Here’s the problem for the “misinformation” reporters: Are they willing to acknowledge that the Democrats are guilty of it? Are they willing to admit that the media elites can get the facts wrong? (Photo: Marat Musabirov/Getty Images)
The year has hardly begun, and the pro-Biden media are already in a full-blown panic. They’re upset many polls show Donald Trump ahead of President Joe Biden. When Democrats are losing, they warn that democracy is dying, and disinformation is thriving.
In this spirit of dread, NBCNews.com posted a story with the headline “Disinformation poses an unprecedented threat in 2024—and the U.S. is less ready than ever.”
The reporter is Brandy Zadrozny, whose specialty is “misinformation, extremism and the internet.” Reader beware, since every reporter who professes to expose “misinformation” and “extremism” is a dedicated warrior against those “far-right” Republicans.
Here’s the problem for the “misinformation” reporters: Are they willing to acknowledge that the Democrats are guilty of it? Are they willing to admit that the media elites can get the facts wrong? Or is there an automatic assumption that every argument Trump and his “MAGA media” forward against the Democrats has to be false?
At the base of leftist panic over “misinformation” is a long-simmering anger that partisan Democratic journalists are not trusted by the Republican half of the country. Journalists cannot stand that Trump remains popular despite all their attempts to destroy him as a political figure.
Parker Thayer of the conservative Capital Research Center posted an informative thread on X (formerly Twitter) noting how Zadrozny’s stable of experts turned out to be misinformation deniers whenever the Republicans had a factual point to press. He started with Claire Wardle, founder of First Draft News and researcher at Brown University. She lamented that after a pandemic, an “insurrection” and congressional investigations into leftists working to censor conservative speech, 2024 is worse than 2020. Thayer pointed out Wardle’s First Draft News disparaged both the Hunter Biden laptop (Russian disinformation) and the COVID-19 lab leak theory (racist). Arguments that turned out to be real didn’t cause any media introspection.
Zadrozny also turned to A.J. Bauer, assistant journalism professor at the University of Alabama, who studies conservative media. “Right-wing media see a demand for content that is pro-Trump and leaning into conspiracy theories,” he pronounced. Bauer dismissed the Hunter laptop as irrelevant after it was verified by pro-Biden media outlets. He also shared the fake story of Israel bombing al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. Doesn’t this shake his credibility as an “expert?” Not at NBC News.
Naturally, the list also included Joan Donovan, a “misinformation” scholar at Boston University honored in all the leftist outlets. Thayer noted Donovan called Hunter’s laptop one of Steve Bannon’s “three biggest disinfo campaigns of 2020.” After the liberal papers acknowledged the laptop was real, Donovan still tweeted the laptop was “the most popular straw man question at #Disinfo2022,” a conference hosted by The Atlantic magazine, which has endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton and Biden for president.
Thayer closed by noting Zadrozny herself wrote a “gem of an article claiming that Boston Children’s Hospital doesn’t perform ‘gender-affirming’ surgeries on minors. (BCH openly admitted they do.)”
Other experts in the NBC story were presented as nonideological. Christina Baal-Owens works for the “nonpartisan voting rights organization” Public Wise, but her LinkedIn page is titled “Social Justice Warrior” and lists her time in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Until recently, Laura Edelson was the “chief technologist” for Biden’s Justice Department.
So, what we’ve learned from NBC is that it assembled a unanimous cast of Democrats who share the opinion that Republicans shouldn’t be allowed to use information they identify as highly unfavorable to their hold on power. Looking back at the COVID-19 lab leak or the suppression of the Hunter Biden scandals? NBC calls that an “unprecedented threat.” Apparently, democracy can’t survive these topics.
NBC has come under fire for omitting Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud’s praise of Jesus Christ during a postgame interview.
Following the Texans’ victory over the Cleveland Browns on Saturday, Stroud told NBC’s Kathryn Tappen: “First and foremost, I just want to give all glory to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” before talking about the city of Houston and fans’ support of him.
The version posted by NBC, however, began after the religious remark, chopping the mention of Jesus.
Both versions were posted by MLFootball on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“It seems like being religious and praying to a god is no longer allowed,” MLFootball remarked.
Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., vented his outrage on X, calling the cut “despicable and un-American.”
“Leave it to @NBCNews to edit out C.J. Stroud’s mention of Jesus Christ,” he wrote on X.
“The left’s attack on Christianity & its followers is despicable & un-American. People like @TonyDungy & C.J. are men of profound faith & appreciation of God that should be celebrated, not censored.”
Dungy is a former football player and coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Indianapolis Colts.
“It’s disconcerting to realize NBC is actively censoring a player praising Jesus after a massive win,” the outlet posted. “Would NBC have censored his speech if he praised transgenders or Palestinians?”
Stroud has been open about his faith in the past, Fox Sports has reported.
For example, in November, amid MVP conversations, Stroud turned his attention to God.
“For me, it’s a lot of prayer,” Stroud explained, Fox Sports reported. “A lot of knowing that God wouldn’t put anything on me that I can’t handle. I don’t deserve his grace and his mercy, but he still gives it to me and I love him for that. It’s not about me, it’s about him and his glory. So I think that’s where it comes from. I think God made me like that.”
And in February 2023, he remarked about his faith: “It’s what’s kept me grounded even through my season,” Fox reported at the time. “Football has a lot of ups and downs, it has a lot of twists and turns, but at the end of the day, it’s all about your foundation. And something that’s set my foundation is my faith.”
The third Republican presidential primary debate, hosted by NBC News, witnessed a dramatic viewership decline with just over 6 million viewers tuning in, marking the lowest audience turnout of the current campaign season and a 45% drop in viewers from the first debate. The drop in Wednesday’s debate was blamed on RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, with GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy criticizing her handling of the forums and calling for her to resign.
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“We’ve got [NBC’s] Kristen Welker here,” Ramaswamy said during the debate.
“Do you think the Democrats would actually hire [Fox News host] Greg Gutfeld to host a Democratic debate? They wouldn’t do it.”
McDaniel organized the presidential debates and reportedly offended former President Donald Trump by giving Fox News control over the first two forums. She has awarded the primary debate hosting position for the third and fourth debates to liberal media outlets, including NBC. Ramaswamy made waves challenging McDaniels during the debate.
“For that matter, Ronna, if you want to come on stage tonight, you want to look the GOP voters in the eye and tell them you resign, I will turn over [and] yield my time to you,” he said.
“Think about who’s moderating this debate. This should be Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk. We’d have 10 times the viewership asking questions that GOP primary voters actually care about.”
NBC’s debate attracted 6.8 million viewers on linear television, with 1.3 million falling within the 25-54 age demographic, according to Nielsen Media Research. Wednesday night’s audience figure was lower than the 9 million viewers who tuned in for the second GOP presidential primary debate in September, which was broadcast on Fox Business and Fox News.
The third GOP debate was also significantly lower than the nearly 12.8 million who watched the inaugural debate on Fox News back in August — as that event saw a 50% decline in ratings from the first debate of the 2016 campaign.
With then-candidate Trump attending, the Fox News 2015 prime-time GOP debate drew a record 24 million viewers.
Ramaswamy urged McDaniel to step down during this week’s GOP debate, blaming her for recent party losses.
“Let’s speak the truth,” Ramaswamy said. “Since Ronna McDaniel took over as chairwoman of the RNC in 2017, we have lost in 2018, 2020, 2022, no red wave that never came. We got trounced last night in 2023. And I think that we have to have accountability in our party.”
Ramaswamy’s call for McDaniel’s resignation drew strong grassroots support.
“What, exactly, does Ronna McDaniel do besides lose? The only thing she SHOULD do is RESIGN. Effective immediately,” media contributor Monica Crowley wrote on social media platform X on Tuesday.
“If Matt Gaetz can vacate Kevin McCarthy, I think it’s time for President Trump to vacate Ronna McDaniel,” social media maven Rogan O’Handley wrote on his DC_Draino X account Wednesday. “Only he has the power to do it at this point.”
