COMPILATION: MEDIA, DEMOCRATS BASH TRUMP OVER KILLING OF ISIS LEADER
Establishment hates Trump so much they can’t even acknowledge obvious win for America
10/28/2019
The mainstream media and even some Democrats couldn’t bring themselves to praise President Trump over his decision to raid and kill the infamous ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Instead, they deployed every form of spin and criticism they could muster in attempt to make Trump look bad for vanquishing the world’s most wanted man.
Here are a few examples:
Some pundits lamented that killing ISIS members only reinforces their murderous ideology.
Vox editor Aaron Rupar lambasted Trump for saying that witnessing the raid against Baghdadi was like “watching a movie.”
A CNN correspondent compared Trump’s language about Baghdadi to ISIS’s hateful rhetoric.
Obama officials like his Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff criticized Trump for “piling on” the humiliation of ISIS’s defeat.
Obama’s former National Security Adviser Susan Rice said the successful raid was not “mission accomplished.”
A CNN panel condemned Trump’s “irresponsible” remarks about Baghdadi “dying like a dog.”
Fox News’ Chris Wallace harped on Vice President Mike Pence for not briefing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the special operations raid.
2020 Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders refused to congratulate Trump or the U.S. forces who conducted the raid, instead giving credit to the Kurds in Syria.
“Saturday Night Live” couldn’t even help digging into Trump over his dovish Syria policy, saying he’s “Making ISIS Great Aagain”…the same night al-Baghdadi was killed.
Fortunately, some journalists, like Glenn Greenwald, recognized the media’s shameful behavior and called them out on it.
CNN’s Sellers: There’s ‘No Question’ That Tulsi Gabbard Is ‘A Puppet For The Russian Government’
Chris Menahan
InformationLiberationCNN’s Bakari Sellers said Tuesday that “there is no question” that Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is “a puppet for the Russian government” and anyone who disagrees with him is probably a Russian “bot.”
Transcript:
SELLERS: There is a slightly — there is a chance that Tulsi [Gabbard] is not just working for the United States of America, but I digress.
RYAN: Wait a minute, what?
SELLERS: No, I firmly —
RYE: That’s a hell of an allegation.
SELLERS: That’s not just an allegations. I firmly believe that —
RYAN: Uh oh, messages is coming now!
SELLERS: No, yeah, watch the bots come on Twitter now! I firmly believe that Tulsi Gabbard stands on that stage and is the antithesis to what the other 11 individuals stand for, especially when it comes to issues such as foreign policy. There is no question, there is no question that Tulsi Gabbard, of all the 12, is a puppet for the Russian government.
RYAN: Whoa, whoa, that was strong.
CAMEROTA: How is there no question?
SELLERS: I think that you look at her relationship doing the bidding, her relationships and affection for people like Bashar al Assad, her admiring somebody we know to be a war criminal, propping them up. I think that those are questions that are going to have to be answered.
Those are the only questions the media ever ask her about!
She’s answered those questions a million damn times!
While Elizabeth Warren has her own undisclosed donors pitching her seemingly fully-scripted questions so she can respond with scripted zingers, Gabbard is always constantly asked why she loves Bashar al-Assad and opposed the homosexual agenda when she was a teenager.
Unfortunately, Gabbard seems to think it’s a good strategy to give in to the media’s bullying and has been flip-flopping all over the place to try and somehow stay in their good graces.
Most recently, she backed Nancy Pelosi’s Trump impeachment inquiry after first opposing it and now she’s been attacking Trump for “abandoning muh Kurds” (my words, not hers) and not pulling out of Syria in just the way she would like.
She could have had a serious impact on this race had she just stuck to her guns and went hard against the establishment (as Trump did during his presidential campaign) but she botched it with her endless flip-flopping and equivocating.
Her only chance at this point is to go nuclear during the upcoming Dem debate.
Leftist Writer at The Nation Calls for Tucker Carlson to be Ostracized
By Jose Nino
Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson was recently called out by Jeet Heer of The Nation.
Tucker drew criticism about his recent comments on congresswoman Ilhan Omar and her ungratefulness as an immigrant.
He specifically said “Ilhan Omar is living proof that the way we practice immigration has become dangerous to this country.”
Carlson added, “A system designed to strengthen America is instead undermining it.”
In response to Carlson’s comments, Heer opined that “There’s nothing new about racism from either Fox News or Carlson’s mouth.”
In Heer’s view, Carlson’s supposedly “toxic” behavior has “reopened a debate about whether progressives, either leftists or liberals, should appear on the right-wing network.”
Certain leftists such as Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept and independent journalist Michael Tracey have been on Carlson’s show. In response to Carlson’s choice words for Omar, author Molly Crabapple commented, “Self identified leftists, stop going on Tucker’s White Power Hour to agree with him.”
