President Trump and Republicans have been repeatedly slamming the Democrats&#8217; impeachment inquiry as a &#8220;partisan sham&#8221; that&#8217;s about politics rather than a patriotic duty to defend the interests of the country, as Democrats have insisted. A new detail about a sudden, unified shift in the Democrats&#8217; talking points, however, shows just how political the impeachment game really is.
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrats-shift-trump-impeachment-focus-to-new-potential-offenses">The Daily Wire</a> and other outlets on the right have noted, after weeks of accusing Trump of imposing a &#8220;quid pro quo&#8221; on Ukraine — allegedly requiring the administration to follow through on investigations into alleged corruption involving Joe and Hunter Biden and Ukraine-based energy company Burisma and alleged Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election in order to receive $391 million in U.S. military aid — the Democrats have dropped the Latin term altogether.
Now, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who is heading up the impeachment effort, and his colleagues are uniformly hammering a new allegation against Trump: &#8220;bribery.&#8221;
In an interview with NPR’s “Morning Edition” Tuesday, Schiff notably avoided mentioning the term &#8220;quid pro quo,&#8221; and instead said he believes he can prove that Trump committed several impeachable crimes, particularly “bribery” and “high crimes and misdemeanors,” which <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/11/12/778380499/rep-adam-schiff-trumps-potentially-impeachable-offenses-include-bribery">NPR</a> pointed out are “both explicitly outlined in the Constitution as impeachable offenses.”
“Bribery, first of all, as the founders understood bribery, it was not as we understand it in law today. It was much broader,” said Schiff, allowing himself as much room as possible in the allegation. “It connoted the breach of the public trust in a way where you’re offering official acts for some personal or political reason, not in the nation’s interest.”
So what prompted the switch? Many conservatives and Trump defenders pointed out one obvious possible rationale: the Democrats&#8217; &#8220;quid pro quo&#8221; argument has largely fallen apart. The transcript of the famous July 25 call that started it all released by the Trump administration shows no explicit quid pro quo. Ukrainian officials, including the president himself on multiple occasions, have made clear that they did not believe there was any form of quid pro quo attached to the investigations. And the U.S. released the aid without Ukraine beginning to conduct or publicly committing to conduct the investigations.
That all very well may be true, but according to a new report by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pelosi-calls-trumps-actions-bribery-as-democrats-sharpen-case-for-impeachment/2019/11/14/0ee9a202-0702-11ea-b17d-8b867891d39d_story.html">The Washington Post</a>, another strong impetus inspired the Democrats to alter their rhetoric. The report sheds light on the Democrats&#8217; decision to drop &#8220;quid pro quo&#8221; and start hammering &#8220;bribery,&#8221; and it&#8217;s purely partisan politics: the opinion of voters in 2020 battleground states. The Post reported Thursday:
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<blockquote>
Several Democrats have stopped using the term “quid pro quo,” instead describing “bribery” as a more direct summation of Trump’s alleged conduct.
</blockquote>
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<blockquote>
The shift came after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee conducted focus groups in key House battlegrounds in recent weeks, testing messages related to impeachment. Among the questions put to participants was whether “quid pro quo,” “extortion” or “bribery” was a more compelling description of Trump’s conduct. According to two people familiar with the results, which circulated among Democrats this week, the focus groups found “bribery” to be most damning. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the results have not been made public.
</blockquote>
Publicly, the Democrats have tried to defend the significant shift by arguing that they are just trying to avoid using &#8220;Latin words&#8221; in getting out their message, suggesting Americans aren&#8217;t sophisticated enough to follow their high-minded arguments. But the Post exposes the Democrats&#8217; most urgent concern, 2020.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-ratcliffe-to-impeachment-witness-here-are-all-the-times-ukraines-president-said-there-was-no-quid-pro-quo">WATCH: Impeachment Witness Asked About All The Times Ukraine’s President Said There Was ‘No Quid Pro Quo’</a>
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Adam Schiff

Report Reveals Why Democrats Really Dropped &#8216;Quid Pro Quo,&#8217; Switched To &#8216;Bribery&#8217;: 2020

Donald Trump

Impeachment

Nancy Pelosi

Ukraine

Washington Post

The New York Times and The Washington Post admitted that mass immigration and changes in demographics were a significant reason that Democrats took complete control of Virginia last week.
Democrats now control the governor&#8217;s seat, both chambers of the state&#8217;s legislature and the lieutenant governor&#8217;s seat for the first time in nearly 30 years.
Following the Democrats&#8217; dominate night in Virginia, The New York Times admitted that years of mass immigration are starting to radically change the electoral map &#8220;from Richmond to Atlanta, Houston, Denver and elsewhere and Democrats are starting to breach Republicans’ firewalls in elections.&#8221;
The New York Times <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/11/10/ny-times-tidal-wave-mass-immigration-hands-virginia-democrats/">reported</a>:
<blockquote>Not long ago, this rolling green stretch of Northern Virginia was farmland. Most people who could vote had grown up here. And when they did, they usually chose Republicans.
The fields of Loudoun County are disappearing. In their place is row upon row of cookie-cutter townhouses, clipped lawns and cul-de-sacs — a suburban landscape for as far as the eye can see. Unlike three decades ago, the residents are often from other places, like India and Korea. And when they vote, it is often for Democrats.
&#8230;
Once the heart of the confederacy, Virginia is now the land of Indian grocery stores, Korean churches and Diwali festivals. The state population has boomed — up by 38 percent since 1990, with the biggest growth in densely settled suburban areas like South Riding. One in 10 people eligible to vote in the state were born outside the United States, up from one in 28 in 1990. It is also significantly less white. In 1990, the census tracts that make up Mr. Katkuri’s Senate district were home to about 35,000 people — 91 percent of them white. Today, its population of 225,000 is just 64 percent white.
“It’s a totally different world,” said Charles Poland, 85, a retired history professor whose family has lived in Loudoun County for four generations. His family farm is now dotted with subdivisions filled with four and five-bedroom homes that sell for $750,000. The family legacy is a road named Poland. “If my parents came back today, they wouldn’t recognize the place. The changes came like a tidal wave.”</blockquote>
The Washington Post essentially <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-virginia-republicans-confront-a-fearful-electoral-future/2019/11/09/2bbdc7aa-026b-11ea-8bab-0fc209e065a8_story.html">reported</a> the same thing following last week&#8217;s election results:
<blockquote>Virginia now stands as a fearful avatar for Republicans of what the nation’s unrelenting demographic and cultural changes mean for the party, as the moderate-to-liberal urban and suburban areas grow and more conservative rural areas lose ground. Similar shifts are starting to hit such states as North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia and Texas, as minority populations increase and white college-educated voters continue to turn away from the Republican brand.</blockquote>
The Wall Street Journal&#8217;s Kimberley Strassel <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/eric-holder-takes-virginia-11573167564">noted</a> that another significant factor that went into the Democrats&#8217; electoral sweep in Virginia was former Democrat Attorney General Eric Holder&#8217;s redistricting program in which he used the legal system to get Virginia&#8217;s congressional districts redrawn in a manner that was favorable for Democrats.
&#8220;While most prominent Democrats spent the months following Donald Trump’s election plotting future runs, Mr. Holder was launching the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, committed to domination of electoral map making through the courts and legislatures,&#8221; Strassel wrote. &#8220;The NDRC spent its first years aggressively litigating legislative maps it didn’t like, to great success. Virginia’s election was the first test of the electoral piece of Mr. Holder’s strategy, and it will now serve as the model by which Democrats attempt to gain redistricting power in 11 other key states next year.&#8221;
&#8220;The NDRC claims its efforts are aimed at simple &#8216;fairness in the electoral system.&#8217; It says it’s working to overturn gerrymanders that &#8216;disenfranchise&#8217; voters,&#8221; Strassel continued. &#8220;Don’t be fooled. Mr. Holder’s group has never engaged in blue states where Democrats routinely draw maps to disadvantage Republicans, such as Maryland, Massachusetts or New Jersey.&#8221;
Strassel concluded: &#8220;Democratic groups threw at least $54 million at Virginia—an unprecedented sum in an election that didn’t feature a single federal office—outspending Republicans by some $12 million. Outside groups accounted for at least $22 million of the Democratic effort, nearly four times what they spent in 2015. Three billionaires—Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer and George Soros—and their organizations spent more than all outside Republican contributors combined.&#8221;

Honduran Migrants

NYT, WaPo: Mass Immigration, Demographic Changes Fueled Democrat Wins In Virginia