The fourth GOP primary debate is scheduled for Dec. 6 in Alabama, shifting from mainstream media to liberal cable.
Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.
While American physical education programs demonstrably fail the nation’s K-12 students, Christian homeschoolers have found an alternative that’s proven far more effective. The result is that homeschooling is now a driving force behind one of the fastest-growing sports in America: Ninja Warrior.
Since 2009, NBC has broadcast a U.S. version of the Japanese sports reality show “Sasuke” as “American Ninja Warrior.” The dynamic obstacles require a level of skilled athleticism far beyond the basic programming of K-12 gymnasiums. The courses’ difficulties have made both the triumphs and the wipeouts award-winning television with 22 nominations to boast while inspiring a new generation of competitive athletes. Eighteen-year-old Elijah Browning of Tennessee is among them.
A three-time contestant on NBC’s program who nearly made it to the million-dollar rope climb in round four, Browning has been competing in obstacle courses since he was 10.
“I’d always grown up watching the show ever since I was 5, 6, 7 years old,” Browning said in a sitdown interview with The Federalist before another competition just south of Denver, Colorado. Then, “me and my mom started finding competitions all over the country for the leagues outside of Ninja Warrior.”
Browning started experimenting with ninja games when his grandfather constructed obstacles at a family farm. A builder for more than 40 years, his grandfather reconstructed common hurdles from the show that have become staples in the sport both on and off the airwaves — from the salmon ladder to the cliffhanger.
“Lucky for me,” said Browning with a smile between sips of coffee. “We started at his house because he had already built these like elaborate tree houses for me, so we were like, adding all these obstacles to the tree houses.”
Also lucky for Browning was his mom’s decision to choose homeschooling over public school, which allowed Browning and his 14-year-old brother, Julian, to take the sport seriously. Browning has now trained and competed in 136 ninja gyms across 35 states and three different countries.
“Most of those [contestants] that are really competitive and serious are homeschooled because you have to travel so much to compete,” Browning said. “You have to travel to stay relevant and compete, and you really can’t take a season off.”
The televised program films from March through May. But beyond the show are dozens of other leagues holding competitions throughout the year. Browning maintains a rigorous training schedule of two- to three-hour workouts six days a week. It’s a workout regimen that sets Browning far apart from the less than 1 in 4 U.S. high school students who are physically active for at least 60 minutes on a daily basis. It’s also a grueling regimen that Leila Smith’s two homeschooled Illinois teens are intimately familiar with.
Tyler Smith, 17, has been on the podium for ninja games at least 110 times, and his 14-year-old sister, Sydney, at least 62. To the family’s frustration, however, Tyler has yet to be on the show, and Sydney is still too young. NBC’s eligibility cutoff begins at 15. Sydney, their mother says, has a much better chance by virtue of her sex.
While Tyler has applied for the televised league twice, the reality is that NBC is still producing reality TV. Guests are featured with generous introductions, put together by producers, before they tackle the obstacles in front of millions watching at home. As a white, midwestern male in a male-dominated sport, Tyler has struggled to grab casting producers’ attention despite his record as one of the best teenage athletes in the sport. Ethan Swanson, a nine-time NBC contestant who now coaches other athletes on the outskirts of Chicago, says Tyler is “one of the most acclaimed” teenage ninjas in the country.
Tyler’s tough luck has led the family to prioritize outside leagues over legacy TV. At 17, Tyler was able to buy his first car outright after having made $20,000 from competitions. He bought an Audi A7 entirely with his prize cash. While it might seem like a large sum for a 17-year-old kid, Tyler’s $20,000 winnings reflect a sport that’s still growing. Obstacle course competitions are not yet commercialized with the support of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), so there are no six-figure scholarships to dish out to high-performing high schoolers. Tyler’s financial success, Swanson said, is by far the “high-water mark.” Even then, it’s no full-time salary after graduation.
Ninjas on a Mission
Christian homeschoolers are trailblazing the growth of competitive ninja leagues in the meantime. Browning’s mom, Renee, called the sport’s expansion “exponential.”
“The Christian homeschool community is always looking for outlets for their kids that are unique and uplifting and encouraging, and that is 100 percent what this sport is,” Renee said. “It’s not cutthroat and mean, like it’s all a bunch of incredible families, and I think that’s appealing to the Christian homeschooling world.”
Leila Smith offered a similar assessment about the sport’s popularity among Christian homeschoolers, calling the community “tight-knit” with a camaraderie of “ninja moms.”
“Knowing that there were Christian families kept us in the sport more,” she said.
Christian ninjas have congregated in Colorado Springs for the past two years to participate in “Warriors on a Mission.” The annual conference features a worship service, book signings, and speakers on how faith has guided athletes’ journey through obstacle courses.
The event is put on by Suzanne Himka, a 53-year-old grandmother who herself still trains and competes in obstacle races. Earlier this month, Himka captured the gold medal in the Mammoth Lakes Obstacle Course Racing World Championships in California. In Colorado Springs, she operates a faith-based gym called Lost Island Warrior where she coaches a team of about 50 competitive athletes and another team of exclusively homeschoolers. The annual conference is her way to “spread the gospel through ninja,” she told The Federalist.
“It’s more than ninja, it’s ministry,” Himka said.
Both Tyler Smith and Elijah Browning were speakers at this year’s conference in June. Next year, Himka plans to hold the conference in Anaheim, California, to coincide with the Ultimate Ninja Athlete Association World Championships so more athletes can attend.
“So many want to come out,” she said, but “it is a big cost.” Himka has spent upwards of $10,000 to help families cover flights and accommodations, but “it’s hard because I’m the only one doing it by myself.”
Himka said 50-85 kids have made professions of Christian faith at the camp every year, and she hopes to keep it running on an annual basis. She speaks regularly to her everyday students and those who come to camp about the analogies between the Bible and overcoming the sport’s obstacles.
“There’s so many analogies,” she said. For example, if kids spend their life looking downward and at a screen instead of upward and outward, “then you’re going to miss a lot of stuff.”
Ninja Inc.
Professional ninjas don’t make a living competing, but the proliferation of the sport has still led prior show contestants to open gyms of their own. The physical demands of the obstacle courses require a unique versatility that leads athletes to peak even earlier than in more popular sports, such as baseball and basketball.
Swanson opened his own gym, Big Time Ninja, in a Chicago suburb with Chris DiGangi, a 12-time contestant on NBC. The facility opened in February after the pair had already hit two dozen buzzers between them and have now chosen to coach the next generation of athletes.
Swanson told The Federalist the top athletes in the sport right now are between ages 16 and 22.
“I think that’s going to increase in the next five years,” he added, crediting advanced facilities such as Big Time Ninja “that offer way more to these kids coming up in the sport.” Swanson estimates the peak age range will shift upward to 17-25.
“All these kids that are learning have better coaches,” he said. “When I was training, I didn’t have a coach.”
But now, even the top teen athletes have begun their careers in coaching. Elijah Browning coaches other ninjas at a gym he launched in Tennessee called Overcome The World. He said about half of his students are homeschooled. Tyler Smith also coaches a team in Illinois on Wednesdays. In Colorado, however, the career of one full-time coach serves as inspiration for athletes who might think competing is beyond their reach.
Just east of Boulder, Nate Hansen, a five-time contestant on NBC, began working at “Ninja Nation” two years before his first invitation for the televised obstacle-course competition. Now known as “Gnarly Nate,” Hansen worked his way from birthday party host in 2018 to head coach at the facility today.
In 2020, Hansen smashed the buzzer on his first run through the course, fulfilling a lifelong mission.
“I was like, ‘This could be the peak of my life,’” Hansen recalled. Despite falling on the fourth obstacle the next day, “that season was definitely like one of the peak moments in my life because it was the time that I got to first execute my dream.”
AMERICAN NINJA WARRIOR | National Finals 3 | Episode 1412 | Pictured: Nate HansenIMAGE CREDITELIZABETH MORRIS/NBC
Yet by every measure, biology was stacked against him becoming a professional athlete. Hansen was born with growth hormone deficiency. Also known as dwarfism or pituitary dwarfism, GHD is a rare condition in which affected individuals develop shorter limbs and stature because the body fails to produce enough growth hormones.
