.
Before we get to that, a little more background. One hundred pages <a href="https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Trump%20Jr%20Transcript_redacted.pdf">before</a> the exchange highlighted by NPR, Trump Jr. responded to another question about the Trump Organization pursuing a development deal with Moscow.
<blockquote>
Q. It&#8217;s been reported that in late 2015 or 2016 when now President Trump was running for office the Trump Organization was pursuing a plan to develop a massive Trump Tower in Moscow. Is that accurate? 
A. Yes.
</blockquote>
Back to the exchange NPR highlighted, which as Hemmingway noted was completely contradicted by what Trump Jr. said earlier in his testimony. Trump Jr. was asked if he knew about the deal to work with Cohen on a Trump Tower in Moscow in 2015. Trump Jr. says he knew his father signed a letter of intent, but that he himself didn&#8217;t know much about it. The senate investigator then asked him if he knew if &#8220;anyone else&#8221; was also looking to work with the Trump Organization to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Here&#8217;s the full exchange, which includes two questions asked just before the exchange NPR cited:
<blockquote>
Q. In this same time frame, 2015 or 2016, when Mr. Sater and Mr. Cohen were exploring a possible deal, do you know if anyone else was also exploring a deal simultaneously with the Trump Organization to build in Moscow? 
A. I don &#8216;t believe so . 
Q. We&#8217;ve discussed the Agalarov family, Emin and his father Aras. Do you know if they were also exploring building a Trump Tower in Moscow? 
A. We had looked at it earlier than that, but it sort of faded away I believe at the end of &#8217;14. 
Q. But not in 2015 or 2016? 
A. Certainly not &#8217;16. There was never a definitive end to it. It just died of deal fatigue.
</blockquote>
Clearly, Trump Jr. was talking about the Agalarov family, and not the deal with Cohen, as NPR reported.
If you still aren&#8217;t convinced, the new question and answer make it clear the discussion is about the Agalarov family.
<blockquote>
Q. How did that deal first come about? 
MR. FUTERFAS: Which, just for clarification? 
MR. PRIVOR: The Agalarovs in 2014.
</blockquote>
It took NPR five hours to delete a tweet from its main account stoking the narrative created by the false story and to add an editor&#8217;s note, which reads:
<blockquote>
Editor&#8217;s note: An earlier version of this report mischaracterized an answer Donald Trump Jr. gave to Senate investigators in 2017 about the prospective projects his family was negotiating with people in Moscow.
The story reported that Trump Jr.&#8217;s response &#8212; that negotiations on one project concluded by the end of 2014 &#8212; contrasted with the version of events as laid out in the guilty plea by Michael Cohen on Thursday. In fact, Trump Jr. and investigators were alluding to a different set of negotiations &#8212; not to a deal that Cohen was reportedly pursuing. Trump Jr. did acknowledge in his testimony that Cohen and another man were exploring a possible deal in Moscow in 2015 or 2016.
Trump Jr. did not address what Cohen has now admitted &#8212; that talks about such a deal continued at least into June 2016, longer than previously known and well into the presidential campaign.
</blockquote>
The article was not retracted, even though its entire premise was incorrect. The title was changed to &#8220;<a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/11/30/672188201/trump-jr-s-2017-testimony-conflicts-with-cohen-s-account-of-russian-talks?utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=npr&amp;utm_term=nprnews&amp;utm_content=2059">Cohen&#8217;s Account Of Russia Talks Raises Questions About Trump Jr. 2017 Testimony</a>,&#8221; even though there are no questions, except for why NPR didn&#8217;t do even a little bit of legwork to make sure it was accurately reporting something.
The body of the article no longer includes the clipped exchange, and has to strain to make Trump Jr. look involved:
<blockquote>
Trump Jr. <a href="https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Trump%20Jr%20Transcript_redacted.pdf">told the Senate Judiciary Committee</a> in September 2017 that he was only &#8220;peripherally aware&#8221; of negotiations that Cohen has admitted to carrying on through June 2016.
Cohen said in his guilty plea that he had briefed Trump&#8217;s family members about his talks, although the court documents don&#8217;t specify who.
Trump Jr. also told Senate investigators that he wasn&#8217;t aware that Cohen had reached out to the press secretary for Vladimir Putin as part of his talks with Moscow about a putative new Trump Tower project there.
</blockquote>
So, the NPR story went from &#8220;Trump Jr. Lied To Congress&#8221; to a media outlet trying to save face by reporting on an exchange that happened a year ago.

NPR Tries, Fails To Prove Donald Trump Jr. Lied To The Senate

Donald Trump Jr.