Heer identifies Tucker’s strategy in trying to appeal to the Left:
Carlson is as insidious as he is odious and therefore very cunning in trying to channel popular anti-war sentiment into a right-wing unilateralism, as well as recasting grassroots anti-business sentiments into a conservative opposition to the supposed cosmopolitan elitism of woke capitalists.
By having leftists like Greenwald and Tracey on his show, Heer argues that “Carlson is trying to co-opt aspects of their anti-establishment message for his own project.”
The anti-war causes that Tucker promotes draw leftists like Greenwald and Tracy to his show to discuss issues that otherwise get ignored by the mainstream media. However, many leftist gatekeepers like Heer want to make sure that so-called “white supremacy” be stopped at all costs.
That usually means that contrarian voices like Carlson should be completely disavowed regardless of what is brought to the table. People can’t agree on everything, but there should at least be a consensus that the never-ending wars must go away.
For too long, concentrated interests have made a killing off of the suffering of foreigners and have completely turned the U.S. into an overstretched empire.
Fretting about comments in the distant past seems petty, especially when we have the opportunity to move forward on an issue like foreign policy intervention. Calling for the isolation and ostracization of people like Tucker Carlson does us no good.
If we want to progress on these issues, we need to avoid the toxic nature of identity politics and actually work together to move forward.
Liberal media site ThinkProgress for sale due to $3m budget shortfall
ThinkProgress, the stalwart liberal opinion site, may not survive the Trump era. After operating at a loss for years, the website is now up for sale.
The Center for American Progress (CAP), the think-tank set up by the Podesta brothers that owns TP, told the Daily Beast on Monday that the project was in search of a new publisher due to dire financial difficulties – $3 million worth of them, to be precise. CAP added that it would ensure the new owners maintained the same editorial line.
The website, which pushed virtually every outlandish conspiracy theory related to President Donald Trump and his alleged ties Moscow, has had its share of gaffes over the years, perhaps explaining the exodus of readers and financial backers.
Last September, ThinkProgress columnist and editor Ian Millhiser caught flak when he urged liberal activists to “confront Republicans where they eat, where they sleep and where they work,” which sounded to some like a call to commit crimes against lawmakers.
“Breaking into someone’s home while they are sleeping to confront them on their political beliefs is especially unhinged and illegal,” journalist Tim Pool pointed out on Twitter in response to the remark.
For an outlet that regularly concerns itself with “atmospheres” that are conducive to violence, Milhiser was all too willing to help create the same noxious cloud around his own political adversaries.
ThinkProgress editor under fire after calling for Republicans to be confronted ‘where they sleep’
ThinkProgress has not only alienated Republicans, who were never likely to read the site in the first place, but has also drawn the ire of its more deeply progressive readership. A critical article published in April entitled “Bernie Sanders is a millionaire” prompted an angry response from the Vermont senator himself, who published an open letter in the New York Times slamming ThinkProgress and CAP for smearing him and other Democratic candidates. The divisive approach, Sanders argued, would hand another presidential term to Trump.
Liberal journalist Aaron Mate pointed out some additional reasons left-leaning readers might have decided to ditch the publication.
‘Death by algorithm’: Maddow inconsolable after YouTube recommends RT interview on Mueller report
Russiagate guru Rachel Maddow has caught wind of the latest Kremlin-linked outrage: YouTube recommended an RT video about the Mueller report! And now social media users have lined up to laugh at her.
The MSNBC host ascended her Twitter pulpit to share a shocking Washington Post article detailing how YouTube allegedly recommended an RT video “hundreds of thousands of times” to users seeking information about the recently released report by special counsel Robert Mueller.
“Death by algorithm,” a despondent Maddow commented.
The video in question – an episode of On Contact, which is hosted by Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist Chris Hedges – features an interview with Canadian journalist Aaron Mate. A fierce critic of the Trump-Russia collusion theory promoted by mainstream media, Mate recently received an Izzy Award for his contrarian reporting on Russiagate.
While Maddow was apparently horrified by the thought of impressionable Americans watching a video of two acclaimed journalists discussing current events, others were more perturbed by the MSNBC host’s melodramatic tweeting.
“This YouTube is so much better than the war mongering conspiracy lunacy that comes from you. You should be ashamed to smear good people & good content in such a base & McCarthyite way,” replied one disappointed Twitter user.
Others took issue with Maddow’s bizarre suggestion that YouTube’s algorithm could somehow bring about “death.”
“’Death?’ No one’s lives were threatened by a conversation between two award winning journalists about the massive disinformation campaign you’re waged on the minds of suggestible Democrats. But they are endangered by the Cold War you’ve helped to stir up,” Max Blumenthal, editor of the Grayzone Project, noted.
