Tag Archive for: media bias

The Leftist Institutional Machine behind the Trump Assassination Attempts

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Former President Donald Trump plays a lot of golf, and by all accounts is skilled at it. But the game of golf has a long history among U.S. presidents. William McKinley is believed to have been the first to play, starting in 1897, but the 350-pound William Howard Taft was the first president to take the game seriously, having taken up golf in 1894 with his brother Henry. Woodrow Wilson played over 1,000 rounds of golf while in office and even painted his golf balls black during the winter so that he could play in the snow.

Warren G. Harding trained his dog to go and fetch his golf balls. Calvin Coolidge was not particularly skilled at golf and eventually left his golf bag behind in the White House when his presidency ended. Before contracting polio, Franklin D. Roosevelt was a golf club champion. Dwight D. Eisenhower installed the first presidential putting green on the White House grounds and often played with his friend Arnold Palmer. John F. Kennedy played on the Harvard golf team and managed a single-digit handicap, although he shied away from the game as president, believing it to be an indication of a privileged lifestyle. Not one of the game’s greats, Lyndon B. Johnson found that inviting senators to join him for a game of golf would give him three or four hours to argue for legislation he favored. Richard Nixon was a fairly gifted golfer but removed the White House putting green and refused to play while in office, focusing his time and energy on his political ambitions. After Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, the first thing he did was play golf.

Ronald Reagan was recognized as a decent player, but not an avid one. George H.W. Bush holds the presidential record for fastest game ever played, clocking in at just under two hours for a full 18 holes. Bill Clinton was known for re-taking shots he wasn’t pleased with but loved the game so much that he would even play alone in the rain. Like his father, George W. Bush was a golf lover, but gave up playing in office after the September 11 attacks of 2001. Barack Obama had custom golf balls made, and his frequent tee times even made national headlines during his White House tenure.

Until Sunday, the golf course was a sort of safe escape, a sportsman’s retreat, for presidents — both in office and afterward. At least 17 U.S. presidents have been golfers, to varying degrees, and some of them played golf during the most fraught, contentious times in modern history, including World War I. But never before, as far as history recollects, had anyone attempted to assassinate a U.S. president on the golf course — not until Ryan Routh poked the muzzle of an automatic rifle through the chain link fence surrounding a West Palm Beach golf course and tried to find Donald Trump in his sights.

This is not to say, of course, that the golf course is some sacred, inviolate place; it is not. Nor are Sunday’s events merely indicative of the volatile lows that political discourse has reached in the Western world in the 21st century — after all, conservatives firmly believe that the political Left is a threat to essential rights, such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and its machinations are responsible for the slaughter of tens of millions of unborn innocents on the horrifying altar of abortion. Yet Vice President Kamala Harris has not been shot in the side of the head, nobody has poked a rifle through the fence to take aim at President Joe Biden while he golfs — or, what is more likely, while he naps on the beach.

Some have said that Thomas Crooks and Ryan Routh — the two men who have, thus far, attempted to assassinate Donald Trump — have been “radicalized.” This is most certainly true, but it is a far deeper, more complicated, and more sinister affair than political pundits and keyboard commentators may suggest. A 20-year-old student and a 58-year-old construction worker are not convinced to attempt murder because they read or hear or watch a few frightening news reports centered on a politician over a period of weeks, months, or even a few years. Were that the case, everyone who watches Alex Jones or Tucker Carlson would be hunting Washington’s elite, believing them to be brainwashed by demons. No, the foundation was laid years — even generations — prior to motivate everyday civilians to take a shot at the president.

There are three chief institutions which come into play in this ploy, and one which plays a supporting role: the education system, the media, the family, and the government. Over the past 60 years or more, the education system has been responsible for drilling into every child’s head the conclusion that Adolf Hitler was the most evil and inhuman creature to ever roam the face of the planet. Of course, Hitler was evil, and he wreaked war and atrocities upon the world, but he may not even be the most vile, despotic genocidal maniac of his day.

His one-time ally Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, is crediting with tens of millions of deaths. Whether in gulags or from famine or in unceremonious mass executions or even massacres in the streets during his many purges, Stalin racked up a body count roughly quadruple that of Adolf Hitler’s. Communist China’s Chairman Mao Zedong topped both Hitler and Stalin, the latter by almost 20 million deaths. Yet generation after generation has been taught, by an institution that they are practically forced to respect, that Adolf Hitler was the most evil man to ever walk the face of the earth.

The media’s role, which is rightly noted as incessantly labeling Donald Trump as “Adolf Hitler” and his allies and supporters as “Nazis,” cannot be fulfilled unless the education system first fulfills its own role. In his apocalyptic novel “That Hideous Strength,” C.S. Lewis made the following observation regarding those who read newspapers:

“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who CAN be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”

Thus, the education system not only teaches children which historical figure to consider the most depraved, the most evil, and the least human. The education system is also tasked with doing away with the “common man.” The sort of man who believes almost nothing written in the newspapers or reported on cable or network news programs, who “takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda,” must be “reconditioned.” His critical thinking skills, instead of being honed and sharpened, are dulled and allowed to atrophy. Subjects are taught to him by rote, his academic and intellectual value is judged on the basis of what he can remember and how closely it resembles the words of his textbook, not by his capacity for innovation or ingenuity. He is not taught to analyze subjects but to identify which analyses (conducted by others) are acceptable for him to read and regurgitate. He is taught the theory of “accreditation,” and learns to fear and abhor sources which are deemed un-credible.

Now, this process should be prevented and remedied by the third institution in our ensemble: the family. It ought to be the mother and father who, upon realizing that their child is especially dull and seemingly incapable of critical thinking, pull that child from the local school and either find a private, classical-based alternative or else just homeschool the child, seeing to his intellectual development and cultivation themselves. Thus, the family must be fractured. Feminism, pornography, and economic strife join forces to achieve this outcome, breaking up marriages and both encouraging and pressuring both mother and father to go out into the workforce, leaving them little time to recognize that their child is languishing intellectually and even less time to devote to rectifying that ill.

Christianity, which offers the antidote to the enemies of marriage, is shunned, mocked, and ridiculed in the public square, leaving fewer and fewer couples with any awareness that there even is an antidote to their marital struggles, much less what that antidote might be or where to find it.

Enter the media: Donald Trump is painted with a Hitler mustache on magazine covers, he is repeatedly compared to the German autocrat over a period of four, now eight, now 12 years, and every rhetorical stretch is employed, every argumentative gymnastic move put to use, to liken his policies and agenda to those of the Third Reich. Never mind that Donald Trump never rounded people up, tossed them in camps, and killed them. Never mind that Donald Trump has ended wars and conflicts, instead of beginning them. Never mind that Donald Trump’s political career did not begin with a failed and violent coup attempt. Never mind that Donald Trump never wrote a book detailing his racial ideology. Never mind that Donald Trump didn’t dissolve Congress upon taking office and declare himself the supreme leader of the country.

Donald Trump is further labeled a “threat to democracy,” a phrase repeated online by Routh, just a few months prior to pointing an AK-47 at the 45th president. This claim has been amplified and repeated ad infinitum by the left-wing political establishment in government and media. Again, never mind that Donald Trump left office in January 2021, even amidst credible claims of election fraud. Never mind that his policies in office included upholding and respecting the separation of powers, instead of packing or discrediting constitutional courts. Never mind that he was democratically elected in 2016 and not only ran for office again but earned even more votes in 2020. No, he’s literally Hitler, you have to believe us.

And the media is believed, because the media is “accredited,” it’s an acceptable source, and there are no critical thinking skills left to refute the overwhelming weight of that “accreditation.” This is only bolstered when those in the government, in the sitting presidential administration, condemn Donald Trump as Hitler and those who appreciate his policies and his patriotism as Nazis. These politicians are seen, by the likes of Thomas Crooks and Ryan Routh, as Winston Churchill, boldly facing down the madman threatening the world, when in fact, ironically, they are more like Joseph Goebbels, pushing dehumanizing propaganda at every turn.

Ultimately, that’s what is behind the assassination attempts against Donald Trump: dehumanization. This machine consisting of the education system, the media, and the government operates on the principle that those who oppose its agenda — even those who simply do not accept it — are unfit to be called human. Again, ironically, this is alarmingly similar to Hitler’s own ideology, to his mythological Aryan ideal: all those who do not fit in are simply declared sub-human and eliminated. The radicalization of would-be assassins — not to mention the unprecedented lawfare campaign targeting Donald Trump — would also seem to fall under the purview of threatening democracy.

Donald Trump not only opposes the ideology of the diabolical elites — unlimited immigration from the third world, the destruction of America’s heritage and history, the economic oppression of every American family working hard to make a home — but is an existential threat to it. He must, therefore, be eliminated. After all, the elites will argue, he’s less than human. He’s a threat to democracy, he’s literally Hitler.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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Assassination Update

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Poll: Over 70% of Dems and Independents Unaware of Harris’s Controversial Policy Positions

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A new poll has revealed that almost three-quarters of registered Democrats and Independents are not aware of numerous intensely controversial policy positions that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has taken. The news comes as the founder of a Harris super PAC admitted that internal polling is showing a much tighter race between the vice president and Donald Trump than what recent public poll results suggest.

The poll, conducted by the Media Research Center (MRC), surveyed 800 Democrats and 400 Independents who said they voted for Joe Biden in 2020. It found that at least 70% or more were not aware of positions the vice president has taken that are widely considered to be extremely left-wing, including supporting the elimination of private health insurance, abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and decriminalizing crossing the border illegally. In addition, 75% said they did not know Harris was named the most liberal U.S. senator in 2019, and 72% did not know she had “never visited a conflict zone on the border as Border Czar.”

Curtis Houck, managing editor of MRC’s NewsBusters, called the results of the poll “stunning” during Wednesday’s “Washington Watch.” “Of the 10 things that we polled, they were no lower than 71% unaware,” he explained. “Seventy-one percent of her voters are unaware that she has flirted with defunding the police, and thought we should talk about reparations. Seventy-three percent did not know that she’s in favor of the Green New Deal.”

Houck continued, “In 2020, she encouraged supporters to donate to the Minneapolis Bail Fund to release violent criminals who rioted and destroyed those city streets after what happened with George Floyd [78% were unaware of this]. [It] goes all the way up to 86% of her voters did not know that at a CNN town hall, [she stated that] we should have a conversation about death row inmates being allowed to vote. So no matter how you slice it, no matter what issue, whether it’s the economy, the environment, crime, the border, her voters do not know what she believes in, and the fact that they’re still willing to vote for her anyway is a really dangerous commentary on the state of our politics.”