“I’m at a severe disadvantage at times being only five-two,” Hansen explained. “I can’t jump as far as, you know, a six-foot-tall athlete.” At the same time, he added, “I honestly appreciate that I weigh less than most athletes.”
The wide variety of obstacles compel athletes to train for an entire range of possibilities on the course and often require just as much climbing as they do reaching. The variation in hurdles means a tall, heavy, athletic body-builder might find it easier to run up the warped wall but more difficult to hurl himself over. An athlete with a lighter stature, on the other hand, probably has an easier time lifting himself through the course.
Yet for all of the disadvantages handed to him by GHD, Hansen defied the odds “by the grace of God” to “show the talent that I’ve been gifted.”
Hansen was among the speakers at this year’s Christian ninja conference in Colorado Springs and credits his faith for carrying him through his athletic career.
“There’s been times where I’m on the Ninja Warrior course that I don’t feel the best or I feel sick, but I just ask that God carry me through and He does,” Hansen said. “Sometimes you fall and there’s lessons to be learned in that too. Sometimes God uses our faults and failures to teach us the most valuable lessons.”
Now Hansen coaches kids on obstacle courses north of Denver, including a handful of homeschoolers. He also has students who similarly struggle with GHD.
“That’s really cool because, you know, I wish I had a role model and a hero with what I had when I was growing up,” Hansen said. “I can kind of motivate and inspire them as young little kids, you know, and say, ‘Hey it’s OK. You’re going to get bullied. You’re going to get pushed down. But you can still do anything.’”
On to the Olympics
Kids who compete in ninja leagues today might even participate in the Olympics.
The 2028 summer games in Los Angeles are on track to feature the first-ever obstacle-course competition in the international series of tournaments.
Terry England, an obstacle-course coach based in New Orleans, told The Federalist the sport will likely be tested in Los Angeles as a replacement for equestrian in the modern pentathlon. The Paris games next summer will be the final year the modern pentathlon will be a five-event sport that includes fencing, swimming, horseback riding, pistol shooting, and running, which were selected to reflect the skills of 19th-century cavalry.
According to NBC, athletes will compete in 10 obstacles up to 100 meters long. Potential hurdles include a rope swing, monkey bars, a rings rig, and a balance beam.
England, which serves on the USA Ninjas Association, is on a committee trying to elevate the sport to Olympic status.
“What does that mean for teen ninjas?” England said. An 8-year-old who has a very good ninja background, he explained, might have a chance to compete on the world stage. “If this 8-year-old can run and swim, then they already have three of the disciplines that are learned to become a pentathlete.”
Exactly why equestrian will be replaced remains unclear, England said. But for ninja, “future Olympics can add events so that there can be longer races, different styles, and team relays in such that would branch out.”
The sport’s addition to the Olympic lineup might also open the door to the league being adopted by American universities. If viewership is good enough, obstacle-course racing may transform from a minor-league hobby with its own television show to a global sport backed by the NCAA. With that would come an even greater flood of interest and money into the sport, including the six-figure scholarships today’s top-tier ninja athletes currently miss out on.
The Olympics may help further popularize Ninja Warrior, but until then, Tyler Smith says he’s ready to compete for “as long as I can.”
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
The leftist “news” media – NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times – continue their conspiracy of silence on blockbuster evidence of President Joe Biden’s corruption, determined to see, hear, and report no evil about the Democratic administration.
An internal FBI document provides convincing evidence that Joe Biden – then the sitting vice president of the United States – along with his son Hunter – extorted $5 million for each of them from an executive of Ukrainian oil company Burisma.
According to terms of the $10 million bribe outlined in the document, the vice president would quash Burisma’s legal problems by threatening to withhold financial aid to Ukraine if they didn’t fire a senior prosecutor looking into their corruption.
Even when the document was released to the public on July 20, Biden’s media minders kept their audiences in the dark. No longer journalists, they’re now mere leftwing storytellers, selectively spreading a message intended to deceive when it suits them, and throwing a blanket over any truthful report when it harms the narrative. Their primary mission isn’t to inform the public or to hold the powerful accountable. It’s to ensure that Joe Biden gets reelected.
A document provides potentially damning evidence against President Biden and his son, Hunter. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
The Burisma scandal follows reports of similar bribery/pay-to-play schemes with Russia, Kazakhstan, Romania and even with America’s arch-enemy China, hiding the money in over 20 LLCs that served no purpose other than to confuse potential investigators.
Between the evening of August 1 and the morning of August 8, ABC, CBS and NBC devoted more than five hours to Donald Trump’s third indictment on morning and evening newscasts as well as their Sunday morning political talk shows, according to an analysis by NewsBusters.
In contrast, the same programs spent a mere four minutes and 50 seconds on matters related to the Biden family’s many scandals. Putting a number on that lopsided disparity, the old networks spent 68.7 times longer covering Trump’s indictment than anything related to the Biden family’s legal troubles.
The Burisma cover-up continues. On August 9, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer released a memo detailing bank transactions that show at least $20 million flowing from Russian and Kazakhstani oligarchs to Hunter and his associates.
“It appears no real services were provided other than access to the Biden network, including Joe Biden himself,” Comer said in a statement. Some of the same oligarchs dined at Washington, D.C.’s Café Milano with then-Vice President Biden, according to Comer. The evidence suggests a criminal scandal on a scale never seen before in American politics. And yet The Big Three refuse to share a word of it with American public.
Those who don’t watch or read these leftist propagandists – and there are plenty of reasons not to tune in – might wonder if it matters. The answer is clear. At the height of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, ahead of the 2020 elections, the legacy media refused to cover it or dismissed it as Russian disinformation.
A post-election poll conducted for the Media Research Center found that 45.1% of swing state Biden voters were unaware of the evidence linking Biden to corrupt financial dealings with China through his son Hunter. And 9.4% of Biden voters said that had they known these facts, they would not have voted for Biden, flipping all six of the swing states he won and giving President Donald Trump 311 electoral votes.
The bottom line is that the legacy media intentionally kept Americans in the dark, and in doing so, swayed the election to Biden.
US Representative and Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) speaks during a House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing regarding the criminal investigation into the Bidens, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on July 19, 2023. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP)
Meanwhile, the Big Three are myopically focused on Trump’s fourth indictment – the timing of which not so coincidentally follows the latest shocking revelation in the Biden influence-peddling scandal.
The Big Three’s abject refusal to report on the Biden bribery scandal while providing wall-to-wall coverage of the dubious charges against Trump is not just a betrayal of their viewers; it constitutes election tampering. As such, their behavior is a threat to democracy.
Last week, an even bigger bombshell. It turns out then-Vice President Joe Biden was using a web of pseudonyms, from Robert Peters to Robin Ware to JRB Ware, while working with his son to place tens of millions of dollars in that web of LLCs. The National Archives revealed that its holdings contain nearly 5,400 emails, electronic records and documents indicating that Biden used aliases while he was vice president.
Those who don’t watch or read these leftist propagandists – and there are plenty of reasons not to tune in – might wonder if it matters. The answer is clear. At the height of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, ahead of the 2020 elections, the legacy media refused to cover it or dismissed it as Russian disinformation.
The pattern continues. Not one story in the pro-Biden press.
It is time for Biden to face an impeachment inquiry to find out whether he used the power of the vice presidency to rake in millions of dollars for his family, Additionally, President of ABC News Kimberly Godwin, CEO and President of CBS News Wendy McMahon, and NBC News President Rebecca Blumenstein should be invited to appear before a congressional committee and be prepared to answer for this behavior.
The American people deserve to hear the truth. Suppressing the news is not something we should expect outside of totalitarian regimes.
To support their left-wing agenda, corporate media occasionally allow members of the conservative movement or Republican Party to appear for a few moments on camera to give an illusion of balance. These select few are always significantly outnumbered by the legion of left-wing activists who dominate these programs and have to really use their time smartly and effectively to fight the propaganda and agenda-pushing that dominate our press.