Mate himself joined the chorus of criticism directed at Maddow.
“I was interviewed on RT by the Pulitzer-winning journalist Chris Hedges about Russiagate. YouTube recommended it. How fitting then that the leading Russiagate conspiracy theorist calls this ‘death by algorithm’ – to a propagandist, dissent from orthodoxy is ‘death’ indeed,” he wrote.
Actually, the entire premise of Maddow’s outrage is highly suspect. The Washington Post report quietly notes that the RT video in question has accumulated “only about 55,000 views,” and that the interview was by far from the most recommended Mueller-related video. “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” was recommended more than five million times, WaPo reported, while other channels, such as Fox and PBS NewsHour, received hundreds of thousands of recommendations for their Russiagate videos.
To make matters even less scary, YouTube disputed the article’s core claims, which were originally made by media watchdog group AlgoTransparency. YouTube said it could not reproduce the group’s data allegedly showing that the RT video had been recommended hundreds of thousands of times by the site’s algorithm.
In fact, the Washington Post story was so shaky that it had to issue a clickbait-deflating correction: An earlier version of their report had erroneously claimed that YouTube had recommended RT’s take on the Mueller report more often than other networks’ programming.
As Blumenthal observed, the WaPo story appears to be yet another tired attempt to shame anyone who doesn’t regurgitate narratives promoted by US corporate media.
Nolte: Top 51 Fake News ‘Bombshells’ the Media Spread About RussiaGate Collusion Hoax Hall of Shame
By John Nolte
Here are the top 51 pieces of fake news the establishment media spread about the Russia Collusion Hoax over the past two years, and I describe this list as the Top 51 because there is a behemoth of an iceberg lurking below.
Since the release of the Mueller Report last week, which — despite two years, $30 million, and a team of rabidly partisan left-wing investigators — found exactly zero crimes of Russia collusion or obstruction associated with President Trump and his campaign, one of the most bizarre results has been watching the media pat themselves on the back for the stories they believe they got correct.
Imagine that. Imagine your industry is so broken and corrupt that all you have left is to point to what you believe you did right. This is like watching an airline pilot brag about the times he didn’t crash, a district attorney point to the people he prosecuted who were not innocent — or in the words of comedian Chris Rock, a parent boast about taking care of his kids.
You’re supposed to take care of your kids!
And the media are supposed to get stories correct.
But here is the media forced to brag on when they didn’t crash the plane, when they did take care of the kids, which tells you something is horribly, terribly, ridiculously wrong.
Hey, here are some examples of when we didn’t mislead the country with disinformation!
Check out this one below. Here you have a reporter forced to focus on the “highlights” of her outlet’s reporting because the Washington Post got so much wrong she was able to quickly cobble together a list of those times the Post did not mislead its readers:
While a list of what the media might have gotten correct is fairly easy to put together, no one will ever be able to grasp the tsunami of fake news Americans were buried under for over two years.
The list below of 51 might sound like a lot, but it is a drop in the ocean when you recall the thousands and thousands of hours CNN, MSNBC, Meet the Press, This Week, PBS NewsHour, State of the Union, Good Morning America, Reliable Sources, and the Today Show devoted to anchors and pundits pushing the hoax that Trump colluded with Russia.
Not to mention, millions and millions of establishment media tweets and Facebook posts.
Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, Shepard Smith, Andrew Napolitano, Joe Scarborough, Chris Hayes, Chuck Todd, Joy Reid, Chris Matthews, Jake Tapper, Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo, Brian Stelter, Erin Burnett, et al., are alone responsible for thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of lies and conspiracy-mongering.
This list of 51 doesn’t count the half-million — half-MILLION — Russia collusion stories published over the past two years, almost all of which were premised on the idea that Trump did, indeed, collude with a foreign power to steal the 2016 presidential election.
This list cannot begin to count the countless times these 51 fake stories were repeated as fact throughout other news outlets, social media, and thousands upon thousands of cumulative broadcast hours.
What’s more, this list of 51 can’t begin to count the countless examples of fake news launched against Trump that have nothing to do with Russia — desperate and deliberate lies involving fish food and ice cream scoops…
Before we begin, credit where it’s due. This list would not have been possible without the lists already compiled by Sharyl Attkisson, Glenn Greenwald, and Sohrab Ahmari.
Michael Cohen went to Prague.
Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie, and Mueller has emails proving it.
Paul Manafort passed polling information to Kremlin.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein forced out.
Federal investigators wiretapped Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen, have recordings of Trump.
Phony Russia dossier was initially funded by Republican group.
