The corrupt press and those who dare stand up to them

Kayleigh McEnany Responds to Chris Wallace's Criticism of Her Press Briefing: ‘Journalists Are Not Above Being Questioned’
. . . “ 'What I was saying was, I was asked 11 questions as to why churches would be allowed to reopen. It was a bit peculiar to be asked these 11 questions in a row. And for the onus and the focus solely to be on why churches are essential, I’ve never been asked why liquor stores was essential," she continued. "So I was merely pointing that out. And to the point about questioning the journalists and asking why they’re asking certain questions, I field hundreds of questions a day. Journalists are not above being questioned themselves. Journalism is a great and noble profession, but there’s been a dearth of journalists asking the real questions for President Obama, the criminal leak of Michael Flynn's identity, who leaked that identity, the dossier which was used to launch a three-year investigation into this president and spy on his campaign. Why aren’t those questions being asked? It’s journalistic malpractice not to ask those questions and I can count on one hand the journalists who are like Maria Bartiromo and Catherine Herridge, but where is the lack of curiosity from the current press corps? There's extreme lack of curiosity at play.' " . . .

Alabama Secretary of State Shreds CNN Host for Saying Absentee Ballot Voter Fraud Doesn't Exist

Alabama Secretary of State Jim Merrill put CNN in their place when host Brianna Keilar said voting fraud only takes place at the in-person polls. 

 McEnany urges White House press corps to ask Obama officials about 'Obamagate'

"White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany challenged the media on Friday to demand answers from former Obama administration officials about their reasons for spying on the Trump campaign in 2016 and unmasking former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
“Why did the Obama administration use opposition research, funded by a political organization and filled with foreign dirt, to surveil members of the Trump campaign?” she asked, referring to the so-called Steele dossier that led to FBI surveillance.
2222222'Ms. McEnany also urged the media to question why Flynn was unmasked in intelligence documents “not by the intel community entirely, but by Obama’s chief of staff, by the former Vice President Joe Biden, by [Obama national security adviser] Susan Rice, by the Treasury Secretary.” . . .

They've earned someone like Kayleigh  The latest from the talking heads club is that some, from Chris Wallace to Jonah Goldberg, find Kayleigh McEnany a little "Indefensible and Grotesque."
"I've seen a couple of Kaleigh's performances, and it's hard to think of her as "grotesque."  She is self-assured, but grotesque?

"After all, this is a group of reporters who ask questions like comparing the pandemic death totals to Vietnam casualties, or another blamed the president because someone listened to him in February and died of the virus.  And then there is the CBS lady who took off her mask to play the "Chinese card."
"It's obvious to me that many in this press corps are political activists, such as Jim Acosta of CNN.  They are confrontational to make news rather than to obtain information for readers and viewers.  They are like the umpire who makes controversial calls just to lead the sports report.
"Do you understand now why President Trump is just giving them a taste of their own medicine?  He's tired of political activists with press passes." . . .

"Change," "Hope" … Why They Must be Talking About Joe Biden!

Alexander Cockburn, 2008  “Change” and “hope” are not words one associates with Senator Joe Biden, a man so ripely symbolic of everything that is unchanging and hopeless about our political system that a computer simulation of the corporate-political paradigm senator in Congress would turn out “Biden” in a nano-second.
. . . 
"And Obama picked Biden for the same reason Michael Dukakis chose Senator Lloyd Bentsen in 1988: the marriage of youth and experience, so reassuring to uncertain voters but most of all to the elites, that nothing dangerous or unusual will discommode business as usual. Another parallel would be Kennedy’s pick of Lyndon Johnson in 1960, LBJ being  a political rival and a seasoned senator. Kennedy and Johnson didn’t like each other, and surely after Biden’s racist remarks about “clean” blacks, Obama cannot greatly care for Biden. It seems he would have preferred Chris Dodd but the latter was disqualified because of his VIP loans from Countrywide." . . .

Joe Biden, a hands-on administrator

Flashback: Former Joe Biden Secret Service Agent: We Had to Protect Women From Him, ‘Weinstein Level Stuff’  (All emphases in the original)

“Agents say that, whether at the vice president’s residence or at his home in Delaware, Biden has a habit of swimming in his pool nude,” Kessler wrote. “Female Secret Service agents find that offensive.”