Houck went on to point to another MRC study showing a massive imbalance in the type of coverage the legacy media is giving Harris and Trump in the four weeks since President Joe Biden exited the race.

“[T]he media have given Kamala Harris 84% positive coverage [versus 89% negative coverage of Trump] on ABC, CBS, and NBC, and on the evening shows only twice mentioned her party ideology, mentioned her as a progressive,” he observed. “… There’s always some sort of label affixed to [Republicans], but they haven’t even done that for Kamala Harris. So if they’re not willing to talk about the party label, they’re not going to talk about her policies.”

Meanwhile, Reuters reported on Monday that Harris’s campaign backers are worried over the results of internal polls that do not reflect recent public poll numbers showing Harris opening up a lead over Trump. During an event hosted by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, Chauncey McLean, president of the Harris super political action committee (PAC) Future Forward, remarked, “Our numbers are much less rosy than what you’re seeing in the public.”

McLean, whose Future Forward PAC has “at least $250 million left to spend” on “a wave of advertising from digital to television,” stated that his group’s analysis has identified Pennsylvania as the most important state for Harris to win, which he anticipated will be a “coin flip.” He also cautioned that the vice president “has yet to fully rebuild the Biden coalition of Blacks, Hispanics and young voters that brought him the White House in 2020.” The race is going to be as “tight as a tick, and pretty much across the board,” he predicted.

Matt Carpenter, director of Family Research Council Action, further underscored that mainstream polling results, particularly within swing states, should be taken with a grain of salt.

“It’s not just McClean who is quietly raising concerns about the state of the Harris-Walz ticket,” he told The Washington Stand. “Former Obama campaign chief strategist David Axelrod also recently said he’s aware of polling which shows the battleground state matchups are far less favorable to the Democratic nominee than many of the big public polling operations are showing, and even suggested if the election were held today that Trump would win. So much of politics is about managing expectations, and if the Harris-Walz campaign is all polling hype, then they aren’t doing themselves any favors in hiding the true state of the race.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Media Helps Reinvent Kamala in Truth-Optional Campaign

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While Kamala Harris lets the mystery of her VP pick hang in the air, we don’t need to wonder who’s already on her ticket: the mainstream media. Just when Americans thought they couldn’t be surprised by the press’s bias, Harris’s candidacy has turned them into outright liars, whose in-kind donation is a blanket cover-up for every unpopular policy she’s ever endorsed. And Republicans, who are used to running against the media, have to wonder: will voters see through the scam?

From defunding the police to banning fracking — even Kamala’s assignment as border czar — the Left’s revisionist history has saturated news casts, network interviews, even fact-checkers. As National Review’s Noah Rothman bleakly put it, “The sense of euphoric inevitability that prevailed when Republicans gathered in Milwaukee for the party’s nominating convention is gone. … The Trump campaign has struggled to break into the Kamala Harris–dominated news cycle in a positive way. Republicans are resigned not just to a race against a tougher opponent but to an array of cultural and journalistic institutions acting with reckless disregard for their reputations to shield Harris from scrutiny. It’s all rather depressing.”

Harris’s dubious record is being scrubbed clean by an army of media water-carriers, who insist that GovTrack’s most liberal senator in 2019 didn’t actually mean those things she said about Medicare for All, voting rights for felons, bans on offshore drilling, and gun control. In one of the more embarrassing displays, CNN’s Daniel Dale even claimed that “Harris was never made Biden’s ‘border czar,’” adding, “In reality, Biden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment.”

“I know it’s a lie. You know it’s a lie. They know it’s a lie,” Becket Adams writes. “That they never bothered to correct this three-year-old ‘misconception’ until she became the presumptive Democratic nominee gives the game away. But the all-too-obvious timing of the thing is not stopping them from trying to revise her record anyway.”

One of Joe Biden’s most feckless Cabinet officials, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, tried to deny the same reality, insisting, “Let’s be very clear about this because there has been a lot of mischaracterization. She was not in charge of the border.” Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on MSNBC, was even more disingenuous, telling MSNBC, “She wasn’t the border czar, but, boy oh boy, did she do a great job at the border.”

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) could only shake his head. They’re all “trying to rewrite history,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on the Hill.” “And you see all the left[ist] media doing this too. President Biden tapped Kamala Harris to be the border czar. She doesn’t have many jobs as vice president, and that’s one of the few things he gave her. The border is a mess. [She was told to] go figure it out. And she couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t even go down to the border for so long. She ignored this problem.”

The Left is hoping everyone forgets is that “she is for open borders,” Scalise insisted. “She’s been very vocal about wanting to legalize people who just roam into the country and giv[e] them free stuff. And by the way, it’s angering most people in America.” The media is “going to try to change history. Sorry,” the House leader said. “They’re not going to be able to get away with it.”

And yet, as Rothman pointed out, “There is no pressure on the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to sit for interviews, hold press conferences, or even merely speak extemporaneously for more than a few sentences. Even what may be Harris’s foremost vulnerability — her inauthenticity — is presented as an asset.” His colleague, Rich Lowry, thinks this is the natural outgrowth of the press “elevat[ing] her from also-ran vice president to savior of the republic in the space of about 12 hours a couple of weekends ago.” Now, trusting that the press won’t challenge her on anything she says, Harris has the audacity to claim she’s the tough one on immigration.

At an Atlanta rally, Biden’s vice president actually said, “I will proudly put my record against his any day of the week. Any day of the week, including, for example, on the issue of immigration. … Donald Trump,” she continued, “has been talking a big game about securing our border. But he does not walk the walk.”

As Lowry bemoans, Harris’s “sociopathic dishonesty” on the border “has not been met with a flurry of fact checks, nor have editors been zealously adding the word ‘falsely’ in front of her claims. No, she’s flipping the script, and going on offense, and punching back.” So why not “try to get it to swallow an even more outlandishly implausible notion?” he wondered.

But how long can Kamala outrun the facts as troves of videos, soundbites, and speeches burn down the straw woman the press has built? “As we get closer to November,” Scalise warned, there are three issues that are “crystallizing everywhere you go. And number one — far and away — is the border. People want to get this border secured. It’s madness what’s going on at the border, and that comes up no matter what part of the country you’re in.”

And as the stock market freefalls, images like Harris in 2023 saying she’s “very proud of Bidenomics” will be hard even for the magicians of the media to erase. As Scalise says, the second biggest issue on voters’ minds is “inflation, the cost of things.” “And whatever part of the country you go into, they’re complaining about grocery prices. They’re complaining about gas prices and energy prices, [and] just cooling their home in the summer. I mean, these are problems that were created by the Biden-Harris administration. Everybody knows that. … [T]his is where Kamala Harris is going to have a real problem. She was with Joe Biden helping be the architect [of these policies]. Look, she was the deciding vote for the Inflation Reduction Act. She can’t run away from these things — the policies that created the inflation, that when you go to the grocery store, you’re paying 30% more than when Biden took office.”

Add that to the explosive situation in the Middle East, and frankly, the House’s second-in-command warned, “I don’t remember a time when America’s projected so much weakness to so many of our friends around the world. …You see what Russia did with Ukraine. You see what Iran, through their proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis — have done to Israel. And then, of course, you see what China is doing to allies like Taiwan. So all of our enemies are taking advantage of the weakness being projected.”

How does this affect the Democrats’ replacement candidate? Well, as Scalise reminded people, “Kamala has really no record on the world stage, except for the Biden agenda. And the Biden-Harris agenda in foreign policy has been walking away from Israel, projecting weakness, allowing our military to be more focused on wokeness, which is not the preparedness we need to deal with the threat that China and other countries pose. So it’s a dangerous place right now, and we’re in a much more dangerous position because of the weakness projected by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. And I think that’s going to be a big factor knowing how strong President Trump was. [There were] no new wars when Donald Trump was president. Our friends knew that we had their back. And we did, by the way, have their back because we weren’t letting the bad guys run roughshod around the world.”

So the Left’s strategy is simple: change the subject. “They really are going to be focused on how they can divide the American people between now and November 5th, because they don’t want the American people talking about the issues people care about. … And the reason that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden don’t want to talk about it is because those problems were created by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. The inflation, high energy prices, open border, all of those are self-created problems by the Biden-Harris ticket. And again, you go back four years ago, we did not have those problems.”

When it comes to Harris’s campaign, “They’re going to want to talk about abortion every day. They’re going to want to talk about mandating [electric vehicles], and January 6th. And the American people are saying, ‘Look, I’ve got real problems that you helped create. And I want to talk about those problems.’”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Media Rewrites Kamala’s Record

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Which senator had the most liberal voting record in 2019? According to GovTrack.us in January 2020, it was then-Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.). Today, that same webpage can no longer be found, nor can the page for Harris’s 2019 report card. The internet Wayback Machine first noticed the pages missing on Monday. Coinciding with this disappearance was only one relevant change: last weekend President Joe Biden announced via X that he would not seek reelection and endorsed Harris as his replacement.

Is the media scrubbing the web of Harris’s past liberal record?

According to GovTrack.us in July 2024, there was a perfectly innocent-sounding explanation for the sudden scrubbing of a five-year-old webpage. That page “was based on a single calendar year. Several years ago we discontinued creating new single-calendar-year ‘report cards’ because a single year of data is “not sufficient to create a reliable portrait of the activity of legislators.”

It is true that more years of data provide a fuller picture. However, having only served in the Senate for four years, Harris didn’t develop a large legislative record there. In 2017 (also archived), GovTrack.us ranked Harris as the 8th-most liberal senator by voting record. In 2018 (live), she ranked as the 4th-most liberal. Harris was the most liberal in 2019, and in 2020 (also live) she ranked as the 2nd-most liberal senator. In 2021, she became vice president.

But arguing that “a reliable portrait” of a legislator’s activity required information from multiple years is not an explanation for deleting pages from certain years and not others. Indeed, deleting any record of voting scores seems beneath an organization described as a non-partisan “government transparency site.”

