Way back in January, when Democrats only cared about removing President Donald Trump from office, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/while-democrats-pushed-impeachment-one-republican-senator-sounded-alarm-on-coronavirus">sounding the alarm</a> on the coronavirus, which at that time appeared contained to China.
Cotton kept asking questions about whether China was telling the truth about how the coronavirus outbreak originated.
“We don’t know where it originated, and we have to get to the bottom of that,” Cotton said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” back in mid-February “We also know that just a few miles away from that food market is China’s only biosafety level 4 super laboratory that researches human infectious diseases.”
Cotton went on to acknowledge that the U.S. needs more information about how the disease originated in China.
“Now, we don’t have evidence that this disease originated there, but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says,” Cotton said. “And China right now is not giving any evidence on that question at all.”
The Washington Post and other media outlets “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/media-claims-tom-cotton-coronavirus-claims-debunked-fail-to-debunk-what-he-actually-said">fact checked</a>” Cotton’s statements, except they fact checked something Cotton never said. The Post’s fact check consisted of talking to a chemical biology professor at Rutgers University who said, “There’s absolutely nothing in the genome sequence of this virus that indicates the virus was engineered.”
Another professor said it was “highly unlikely” the virus infected the general population due to an accident at China’s super lab, but then also said it was wrong to suggest China intentionally released the disease – again, something Cotton didn’t say.
Cotton responded to the “fact checkers” by saying he didn’t say the coronavirus was bioengineered. He then listed four hypotheses – not theories – about how the virus originated and again said China needed to provide more information. The four hypotheses were: 1) The virus came from natural causes, 2) it was accidentally released from the lab, 3) it was bio-engineered and accidentally released, and 4) it was bio-engineered and deliberately released. He said the third and fourth hypotheses were the least likely. He also listed these after so-called fact checkers claimed he suggested China deliberately released a bioweapon into the world.
Now, in early April, Post columnist David Ignatius <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-did-covid-19-begin-its-initial-origin-story-is-shaky/2020/04/02/1475d488-7521-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html">begrudgingly accepts</a> that maybe Cotton was right to suggest the coronavirus was accidentally released from the lab that studies the coronavirus. Of course, Ignatius couldn’t say Cotton was right, and instead downplayed Cotton’s early talk of an accidental release by claiming “Cotton’s earlier loose talk about bioweapons set off a furor, back when he first raised it in late January and called the outbreak ‘<a href="https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2020/jan/31/cotton-steps-away-from-trial-to-deal-wi/?news">worse than Chernobyl</a>.’”
Ignatius also worked in a dig at President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for referring to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” and “Wuhan virus,” even though major media outlets – <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/07/what-iowa-disaster-wuhan-virus-have-common/">including the Post</a> – were using those terms until the Chinese Communist Party said it was racist to use them.
Ignatius then said “China dished wild, irresponsible allegations of its own,” even though he provided no evidence the U.S. also dished “wild, irresponsible allegations.”
Still, Ignatius finally admitted that “the initial ‘origin story’ — that the virus was spread by people who ate contaminated animals at the <a href="https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/wuhans-huanan-seafood-market-may-not-be-ground-zero-of-the-covid19-pandemic/">Huanan Seafood Market</a> in Wuhan — is shaky.” He then spoke to the same Rutgers professor from the Post’s earlier fact check who now acknowledged that “the first human infection could have occurred as a natural accident.”
More from Ignatius:
<blockquote>Ebright described a December video from the Wuhan CDC that shows staffers “collecting bat coronaviruses with inadequate [personal protective equipment] and unsafe operational practices.” Separately, I reviewed two Chinese articles, from 2017 and 2019, describing the heroics of Wuhan CDC researcher Tian Junhua, who while capturing bats in a cave “forgot to take protective measures” so that “bat urine dripped from the top of his head like raindrops.”
And then there’s the Chinese study that was curiously withdrawn. In February, a site called ResearchGate published a brief article by Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao from Guangzhou’s South China University of Technology. “In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety level may need to be reinforced in high risk biohazardous laboratories,” the <a href="https://img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/114720192-5eb8307f-017c-4075-a697-348628da0204.pdf">article </a>concluded. Botao Xiao <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-epidemic-draws-scrutiny-to-labs-handling-deadly-pathogens-11583349777">told </a>the Wall Street Journal in February that he had withdrawn the paper because it “was not supported by direct proofs.”</blockquote>
Yet the Post refused to accept Cotton may have been right to suggest the virus came from that lab that was just down the street from the epicenter of the virus. Instead it used the opportunity to paint the Arkansas senator as a conspiracy theorist.

Tom Cotton

Washington Post Now Admits Maybe Tom Cotton Was Right To Suspect Coronavirus Outbreak Originated in Chinese Lab

Coronavirus

Media Bias

Washington Post

A new analysis from Washington Post Beijing bureau chief Anna Fifield suggests that the real number of people who have died from the coronavirus in Wuhan, China, where the virus originated, is more than 16 times higher than the number reported by communist China.
The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinese-families-should-be-sweeping-graves-now-but-thousands-still-havent-buried-their-dead/2020/04/03/5a6daa50-7234-11ea-ad9b-254ec99993bc_story.html">reported</a>:
<blockquote>The coronavirus pandemic ravaging the globe officially claimed 2,563 lives in Wuhan, where it began in a market that sold exotic animals for consumption. But evidence emerging from the city as it stirs from its two-month hibernation suggests the real death toll is exponentially higher. &#8230;
Using photos posted online, social media sleuths have estimated that Wuhan funeral homes had returned 3,500 urns a day since March 23. That would imply a death toll in Wuhan of about 42,000 — or 16 times the official number. Another widely shared calculation, based on Wuhan’s 84 furnaces running nonstop and each cremation taking an hour, put the death toll at 46,800.</blockquote>
The analysis from The Washington Post comes after Bloomberg News reported this week that U.S. intelligence officials have presented President Donald Trump with a highly classified report that confirmed that China lied about the extent of the outbreak.
“China’s public reporting on cases and deaths is intentionally incomplete,” Bloomberg News <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-concealed-extent-of-virus-outbreak-u-s-intelligence-says">reported</a>, according to three U.S. officials that it spoke to. “Two of the officials said the report concludes that China’s numbers are fake.”
Vice President Mike Pence told CNN this week: “The reality is that we could have been better off if China had been more forthcoming. What appears evident now is that long before the world learned in December that China was dealing with this, and maybe as much as a month earlier than that, that the outbreak was real in China.”
White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx also indicated this week that China&#8217;s lying about the extent of the outbreak harmed the rest of the world.
“When you talk about could we have known something different, you know, I think all of us, I was overseas when this happened in Africa and I think when you look at the China data originally, and you said, there’s 80 million people, or 20 million people in Wuhan and 80 million people in Hubei, and they come up with the number of 50,000, you start thinking of this more like SARS than you do this kind of global pandemic,” Birx said.
Birx said that when U.S. officials looked at the data from China during the first days of the outbreak that she did not think that it would be a global pandemic based on the data that China provided.
“So, I think the medical community interpreted the Chinese data as this was serious, but smaller than anyone expected because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data” from China, Birx added.
Communist China also has a history of lying about epidemic outbreaks that originate within its borders.
The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/21/world/the-sars-epidemic-epidemic-china-admits-underreporting-its-sars-cases.html">reported</a> on the SARS outbreak in April 2003:
<blockquote>In a rare public admission of failure, if not deception, the Chinese government disclosed today that cases of a dangerous new respiratory disease were many times higher than previously reported, and stripped two top officials of their power.
…
Admitting to the existence of more than 200 previously undisclosed SARS patients in military hospitals, the official, Deputy Health Minister Gao Qiang, said that as of Friday Beijing had 339 confirmed cases of SARS and an additional 402 suspected cases.
Ten days ago, Health Minister Zhang Wenkang said there were only 22 confirmed SARS cases in Beijing. Last Wednesday, the World Health Organization caused a stir here by estimating that there could be as many as 100 to 200 cases.</blockquote>
This report has been updated to include additional information.

CHINA-BEIJING-LEADERS-TREE PLANTING (CN)

Washington Post: ‘Evidence’ Coming Out Of Wuhan Suggests Real Death Toll Over 40,000