"A former Secret Service agent assigned to the Vice President Joe Biden residence claims that the Service often had to protect female agents from him.

"Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the agent asserted that,  “We had to cancel the VP Christmas get together at the Vice President’s house because Biden would grope all of our wives and girlfriend’s asses.” The annual party was for agents and Navy personnel who were tasked with protecting the Biden family.

“He would mess with every single woman or teen. It was horrible,” the agent said.

"According to the source, a Secret Service agent once got suspended for a week in 2009 for shoving Biden after he cupped his girlfriend’s breast while the couple was taking a photo with him. The situation got so heated, the source told Cassandra Fairbanks, that others had to step in to prevent the agent from hitting the then-Vice President.
Additionally, the agent claims that Biden would walk around the VP residence naked at night. “I mean, Stark naked… Weinstein level stuff,” he added.
. . .

"He said that the men on duty would frequently stand in front of female agents and Navy women that were present “like a damn guardian.” On some occasions, they would make up reasons to get the women away from where he was.
"The agent said he was specifically concerned about women in the Navy.
“They weren’t allowed to disobey him at all, but we’d take them away under pretend auspices,” the agent stated." . . .

A viral video may keep Biden’s nasty little habit in the public eye "Even if Leftists successfully obliterate Tara Reade’s story, there’s one creepy Joe Biden narrative that’s not going to go away, and that’s the endless footage of him getting too close to and too touchy with little girls. On Tuesday, a new video emerged with the usual footage showing Biden relentlessly pawing manifestly uncomfortable little girls. What makes this one different is the way it’s paired with statements from Professor Anthony Zenkus (ironically enough, a die-hard leftist and anti-capitalist) who speaks in an old video about how pedophiles groom children:" . . .

CNN On Biden Allegations: 'Some Presidential Candidate Did Something' (From the 
Babylon Bee, a more trusted name in news than CNN, which we regard as parody itself)
. . . " .Some presidential candidate did something," the article reads, "but what difference, at this point, does it make? Besides, it's not really harassment -- it's democratic harassment. His body, his choice." The article then includes a long list of Joe Biden's accomplishments and reminds readers that if they were to do actual journalism on the accusations against Joe Biden, the "Bad Orange Man" might win again this year. "So before you rush to judgment on this old creepy guy, remember that he's our old creepy guy.' " . . .

America has a great president and a third-world press corps.

Don Surber

"America has a great president and a third-world press corps. At a single press briefing on covid-19, four different reporters asked President Donald John Trump if calling the Chinese virus the Chinese virus is racist.
"The political reporters and commentators are also the thinnest skinned people in the universe.
On the day he announced for president, the name-calling began: Witless Ape, ridiculous buffoon, baboon, an ass, and an ass of exceptionally intense asininity.
"And that was just in one magazine.
"Imagine anyone saying that about Obama.
"When President Trump pushes back, they cry.
"Consider this report in USA Today last month: "A new report says President Donald Trump and his administration's attack on the press 'dangerously undermined truth and consensus in a deeply divided country.'
" 'The study from the Committee to Protect Journalists was authored by Leonard Downie Jr., former executive editor of The Washington Post." . . .

Media Mistakes in the Trump Era: The Definitive List

Sharyl Attkisson   Updated May 16, 2020

"We the media have "fact-checked" President Trump like we have fact-checked no other human being on the planet, and he's certainly given us plenty to write about. That's probably why it's so easy to find lists enumerating and examining his mistakes, missteps and "lies."

 "But as self-appointed arbiters of truth, we've largely excused our own unprecedented string of fact-challenged reporting. The truth is, formerly well-respected, top news organizations are making repeat, unforced errors in numbers that were unheard of just a couple of years ago.

 "Our repeat mistakes involve declaring that Trump's claims are "lies" when they are matters of opinion, or when the truth between conflicting sources is unknowable; taking Trump's statements and events out of context; reporting secondhand accounts against Trump without attribution as if they're established fact; relying on untruthful, conflicted sources; and presenting reporter opinions in news stories, without labeling them as opinions.