Their poor excuse for deleting the 2019 report card (and a 2019 page ranking all senators ideologically), combined with the suggestive timing of the move, only stoked suspicions that GovTrack.us deleted the pages to obscure Harris’s voting record, which was the most liberal of the year. What made GovTrack’s coverup even more embarrassing is that their patchwork deletions did not even effectively obscure Harris’s consistently liberal voting record.

When CBS news anchor Norah O’Donnell asked Harris about the “most-liberal” ranking in an interview for “60 Minutes,” Harris first deflected, then characteristically laughed it off. “You supported the Green New Deal, you supported Medicare for all, you’ve supported legalizing marijuana. Joe Biden doesn’t support those things,” O’Donnell pressed.

Harris did not deny that statement. Instead, she responded, “What I will do — and I promise you this, and this is what Joe wants me to do, this was part of our deal — I will always share with him my lived experience as it relates to any issue that we confront. And I promised Joe that I will give him that perspective and always be honest with him.”

Two things seem to be true at the same time. On one hand, Kamala Harris is on the far-left flank of the American political spectrum, or at least she wants the support of that constituency. On the other hand, Harris also has national political ambitions and enough political instincts to recognize that being “the most liberal senator” doesn’t play well in most places outside of California.

The best explanation to be offered so far for GovTrack.us deleting Harris’s record from their site is that they, too, recognize the political liability of being “the most liberal senator,” and they removed the page as an intangible contribution to Harris’s campaign for president. If they wish to dispute this, let them offer a better explanation to convince us. The American people know when we are being gaslighted.

Border Czar?

GovTrack.us is not the only organization to be exposed for polishing up Harris’s record by, well, denying what they had previously said about it. “In the past few days,” Axios claimed Wednesday, “the Trump campaign and Republicans have tagged Harris repeatedly with the ‘border czar’ title — which she never actually had.”

Again, the urge to exonerate Harris of any responsibility for the border serves the short-term, political goal of separating her from the unpopular border policies of the Biden-Harris administration.

Yet this critique would surprise Axios writers from five years ago, when they unironically called Harris the “border czar.” The very same writer who is now denouncing Republicans’ use of the label “border czar,” Stef Kight, wrote an article on March 24, 2021 titled, “Biden puts Harris in charge of border crisis.” As with all American applications of the word “czar,” the “border czar” refers colloquially to the person in charge of an issue, not to that person’s technical title.

Even worse, this shifts the focus of history revisionism from Harris’s Senate career to her record as vice president. In other words, it memory-holes Harris’s actions not from a role she held five years ago, but from a role she holds right now. In other words, to identify Axios’s infinitesimal distinction, their readers would not only have to rewrite their memory of their recent past but also override their current political knowledge about the present.

Axios knows better, and their readers do too. But they went ahead and published this ridiculous argument for cheap political points, hoping no one would notice that they had drawn a distinction without a difference. After getting called out in a community note on X, Axios doubled-down on their recent resolve to split hairs. At the bottom of their most recent article, an editor’s note now declares that “Axios was among the news outlets that incorrectly labeled Harris a ‘border czar’ in 2021.”

“There’s some kind of oligarchy there that’s running the country,” declared Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) on “Washington Watch” Thursday. “You’ve got the massive cover up and cleaning up of the image of Kamala Harris, who has bungled everything that she’s been put in charge of, like the border.”

“She was the border czar,” Biggs added. “Everybody calls her that. And if you don’t like border czar, she was appointed to lead the border effort. She was the manager. She was the director, whatever you want to call it. The bottom line is still the same. She failed, and Joe Biden, stuck with her.”

Rioter Bailouts

Yet another attempt to rehabilitate Kamala Harris’s political image came Thursday, when CBS News claimed, “Trump falsely accuses Harris of donating to Minnesota Freedom Fund, bailing out ‘dangerous criminals.’”

The Minnesota Freedom Fund was a Democrat-organized fundraiser to bail out violent activists who were arrested for attacking police, torching businesses, and terrorizing neighborhoods during the height of the George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020. Again, it’s obvious why Harris and her supporters would want to distance themselves from such a politically unpopular policy.

CBS News got tagged by a community note informing their readers that Harris publicly promoted the Minnesota Freedom Fund in a June 1, 2020 tweet that is still live, “If you’re able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.”

CBS has since updated its headline to read, “Despite Trump claim and 2020 tweet showing support, Harris never donated to Minnesota Freedom Fund.” In other words, to salvage the “news” story, CBS twisted it into a story about something a politician didn’t do four years ago. Do these people ever listen to themselves?

Even if they hadn’t descended into absurdity, it’s hard to see that Harris appears in a better light after CBS’s amended story. Perhaps she didn’t personally donate to the rioter bail fund. But she promoted it and encouraged others to donate to it. If the point was to distance the presumptive Democratic nominee from a radical, unpopular stance she took four years ago, the mission was most definitely not accomplished.

In late 2023, The New York Times Magazine ran a lengthy profile of Harris that described how she “is still struggling to make the case for herself — and feels she shouldn’t have to.” The bottom line is that many Americans have never been very enamored with the radical, leftward-pressing fringe of the Democratic Party that Harris so often represents. Until recently, it was okay for the media to say so. But, with Biden bowing out of the race, and no other Democrat stepping forward to challenge Trump, refurbishing Harris’s rusty image has become the prime objective.

In unburdening Harris from what has been, it seems the media is not above rewriting the past.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

A Preview of the Highly Anticipated Trump-Biden Showdown

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Former President Donald Trump will face off against incumbent Joe Biden Thursday night in a highly anticipated presidential debate, but experts are warning that the debate may be less “Trump vs. Biden” and more “Trump vs. the network.” The debate will be broadcast by CNN, long considered a left-wing network, and moderated by CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, both of whom have been openly critical of Trump in the past.

Tapper has called Trump a “nightmare,” a “disaster,” a liar, and “100% insane,” in addition to comparing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Bash, meanwhile, has accused Trump of “race-baiting,” sexism, and anti-Semitism. Both anchors have called Trump a threat to democracy, harshly criticized his policies, and faulted him for the actions of others during the events of January 6, 2021.

Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt blasted CNN on Monday for what she predicted would be unfair treatment of the former president. Leavitt told CNN personality Kasie Hunt that Trump “is knowingly going into a hostile environment on this very network, on CNN, with debate moderators who have made their opinions about him very well known over the past eight years in their biased coverage of him.” Hunt responded by applauding Tapper and Bash as “professionals,” adding, “If you’re attacking the moderators, you’re usually losing.” When Leavitt pointed out that Tapper’s criticism of Trump in particular was well-documented, her microphone was cut and the interview was abruptly ended.

With both Tapper and Bash being accused of clear personal and political bias, CNN has defended its moderators, according to a memo obtained by The Hill. “Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are well respected veteran journalists who have covered politics for more than five decades combined,” the news outlet claimed. “They have extensive experience moderating major political debates, including CNN’s Republican Presidential Primary Debate this cycle. There are no two people better equipped to co-moderate a substantial and fact-based discussion and we look forward to the debate on June 27 in Atlanta.”

CNN CEO Mark Thompson has also attempted to distance himself from potential controversy surrounding the debate. In an interview with The New York Times, Thompson said, “Much of the reaction of the public, the rest of the media and other politicians is going to depend on President Trump and President Biden, who are the stars of the show.” He claimed that the format of the debate is designed “to get as much light as possible, and not to be overwhelmed with heat.”

While Trump has been campaigning extensively over the past days and weeks, regularly delivering two-hour-long speeches at various rallies and conferences, Biden has retreated to Camp David with campaign staff and advisers to prepare for the debate. Biden’s former chief of staff Ron Klain is reportedly in charge of debate prep for the 81-year-old incumbent. Former White House physician Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) suggested that much of Biden’s time at Camp David will be spent “experimenting with doses” of performance-enhancing drugs. As a former physician to both Trump and Barack Obama, Jackson has repeatedly alleged that Biden’s performance in speeches such as the State of the Union is likely fueled by drugs. He has demanded that performance-enhancing drug tests be conducted both before and immediately following Thursday night’s debate.

Jackson’s suggestions of performance-enhancing drugs come as Americans continue to worry about Biden’s age and his cognitive state. The White House has frequently had to address video footage of the octogenarian president freezing onstage, wandering away from events, and mumbling incoherently. A survey conducted ahead of the debate found that 70% of Americans expect Biden “to mess up his words” during the debate, 49% expect him “to forget where he is,” 41% expect him “to walk off the wrong side of the stage,” and 40% expect him “to have problems standing up.” Half of voters expect Trump to win the debate, while less than 40% expect Biden to do well.

“Does Joe Biden make it through 90 minutes without a significant gaffe?” asked Brett O’Donnell, president of O’Donnell and Associates communications firm and former debate coach at Liberty University, on Tuesday night’s episode of “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.” O’Donnell added that Biden’s frequent bumbles and blunders are “an indication of what age might be doing to him in terms of his competence for office.”

O’Donnell also urged Trump to make it clear that he will not allow Biden and the Democratic Party to federalize abortion. “This is definitely an issue that’s going to get debated, because I think Democrats feel like they have a good deal of offense they can generate because of the space being opened up by the overturning of Roe,” the debate coach predicted. He also advised Trump to go “on the offense” against Biden’s policies, noting that “there’s a lot of offense for him to generate, whether it’s the economy, immigration, or even on the life issue, because to this day, Democrats continue to try and pass a law that would legalize abortion on demand up until the minute before babies are born, at taxpayer expense.”

O’Donnell continued, “That is the position of the Democrats in the House and the Senate. Virtually no Democrats voted against the bill legalizing abortion up until the minute before a baby is born at taxpayer expense. And so, yes, Trump should be on offense on that issue, as well as all of the other issues, whether it’s the economy, energy, immigration, crime, so many different things where the public, en masse, believes Joe Biden has been a complete failure.”

Additionally, O’Donnell recommended that Trump contrast himself against the extremism of Biden’s policies. “It doesn’t matter what issue you look at, Joe Biden is a radical leftist liberal who is behind policies that have completely failed America and are ripping our country apart,” O’Donnell said, specifically noting Biden’s promotion of abortion, transgenderism, and illegal immigration. “None of those positions are popular with the American public,” he stated. “Joe Biden is out of step, that’s why he’s doing so miserably in many of the polls.”