Democratic Party

Eric Holder

New York Times

Virginia

On Thursday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show,” Klavan talks about the media’s attempt to romanticize the next phase of impeachment proceedings in order to manipulate the public’s emotions. Video and partial transcript below: 
They’ve scheduled open impeachment hearings for next week — theoretically open impeachment hearings, and let&#8217;s just listen to the way CBS News, Norah O&#8217;Donnell, who is really bad. She is, she&#8217;s not just bad, she&#8217;s stiff and performative on the news. She&#8217;s so prejudiced, so biased that anyone with any sense of fairness has got to listen to her and think, &#8220;Wait a minute, this isn&#8217;t the news. These are Democrat talking points.&#8221; But you got to listen to this, the way she promotes the upcoming impeachment hearings.  
<blockquote>O’DONNELL: Tonight: Lights, camera, testimony. The stage is set for the first televised hearings of the impeachment inquiry. We now know when they will happen and who may be the Democrats&#8217; star witness. 
Good evening and thank you for joining us. It&#8217;s official: Historic, televised impeachment hearings begin a week from today, and it promises to be must-see TV. The Democrats plan to start with their star witness, a West Point grad with 50 years of public service. Acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor will testify Wednesday alongside Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent. Then on Friday, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch will testify. House Democrats say that&#8217;s just the beginning. 
Today, more Democrats — I should say, more of the Democrats released more transcripts from those closed door depositions, and Nancy Cordes says they offer a preview of what&#8217;s expected to be bombshell testimony.</blockquote>
Bombshell? It’s a bombshell! Lights, camera, action! I mean, it’s like over at NewsBusters, they said it&#8217;s like a prize fight, but it&#8217;s just like promotion for entertainment, promotion for a movie. It&#8217;s a blockbuster &#8230;
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Anyway, so they&#8217;re promoting this thing like it&#8217;s a movie, and here&#8217;s a piece that The Washington Post ran on Adam Schiff, the congressman in my district. Now this guy to me is like a greasy McCarthyite dishonest guy. He&#8217;s been caught lying repeatedly. Right, he lied about the whistleblower, he lied about having evidence of Russian collusion with Trump, he has just lied from the beginning, plus he looks like a turtle taken out of his shell. I&#8217;m sorry, but he does, he looks like a turtle. [The] guy is a turtle taken out of its shell and he lies all the time, and the Left, both The New York Times, a former newspaper, and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/adam-schiff-once-wanted-to-be-a-screenwriter-can-he-give-the-trump-presidency-a-hollywood-ending/2019/10/31/07cb9594-f748-11e9-ad8b-85e2aa00b5ce_story.html">The Washington Post</a>, where democracy dies in crap, are trying to glorify this guy to make him look like a romantic figure. It is utterly amazing. I mean, people do have eyes. They do have ears, they do see things, but they&#8217;re living in their own world. So here&#8217;s the [headline]:
&#8220;Adam Schiff once wanted to be a screenwriter. Can he give the Trump presidency a Hollywood ending?&#8221; 
And we know what The Washington Post — this is in the style section, by the way. We know what The Washington Post thinks a Hollywood ending to the Trump presidency would be: It’s Trump led out of the White House in handcuffs. Ain&#8217;t going to happen, but let me read you some of this, because it actually does tell you exactly what&#8217;s happening when you think about it. 
<blockquote>When Adam Schiff was a young assistant U.S. attorney living in Los Angeles, he did what everyone does when they moved to Hollywood. He wrote a screenplay. He spent hours at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Sciences, reading the scripts for &#8220;Silence of the Lambs&#8221; and &#8220;Witness&#8221; in the library (it was the ‘90s). He leaned on his courtroom experience, thinking back on snippets of dialog during trials as he typed out a crime thriller. The prosecutor was the hero, naturally. He called it &#8220;Minotaur,&#8221; and, if you ask Schiff, it was pretty good.
&#8220;I got an offer of an option from Nick Wechsler,&#8221; Schiff said, leaning back in a leather chair inside his Capitol Hill office late last month. &#8220;He produced &#8216;The Player,’ remember that movie with Tim Robbins?&#8221;
Schiff turned down the offer, he said. He doesn&#8217;t remember it being a huge sum of money, and anyway, he was getting into a different kind of storytelling business: Politics.</blockquote>
This is The Washington Post glorifying this guy and yet also playing his hand.
<blockquote>In some ways, he&#8217;s become the chief storyteller of this drama-filled political moment. Schiff is the head of the House Intelligence Committee and leader of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry of President Trump. He&#8217;s in charge of calling witnesses, taking depositions, and subpoenaing documents. More than that, it&#8217;s his job to stitch it all together into a believable, easy-to-follow narrative. Imagine the pitch meeting: It&#8217;s like &#8220;The Manchurian Candidate,&#8221; except the president has heel spurs. It&#8217;s &#8220;The Godfather&#8221; meets &#8220;Borat.&#8221;</blockquote>
Alright, they’re telling you — you know, I talk about this on college campuses a lot because really, my expertise, is storytelling. That is what I&#8217;ve done all my life, that&#8217;s what I know about. I&#8217;ve studied it a lot, I’ve studied it deeply. I would say, I know about narrative and how it works, and I know about how it affects people and about how storyteller stories manipulate your emotions. 
Again, I think I mentioned this yesterday, you go to a movie and you cry over the death of someone who never lived, right? And that&#8217;s an important thing — it tells you that your emotions can be manipulated at a very high level, and it&#8217;s a good thing. We like it when it&#8217;s done right. But it can also be used against you, because they can manipulate emotions that are geared to one thing and tell you that they&#8217;re about another. 
The best example I can think about is a movie like &#8220;Avatar,&#8221; which is also the movie &#8220;Dances with Wolves,&#8221; which is also the movie &#8220;Pocahontas.&#8221; They&#8217;re all the same movie: A man from a civilized, in these cases white, society enters the world of a less civilized, non-white society and discovers that they&#8217;re the innocents and they&#8217;re these wonderful — what do they call them in the old days, the noble savage? — and his society is deeply corrupt. That&#8217;s the story in each one of those instances, right? His civilized society is bad, and the innocent brown people with their primitive society is good. 
Listen, all stories that move you are telling the truth, but it&#8217;s up to you to find out what that truth is. The truth is, we all know that there&#8217;s something distorting about technology, there&#8217;s something distorting about civilization. Freud called it &#8220;Civilization and Its Discontents,&#8221; and we all have this Rousseauvian feeling that there&#8217;s something we left behind, just like we have a feeling that there&#8217;s something we left behind in childhood. Maybe those feelings are connected? 
Okay, so they&#8217;re manipulating that to tell you that the white cavalry men in the West were bad and the Native Americans were good. They’re manipulating a true feeling to tell you something that is historically a lot more complicated than that, right? Historically, it&#8217;s a lot more complicated, and &#8220;Avatar&#8221; is even worse because they&#8217;re manipulating you to think that the American military is bad. Basically, they were telling you that the Iraqis and the Afghanis were innocent people and we were going in there to steal their oil. &#8230;
Anyway, this is what they&#8217;re doing: Manipulating us. They&#8217;re playing this up, [saying] it&#8217;s a dramatic moment in politics. It&#8217;s not dramatic, it&#8217;s really not. We know what the story is, we know the real story. We know that this is something that&#8217;s been going on for a long time — that they&#8217;re trying to get this president impeached.
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-andrew-klavan-show/id1045171376?mt=2">Listen to full episodes of “The Andrew Klavan Show” on iTunes. 
</a><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show">Watch “The Andrew Klavan Show” on-demand!</a>

Nancy Pelosi And Adam Schiff

KLAVAN: Lights, Camera, Impeachment!

The loudest voices pushing the gender wage gap myth often fail to adhere to their own standards. The latest example comes from The Washington Post, which, other than some decent fact checks on the subject from Glenn Kessler, continues to insist the pay gap is real and due to discrimination against women.
A <a href="https://postguild.org/2019-pay-study/">report</a> from the Post’s union, however, shows that the legacy media outlet has its own gender wage gap problem. The report found that the median pay for women working at the Post is $91,816, while the median pay for men is $109,928. The median pay for hourly employees puts women ahead, with women making $30.77 per hour while men make just $25.84 per hour.
The union, or guild, then broke down the median salaries of Post employees by gender and race. The median salaries for white men ($111,035) and black men ($99,931) were higher than the median salary of white women ($95,780). At the bottom of the list were black women ($87,808), Latino women ($80,250) and women of two or more races ($75,000) or an undisclosed race ($73,000).
The report also found that merit raises at the company seem to favor white male journalists. White employees received 75.7% of all merit-based pay raises, while men received 51.7% of them (meaning near parity among the sexes). The report that performance evaluation scores allegedly favored white employees. Employees at the Post are rated on a scale of 1 to 5, and the report found that 85% of those employees who received a score of 4 or higher were white. The report found that 37% of those given a score lower than 3 were employees of color (meaning 63% of those receiving low scores were also white). Post employees are 64.4% white.
The Post guild claims the disparity persists even when controlling for age and job description, but there are numerous other factors that can lead to the gap, such as experience (may not necessarily be tied to age) and negotiating ability.
It is amusing to see a company like the Post, which is so committed to painting women as victims of mass discrimination, grapple with its own discrimination claims. The same has happened to lawmakers who push the gender wage gap.
President Barack Obama and his administration were one of the most persistent purveyors of the wage-gap myth (it is more accurately an earnings gap, as it typically measures what men and women earn at the end of the year, rather than what they are individually paid). A <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2017_economic_report_of_president.pdf">report</a> of the Obama White House found that the median salary for men was higher than the median salary for women. The Obama administration countered by pointing out the discrepancy was due to more men at top-level positions, but highlighted the fact that the administration was hiring more women to junior positions in an effort to enact change.
The Washington Free Beacon conducted several studies of Democrat campaigns and offices, finding pay disparities on Obama’s <a href="https://freebeacon.com/politics/the-democratic-war-on-women-continues/">2012 campaign</a>, as well as the senate offices of <a href="https://freebeacon.com/politics/hillary-clintons-war-on-women/">Hillary Clinton</a> and 2020 presidential candidate <a href="https://freebeacon.com/politics/men-paid-more-than-women-in-kamala-harriss-senate-office-and-campaign/">Kamala Harris</a>.

Gender Wage Gap

The Washington Post Pushes The Gender Wage Gap. Turns Out It Has A Wage Gap Of Its Own.

When I first saw the <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1189601417469841409?s=20">image</a> tweeted by President Trump of a dog being awarded the Medal of Honor, like any reasonable person I immediately assumed that it was completely real and accurate. Granted, I’d heard dark tales of a black magic known as “photoshop,” but I couldn’t believe the President of the United States would ever engage in such sorcery. I was wrong.
As has since been exposed by the tireless work of our courageous news media, the picture was a fraud. A fake. A forgery. It has been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/us/politics/trump-dog.html">altered</a>, the New York Times confirmed in an article with two authors. After its own extensive investigation, the Washington Post agreed that the photo was &#8220;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2019/10/30/trump-tweeted-photo-medal-honor-recipient-who-was-edited-out-replaced-by-dog/">edited.</a>&#8221; CNN&#8217;s Jim Acosta ran down his own leads and <a href="https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1189658623431102465">discovered</a> that &#8220;the dog is not at the White House.&#8221; Another fearless journalist immediately <a href="https://twitter.com/W7VOA/status/1189603619391320065">called</a> the White House and found that there had been no &#8220;canine events.&#8221; After a whole day spent on this important subject, it became clear that the picture was an elaborate ruse. Most disturbing of all: the Daily Wire was behind it.
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AMERICAN HERO! <a href="https://t.co/XCCa2sGfsZ">pic.twitter.com/XCCa2sGfsZ</a>
&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1189601417469841409?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 30, 2019</a></blockquote>
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As it turns out, our very own social media team created this image as a “joke.” But this is no joking matter. We have learned time and again throughout Trump&#8217;s presidency that memes are nothing to laugh about. So, I want to say this loudly and unequivocally: I do not approve of such a dastardly misuse of photoshop. If I had been consulted ahead of time, I would have cautioned against going down this fateful path. I would have warned our social media team that humorously editing a photo of a Medal of Honor ceremony will send the entire nation — or at least the media, at any rate — into a spiral of confusion and despair. Anarchy will follow. Cannibalism won’t be far behind. The very survival of human civilization is at stake. Stop, dear God stop, I would have shouted with tears in my eyes. This is not who we are. Put the photoshop down, damn you! Turn back now before it&#8217;s too late! You don&#8217;t have to do this!
But I never had the chance. The decision was made and we all must live with the consequences. A disturbing question now inevitably arises: can we even trust the things we see on the internet? If the dog photo was fake, what else is fake? I saw a picture on Facebook last week of a velociraptor riding a shark while shooting a machine gun. I spent days trying to figure out which aquarium has this interesting exhibit, but now I&#8217;m starting to wonder if it was just propaganda. Reality itself suddenly seems unstable.
In closing, I can only express my deep gratitude to the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and all of the other news outlets that exposed this wicked hoax. And though the culprits here at the Daily Wire appear to be entirely lacking in remorse, I will apologize on their behalf. I pledge that, from now on, so help me God, photoshops and memes will be treated with the respect and seriousness they deserve.