In the case of Brendan Buck, the corporate media are engaged in a deliberate disinformation operation against the public. They have mislabeled him as someone representative of Republican voters when, in fact, he parrots some of the most preposterous Democrat talking points and ignores obvious facts to push back against those talking points.
Buck trades on the fact that he was a longtime top aide to former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Like many of the old-guard GOP establishment operatives, he has had to deal with the widespread voter rejection of the Romney-Ryan era he helped craft. For him, this has included joining with left-wing critiques of those who supplanted the former GOP leaders. It is not surprising, therefore, that Democrat activist Chuck Todd frequently uses Buck on his Sunday morning news panel for NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The panel this past week also included Democrat activist and NBC host Symone Sanders-Townsend; Valerie Jarrett’s daughter Laura, who is a legal analyst at NBC; and an anchor from the left-wing PBS “NewsHour.” Buck was ostensibly supposed to balance out those three and the hard-core partisan Todd.
Instead, he allowed every single left-wing talking point to pass by without even a slight reproach. In some cases, he joined in enthusiastically.
For example, Todd led a subliterate discussion about Tennessee on Sunday. In the real world, the situation was that a trans-identified shooter in Nashville murdered three Christian children and three of their caregivers. Left-wing activists, including three elected Democrats, responded by orchestrating a takeover of the legislature in an attempt to restrict self-defense rights. The manner in which they led this takeover of the legislative assembly included violations of rules for which they were removed from committees and, in two cases, the legislative body. Many in the propaganda press have willfully lied about these facts to push a left-wing narrative.
So, in Chuck Todd’s world, this story meant there were “loud echoes from our recent past in the south and in the ’60s,” and it “felt like a whole bunch of people who just don’t deal with dissent.” He allowed Sanders-Townsend to falsely claim, “What is happening in Tennessee, and frankly across the South, is in fact Jim Crow.” She even said the potential pardon of a man convicted in a self-defense shooting of a Black Lives Matter demonstrator “is an assault.”
Now, I’m no fancy-pants Republican media strategist, like Buck’s bio claims he is. I don’t have a single day, much less decades, of experience in Republican messaging, as Buck has. And I certainly don’t get paid the big bucks to fight four left-wing activists on NBC while posing publicly as the representative of the majority of the country that is not represented by those activists. But I know literally any Republican on Earth could have done a better job than Brendan Buck did in this circumstance.
He said, and I quote, “Yeah. Well, this is again a situation where there’s no infrastructure. There’s nobody calling the shots. We are being defined as extreme, and it’s why Republicans are on the run in just about everywhere across the country.”
By the way, he said “again,” because earlier in the program he had joined with his left-wing buddies as they spouted falsehoods about which party’s abortion views are, in fact, extreme.
Are you kidding me? Now, do I expect Todd or Sanders-Townsend or any other Democrat activist to push a narrative of Republicans being extreme and on the run? Of course, I do. But why is Brendan Buck, Paul Ryan’s longtime aide, pushing this falsehood?
Just a cursory review of the most recent news shows this is simply not true. The Associated Press wrote just last week in an article headlined “North Carolina state lawmaker switches parties, gives GOP supermajority,” that, “A Democrat in the North Carolina state House switched to the Republican Party on Wednesday, giving the GOP veto-proof control in both chambers of the legislature and handing Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper a setback in trying to block hardline conservative policies in his final two years in office.”
Buck may agree with his super-duper best friend Todd that Republicans are just so extreme for supporting safe streets, biological reality, protection of children, sane foreign policy, constitutional order, and the like, but outside the confines of that NBC studio, there’s a very different world he should probably think about visiting. A world with Republicans, for one thing, but also a world where Democrats are forced to flee the party that Buck thinks everyone is running to:
Cotham, a former teacher and assistant principal who had served in the House for nearly 10 years through 2016 before returning in January, announced her decision at a news conference at North Carolina Republican Party headquarters. ‘I will not be controlled by anyone,’ Cotham said as she announced she would switch her party registration to the GOP. She said the Democratic Party is no longer a big tent party and tries to bully its members. She said that she was considered a ‘spy’ and a ‘traitor’ and that the turning point was when she was criticized for using the American flag and praying-hands emoji on social media and on her vehicles.
The range of topics corporate media are eagerly dishonest about is reaching a level that is a serious threat to the republic. In service of a Democrat agenda, they lie with alarming frequency about nearly everything — including crime, abortion, radical gender ideology, racism, taxes, foreign policy, gun rights, civil liberties, free speech issues, freedom of religion, the right to protest, due process, dueling standards of justice, and other important issues.
Those lies affect political and policy outcomes with devastating effects on the American people.
The GOP establishment from the past may be having a temper tantrum about how unpopular the views of the Romney-Ryan era are, but they need to have that tantrum on their own time, not during these limited opportunities to push back against the vile lies of the corporate media.
Democrats and their media organs have enough tools for disinformation. There is no need for Brendan Buck to be one of them.
The suspect in last weekend’s Colorado Springs mass shooting at a gay nightclub isn’t exactly the right-wing Christian boogeyman legacy media immediately painted him as. According to The New York Times on Tuesday, 22-year-old Anderson Aldrich claims to be “non-binary” and wants other people to refer to him with the plural pronouns “they” and “them.”
“The lawyers refer to their client as Mx. Anderson Aldrich,” reported the paper’s Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs.
Aldrich has been charged with five counts of first-degree murder and five counts of a bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury related to the shooting that left five people dead and at least another 25 injured on Saturday night.
Despite few details about the suspect emerging immediately after the shooting, left-wing talking heads placed blame on conservative media in a knee-jerk fashion. Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, whose Monday night monologue included a condemnation of political violence paired with a reminder of the dangers surrounding transgender medical interventions for minors, became a primary target — despite the fact that these interventions have been shown to raise suicide risks, contrary to the left’s constant fearmongering.
According to a recent groundbreaking study from the Heritage Foundation, “easing access to cross-sex treatments without parental consent significantly increases suicide rates.”
“There is no scientific justification for sexually mutilating kids,” Carlson said. “Is pointing that out an attack on gay people? Of course it is not an attack on gay people. It has nothing to do with gay people.”
“Violence and cruelty should always horrify us every single time,” Carlson added, provoking critics to call him a hypocrite because, according to the left, opposition to mutilative surgeries and sterilizing drugs for minors is somehow violent.
“‘Hateful’: Critics Rip Tucker Carlson’s Response to LGBTQ Nightclub Shooting,” blared a headline in HuffPost amplified by Yahoo News. The article ran down a list of media personalities active on Twitter, from Media Matters for America to liberal podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen, who admonished Carlson despite the prime-time host admitting the many unknowns and his commentary later being vindicated.
“So, the most obvious question is why did Anderson Aldrich shoot 30 people?” Carlson asked on air. “The truth is we don’t know.”
The leftist pundits on MSNBC, however, seemed to have an answer without actually knowing any of the facts. On Tuesday, NBC’s Twitter hall monitor Ben Collins, on the verge of tears, called on reporters to “have a come-to-Jesus moment” and confront the supposedly violent rhetoric from conservative outlets.
“Are we more afraid of being on Breitbart for saying that trans people deserve to be alive, or are we more afraid of the dead people?” Collins asked after he highlighted a series of headlines that warned of right-wing violence targeting transgender-identified people.
“I’m more afraid of the dead people,” Collins finished. “I don’t want to wake up on a Sunday and see all of these headlines come to fruition.”
"I think we have to have a come-to-Jesus moment here as reporters—Are we more afraid of being on Breitbart for saying that trans people deserve to be alive, or are we more afraid of the dead people?"
Now would be a good time for Collins and the rest of the left-wing media establishment to have an actual “come to Jesus moment” over their hysterical coverage that immediately fomented outrage, fear, and division by blaming their political opponents. Now that we actually have a few facts, their narrative appears to be falling apart.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
NBC pulled an aired report from its website that said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul opened the door to their house, walked away from police and “did not immediately declare an emergency” the morning he was attacked.