"What's worse, we defend ourselves by trying to convince the public that our mistakes are actually a virtue because we (sometimes) correct them. Or we blame Trump for why we're getting so much wrong. Is a little bit like a police officer taking someone to jail for DUI, then driving home drunk himself: he may be correct to arrest the suspect, but he should certainly know better than to commit the same violation.

 "So since nobody else has compiled an updated, extensive list of this kind, here are: 

 Notable Mistakes and Missteps in Major Media Reporting on Donald Trump

. . . "52. June 21, 2018; Time magazine and others used a photo of a crying Honduran child to illustrate a supposed Trump administration policy separating illegal immigrant parents and children. The child's father later reported that agents had never separated her from her mother; the mother had taken her to the US without his knowledge and separated herself from her other children, whom she left behind.

Earth to Media: 10 Black Conservatives Condemn Biden’s ‘You Ain’t Black’ Insult

Fox News Contributor Deneen Borelli said she was insulted by Biden’s gaffe and tweeted a video of her response to the former VP. She claimed, “Joe Biden says you’re not black if you don’t vote for him. Well, Joe Biden, as a black woman, I am outraged by your ridiculous comments and this independent black woman won’t be voting for you.”

MRC  "Presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden made one of the biggest gaffes of his 2020 campaign by letting it slip just how much he takes the African-American community for granted. Prominent African-American conservatives swiftly condemned his disgusting comments.

"As The Breakfast Club radio host “Charlamagne Tha God” signed off on his interview with the Dem nominee, he claimed he still had “more questions” about how Biden would benefit the African-American community. That wasn’t enough of a pledge for the indignant candidate, who responded by saying, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

"Following the offensive blunder, 10 prominent African-American conservatives slammed the callous comment on behalf of the “1.3 million” black Americans who supported President Trump in 2016, and the “millions” more who will be supporting him in 2020. Black conservative leaders like HUD Secretary Ben Carson, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and commentator Candace Owens called Biden’s words “racist,” “condescending,” “short-sighted” and “entitled.”

"Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson commented on Biden's gaffe, tweeting, “It is disheartening to see that some in this country still believe that African Americans are beholden to one political ideology at birth, due to the color of their skin.”

"In a subsequent tweet he added, “In reality, ideals like the freedom of thought, resilience, and self-determination have guided the black community through the darkest of times. It is these principles, not pandering, that will continue to lead us to the mountaintop.' ” . . .

Turns out 'Central Park Karen' was an Obama and Buttigieg donor

"Any time anything bad happens, Trump's supporters did it. Nobody's apologizing for that nonsense. The people who got smeared in this instance, for sure, were the Trumpsters. Call it left-skin privilege. Where's the lefty apology on that?"

Image by Mike Harris

Monica Showalter  "A white woman who got into an incredibly stupid altercation with a black man in the wilds of Central Park over her inexplicable refusal to put her dog on a leash as he politely asked and the park rules required, and then threatened to call the cops on him, pretty well did herself in. After getting herself on film in the throes of her episode, and seeing it go viral, Amy Cooper lost her $170,000 a year job at Franklin Templeton, any prospect of employment afterward, her reputation, and even her dog. And sure enough, her lowly dog walker was the one who turned her in. 

"It was rough justice for sure, given what she did, but she knew the rules of living in New York. Tom Wolfe's Sherman McCoy pretty well mansplained it. For being a 'Karen,' or entitled white woman as the annoying term now means, she's now a Sherman. As for the black man, Christian Cooper (no relation), he was unjustly treated, too, given that the woman was trying to call the cops on him and counting on the cops to believe her over him, and she was lying about being 'threatened.' The only creature who got a real scare from that encounter was the poor yelping dog.

. . .  "Leftists pounced on the matter and splatted all over the internet that this foolish woman was a Trump supporter. Here's one of them, per the Independent of London:

"Actually, she was a liberal. Just like everyone else in that picture. She'd voted for Barack Obama twice. She was a big fan of Hillary Clinton. She donated money to the John Kerry and Pete Buttigieg campaigns. She went to the now-left-wing University of Chicago." . . .

More on "Karens" here

What does it mean to be a ‘Karen’? Karens explain  "According to a popular meme, Karen is a middle-aged white woman with an asymmetrical bob asking to speak to the manager, who happens to be as entitled as she is ignorant."
What about a "Maxine"?