Finally, O’Donnell suggested that Trump be “aggressive but not offensive” in Thursday night’s debate. “He should make this race a referendum on Joe Biden’s failed policies, because Joe Biden’s going to have a hard time defending any one of his policies,” O’Donnell said. “Donald Trump should litigate the case against Joe Biden on a policy level, to show just how miserably his policies have failed. And then present the solutions that he would bring in. … If he does that work in the debate, he’s going to have a successful night.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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Biden Aides Reportedly Training Him To ‘Trigger’ Trump On Debate Night

CNN’s Van Jones Says Voters ‘Don’t Know What’ Biden’s Accomplishments Are, Have ‘Weird Kind Of Nostalgia’ For Trump

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

The Left’s Plan to Sabotage Talk Radio and Local News

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For its nearly universal control over the news-industrial complex, the Left has failed to penetrate the one and only media format dominated by conservatives: talk radio. Despite repeated liberal incursions into the medium, from Mario Cuomo to Tom Daschle to Air America, the Left cannot make a showing. Now, the Left has launched a series of deceptive websites and bought up talk radio outlets — apparently in hopes that, where persuasion failed, cold hard cash may prevail.

Enter George Soros — and his bank account.

“Over the last two years, Soros Fund Management, the firm founded by the billionaire investor and now controlled by the Open Society Foundations, has become an increasingly key player in the oldest electronic mass media: radio,” reported Semafor.com.

Two months ago, the business arm of the Soros empire bought out Audacy, giving it control of more than 230 radio stations and innumerable podcasts. The fund now openly discusses taking over Cumulus Media, which owned and operated 403 radio stations across 85 markets in the United States last year, according to its website.

Soros facilitated the buy-out of 18 Univision radio stations by a consortium of Obama and Clinton known as The Latino Media Network for $60 million, cash. When Vice Media faced bankruptcy in 2019, Soros provided part of the $250 million in debt relief that kept it afloat.

“Soros specifically funneled at least $131,111,250 between 2016 and 2020 into 253 journalism and activist media groups worldwide to spread his radical leftist ideas on abortion, Marxist economics, anti-Americanism, defunding the police, environmental extremism and LGBT fanaticism,” reported the Media Research Center in a three-part exposé. Some $103 million of the $131 million went directly to media outlets, including $2 million to Wikipedia — which, despite its dependably left-leaning bias, poses as an impartial encyclopedia.

Donor-driven deception seems to be a recurring theme for the Soros media takeover, as numerous beneficiaries disguise left-wing political advocacy in the form of “local news” websites.

Among the practitioners of this art is Tara McGowan, a Democratic political operative who worked for the 2012 Obama-Biden reelection campaign and for the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign’s primary super PAC, Priorities USA Action. (To give you a flavor, a 2012 Priorities USA ad falsely charged Utah Republican Mitt Romney with causing a woman to die of cancer.) After Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump, McGowan got concerned, writing in a 2019 memo that the “Democratic Party, long reliant on television and radio, is losing the media war.” To fill the gap, she created Courier Newsroom, owned by another McGowan organization, Good Information Inc. Courier’s media outlets use apolitical news stories with local content to deliver Democratic diatribes. “The goal was to get persuadable voters engaged with unassuming content, then feed them political persuasion content, using underwriters who would pay Courier to come up with the content,” a former Courier employee revealed.

George Soros is one of those underwriters. So, too, is Planned Parenthood. The nation’s leading abortion franchise gave McGowan’s faux news media empire a quarter of a million dollars in the 2021-2022 fiscal year alone. Yet McGowan did not disclose either contributor, which one investigator noted “cannot be traced through public records until years after the fact.”

Courier also has another revolving door with the Biden administration: McGowan has visited the Biden White House 20 times, according to a review of White House visitor logs carried out by Fox News. (More about them later.) One visit produced an exclusive interview with Biden — but the rest seem to have influenced Courier’s journalism in other ways. McGowan met with Patrick Stevenson, Biden’s senior advisor for digital strategy, raising questions about whether McGowan coordinated its media activities with the administration. (That would be old hat. A 2016 email from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign manager outlined a strategy of illegal “coordination of some ads with Priorities” USA.)

The Left followed the same blueprint in the 2022 midterm elections. Last time, the misleading media strategy worked through The American Independent, the grotesquely misnamed company then led by Media Matters founder David Brock. The group, now branding itself “TAI News,” hosts “local” websites in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, as well as Montana, where incumbent Democratic Senator Jon Tester faces a difficult reelection race. “It’s been widely reported that where local news outlets shut down, dis- and misinformation grows,” said Jessica McCreight, then TAI’s executive editor, in 2022. “To combat this challenge, The American Independent has expanded to bring readers local, fact-based news and information on topics and issues that impact their communities.”

TAI used McGowan’s model of writing local news to sell its political product. For instance, the Pennsylvania Independent’s story “Pennsylvania is home to the world’s mushroom capital” sits alongside headlines slamming alleged GOP “health care cuts” and touting Biden’s “clean energy investments in Pennsylvania farms.” Yet the state websites carry dizzyingly repetitive content for an operation purportedly dedicated to local news. Each site carries the same national news stories, usually as the lead. Very little original local content takes place: As of this writing, the Wisconsin website has the same story, with the same graphic, side-by-side as the lead story in both the Politics and Economy sections.

TAI News also shares McGowan’s troubles with the truth and ties to partisan hacks. TAI’s current president, Joe Conason, wrote a baseless 1992 article claiming that President George H.W. Bush had an affair with longtime aide Jennifer Fitzgerald, and a 2003 book titled “Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth.” TAI’s former president, Matt Fuehrmeyer, had been a senior aide at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

Ownership and management of media matters. Look at Fox News since Rupert Murdoch stepped back from day-to-day affairs, leaving its direction to his children. As part of its 2022 Pride Month coverage, Fox News Channel carried a news story celebrating a child’s gender transition. Last April, FNC fired its top-rated host, Tucker Carlson, days after he delivered a revival-themed address to The Heritage Foundation. While Fox News still has outstanding hosts and guests, its retreat from social issues mirrors the views of management.

This seeming minutiae impacts citizens’ ability to make a difference for Christ in the public square. Since information fuels and directs action, intelligence is a vital asset of spiritual warfare. The world’s greatest calamity occurred when our first parents acted on erroneous information (Genesis 3:5). On the other hand, God asks rhetorically whether His people know of His power to cast aside kingdoms that violate His laws by asking, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?” (Isaiah 40:21).

The anti-life crowd believes it can hide its venomous viewpoint in objective-looking news sites. If you do not know the bias and ownership of your “local” media site, why not read — and promote — news outlets like this one that share your Christian worldview? We will never sell out to shadowy leftist billionaires. We have already been bought with a price (I Corinthians 7:23).

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Lawmakers, FBI Director Warn of CCP’s Vast Cyberwarfare Campaign

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

What Do RFK Jr. and Ronna McDaniel Have in Common? Cancel Culture

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After several commentators on MSNBC displayed public outrage on Monday and Tuesday about their employer, NBC, hiring former Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to be a paid contributor, NBC abruptly fired her after less than one week on the job.

MSNBC hosts claimed that McDaniel was an “election denier” because she initially questioned the outcome of the 2020 elections. Yet McDaniel said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that President Biden won the 2020 election “fair and square” and that he’s “the legitimate president.”

However, that didn’t stop MSNBC hosts on Monday from piling attacks on McDaniel and insisting that their employer fire her immediately so that she could not share their “sacred airwaves” as “one of us,” a “badge-carrying employee of NBC News.”

Rachel Maddow said, “And so I want to associate myself with all my colleagues at MSNBC and NBC News who have voiced loud and principled objections to our company for putting on the payroll someone who hasn’t just attacked us as journalists, but someone who is part of an ongoing project to get rid of our system of government. Someone who is still trying to convince Americans that this election stuff doesn’t really work. That this last election wasn’t a real result. That American elections are fraudulent.”

As a result of this immense internal pressure, NBC caved to its employees — many of whom are biased former Democratic operatives. McDaniel herself did not find out that she was fired by NBC executives directly, but by hearing about it in the news.

This decision reveals what many already knew: the mainstream media has a deep left-wing bias, and they have no tolerance for those that disagree with them.

The new chairman of the RNC, Michael Whatley, discussed this on Wednesday’s “Washington Watch” with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “[… The legacy media] really, truly wants to make sure that their viewers are only getting one side of any given debate, which is really unfortunate. You know, when the American voters are informed voters, they make better decisions.”

Sadly, McDaniel’s firing reflects a deeper problem that has spread throughout our country: cancel culture. Just ask presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who has continuously been canceled by the Democratic Party and social media. Both have tried to delegitimize Kennedy because he disagrees with the Left’s base about how to address issues such as mandatory COVID-19 vaccines, open borders, the Israeli-Hamas war, and environmental policies.

And although Kennedy still holds liberal positions on many issues, the Democratic Party would not tolerate dissent from their base or even allow him to debate Joe Biden during the Democratic primary race. This ultimately led Kennedy to leave the party and become an Independent candidate.

Democrats and Republicans alike used to care deeply about free speech and defend that right — even for those they disagree with. After all, free speech is a fundamental right protected by our Constitution’s First Amendment and essential to a functioning democratic republic. However, more Democrats are realizing that the base of their party has dropped their belief in the freedom of speech. Because now, if you’re like RFK Jr. and you disagree with the socialist wing of the Democratic Party or if you are a conservative Republican like Ronna McDaniel, they believe you do not have a right to express your thoughts on television or debate your point of view in a presidential debate. Such silencing of opposing views is dangerous not only because it disregards political leaders, but it can lead to a disregard for voters.

As Whatley explained, “When you think about where the Left is coming from — and I don’t even say Democrats, I say the Left — where they’re coming [from] is they want to dismantle the family. They want to dismantle America. What they want to do is make everybody dependent on the government for everything,” he argued. “They want to really kind of take this country down a road where the American people do not want to go. And a key component for them is to be able to stifle that debate and put their message out.”

This is why it is essential for Americans to teach accurate history and civics and make sure we are using reliable news sources. As Tony Perkins pointed out on “Washington Watch” Monday, “We all come at this with different perspectives. In fact, up until about 15 years ago, it’s what made America strong: we came together, we had different views, but we would arrive at a consensus. Why? Because we had conversations. …This is what is so dangerous about the Left,” he pointed out. “They want to shut down our conversations. They want to silence. They want to cancel any voice that runs counter to theirs. Ultimately, they’re going to silence you. That’s why we can’t let them.”