“Sources familiar with what unfolded within the Pelosi residence now revealing, when officers responded to the high-priority call, they were seemingly unaware they’d been called to the home of the Speaker of the House,” NBC News reporter Miguel Almaguer said in the Nov. 4 “Today” report. “After a knock and announce, the door was opened by Mr. Pelosi. The 82-year-old did not immediately declare an emergency or try to leave his home, but instead began walking several feet back into the foyer toward the assailant and away from police.”
BREAKING: Paul Pelosi opened the door for cops, did not flee or declare emergency, walked back to the attacker in the house, then was ATTACKED!? WHAT!? pic.twitter.com/9YfJiaJX9f
NBC removed the report from the show’s website the same day, stating, “The piece should not have aired because it did not meet NBC News reporting standards.”
David DePape allegedly broke into the home early on Oct. 28, said he wanted to speak with Nancy Pelosi, and eventually attacked her husband with a hammer, according to a federal affidavit. The Speaker and her protective detail were in Washington, D.C., when the incident occurred, U.S. Capitol Police said.
The report referenced a state-level court filing against DePape. He has pleaded not guilty to all state-level charges against him, CNN reported, including attempted murder, false imprisonment and threatening the life or serious bodily harm to a public official.
DePape is also federally charged with assaulting a U.S. official’s immediate family member with the intent to retaliate against the official on account of the performance of official duties and attempting to kidnap a U.S. official on account of the performance of official duties.
NBC did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Democrats and their fangirls in the national media pretend they have this thoughtful, nuanced view about where the country is right now, but it really boils down to: None of America’s institutions or political processes are lawful nor legitimate unless we’re the ones controlling them.
Elections, Supreme Court decisions, legislation signed into law, “norms,” etc. All of it holds meaning so dear to their hearts.*
*Except when Republicans are in power, in which case it’s all fraudulent.
That dynamic was reinforced in virtually everything Vice President Kamala Harris said during an interview that aired Sunday with NBC’s Chuck Todd. She said the Senate filibuster rule should be discarded for Democrat priorities, but believed it should be maintained for everything else. Roll the tape…
Todd: “Are you comfortable that this could end the legislative filibuster for good, probably, even if you only try to do it for two issues?”
Harris: “No, I’m not. No I’m not.”
She said the country needs a president who will “speak up and raise the alarm” about those “who right now are vividly not defending our democracy.” Then she excused Democrats who actively supported and elevated Republican primary congressional candidates who voiced skepticism about the 2020 election.
Back to the tape…
Todd: “When you see the Democratic Party and some parts of the party funding ads to promote some of these election deniers in primaries… Is this something you’d be comfortable with?”
Harris: “I’m not going to tell people how to run their campaigns, Chuck.”
She professed to be deeply dedicated to ensuring the world witnesses America’s dedication to “the importance of democratic principles, rule of law, human rights.” Then she undermined our highest court, accusing the justices of being politically motivated.
To the tape…
Todd: “How much confidence do you have in the Supreme Court?”
Harris: “I think this is an activist court.”
There is no logical end to Harris and every other Democrat leader’s thought process other than: When we run things, it’s right, just, and everyone must accept. When it’s not us, everything is improper, invalid, and unlawful.
To be a Democrat is not to be pro-democracy. It’s to pursue a one-party state.
In this case, NBC was the middleman in an Olympics where many of the athletes were less than thrilled to be representing the United States.
On July 26, for example, there were only 14.7 million people watching primetime coverage — a 49 percent drop from the 2016 Olympics and a 53 percent decline from the 2012 Olympics, Fox News reported. These ratings are so poor that the network began re-airing commercials for advertisers at no additional charge.
The Monmouth University Polling Institute released a poll showing that 43 percent of Americans did not have much interest in watching the games whatsoever. Patrick Murray of the polling institute told Fox News that the reason might have been the politicization of the games by some athletes.
“The Olympic spirit is a bit dampened this year,” he said.
“The delay from last year and lack of spectators have taken the edge off the typical anticipation and excitement for this event. But the emergence of Black Lives Matter in the sports world has also led to a backlash among some Americans.”
“I’m just here to represent, man,” she said last week, CNN reported.
“I know a lot of people like me, a lot of athletes like me, a lot of people are scared to succeed or speak out. As long as I can represent those people, I’m fine.”
Berry also had an “X” written on her hand in protest during the final.
Fencer Race Imboden did the same thing, saying he did so in “support of athletes of color, Ending Gun violence, and all the athletes who wish to use their voice on the platform they’ve earned,” according to CNN.
Shot-putter Raven Saunders crossed her arms during her medal ceremony, explaining later that the “X” was “the intersection of where all people who are oppressed meet.”
Then there is U.S. soccer captain and social justice connoisseur Megan Rapinoe, who led the charge in kneeling in protest before her team’s games.
“It’s an opportunity for us to continue to use our voices and use our platforms to talk about the things that affect all of us intimately in different ways,” Rapinoe said, according to The Associated Press.
“We have people from Team USA, from all over the country, from all backgrounds, and people literally from all over the world for every other team so I obviously encourage everyone to use that platform to the best of their ability to do the most good that they possibly can in the world, especially as all eyes are on Tokyo these next couple weeks,” she later added.
Rapinoe and her team went on to finish a disappointing third in Tokyo.
While they certainly have the right to protest, Americans have the right to turn off the television when they feel their country is being insulted or disrespected.
Tamyra Mensah-Stock—the first black woman to win gold in wrestling for the U.S.A.—also shared her contagious love for America: “I’m so happy I get to represent U.S.A.!” 🤼♀️🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/mqDL2G9qzM
There were many athletes who were extremely patriotic on the world stage, but the social justice warriors have become martyrs in the establishment media and have monopolized the coverage.
Cable television is already a dying medium, and wokeness could be the nail in the coffin.
Cameron Arcand is a political commentator based in Orange County, California. His “Young Not Stupid” column launched at The Western Journal in January 2021, making Cameron one of the youngest columnists for a national news outlet in the United States. He has appeared on One America News, and has been a Young America’s Foundation member since 2019.@cameron_arcand
In all the back and forth of Tuesday’s Big Tech hearing, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons’ exchange with Twitter’s Jack Dorsey stood out most starkly, offering a window into the next step of the left’s long-championed Big Tech censorship of scientific dissent from liberal orthodoxy.
“You do, Mr. Dorsey, have policies against deep fakes or manipulated media, against Covid-19 misinformation, against things that violate civic integrity,” the Delaware senator began, “but you don’t have a standalone climate change misinformation policy. Why not?”
“Our policies are living documents,”Dorsey replied. “They will evolve, we will add to them, but we thought it important we focus our energies and prioritize the work as much as we could.” And then:
Well, Mr. Dorsey… I cannot think of a greater harm than climate change, which is transforming literally our planet and causing harm to our entire world. I think we’re experiencing significant harm as we speak. I recognize the pandemic and misinformation about Covid-19 manipulated media also cause harm but I’d urge you to reconsider that because helping to disseminate climate denialism in my view further facilitates and accelerates one of the greatest existential threats to our world.
This has been ongoing for years in corporate media. In 2019, Chuck Todd pompously announced his show would no longer “give time to climate deniers.” Two years before that, when The New York Times’ Bret Stephens used his debut column to call out “The Climate of Complete Certainty” that seeks to shut down completely reasonable dissent, the paper faced vicious backlash labeling Stephens a “climate denier.” For more than a decade before this, more of the same — often trickling up, from activists to the reporters who sympathize to the powers that can truly silence voices.
Four years ago, reporters demanded then-President Barack censor fake news, pushing Press Secretary Josh Earnest into the awkward position of having to remind apparent journalists of the First Amendment four times. The targets that day were the Bat Boy-like farces they blamed for Her 2016 loss, but it was already obvious the definition of “fake news” would rapidly expand. Once President Donald Trump assumed office, corporate media and allied politicians bypassed the White House and turned to Silicon Valley, which fell in line quickly enough.