Adobe Photoshop Downloadable software logo seen displayed on

WALSH: The Daily Wire Created A Doctored Photo Of A Dog Receiving The Medal Of Honor. I Apologize For This Evil Hoax.

The Daily Wire

As Nicholas Sandmann&#8217;s lawsuit against The Washington Post was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-judge-reverses-course-on-covington-catholic-student-nick-sandmanns-lawsuit-against-the-washington-post">given anew</a> a green light to proceed, President Trump championed the cause on Twitter Wednesday morning.
“A Federal Judge is allowing the Nick Sandman [sic] libel suit to move forward against the thoroughly disgusting Washington Post (which is no longer available at the White House!),” Trump wrote on Twitter. “He could now have a good chance of winning. Go Nick!”
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A Federal Judge is allowing the Nick Sandman libel suit to move forward against the thoroughly disgusting Washington Post (which is no longer available at the White House!). He could now have a good chance of winning. Go Nick!
&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1189518901991923712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 30, 2019</a></blockquote>
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As The Daily Wire&#8217;s Ryan Saavedra <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-judge-reverses-course-on-covington-catholic-student-nick-sandmanns-lawsuit-against-the-washington-post">reported</a> on Tuesday, Federal Judge William Bertelsman reversed his previous decision and allowed Sandmann&#8217;s libel lawsuit to proceed against the Washington Post, barring a few caveats:
<blockquote>A federal judge in Kentucky reopened Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann’s $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Washington Post on Monday after having previously dismissed it over the summer.
“After reviewing an amended complaint, Judge William Bertelsman ordered Monday that the case could enter the discovery phase and hence a portion of the lawsuit against the newspaper could continue,” the Cincinnati Enquirer <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/28/cov-cath-judge-rules-lawsuit-against-washington-post-can-continue/2489395001/">reported</a>.
The lawsuit is allowed to proceed but has been limited in scope after the judge said that 30 out of the 33 statements that Sandmann’s lawyers argued were libelous were not actually libelous.</blockquote>
Sandmann was thrust into the national spotlight earlier this year, when mainstream news outlets like the Post and CNN reported that he and several of his fellow students harassed a Native American man named Nathan Phillips while attending the March for Life in Washington, D.C. Phillips testified that “Make America Great Again” hat-wearing boys blocked his path and taunted him with racial slurs, which appeared somewhat credible at first when viral video revealed the boys standing around Phillips, cheering as he banged a drum in front of Sandmann’s face. However, the narrative took a dramatic turn when other videos showed that Phillips approached the boys, who were at the time being taunted with racial slurs by a fringe group known as the Black Hebrew Israelites.
Without fully investigating the matter, news outlets largely ran with Phillips’ account of what happened, smearing the boys as racists. Sandmann arguably bore the brunt of the smears due to his face being featured so prominently in the video. In fact, media figures, such as CNN contributor Reza Aslan, <a href="https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2019/01/20/reza-aslan-who-cried-at-the-gillette-commercial-thinks-covington-catholic-hs-student-has-a-punchable-face/">suggested</a> he’d like to punch the 16-year-old in the face. “Honest question. Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?” Aslan tweeted at the time.
In response, Sandmann’s family sued several news outlets for defamation, targeting the Post first for $250 million and accusing the outlet of “using its vast financial resources to enter the bully pulpit by publishing a series of false and defamatory print and online articles … to smear a young boy who was in its view an acceptable casualty in their war against the president.” Originally, Judge Bertelsman (who was initially nominated to the bench by former President Jimmy Carter) dismissed the lawsuit, arguing that the Post did not commit defamation because it never mentioned Sandmann by name.
“The words used contain no reflection upon any particular individual,” the judge said in the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/judge-dismisses-nick-sandmanns-lawsuit-against-paul-bois">July ruling</a>, adding that the newspaper used “loose, figurative,” and “rhetorical hyperbole” — all of which are protected by the First Amendment.

President Trump Speaks At International Association Of Police Chiefs Annual Conference And Exposition

Trump Champions Nick Sandmann’s Lawsuit Against The Washington Post

Constitution

First Amendment

Lawsuit

Nick Sandmann

According to a new report, an integral factor in the successful elimination by U.S. special forces of the most wanted man in the world, mass murdering Islamic State leader Abu Baker al-Baghdadi, was &#8220;an extraordinarily well-placed informant.&#8221; The informant was reportedly a defector of the terrorist group who worked from inside the compound where Baghdadi was cornered and ultimately killed himself and some of his children by detonating a suicide vest.
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&#8220;U.S. commandos zeroed in on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s final hideout with the help of an extraordinarily well-placed informant, an Islamic State operative who facilitated the terrorist leader’s movements around Syria and even helped oversee construction work on his Syrian safe house, according to U.S. and Middle East-based officials knowledgeable about the operation,&#8221; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/islamic-state-turncoat-inside-baghdadis-hideout-critical-to-success-of-raid-officials-say/2019/10/29/e702c2fa-fa86-11e9-ac8c-8eced29ca6ef_story.html">The Washington Post</a> reported Tuesday.
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The defector reportedly provided the U.S. military a detailed, &#8220;room-by-room layout&#8221; of the compound where the terrorist&#8217;s reign finally came to an inglorious end on Oct. 26.
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&#8220;The informant was present during the assault on Baghdadi’s compound in the Syrian province of Idlib, and he was exfiltrated from the region two days later with his family,&#8221; the Post reports. &#8220;The man, whose nationality had not been revealed, is expected to receive some or all of the $25 million U.S. bounty that had been placed on Baghdadi’s head, according to the officials.&#8221;
The Post notes that an unnamed official described the informant as a Sunni Arab who defected after the terrorist group killed one of his relatives.
In a nationally televised statement Sunday morning, President Trump announced the death of Baghdadi and made a point of underscoring his heinous actions as the leader of the barbaric group as well as his shameful death, which took the lives of three of his own children.
&#8220;Last night, the United States brought the world’s No. 1 terrorist leader to justice,&#8221; Trump told the nation Sunday. &#8220;Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead. He was the founder and leader of ISIS, the most ruthless and violent terror organization anywhere in the world. The United States has been searching for Baghdadi for many years. Capturing or killing Baghdadi has been the top national security priority of my administration. U.S. Special Operations forces executed a dangerous and daring nighttime raid in northwestern Syria and accomplished their mission in grand style.
&#8220;He died after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way,&#8221; said Trump. &#8220;The compound had been cleared by this time, with people either surrendering or being shot and killed. Eleven young children were moved out of the house uninjured. The only ones remaining were Baghdadi in the tunnel, and he had dragged three of his young children with him. They were led to certain death.&#8221;
&#8220;He reached the end of the tunnel, as our dogs chased him down,&#8221; Trump continued. &#8220;He ignited his vest, killing himself and the three children. His body was mutilated by the blast, the tunnel had caved in on it in addition, but test results gave certain, immediate and totally positive identification it was him.&#8221;
&#8220;The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread — terrified of the American forces bearing down on him,&#8221; said the president. &#8220;We were in the compound for approximately two hours, and after the mission was accomplished, we took highly sensitive material and information from the raid, much having to do with ISIS, origins, future plans, things that we very much want. Baghdadi’s demise demonstrates America’s relentless pursuit of terrorist leaders, and our commitment to the enduring and total defeat of ISIS and other terrorist organizations.&#8221;
Below is the full <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/us/trump-transcript-isis-al-baghdadi.html">transcript</a> of Trump&#8217;s remarks
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Last night, the United States brought the world’s No. 1 terrorist leader to justice. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead. He was the founder and leader of ISIS, the most ruthless and violent terror organization anywhere in the world. The United States has been searching for Baghdadi for many years. Capturing or killing Baghdadi has been the top national security priority of my administration. U.S. Special Operations forces executed a dangerous and daring nighttime raid in northwestern Syria and accomplished their mission in grand style.
The U.S. personnel were incredible. I got to watch much of it. No personnel were lost in the operation, while a large number of Baghdadi’s fighters and companions were killed with him. He died after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way. The compound had been cleared by this time, with people either surrendering or being shot and killed.
Eleven young children were moved out of the house uninjured. The only ones remaining were Baghdadi in the tunnel, and he had dragged three of his young children with him. They were led to certain death. He reached the end of the tunnel, as our dogs chased him down. He ignited his vest, killing himself and the three children. His body was mutilated by the blast, the tunnel had caved in on it in addition, but test results gave certain, immediate and totally positive identification it was him.
The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread — terrified of the American forces bearing down on him. We were in the compound for approximately two hours, and after the mission was accomplished, we took highly sensitive material and information from the raid, much having to do with ISIS, origins, future plans, things that we very much want.
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Baghdadi’s demise demonstrates America’s relentless pursuit of terrorist leaders, and our commitment to the enduring and total defeat of ISIS and other terrorist organizations. Our reach is very long. As you know, last month we announced that we recently killed Hamza bin Laden, the very violent son of Osama bin Laden, who was saying very bad things about people, about our country, about the world.
He was the heir apparent to Al Qaeda. Terrorists who oppress and murder innocent people should never sleep soundly, knowing that we will completely destroy them. These savage monsters will not escape their fate — and they will not escape the final judgment of God.
Baghdadi has been on the run for many years, long before I took office. But at my direction, as commander-in-chief of the United States, we obliterated his caliphate, 100 percent, in March of this year. Today’s events are another reminder that we will continue to pursue the remaining ISIS terrorists to their brutal end. That also goes for other terrorist organizations. They are likewise in our sights.
Baghdadi and the losers who worked with him — and losers they are — they had no idea what they were getting into. In some cases they were very frightened puppies, in other cases they were hard-core killers. But they killed many, many people. Their murder of innocent Americans James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller were especially heinous. The shocking publicized murder of Jordanian pilot — a wonderful young man, spoke to the king of Jordan, they all knew him, they all loved him — who was burned alive in a cage for all to see, and the execution of Christians in Libya and Egypt, as well as the genocidal mass murder of Yazidis, rank ISIS among the most depraved organizations in the history of our world.
The forced religious conversions, the orange suits prior to so many beheadings, all of which were openly displayed for the world to see — this was all that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — this is what he wanted, this is what he was proud of. He was a sick and depraved man. And now he’s gone. Baghdadi was vicious and violent, and he died in a vicious and violent way, as a coward, running and crying. This raid was impeccable, and could only have taken place with the acknowledgment and help of certain other nations and people.
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I want to thank the nations of Russia, Turkey, Syria and Iraq, and I also want to thank the Syrian Kurds for certain support they were able to give us. This was a very, very dangerous mission. Thank you as well to the great intelligence professionals who helped make this very successful journey possible.
I want to thank the soldiers and sailors, airmen and Marines involved in last night’s operation. You are the very best there is anywhere in the world, no matter where you go there is nobody even close. I want to thank Gen. Mark Milley and our Joint Chiefs of Staff, and I also want to thank our professionals who work in other agencies of the United States government and were critical to the mission’s unbelievable success.
Last night was a great night for the United States and for the world. A brutal killer, one who has caused so much hardship and death, has violently been eliminated — he will never again harm another innocent man, woman or child. He died like a dog. He died like a coward. The world is now a much safer place.
God bless America, thank you.
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Al-Baghdadi