Fake News

Russia

Cristina King Miranda, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/36082/kavanaugh-accusers-classmate-makes-new-claim-then-ryan-saavedra">who posted on Facebook Tuesday that she&#8217;d heard rumors</a> of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh&#8217;s alleged attack on a classmate, was already backtracking on her claims Wednesday morning. By Wednesday night, she&#8217;d deleted her social media profiles.
Thursday morning, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/09/20/649787076/kavanaugh-accuser-classmate-that-it-happened-or-not-i-have-no-idea?utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=npr&amp;utm_term=nprnews&amp;utm_content=20180920">in an interview with National Public Radio</a>, Miranda admitted that although she felt &#8220;empowered&#8221; to tell her story suggesting firsthand, contemporaneous knowledge of the alleged assault, but as far as whether the alleged assault actually occurred, well, Miranda says, &#8220;That it happened or not, I have no idea.&#8221;
&#8220;That it happened or not, I have no idea,&#8221; Miranda told NPR. &#8220;I can&#8217;t say that it did or didn&#8217;t.&#8221;
That&#8217;s in stark contrast to Miranda&#8217;s statements on social media, where she emphatically claimed, &#8220;The incident DID happen, many of us heard about it in school.&#8221;
Miranda later removed the post, explaining cryptically that the post &#8220;served its purpose,&#8221; and that she &#8220;was not ready&#8221; for the media attention the post garnered &#8212; even though NBC News and other outlets reported Miranda&#8217;s claims as a major break in the Kavanaugh story.
When asked why she bothered to post the claim in the first place, Miranda answered that she was &#8220;empowered.&#8221;
&#8220;In my [Facebook] post, I was empowered and I was sure it probably did [happen],&#8221; Miranda said. &#8220;I had no idea that I would now have to go to the specifics and defend it before 50 cable channels and have my face spread all over MSNBC news and Twitter.&#8221;
That&#8217;s a little confusing. Miranda probably wasn&#8217;t approached or &#8220;empowered&#8221; by any specific individual to author the tweet, so it&#8217;s likely she just felt the need to inject herself into the national conversation without any real reason why she should.
NBC News, which first (and breathlessly) reported on Miranda&#8217;s claims, has now updated their story about her tweet, adding her NPR denial, but the update doesn&#8217;t come, of course, until the fifth paragraph.

Classmate Who Claimed Knowledge Of Kavanaugh Assault Says She Felt ‘Empowered’ To Tell Story, Has ‘No Idea’ If Attack Happened

Brett Kavanaugh

Leaked emails from National Public Radio (NPR) reveal the taxpayer-funded group running interference for the abortion industry by banning the term &#8220;abortionist&#8221; and &#8220;abortion doctor&#8221; to describe the murderous Kermit Gosnell, an abortionist currently serving a life sentence for three counts of first-degree murder and one count of involuntary manslaughter.
When an executive producer for the new film &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/34591/watch-movie-trailer-about-serial-murder-amanda-prestigiacomo">Gosnell: The Trial of America&#8217;s Biggest Serial Killer</a>&#8221; reached out to NPR to purchase a sponsorship for the interview show &#8220;Fresh Air,&#8221; he was told he could not use the term &#8220;abortionist&#8221; to describe Gosnell in the ad, though he could use the term &#8220;doctor,&#8221; emails <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/leaked-npr-emails-dont-call-kermit-gosnell-an-abortion-doctor">obtained</a> by The Daily Beast indicate:
<blockquote>
Sullivan, who was prepared to spend as much as six figures, crafted his ad copy to answer the question you&#8217;re probably asking: Who is Gosnell? The proposed ad was as follows, &#8220;Support for this NPR program comes from the film Gosnell: The Trial of America&#8217;s Biggest Serial Killer. The film is the true story of abortionist Kermit Gosnell. A story the mainstream media tried to cover up because it reveals the truth about abortion.&#8221;
No dice. According to e-mails provided to The Daily Beast, NPR&#8217;s representative ran it up the legal flagpole and came back with a disappointing answer. In addition to other minor tweaks to the wording, their response stated, &#8220;The word &#8216;abortionist&#8217; will also need to be changed to the neutral word &#8216;doctor.'&#8221;
</blockquote>
But using the ambiguous term &#8220;doctor&#8221; widely misdirects from the function of the film, as NPR surely understands. So Sullivan pushed back, asking if he could use the much more accurate term &#8220;abortion doctor.&#8221;
NPR, amazingly, said no.
The modified ad, as provided by NPR Senior Director of Media Relations Isabel Lara, would say: &#8220;Hat Tip Distribution, with the film &#8216;Gosnell: The Trial of America&#8217;s Biggest Serial Killer,&#8217; based on the true story of Philadelphia doctor Kermit Gosnell. Out Friday.&#8221;
Not even a mention of abortion.
&#8220;Our movie isn&#8217;t about a podiatrist or a cardiologist or a proctologist,&#8221; argued &#8220;Gosnell&#8221; producer Phelim McAleer. &#8220;It&#8217;s specifically about a doctor who performs abortions.&#8221;
&#8220;Sponsor credits that run on NPR are required to be value neutral to comply with FCC requirements and to avoid suggesting bias in NPR&#8217;s journalism,&#8221; Lara reasoned to The Daily Beast.
This is nonsense. NPR has used the term &#8220;abortion doctor&#8221; repeatedly in the past when reporting on the murder of an &#8220;abortion doctor.&#8221; And when the Gosnell story first hit the uninterested media, a buried headline with the term &#8220;abortion doctor&#8221; describing Gosnell sneaked by the media group.
So why can&#8217;t Gosnell, an abortionist, be described as an abortionist? The answer is obvious: to protect the abortion industry. Abortion can in no way be associated with &#8220;Gosnell&#8221; the movie &#8212; a brutally honest uncovering of abortionist Gosnell&#8217;s &#8220;House of Horrors.&#8221; This would expose to the world what abortion and late-term abortion actually is.
As noted by The Daily Beast, the efforts to silence or obfuscate the premise of &#8220;Gosnell&#8221; the film has been heavy- handed. &#8220;Before trying to market the movie, the filmmakers encountered similar obstacles preventing them from crowdfunding via Kickstarter. Then, they had a hard time finding a distributor. And long before a film existed, the actual crime itself, the event on which the film is based, was largely under-covered,&#8221; the outlet reports.
When the Gosnell story broke in 2013, the media were essentially nowhere to be found. Even liberal pundit Kirsten Powers admitted this much in a USA Today column: &#8220;Infant beheadings. Severed baby feet in jars. A child screaming after it was delivered alive during an abortion procedure. Haven&#8217;t heard about these sickening accusations? It&#8217;s not your fault,&#8221; she wrote. &#8220;Since the murder trial of Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell began March 18, there has been precious little coverage of the case that should be on every news show and front page.&#8221;
&#8220;Gosnell&#8221; producer Ann McElhinney noted that NPR receives taxpayer funds and thus has &#8220;a duty to push aside their own prejudices and opinions and apply fair and consistent standards and allow paid advertising even if the ads are promoting something they would rather remain hidden from their listeners.&#8221;
&#8220;Perhaps Congress should look into the matter. If they&#8217;re so well-funded that they&#8217;re turning away advertisers like us, maybe they don&#8217;t need government subsidies anymore,&#8221; said McAleer.
To find out more about the film, <a href="http://www.gosnellmovie.com/">click here</a>.