COVID-19 provided the first preview of the new alliance, where even doctors and scientists were censored for carefully — we once said “scientifically” — questioning the alarmists’ narrative of the day. At the same time, Democrats, corporate media, and even corrupt, foreign bodies like the World Health Organization have been permitted to push whatever information supports that day’s goal post.
Completely rational appeals are met with absurdities like “the science is decided,” as if constantly evolving experimentation in search of knowledge can be bottled into some oracle-like decree to support the mob’s latest demand. Rather than decided science, these decrees are mere hypotheses susceptible to support and opposition, but through the alliance of Democrats, corporate media, and Silicon Valley, they become unquestionable edicts ranging from No Business to Eternal Mask-Wearing to No Family For Thanksgiving.
Coons’s comments are a good reminder that what is COVID today is climate tomorrow. Indeed, COVID policy has offered Americans a perfect preview of what will happen if climate alarmists get their way: Science not as method, but as god. And not the strong and mysterious God of the Jewish and Christian faiths, but a shifting one, whose every dictum and desire is whispered to the kings and enforced at their whims.
Do you have a problem with that? You can take it up with The Science. And The Science is decided.
Christopher Bedford is a senior editor at The Federalist, the vice chairman of Young Americans for Freedom, a board member at the National Journalism Center, and the author of The Art of the Donald. Follow him on Twitter.
The NFL continues to feel the pain from football players’ national anthem protests. NBC Universal’s head of advertising, Linda Yaccarino, said network advertisers are not happy with the ongoing protests. They’re so unhappy, in fact, that marketers told the network to stop airing the protests or they will pull their ads, Business Insider reported.
Speaking during an interview Friday, Yaccarino said that while no advertisers have pulled out of NFL games yet, that could change. Yaccarino said that although it’s hard to prove definitively, she believes the protests are having a negative impact on ratings.
“I don’t think there’s any way to prove it, but I do think it has affected the ratings,” she said during a “fireside chat” with Oath CEO Tim Armstrong at the Manhattan offices of Verizon’s media agency, R/GA.
She may not think there is a way to prove it, but anyone paying attention is well aware that protests are a big problem for the league. Yaccarino said there are many advertisers who are reaching a boiling point.
“There is a list of advertisers that have made themselves very clear: ‘If you continue to cover the political coverage of the issue, we will not be part of the NFL,’” Yaccarino said, according to Deadline.
“Think about it — they have half the country that is cheering about that and half the country that is emailing them saying, ‘Don’t do that.’ That’s a real thing.”
Last Wednesday, Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter attributed slow sales in the third quarter of 2017 to the controversy surrounding the protests, asserting that the controversy was diminishing the pizza chain’s advertising.
“NFL leadership has hurt Papa John’s shareholders,”Schnatter said, in a call with analysts, as reported by CBS. “This should have been nipped in the bud a year and a half ago.”
Schnatter criticized NFL leadership for letting the issue fester.
“We’re certainly disappointed that NFL and its leadership did not resolve the ongoing situation to the satisfaction of all parties this year, year-and-a-half ago,”he said.
“Good or bad, leadership starts at the top, and this is an example of poor leadership,” the CEO said.
Schnatter hit the nail on the head, and his comments reflect how many Americans feel about the matter. That’s probably why advertisers are reconsidering advertising during NFL games.
I’m obsessed with the White House’s war on the press and on the media. Let’s be clear about this, that war is nothing less than a war on the truth. Do we get it right all the time? Nope, we don’t. And when we don’t, we run a correction, and in some cases, people lose their jobs. That’s what just happened at CNN. CNN took responsibility for its mistakes.
At this network, we’ve done it quite a few times publicly as well. But because we try to get it right we take what we do seriously, because truth, viewers and readers’ trust is all we have and without that, we’re nothing.
Todd is right that what we are talking about is a war on truth. Only he’s got it backwards. It is not Donald Trump who’s waging this war on truth but the low-information media.
Even Todd himself admits that NBC has choked on the truth “quite a few times” and has been forced to publicly correct its errors. Thus Todd himself admits that NBC can’t be trusted. If they got it wrong then, why should we trust them now? If it turns out we shouldn’t have believed them then, why should believe what they are telling us now?
The premiere case in point of all this is the Talking Snake Media’s obsession with the substance-free accusation that Trump somehow colluded with the Russians to steal the election from the American people. (I call them the Talking Snake Media in honor of their patron saint, the snake in the Garden of Eden who lied to Eve in order to frustrate the purposes of God.)
There never was any evidence at all of any such collusion despite over a year’s worth of investigation. A senior producer at CNN (which I refer to as the “Counterfeit News Network”) revealed to an undercover reporter from Project Veritas that there was in fact no smoking gun, the whole thing was probably “bull****”, and that they had only been ordered to refocus on the Russia thing because it was good for ratings.
To top it off, Van Jones, CNN’s resident communist commentator, admitted to another undercover journalist, “This Russia thing is a nothing-burger.”
In other words, CNN is not searching for the truth, they are searching for viewers. The truth to them is utterly disposable if twisting and distorting it serves their agenda.
Well, focusing on the fabricated Trump-Russia story is not working any more for CNN. Itsratings are in a free fall, now dropping far behind both Fox and MSNBC in prime time.
There is a larger dynamic at work here, especially for people of faith. And that dynamic is that error and falsehood can only be propped up for so long. You can lie to people for a time, but eventually the truth will come out and the lie will be exposed for the ugly thing that it is.Abraham Lincoln was credited with saying, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.”
Satan lied to Eve and got her to believe his lie because it was, well, so believable. The fruit was, he told her, “good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise” (Genesis 3:6). Eve believed the believable lie, convinced her husband to join her, and the horrible truth was revealed in an instant.
The point here is that the fake news the media has been dishing out may sound plausible at first blush, but the façade cannot be sustained. If the media continues to traffic in patent falsehoods, eventually their entire enterprise will collapse in on itself. In an almost biblical sense, the media will fall into the pit they have dug for the others.
That implosion seems to be happening as we speak. CNN is firing reporters for filing utterly bogus stories about Trump and Russia and is now admitting that there is no evidence to support the charge. CNN is rapidly going from the most trusted name in news to the most busted name in news.
CNN and the rest of the media has blindly blundered on, to focus now on an equally unsupportable lie, that the president obstructed justice by doing his job and exercising his constitutional responsibilities as the head of the executive branch.
Jesus told us that if we abide in His words, we will know the truth, and the truth will set us free (John 8:32). We can spot the lies of the media in an instant by comparing what they say to what the Scriptures say. The truth of Scripture is the carpenter’s level we use to identify declarations that align with the truth, and separate them from those that don’t.
The media is waging its war on the truth by relentlessly assaulting the truth not only about public policy matters but about abortion, marriage, the family, sexual immorality, homosexuality, abortion, and everything else under the sun. But Christian citizens are not duped.
Todd said that without the viewers’ trust, “we’re nothing.”He’s got that right. The jig is up, the American people are on to him and his ilk, and in the end the truth will be the only thing left standing. May Mr. Todd and his colleagues enjoy a long, serene, and fact-free retirement as soon as possible.
No, we’re not talking about a poll from a Republican outfit, and we’re not talking about a survey from a “right wing” website. The poll we’re talking about is from is from a mainstream media outlet.
The latest poll from the folks at NBC and the Wall Street Journal has revealed some shocking information that NBC has chosen to spin in an effort to make the President look bad. Here’s what NBC’s headline had to say about their poll…
Trump’s Job Approval Stands at Just 44 Percent as Partisan Splits Reign
Oh no. Sounds like it must have been a rough poll for the President, doesn’t it? This is where NBC focuses their reporting on this poll — the fact that Trump’s numbers aren’t great and that Democrats don’t support him at all. But if they would have just dug a little deeper into their own numbers, they might have learned a very different set of lessons. They might have learned that the majority of those polled (53%) believe that the media has been too critical of Trump and has “exaggerated” the problems in the Trump administration. Or they might have noticed that the majority of Americans (52%) believe that President Trump and the GOP should be taking the lead in setting policy for our nation!
NBC/WSJ poll: Who should take the lead in setting policy for the US?