China

With the help of the Food and Drug Administration, which has fast-tracked the effort, the state of New York is trying out potential treatments for people who have contracted COVID-19. Under the direction of Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the state is testing out three medications — hydroxychloroquine, chloroquine and azithromycin — combinations of which have produced promising results for those infected by coronavirus, which President Trump has repeatedly highlighted in public statements.
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/03/26/trump-keeps-touting-an-unproven-coronavirus-treatment-its-now-being-tested-thousands-new-york/">The Washington Post</a>, which, like many other left-leaning mainstream outlets has criticized Trump for &#8220;overhyping&#8221; the medications as a potential treatment for the virus, reported Thursday on New York&#8217;s treatment effort, which the paper describes as a &#8220;human experiment&#8221; involving potentially thousands of patients that is &#8220;moving at unprecedented speed and scale.&#8221;
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&#8220;New York will use three medications — hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin — contributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Amneal Pharmaceuticals,&#8221; the paper reports, citing state officials. &#8220;The first wave of patients will receive hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin.&#8221;
The study&#8217;s findings will contribute to a federally coordinated &#8220;observational&#8221; trial, which will compare the treatment method with a placebo. &#8220;In addition to mortality and overall recovery, the study will measure patients’ overall viral load, duration on a ventilator and number of days in the hospital,&#8221; the Times explains.
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The Food and Drug Administration has moved with &#8220;uncommon speed&#8221; to authorize New York’s distribution of the drugs through hospitals, the Post notes. While experts say such an effort would usually take up to nine months, the timeline &#8220;has been compressed into three days,&#8221; the paper reports.
The Post repeatedly underscores that the treatment has not yet been proven to be effective by officials and highlights &#8220;concerns&#8221; among health experts about the Trump and Cuomo-promoted medications, which sometimes have dangerous side effects, like &#8220;fatal heart arrhythmia and vision loss.&#8221; The Post&#8217;s editorial board has accused Trump of causing &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/wapo-editors-lash-out-at-trump-for-spreading-false-hope-about-curing-virus">damage</a>&#8221; by pointing to the treatment as a potential &#8220;cure.&#8221; The paper&#8217;s new report suggests Trump, and to a lesser extent Cuomo, may be guilty of &#8220;raising false hopes in the American public&#8221; and &#8220;contribut[ing] to runs on supply and hoarding&#8221; of the drugs.
But the Republican president and the Democratic governor appear to agree that the promise of the much-needed treatment trumps concerns about &#8220;overhyping.&#8221;
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While the Post appears to remain skeptical about the &#8220;human experiment,&#8221; some in the health industry are praising the rapidity of the federal and state-coordinated action.  “I have never seen anything like this. It is amazing how the country and everybody can pull together and come up with quick, innovative ways to try to attack it,” said Northwell Health Chief Pharmacy Officer Onisis Stefas, the paper reports. “Everybody’s questioning it, and that’s why these studies need to be done to confirm it. There aren’t a lot of other options out there.”
Along with the urgency of testing out the potential treatment, Trump and Cuomo also appear to be aligning on the question of how long to maintain mandated lockdowns, with the governor recently questioning the effectiveness of mass quarantines.
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“We closed everything down. That was our public health strategy,” Cuomo <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cuomo-questions-quarantine-probably-not-the-best-public-health-strategy">said</a> Thursday. “If you re-thought that or had time to analyze that public health strategy, I don’t know that you would say ‘Quarantine everyone.’”
“I don’t even know that that was the best public health policy,” he said. “Young people then quarantined with older people, [it] was probably not the best public health strategy. The younger people could have been exposing the older people to an infection.”
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Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/harvard-researchers-one-long-lockdown-is-not-the-right-approach">Harvard Researchers: One Long Lockdown Is Not The Right Approach</a>
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly cited the New York Times as the source of the new report rather than the Washington Post.
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Donald Trump

‘Unprecedented’: NY Begins Use Of Potential COVID-19 Treatments Fast-Tracked By Trump

Andrew Cuomo

New York

President Trump&#8217;s poll numbers are on the rise as a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gallup-trump-approval-spikes-majority-of-americans-approve-of-his-handling-of-crisis">strong majority</a> of Americans now approve of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Amid the crisis, Trump has increasingly shifted away from his trademark opponent-attacking mode to taking on the role as the nation&#8217;s &#8220;encourager-in-chief,&#8221; likely part of the reason public opinion of his handling of the job has improved.
Right on cue, the editorial board of The Washington Post published an editorial Wednesday warning the paper&#8217;s readers that some of the hope Trump has been offering the nation is actually &#8220;false&#8221; and doing great &#8220;damage.&#8221;
&#8220;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trump-is-spreading-false-hope-for-a-virus-cure--and-thats-not-the-only-damage/2020/03/25/587b26d8-6ec3-11ea-b148-e4ce3fbd85b5_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_opinions&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter">Trump is spreading false hope for a virus cure — and that’s not the only damage</a>,&#8221; declared the headline of the Post&#8217;s editorial published Wednesday. That &#8220;false hope,&#8221; the Post says, is Trump&#8217;s comments about a potential treatment for COVID-19 involving the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine.
The Post offers some background on why many (including Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo) have looked to hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for coronavirus:
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During the first two weeks of March, 20 patients suffering from the new <a class="contextual_link" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/02/28/what-you-need-know-about-coronavirus/?tid=lk_inline_manual_1&amp;itid=lk_inline_manual_1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">coronavirus</a> at a hospital in Marseille, France, participated in a preliminary <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920300996?via%3Dihub">study </a>to see if the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine had any effect on the disease, in some cases combined with an antibiotic, <a href="https://www.drugs.com/azithromycin.html">azithromycin</a>. Sixteen people who didn’t get the drugs were enlisted as controls. After six days, the study found that 57.1 percent of patients who got hydroxychloroquine were cured, and 100 percent of those who got both drugs were cleared of the virus — compared to only 12.5 percent of the control group. Soon after it was published, this result was <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1241367239900778501">advertised</a> by President Trump as “a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.”
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&#8220;Not so fast,&#8221; writes the Post&#8217;s snarky editorial board. &#8220;Such success does not usually occur overnight. Widespread testing for drug safety and efficacy is essential. The French result does not mean this <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/25/chloroquine-coronavirus-toxic-malaria/?tid=lk_inline_manual_2&amp;itid=lk_inline_manual_2">drug </a>is ready for use against the coronavirus, nor should a world ridden with anxiety about pandemic illness and death rest its hopes on this <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-25/hydroxychloroquine-no-better-than-regular-covid-19-care-in-study">unproven possibility</a>. There may be a &#8216;wonder&#8217; drug at the end of the rainbow, but we are not there yet.&#8221;
To fully know if the drug combination is an effective treatment, the Post explains, &#8220;controlled <a href="https://www.drugwatch.com/fda/clinical-trials/">clinical trials</a> would be required before a drug is approved by the Food and Drug Administration: Phase 1 to determine overall safety and dosage; Phase 2 (about 100 people) to see if effective and safe compared with other compounds; Phase 3 (a large group) to test efficacy and side effects.&#8221;
But hasn&#8217;t hydroxychloroquine already been approved for treatment of malaria? Yes, the Post notes, but it hasn&#8217;t been approved for use on coronavirus. &#8220;Scientists are still <a href="https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/03/20/chloroquine-past-and-present">arguing </a>over how the drug attacks the malaria parasite. No one is sure how it might work against viruses,&#8221; the editorial board notes. &#8220;Besides, there are potentially serious <a href="https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2017/006002s044lbl.pdf">side effects</a>: irreversible retinal damage and cardiac failure in some patients.&#8221;
But just because the treatment hasn&#8217;t been adequately tested and officially approved, is it necessarily a &#8220;false hope&#8221; that is doing &#8220;damage&#8221;? The Post insists it is, blaming Trump&#8217;s &#8220;overhyping&#8221; of the potential treatment for &#8220;hoarding of hydroxychloroquine and diverted supplies from people with other maladies who need it.&#8221; The only true cure, the Post says, is going to be a vaccine.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gallup-trump-approval-spikes-majority-of-americans-approve-of-his-handling-of-crisis">Trump Approval Spikes, Strong Majority Of Americans Approve Of His Handling Of Crisis</a>
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The Washington Post

WaPo Editors Lash Out At Trump: His ‘False Hope’ About Curing Virus Causing ‘Damage’

On Tuesday, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/business/media/china-expels-american-journalists.html">The New York Times</a> reported that the Chinese government announced that it would revoke the press credentials of American journalists for major news outlets while demanding that the media outlets for which the journalists worked tell the Chinese government what they were doing. The news outlets included The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the Voice of America and Time magazine.
The Times wrote, “China instructed American journalists ‘whose press credentials are due to expire before the end of 2020’ to ‘notify the Department of Information of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs within four calendar days starting from today and hand back their press cards within ten calendar days.’” The government also said the journalists “will not be allowed to continue working as journalists in the People’s Republic of China, including its Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions.”
A Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman said the decisions “are entirely necessary and reciprocal countermeasures that China is compelled to take in response to the unreasonable oppression the Chinese media organizations experience in the U.S. They are legitimate and justified self-defense in every sense. What the U.S. has done is exclusively targeting Chinese media organizations, and hence driven by a Cold War mentality and ideological bias.”
The move by the Chinese government is the latest salvo in the battle between the Trump administration and China. On Feb. 18, the Trump administration declared that employees of Xinhua, CGTN, China Radio, China Daily and The People’s Daily, the major Chinese news outlets, were government operatives. On February 19, China announced it was expelling three members of The Wall Street Journal; TIME noted, “Beijing blamed the expulsions on an editorial headline that called China the ‘sick man of Asia,’ but the expelled reporters had also written hard-hitting investigative stories about alleged human rights violations in Xinjiang, where Beijing has been detaining members of the Muslim Uighur minority in camps, and alleged abuses of power by Chinese leaders.”
The Trump administration <a href="https://time.com/5794166/the-trump-administration-has-put-new-restrictions-on-chinese-journalists-in-the-u-s-will-it-work/">cut the number of Chinese nationals</a> working for China’s state-run media outlets in the U.S. by almost 50% on March 2. On March 3, Hua Chunying, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, wrote on Twitter, “Now the U.S. has kicked off the game, let’s play.” China then demanded an apology for the Wall Street Journal article.
As the Times reports, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club has stated that China has increased its targeting of journalists, writing, “Chinese authorities are using visas as weapons against the foreign press like never before, expanding their deployment of a longtime intimidation tactic as working conditions for foreign journalists in China severely deteriorated in 2019.”
<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/17/report-china-clamps-down-further-on-dissent-as-it-expels-journalists-from-nyt-wsj-and-wapo/">TechCrunch</a> noted:
<blockquote>China’s suppression of external dissent is also being mirrored with regard to its own citizens. While there was a bit of an open window for discussion as the government attempted to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51409801">moderate blowback over its response to the novel coronavirus pandemic</a>, internet censors <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/business/china-coronavirus-internet-police.html">according to The New York Times</a> are now once again clamping down hard on negative conversations and adding additional reinforcements to police online discussions</blockquote>
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Chinese Foreign Ministry resumes offline briefings in Beijing