AUTHOR

Kathy Athearn

RELATED ARTICLE: Roger Stone on RFK Jr.’s VP choice: What you need to know about Nicole Shanahan

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

A ‘Bloodbath’ of Journalistic Ethics

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The legacy media got caught over the weekend twisting President Donald Trump’s use of the mundane economic phrase “bloodbath” into an instigation of violence — an act of yellow journalism that one media expert told The Washington Stand will only “further damage their credibility as self-appointed guardians of democracy and truth.”

Speaking at a Dayton rally to endorse Ohio Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, President Trump warned Ohio voters that China hopes to destroy the U.S. auto market during a second Biden term — something he plans to stop by imposing robust tariffs against the Beijing electric vehicle market. He addressed his remarked specifically “to China” concerning “those big monster car manufacturing plants that you’re building in Mexico right now.” China’s largest electric vehicle producer, BYD, plans to expand into the U.S. automobile market by opening manufacturing plants in Mexico. China has funneled many of its products into the U.S. through China, as the U.S. removed all tariffs with Mexico when it adopted NAFTA in 1993.

“If you’re listening, President Xi,” if you think “you’re going to get that, you’re going to not hire Americans, and you’re going to sell the cars to us? No. We’re going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars if I get elected. Now if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s gonna be the least of it.”

The term “bloodbath” is regularly used in the financial sector to describe an industrial contraction. The Merriam-Webster dictionary lists one of the definitions of “bloodbath” as “a major economic disaster.” They held special resonance in Ohio, home to 86,000 auto manufacturing jobs, the third largest auto-producing state in the nation behind Michigan and Indiana. Ohio has lost 276,474 manufacturing jobs, many to Mexico or China, between the adoption of NAFTA in 1993 and 2018, according to Public Citizen. Business Insider noted last December that China’s aggressive expansion into the Mexican auto market “is alarming U.S. officials.”

Democratic campaign operatives pounced on Trump’s use of the term “bloodbath” to insinuate he wanted to foment a blood-drenched revolution if he lost the election. The same operatives have said he will foment a blood-drenched revolution if he is elected. The Biden campaign promptly wrenched the president’s remarks out of context to create a digital campaign ad titled “Bloodbath,” which recycles other erroneous statements, such as falsely claiming Trump praised rioters at the Charlottesville and January 6 D.C. riots.

The legacy media followed the Democratic Party’s lead, producing such headlines as:

  • CBS News: “In Ohio campaign rally, Trump says there will be a ‘bloodbath’ if he loses November election.”
  • NBC News:“Trump says there will be a ‘bloodbath’ if he loses the election.”
  • Politico: “Trump says country faces ‘bloodbath’ if Biden wins in November.”
  • Rolling Stone: “Trump Says There Will Be a ‘Bloodbath’ and Elections Will End if He Isn’t Reelected.”
  • New York Times: “Trump Defends His Warning of a ‘Blood Bath for the Country.’”

“It’s hard to avoid that the so-called objective media uses a lot of the same language in their Trump stories as Biden-Harris press releases, in addition to quoting the Biden-Harris press releases,” Tim Graham, executive editor of the Media Research Center, told The Washington Stand. MRC has long documented the bias, misinformation, and political collusion the legacy media provide to secular-progressive causes in general and the Democratic Party in particular.

The headlines alone may mislead an untold number of individuals. Only 41% of people read beyond a headline, according to a 2014 study from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the American Press Institute.

Even well-informed sources inside the Beltway sometimes fall under the sway of legacy media misinformation. “I didn’t realize this until I went to do the research: It’s a conversation about Chinese automakers trying to use Mexico to get cars into the United States,” admitted former Trump chief-of-staff Mick Mulvaney on “NewsNation Prime” Sunday.

In some cases, the reporters have walked through the revolving door between politics and journalism, serving in partisan roles in the Democratic Party before taking on the mantle of putatively neutral (and certainly well-compensated) journalists on major networks. On ABC’s “Good Morning America” Monday, former Clinton aide and Democratic campaign operative George Stephanopoulos told his viewers that President Trump had delivered an “incendiary speech … warning of a bloodbath for the country if he’s defeated.” At NBC’s “Today,” Trump’s remarks were reported by another individual connected to a Democratic administration: Laura Jarrett, the daughter of President Barack Obama’s most intimate adviser, Valerie Jarrett.

Experts warn that cherry-picking words and phrases, and placing them into a false context, is the antithesis of journalism. “If you’ve stripped enough context away, any piece of truth can become a piece of misinformation,” said Jaime Settle of the College of William & Mary in NPR article attacking The Daily Wire.

When former Vice President Mike Pence went on “Face the Nation” Sunday to announce he would not endorse President Donald Trump in the general election, he thanked host Margaret Brennan for playing the full clip of Trump speaking about the Chinese auto manufacturing sector. “I want to commend you for putting that into context,” said Pence.

Some media talking heads seemed to cling to the left-wing, anti-Trump narrative despite the facts. Kristen Welker, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” and moderator of the 2020 presidential debate, asked Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a Republican who voted to impeach Trump, “Even in the context of talking about the auto industry, does it cross a line for you?”

Others simply encouraged journalists to ignore the context and use any word or phrase as a cudgel against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Ana Marie Cox of The New Republic confessed on MSNBC, “We can’t look at what he is saying and think, ‘Oh, well, we’re going to be accurate for this. We’re going to say he was referring to the auto industry.’” Media Research Center journalist Jorge Bonilla said Cox appeared “the most forthright” by admitting the left-leaning media willfully ignored accuracy in order to demonize the 45th president.

The legacy media have a long history of twisting, seizing, and pouncing on Republicans, especially Trump, said his colleague at the media watchdog MRC. “The bloodbath freakout is just the latest in a long string of freakouts stretching back to 2015,” Graham told TWS.

He believes President “Trump has a freakout strategy: He goads the press into wild overreactions that further damage their credibility as self-appointed guardians of democracy and truth.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump ‘Bloodbath’ Hoax Shows Just How Pathetic The Media Has Become

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

VIDEOS: ‘The Great Setup’ Parts 1 & 2 with Dr. David Martin

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Each detail he mentions in the timeline, this site remembers well.

This is recommended by Conservative Tree House.

The Great Setup With Dr. David Martin Full Part 1

Part 2.

ABOUT DR. DAVID MARTIN

Dr. David Martin is the founder and owner of the company M-CAM International which has provided research and corporate advisory services to over 160 countries and he has personally served as an advisor to the World Bank and many governments. Dr Martin first came to the attention of the world when he featured in the August 2020 documentary by Mikki Willis called Planandemic Indoctornation.

EDITORS NOTE: This Vlad Tepes Blog column with videos posted by Eeyore is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

What Business Do Christians Have Being Journalists?

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Collin Hansen, a Christian journalist, once wrote that “there’s significant overlap between” journalism and Christianity, because both “teach by distilling complicated concepts about how the world works. Both herald news, good and bad.” But he added that one “might not know about the overlap between these callings because journalists and preachers generally don’t like each other.”

Of course, it’s no wonder why. Journalists aren’t famous for their good, trustworthy reputations. Rather, they’re more commonly infamous for their willingness to lie and twist the narrative to accommodate their biases. We scan headlines and notice that left- and right-wing outlets may cover the same news yet tell completely different stories. How do we know who and what to trust?

More importantly, what business does a Christian have in a field notorious for misconduct?

Growing up, I didn’t pay much attention to politics. Partly because I lacked an interest in it, and partly because I saw how it stirred up immense controversy. I didn’t see the point of engaging in what seemed like a constant societal migraine. But here I am, a Christian reporter with my gaze particularly fixed on the political arena. So, what changed? It’s simple.

I used to tell people, “The only political opinions I have are what’s addressed in the Bible.” And while it’s largely still the case, there’s a much different meaning behind that statement now. Back then, if I said that, I was primarily referring to matters of abortion, gender, and marriage — areas I firmly believe Scripture makes abundantly clear. But what changed between then and now is that I see more clearly how the Bible touches on far more than those three significant areas. Indeed, the more I study Scripture (and observe the political landscape), the more I see just how much the Bible applies to nearly everything.

It was during my internship at Family Research Council, shortly after attending Bible college, when this became blatant. Evidently, there are a vast number of political topics to consider when claiming the Bible “nearly” applies to “everything.” But I’ve had the privilege of writing for The Washington Stand about immigration, debanking, socialism, abortion, economics, LGBT activism, education, social media, mental health, and more, and for every single topic, a biblical worldview has applied. Moreover, in each topic, a Christian voice was not only relevant, but needed.

God is not just “some” truth you can choose to adopt in personal and isolated areas of convenience. No, He is the ultimate Truth as it pertains to all things, regardless of how we feel. The truth of God is “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). It’s completely detached from the roller coaster of human trends and finite perspectives. As such, Christians have an advantage to journalism secular journalists don’t. Christian journalists know objective truth, and it has set us free (John 8:32). And its Christian journalists who then take God and His word into the messy battleground of secular journalism to serve as salt and light to a world in desperate need of it. And really, all Christians who engage in politics are called to do this, too.

I had a conversation with a friend the other day about how hopeless it can feel standing for biblical truth in the public square when it seems to have no impact. And yet, for this very reason, I don’t find it coincidental Galatians 6:9 frequently comes to mind, which says, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” And really, this is what Christian journalists are called to take on.

I believe it’s a strong and reasonable temptation to give up when swimming against the current — particularly in an ocean as restless as politics. But what I believe Galatians 6:9 is meant to remind us of is that we don’t give up because, while we may not always be able to see how our efforts make a difference, we serve a God who said, “Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear” (Isaiah 65:24). And Jesus said in John 5:17, “My Father is always working, and so am I.”

Feeling like God isn’t working is no reason to give up. Instead, we never have reason to give up because we trust, in His sovereignty, He is working.

2 Corinthians 4:4 says that “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” But don’t you see? Journalism is such a wonderful opportunity for Christians to put the light of the gospel back into the public square. We will be criticized and rejected for it, but we will also be glorifying God.

Hansen articulated it well when he shared why Christian journalism matters:

“Journalists that would serve the church will fulfill a catechetical calling. We are teachers who help other Christians understand a world created by God but corrupted by sin. Our investigative work reflects the biblical reality that we live in … [a] time when our ‘adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour’ (1 Peter 5:8). We expose the sin that imperils believers so that they might be prepared to defend themselves in the power of the Holy Spirit.