If NBC had been worried about writing something more than a hit piece against President Trump, they might have also noticed that more Americans have been “harmed” by Obamacare than have been helped.
NBC/WSJ is the latest poll to confirm that significantly more Americans have been harmed by #Obamacare (30%) than helped (24%).
But the real “nail in the coffin”for this poll can be seen when examining those dreaded “popularity” numbers that the media loves to focus on. While the liberals are busy crowing about how unpopular President Trump is, it’s worth noting that he’s far MORE popular than most of the Democrat leadership and more popular than the Democrat Party as a whole!
NBC/WSJ poll (D+5 sample): GOP viewed significantly more favorably than Dems. Pelosi = least liked politician in USA (-25) vs Trump (-4): pic.twitter.com/gJMhsp0xvW
The president’s approval rating is slightly underwater (44/48), a figure that is leavened by fairly widespread optimism about the future of the country and US economy. Sixty percent say they’re “hopeful and optimistic” about America, with 40 percent calling themselves “worried and pessimistic.” By a similar 20-point margin, more Americans say they expect the economy to improve over the next year, with only one-in-five expecting it to worsen. In certain circles, it’s taken for granted that the sky is falling, but that sentiment simply hasn’t taken root among most Americans. Liberal Bubble-dwellers believe the nation has galvanized against Trump, with pervasive buyers’ remorse setting in; this data punctures that illusion. As for favorability, despite all the news coverage painting Trump as a train wreck, Republicans as craven enablers, and Democrats as righteous opponents, Trump and his allies are in much better shape than the Democratic Party…
This poll may be used as evidence that the President is unpopular, but it’s better evidence of the fact that our national media has completely lost its mind when it comes to Donald Trump.While Trump may not be Mr. Popular, the majority of the American people would rather walk the path being laid out by Trump and the GOP than to continue down the road to ruin from the Obama era.
Onan is the Editor-in-Chief at Liberty Alliance media group. He’s also the managing editor at Eaglerising.com, Constitution.com and the managing partner at iPatriot.com. Onan is a graduate of Liberty University (2003) and earned his M.Ed. at Western Governors University in 2012. Onan lives in Atlanta with his wife and their three wonderful children. You can find his writing all over the web.
(AP) In this April 10, 2015, file photo, Donald Trump speaks at the National Rifle… Full Image
WASHINGTON (AP) — With a presidential field approaching 20 high-profile Republicans, the GOP’s 2016 class offers voters a little bit of everything.
There is the top-tier, a group that includes former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who formally launched his candidacy on Monday. There are the single-issue candidates such as South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who talks about national security and little else. There are even the quixotic underdogs, such as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, ambitious against all odds.
And then there is Donald Trump. The Donald, as he is known as a celebrity, will announce his 2016 intentions on Tuesday at a Manhattan skyscraper that bears his name.
He is a businessman, a reality television star and a master of self-promotion. And should (UPDATE: HAS ANNOUNCED) he decide to run, Trump is positioned to have a greater impact on the early months of the Republican presidential primary contest than many GOP leaders would like.
Should he get in, Trump would be required to release a personal financial disclosure that would reveal intimate details about his personal finances. The disclosure would include his net worth, sources of income, liabilities and assets. He would have to reveal the same information for his wife and dependent children. Trump is ready to do so. On Tuesday, he will share details about his personal finances that reveal a net worth of $9 billion, according to a person close to his potential campaign who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt the announcement.
The financial disclosure, required of all candidates for president, was thought to be the final obstacle blocking Trump from launching a 2016 campaign. Based on guidelines recently announced by the television networks, Trump could play a prominent role in the upcoming nationally televised Republican debate in August. Those who rank in the top 10 in national polls — and Trump currently does, although he’s close to the bottom — will earn a place on the debate stage. That could place Trump in a debate alongside leading candidates such as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Bush.
“Selfishly, the networks would put me on because I get great ratings,”Trump said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
Trump has teased presidential runs before, and always backed out. But there are signs that he’s more serious this time around. After forming a presidential exploratory committee in March, Trump says he has hired political operatives on the ground in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. He has also been a frequent visitor to the early voting states in recent months.
Perhaps most significantly, he said he would not renew his contract with NBC for his reality show, “The Apprentice.” He cannot appear on the network and run for president at the same time.
New Jersey State Police and the FBI providing security for Super Bowl XLVIII Photographer: Jamie Squire/Getty Images
If you’ve already bought tickets for Super Bowl XLIX or are looking forward to watching it with your friends and family, you may be surprised to learn that there is a chance it might not be played. Congress first needs to make a decision on renewing a piece of legislation that you possibly never have heard of: TRIA—the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act.
TRIA was signed into law in 2002 in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, establishing a risk-sharing partnership between the federal government and the insurance industry that made terrorism insurance widely available to U.S. businesses—among them, organizers of sporting events. Without federal support, most insurers had been unwilling to offer coverage. TRIA was renewed in 2005 and in 2007. It is set to expire on Dec. 31 unless Congress renews it. With two weeks until the deadline, the clock is ticking.
You may think: No way that the Super Bowl can be canceled! Think again. A few years ago FIFA, organizer of the World Cup, could not find insurers to cover the final game of the 2006 tournament at a cost it judged reasonable. FIFA was eventually able to structure a special financial instrument so the game could go on, but this took several months.
There is considerable money at stake for the organizers of Super Bowl and for NBC (CMCSA), which will televise the game. No insurance, no game. It is thus not surprising that the NFL has joined with other professional sports leagues and 80 business groups nationwide to form the Coalition to Insure Against Terrorism (CIAT) to urge Congress to fund reauthorization of the TRIA legislation.
A bit of background on why insurers changed their view of terrorism coverage after 9/11 provides the relevant context. Before 9/11, insurers included terrorism coverage in all commercial policies without charging for it because the risk was below their threshold level of concern. But after paying $44 billion in claims for 9/11—at that time the most costly disaster in the history of insurance—most insurers excluded terrorism from commercial policies.
The absence of terrorism coverage halted large construction projects around the country because financial institutions were concerned about the viability of their loans. Their fears resembled the concern that organizations such as FIFA and the NFL have with respect to their own liability.
TRIA addresses the insurance supply problem. Under the program, the federal government provides a financial back-up for insurers by covering a portion of insured losses above $27.5 billion, up to $100 billion, giving the insurance industry some certainty as to its maximum exposure. In return, insurers are required to offer terrorism coverage to all business clients, which can decide to purchase coverage or not. About 60 percent of large businesses carry terrorism insurance, indicating strong demand for it.
Unless TRIA is reauthorized during the next two weeks, insurers will have the right to cancel terrorism insurance policies after Jan. 1. They are likely to do so for fear of insolvency should a massive terrorist attack take place with no government backup. By law, only insurance companies offering workers’ compensation insurance must include terrorism peril in their policies, whether or not TRIA is renewed. The only way for those insurers to limit their exposure to terrorism—say, in large metropolitan areas where they are heavily concentrated—might be to cancel some commercial insurance policies altogether if TRIA is not in place. Some businesses would then be unprotected against a wide variety of risks, ranging from fire to industrial accidents.
Competing bills now in Congress would extend TRIA for an additional five to seven years. Over the summer, S. 2244 passed in the Senate and H.R.4871 was passed by the House Financial Services Committee. The November elections put everything on hold.
The two chambers may decide to buy time by authorizing a short-term extension. That would be better than doing nothing: In the event of a terrorist attack, we as a nation can avoid massive economic disruption by taking appropriate financial protection measures to facilitate a rapid recovery. The emergence of the Sunni fundamentalist self-proclaimed Islamist State in Iraq and Syria tells us that the threat of terrorism will be with us for many years.
In our recent Wharton Risk Center report, “TRIA After 2014,” we detail the impact of both the House and Senate TRIA renewal bills with respect to who will pay after a terrorist attack. Our analyses show that both bills push more risk to the private sector and that under either bill, insurers would bear the entire insured losses if claims total less than $50 billion. We also highlight the relatively minor differences between the bills under a variety of terrorist attack scenarios in four large cities (Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and New York).