SHOCKER: Leaked NPR Emails Reveal Coordinated Effort To Cover For Abortion Industry

Gosnell

On Tuesday, Ari Fleischer, former White House Press Secretary under President George W. Bush, participated in the new favorite pastime of all &#8220;former&#8221; everythings everywhere: trolling political, ideological or personal foes on Twitter. His target: National Public Radio, which presents itself as a source of unbiased, informative reporting and analysis, but increasingly just can&#8217;t help but let its leftward political leanings show.
As usual, the Twitter watchdogs over at <a href="https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2018/06/19/ari-fleischer-npr-seems-to-have-left-a-word-out-of-its-tweet-about-immigrant-families/">Twitchy</a> caught the moment and some of the fallout. Here is the tweet from NPR that prompted Fleischer to weigh in:
<blockquote>
On the policy of separating immigrant families, here&#8217;s what we know regarding: 
-What happens when families are separated? 
-Where do the children go? 
-Can parents who&#8217;re prosecuted be reunited with their kids? 
-What was the policy under President Obama?
</blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-cards="hidden" data-lang="en">
On the policy of separating immigrant families, here&#8217;s what we know regarding: 
-What happens when families are separated? 
-Where do the children go? 
-Can parents who&#8217;re prosecuted be reunited with their kids? 
-What was the policy under President Obama?<a href="https://t.co/o4O041yYDH">https://t.co/o4O041yYDH</a>
&#8212; NPR (@NPR) <a href="https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1009179766996525056?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 19, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
Fleischer couldn&#8217;t let the dishonest tweet go unchallenged:
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
This headline is missing the word &#8220;illegal&#8221; in front of the word &#8220;immigrant&#8221;. I&#8217;m sure it was just an oversight. <a href="https://t.co/rbosXh0NRc">https://t.co/rbosXh0NRc</a>
&#8212; Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) <a href="https://twitter.com/AriFleischer/status/1009181659495723008?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 19, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
Fleischer wasn&#8217;t the only one who noticed the glaring omission. In fact, the response to NPR&#8217;s tweet online was overwhelmingly negative. Here are some highlights from the first dozen or so responses, most of which are far less gracious than Fleischer&#8217;s:
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
&#8211; why do liberals promote illegal entry thus placing these kids at risk? &#8211; why are liberals evil enough to use these kids as pawns? &#8211; why didn&#8217;t liberals make any attempt at making a LEGAL entry solution? What isn&#8217;t a question is why liberals were voted out of everything
&#8212; nunya (@nunyabesniz) <a href="https://twitter.com/nunyabesniz/status/1009181230095568897?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 19, 2018</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
I don&#8217;t support illegal immigration, but I do support treating people with kindness and as human beings. What&#8217;s happening at the border is just cruel.
&#8212; kate turner (@kathrynjt) <a href="https://twitter.com/kathrynjt/status/1009183234024968193?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 19, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
In addition, the people that the left are saying are being placed in cages is BS. This is a staged event by Telemundo. Look at the crews hat in the third picture. Look at the little kid in all three pictures. <a href="https://t.co/Yii41JroO9">pic.twitter.com/Yii41JroO9</a>
&#8212; GalRN (@rn_gal) <a href="https://twitter.com/rn_gal/status/1009185791837462533?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 19, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Key word&#8230; ILLEGALS
&#8212; Borderlander22 (@Borderlander109) <a href="https://twitter.com/Borderlander109/status/1009184243875008512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 19, 2018</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
You&#8217;re advocating on the behalf of the cartels, coyotes and the parents that are exploiting their children as a legal shield. Mexico, US and Canada will all except an asylum application at a legal crossing or consulate office, and that doesn&#8217;t endanger children.
&#8212; Kev (@Kevgenus) <a href="https://twitter.com/Kevgenus/status/1009183320368824320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 19, 2018</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Defund <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NPR?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NPR</a>
&#8212; Stringfellow 3 (@stringfellowfr4) <a href="https://twitter.com/stringfellowfr4/status/1009192442715889670?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 19, 2018</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
*Illegal immigrant.<a href="https://t.co/3zB6b5jP61">https://t.co/3zB6b5jP61</a>
&#8212; MegMurph (@AllIn4DJT) <a href="https://twitter.com/AllIn4DJT/status/1009182988498817030?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 19, 2018</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Wrong. ILLEGAL ALIEN. There is no immigrant &amp; there is no such thing as illegal immigrant. ALL immigrants are legal &amp; fully documented. Only ILLEGAL ALIENS are undocumented &amp; are not immigrants at all.
&#8212; John Boy (@GovCorrupted) <a href="https://twitter.com/GovCorrupted/status/1009244948988821505?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 20, 2018</a></blockquote>
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<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Illegal alien families
&#8212; Brostarosta (@brostamimd) <a href="https://twitter.com/brostamimd/status/1009188645301940224?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 19, 2018</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
I thought that NPR was more non-biased than most news orgs. Call it correctly NPR. I&#8217;m going to have to rethink my $500/yr donation if I keep hearing this alt right spin regurgitation.
&#8212; Mike.Lane (@MikeLan43299737) <a href="https://twitter.com/MikeLan43299737/status/1009237384343347200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 20, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/31980/media-are-lying-about-trump-separating-illegal-ben-shapiro">SHAPIRO: The Media Are Lying About Trump Separating Illegal Immigrant Families. Here&#8217;s The Truth.</a>