Report: ISIS Defector Inside Baghdadi’s Compound Was Key To U.S. Getting Terrorist Leader

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Islamic State (ISIS)

Trump Administration

The following is satirical.
Media pundits seem to be discovering the hidden charms of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Ever since President Donald Trump arranged for the erasure of the ISIS leader, press anti-Trumpers seem to be asking themselves: If Trump ordered him killed, can he really have been so bad?
The Washington Post, where Democracy dies strangling on hatred after taking a heavy dose of mindless venom, called the terrorist leader an “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/58280">austere religious scholar</a>,” and blamed the United States invasion of Iraq for distracting this “academic” from his intention to live a “quiet life as a professor of Islamic law.”
Never Trumper Max Boot, meanwhile, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/28/al-baghdadis-death-could-have-been-trumps-finest-hour-he-messed-it-up-anyway/">objected</a> to President Trump calling the austere scholar a coward saying, after all, the terrorist had been brave enough to blow himself and three children to smithereens.
I’ve prayed God would allow me to wake up in a world where I’m making all that up, but so far no dice. I haven’t even gotten to the satire part yet.
We can now look forward to articles from, say, The New York Times, a former newspaper, praising al-Baghdadi for his wistful appreciation of female beauty, and maybe Chuck Todd will chime in on al-Baghdadi’s artistic camera work as he made videos of innocent people being beheaded in order to recruit more austere scholars to his cause of slaughtering everybody in sight.
There was, of course, also al-Baghdadi’s fabulous fashion sense which led MSNBC to offer him a hosting spot on their new show &#8220;Muslim Eye for the Christian Guy,&#8221; which has now unfortunately been canceled due to Trump’s brutal indifference to fostering really good TV.
Meanwhile, McCarthyite Congressman Adam Schiff is whining because Trump didn’t inform him of the operation ahead of time. Trump said he worried Schiff would leak the mission to the press. But Schiff said that was absurd, according to anonymous sources on the Intelligence Committee who spoke with the Times.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/58280">Washington Post Changes Headline About Terrorist Leader’s Death, Calling Him An ‘Austere Religious Scholar’</a>

Media Asks: If Trump Had Al-Baghdadi Killed, Can He Really Have Been So Bad? [Satire]

Chuck Todd

MSNBC

Satire

A federal judge in Kentucky reopened Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann&#8217;s $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Washington Post on Monday after having previously dismissed it over the summer.
&#8220;After reviewing an amended complaint, Judge William Bertelsman ordered Monday that the case could enter the discovery phase and hence a portion of the lawsuit against the newspaper could continue,&#8221; the Cincinnati Enquirer <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/28/cov-cath-judge-rules-lawsuit-against-washington-post-can-continue/2489395001/">reported</a>.
The lawsuit is allowed to proceed but has been limited in scope after the judge said that 30 out of the 33 statements that Sandmann&#8217;s lawyers argued were libelous were not actually libelous.
The Enquirer added: &#8220;The judge&#8217;s order that discovery can continue means Sandmann&#8217;s legal team can make requests for internal Washington Post documents concerning the events like emails and communications between editors and reporters.&#8221;
&#8220;The Court will adhere to its previous rulings as they pertain to these statements except Statements 10, 11, and 33, to the extent that these three statements state that plaintiff &#8216;blocked&#8217; Nathan Phillips and &#8216;would not allow him to retreat,'&#8221; Judge Bertelsman said on Monday, according to <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/oct/28/nick-sandmann-covington-catholic-student-washingto/">The Washington Times</a>.
&#8220;Suffice to say that the Court has given this matter careful review and concludes that ‘justice requires’ that discovery be had regarding these statements and their context,&#8221; Bertelsman added. &#8220;The Court will then consider them anew on summary judgment.&#8221;
Sandmann attorneys Todd V. McMurtry and L. Lin Wood celebrated the judge&#8217;s decision, calling it a &#8220;huge win.&#8221;
&#8220;The Sandmann family and our legal team are grateful that Judge Bertelsman has allowed the case to proceed,&#8221; McMurtry said in an email, according to the Times. &#8220;The Court’s ruling preserves the heart of the Nicholas Sandmann’s claims. We can consider this a huge victory and look forward to initiating discovery against The Washington Post.&#8221;
McMurtry added on Twitter: &#8220;NEWSFLASH: Federal Judge William O. Bertelsman partially reversed his ruling to dismiss #nicksandmann&#8217;s claims against the @washingtonpost. Nick&#8217;s case may now proceed into discovery. The ruling bodes [well] for the NBC and CNN cases, as well.&#8221;
&#8220;This is a huge win,&#8221; McMurtry concluded. &#8220;Now #NickSandmann will be able to start discovery and find out exactly what the reporters were thinking when they attacked Nicholas and the #CovingtonCatholic kids.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
This is a huge win. Now <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NickSandmann?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NickSandmann</a> will be able to start discovery and find out exactly what the reporters were thinking when they attacked Nicholas and the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CovingtonCatholic?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CovingtonCatholic</a> kids.
— Todd V. McMurtry (@ToddMcMurtry) <a href="https://twitter.com/ToddMcMurtry/status/1188878949268512773?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2019</a></blockquote>
Wood wrote on Twitter: &#8220;As a prepare for summary judgment hearing today in LA in Vernon Unsworth v. Elon Musk, the news of our team’s huge win in Covington, KY reaffirms my career-long belief that our system of justice works. Nicholas Sandmann deserves his day in court against WaPo. Now he will get it.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
As a prepare for summary judgment hearing today in LA in Vernon Unsworth v. Elon Musk, the news of our team’s huge win in Covington, KY reaffirms my career-long belief that our system of justice works. Nicholas Sandmann deserves his day in court against WaPo. Now he will get it.
— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) <a href="https://twitter.com/LLinWood/status/1188882340585459712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2019</a></blockquote>
Sandmann&#8217;s legal team also filed massive lawsuits against CNN and NBCUniversal for their smears against the teenagers.
Fox News <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/sandmann-family-sue-cnn-for-275m-in-covington-catholic-controversy">reported</a> on March 12 that &#8220;the lawsuit, filed just after 3 P.M. in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, claims that CNN &#8216;elevated false, heinous accusations of racist conduct&#8217; against Sandmann and failed to adhere to &#8216;well-established journalistic standards and ethics.'&#8221;
The Washington Times <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/may/1/nick-sandmann-covington-catholic-teen-sues-nbc-275/">reported</a> on May 1 that Sandmann&#8217;s attorneys filed a &#8220;$275 million lawsuit Wednesday against NBCUniversal over its coverage of the Kentucky teen, accusing the network of creating a &#8216;false narrative&#8217; driven by its &#8216;anti-Trump agenda.'&#8221;

Judge Reverses Course On Covington Catholic Student Nick Sandmann’s Lawsuit Against The Washington Post