We urge the House and Senate to reconcile the differences in their bills before Christmas. Congress, you have the ball. Don’t fumble it. We are looking forward to watching Super Bowl XLIX on Feb. 1.
Thursday morning, NBC Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel was grilled by CNBC panelist and Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone, to name just one country where relations with the United States have improved under Obama (SEE VIDEO BELOW).
“Name one country with whom we have better relationships with today, than we did when he [Obama] became president almost six years ago,” Langone challenged the NBC reporter.
You would naturally want to say Europe, answered NBC’s Engel, “But generally, the relations with a lot of European countries have gotten worse because of these relationships…”
Langone interrupted Engel saying, “I can name all the countries where the relationships have gotten worse. I’m asking to give me one country where they’ve gotten better.”
While Engel appeared clearly taken aback, and wasn’t able to name one country the Obama foreign policy had improved U.S. relations with, he didn’t hesitate to come to the defense of the Obama regime, using the old-standby, the worn-out “blame Bush” meme.
Engel answered Langone:
“Yeah, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find that, and I think this is the reason…I think the reason is our allies have become confused. For eight years, you had the Bush administration with a very interventionist policy, driving into world affairs, driving primarily into the Islamic world, army first or fist first, and that was very unpopular with most of our allies.”
This week’s Mainstream Media Scream features NBC‘s “Today” hosts expressing surprise that Fortune Magazine’s new list of the 50 greatest leaders didn’t include President Obama.
From the Thursday, March 20 “Today” show on NBC:
Savannah Guthrie: “We are back now at 8:14 with ?What’s Trending Today.’ And this morning, Fortune magazine is releasing its first list of the world’s 50 greatest leaders. The issue’s out tomorrow. We’re going to get an exclusive look right now at who makes the list. Bill Clinton comes in at number five and makes the cover. There are a lot of other notable names here.
“Tell you what, though, there may be some talk about one leader who did not make the list, the leader of the free world, President Obama. Fortune tells us he was not overlooked, he just did not make the cut.”
Natalie Morales: “In the top 50.”
Matt Lauer: “Yeah, that’s surprising.”
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains our pick: “Another example of how out of touch the media elite are from the rest of America. Obama’s approval rating is cratering, well below 50 percent, as his foreign policy experiences setback after setback. Yet Guthrie and Lauer are surprised he’s not automatically considered one of the world’s ‘greatest’ leaders.’ ”
Rating: Three out of five screams.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com.
NBC’s Meet the Press host David Gregory took House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) to task Sunday for the failures of Obamacare and taped promises she made about the law.
Gregory played a clip from 2009 when the then-Speaker of the House essentially repeated President Obama’s infamous “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan promise” in an interview with MSNBC’s Ed Schultz.
While Obama has acknowledged he was wrong, Pelosi still couldn’t bring herself to admit it.
“Are you accountable for saying something that turned out not to be correct?” Gregory asked.
“Well, it’s not that it’s not correct, it’s that if you want to keep it and it’s important for theinsurance companies to say to people, this is what your plan does,” she said. “It doesn’t prevent you from being discriminated against on basis of pre-existing conditions.”
Gregory didn’t let up, though.
“The government has decided there have to be minimum standards in any health care plan. So if you have something and you like it and it doesn’t meet what the government says you have to have, you cannot keep it. That’s not what you said, though,” he said.
“If you had your plan before the enactment of the law in 2010, if you had your plan — there is nothing in the law that says — we can go back and forth on this,” she sputtered.
Pelosi returned to the Democratic talking point that the promise made referred to keeping plans they had before Obamacare was passed in 2010, but Obama continued to make that pledge in 2012 and as recently as late October 2013. Yet, Pelosi commended Obama for being forthright and taking responsibility for Obamacare’s problems.
Also, Gregory played a clip of her much-criticized remarks that Obamacare needed to be passed in order to “find out what’s in it,” leading to this exchange:
DAVID GREGORY: And hasn’t that idea that you have to pass it before you know what’s in it, isn’t that really the problem, as you look back on it, that there was such a rush to get this done, no Republicans voting for it, and now there are unintended effects of this that were foreseen at the time that you couldn’t know the impact of it and now this is coming home to roost.
NANCY PELOSI: No. What I was saying there is, we are House and the Senate, we get a bill, we go to conference, we ping-pong it and then you see what the final product is. However, however, I stand by what I said there. When people see what is in the bill, they will like it, and they will. So while there’s a lot of hoop-de-do and ado about what’s happening, very appropriate. I’m not criticizing. I said it would take a great deal to pass this bill. I said, if we go up to the gate and it’s locked, we’ll unlock the gate. If we can’t do that, we’ll climb the fence. If the fence is too high, we’ll pole vault in. If we can’t do that, we’ll helicopter but we’ll get it done. We had to pass the test of the courts, and we did. The first rollout in the first part, the first year of the implementation went very smoothly. The website did not work. That has caused problems, complicating people transitioning from those policies. But again, this was never thought to be easy. And the fact is it doesn’t matter what we’re saying here. What matters is what happens at the kitchen table of the American people and how they will have more affordability, more accessibility, better quality care, prevention, wellness, a healthier nation honoring the vows of our founders. That life, a healthier life, liberty to pursue their happiness not be chained by a policy.
GREGORY: I understand what the arguments are. The administration is saying –
Today, columnist Jason Whitlock of Fox Sports and formerly of the Kansas City Star, blamed the Second Amendment to the United State Constitution for the murder/suicide of Jovan Belcher, linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs. Calling for the NFL to have cancelled the Chiefs’ Sunday game, Whitlock wrote:
I would argue that your rationalizations speak to how numb we are in this society to gun violence and murder. We’ve come to accept our insanity. We’d prefer to avoid seriously reflecting upon the absurdity of the prevailing notion that the second amendment somehow enhances our liberty rather than threatens it.
Our current gun culture simply ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.
By this time you have probably heard about Bob Costas editorial at the end of the half time period in last nights Sunday Night Football game. I was all set to write this then, but thought better of it knowing I should never write and publish anything while I am that angry.
I find his politicizing the above tragedy deplorable. Anyone taking such a major heart-rending event and using it to preach your political position on gun control is horrendously abusing the power of the press. To make matters worse, his quoting a sports writer from Kansas City, Jason Whitlock, is an act of a coward. NBC should be ashamed of that part of the broadcast, yet I have heard nothing from NBC about it, so I can only conclude that they approve of such misuse of their broadcast.
Mr. Costas has the right of any American to give his opinion. However, to misuse the forum of a football broadcast is unarguably wrong. Beside that, I have a few things to say to Mr. Costas and those that agree with him:
“Mr. Costas, your conclusion that if Jovan Belcher had not had a gun, then he and his girlfriend would still be alive. Your argument that guns make it too easy is absurd. When any person has murder in their heart, they will use whatever means to exact that impulse. If he had used a baseball bat to beat her to death and then crash into anything unmovable causing his death, would you have made the same comments about baseball bats, cars and unmovable objects?”
Guns are as inert as any knife, rock, brick, bat, vehicle or any other means of committing murder. Each are not bad unto themselves. It is the contents of a person’s heart that turns these otherwise useful things as weapons of mayhem. It is the PERSON MAKING MURDEROUS DECISIONS USING SOMETHING THAT CAN CAUSE DEATH THAT IS THE PROBLEM, NOT THE THING ITSELF!
You also made another mistake. Testimony abounds of lives saved because of an armed citizen. Don’t reply that there are also stories of people having their guns taken from them and used on them. Such examples are in the extreme minority compared to those of success (meaning the gun owner is alive and well, as well as their families and friends).
Until more is known about Jovan Belcher, his mental condition at the time, and all other stress sources, everyone needs to follow the example of the Chief’s coach and say nothing.
Let us NOTforget there is now a three-month old little girl without mom or dad.
Unless Bob Costas is announcing that he is leaving sports and turning to politics, he should keep such personal convictions to himself instead of misusing a national broadcast to spew his rhetoric.
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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