“Yet, we also live in … [a] time when the Father is working in glorious ways to spread the saving knowledge of His Son, Jesus Christ. This is good news, and journalists have been called to tell it. With a little help from preachers, we just might be able to encourage the church with a new, more edifying approach to media.”

As corrupt and abused as it may be, I don’t believe the realm of media, reporting, and journalism is worth abandoning. Like everything in this fallen world, its frustrating nature is not one we should shy away from. Rather, it should be a wake-up call to what Christians are meant to do in the first place. That is, to proclaim the truth.

Earlier, I said I am a Christian reporter with my gaze fixed on politics. And while that is true as it pertains to what I write about, behind it all is a gaze fixed on Christ. And so, as a Christian journalist, I shall repeat the words of Psalm 146:2, in that “I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

4 Biblical Ways to ‘Counter the Deception’ Rampant in Modern Media

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“Even the AP is acknowledging that there is deception” in modern media, said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, host of “Washington Watch,” on Wednesday. Perkins referenced an Associated Press headline published on January 31, which read, “Grave peril of digital conspiracy theories: ‘What happens when no one believes anything anymore?’” That’s “a very profound question,” said Perkins, but he added that the AP failed to “get to the real problem and the source or the solution.”

The nearly 3,000-word article “focused on bloggers and others using the internet” to spread or adopt conspiracy theories, said Perkins. With a predictable skew toward right-fringe conspiracy theories, the article featured everything from QAnon and 2020 election claims, to government complicity in the Maui wildfires and the Sandy Hook school shooting.

On one hand, technology is a tool that cuts both ways, Perkins acknowledged. “Today’s technology … has benefits such as allowing you to watch or listen to ‘Washington Watch’ on a device you carry in your pocket. It also allows the false prophets to amplify their message with what today we might call conspiracy theories or fake news,” he said. David Closson, director of FRC’s Center for Biblical Worldview concurred. “Someone can fire something off on social media and it can make it around the world … before there’s even a chance to do a fact check.”

On the other hand, “the legacy media is a part of this problem,” Perkins argued. “The reason [people are] susceptible” to conspiracy theories is “because [the legacy media] were the first ones that rejected truth and therefore set the stage for these conspiracy theories to prosper.” As the media becomes less trustworthy, they are shocked to find a corresponding decrease in people trusting the media.

“The media and journalists of all stripes really have had such a casual relationship with the truth,” agreed Closson, “or worse, … even suppressed legitimate news.” On some networks like CNN, he said he can’t even trust “the premise of some of their arguments when [in] the previous segment, you know, they’re using preferred pronouns.” At The New York Times, staffers complained internally that an article on detransitioners created “a hostile work environment for the queer people who work here.” Readers will surely recall their own encounters with mainstream media outlets choosing narrative over news.

People eschewing the legacy media for alternate sources of information represents an existential crisis to those outlets, and they have responded accordingly. Last month, a Washington Post analyst known for favoring false narratives over true ones concluded that ordinary Americans shouldn’t do their own research. Ironically, the study he relied upon actually demonstrated that the cottage industry of fact-checking has become so subjective that fact-checkers agree on what is disinformation less than half the time.

The AP article, which extended a multi-part series on the rising threat of conspiracy theories, noted with alarm that the increase in conspiracy theories corresponds to a decrease in authority, institutions, and the mainstream media. “And even when they fail to convince people,” they wrote, “the conspiracy theories embraced by these groups contribute to mounting distrust of authorities and democratic institutions, causing people to reject reliable sources of information while encouraging division and suspicion.”

“When you have a breakdown in authority … especially in media, … you sow the seeds on fertile ground for these conspiracy theories to thrive,” Closson warned. He pointed to a 2023 Gallup poll which, for 11 out of 16 public institutions they asked about, found “the lowest level of confidence that [the public has] had in 40 years.”

“We live in a time when people simply don’t trust institutions,” said Closson. “Nor should they, given where we are,” Perkins argued. “When you have people denying the revealed truth that is so fundamental — male and female, the institution of marriage … these people are not worthy to be trusted or followed.”

Closson pointed out that conspiracy theories and misinformation have been around for a long time, “really since the beginning of time,” beginning with the serpent in the garden. “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” the serpent said to Eve (Genesis 3:1). There, the serpent challenged the truth of God’s Word, “sowing doubt, sowing confusion,” said Closson, and Adam and Eve swallowed the lie. “Ever since then, we’ve lived in some sort of a post-truth world.”

However, Closson added, conspiracy theories seem to be gaining more traction now because of America’s culture-wide rejection of truth. “Even in our churches, we’re not immune from these things,” he lamented. He cited research FRC commissioned in 2023 that found “48% of regular church goers say that they don’t believe in absolute moral truth, … a basic tenet of a biblical worldview.”

“Deception comes when we depart from truth,” Perkins responded. He cited Paul’s warning to the Thessalonians about the age of lawlessness, which would bring “all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:9-12). “We should take that as an indication that these latter days are going to be filled with deception,” said Perkins.

Perkins and Closson identified four ways that Christians should respond to the epidemic of deception poisoning America’s media, public discourse, and even the church. In a refreshing contrast to America’s prevailing buffet of lies, they served up courses of hearty, wholesome truth — all of which were grounded in God’s infallible Word.

1. Don’t Be Led Astray

The Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24-25) opened with Jesus’s disciples asking him to teach them about “the sign of your coming and of the end of the age” (Matthew 24:3). Jesus answered, “See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray” (Matthew 24:4-5). Paul, having learned from Jesus, later issued similar instructions to the Thessalonians, “Let no one deceive you in any way” (2 Thessalonians 2:3). In other words, the latter times would feature many anti-Christ deceivers peddling counterfeit gospels, and Jesus wanted his followers to be on their guard.

These instructions from our Lord were the “first words out of his mouth,” Perkins noted, after quoting the passage. “You see, Jesus warns his followers to be on guard against deception and those who will peddle deception. … So, repeatedly he says, ‘Don’t be deceived.’”

Jesus had already warned his followers against deception. “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves,” said Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:15). Closson quoted these words and added that Jesus gave “a litmus test” by which to recognize false teachers: “You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16). He endorsed applying this litmus test to “the people reporting the news. Let’s recognize them by their fruit.”

In a culture of confusion and lies, Christian, don’t be led astray by false teachers.

2. Don’t Be Alarmed

Jesus proceeded to instruct his disciples, “See that you are not alarmed” (Matthew 24:6). Jesus foretold wars, calamities, persecutions — intense trials that could throw Christians off-balance. Nevertheless, Jesus instructed his followers that these things must happen, preparing them beforehand to remember that God is sovereign over all things.

Paul repeated this instruction, too. “Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come” (2 Thessalonians 2:1-2).

“We should not be surprised,” said Perkins, who quoted from Matthew 24. “Jesus warned us over and over … that this was going to occur.”

3. Return to the Truth

Christians must also “go back to the truth,” as an antidote to the epidemic of deception, said Closson. “We need to stand on God’s word …, which is our ultimate source of truth” (see John 17:17). “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

“We should put our confidence in that which does not change,” Perkins agreed. He added, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever [Hebrews 13:8]. The Word of God does not change.” Jesus also said this on the Mount of Olives, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

Perkins applied this truth to the moments in which we’re tempted to believe a lie, especially one that questions God’s Word (“Did God really say?”). Our response, he said, should be, “‘Well, wait a minute. Let me check. Let me go back to the source.’ … You go back to the source. That’s how you counter the deception.”

Perkins argued that American Christians should use their access to the source of truth to counter the deception of the evil one in the public square. “We have the ability, here in the United States, to use the freedoms that we still have to advocate for others. We have the ability to expose these things that are occurring in the end times that Jesus warned about,” he said. “He said they were coming, I think, to prepare us so that we could stand against the evil.” Invoking Matthew 24:12, “Because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold,” Perkins urged, “We have to act on legitimate information we have, so that we can be the salt and light that allows the gospel to go forth.”

4. Use Discernment

Countering error with truth is not always simple, which is “why we need discernment,” said Closson, “today more than we have ever needed it.” When Jesus first sent his disciples out into the world, he told them to “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16), he quoted. Additionally, Jesus quoted the greatest commandment in the law, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).

Using discernment is easier said than done, but Perkins and Closson discussed several helpful tips for evaluating the news:

A. Pause and Pray

“The first step that I would take when I see something on the social media or the news, is just take a pause,” said Closson. “There’s the impulse that we like to know everything at once. In a social media age, we’re used to getting our news instantaneously. And so I think we need to slow down. We need to pray.”

“You don’t have to be the first one to pass [a news article] on,” Perkins concurred. Because here’s what happens when you do that. Most of these [conspiracy theories] are exposed within time. If you’re associated with that, you lose credibility among your friends.”

So, counseled Perkins, “Resist this temptation to forward it on or to post it or embrace it. … Pray over it. Just have discernment.”

B. Read Critically

Second, “Don’t believe anything you see just because you see it in print,” said Closson. Perkins put the same concept in different words, “Be careful what you read online. Be careful about just forwarding something on” without considering first if it’s true.

As part of this step, Christians should compare what they read in the news to what the Bible says, Perkins advised.

In the same discourse, Jesus predicted, “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. … Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. … And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray” (Matthew 24:7, 9, 11).

“When you hear those things happening,” we know that “the Scripture says, ‘Yeah, those things are going to happen,’” said Perkins. “So, we can say, ‘Well, all right, this lines up with what Jesus said was going to be happening. Let’s go the next step and validate and verify the source.’”

C. Corroborate Information

“It’s always good to corroborate. If you see something on social media, don’t just assume it’s true,” Closson said. “Don’t forward the email to a friend. Don’t forward the post, but corroborate it. Go to some valid news organizations.”

Closson recommended Family Research Council’s own news organization, The Washington Stand, noting that it has “a whole team of reporters” dedicated to “coming at [the news] from a biblical worldview.” This means that they are “trying to connect it to Scripture, trying to connect it to facts, objective truth, things that are reportable, things that can be verified.”

Perkins suggested a “rule of thumb” that “anything you see that is detached from a specific, reliable news or organizational site like The Washington Stand, … don’t trust it if it’s not connected to a site that it can be verified.”