NPR Hammered Online For Dishonest Immigration Tweet; Former WH Press Sec Joins In

Illegal Immigration

At the close of 2017, no less than seven prominent male hosts and editors of influential government-sponsored radio and television shows are out of work amid claims of sexual harassment.
According to their accusers, the alleged Malevolent Seven are powerful pervs and creeps who&#8217;ve been running wild at NPR and PBS for decades, sponsored and subsidized by taxpayers and corporate donors.
In August, award-winning broadcast and radio host John Hockenberry departed from his public radio program &#8220;The Takeaway&#8221; on New York City&#8217;s NPR affiliate, which garnered a peak audience of nearly 3 million weekly listeners on more than 270 stations. Female producers and interns accused him of harassment and bullying before and after he deployed his golden parachute. Hockenberry says he&#8217;s &#8220;horrified&#8221; by the allegations.
In October, NPR&#8217;s former editorial director and senior vice president of news, Michael Oreskes, was ousted from his perch after several women claimed he forcibly kissed them in the 1990s while seeking jobs at his previous employer, The New York Times.
That same month, NPR launched an investigation of veteran Minnesota Public Radio host Garrison Keillor, creator of &#8220;A Prairie Home Companion.&#8221; The liberal icon penned a column defending fellow sexual harassment suspect Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., in late November; the next day, NPR fired him for inappropriate behavior involving at least one female co-worker. Keillor says the only incident he recalls involves inadvertently slipping his hand up the bare back of a &#8220;friend.&#8221;
Also on the Thanksgiving holiday chopping block: PBS fixture and CBS morning news star Charlie Rose, who reportedly groped, grabbed, phone-harassed and exposed himself to upwards of eight female employees, interns and job applicants dating back to the 1990s.
At the end of November, NPR canned Chief News Editor David Sweeney following an internal review after four of the public radio network&#8217;s female employees lodged formal complaints involving unwanted kisses, attention and gifts.
In mid-December, Boston-based Tom Ashbrook, host of NPR&#8217;s &#8220;On Point&#8221; live morning show broadcast on 290 NPR affiliates stations for the past 16 years, was suspended after young women alleged he gave &#8220;creepy&#8221; sex talks, hugs and back rubs in the studio. Ashbrook says he was &#8220;stunned&#8221; to learn of the charges.
And last week, PBS suspended weeknight host Tavis Smiley, whose interview show airs in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Southern California and nationwide &#8212; with major corporate underwriting from Walmart. He also hosted a podcast on NPR. Smiley has waged an aggressive campaign defending himself against his employer&#8217;s witch hunt &#8220;gone too far.&#8221;
I can&#8217;t tell you who&#8217;s lying and who&#8217;s telling the truth, but I know with absolute certitude that all seven of these men are left-leaning journalists and pundits encrusted in the public broadcasting establishment.
This is a golden opportunity for President Donald Trump to drain the elitist media swamps and inject true intellectual diversity in the newsrooms of NPR and PBS. Liberal bias at these Beltway institutions is notorious &#8212; from NPR legal analyst Nina Totenberg wishing AIDS upon Sen. Jesse Helms and his grandchildren as &#8220;retributive justice,&#8221; to &#8220;Sesame Street&#8217;s&#8221; Oscar the Grouch mocking Fox News on PBS, to top NPR executives slamming the tea party movement as &#8220;scary&#8221; and &#8220;racist&#8221; to the undercover journalists of Project Veritas.
If pushover Republicans can&#8217;t bring themselves to fully defund NPR and PBS, can&#8217;t they at least step up and advocate for hosts and editors who keep their hands to themselves and refrain from insulting the people in flyover country who keep their rackets afloat?
What better time, in the wake of liberal hypocrisy and sexual harassment self-implosions, to bring real balance to government-sponsored programming?
So far, the moment is being squandered. The replacements announced for Charlie Rose on PBS are BBC correspondent Katty Kay and former CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour.
That&#8217;s right. Two liberal British female journalists.
Come on, Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Do better, D.C.
All things considered, we could use a little more &#8220;America First&#8221; and a little less globaloney and groupthink from NPR and PBS. I can think of a conservative female journalist or 12 up to the task.
Michelle Malkin is host of &#8220;Michelle Malkin Investigates&#8221; on CRTV.com. Her email address is writemalkin@gmail.com. To find out more about Michelle Malkin and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2017 CREATORS.COM