Covington Catholic High School

Judiciary

Early Sunday morning, The Washington Post published <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/58280">an article</a> about the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Cornered in a tunnel, the terrorist leader “detonated a suicide vest, killing himself” and three of his children, reports <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/isis-leader-dead-trump-says-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-died-like-a-coward-in-us-raid-in-syria-today-2019-10-27/">CBS News</a>.
The original title of the Washington Post piece read: “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Islamic State’s ‘terrorist-in-chief,’ dies at 48.” Then, in a bizarre twist, the title was changed to: “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State, dies at 48.”
After receiving significant backlash, the title was changed for a final time: “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, extremist leader of Islamic State, dies at 48.”
On Sunday afternoon, The Washington Post’s Vice President of Communications said the following about the title controversy: “Regarding our al-Baghdadi obituary, the headline should never have read that way and we changed it quickly.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Regarding our al-Baghdadi obituary, the headline should never have read that way and we changed it quickly.
— Kristine Coratti Kelly (@kriscoratti) <a href="https://twitter.com/kriscoratti/status/1188522256810631170?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
This ridiculous title shuffle has led to the hashtag #WaPoDeathNotices, which as of publication, is trending at number five on Twitter.
Below are the funniest and most clever fake death notices mocking The Washington Post:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Jeffrey Dahmer, LGBT activist-pioneer, unconventional romantic, and avant-garde gastronomist passed away at age 34 surrounded by his caretakers <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WaPoDeathNotices?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WaPoDeathNotices</a>
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) <a href="https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1188547437687758848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>Jeffrey Dahmer, LGBT activist-pioneer, unconventional romantic, and avant-garde gastronomist passed away at age 34 surrounded by his caretakers.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Wicked Witch of the West, devoted sister, broom enthusiast, died suddenly from oversaturation, age unknown<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WaPoDeathNotices?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WaPoDeathNotices</a>
— Emily Brandwin (@CIAspygirl) <a href="https://twitter.com/CIAspygirl/status/1188552046619713536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>Wicked Witch of the West, devoted sister, broom enthusiast, died suddenly from oversaturation, age unknown.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Adolf Hitler, passionate community planner and dynamic public speaker, dies at 56.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WaPoDeathNotices?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WaPoDeathNotices</a>
— Jason Howerton (@jason_howerton) <a href="https://twitter.com/jason_howerton/status/1188482231930675200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>Adolf Hitler, passionate community planner and dynamic public speaker, dies at 56.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Ted Bundy, unconventional pickup artist, dies, shockingly, at 42 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WaPoDeathNotices?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WaPoDeathNotices</a>
— Harry Khachatrian (@Harry1T6) <a href="https://twitter.com/Harry1T6/status/1188501310582206464?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>Ted Bundy, unconventional pickup artist, dies, shockingly, at 42.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Emperor Palpatine, austere holder of emergency powers and advocate for democracy, died after a fall. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WaPoDeathNotices?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WaPoDeathNotices</a>
— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) <a href="https://twitter.com/robbysoave/status/1188528161945980928?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>Emperor Palpatine, austere holder of emergency powers and advocate for democracy, died after a fall.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Nero, emperor who helped Christians bring light to Rome, dies at 30. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WaPoDeathNotices?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WaPoDeathNotices</a>
— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) <a href="https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1188511134946680833?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>Nero, emperor who helped Christians bring light to Rome, dies at 30.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Sauron, passionate collector of rare jewelry, dead, age unknown. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WaPoDeathNotices?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WaPoDeathNotices</a>
— Mike Sellraiser III: Sell on Earth (@mike_sell) <a href="https://twitter.com/mike_sell/status/1188504524144762883?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>Sauron, passionate collector of rare jewelry, dead, age unknown.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
John Wayne Gacy, eccentric children’s performer, dies at 52. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WaPoDeathNotices?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WaPoDeathNotices</a>
— Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) <a href="https://twitter.com/AsheSchow/status/1188553323051393025?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>John Wayne Gacy, eccentric children’s performer, dies at 52.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
John Wilkes Booth, noted thespian, dies at age 24. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WaPoDeathNotices?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WaPoDeathNotices</a>
— Justin (@trojanjustin) <a href="https://twitter.com/trojanjustin/status/1188483706031349773?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>John Wilkes Booth, noted thespian, dies at age 24.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Mao Zedong, who saved 20-45 million of his own people from having to suffer through the struggle of existence, dies at 82.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WaPoDeathNotices?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WaPoDeathNotices</a> <a href="https://t.co/4wwJqQqXp3">pic.twitter.com/4wwJqQqXp3</a>
— Jason Howerton (@jason_howerton) <a href="https://twitter.com/jason_howerton/status/1188485636925415425?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>Mao Zedong, who saved 20-45 million of his own people from having to suffer through the struggle of existence, dies at 82.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Saddam Hussein, successful politician, oil baron and noted tough boss, dead at 69. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WaPoDeathNotices?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WaPoDeathNotices</a>
— Sen. Denise Batters (@denisebatters) <a href="https://twitter.com/denisebatters/status/1188532688057176064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>Saddam Hussein, successful politician, oil baron and noted tough boss, dead at 69.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Charles Manson, famous songwriter and meditation leader, dead at 83 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WaPoDeathNotices?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WaPoDeathNotices</a>
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) <a href="https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/1188518533589655552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>Charles Manson, famous songwriter and meditation leader, dead at 83.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Al Capone, noted self-made entrepreneur, dies at 48. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WaPoDeathNotices?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WaPoDeathNotices</a>
— Phineas Fahrquar (@irishspy) <a href="https://twitter.com/irishspy/status/1188528874738475008?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>Al Capone, noted self-made entrepreneur, dies at 48.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Heinrich Himmler, passionate chicken farmer, dies unexpectedly at 44 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WaPoDeathNotices?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WaPoDeathNotices</a>
— John Schindler (@20committee) <a href="https://twitter.com/20committee/status/1188525310460997632?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
<blockquote>Heinrich Himmler, passionate chicken farmer, dies unexpectedly at 44.</blockquote>
The contrast between the way The Washington Post headlined the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi under President Trump and the way in which the paper headlined the death of Osama Bin Laden under President Obama makes the #WaPoDeathNotices trend all the more important to note.
On May 2, 2011, after it was announced that Osama Bin Ladin had been killed, The Washington Post offered a much more <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/osama-bin-laden-killed-leader-of-terrorist-group-al-qaeda-was-53/2010/09/21/AFqrZ0VF_story.html">simple headline</a>: “Osama bin Laden killed: Leader of terrorist group al-Qaeda was 54.”
Speaking on Sunday about the operation to take out Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, President Trump <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-death-isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi/">stated in part</a>:
<blockquote>The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread, terrified of the American forces bearing down on him&#8230;
Terrorists who oppress and murder innocent people should never sleep soundly, knowing that we will completely destroy them.  These savage monsters will not escape their fate, and they will not escape the final judgment of God&#8230;</blockquote>
“Last night was a great night for the United States and for the world. A brutal killer, one who has caused so much hardship and death, has violently been eliminated,” Trump concluded. “He will never again harm another innocent man, woman, or child. He died like a dog. He died like a coward. The world is now a much safer place.”

Twitter.

Twitter Users Hilariously Savage The Washington Post With ‘WaPoDeathNotices’ Hashtag After Al-Baghdadi Bungle

Twitter

On Saturday night, the world’s top terrorist killed himself before the United States could take him into custody.
On Sunday morning, The Washington Post seemingly struggled to come up with a headline for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s obituary.
The original headline for the Post’s article about the terrorist leader’s death read, “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Islamic State’s ‘terrorist-in-chief,’ dies at 48.”
To start, the headline makes is seem like he simply died of an illness rather than in response to a raid conducted by the U.S. military, but at least it calls him a terrorist and notes the gravity of his death. But apparently that headline was too harsh, because the Post changed the headline to, “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State, dies at 48,” according to a screenshot from journalist Yashar Ali.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
They had it right the first time.
The Washington Post changed the headline on its Al-Baghdadi obituary from “Islamic State’s terrorist-in-Chief” to “austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State.” <a href="https://t.co/cs243EVz7W">pic.twitter.com/cs243EVz7W</a>
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) <a href="https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1188473675894284289?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Just imagine the Post claiming Osama bin Laden was an “austere religious scholar.” You can’t, because that’s not how the Post described him after the raid that killed him during the Obama Administration. The headline for that obituary read: “Osama bin Laden killed: Leader of terrorist group al-Qaeda was 54.”
Yet when the leader of a terrorist organization dies under President Donald Trump, the word “terrorist” gets removed.
The Post’s headline on the al-Baghdadi obituary appears to have been changed yet again since Ali posted screenshots, as it now reads: “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, extremist leader of Islamic State, dies at 48.”
The Post’s tweet of the article and its appearance on “related links” on its website still use the original headline for now.
The article itself isn’t much better. It describes al-Baghdadi as an “austere religious scholar with wire-frame classes” and says he “maintained a canny pragmatism.”
“Acquaintances would remember him as a shy, nearsighted youth who liked soccer but preferred to spend his free time at the local mosque,” the Post wrote, as <a href="https://twitter.com/LizRNC/status/1188477530602377218">highlighted</a> by Republican National Committee spokeswoman Elizabeth Harrington.
Consultant Elliott Schwartz also <a href="https://twitter.com/elliosch/status/1188478710128791559">noted</a> that the Post “waits until the 34th [paragraph] to inform readers he was a serial rapist of hostage sex slaves.”
Saturday night, Trump sent a cryptic tweet saying simply: “Something very big has just happened!” On Sunday morning, the president announced al-Baghdadi’s death during an address to the nation.
“Last night, the United States brought the world’s number one terrorist leader, to justice: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead,” Trump said, as <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-president-trump-confirms-death-of-isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi">previously reported</a> by The Daily Wire’s Emily Zanotti. “Last night was a great night for the U.S. and the world. A brutal killer, one who has caused so much hardship and death, has violently been eliminated. He will never again harm an innocent man, woman or child.”
Trump also described al-Baghdadi as dying like a “dog” and “a coward.”
“He died like a coward … The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread, terrified of the American forces bearing down on him,” Trump said.
CNN <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/17/world/mapping-isis-attacks-around-the-world/index.html">reported</a> that al-Baghdadi’s terrorist network was responsible for more than 140 terrorist attacks in nearly 30 countries, resulting in the deaths of at least 2,043 people.

President Trump

Washington Post Changes Headline About Terrorist Leader’s Death, Calling Him An ‘Austere Religious Scholar’

Media Bias

One of the most interesting parts of the CNN Democratic debate this week had nothing to do with the debates. It came during a commercial break. The Washington Post bought commercial time — which isn&#8217;t shocking, since the Democrats are the paper&#8217;s natural subscriber base. It&#8217;s how The Post promoted itself that was truly jaw-dropping.
The ad resembles a computer screen with a cursor floating over a button that reads, &#8220;Unsubscribe.&#8221; It starts with the phrase &#8220;Clickbait as news.&#8221; Is that true? The Post abhors clickbait?
Two minutes on the paper&#8217;s website puts the lie to that. The night after the debate, the first &#8220;In the News&#8221; tag at the top of the website promoted the &#8220;news&#8221; subject of &#8220;snowball fight.&#8221; That clickbait led straight to this headline: &#8220;A 68-year-old got hit with a snowball. He retaliated by beating a 9-year-old unconscious, police say.&#8221;
There was more. The next scourges The Post opposed in the commercial were &#8220;Hidden agendas&#8221; and &#8220;Unverified sources.&#8221; But The Post thrives on hiding the agendas of anonymous sources, whose identities feel unverified to the reader. In 2017, The Post published an article gleefully titled &#8220;Anonymous sources are absolutely killing Trump&#8217;s presidency.&#8221; Two weeks ago, the paper gushed over the &#8220;whistleblower&#8221; fueling the Democratic impeachment effort, under the headline &#8220;Someone blew a whistle. It&#8217;s now the hottest tune in D.C.&#8221;
Virtually the entire false narrative of Russian collusion with Trump was based on statements like &#8220;said one source,&#8221; &#8220;according to an official,&#8221; &#8220;based on interviews with 17 sources familiar with the case&#8221; etc., etc. Now it&#8217;s the same with the narrative on Trump and Ukraine.
And The Post is one of the worst offenders. What anonymous staff member came up with that lie?
Still, there&#8217;s more to the ad. The Post also claims to be in staunch opposition to &#8220;The outrage cycle&#8221; and &#8220;Purposefully polarizing narratives.&#8221; But whether it&#8217;s the &#8220;news&#8221; pages or the editorials, the outrage at Trump and polarization over Trump are never-ending. Even in times when unity should occur — take the funeral of George H.W. Bush — The Post was polarizing, running a front-page &#8220;news&#8221; update headlined, &#8220;Trump sits with fellow presidents but still stands alone.&#8221; Reporter Philip Rucker snarkily described former presidents and first ladies in the front row &#8230; by reminding everyone how Trump had insulted them over the years.
Still more. The ad claims you should subscribe to The Post to avoid &#8220;Reckless reporting&#8221; and &#8220;Misinformation.&#8221; Holy smokes. We won&#8217;t bother to cite the endless stream of recklessness. We will only point to the entirety of the Russia collusion story that dominated The Post&#8217;s coverage for two years and was entirely wrong. &#8220;Reckless&#8221; is an understatement.
Just weeks ago, The Post rushed to print a story about a young African American girl who was allegedly savagely bullied by white boys at a Northern Virginia private Christian school where Karen Pence teaches. &#8230; And then the girl admitted the attack never happened. She made it up.
It grew worse. You should also buy The Post to avoid &#8220;Intentional bias&#8221; and &#8220;One-sided news,&#8221; the ad said. This needs a laugh track and &#8220;no comment&#8221; from us.
Finally , The Post rejects &#8220;scare tactics.&#8221; It&#8217;s hard to forget that in the summer of 2016, it made a half-page &#8220;photo illustration&#8221; of a nuclear mushroom cloud inside Trump&#8217;s head — with the headline &#8220;Anger management.&#8221; He&#8217;d get us all nuked!
If The Post is really trying to attract new online subscribers during a Democrat debate on the Collusion News Network, it should just say: &#8220;You hate Trump? We hate Trump. Come to us for all the hot Trump-hating scoop. The Washington Post.&#8221;
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.