One way to find reliable news is to “get as close to the source as you can,” said Perkins. “That’s why we bring you the actual news makers. We go right to the source. We’re not, you know, reporting on what someone else said.” That’s one reason why social media is an unreliable place to peruse the news; it’s far removed from the source.

D. Be Honest

Everyone is liable to make mistakes. This is even easier in a rapidly changing news environment, where first reports often turn out to be wrong, misleading, or at least lacking critical information. The question is, how do we respond when we make mistakes?

Perkins exhorted “Washington Watch” listeners to be honest. “I do my very best to make sure that everything we say here is validated and it’s true,” he said. “And, if we do get something wrong, I’m going to take ownership of that, and I’m going to correct it when we find out.”

“So,” Closson summarized, “prayer, discernment, corroborating objectivity — all of these things, I think, ought to mark a Christian as they take in, read, understand, and share the news.” Christians should speak the truth in love, which means we should not be led astray or alarmed, but stand firm on the Word of God, the only infallible source of truth. To accurately handle the Word of truth amid a culture of deception, Christians must navigate with all discernment, never losing sight of him who is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Only 3.4% of Journalists Are Republican: Study

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A survey has found that only 3.4% of American journalists identify as Republican, compared to 36.4% who identify as Democrat and 51.7% as Independent. The survey also indicated a steep decline in the number of Republican journalists over the last several decades, which has coincided with record high levels of Americans saying they do not trust the media.

The Syracuse University study was first conducted in 1971 and was repeated roughly every 10 years thereafter. The first survey found that 25.7% of journalists said they were Republican. In 1982, the number plunged to 18.8%, and in 1992 it further fell to 16.4%. In 2002, the number of Republican journalists increased slightly to 18%. But by 2013, the number nosedived to 7.1%, and even this low number was cut in half by 2022 at 3.4%.

Notably, the massive decline in journalists who identify as Republican has occurred even while the number of Americans who say they are Republican has remained relatively consistent. From 2004 until now, Gallup has found that roughly 30% of Americans consider themselves Republican, with roughly the same number identifying as Democrats and around 40% saying they are Independent.

The marked decline in Republican journalists comes as a record number of Americans say they don’t trust the media. Last October, Gallup found that a record high 39% of Americans say they have no trust in the media. A few months prior, a Rasmussen Reports poll found that 58% of voters think that “bias in the news media is getting worse,” with only 13% saying the issue is “getting better.” The poll also found a stark difference between the views of Republicans and Democrats, with 68% of GOP voters saying that bias is worsening, while only 42% of Democrats saying the same.

The American public’s trust of the media has in fact reached such a low level that at least half say that national news organizations are intentionally attempting to mislead, according to a Gallup/Knight Foundation poll released last February.

“I think it’s difficult to say that most people in the media are intentionally trying to deceive, but it’s understandable why people feel that way,” Jared Bridges, editor-in-chief of The Washington Stand, told TWS. “I’m sure there are outliers who are trying to deceive. But I think that the worldview that most journalists are steeped in sets them up to begin on faulty foundations.”

Meanwhile, the personal political leanings of staff at some media outlets that have historically been conservative appear to be affecting their content. In October, it was reported that between 2015 and 2022, nine staff members at Christianity Today made 73 political donations that all went to Democrats. Commentators have observed that CT, which was founded by Billy Graham in 1956, has been moving in a leftward direction for a number of years. “The fact that modern CT staff have financially supported pro-abortion, pro-sexual perversion candidates does not surprise me at all,” Tom Ascol, who serves as president of Founders Ministries, told The Daily Wire. “The magazine long ago lost its biblical moorings and has been under the influence of progressives and leftists for years. It’s tragic. And it’s a reminder to evangelicals that institutions that faithful Christians build are always in danger of drifting left.”

As for the obvious lopsided Democratic affiliations of journalists in the mainstream media, Bridges contended that the imbalance is bound to have far-reaching ramifications for public trust and even-handedness in reporting.

“So you have thousands of reporters working in a journalistic house built upon sand that shifts with whichever cultural wind is blowing the strongest,” he emphasized. “A lack of Republican (and presumably conservative) journalists certainly plays a part in an atmosphere of distrust, and when you have an institution that has no room for an alternate worldview, it’s a recipe for one-sided bias.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

You Can’t Have Your Theocracy and Eat It Too

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“Ah, thank God for Salon, the voice of reason,” said no one ever, and former “senior White House correspondent for Playboy” Brian Karem’s latest article there is demonstrative of why.

In a piece published Thursday and subtly, tastefully entitled “MAGA and Christian nationalism: Bigger threat to America than Hamas could ever be,” Karem argues that so-called Christian nationalists (by which his fustian smear piece makes clear he means any devout Christian elected to public office) pose a greater threat to the U.S. than Islamist terrorists like Hamas — you remember them, the little ragtag band who attacked Israel last month and slaughtered over 1,400 Israelis in a single day and have been torturing hostages every day since. No, Hamas is nothing more than a Middle Eastern bogeyman, Karem would have you believe. The real threat to the American way of life is that devious religion founded on the principle of self-sacrificial love: Christianity.

In an interesting rhetorical choice, Karem chooses to begin his argument by noting that “the FBI issued a warning that the chance of staged terrorist attacks in the United States has grown since the war began in Gaza.” He further mocks Fox News’s White House correspondent Peter Doocy for asking national security officials if they’ve considered the possibility of a terrorist entering the U.S. via the nation’s wide-open southern border. “Obviously they have,” write Karem, “or the FBI wouldn’t have issued the warning.”

For a few paragraphs, Karem does some adroit fund-the-war-in-Ukraine cheerleading, somehow manages to praise Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for betraying his voter base and shipping American tax dollars overseas, and speculate whether or not Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) or Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) are “fans” of Russian president Vladimir Putin — all of this amidst a smattering of pop culture references of which I’m sure Karem is proud, and equally sure he shouldn’t be.

Then he reaches the crux of his argument: “While the world burns, Johnson and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party … seem determined to convert the U.S. into a theocracy run by people who will thump you with the Bible, but haven’t read much of it.” This coming from the former White House correspondent for Playboy.

“Lord, how they love to preach fire and brimstone. But the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes? Forget it,” Karem opines. “Not a chance. They’ve embraced only the Old Testament angry God and the apocalyptic parts of Revelation brought on by ergot poisoning.” Most devout Christians are no doubt familiar with this age-old approach: the admitted non-believer who doesn’t read his Bible cherry-picks a handful of Scripture passages that, taken out of context, he thinks prove his point, and proceeds to berate the Christian for failing to live up to his arbitrary standard of Christianity based on an English translation of an out-of-context Bible verse, or two, if he’s feeling particularly cocky.

Karem would do well to remember that the Beatitudes include “Blessed are the pure in heart” (Matthew 5:8) and “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you for my sake” (Matthew 5:11), which is exactly what the leftist-dominated media, including Salon, has been doing to Mike Johnson, ridiculing him for his Christian faith, his fidelity to his wife, and even his adoption of an African-American teenager.

In classic anti-Christian form, Karem disregards roughly 2,000 years’ worth of theological scholarship, debate, and clarification to roughly cite a Bible verse and implicitly declare himself a knowledgeable arbiter of all things Christian. He claims that Johnson and his MAGA ilk “want no separation of church and state. They want an isolationist country surrounded by walls and dedicated to the proposition that the First Amendment guarantees them the right to worship any way they want — while forcing the rest of us to worship the way they choose.” He adds that “modern Republicans seem hellbent on returning to the Middle Ages, driven there by the first Christian nationalist House speaker.”

Of course, Christians do support the First Amendment. It’s the legal mechanism that protects our right to worship the Triune God and to live so we that might be more and more like Him, in the hopes of one day being united wholly with Him in Heaven. While Karem rightly notes that the U.S. Constitution forbids “respecting an establishment of religion,” he wrongly interprets this to mean a “separation of church and state.”

The leftist’s or progressive’s notion of the constitutional amendment guaranteeing freedom of religion seems to demand that lawmakers leave their religious beliefs — which, for the devoutly religious, are the very core of their being and the moral fabric upon which they base their every decision — at the door of the statehouse or capitol building. At no point anywhere in the U.S. Constitution is this explicated or even implied. If it were, a substantial sum of religious Americans of all creeds would be barred from public service, leaving the running of the nation to those with, essentially, no beliefs beyond the merely material world.

As the great author C.S. Lewis elegantly elucidated in his book “The Abolition of Man,” those who do not profess some kind of eternal or religious belief essentially have no beliefs, and therefore have no basis for forming value judgments. It is the eternal, the immutable which is the standard against which all things are measured, which serves as the source of value itself. Without such a belief, there can be no deciding this policy or that is “good” for the nation or “bad” for the country because there is no basis for declaring anything “good” or “bad.” Lewis, of course, explains the concept far more authoritatively and far more intelligently than I, and as I’m sure there would be some copyright issue with quoting the entirety of his book here, I strongly recommend you read (or re-read) it.

Back to Karem’s postulation that Christian nationalism is a bigger threat to America than Islamist terrorists. Citing Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a rabid abortion advocate whom Karem classifies as “a constitutional scholar,” the Salon columnist quips, “The framers taught us that the biggest threat to religious freedom comes from theocrats who try to establish their own sect over everyone else.” Karem adds, “None of that matters to the Republicans. They revel in their own chicanery. They despise free thought and independence…” Nevermind that the vast majority of censorship efforts come from the Left, never mind that the preponderance of America’s founders were Bible-believing Christians, nevermind that “free thought and independence” in America were pioneered by those who put their faith in Someone other than the president or their local congressmen, nevermind that God Himself is the source (and, indeed, summit) of freedom and independence.

If Christian conservatives seem “hellbent on returning to the Middle Ages,” then Karem (and many a leftist like him) is “hellbent” on proliferating a self-defeating argument. Anti-Christian leftists deride “theocracy,” while simultaneously insisting that Christians aren’t being properly Christian. Leftists jettison the bulk of the Christian moral code and stick to the platitude “Be nice to people,” which Christ notably never uttered. Leftists fear a Christian “theocracy,” but also try to tell Christians we’re doing theocracy wrong. Which one is it, Mr. Karem? Is Christianity a violent, threatening, oppressive religion that cannot be tolerated openly in the public square? Or is it a peaceful belief proclaiming niceness and tolerance to all men? It can’t be both.