In the end, it is the face mask that is the clearest symbol of America’s divide

Heroes of the left, Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx have been wrong, wrong, wrong.  Long ago the great Thomas Sowell wrote that “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” 

pixabay

Patricia McCarthy  "There have been several great columns on the debate over mask-wearing in public.  Scott McKay at American Spectator explains why the mask is essentially useless:  The mask is not an adequate defense against the COVID-19 virus, gang. The virus checks in at somewhere between 0.06 and 0.14 microns, meaning it’s too small for any commercially available mask to effectively filter it out. The pores on an N95 mask, which are the best masks you’re reasonably going to find, and the vast, vast majority of you are not going to have N95 masks but rather cloth masks, which perform far less well, are 0.3 microns.”  Over at Powerline, John Hinderaker  writes about how “wearing face masks has become a cultural divide….On the left, mask wearing has become a basic marker of good citizenship, no matter how silly it may be…' ”  
"Then on Tuesday at the Federalist, David Marcus astutely observes that the mask has become the political symbol of 2020.  Indeed it has.  In Staten Island a mob of “karens” forced a woman from a store for not wearing a mask and they were not at all polite about it; they were vicious. " . . . 

Jon Gabriel gives a good accounting of the two types of people who have been revealed since the virus came to visit, “karens” and “sharons.”  That would be the ones who virtue-signal by shaming anyone not wearing a mask and those who live and let live.

MSNBC, the darling of "Law & Order" gets busted by passer-by; many comments ensue

MSNBC Gets Busted While Virtue Signaling About Masks On Air

I missed this MSNBC fail yesterday
Katy Tur tells reporter, "It seems like you might be one of the only people wearing a mask"
Reporter: You can see here, nobody's wearing them. Katy.
Hero bystander: Including the cameraman.
Defeated reporter: Including the cameraman.

 Mask-Obsessed NBC Reporter Forced to Admit on Live TV Cameraman Not Wearing a Mask   . . . "As Perry was wrapping up the segment, a bystander recording on his phone also noted that his cameraman was also not wearing a mask, which Perry acknowledged." . . . 

Unmasked: MSNBC’s Double-Standard, Elitist, Mask-Shaming Faceplant

Passer-by video  . . . "This doesn’t bode well for future live reports from Flyover Country. These days, everyone has a camera and the ability to report on the reporters. Media outlets should think twice about their next “the hicks in the sticks are thick as bricks” segment. If they want to make a point about wearing masks, maybe they should just follow Sean Hannity’s example and be honest about it. Honesty and respect at least have the novelty of not having been tried on MSNBC." . . .

MSNBC phony mask-shaming busted on live TV  . . . "If you love seeing progressive, phony propagandists devastatingly embarrassed, this video, less than a minute in length, is a moment to save and savor." . . .

MSNBC Had a Reporter On to Shame People Over Masks, Then Something Amazing Happened

Enough of this nonsense. Stop shaming people for going outside and trying to live their lives. The virus doesn’t spread outdoors to any real degree anyway. There is no reason to wear a mask when you are walking on a sidewalk. The media continue to show themselves to be buffoons.

.terrellaftermath/

The Obama People Turned the Whole Philosophy of the American Founding Upside Down. Not Because They're Evil, but Because They're Idiots.