Washington Post.

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: No Truth In Washington Post Advertising

2020 Election

Media

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) misled multiple times when asked about whether he knew about the whistleblower who alleged President Donald Trump had broken the law during a conversation with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. For that, The Washington Post’s fact checker Glenn Kessler awarded him “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/04/schiffs-false-claim-his-committee-had-not-spoken-whistleblower/">Four Pinocchios</a>” the highest rating, indicating an outright falsehood.
Schiff had made multiple statements regarding the whistleblower prior to The New York Times and the Post’s reporting that showed the whistleblower “approached a House Intelligence Committee staff member for guidance before filing a complaint with the Intelligence Community inspector general,” Kessler wrote. While the staff member said they only learned the “very bare contours” of the allegation, those “contours” included “potentially privileged communications by persons outside the Intelligence Community,” which, according to Kessler, is code for the president.
Based on this information, Kessler looked at three statements made by Schiff prior to the reporting.
On September 16, Schiff told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he doesn’t “know the identity of the whistleblower” after being asked if he did. But when Cooper asked if the whistleblower or their legal representation had contacted Schiff, the California congressman deflected, saying: “I don’t want to get into any particulars. I want to make sure that there’s nothing that I do that jeopardizes the whistleblower in any way.”
On September 17, Schiff told Sam Stein on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” panel that neither he nor his staff had “spoken directly with the whistleblower.”
“We would like to. But I am sure the whistleblower has concerns that he has not been advised, as the law requires, by the inspector general or the director of national Intelligence just how he is supposed to communicate with Congress, and so the risk to the whistleblower is retaliation,” Schiff said.
As Kessler noted, this “is flat-out false” because we now know Schiff’s committee did speak directly to the whistleblower. A staffer for Schiff told Kessler that Schiff was referring to whether or not the committee had heard “testimony from the whistleblower, which they had not.” Schiff later told The Daily Beast he should have been clearer in his answer.
And on September 19, Schiff told reporters: “In the absence of the actions, and I want to thank the inspector general, in the absence of his actions in coming to our committee, we might not have even known there was a whistleblower complaint alleging an urgent concern.”
Kessler said Schiff was misleading here again because even though he later claimed he didn’t know the whistleblower that came to his committee was the same one we all know now, he gave “no hint that the committee was aware a potentially significant (“privileged”) complaint might have been filed.”
As Kessler concluded:
<blockquote>Schiff on “Morning Joe” clearly made a statement that was false. He now says he’s was answering the wrong question, but if that was the case, he should have quickly corrected the record. He compounded his falsehood by telling reporters a few days later that if not for the IG’s office, the committee would not have known about the complaint. That again suggested there had been no prior communication.
The explanation that Schiff was not sure it was the same whistleblower especially strains credulity.</blockquote>
On Thursday, Kessler also gave Secretary of State Mike Pompeo <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/03/pompeos-four-pinocchio-spin-trump-ukraine/">Four Pinocchios</a> for initially dodging questions on whether he also was present on the Ukraine call with Trump before saying he was on the call.

Washington Post Fact Checker Gives Adam Schiff Four Pinnochios For Misleading About Contact With Trump Whistleblower

The peach emoji, which is normally used to symbolize a butt (typically for the purposes of sending raunchy text messages or referring to a member of the Kardashian family without naming them), is the latest symbol of the anti-Trump resistance, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-the-sexy-peach-emoji-joined-the-resistance/2019/09/30/4b0d292e-e142-11e9-be96-6adb81821e90_story.html?tid=sm_tw">according to the Washington Post</a>.
&#8220;Everyone&#8217;s favorite thicc stone fruit,&#8221; the newspaper tweeted over a photo of the emoji in question, &#8220;is now a juicy anti-Trump symbol.&#8221;
Apparently, the &#8220;peach&#8221; has now come to stand in for the middle part of the word, &#8220;impeachment&#8221; &#8212; a trend started by rap goddess, Lizzo, who tweeted out &#8220;IM[PEACH]MENT&#8221; last week, likely in celebration of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s (D-CA) decision to launch an impeachment inquiry in the House over conversations that reportedly took place between President Donald Trump and the president of Ukraine.
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IM🍑MENT
&mdash; |L I Z Z O| (@lizzo) <a href="https://twitter.com/lizzo/status/1176615579463159810?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 24, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The president is, of course, accused of seeking information about former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who sat on the board of a company that faced prosecution in Ukraine earlier in the 2000s, allegedly in return for favors or the restoration of foreign aid to the eastern European country.
So far, evidence, mostly released voluntarily by the White House, hasn&#8217;t establsihed any quid-pro-quo agreement between the two leaders, and a whistleblower, who claimed to have information about the exchange, obtained that information second-hand. But House Democrats have already moved forward on opening an impeachment inquiry and plan to introduce articles of impeachment by the end of 2019.
But back to the &#8220;peach.&#8221;
Lizzo&#8217;s tweet, it seems, caught on like wildfire among the social media resistance, and the peach quickly became the go-to indicator that someone on Twitter was in favor of pursuing impeachment against the president.
The Washington Post, attuned to the latest in cultural revolutions, explained, in a story posted earlier this week, that the emoji, which features a &#8220;crease&#8221; representative of a &#8220;butt crack,&#8221; can now be used to refer to both another human being&#8217;s derriere or Donald Trump.
&#8220;In certain online circles,&#8221; they write, &#8220;the peach is becoming a protest emoji — much like how some use the rose emoji to signify that they are supporters of the Democratic Socialists of America. Impeachment supporters put it in their Twitter bios.&#8221;
The Post is rather impressed. They&#8217;re absolutely giddy over the “multiple layers of meaning in the peach emoji — the impeachment pun, the color of the fruit evoking the president’s tanned skin tone and the original slang meaning of the peach emoji.”
You can also purchase peach-themed items, it seems, off of sites like Etsy where people sell handmade goods, so that you can express your happiness with the impeachment inquiry in real life. The most popular items, the WaPo notes, in its breaking news piece, are peach emoji pins, but there <a href="https://www.etsy.com/search?q=impeachment">are also magnets, tee shirts</a>, stickers, and even jewelry (if you&#8217;re not into peach-themed impeachment items, there are also &#8220;impeach Trump&#8221; flip-flops, bumper stickers, hats and a flag).
One seller even remarked to the Post how his Trump-Peach pins are now outselling other emoji-themed Trump merchandise, like &#8220;Trump poop&#8221; pins: “It’s like, ‘Oh he’s a buttface,’ so it’s like, very intellectual, multilayered high art, I like to think,” [one seller] joked. “Enamel pin culture is about having a visual marker for different aspects of your personality and your interests.&#8221;
The WaPo has been promoting their peach story for two days, but social media users on the other end of the tweets aren&#8217;t particularly impressed.
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I want to die <a href="https://t.co/CxkkGwRHUH">https://t.co/CxkkGwRHUH</a>
&mdash; Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) <a href="https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1179012666209263617?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 1, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Large peaches

The &#8216;Sexy Peach&#8217; Emoji Is The Newest Symbol Of The Resistance

The media has spent the past few days speculating all the ways in which the Trump presidency could end after a whistleblower lodged a complaint regarding President Donald Trump’s communications with an unknown foreign leader.
It turns out the complaint is nothing more than a rumor reported by someone in the intelligence community. Buried in <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/20/politics/donald-trump-whistleblower/index.html">a lengthy CNN article</a> about the complaint is the following paragraph:
<blockquote>The whistleblower didn&#8217;t have direct knowledge of the communications, an official briefed on the matter told CNN. Instead, the whistleblower&#8217;s concerns came in part from learning information that was not obtained during the course of their work, and those details have played a role in the administration&#8217;s determination that the complaint didn&#8217;t fit the reporting requirements under the intelligence whistleblower law, the official said.</blockquote>
Granted, this is yet another anonymous source giving more context on what another anonymous source told a different outlet, but it still calls the entire story into question.
The Washington Post first reported the complaint on Wednesday, using anonymous sources and vague descriptions. The outlet placed the story on its front page, with the headline, “Trump’s communications with foreign leader are part of whistleblower complaint that spurred standoff between spy chief and Congress, former officials say.”
The story was as vague as the headline, with “two former U.S. officials familiar with the matter” who were “speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly” claiming Trump made a “promise” to a world leader, which is apparently wrong.
The Post filled out its story with information about a “standoff” between Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire and Congress.
The Intelligence Community Inspector General, Michael Atkinson – who was appointed by Trump – determined the whistleblower complaint to be of “urgent concern,” according to the Post. But Maguire argued he was not required by law to turn the complaint over to congressional Democrats seeking to impeach Trump.
The reason Maguire didn’t turn the complaint over is because of what CNN reported – that the person who made the complaint had no direct knowledge of what was said and was merely reporting a rumor. Why the inspector general determined it “urgent and credible” remains to be seen.
Media outlets have continued to speculate about what terrible thing Trump allegedly promised and to whom. The Post published a timeline of Trump’s calls with foreign leaders over the past four months, emphasizing his contacts with Russia and North Korea. Further reporting suggested Trump made some kind of “promise” with the newly elected leader of Ukraine, possibly over the country’s investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. The elder Biden <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45438/vice-president-joe-biden-bullied-ukraine-firing-ashe-schow">reportedly bullied</a> Ukraine into firing a prosecutor looking into a company that employed his son. Biden allegedly threatened to withhold U.S. loan guarantees if the prosecutor was not fired.
Some in the media suggested Trump <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-09-20/why-did-trump-withhold-250-million-military-aid-ukraine">withheld $250 million in military aid</a> from Ukraine possibly in relation to whatever “promise” was made in that telephone call, which, again, the whistleblower didn’t overhear.