MALKIN: Time For Trump Makeover Of Lib NPR And PBS

Charlie Rose

Continuing a day-long streak of sexual harassment-related firings Wednesday,<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/28/567026934/npr-chief-news-editor-departs-in-wake-of-harassment-allegations?utm_campaign=storyshare&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_medium=social"> National Public Radio announced</a> that it has parted ways with its chief news editor after several of his female colleagues accused him of inappropriate behavior.
Three female journalists alleged that David Sweeney gave them unwanted attention. One claimed Sweeney gave her inappropriate gifts and made her feel &#8220;uncomfortable&#8221;; two others said that Sweeney kissed them without provocation.
NPR has been investigating the allegations against Sweeney for several weeks &#8212; all three claims emerged around the same time as claims against Harvey Weinstein first hit headlines &#8212; but made the decision to drop Sweeney from the media company&#8217;s news program only this week.
In an email to staff, NPR&#8217;s senior vice president of news, Christ Turpin, said that the company now wants to &#8220;move forward.&#8221;
&#8220;David Sweeney is no longer on staff,&#8221; Turin said. &#8220;This is a difficult time for our newsroom and I&#8217;m committed to supporting all of you as we move forward. I know you appreciate that there are some questions I cannot answer in keeping with our practice to not comment on personnel issues, but I will do my best to address those I can.&#8221;
Senior managing editor Edith Chapin will take over Sweeney&#8217;s role.
The news comes on a day where left-leaning media &#8212; and especially NPR &#8212; has been besieged by claims of sexual harassment.
NBC News correspondent and Today Show host Matt Lauer was fired Wednesday morning, apparently without a word to his colleagues, for an alleged incident that happened during the Rio summer Olympics (with more victims, allegedly, ready to come forward). NPR also booted one of its most famous names, Garrison Keillor, after the longtime Prairie Home Companion host was accused of touching a coworker inappropriately.
Details of the claim against Keillor have not been made public, but were serious enough to warrant removing &#8220;Prairie Home Companion&#8221; from NPR&#8217;s archives.

Tough Day: NPR Says It Fired Its Chief News Editor After Claims Of Sexual Harassment

Sexual Harassment

On Wednesday, Garrison Keillor, the ostensibly genial but fiercely leftist host of National Public Radio&#8217;s &#8220;Prairie Home Companion,&#8221; which he hosted for 42 years from 1974 to 2016, announced he had been fired by NPR over allegations of inappropriate behavior
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) &#8212; Garrison Keillor says he&#8217;s been fired by Minnesota Public Radio over allegations of inappropriate behavior.
&#8212; Steve Peoples (@sppeoples) <a href="https://twitter.com/sppeoples/status/935922048706207744?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 29, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
Although Keillor retired last year from &#8220;Prairie Home Companion,&#8221; he <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/garrison-keillor-fired-alleged-improper-behavior-1062460?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_source=t.co&amp;utm_medium=referral">still produced </a>&#8220;The Writer&#8217;s Almanac&#8221; for syndication for NPR. He followed up after announcing that he had been fired from Minnesota Public Radio by stating he was fired over &#8220;a story that I think is more interesting and more complicated than the version MPR heard.&#8221;
Keillor&#8217;s apparent firing has one of the most ironically hilarious moments in recent media history: less than 24 hours before, he posted an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/al-franken-should-resign-thats-absurd/2017/11/28/d33e2d8a-d482-11e7-a986-d0a9770d9a3e_story.html?utm_term=.ee63659512e6">op-ed in The Washington Post</a> titled, &#8220;Al Franken should resign? That&#8217;s absurd.&#8221; In Keillor&#8217;s piece, he viciously attacked President Trump, writing:
<blockquote>
The greatest absurdity of our time is You Know Whom, which goes without saying but I will anyway. What his election showed is that a considerable number of people, in order to demonstrate their frustration with the world as it is, are willing to drive their car, with their children in the backseat, over a cliff, smash the radiator, bust an axle, and walk away feeling good about themselves. No other president in modern times has been held in contempt by a preponderance of people from the moment he said, &#8220;So help me, God.&#8221; The playboy blather, the smirk of privilege, the stunning contempt for factual truth &#8212; how can the country come together when the president has nothing in common with 98 percent of the rest of us?
</blockquote>
The playboy blather? Hmm.
Keillor then truculently defended Franken, writing that talk of Franken resigning from the Senate is &#8220;pure absurdity&#8221;:
<blockquote>
And then there is Sen. Al Franken. He did USO tours overseas when he was in the comedy biz. He did it from deep in his heart, out of patriotism, and the show he did was broad comedy of a sort that goes back to the Middle Ages. Shakespeare used those jokes now and then and so did Bob Hope and Joey Heatherton when they entertained the troops. If you thought that Al stood outdoors at bases in Iraq and Afghanistan and told stories about small-town life in the Midwest, you were wrong. Miss Tweeden knew what the game was and played her role and on the flight home, in a spirit of low comedy, Al ogled her and pretended to grab her and a picture was taken. Eleven years later, a talk show host in L.A., she goes public with her embarrassment, and there is talk of resignation. This is pure absurdity and the atrocity it leads to is a code of public deadliness. No kidding.
</blockquote>
Back in August 2016, when Trump was trailing badly in the polls against Hillary Clinton, Keillor <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-donald-trump-losing-garrison-keillor-20160831-story.html">wrote</a>:
<blockquote>
You are in the old tradition of locker room ranting and big honkers in the steam room, sitting naked, talking man talk, griping about the goons and ginks and lousy workmanship and the uppity broads and the great lays and how you vanquished your enemies at the bank. Profanity is your natural language and vulgar words so as not to offend the Christers but the fans can still hear it and that&#8217;s something they love about you.
</blockquote>
Doubling down, Keillor <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-manafort-donald-trump-tweets-20171030-story.html">wrote</a> in late October 2017:
<blockquote>
Donald Trump is done. He couldn&#8217;t get elected dogcatcher in New York, his hometown. I was very, very nice about it. Very nice. But New Yorkers love dogs and he does not. There are 14 recorded instances of him kicking small dogs, and I have documentary proof of all but two of them. Plus many other instances of him running around grabbing women&#8217;s cats. Knocked on the door, grabbed the cat, walked away. Just to show that a famous rich guy could get away with it. Where is the apology?
</blockquote>
Good question for Keillor the next time he looks in the mirror.