Christopher Chantrill  "I think it is pretty clear now to all but the most klueless, given the bombshells and walls closing in of the past week, that the whole Trump Russia thing was a put-up job, that the Obama people, whether prompted by the Clinton campaign or President Obama himself, spied on the Trump campaign on a presumption about Russian spying. Predicates? We don’t need no stinkin’ predicates.
"And the latest line on the pursuit of Michael Flynn is that he had dirt on the Obama Iran Deal and wanted to clean out the Augean stables at the intelligence community. So he had to be eliminated.
"Here’s my objection to the whole Russia/Flynn thing.
"Rule One, for me, is that We give the guys in the Other party the benefit of the doubt. We do not investigate Them, or trap Them, or leak IC information on Them to the media. Why not? Because We are the smart ones; we know the day will come when They will do it to Us. And We won’t like that.
"If you ask me, that was really the bigger question in the McCarthy era, and why the liberals were right for the wrong reasons back then. So Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss were spying for the Russians. They weren’t crazy radicals, but establishment figures, members of the ruling class. I expect that their “helping” Soviet Russia was almost conventional wisdom in progressive circles back in the 1930s and 1940s. Bottom line: When a significant sector of the ruling class thinks that “colluding” with Russia is the okay thing to do -- even if that means winking at the transfer of atomic secrets -- then that is the political status quo, even if Tailgunner Joe don’t like it.
"But now, 70 years later, collusion with the Russians is scandalous and traitorous, because something-or-other? Please. Tailgunner Joe got sent to the corner for that.
"The way we know that the Obama people were up to no good is what they did not do with Russia and Flynn. They did not call up the Trump campaign and say, with respect to Russia, that some of the Trump people were fishing in dangerous waters. Why not, if their purpose was to help America and not conspire to damage Trump?
"And President Obama did not tell president-elect Trump what his real beef was with LTG Flynn when, as Lee Smith writes, he called Trump two days after the 2016 election to warn him about Flynn. “Trump told aide Hope Hicks that he was bewildered by the president’s warning.” No doubt, because Obama wasn’t leveling with him." . . . Read more...

The Remains of an Administration; Obama’s policies are in tatters, and the worst scandals of his White House are coming to light.

Victor Davis Hanson

 Obama entered office to gushes that he was a living god and the smartest man ever to enter the White House. He quickly won the Nobel Peace Prize and was courted internationally through a series of overseas tours. His brand was that he was not so much a citizen of an unexceptional America as a citizen of the now globalized world.

     "Each day that the Obama administration fades into the past, its wrongdoings manage to wander back into the present.

     "After years of suppression, all sorts of strange events keep popping up to remind us of what little is left of the Obama years — the Susan Rice memo, Christopher Steele deleting his computer records, FBI-doctored and lost 302s, text messages wiped clean, the bizarre Obama January 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting, the ambush interview of Michael Flynn, the unmasking and leaking of redacted names swept up in reverse-targeting surveillance operations, the administration fraud perpetrated on the FISA courts. The list is so overwhelming and bizarre that it ensures that anything at any time can now appear. And the result keeps reminding Americans of how corrupt were the years between 2009 and 2017 and how untruthful was the coverage of such institutionalized wrongdoing.
     "Emeritus Barack Obama now and then ventures out to go through the motions of an enfeebled defense for what is becoming an increasingly discredited administration. But his heart is not in it. His mind is elsewhere. His cause is no longer social activism and community organizing, if it ever was, but lucre and the perceived well-earned good life. The arc of his moralizing universe is long, but for the anointed like him, it apparently bends toward the just deserts of riches and material bounty.
     "First lady forever and bestselling memoirist Michelle Obama sometimes takes a hiatus from making millions to offer a half-hearted progressive warning about the sudden heartlessness of the country — reminiscent of her transitory 2008 warnings about a downright mean country and one of which she had previously not been especially proud." . . .

Boom: Kayleigh McEnany Dropkicks Chris Wallace Over Suggestion That Journalists Shouldn’t Be Questioned

RedState

“Journalism is a great and noble profession but there’s been a dearth of journalists asking the real questions for President Obama, the criminal leak of Michael Flynn’s identity, who leaked that identity, the dossier used to launch a three year investigation into this president to spy on his campaign why aren’t those questions being asked?”“It’s journalistic malpractice not to ask those questions,” McEnany concluded.

"Yesterday, my RedState colleague Bonchie wrote about how Fox News anchor Chris Wallace and former National Review editor Jonah Goldberg bashed White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany Sunday for not only asking journalists at the Friday press briefing about their lack of curiosity over Gen. Michael Flynn’s unmasking, but for also pointing out that it seemed like they didn’t want churches to reopen.

"McEnany’s turning the tables on the notoriously combative, left-wing White House press corps earned her a “Twitter troll” designation by Goldberg, who stated that he believed her behavior was “indefensible and grotesque.” Wallace teed up the segment by suggesting that if McEnany “had told” him and former ABC News journalist Sam Donaldson “what questions” they should have asked during a briefing, that it “would not have gone well.”

"Their criticisms were absurd for many reasons, as Bonchie explained well in his post, but McEnany herself was asked about them during a Fox and Friends interview this morning, and she did not hold back:" . . .