And let the record reflect that at no point does Karem address how Christian nationalists might launch an attack on America that slaughters over 1,400 in a single day, nor which book of the Bible condones taking and torturing hostages, nor indeed where in Scripture Christ promised his disciples any number of virgin-afterlife-brides in exchange for suicide bombings. At the end of the day, Hamas and other Islamist terrorist organizations pose an infinitely greater threat to America than devout Christians striving for the good of the nation.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Israel Screens Raw, Unseen Hamas Footage for Reporters to Understand ‘What We’re Fighting For’

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You didn’t have to be in the roomful of international journalists to understand the sheer horror of what they saw. For all of the grisly, stomach-turning images posted online, nothing compared to the 43 minutes of torture screened for reporters on an Israeli military base Monday. Afterward, many, including Breitbart’s Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollack, could only lean against a wall and weep. Replaying the victims’ terrified screams in his mind, he writes, “There is no moment of redemption in the footage. We do not see the end, when the good guys arrive and save the victims.” The only comfort, Pollack admits, “is the knowledge that the footage, at least, was retrieved from the terrorists after they were killed or captured.”

Like so many Israelis, government official Eylon Levy is appalled his country has to prove that terrorists brutalized innocent Jews when the evidence lies in morgues across the country. “I can’t believe we as a country are having to do this,” he shook his head, “… [but] we are witnessing a Holocaust denial-like phenomenon evolving in real time as people are casting doubt on the magnitude of the atrocities that Hamas committed against our people and, in fact, recorded in order to glorify that violence.”

With just pen and paper, dozens of journalists sat frozen through the raw and agonizing scenes from October 7 — videos Levy called “gruesome and as yet unseen.” Pollack was ready to quit 17 minutes in. “Make it stop,” he heard a reporter whisper, as others openly cried. In one of the most heart-wrenching moments, a boy whose father was just butchered by Hamas sobs, “Why am I alive?” — a haunting echo Pollack couldn’t shake.

In stunned silence, reporters filed out of the room to retrieve their laptops, phones, and other electronic devices they weren’t allowed to bring in. Pollack kept replaying the moment two sons became fatherless in front of their very eyes, one wailing, “Daddy, Daddy.” The killings were savage enough to make one journalist heave. It was, as The Atlantic’s Graeme Wood wrote, “pure, predatory sadism … an eagerness to kill nearly matched by eagerness to disfigure the bodies of the victims.”

Incredibly, Pollack pointed out, what these reporters witnessed is “just a small part of what the IDF still possesses.” And while Major General Mickey Edelstein admitted the government has evidence of brutal rape, “we cannot share it,” he told them somberly.

Still, the question that lingered in everyone’s minds was Defense Forces Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari’s: “Why does a person take a GoPro [to such an attack]?” he asked the press later. “Because he’s proud of what he does.”

As difficult as the decision was to play the footage for reporters, Hagari believes it was important, because “we want to understand, ourselves, what we are fighting for.” It is their duty, he said, to build a “collective memory,” so that when Israel is challenged, it can point back to these atrocities.

Already, the global pressure is on to back off the ground invasion that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been preparing. “Israel’s the only country that has a stopwatch on it when it needs to defend itself,” CBN News’s Chris Mitchell warned from the ground.

But, as Chuck Holton reported from Israel on Friday’s “Washington Watch,” the fighting “really has not stopped in the last two weeks.” “It’s not like they just attacked on October 7th and then nothing’s happened since then. The Hamas terrorists and Hezbollah terrorists have been attacking Israel nonstop every day since then.”

While so many international outlets are focused on the Palestinian casualties, Holton explained that the Israel’s enemies are actively shelling innocent people. “There was just a massive rocket attack in Ashdod and Ashkelon out on the coast — and that’s quite a ways from Gaza. So they are still firing rockets and they’re firing them out of civilian areas.”

In talking to IDF soldiers, Holton says that every one of them agrees that there is only one option at this point, “and that is to go in and to absolutely demolish and dismantle the entire organization of Hamas.” Of course, Hamas “is working very hard to hide behind the civilian populace, to weaponize the civilians against Israel and the West, and to weaponize whatever aid comes in there so that they can continue to fight.”

As to whether the ground campaign is imminent, “that is one of the most closely guarded secrets,” the freelance correspondent told guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice. “But I’ll just say this. This is going to be a massive, absolutely massive, combined arms operation on the scale of the Shock and Awe campaign into Iraq in 2003. We’re talking about up to a half a million troops that will likely be engaged in combat before too long — and this is not planned over a course of years or even months. This is going from a standing start just two weeks ago. The logistics alone behind this kind of an operation are absolutely mind-boggling.”

As to why more boots aren’t already on the ground in Gaza, Holton explained, “You’re talking about having to coordinate all the moving parts of aviation and armor and artillery and infantry and signal and intelligence — and figure out what targets to hit and figure out who’s supposed to hit them and figure out how they’re not going to shoot each other in the process. This is an absolutely unbelievable undertaking that they’re about to do. And they realize that the more time they spend preparing, the less time they’ll have to spend fighting.”

In the meantime, fears of an even bigger conflict are spreading with the news that China is sending six warships to the Middle East. In the U.S., Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is prepping the troops for possible deployment. “What we’re seeing is a prospect of a significant escalation of attacks on our troops and our people throughout the region. We’re going to do what’s necessary to make sure that our troops are in that position and they were protected and that we have the ability to respond,” he said over the weekend, adding, “We won’t hesitate to take the appropriate action.”

“If any group or any country is looking to widen this conflict and take advantage of this very unfortunate situation that we see. Our advice is don’t,” Austin warned. “We maintain the right to defend ourselves…” If that happens, Secretary of Antony Blinken echoed, “we’re ready for it.”

For now, Israelis struggle to cope — not just with the nightmare of such enormous loss, but with the world’s perception that they are somehow to blame. “I can tell you that we are already used to it, unfortunately,” Idan Rakovsky said regretfully. Still, “seeing the coverage outside of Israel is very, very hard,” he admitted.

Maybe what Pollack and others saw will help change minds. But even if it doesn’t, “At the end of the day, we know it’s a war between the light and the darkness,” the former IDF soldier insisted. “And we know that life will prevail — even though people might say differently.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Perkins, Leaders Call Believers to Pray and Stand for Israel ‘Until We See Victory’

RELATED VIDEO: The full Shin Bet interrogation of Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel on October 7th.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

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Michigan State Police Discovered Widespread 2020 Voter Fraud & Turned Over Evidence to FBI—Who Apparently Did Nothing

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Last evening a gentleman informed me that he believes the claims of 2020 Election Fraud were preposterous and “made-up.” Merely a conspiracy theory and Trump being a “poor sport” in losing. After two and a half years of diligent, very slow but steady and emotionally painstaking work proving otherwise, there are still those who choose to live in their self-made “comfortably numb” bubble. I think their predecessors on the Titanic were similar as they were told to leave their staterooms, prepare to board life boats and evacuate the ship. Dressed in high fashion expensive clothing, and growling at the inconvenience these similarly “comfortably numb” remained in their self-made bubbles of opinion even as they were escorted onto the main deck and saw the iceberg mountain the ship had struck which led to the giant ship already tilting downward having taken on mammoth amounts of water. They were far more interested in what would be on the breakfast menu then the reality before them.

Evidence be damned…similar to the “I’m content in my comfortable world of Marxist philosophy and/or sufficient money capable of snuffing out noise and distractions not to my taste” predecessors, the self-absorbed non critical thinkers of today just cannot be bothered examining evidence, their minds are already set or dulled or both! Furthermore their life-styles have not been terribly altered…yet! With less funds and positions of comfort a large number of the younger generation who have been indoctrinated via the school and college systems are, likewise, simply not able to critically think their way through the mounting evidence of planned deterioration our country is experiencing.

A preponderant number of elected officials in public office and candidates seeking such positions have conveniently loss what our founders established and demonstrated in their own lives – Service above Self. It is no longer relevant to place God and Country above or before self when seeking or holding public office. Self-made agendas leading to higher positions is the game. Defending the principles and foundational beliefs of our exceptional nation are no longer proper; or worse, they are racist or some other derogatory term. America may not die from bullets or bombs but be destroyed from within by those who have chosen to alter and abolish our country to serve their own means, their own agendas, their own pride and prejudice. America may very likely survive from patriots, even a remnant, who in their heart believe and are willing to stand, be counted, terribly abused and slandered defending the principles and foundational beliefs of our exceptional nation. Members of the Michigan State Police are such an example.

After two and a half years of diligent, very slow and emotionally painstaking work, there are remnant patriots across our Land still fighting the good fight. Fighting to prove the 2020 Election (2022 Election as well) was a diabolical deception, corrupted financially and otherwise, fraud, even a conspiracy to destroy the basic gift our founders presented to us if we would only hold on to it; the gift of free and unencumbered elections. Look at the link below to see still more evidence presented by the Michigan State Police, and purportedly covered-up by the FBI. For those comfortably numb in their bubble simply move on nothing to see, nothing to learn. But if you consider yourself a remnant patriot like our brothers and sisters in the colonies of 1775, hunker down and continue to fight for the life of this country.

Michigan State Police Discover Widespread 2020 Voter Fraud and Turn Over Evidence to FBI – Who Apparently Did Nothing

 | Sundance

Stunning discovery being shared by Gateway Pundit about a network of massive ballot fraud and voter registration fraud in Michigan as a result of a city clerk notifying local police.  The investigation uncovered a multi-state voter registration operation and the details within the state police report are quite remarkable.

(Gateway Pundit) […] On October 8, 2020. only one month before the 2020 general election, Muskegon, MI City Clerk Ann Meisch noticed a black female (whose name was redacted from the police report), dropping off between 8,000-10,000 completed voter registration applications at the city clerk’s office.

The Muskegon Police Department was contacted and asked to investigate. On 10/21/20 First Lieutenant Mike Anderson was contacted by Tom Fabus, Chief of Investigations for Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s Office. According to the MI State Police report, Mr. Fabus asked for Michigan State Police assistance with a joint investigation of alleged voter fraud being conducted by the Muskegon Police Department and the AG.   An investigative task force was formed, and an investigation was initiated. (read more)

Read more.

©2023. Lyle J. Rapacki. Ph.D. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel Confirms 10K Voter Registrations Delivered to Muskegon Clerk in October 2020 Were FRAUDULENT