China Expels Journalists From Major American Media Outlets

New York Times

Wall Street Journal

Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post says more Republicans than Democrats will die of coronavirus.
Now, she&#8217;s not a doctor and she does not play one on TV, but she&#8217;s got her theory.
&#8220;There is a particular cruelty/irony that it is their core viewers, the Republican older viewers, who are the most at risk,&#8221; she said, according to a transcript by <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/03/15/jennifer_rubin_more_republicans_than_democrats_will_die_of_coronavirus_because_right_wing_media_is_downplaying_threat.html">Real Clear Politics</a>.
<blockquote>Rubin: And when you think about it, which party immediately canceled all of their rallies? Which party immediately started having their political figures really portray and use their lies as an example? It was the Democrats.
So, I hate to put it this way, but there will be less Democrat deaths because there will be less mass gatherings, there will be less opportunities for people to congregate and share this horrible disease. So it is really a very short-sighted strategy.
But, I think now the name of the game is how do they get back on Planet Earth. And part of the way that I think that they are doing it is down the memory hole. He jumped right on this right away because of all this planning that we’re doing so well, which is head-spinning for the rest of us who watched him for weeks say this was a hoax. But this is how they do it at Fox News. Suddenly, he’s been the most pro-active president… The toughest on it.
And so they will contort themselves to get in line and get in sync. And, you know, we’re always saying but, but, but, pointing to the past. They don’t. They simply move with the flow. Every day is a new day. Every day is a new storyline, and they will stick with it.
I think the problem will be what happens unfortunately if we start to follow that Italian model where we have mass casualties, and our lives are not disrupted for a week or two, but we’re talking months. And that is going to be some serious stuff. And I don’t know if their brainwashing is so strong as to carry on and make excuses for Trump during that. But this will be some serious stuff.</blockquote>
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Jennifer Rubin says that more Republicans will die of coronavirus than Democrats because President Trump and right-wing media have downplayed the threat <a href="https://t.co/wmzMMPc3qZ">pic.twitter.com/wmzMMPc3qZ</a>
&mdash; Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) <a href="https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1239323346128572422?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 15, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Meghan McCain, a co-host on &#8220;The View,&#8221; blasted Rubin, tweeting: &#8220;This is ghoulish and craven, even by Jennifer Rubin standards. Why does anyone feel the agency to politicize pain and possible death? It is GODLESS.&#8221;
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This is ghoulish and craven, even by Jennifer Rubin standards. Why does anyone feel the agency to politicize pain and possible death? It is GODLESS. <a href="https://t.co/q9cp7oQn5V">https://t.co/q9cp7oQn5V</a>
&mdash; Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) <a href="https://twitter.com/MeghanMcCain/status/1239300472411955203?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 15, 2020</a></blockquote>
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The Washington Post describes Rubin, who once was touted as a “conservative” author of the paper’s blog “Right Turn,” as an “opinion writer reporting from a center-right perspective.”
But in 2018, the American Principles Project sent a letter to the Post signed by 37 top conservative leaders to urge the paper to stop promoting Rubin as a “conservative” and to instead hire a columnist who could “eloquently and effectively” defend the policies of President Trump and his party.
“We, of course, respect the right of The Washington Post to employ whatever writers it pleases — even Jennifer Rubin. However, we ask for the sake of intellectual honesty that the Post cease to identify her as in any way ‘conservative,&#8217;” the conservative leaders wrote. “Given the Post’s standing as an important platform for political opinion in our nation’s capital, we also respectfully request that you consider hiring a voice who can eloquently and effectively defend the positions held by our President, his party, and the millions of voters who elected him. We would be happy to provide recommendations.”

Meet the Press &#8211; Season 68

Washington Post Reporter Says Coronavirus Will Kill More Republicans Than Democrats

Meghan McCain

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, filed a $250 million lawsuit against The Washington Post and national security reporter Shane Harris on Monday for what the suit describes as a Russia-themed &#8220;hit piece&#8221; that was &#8220;manufactured out of whole cloth.&#8221;
The <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/449816497/Nunes-WaPo-Lawsuit#from_embed">lawsuit</a>, filed in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia on Monday, claims $250,350,000 in damages over what the complaint portrays as billionaire Jeff Bezos&#8217; use of the paper to target political figures in order to &#8220;influence Federal elections.&#8221;
&#8220;Billionaire, Jeff Bezos (&#8216;Bezos&#8217;), purchased WaPo in 2013 for the  purpose of using WaPo’s mighty pen to influence Federal elections,&#8221; Nunes&#8217; lawsuit states. &#8220;Bezos failed to defeat the GOP in 2016, in spite of WaPo’s notoriously libelous reporting. Bezos’ WaPo heavily promoted the Russian &#8216;collusion&#8217; hoax between 2017 and 2019, in spite of the fact that there was no evidence that any member of the Trump campaign colluded with any &#8216;Russian&#8217; to influence the 2016 Presidential Election. This is 2020. As this case illustrates, Bezos and his printing press remain desperate to defame the President of the United States and his allies in Congress. This defamation must end.&#8221;
The particular &#8220;hit piece&#8221; for which Nunes is suing the Post was published on Feb. 20 and claimed that intelligence community elections threats executive Shelby Pierson told members of Congress during a classified intelligence briefing the week before that Russia was attempting to help Donald Trump in the 2020 election. The article, titled &#8220;<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200221213025/https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/after-a-congressional-briefing-on-election-threats-trump-soured-on-acting-spy-chief/2020/02/20/1ed2b4ec-53f1-11ea-b119-4faabac6674f_story.html">Senior intelligence official told lawmakers that Russia wants to see Trump reelected</a>,&#8221; begins:
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A senior U.S. intelligence official told lawmakers last week that Russia wants to see President Trump reelected, viewing his administration as more favorable to the Kremlin’s interests, according to people who were briefed on the comments.
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After learning of that analysis, which was provided to House lawmakers in a classified hearing, Trump grew angry at his acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, in the Oval Office, seeing Maguire and his staff as disloyal for speaking to Congress about Russia’s perceived preference. The intelligence official’s analysis and Trump’s furious response ­ruined Maguire’s chances of becoming the permanent intelligence chief, according to people familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
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&#8220;The defamatory gist of the WaPo Hit Piece is that Plaintiff lied to and deceived the President of the United States, which caused the President to become &#8216;angry at his acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, in the Oval Office, seeing Maguire and his staff as disloyal for speaking to Congress about Russia’s perceived  preference&#8217;, which &#8216;furious response&#8217; &#8216;ruined Maguire’s chances of becoming the permanent intelligence chief&#8217;,&#8221; the complaint states. 
The Post&#8217;s publication of the &#8220;hit piece&#8221; amounts to criminal conduct because of its &#8220;dishonesty, deceit, sharp and unethical practices, and independently actionable tortious acts, all of which severely impugns Plaintiff’s integrity and prejudices him in the performance of his duties as a United States Congressman.&#8221;
The report also &#8220;falsely represents that the anonymous sources of its misrepresentations are &#8216;people familiar with the matter&#8217; and/or &#8216;one person familiar the matter&#8217; and/or a &#8216;committee official&#8217;,&#8221; the lawsuit alleges. &#8220;In truth, as WaPo and Harris knew full well, the only source of the falsehoods about Plaintiff was the House Democrats and their agents. Acting in concert with House Democrats, WaPo and Harris republished false statements in order to impugn Plaintiff’s reputation and undermine his relationship with the President.&#8221;
As reported by the <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/hit-piece-devin-nunes-sues-washington-post-for-250m-over-russia-intelligence-briefing-story">Washington Examiner&#8217;</a>s Jerry Dunleavy, the Post&#8217;s Vice President of Communications Kris Coratti Kelly responded to the lawsuit Monday. “The Post stands behind the reporting of Shane Harris and his colleagues,” Kelly told the Examiner. &#8220;We will vigorously defend our work against the claims made in Rep. Nunes’s lawsuit.&#8221;
Dunleavy notes that the claims in the Post&#8217;s Feb. 20 story have since been undermined by on-the-record statements from intelligence and administration officials, including in reports by The New York Times and the Examiner. (<a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/449816497/Nunes-WaPo-Lawsuit#from_embed">Read the full lawsuit here</a>.)
The lawsuit follows two separate lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign over the last week against <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-campaign-files-lawsuit-against-new-york-times-times-responds">The New York Times</a> and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-campaign-sues-washington-post-for-libel-over-false-defamatory-statements">The Washington Post</a> for promoting debunked Russian &#8220;collusion&#8221; claims in their stories.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-campaign-files-lawsuit-against-new-york-times-times-responds">Trump Campaign Files Lawsuit Against New York Times; Times Responds</a>