Donald Trump Thumbs Up

Yup, Looks Like That Big Anti-Trump, Whistleblower Story Was All Smoke And Mirrors

The New York Times is taking serious heat from all sides for publishing a disastrous Opinion section article this past weekend that alleges U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh forced his penis into the hand of a female student at Yale back in the 1980s. The article completely omits the fact that the alleged victim does not even remember the alleged event.
Over at <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/16/media/new-york-times-kavanaugh/index.html">CNN Business</a>, Oliver Darcy writes that The New York Times completely &#8220;fumbled a high-profile story&#8221; that embarrassed the Times&#8217; opinion editor, James Bennet.
&#8220;It was the latest in a series of high-profile blunders that has caused embarrassment to James Bennet since he was appointed in 2016 as the editor overseeing The Times&#8217; Opinion section,&#8221; writes Darcy. &#8220;Bennet&#8217;s tenure has been marked with several mishaps that have generated controversy, drawn criticism, and spurred at least one lawsuit &#8230; While the Opinion section has unquestionably produced strong work in the years since Bennet took over, it has also been culpable for some of the biggest journalistic black eyes at The Times during that period.&#8221;
Despite that, a spokesperson for the Times defended Bennet&#8217;s decision to publish the piece that said nothing about the fact the alleged victim had no recollection of a sexual assault occurring.
&#8220;Opinion produces powerful journalism that makes a difference in people&#8217;s lives from the ground-breaking, on-going Privacy Project to an editorial series on laws that value a fetus over the life of the mother, to an on-camera essay by Alysia Montaño that resulted in a number of companies changing their contracts with female athletes to protect women during and after pregnancy,&#8221; the spokesperson for the Times told CNN Business. &#8220;The diversity and quality of this work is being embraced not just by readers but by professional peers.&#8221;
Even CNN&#8217;s Brian Stelter, the same host who once allowed a psychologist to claim that President Trump is worse than Stalin or Hitler, <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/media-question-new-york-times-blunder/">called out the Times</a> for such a glaring mistake.
&#8220;Times turmoil,&#8221; read the headline to Stelter&#8217;s morning media newsletter, in which he advised the newspaper to &#8220;take disciplinary action in the wake of this embarrassing episode.&#8221;
&#8220;It is certainly possible, I’m told by a plugged-in staffer, as the newspaper reviews a glaring omission in its original story about the book and an offensive tweet about the story,&#8221; said Stelter.
Over at <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/16/new-york-timess-rocky-kavanaugh-weekend/">The Washington Post</a>, Erik Wemple said that the Times has some &#8220;explaining to do.&#8221;
&#8220;The roar from the Internet left the New York Times with some explaining to do. How did this piece land in the Sunday Review section? What was going on here?&#8221;
&#8220;That’s a grievous omission, one that could account for some of the outrage following initial publication of the piece,&#8221; continued Wemple.
Joe Scarborough of MSNBC <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51872/joe-scarborough-blasts-kamala-harris-pushing-paul-bois">has been equally critical</a> of the Times for publishing the Opinion piece while omitting key facts. &#8220;I could not believe The New York Times would write this piece without that information contained in it. Are you surprised 24 hours &#8230; went by before they clarified that fact?&#8221; he said on Monday.

kavanaugh.jpg

CNN, WaPo Admit NYT Has A Big Egg On Its Face After Kavanaugh Debacle

Brett Kavanaugh

In a wide-ranging report for <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/09/turmoil-engulfs-the-times-over-kavanaugh-debacle">Vanity Fair</a> chronicling the &#8220;turmoil&#8221; now &#8220;engulfing&#8221; The New York Times in the wake of its decision to print an excerpt of a book detailing an additional, unproven sexual assault allegation against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, journalist Joe Pompeo reveals that the NYT&#8217;s news division turned down the exposé, leaving the book&#8217;s authors to deliver their scoop to the opinion pages.
Reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly &#8220;initially pitched their reporting to the news side,&#8221; hoping for a front page, above-the-fold story that would embroil Kavanaugh, yet again, in a high-profile controversy, but The New York Times news editors &#8220;felt that there wasn’t enough juice to warrant a story there, let alone a big page-one treatment&#8221; — the kind leftists have been hoping for, Vanity Fair admits, since Kavanaugh was confirmed to the bench.
Instead, Pogrebin and Kelly were told to pitch an excerpt from their forthcoming book, delving into claims made against Kavanaugh by a woman named Deborah Ramirez, to the opinion-editorial side, where they could hope to see some of the juiciest parts of their report in print, but without the same level of scrutiny the Times reserves for its news section.
As Vanity Fair ultimately points out, The New York Times likely knew that the average reader wouldn&#8217;t take note of where the story first appeared, particularly if they get their news primarily from the Internet. When the &#8220;story&#8221; broke, it wasn&#8217;t clear that Pogrebin and Kelly&#8217;s scoop was actually in the opinion section, or even that it was excerpted from a forthcoming tome, and the lack of information allowed interested parties to run with the claims.
Ultimately, the gamble backfired. The excerpt, printed in the Times, left out key details, including that the woman at the center of the alleged incident doesn&#8217;t remember it happening and that the man who fed the story to the Times reporters — a longtime Democratic operative who faced off against Kavanaugh during the Clinton impeachment hearings — also fed the story to Congressional investigators during the Kavanaugh hearings, only to have it dismissed out of hand by the FBI and the Senate Judiciary Committee when they could find no evidence the incident ever happened.
Vanity Fair also mentions that other news organizations, including <a href="https://beta.washingtonpost.com/politics/senator-says-fbi-did-not-investigate-allegation-against-kavanaugh/2019/09/16/a881f584-d883-11e9-adff-79254db7f766_story.html">The Washington Post</a>, were already aware of the allegation and had passed on printing it because the woman Max Stier named as Kavanaugh&#8217;s &#8220;victim&#8221; had no memory of the party or being the subject of Kavanaugh and his friends&#8217; advances, and no one besides Stier could corroborate the story. On Monday, the Post admitted that they&#8217;d passed on the scoop &#8220;in part because the intermediaries declined to identify the alleged witness and because the woman who was said to be involved declined to comment.&#8221;
Pogrebin and Kelly&#8217;s story gets around the corroboration point by suggesting that Stier directed them to several people who could verify his story — but those people verified that Stier had raised his concerns with Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, not that Stier&#8217;s story was true.
As the Daily Wire reported earlier Tuesday morning, The New York Times is now facing more questions over how the excerpt got published — and specifically how it got published missing key details about who remembered the incident actually happening. In an interview Monday night, Pogrebin and Kelly claimed that they submitted the full excerpt from their book to the Times opinion editors and that the editors — not the authors — removed those key details.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51857/nyt-tries-answer-questions-kavanaugh-report-james-barrett">NYT Tries To Answer Questions On Kavanaugh Report Debacle, Raises More Questions</a>

neil_gorsuch_brett_kavanaugh_gi.jpg

REPORT: NYT News Department, Washington Post Turned Down Kavanaugh &#8216;Scoop&#8217; Over Lack Of Evidence

On Monday, Valerie Plame, a former undercover CIA operative who became famous from a CIA leak scandal in 2003, released a campaign ad accusing President Trump of pardoning the man who &#8220;took revenge against my husband and leaked my identity.&#8221; In a fact-check for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/10/valerie-plames-claim-that-scooter-libby-leaked-her-identity/?noredirect=on">The Washington Post</a> Tuesday, Glenn Kessler, who testified at the leak trial, debunked Plame&#8217;s attempt to blame Scooter Libby for leaking her information and called her out for exaggerating her role in the CIA and trying to make Trump the bad guy.
Plame, who is running as a Democrat for New Mexico&#8217;s 3rd District, has made clear that she is not a fan of Trump. In fact, in August 2017, Plame launched a GoFundMe page to <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/buytwitter">&#8220;#BuyTwitter&#8221; in order to &#8220;#BanTrump.&#8221;</a> In her new campaign ad, Plame makes the following dramatic claims, as highlighted by Kessler:
<blockquote>
I was an undercover CIA operative. My assignment was preventing rogue states and terrorists from getting nuclear weapons. You name a hot spot, I lived it. [images of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and North Korea] Then Dick Cheney’s chief of staff took revenge against my husband and leaked my identity. His name: Scooter Libby. Guess who pardoned him last year? [image of President Trump]
</blockquote>
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For the assertions, Kessler ultimately gives her Three Pinocchios, only sparing her the Post&#8217;s worst rating, Four Pinocchios, for allowing her a &#8220;fuzzy&#8221; potential argument.
Kessler begins by first noting that Plame&#8217;s video potentially misleads viewers about her role in the CIA. &#8220;The ad strongly suggests that Plame was an undercover operative in places such as Iran and North Korea, when that was not the case,&#8221; he writes. &#8220;She was under diplomatic cover in Greece,&#8221; he notes.
While she wasn&#8217;t undercover in Iran and North Korea, she was &#8220;operations chief at the Joint Task Force on Iraq of the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA’s clandestine operations directorate when her name was publicly disclosed in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR2005102000874.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a column written by Robert Novak</a> and published in The Washington Post on July 14, 2003,&#8221; Kessler explains.
The real question, he continues, is whether Vice President Dick Cheney&#8217;s chief of staff Scooter Libby was actually the source of the leak, as Plame claims in the ad. The answer is no.
&#8220;Libby was convicted of perjury and lying to the FBI during its investigation, but he was not charged with leaking Plame’s name,&#8221; Kessler explains. The fact-checker goes on to give a detailed account of the famous leak case, including this key passage:
<blockquote>Libby was charged and convicted of misleading investigators about his conversations with reporters, in particular a claim that he received information about Plame from NBC’s Tim Russert. But the only article that directly can be traced to Libby is the item in Time magazine — in which one could argue he only tangentially confirmed information already obtained by the reporter — and the jury acquitted Libby on the charge of lying about what he told [Time&#8217;s Matthew] Cooper. No evidence emerged at trial that Libby had seen the State Department memo or that he knew Plame had a covert status.</blockquote>
&#8220;Plame’s name and CIA role was first disclosed in Robert Novak&#8217;s column. Novak’s original source was Armitage, and his confirming sources were Rove and a CIA spokesman. Novak&#8217;s column led to the firestorm that launched a federal investigation,&#8221; Kessler concludes. &#8220;But no evidence shows that Libby disclosed Plame&#8217;s role to Novak.&#8221;
Kessler notes that Bush administration officials were &#8220;certainly eager to try to discredit Wilson, who had emerged as a damaging critic about the failed search to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,&#8221; so one could possibly &#8220;draw a fuzzy line from Libby’s inquiries about Wilson’s role, the State Department memo and Libby’s conversations with administration officials to the eventual leak of Plame’s name.&#8221; For that reason, Kessler spares Plame the full four Pinocchios.
Kessler also suggests that trying to make Trump retroactively complicit is a stretch:
<blockquote>The indictment says that on June 23, Libby told New York Times reporter Judith Miller that he believed Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA. That narrative was later thrown in doubt when Miller later recanted her testimony at the trial, which was damaging to Libby’s case, as she was the only reporter who had claimed Libby volunteered information about Plame. (Miller’s retraction led to Libby getting his law license back well before he was pardoned by Trump.)</blockquote>
Plame&#8217;s campaign has defended its ad, a spokesman telling the Post, &#8220;From his trial, it was clear that Libby gave Valerie’s name to New York Times reporter Judith Miller. Please recall that Scooter Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice because he attempted to hide information from the prosecutors. He obstructed justice, perjured himself and was held accountable until Donald Trump pardoned him. No one suggested he leaked it.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51670/updates-nyt-says-trump-ordered-noaa-statement-dems-james-barrett">UPDATES: NYT Says TRUMP Ordered NOAA Statement; Dems Launch Investigation; Trump Responds</a>