PBS Leftist Garrison Keillor Reportedly Fired For ‘Inappropriate Behavior’

Garrison Keillor

Hillary Clinton told NPR&#8217;s Terry Gross Monday that she still hasn&#8217;t fully ruled out questioning Trump&#8217;s legitimacy as President &#8212; but she&#8217;ll wait to see what Robert Mueller uncovers in his investigation into the Trump campaign&#8217;s ties to Russian officials.
The failed Democratic presidential nominee is still on tour promoting her book, What Happened (okay, it&#8217;s been, like, a week, but it feels like she&#8217;s been everywhere), and made a pit stop to chat with NPR&#8217;s Fresh Air about her post-election emotional recovery.
But Clinton was reticent to say that she&#8217;s fully come to terms with her loss, and<a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/09/18/clinton_would_not_rule_out_questioning_legitimacy_of_election_if_deep_russia_interference_confirmed.html"> appeared to claim she&#8217;s got something in her back pocket</a> for when it&#8217;s finally revealed the Russians messed with the election.
&#8220;As more and more information comes out about the depth of Russia&#8217;s interference in the election, do you think, at some point, that it would be legitimate to challenge the legitimacy of the election?&#8221; asked Gross.
&#8220;Let me just put it this way, if I had lost the popular vote but won the electoral college and in my first day as president the intelligence community came to me and said, &#8216;The Russians influenced the election,&#8217; I would&#8217;ve never stood for it,&#8221; Clinton said. &#8220;Even though it might&#8217;ve advantaged me, I would&#8217;ve said, &#8216;We&#8217;ve got to get to the bottom of this.&#8217; I would&#8217;ve set up an independent commission with subpoena power and everything else.&#8221;
Clinton says she&#8217;s sure Russians were involved in the election outcome because then-candidate Donald Trump jokingly asked the hackers who&#8217;d broken into the DNC&#8217;s unprotected server, if they&#8217;d be able to recover the 33,000 missing emails Clinton had deleted off her own private email server, kept in the bathroom of her Chappaqua home.
&#8220;There&#8217;s no doubt they influenced the election,&#8221; Clinton said. &#8220;We know more about how they did that.&#8221;
When Gross pressed Clinton on whether that meant Clinton could still challenge Trump&#8217;s win, Clinton was less cagey.
<blockquote>
NPR: I want to get back to the question, would you completely rule out questioning the legitimacy of this election if we learn that the Russian interference in the election is even deeper than we know now?
CLINTON: No. I would not. I would say &#8212;
NPR: You&#8217;re not going to rule it out.
CLINTON: No, I wouldn&#8217;t rule it out.
</blockquote>
When asked whether she thought there&#8217;d be any available apparatus for overturning a vote that happened nearly a year ago, Clinton said she wasn&#8217;t sure, but that Kenya just overturned their election, and that transition went smoothly. Clinton then launched into a bizarre, Beautiful Mind-style connect-the-dots conspiracy, tying the Mercer family, who gave a fortune to Trump in the election, to the overturned Kenyan contest, and then to Brexit.
She admitted, though, that her chance has probably come and gone and that, instead, she&#8217;d like to work to abolish the Electoral College, because while she dominated the vote on the coasts, nominal Rust Belt and flyover country states still stubbornly demand to have a say in presidential elections.