Devin Nunes

Congressman Sues Washington Post For Russia-Themed ‘Hit Piece’; Post Responds

Russia

The Trump campaign on Tuesday filed a libel lawsuit against The Washington Post for “millions of dollars,&#8221; claiming the liberal newspaper published “false and defamatory statements” about an alleged conspiracy with Russia, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-campaign-sues-washington-post-libel-false-defamatory-statements">Fox News</a> reported.
<blockquote>The complaint obtained by Fox News was filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. by attorneys David C. Tobin and Charles J. Harder. It points to a pair of Post articles published in June 2019 that included statements tying the Trump campaign to foreign campaign interference.
“The statements were and are 100 percent false and defamatory. The complaint alleges The Post was aware of the falsity at the time it published them, but did so for the intentional purpose of hurting the campaign, while misleading its own readers in the process,” Senior Legal Adviser to Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. Jenna Ellis said in a statement, adding the Post reported “a conspiracy” as a fact.</blockquote>
The lawsuit says a June 13 article, headlined “Trump just invited another Russian attack. Mitch McConnell is making one more likely,” &#8220;contained the defamatory statement that Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded that Trump’s campaign &#8216;tried to conspire with&#8217; a &#8216;sweeping and systematic&#8217; attack by Russia during the 2016 election.&#8221;
The suit calls that claim “false and defamatory.&#8221;
“The Mueller Report concluded there was no conspiracy between the Campaign and the Russian government, and no United States person intentionally coordinated with Russia’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election,” the complaint states.
The suit also cites another story, this one published June 20 and headlined, “Trump: I can win reelection with just my base.&#8221; In the piece is a line that says, “Who knows what sort of aid Russia and North Korea will give to the Trump campaign, now that he has invited them to offer their assistance?”
That, too, is “false and defamatory,&#8221; the suit says, because there “has never been any statement by anyone associated with the Campaign or the administration ‘inviting’ Russia or North Korea to assist the campaign in 2019 or beyond.”
“There also has never been any reporting that the Campaign has ever had any contact with North Korea relating to any United States election,” the complaint adds. “Obviously, the Mueller Report is a public record that has been extensively reported in The Post.”
What&#8217;s more, the suit says, “there is an extensive record of statements from the Campaign and the White House expressly disavowing any intention to seek Russian assistance” and “there is not a shred of evidence that there have been any contacts between the Campaign and North Korea.”
“The articles at issue herein also are part of the Post’s systematic pattern of bias against the Campaign, designed to maliciously interfere with and damage its reputation and ultimately cause the organization to fail,” the complaint states. &#8220;The Campaign was damaged in the millions of dollars, the specific amount to be proven at trial.&#8221;
Last week, the Trump campaign sued The New York Times for libel, sating that an op-ed published by the newspaper falsely asserted a “quid pro quo” between Russian officials and Trump’s 2016 campaign.
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TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-TRUMP

Trump Campaign Sues Washington Post For ‘False, Defamatory Statements’

The Washington Post on Tuesday <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/once-cold-war-heroes-miracle-on-ice-team-struggles-with-backlash-from-donning-keep-america-great-hats-at-trump-rally/2020/02/24/0a9a0f80-5738-11ea-9b35-def5a027d470_story.html">attempted to shame</a> the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team that defeated the Russian team in what is known as the “Miracle on Ice” because some appeared with President Donald Trump.
To briefly recap: The men responsible for defeating Russia at hockey during the Cold War are now being harassed by Democrats and the Left for appearing with the president of the United States.
The Post spoke to exactly one player from the team, Mike Eruzione, in order to get him to suggest he regretted wearing one of Trump’s “Keep America Great” hats when he appeared on stage with the president Friday night in Las Vegas, Nevada. Eruzione has been getting harassed by people who despise Trump, yet the Post spun the story as if the team deserved the harassment because some of them dared to wear hats that Trump’s political opponents have deemed racist. Many people simply refuse to allow the media or the Left the ability to determine what is and isn’t considered a hate symbol. For the record, the media and the Left would have deemed campaign gear from any Republican candidate as hateful.
But now the media has turned its attention to hockey players. It also should be noted that the media does this to any recognizable person who appears on stage with Trump. When asked about the Left-led “backlash,” Eruzione told the post: “You going to light into me, too? We’re getting killed!”
Eruzione, 65, would later illustrate to the Post that there’s a whole world outside of politics that hasn’t been brainwashed into thinking a hat is a racist symbol or that anyone who doesn’t actively hate Trump must be a racist. The former U.S. Olympic team captain said that after they met with Trump for photos to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the “Miracle on Ice,” they were ushered on stage for Trump’s rally and handed the red “Keep America Great” hats.
“If we knew we were going to piss off this many people, we probably would not have put the hats on,” said Eruzione, 65, who served as the team’s captain and scored the game-winning goal against the Soviet team. “That’s the big question here. A lot of the stuff I got was, ‘You guys said it’s not political, but when you put the hats on, you made it political.’”
Eruzione then said he didn’t realize how much hate he would get from wearing the hat.
“I just put it on. I wasn’t thinking. Maybe this shows I’m naive, shows I’m stupid. I don’t know. I don’t follow politics. I know he’s had some issues and said a lot of things people don’t like,” he told the Post.
The Post then spoke to people who supported the idea that the hats are racist to conclude the team somehow did something wrong by appearing with the president of the United States (something the Post never would have done when Barack Obama was president), including a college professor who made the prejudiced determination that a student wore a “Make America Great Again” hat to his class to direct “a hateful message” toward him.
For added measure, the Post included the story of a man who murdered six Muslims and who apparently read Trump’s Twitter feed as evidence Trump is bad, while only briefly mentioning that Trump supporters who wear the hat have been physically assaulted by leftists.

Miracle on Ice

‘Miracle On Ice’ Team Shamed By Washington Post For Meeting Trump

hockey

Despite widespread backlash over his praise of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro during an interview with &#8220;60 minutes&#8221; Sunday, Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) doubled down on his positive comments on the brutal communist leader&#8217;s regime during a townhall with CNN on Monday, declaring, &#8220;The truth is the truth.&#8221; But a past fact-check by the Washington Post on the claim Sanders continues to push suggests that the socialist senator&#8217;s &#8220;truth&#8221; about Castro&#8217;s regime lacks key context and relies on highly questionable data from the dictatorial regime.
&#8220;We&#8217;re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but you know, it&#8217;s unfair to simply say everything is bad.&#8221; Sanders told Anderson Cooper in an interview with CBS&#8217; &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; that aired Sunday. &#8220;When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?&#8221;
During the CNN townhall Monday, Chris Cuomo pressed Sanders on the claim. &#8220;So the Democrats who say, &#8216;You don&#8217;t say good things about Fidel Castro — he destroyed freedoms in that country, he played winners and losers and killed them and put them in prison forever. You don&#8217;t give him a pat on the back for anything.&#8221;
&#8220;You don&#8217;t give him— it&#8217;s not a question— Truth is truth,&#8221; said a clearly frustrated Sanders, a line that drew some applause and cheers from the largely left-wing audience. &#8220;Now if you want to disagree with me, if somebody wants to say that — and, by the way, all of those congress people that you mentioned just so happen to be supporting other candidates, just accidentally no doubt, coincidentally. But, you know, the truth is the truth. And that&#8217;s what happened in the first years of the Castro regime.&#8221;
&#8220;There was a lot of folks in Cuba at that point who were illiterate,&#8221; Sanders <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-bernie-continues-praise-for-murderous-dictator-castro-praises-communist-china">claimed</a> during the event. &#8220;He formed a literacy brigade, they went out and helped people learn to read and write. You know what? I think teaching people to read and write is a good thing.&#8221;
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Bernie Sanders doubles down on defending Fidel Castro: “the truth is the truth”<a href="https://t.co/bzmv1DmtJH">https://t.co/bzmv1DmtJH</a> <a href="https://t.co/oFrfNKXEOu">pic.twitter.com/oFrfNKXEOu</a>
&mdash; RNC Research (@RNCResearch) <a href="https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1232134881175576576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2020</a></blockquote>
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So, is Sanders&#8217; &#8220;truth&#8221; about the Castro regime actually true? While the basic assertion that Castro did implement a literacy program is certainly true, the underlying premise — that the &#8220;massive&#8221; literacy program was massively effective — is an oft-repeated claim about the communist regime that relies on questionable data and leaves out key context that ultimately undermines it.
As explained in a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/12/01/justin-trudeaus-claim-that-castro-made-significant-improvements-to-cuban-health-care-and-education/">Washington Post fact-check</a> of leftist Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau&#8217;s similar claim back in 2016, when Castro came to power, Cuba already had a strong literacy rate. In the areas of education and healthcare, the Post explained, &#8220;many other Latin American countries made far more dramatic strides in the past six decades, without the need for a communist dictatorship.&#8221;
&#8220;A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation,&#8221; Trudeau said in response to Castro&#8217;s death in late November 2016. The Post gave the claim three Pinnochios:
<blockquote>Trudeau appears to accept outdated Cuban government spin as current fact. The reality is that education and health care were already relatively vibrant in Cuba before the revolution, compared with other Latin American countries. While the Castro regime has not let that slip — and given greater access to the poor — it is a stretch to claim Castro was responsible for “significant improvements,” especially more recently.
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Many other Latin American countries made far more dramatic strides in the past six decades, without the need for a communist dictatorship; Cuba simply had a head start when Castro seized power.
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Moreover, the focus on health care and education should not detract from the fact that overall living standards, as measured by gross domestic product, calorie consumption and other measures, have declined significantly under communist rule. Without big handouts from first the Soviet Union and then Venezuela, the economic picture would be even worse.
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Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/james-woods-ted-cruz-team-up-to-take-down-sanders">James Woods, Ted Cruz Team Up To Take Down Sanders</a>
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Bernie Sanders