Celebrities Visit Build &#8211; October 24, 2018

Dem Candidate Slams Trump For Releasing Man Who ‘Leaked’ Her Name, Gets Smacked By Fact-Check

George W. Bush

On Tuesday, President Trump unloaded on a new ABC News/Washington Post poll showing him losing to all five leading Democratic presidential candidates in 2020. Following the dual congressional victories of Republicans in North Carolina, including one that Democrats increasingly believed they could flip, Trump pointed again to the &#8220;fake poll&#8221; as more evidence that the media is trying to manipulate the public to thwart his reelection.
In its report on the new survey, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/president-trump-trails-potential-democratic-challengers-in-2020-test/2019/09/10/82980d72-d36a-11e9-9610-fb56c5522e1c_story.html">The Washington Post</a> sets the scene by noting Trump&#8217;s chronic polling problems. &#8220;President Trump overcame formidable odds and discouraging poll numbers to win the White House in 2016. More than a year out from the 2020 election, it appears he might have to repeat that performance to win a second term, according to a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/sept-2-5-2019-washington-post-abc-news-poll/d4e18b36-79bf-492d-91e3-d1c7a49d37e2/">Washington Post-ABC News survey</a>,&#8221; the Post reports.
Against the top five Democratic candidates, the new poll found Trump losing to all of them — and by a dramatic margin to the frontrunner. The poll found Trump trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in a hypothetical head-to-head by 15 points, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) by 9, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) by 7, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) by 7, and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg by 4.
The poll also found Trump&#8217;s approval numbers looking grim. &#8220;Among all adults, whether registered to vote or not, the president never tops 41 percent support,&#8221; the Post reports. &#8220;Among registered voters, he does better, but his highest level of support against any candidate is 44 percent. In 2016, he won 46 percent of the popular vote to Hillary Clinton’s 48 percent, but nonetheless won an electoral college majority by narrowly winning three northern states that had gone to the Democrats in the previous six elections.&#8221;
Trump responded to the new results by blasting the poll as &#8220;the worst and most inaccurate&#8221; of the 2016 polls. &#8220;ABC/Washington Post Poll was the worst and most inaccurate poll of any taken prior to the 2016 Election. When my lawyers protested, they took a 12 point down and brought it to almost even by Election Day. It was a Fake Poll by two very bad and dangerous media outlets. Sad!&#8221; Trump wrote in a pair of tweets early Tuesday. &#8220;One of the greatest and most powerful weapons used by the Fake and Corrupt News Media is the phony Polling Information they put out. Many of these polls are fixed, or worked in such a way that a certain candidate will look good or bad. Internal polling looks great, the best ever!&#8221;
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">ABC/Washington Post Poll was the worst and most inaccurate poll of any taken prior to the 2016 Election. When my lawyers protested, they took a 12 point down and brought it to almost even by Election Day. It was a Fake Poll by two very bad and dangerous media outlets. Sad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1171429005251104769?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">One of the greatest and most powerful weapons used by the Fake and Corrupt News Media is the phony Polling Information they put out. Many of these polls are fixed, or worked in such a way that a certain candidate will look good or bad. Internal polling looks great, the best ever!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1171431074485817344?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
After Republicans <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51620/breaking-results-are-nc-congressional-races-big-james-barrett">won both congressional seats </a>in North Carolina&#8217;s special election Tuesday, Trump returned to criticizing the poll, pointing to the outcome as evidence that he&#8217;s right about the &#8220;phony suppression poll.&#8221;
&#8220;In a hypothetical poll, done by one of the worst pollsters of them all, the Amazon Washington Post/ABC, which predicted I would lose to Crooked Hillary by 15 points (how did that work out?), Sleepy Joe, Pocahontas and virtually all others would beat me in the General Election,&#8221; Trump tweeted Wednesday morning. &#8220;This is a phony suppression poll, meant to build up their Democrat partners. I haven’t even started campaigning yet, and am constantly fighting Fake News like Russia, Russia, Russia. Look at North Carolina last night. Dan Bishop, down big in the Polls, WINS. Easier than 2016!&#8221;
&#8220;If it weren&#8217;t for the never ending Fake News about me, and with all that I have done (more than any other President in the first 2 1/2 years!), I would be leading the &#8216;Partners&#8217; of the LameStream Media by 20 points. Sorry, but true!&#8221; he added.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">In a hypothetical poll, done by one of the worst pollsters of them all, the Amazon Washington Post/ABC, which predicted I would lose to Crooked Hillary by 15 points (how did that work out?), Sleepy Joe, Pocahontas and virtually all others would beat me in the General Election&#8230;.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1171758531449643008?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en">&#8230;.This is a phony suppression poll, meant to build up their Democrat partners. I haven’t even started campaigning yet, and am constantly fighting Fake News like Russia, Russia, Russia. Look at North Carolina last night. Dan Bishop, down big in the Polls, WINS. Easier than 2016!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1171758532280143873?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">If it weren’t for the never ending Fake News about me, and with all that I have done (more than any other President in the first 2 1/2 years!), I would be leading the “Partners” of the LameStream Media by 20 points. Sorry, but true!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1171760235935125508?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51620/breaking-results-are-nc-congressional-races-big-james-barrett">Trump Passes ‘Test’ In North Carolina: Republicans Win Both Congressional Seats</a>

Trump: Want Proof Media Polls Are Phony? Look At What Just Happened In North Carolina

ABC News

Bernie Sanders

Elizabeth Warren

Joe Biden

Kamala Harris

North Carolina

Pete Buttigieg

The Trump White House is looking into a cutting edge but &#8220;controversial&#8221; proposal that seeks to prevent mass shootings prompted by mental illness.
With <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/pre-attack-behaviors-of-active-shooters-in-us-2000-2013.pdf/view">studies</a> finding that about a quarter of mass shooters have been diagnosed with some form of mental illness, Trump has repeatedly pointed to psychological as well as ideological causes behind many mass shootings. In his <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50277/democrats-blast-nyt-after-outrageous-trump-speech-james-barrett">speech</a> following the horrific shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, Trump outlined a series of steps his administration is promoting to address the growing problem, including &#8220;reform[ing] our mental health laws to better identify mentally disturbed individuals who may commit acts of violence, and mak[ing] sure those people not only get treatment, but when necessary, involuntary confinement.&#8221; He added, &#8220;Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun.&#8221;
One of the new ways of proactively addressing the issue that the administration is considering involves the development of a new research agency and the use of a technology that will help detect those suffering from mental illness who may pose a risk to themselves or others.
&#8220;The White House is considering a controversial proposal to study whether mass shootings could be prevented by monitoring mentally ill people for small changes that might foretell violence,&#8221; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/white-house-considers-controversial-plan-on-mental-illness-and-mass-shooting/2019/09/09/eb58b6f6-ce72-11e9-87fa-8501a456c003_story.html">The Washington Post</a> reported Monday.
The proposal, presented by former NBC Chairman and long-time Trump associate Bob Wright, seeks to create a new agency called HARPA to &#8220;come up with out-of-the-box ways to tackle health problems,&#8221; the Post reports.
In a three-page proposal presented to Health and Human Services Sec. Alex Azar and other administration officials, Wright introduced a plan called &#8220;SAFEHOME&#8221; (Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes), which researches how technology, including cell phones, might be used to detect warning signs of violence from those suffering from mental illness.
The SAFEHOME proposal stresses that all of the subjects of the research would participate on a volunteer basis and the program would prioritize protecting individuals&#8217; rights and avoiding &#8220;profiling of any kind.&#8221;
The Post spoke with some authorities on the concept and found some heavy skepticism, including from a former chief research psychologist for the U.S. Secret Service who warned against the possibility of false positives. Noting that three-quarters of mass shootings are carried out by people who are not diagnosed with a mental illness, she also pushed back on the premise.
But the lead researcher behind the HARPA proposal, Geoffrey Ling, suggested that while there might be some controversial aspects to the program, he hasn&#8217;t seen many better ideas for addressing the problem.
&#8220;To those who say this is a half-baked idea, I would say, &#8216;What&#8217;s your idea? What are you doing about this?'&#8221; Ling said in comments reported by the Post. If the program proves unsuccessful at preventing mass shootings, he maintained, it might end up helping address other issues, like suicides or child abuse. &#8220;The worst you can do is fail, and failing is where we are already,&#8221; he added. &#8220;You need to find where the edge is so you can push on that edge.&#8221; (<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/health/white-house-considers-controversial-plan-on-mental-illness-and-mass-shooting/2019/09/09/eb58b6f6-ce72-11e9-87fa-8501a456c003_story.html">Read the full report here</a>.)
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51456/ocasio-cortez-accuses-dan-crenshaw-lending-guns-james-barrett">Ocasio-Cortez Accuses Dan Crenshaw Of Lending Guns To Spouse Abusers, Criminals; He Fires Back</a>

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