Hillary Clinton Says She Might Still Challenge Trump’s Legitimacy As President

Hillary Clinton

The death match between &#8220;<a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/donald-trump-liar-in-chief-w475917">Liar in Chief</a>&#8221; Donald Trump and the &#8220;<a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/832708293516632065?lang=en">FAKE NEWS</a>&#8221; media added another few brutal rounds last week involving a bloody <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/18300/morning-joes-facelift-fight-trump-pays-big-time-james-barrett">&#8220;facelift&#8221; tweet</a>, Trump <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/18259/thug-journalism-cnn-threatens-reveal-identity-ben-shapiro">&#8220;body-slamming&#8221; CNN</a>, and blatantly false reports on a &#8220;<a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/18352/polish-president-slams-fake-news-report-about-his-james-barrett">dissed handshake</a>.&#8221; So who&#8217;s winning, or perhaps more appropriately, who&#8217;s losing the war? A recent Marist poll provides an answer Trump&#8217;s nemesis is not going to appreciate.
In what one PBS NewsHour guest described as a &#8220;horrible trend,&#8221; a recent <a href="http://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/misc/usapolls/us170621_PBS_NPR/NPR_PBS%20NewsHour_Marist%20Poll_National%20Nature%20of%20the%20Sample%20and%20Tables_Democracy_Trust_July%202017.pdf#page=3">NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll</a> found that more Americans trust the Trump administration than they do the establishment media. While trust in both was quite poor, 7% more respondents said they put a &#8220;good amount&#8221; or &#8220;great deal&#8221; of trust in the Trump administration (37%) than said the same of the media (30%). Asked about their trust in polls, Americans also rated them slightly below Trump at 35%.
The partisan divide on trust in Trump goes about how you&#8217;d expect, with a vast majority of Trump supporters and Republicans expressing trust in Trump (86% and 84%, respectively) and most Democrats distrusting him (90% saying they either have &#8220;not very much&#8221; trust in his administration or &#8220;none at all&#8221;). Only 28% of Independents said they trust the administration.
But the most eye-opening numbers involve trust in the media: Only 56% of Democrats have a &#8220;good amount&#8221; or &#8220;great deal&#8221; trust in the media, while 42% said they don&#8217;t have very much or any at all. Republicans expressed even less trust in the Fourth Estate, only 9% saying they trusted it; a stunning 91% said they did not trust the media. Only 28% of Independents said they trust the media; more than two-thirds, 70%, said they did not trust the media. Oof.
<a href="http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/matthew-balan/2017/07/06/pbs-poll-more-americans-trust-trump-media-horrible-trend">Newsbusters</a> highlighted NPR&#8217;s rather grim coverage of their deflating poll on Monday&#8217;s episode of NewsHour, which included a few gems from host Judy Woodruff and guests Stuart Rothenberg and Tamara Keith. After Woodruff pointed to the poll as more evidence that &#8220;the media may be a good whipping boy,&#8221; Rothenberg noted the precipitous decline in the media since the 1970s, decrying it as a &#8220;horrible trend,&#8221; one that Keith said &#8220;puts America at risk.&#8221;
<blockquote>
WOODRUFF: I do want to raise, in our last few minutes, this new CNN &#8212; I&#8217;m sorry. I had CNN on the brain from the video &#8212; the new poll that the NewsHour and NPR did in conjunction with Marist, where one of the things we looked at was what Stu &#8212; exactly what you mentioned &#8212; high distrust of the news media. 
More than two-thirds of Americans &#8212; they were asked, what do you think about trust in institutions? And here it is: 37%, a good deal or a great amount of trust in the Trump administration; 30% &#8212; even less &#8212; trust in the news, in the media. And twenty [nine], about on the same par as trust in Congress. And you go on to see trust in the intelligence community, twice that much, 60%, and in the courts, 60%.
But the bottom line here, Stu, is that the media may be a good whipping boy.
</blockquote>
Rothenberg replied that &#8220;right now, nobody trusts politicians or people covering politicians. &#8230; It&#8217;s a horrible trend. I look back to Gallup numbers in the early 1970s, and those of us in the media are regarded much worse than we were back then. But it&#8217;s been occurring over the past couple of decades.&#8221;
Keith then chimed by citing Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, who faulted the president for &#8220;trying to weaponize distrust,&#8221; and said, &#8220;We are at risk of getting to a place where we don&#8217;t have a shared set of public facts. A republic will not work if we don&#8217;t have shared facts.&#8221;
&#8220;These numbers are part of a very long trend of institutions losing trust from the American people; and that makes &#8212; puts America at risk,&#8221; said Keith.
H/T <a href="http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/matthew-balan/2017/07/06/pbs-poll-more-americans-trust-trump-media-horrible-trend">Newsbusters</a>, <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2017/07/07/marist-people-trust-trump-administration-media/">HotAir</a>.

Who’s Winning The Trump-Media War? The Media’s NOT Going To Like This New Poll.

On Monday, neither James Clapper nor Sally Yates could provide any evidence of &#8220;collusion&#8221; between President Donald Trump&#8217;s political team and the Russian government when invited to do so by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

Both Clapper and Yates, former Director of National Intelligence and former acting Attorney General, respectively, were <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?427577-1/white-house-warned-general-flynn-compromised">invited to testify</a> before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime &amp; Terrorism, ostensibly to examine allegations of &#8220;Russian interference&#8221; in 2016&#8217;s presidential election.

Asked by Graham to offer evidence of &#8220;improper contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials,&#8221; both Clapper and Yates provided nothing.