WATCH: Bernie Praises Brutal Communist Dictator Again: ‘Truth Is Truth’; Fact-Check: Here’s The Real Truth

2020 Election

Communism

Cuba

Fidel Castro

The Washington Post is worried that President Donald Trump is removing people from his administration he sees as disloyal to him or his agenda.
In an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/were-cleaning-it-out-trump-embarks-on-expansive-search-for-disloyalty-as-administration-wide-purge-escalates/2020/02/21/870e6c56-54c1-11ea-b119-4faabac6674f_story.html">article</a> titled “Trump embarks on expansive search for disloyalty as administration-wide purge escalates,” three Post reporters try to craft a narrative of something nefarious, even though any president would do the same thing.
“Johnny McEntee, Trump’s former personal aide who now leads the effort as director of presidential personnel, has begun combing through various agencies with a mandate from the president to oust or sideline political appointees who have not proved their loyalty, according to several administration officials and others familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations,” the Post reported.
Notice the entire story is based on anonymous “administration officials and others familiar with the matter.”
The article contains just two on-the-record statements, one from former White House adviser Cliff Sims who said there was nothing wrong with the president expecting loyalty in his administration.
“Loyalist shouldn’t be a dirty word,” Sims told the outlet. “Loyalty to the duly elected president and his agenda is exactly what we should expect from our unelected appointees.”
The other statement came from Brendan Buck, longtime adviser to former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), who said finding people who never take issue with a president’s agenda would be difficult (without noting that Obama seemed to have no trouble on this front).
“If they also insist on hiring only people who’ve never taken issue with something the president has done, it’s going to be slim pickings,” Buck said.
Perhaps it’s not so much about being in lock-step with the president but about carrying out his agenda without undermining it through leaks and insubordination.
Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush, said on Twitter that there was nothing wrong with Trump cleaning house to expel disloyalty.
“There is nothing g wrong with this. Every POTUS deserves a team committed to the President’s agenda, not their own. Does anyone think if Bernie wins he won’t install his own people, and rid the WH of anyone ‘loyal’ to Trump? This is fine,” Fleischer <a href="https://twitter.com/arifleischer/status/1231213061849088002?s=11">tweeted</a>.
Among those who have been let go so far are John Rood, who was formerly in charge of Defense Department policy and the Vindman brothers, all of whom were seen as working against Trump and helping Democrats try to remove him from office. Victoria Coates, a deputy national security adviser, was moved to the Energy Department. It was announced this week that Trump was moving Ric Grenell, the ambassador to Germany, to Director of National Intelligence. Grenell has worked already to get the community in line with Trump’s agenda. The previous acting head of the intelligence community was Joseph Maguire, whose deputy, Andrew P. Hallman, resigned when Grenell was put in charge.
It is unlikely the Post would be worried if a Democrat president cleared out people who didn’t agree with his or her agenda, as Fleischer said.

President Trump

Washington Post Frets Over Trump Removing Disloyal People In His Administration

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After The Washington Post suspended reporter Felicia Sonmez allegedly for publicly sharing the names of those criticizing her decision to remind people mourning Kobe Bryant&#8217;s tragic death that the basketball star had been accused of rape, staffers at The Washington Post have accused the news publication of fostering a sexist work culture.
According to <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/women-washington-post-sexism-culture_n_5e34b8a3c5b611ac94d4aa89">HuffPost</a>, Sonmez fell subject to severe online harassment, including death threats. One person even discovered her home address and posted it online. Throughout this episode, WaPo allegedly did nothing to protect her.
&#8220;Instead of rushing to protect her from abuse or worse, her editors suspended her and suggested she go to a hotel for her safety,&#8221; reports HuffPost. &#8220;The situation was different for national security reporter Shane Harris last spring. Harris also was getting harassed online, although not at the same level of intensity as his colleague. Someone discovered his home address. He told his editors.&#8221;
WaPo staffers told HuffPost on the condition of anonymity that this kind of allegedly sexist behavior is routine at the media publication and is part of the work culture.
&#8220;The Washington Post doesn’t value women and men in the same way, these people said,&#8221; continued HuffPost. &#8220;This appears literally true when it comes to pay: Women in the newsroom are paid less than men, <a href="https://postguild.org/2019-pay-study/" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:6;elm:context_link;itc:0" data-rapid-parsed="slk">according to a report</a> published last year by the union that represents employees. (The paper disputed the findings at the time.) One former Post contractor told HuffPost she was let go after asking for a raise.&#8221;
Despite WaPo&#8217;s notoriously woke and progressive activism, the publication is largely male-dominated, with only four of 17 department heads being women.
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“The place is run by men and it creates a particular atmosphere and assigns a higher value to certain male characteristics,” said one female reporter. “I’ve been a victim of it in a broad way, as most women in the newsroom have.”
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“It seems that there’s a blind spot when it comes to the needs of female employees. So when this incident with Felicia happened, it turned up all these other concerns and worries and long-standing issues,&#8221; said another anonymous employee.
Kristine Coratti Kelly, a spokeswoman for the newspaper, disputed this narrative, arguing that the publication has always fostered a culture of fairness.
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“We dispute your narrative,” wrote Kelly. “The Washington Post has been equitable in its hiring, promotion and compensation for employees, in its security deployment on behalf of employees and in the high standards it applies to all stories.&#8221;
When it comes to equal pay, women in the newsroom earn less than men at The Washington Post, according to a union&#8217;s report.
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&#8220;The salaried men in the newsroom earn a median of $116,065 a year,&#8221; reports HuffPost. &#8220;The median for women is $95,595. The gap is widest for staffers under 40: Young men earn $95,890 compared to $84,030 for women. The report used age as a proxy for experience, which it did not expressly track.&#8221;
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Alleged #MeToo stories also have a higher editorial threshold at The Washington Post, such as when Irin Carmon, a former freelancer for the Post, tried and failed to publish a story about sexual misconduct allegations against &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; producer Jeff Fager. Though WaPo turned the story down, Ronan Farrow at the New Yorker covered it, forcing Fager out of his job.
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WASHINGTON,  DC &#8211; JANUARY 23: Washington Post logo outside of t

Staffers Accuse The Washington Post Of Fostering A Sexist Work Culture

Amid strong backlash from members of its union, The Washington Post reversed its suspension of reporter Felicia Sonmez for an &#8220;ill-timed&#8221; tweet about the rape allegation against recently deceased NBA legend Kobe Bryant. The newly reinstated Sonmez responded Tuesday night by issuing a demand of the paper&#8217;s top editor, Marty Baron.
The suspension of Sonmez following her much-criticized tweet linking to a Daily Beast article about a 2003 rape allegation against Bryant — posted shortly after Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, along with seven others, tragically died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California — was met with a strong public rebuke from The Washington Post Newspaper Guild, which wrote a letter to to the paper&#8217;s executive and managing editors that was signed by hundreds of Sonmez&#8217;s colleagues. The letter begins (full text below):
<blockquote>We write to share our alarm and dismay that our newsroom leaders have chosen to place Felicia Sonmez on leave over a social media post, and to urge The Post to take immediate steps to ensure the safety of our colleague.
Felicia received an onslaught of violent messages, including threats that contained her home address, in the wake of a tweet Sunday regarding Kobe Bryant. Instead of protecting and supporting a reporter in the face of abuse, The Post placed her on administrative leave while newsroom leaders review whether she violated the social media policy. Felicia had to leave her home out of fear for her safety and has gotten insufficient guidance from The Post on how to protect herself.    
We understand the hours after Bryant’s death Sunday were a fraught time to share reporting about past accusations of sexual assault. The loss of such a beloved figure, and of so many other lives, is a tragedy. But we believe it is our responsibility as a news organization to tell the public the whole truth as we know it — about figures and institutions both popular and unpopular, at moments timely and untimely.</blockquote>
On Tuesday, Grant issued a <a href="https://twitter.com/kriscoratti/status/1222281539100250114">statement</a> announcing that Sonmez had been reinstated following an internal review. &#8220;After conducting an internal review, we have determined that, while we consider Felicia&#8217;s tweets ill-timed, she was not in clear and direct violation of our social media policy,&#8221; said Grant. &#8220;Reporters on social media represent The Washington Post, and our policy states, &#8216;we must be ever mindful of preserving the reputation of The Washington Post for journalistic excellence, fairness and independence.&#8217; We consistently urge restraint, which is particularly important when there are tragic deaths. We regret having spoken publicly about a personnel matter.&#8221;
Tuesday night, the newly reinstated Sonmez issued her own <a href="https://twitter.com/feliciasonmez/status/1222335744687198209">statement</a>, which included a demand directed at Baron and called into question the paper&#8217;s commitment to reporting &#8220;ALL the truth&#8221; about important matters.
&#8220;I believe that Washington Post readers and employees, including myself, deserve to hear directly from Marty Baron on the newspaper&#8217;s handling of this matter,&#8221; said Sonmez.
&#8220;Washington Post journalists endeavor to live up to the paper&#8217;s mission statement, which states, &#8216;The newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it, concerning the important affairs of America and the world,'&#8221; she continued. &#8220;My suspension, and Mr. Baron&#8217;s Jan. 26 email warning me that my tweets about a matter of public record were &#8216;hurting this institution,&#8217; have unfortunately sown confusion about the depth of the management&#8217;s commitment to this goal.&#8221;
&#8220;I hope Washington Post newsroom leaders will not only prioritize their employees&#8217; safety in the face of threats of physical harm but also ensure that no journalist will be punished for speaking the truth,&#8221; Sonmez concludes.
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I believe that Washington Post readers and employees, including myself, deserve to hear directly from <a href="https://twitter.com/PostBaron?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PostBaron</a> on the newspaper’s handling of this matter. My statement on The Post’s decision tonight: <a href="https://t.co/t5ULzUQhYT">pic.twitter.com/t5ULzUQhYT</a>
&mdash; Felicia Sonmez (@feliciasonmez) <a href="https://twitter.com/feliciasonmez/status/1222335744687198209?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 29, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Below is the full text of the <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ErQ7bN352jQZ0Ka8kCzAW8CWr2zEnUIvms5BG2Kdt1E/preview?pru=AAABcA0trug*O_CCfCHERRMCGfGdjb_ZWA">guild&#8217;s letter</a>, including some of the signees in key roles in the guild:
To Marty Baron and Tracy Grant:
We write to share our alarm and dismay that our newsroom leaders have chosen to place Felicia Sonmez on leave over a social media post, and to urge The Post to take immediate steps to ensure the safety of our colleague.
Felicia received an onslaught of violent messages, including threats that contained her home address, in the wake of a tweet Sunday regarding Kobe Bryant. Instead of protecting and supporting a reporter in the face of abuse, The Post placed her on administrative leave while newsroom leaders review whether she violated the social media policy. Felicia had to leave her home out of fear for her safety and has gotten insufficient guidance from The Post on how to protect herself.    
We understand the hours after Bryant’s death Sunday were a fraught time to share reporting about past accusations of sexual assault. The loss of such a beloved figure, and of so many other lives, is a tragedy. But we believe it is our responsibility as a news organization to tell the public the whole truth as we know it — about figures and institutions both popular and unpopular, at moments timely and untimely.
This is not the first time that The Post has sought to control how Felicia speaks on matters of sexual violence. Felicia herself is a survivor of assault who bravely came forward with her story two years ago. When articles attacking her were published in other outlets, The Post did not release a statement in support of one of its respected political reporters. Instead, management issued a warning letter against Felicia for violating The Post’s vague and inconsistently enforced social media guidelines.
The Post’s handling of this issue shows utter disregard for best practices in supporting survivors of sexual violence — including the practices we use in our own journalism. Assault survivors inside and outside this newsroom deserve treatment that is fair and transparent; that does not blame victims or compromise the safety of survivors. 
This case also reflects fundamental flaws in The Post’s arbitrary and over-broad social media policy. We have repeatedly seen colleagues — including members of management — share contentious opinions on social media platforms without sanction. But here a valued colleague is being censured for making a statement of fact. Felicia did nothing more than what The Post’s own news stories have done when she shared an article about the past allegation against Bryant.
Even now, after numerous conflicting reports have been published about Felicia’s situation, The Post has failed to offer a clear explanation of why she was placed on leave — to Felicia or to anyone else. We are concerned by The Post&#8217;s unwillingness to be transparent about this issue, and alarmed by the implication that reporters will be penalized for talking about any topic not on their beat.
We urge The Post to immediately provide Felicia with a security detail and take whatever other steps are necessary to ensure her safety, as it has done in the past when other reporters were subject to threats. The company should issue a statement condemning abuse of its reporters, allow Felicia to return to work, rescind whatever sanctions have been imposed and provide her with any resources she may request as she navigates this traumatic experience.  
We also hope that Post management will work with the Guild to educate themselves on treatment of assault survivors and improve the social media policy so that employees can get back to the work we all want to be doing: journalism.
Sincerely,
The Washington Post Newspaper Guild
Katie Mettler, Post Guild co-chair for News
Sarah Kaplan, Post Guild chief steward 
Justin Moyer, Post Guild treasurer and vice chair
Alice Li, Post Guild equity and diversity co-chair
Sophie Ho, Post Guild equity and diversity co-chair
[et al]

Kobe Bryant

Washington Post Reporter Suspended For Kobe Bryant Tweet Issues Demand To Top Editor After Being Reinstated

The Washington Post released a new statement about left-leaning reporter Felicia Sonmez on Tuesday night after the newspaper suspended her at the start of the week for an inflammatory tweet she published in the wake of former NBA star Kobe Bryant&#8217;s death, saying that the newspaper should not have suspended her.
Sonmez was suspended on Sunday after she tweeted a news story immediately after news broke of Bryant&#8217;s death that highlighted the past rape allegations that he faced from years ago.
&#8220;After conducting an internal review, we have determined that, while we consider Felicia&#8217;s tweets ill-timed, she was not in clear and direct violation of our social media policy,&#8221; Washington Post Managing Editor Tracy Grant said in a statement. &#8220;Reporters on social media represent The Washington Post, and our policy states &#8216;we must be ever mindful of preserving the reputation of The Washington Post for journalistic excellence, fairness and independence.&#8221;
&#8220;We consistently urge restraint, which is particularly important when there are tragic deaths,&#8221; Grant continued. &#8220;We regret having spoken publicly about a personnel matter.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
New statement regarding Post reporter Felicia Sonmez <a href="https://t.co/HBt2s5VW68">pic.twitter.com/HBt2s5VW68</a>
&mdash; Kristine Coratti Kelly (@kriscoratti) <a href="https://twitter.com/kriscoratti/status/1222281539100250114?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 28, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Sonmez portrayed herself the victim of the situation, issuing the following statement:
<blockquote>I believe that Washington Post readers and employees, including myself, deserve to hear directly from Marty Baron on the newspaper&#8217;s handling of this matter.
Washington Post journalists endeavor to live up to the paper&#8217;s mission statement, which state, &#8216;The newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it, concerning the important affairs of America and the world.&#8217; My suspension, and Mr. Baron&#8217;s Jan. 26 email warning me that my tweets about a matter of public record were &#8216;hurting this institution,&#8217; have unfortunately sown confusion about the depth of management&#8217;s commitment to this goal.
I hope Washington Post newsroom leaders will not only prioritize their employees&#8217; safety in the face of threats of physical harm but also ensure that no journalist will be punished for speaking the truth.</blockquote>
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Nine people died in a helicopter crash, but this WaPo reporter is the real victim. <a href="https://t.co/0bWtzioZyR">https://t.co/0bWtzioZyR</a>
&mdash; jon gabriel (@exjon) <a href="https://twitter.com/exjon/status/1222349796796583937?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 29, 2020</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;More than 300 of her colleagues rallied to her defense on Monday, adding their names to a letter addressed to The Post’s executive editor, Martin Baron, and its managing editor, Tracy Grant,&#8221; The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/business/media/felicia-sonmez-kobe-bryant-tweet.html">reported</a>. &#8220;In the petition, they argued that Ms. Sonmez had not violated the newspaper’s social media guidelines, a set of rules asking Post journalists not to share opinions online.&#8221;
Sonmez&#8217;s inflammatory tweets instantly went viral and gained well over 20,000 comments before she deleted all of her tweets on the matter.
In a follow up tweet, Sonmez wrote:  &#8220;Well, THAT was eye-opening. To the 10,000 people (literally) who have commented and emailed me with abuse and death threats, please take a moment and read the story &#8212; which was written 3+ years ago, and not by me. Any public figure is worth remembering in their totality.&#8221;
Sonmez&#8217;s explanation for why she tweeted the story, because &#8220;any public figure is worth remembering in their totality,&#8221; does not stand up well under scrutiny because she did not tweet about anything else from Bryant&#8217;s life other than the rape allegation, which he was never convicted of.
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The American Media Playbook:
Step 1: Do something unspeakably awful.
Step 2: Get dragged by pretty much everyone. 
Step 3: Don’t apologize. Play the victim.<a href="https://twitter.com/feliciasonmez?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@feliciasonmez</a> <a href="https://t.co/hymjJpRrIO">pic.twitter.com/hymjJpRrIO</a>
&mdash; Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) <a href="https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1221561178108891139?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 26, 2020</a></blockquote>
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This report has been updated to include additional information.