In a <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/14102/obamas-former-dni-clapper-no-wiretapping-trump-robert-kraychik">March interview</a> on NBC&#8217;s Meet the Press, Clapper could not provide any evidence of &#8220;collusion&#8221; between Trump&#8217;s presidential campaign and the Russian state when invited to do so by Chuck Todd:

<blockquote>
There was no evidence [of] collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians.
</blockquote>
Since October of 2016, Democrats and their news media allies (CNN, The New York Times, MNSBC, The Washington Post, NPR, et al) have pushed an innuendo-laden narrative of 2016&#8217;s presidential election having been compromised by foreign interference. Without evidence, the narrative&#8217;s proponents advance several interconnected assertions: (1) Americans were duped by &#8220;fake news&#8221; produced by the Russian state and spread across networks such as Facebook and Twitter for the purpose of politically damaging Hilary Clinton; (2) The Russian state directed illegal seizure of email records from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton loyalist John Podesta, subsequently releasing the stolen emails via WikiLeaks to politically damage Hillary Clinton; (3) Donald Trump and his political associates likely conspired with the Russian state during last year&#8217;s presidential election season in order to defeat Hillary Clinton.

<img alt height="607" src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/james_clapper_sally_yates_1.jpg" width="780" />
WASHINGTON, DC &#8211; MAY 8: Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates , right, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, left, listen to opening statements before their testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 election, on May, 08, 2017 in Washington, DC.

Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k">Twitter</a>.
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james_clapper_sally_yates_1

WATCH: Clapper/Yates Have ZERO Evidence Of  Trump-Russia ‘Collusion’

Barack Obama

Democratic National Committee

James Clapper

John Podesta

Lindsey Graham

Since January, political and media observers have been inundated with a narrative of consensus across the nation&#8217;s federal intelligence apparatus regarding a storyline of the Russian government&#8217;s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/russian-election-hacking">Russian hacking in the U.S. election</a>, essentially undermining the legitimacy of President Donald Trump&#8217;s administration by framing the president as a benefactor of a political subversion operation directed by a foreign adversary. Proponents of the narrative often frame Trump and his political allies as co-conspirators with the Russian state.

This narrative and storyline are largely built on a <a href="http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf">declassified report</a> publicly published on January 6, in the Obama administration&#8217;s final days. Entitled, &#8220;Background to &#8216;Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections&#8217;: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution,&#8221; the report was produced by three intelligence bureaucracies. Left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media outlets such as CNN, The New York Times (NYT), and NPR, however, repeatedly and falsely claim the report reflects consensus across the entirety of the federal government&#8217;s &#8220;seventeen intelligence agencies.&#8221;

During a <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?427577-1/white-house-warned-general-flynn-compromised&amp;live">Sunday hearing</a> held by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime &amp; Terrorism, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made a point to correct the false record made ubiquitous by left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media. He specifically stated that the intelligence report was published by three intelligence bureaucracies, not seventeen.

The January report, jointly produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Intelligence Council (NSC), drew conclusions from intelligence it claimed was provided by the CIA, FBI, and NSA.

Left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media outlets continue to repeat the false claim that the report was a product of consensus across &#8220;all seventeen components of the intelligence community.&#8221;

CNN has repeatedly pushed the false claim that &#8220;seventeen intelligence agencies&#8221; corroborated the narrative. View an example below from a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/03/politics/donald-trump-intelligence-briefing-russian-hack-delay/">January 4th article</a> composed by four of its reporters, including its two most senior national security correspondents.

<img alt height="111" src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/cnn1-2.jpg" width="706" />

The NYT similarly parroted the falsehood of consensus across the nation&#8217;s &#8220;17 federal intelligence agencies,&#8221; incorrectly framing Clapper&#8217;s statement as reflective of unanimity of perspective across the federal intelligence apparatus. View an example below from <a href="https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/15/opinion/to-understand-trump-learn-russian.html">an article</a> published last December making the false claim.

<img alt height="138" src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/nyt1_0.jpg" width="599" />

NPR similarly repeated the falsehood in <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/01/05/508355408/intelligence-chiefs-stand-more-resolutely-behind-finding-of-russia-election-hack">an article</a> originally published on January 5 and subsequently updated; claiming that the joint DNI/NSC report was released by &#8220;17 intelligence agencies.&#8221; View its false claim below.

<img alt height="98" src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/npr1.jpg" width="625" />

In October of last year, PolitiFact <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/19/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-blames-russia-putin-wikileaks-rele/">published a false &#8220;fact-check&#8221;</a> of Hillary Clinton&#8217;s repetition of the claim to further the narrative of what the NYT has described as &#8220;Russian Election Hacking.&#8221; View its fraudulent analysis below.

<img alt height="221" src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/politifact.jpg" width="759" />

Reuters deployed nuance in order to maintain technical accuracy while echoing the false narrative via innuendo, noting that the DNI &#8220;oversees&#8221; what it says are the federal government&#8217;s &#8220;17 intelligence agencies;&#8221; view it below.

<img alt height="83" src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/reuters1.jpg" width="703" />

These news media outlets all present themselves as politically objective and non-partisan in their conduct.

Clapper provided no evidence to corroborate his assessments of an &#8220;influence campaign&#8221; directed by the Russian state to subvert last year&#8217;s presidential election, including claims that the Russian government has illegally obtained email records from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton loyalist John Podesta. Wikileaks, he added, obtained the emails from the Russian government.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Clapper, &#8220;directed an influence campaign to erode the faith and confidence of the American people in our presidential election process. &#8230; He did so to demean Secretary Clinton [and] sought to advantage Mr. Trump.&#8221; No comments were offered by any Democrat or Republican senators regarding efforts to erode Americans&#8217; faith and confidence in the presidential election process driven by left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media. Similarly ignored by all attendant senators were efforts made by left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media outlets to demean Trump and advantage Clinton.


Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k">Twitter</a>.
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