Washington Post Issues New Statement About Reporter Suspended Over Kobe Bryant Tweet

Long on narrative and short on sourcing, Washington Post writers Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker published <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/youre-a-bunch-of-dopes-and-babies-inside-trumps-stunning-tirade-against-generals/2020/01/16/d6dbb8a6-387e-11ea-bb7b-265f4554af6d_story.html">an adapted excerpt</a> from their new upcoming book “A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America.”
In the article published Friday, the writers describe at length a meeting between President Donald Trump, some advisors, and military leaders. The conversation is alleged to have taken place in a secure room called “the Tank” back when Gen. Jim Mattis was still Secretary of Defense, Rex Tillerson was still the Secretary of State, and Steve Bannon was still a White House adviser.
The Post writers paint a narrative as if they had audio or video recordings of the meeting or personally witnessed the conversation. It’s a typical narrative topic, but in this case – and with the outlet’s past bias against Trump – such writing serves only to conceal the fact that the sourcing for the conversation is rather thin. At one point during the conversation, Trump is alleged to have told the military leaders: “I wouldn’t go to war with you people. You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”
Who claims Trump said this? The Post authors don’t let us know. The only kind of sourcing we get is Tillerson allegedly later told “close aides” that he felt Mattis said nothing during the discussion to defense himself because, as a Marine, he would not talk back to the commander in chief. Other sources include “one attendee,” “another,” and “a third attendee.” There were also “Others at the table,” apparently. Tillerson also apparently “told others” there was a woman in the room who was crying. There’s also a statement from “one senior official.” Eventually, the writers refer to one attendee as a “victim” of the meeting.
The Amazon description for the book suggests Leonnig and Rucker had “deep and unmatched sources throughout Washington, D.C.” who told them about Trump’s “rages and frenzies but also moments of courage and perseverance.” They also apparently spoke to “some of the most senior members of the Trump administration and other firsthand witnesses.”
We have seen from the Post’s past reporting, as well as The New York Times’ and other left-leaning outlets, that anonymous sources are constantly used to paint a particular narrative. These anonymous sources are allowed to control the news cycle without have to prove how they could possibly know what had transpired. Many times, as with this article, people who were told about the meeting after the fact are used to craft the narrative.
Let’s say Tillerson, Bannon, Mattis, and the other big-name people who were in the room spoke to the Post. They’re all former officials who have a bone to pick with the president, but in the Trump era of “journalism,” leaving the Trump administration and speaking ill of the media’s most hated president instantly provides an impenetrable shield of credibility.
This is not to say Trump absolutely did not say what the Post claims, but given the media’s willingness to accept bad faith, anonymous sources to paint their preferred portrait of the Trump administration, it’s hard to believe anything they publish.
For good measure, that Amazon description flat-out states their bias, claiming that despite Trump’s claims to help the country, we have only suffered with him as president and our nation has plunged into “chaos.” This conveniently ignores that wages are rising and the unemployment rate has dropped to its lowest in decades and that Americans who don’t already hate Republicans are actually doing much better than they were under the Obama administration.

Trump

Washington Post Writers Claim Trump Called Military Leaders ‘Dopes And Babies’

Hours after finally announcing their decision to hold the vote on sending their delayed articles of impeachment to the Senate, the Democrat-led House impeachment investigation committee released new materials to the press that Democrats say prove a trial in the Senate cannot be &#8220;full and fair&#8221; without documents they&#8217;ve demanded from Trump.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delayed the transfer of the impeachment articles against President Trump for nearly a month in an attempt to pressure Senate Republicans to hold an impeachment trial that effectively retries the case the House Democrats were supposed to have already proven convincingly. Amid mounting pressure, including from key Democrats in the Senate, Pelosi finally caved Tuesday, the Democrats holding a press conference to announce that they would vote on sending the articles on Wednesday.
Tuesday night, on the eve of the big vote, House investigators released new documents that have &#8220;spurred Democrats to renew calls for the White House to turn over documents related to the Ukraine pressure campaign that it has refused to share with Congress,&#8221; reports <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ukraine-prosecutor-offered-information-related-to-biden-in-exchange-for-ambassadors-ouster-newly-released-materials-show/2020/01/14/cc45d19e-371e-11ea-9541-9107303481a4_story.html">The Washington Post</a>, which promptly reported on the conveniently timed document dump.
Along with the new materials, the chairs of the Democrat-led House Intelligence, Oversight, Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees issued a joint statement Tuesday night saying the &#8220;new evidence&#8221; means &#8220;there cannot be a full and fair trial in the Senate&#8221; until Trump hands over the demanded information he has thus far withheld.
&#8220;All of this new evidence confirms what we already know: the President and his associates pressured Ukrainian officials to announce investigations that would benefit the President politically,” reads the statement, as reported by the Post. “There cannot be a full and fair trial in the Senate without the documents that President Trump is refusing to provide to Congress.”
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&#8220;New materials released by House Democrats appear to show Ukraine’s top prosecutor offering an associate of President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, damaging information related to former vice president Joe Biden if the Trump administration recalled the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine,&#8221; the Post explains.
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&#8220;The text messages and documents provided to Congress by former Giuliani associate Lev Parnas also show that before the ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, was removed from her post, a Parnas associate now running for Congress sent menacing text messages suggesting that he had Yovanovitch under surveillance in Ukraine,&#8221; the Post continues.
&#8220;A lawyer for Yovanovitch said Tuesday that the episode should be investigated,&#8221; the outlet notes.
The Post goes on to emphasize the Democrats&#8217; argument that the new materials merit further investigation as they include &#8220;a number of previously unknown details about efforts by Giuliani and his associates to obtain material in Ukraine that would undermine Trump’s Democratic opponents.&#8221;
Among the materials is a document that includes a message from Giuliani to Parnas saying he has gotten a person he simply refers to as &#8220;no 1&#8221; involved in his attempt to lift a U.S. visa ban on the former Ukrainian prosecutor &#8220;who was planning to come to the United States to make claims about Biden.&#8221; (<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ukraine-prosecutor-offered-information-related-to-biden-in-exchange-for-ambassadors-ouster-newly-released-materials-show/2020/01/14/cc45d19e-371e-11ea-9541-9107303481a4_story.html">Read the Post&#8217;s full report here</a>.)
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nancy-pelosi-appoints-adam-schiff-jerry-nadler-and-five-others-as-impeachment-managers">Nancy Pelosi Appoints Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, And Five Others As Impeachment Managers</a>
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Speaker Pelosi Announces Impeachment Managers, Signs And Transmits Articles To Senate For Trial

Democrats Dump New Impeachment Evidence On Eve Of Vote, Say It Proves Senate Trial Can’t Be ‘Full And Fair’

Ukraine

According to The Washington Post&#8217;s unnamed sources, the Justice Department investigation into alleged Clinton-involved corruption launched over two years ago by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions is winding down — and likely to disappoint Donald Trump and everyone else hoping to see &#8220;Lock Her Up!&#8221; come to fruition.
In yet another report that tips the establishment media&#8217;s partisan hand, the U.S. Attorney John Huber-led investigation, launched &#8220;to mollify conservatives clamoring for more investigations of Hillary Clinton,&#8221; as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/justice-dept-winds-down-clinton-related-inquiry-once-championed-by-trump-it-found-nothing-of-consequence/2020/01/09/ca83932e-32f9-11ea-a053-dc6d944ba776_story.html">the Post</a> puts it, &#8220;has effectively ended with no tangible results.&#8221; The Post provides some background on the investigation:
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John Huber, the U.S. attorney in Utah, was tapped in November 2017 by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to look into concerns raised by President Trump and his allies in Congress that the FBI had not fully pursued cases of possible corruption at the Clinton Foundation and during Clinton’s time as secretary of state, when the U.S. government decided not to block the sale of a company called Uranium One.
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As a part of his review, Huber examined documents and conferred with federal law enforcement officials in Little Rock who were handling a meandering probe into the Clinton Foundation, people familiar with the matter said. Current and former officials said that Huber has largely finished and found nothing worth pursuing — though the assignment has not formally ended and no official notice has been sent to the Justice Department or to lawmakers, these people said.
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In the end, the Post&#8217;s sources say, Huber is likely going to recommend &#8220;no criminal charges&#8221; and the investigation will result in &#8220;no other known impacts,&#8221; a conclusion that the Post predicts will likely &#8220;roil some in the GOP who had hoped the prosecutor would vindicate their long-held suspicions about a political rival.&#8221;
Current and former unnamed law enforcement officials told the left-leaning outlet that they &#8220;never expected the effort to produce much of anything,&#8221; the Post notes. In other words, officials felt much the same way about the Huber investigation as Republicans felt about the Robert Mueller &#8220;Russia collusion&#8221; investigation, which likewise took two years and ended up burning up $30 million taxpayer dollars to look into a claim largely based on a DNC and Clinton campaign-funded opposition research document that including on-their-face absurd accusations from foreign sources.
The reality is that the investigation has largely fallen off Trump and Republicans&#8217; radars. The real focus on the right now is on the damning results of the Michael Horowitz investigation into the origins of the FBI probe of the Trump campaign for the Mueller-debunked &#8220;collusion&#8221; conspiracy theory and the bureau&#8217;s handling of the Clinton email probe, as well as the upcoming report by John Durham, which has turned into a &#8220;<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/john-durham-investigation-fbi-misconduct-criminal-probe">full-fledged criminal investigation</a>&#8221; and, as the Post acknowledges, Justice Department officials believe will be &#8220;far more consequential.&#8221;
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In his lengthy report on the origins of the FBI&#8217;s surveillance of the Trump campaign, Intelligence Community Inspector General Horowitz identified &#8220;at least 17 significant errors or omissions&#8221; by the FBI in its FISA surveillance applications into Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and &#8220;many additional errors in the Woods Procedures.&#8221; The report also found that the infamous Christopher Steele dossier, funded by Democrats and the Clinton campaign, &#8220;played a central and essential role in the FBI’s and Department’s decision to seek the FISA order&#8221; to surveil Page.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fact-check-republicans-famous-memo-on-fisa-abuse-blasted-by-democrats-ended-up-getting-it-mostly-right">WaPo Admits: Republicans’ Famous Memo On FISA Abuse Blasted By Dems Ended Up Getting It Mostly Right</a>
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Hillary Clinton

Report: Justice Department Closing Out Clinton Corruption Probe, Will Disappoint Trump

John Durham

Michael Horowitz

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

Rachel Maddow

Washington Post Media Critic Blasts Rachel Maddow Over Steele Dossier

2016 election

Department of Justice

Leftism

Media

Progressivism

The Washington Post hacked into a Chevy Volt several days ago with the help of a automotive technology expert to find out just how much automakers are spying on their owners and discovered that vehicles are recording their owners&#8217; every move.
The Post used a 2017 Chevy Volt for its experiment and learned that the car collected a wide range of highly precise data ranging from the vehicles location to information about the driver&#8217;s cell phone, including call records — noting that many vehicles copy over personal data the moment that a smart phone is plugged into the vehicle.
The Post noted that the Chevy Volt did not inform drivers what information it was recording and did not make mention of it in the owner&#8217;s manual since there are no federal regulations protecting consumer&#8217;s privacy and data from automakers.
The Post went to Jim Mason, who has a PhD in engineering and reconstructs car accidents for a living by hacking into vehicles, for help hacking into the Chevy Volt.
Mason focused on hacking into the car&#8217;s infotainment system since it was the easiest computer, out of several computers in the vehicle, to physically get to inside the car.
After having to take a bit of the car apart to reach the computer, The Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/17/what-does-your-car-know-about-you-we-hacked-chevy-find-out/">found</a> that Chevy collected the  following information:
<blockquote>There on a map was the precise location where I’d driven to take apart the Chevy. There were my other destinations, like the hardware store I’d stopped at to buy some tape.
Among the trove of data points were unique identifiers for my and Doug’s phones, and a detailed log of phone calls from the previous week. There was a long list of contacts, right down to people’s address, emails and even photos.
For a broader view, Mason also extracted the data from a Chevrolet infotainment computer that I bought used on eBay for $375. It contained enough data to reconstruct the Upstate New York travels and relationships of a total stranger. We know he or she frequently called someone listed as “Sweetie,” whose photo we also have. We could see the exact Gulf station where they bought gas, the restaurant where they ate (called Taste China) and the unique identifiers for their Samsung Galaxy Note phones.</blockquote>
The Post noted that GM would not reveal what information it was collecting on drivers and that the other computers in the vehicle, including the infotainment computer, collect far more information than what Mason was able to pull up.
The vehicle also collected information on &#8220;acceleration and braking style, beaming back reports to its maker General Motors over an always-on Internet connection,&#8221; The Post added. &#8220;Coming next: face data, used to personalize the vehicle and track driver attention.&#8221;
The Post reported that 20 automakers pledged in 2014 to voluntarily adhere to privacy standards that protected consumers privacy by protecting their data — although none of the 20 automakers followed through on their promises.
As 5G cellular technology becomes integrated into cars in the future it will become even more important for Americans to advocate for their privacy rights as China&#8217;s potential entry into 5G markets in the U.S. is a <a href="https://www.heritage.org/technology/report/the-us-must-treat-china-national-security-threat-5g-networks">significant</a> national security threat for the U.S.
Fears that vehicles could be hacked and taken over by someone outside the vehicle who has a sinister intent are not only legitimate, they are well-rooted in reality because it has happened.
In July 2015, The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2015/07/22/hacks-on-the-highway/?tid=lk_inline_manual_10&amp;utm_term=.9a18df869426">reported</a> on one such criminal instance:
<blockquote>The complaints that flooded into Texas Auto Center that maddening, mystifying week were all pretty much the same: Customers’ cars had gone haywire. Horns started honking in the middle of the night, angering neighbors, waking babies. Then when morning finally came, the cars refused to start.
The staff suspected malfunctions in a new Internet device, installed behind dashboards of second-hand cars, that allowed the dealership to remind customers of overdue payments by taking remote control of some vehicle functions. But a check of the dealership’s computers suggested something more sinister at work: Texas Auto Center had been hacked. &#8230;
&#8230; Police later reported more than 100 victims and charged a former dealership employee with computer crimes. &#8230;
&#8230;Widespread hacks on cars and other connected devices are destined to come, experts say, as they already have to nearly everything else online. It’s just a question of when the right hacking skills end up in the hands of people with sufficient motives.</blockquote>
Also in 2015, Andy Greenberg wrote at Wired about how his Jeep was completely taken over by Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, who hacked the vehicle as part of an experiment to which Greenberg agreed. Greenberg <a href="https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/">wrote</a>:
<blockquote>I was driving 70 mph on the edge of downtown St. Louis when the exploit began to take hold.
Though I hadn&#8217;t touched the dashboard, the vents in the Jeep Cherokee started blasting cold air at the maximum setting, chilling the sweat on my back through the in-seat climate control system. Next the radio switched to the local hip hop station and began blaring Skee-lo at full volume. I spun the control knob left and hit the power button, to no avail. Then the windshield wipers turned on, and wiper fluid blurred the glass. &#8230;
&#8230; Their code is an automaker&#8217;s nightmare: software that lets hackers send commands through the Jeep’s entertainment system to its dashboard functions, steering, brakes, and transmission, all from a laptop that may be across the country.</blockquote>
The hackers were able to completely kill the transmission on the vehicle from miles away as it drove on the freeway, which is less than they did to Greenberg two years prior in 2013 when they &#8220;disabled [the] brakes, honked the horn, jerked the seat belt, and commandeered the steering wheel&#8221; on a couple of  different vehicles that they had Greenberg drive.
WikiLeaks released a trove of documents in 2017 that revealed that the U.S. government has extremely sophisticated hacking tools that it can use to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/03/07/why-the-cia-is-using-your-tvs-smartphones-and-cars-for-spying/">spy</a> on people through televisions, smartphones, and even anti-virus software.
&#8220;Tucked into WikiLeaks’ analysis of a trove of documents allegedly from the Central Intelligence Agency is a stunning line: That the agency has looked into hacking cars, which WikiLeaks asserts could be used to carry out &#8216;nearly undetectable assassinations,'&#8221; The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/03/08/what-we-know-about-car-hacking-the-cia-and-those-wikileaks-claims/">reported</a>.

The 2011 Chevrolet Volt on display at th

Washington Post Hacks Into Chevy To Show How Much Cars Are Spying On Owners

When The Washington Post infamously posted the motto &#8220;Democracy Dies in Darkness&#8221; on its masthead after Donald Trump was elected, it was implicit — The Post will deny it — that Trump is the enemy of democracy, and of &#8220;light&#8221; or transparency. So it was sadly poetic that after the House Democrats rammed through such an incredibly partisan impeachment vote — without a single Republican voting aye — Washington Post reporter Rachael Bade posted a photograph on Twitter of her and her colleagues celebrating with beers.
Bade tweeted: &#8220;Merry Impeachmas from the WaPo team! @pkcapitol is buying.&#8221; After it became controversial, Bade deleted it, claiming it had been misunderstood.
With all their tweets and all their angry, opinionated segments on CNN and MSNBC, these journalists cannot be misunderstood. This was a message of &#8220;mission accomplished.&#8221; The Post and all its brethren in the Trump-hating media have been seeking this vote since before President Trump was even inaugurated. It&#8217;s hard to tell whether the Democrats or the media have been more ardent in seeking Trump&#8217;s removal from office. It&#8217;s difficult to discern the slightest difference in partisan aggression between the Democrats and the press.
Our only question is: Who are the leaders, and who are the followers? Are the ideologues in the media forcing their will on the Democrats, or the other way around?
After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s crackpot impeachment vote came her declaration that she would withhold the articles of impeachment from the Senate. &#8220;So far, we haven&#8217;t seen anything that looks fair to us, so hopefully it will be fairer, and when we see what that is, we&#8217;ll send our managers,&#8221; she shamelessly proclaimed. As if the Democrats and their media allies have been fair to Team Trump all along. She called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a &#8220;rogue leader&#8221; for failing to bend to her will.
NBC located &#8220;a source familiar with the administration&#8217;s reaction&#8221; who asked, &#8220;How can these people be taken seriously?&#8221;
Mark Levin took it very seriously, tweeting: &#8220;So she&#8217;s unilaterally sitting on the impeachment. This is another brazen unconstitutional act.&#8221; He argued the impeachment should be declared &#8220;null and void&#8221; by the Senate and added, &#8220;Her effort to cripple the presidency &amp; blackmail the Senate must be defeated.&#8221; The founders didn&#8217;t set up this system so the House speaker could make demands of the Senate until it cries uncle.
This is where the media&#8217;s bowing to and scraping for Democrats and their strategists warps our system. They&#8217;re not part of the checks and balances. They have no balance, and they never check the Democrats. The media paint everything Team Chuck &amp; Nancy does as &#8220;historic&#8221; and &#8220;solemn,&#8221; and the Republican reactions as &#8220;diatribes&#8221; and &#8220;onslaughts.&#8221;
During the Clinton impeachment in 1998, TV reporters also sounded hopelessly devoted to the Democratic party line. They emotionally announced that special counsel Kenneth Starr&#8217;s report was a truck bomb and compared the entire process to a Puritan big brother obsessing over Bill Clinton&#8217;s sex life as if we all lived in George Orwell&#8217;s &#8220;1984.&#8221;
Perjury? Who cares about perjury?
The morning after the Trump impeachment vote, ABC &#8220;news&#8221; man George Stephanopoulos grimly implied Trump will have an &#8220;indelible mark on his record.&#8221; Indelible? This from the &#8220;journalists&#8221; who blatantly campaigned in 2016 to put Clinton back in the White House as first gentleman.
The media cannot credibly lecture anyone on the erosion of &#8220;democratic norms&#8221; under this president. They have eroded every journalistic norm in their crusade to remove Trump and are now stenographers for undoing constitutional norms. They are the ones casting a dark shadow over our democracy. And no one gets to remove these unelected, permanent politicians from their offices.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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