Donald Trump directed Flynn to make contact with Russian officials during the 2016 presidential campaign
Russian social media company provided documents to Senate about communications with Trump official.
- CNN:
Donald Trump Jr. conspired with WikiLeaks.
Robert Mueller subpoenaed Trump’s Deutsche Bank records.
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort worked with Russia intelligence-connected official as late as December 2017.
Trump Deputy National Security adviser K.T. McFarland lied about another official’s contacts with Russians.
- CNN:
Trump’s campaign was never wiretapped.
Manafort notes from Russian meeting refer to political contributions.
Seventeen intelligence agencies concur Russia hacked the 2016 presidential race.
- CNN:
Congress investigating Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials.
Former FBI Director James Comey says Attorney General Jeff Sessions told him not to call Russia probe an investigation but “a matter.”
- CNN:
James Comey will testify he never told Trump he was not under investigation.
Putin admits he has compromising information about Trump.
Trump fired Comey after Comey asked for additional resources for the Russia investigation.
Numerous contacts between Trump campaign staff and “senior Russian intelligence officials.”
Among others, a Trump family member will be indicted on February 8.
Paul Manafort visited WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange on three occasions.
Trump campaign changed GOP platform on Ukraine.
Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Michael Cohen really did visit Prague.
- CNN:
Trump is lying when he calls Russia dossier “phony.”
RT had hacked into and taken over C-SPAN and C-SPAN “confirmed” it had been hacked.
Russia’s hacked the election systems of 21 American states.
Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont.
“More than 200 websites” were “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season.”
Russia is the main suspect in the sonic attacks that sickened 26 U.S. diplomats.
Trump created a secret Internet server to covertly communicate with a Russian bank.
- CNN:
Donald Trump knew in advance of the Trump Tower meeting.
- CNN:
Mueller Report will show Trump “has helped” Putin “destabilize” the United States.
- NBC:
Russia supports Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI).
-
- CNN:
Sessions failed to disclose meetings he had with the Russian ambassador.
“There’s actually lots of evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.”
Trump revealed classified information to Russians.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said Russia paid Trump.
Mueller can show Trump campaign “had a connection to Russian intelligence.”
“Rudy Giuliani just told America that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia.”
Evidence suggests Trump could be a Russian “asset.”
- NBC:
Russians began hacking Hillary Clinton’s emails on the day Donald Trump joked about it in July 2016.
Russia spy visited Trump’s Oval Office.
- CNN:
Phony Russia dossier has been “corroborated.”
- NPR:
Donald Trump Jr. lied under oath about Trump Tower deal in Moscow.
Russia successfully hacked voting systems in a number of states.
- CNN:
Trump is “bonkers” for claiming Hillary Clinton behind Russia dossier.
- CNN:
“Every intelligence expert, both under the Obama administration and under the Trump administration,” agrees with the assessment that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
- BBC:
Ukrainian president “authorized” an illegal payment of $400,000 to Michael Cohen for additional face time during a June 2017 meeting with President Trump.
Mueller was supposed to be the Democrats’ savior, but now they’re out for blood
By Danielle Ryan
The Mueller report’s finally dropped and instead of being relieved to discover, once and for all, that the president didn’t collude with a foreign power to steal an election, Democrats and media pundits are absolutely devastated.
This is America in the era of Russiagate.
The partly-redacted, nearly 400-page report, delivered to Congress on Thursday afternoon, offered no new evidence or indication that Donald Trump or his 2016 campaign were in cahoots with Moscow to prevent Hillary Clinton from ascending to what Democrats believed was her rightful presidential throne.
Of course, their high expectations for the report had already come crashing down when Mueller wrapped up his investigation mid-March and Attorney General Bob Barr sent a four-page letter summarizing its anti-climactic findings to Congress. No evidence of collusion, it said.
The opposition party and the media’s most ardent Russiagate pushers had been moving the goalposts on “collusion” for months. In the earliest days of the two-year investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was given savior status; he would be the one, they said, who would deliver them from the evil of the Trump presidency. “Wait for the Mueller report!”they had screamed, as the weeks and months dragged on with “bombshell” after “bombshell” evaporating into thin air.
“Wait for the Mueller report!” quickly morphed into “Barr must be lying — wait for the full Mueller report!”
But Barr hammered the final nail into the Russiagate coffin on Thursday as he emphatically reiterated during a pre-release press conference that evidence to support theories of collusion did not exist and that all Americans should be “grateful” to hear that news. They were not grateful, though. In fact, they were acutely distressed by the news that Trump had been telling the truth about “no collusion” all along.
On the question of whether Trump had obstructed the investigation, Mueller’s report offered Russiagaters slightly more hope, in that it did not make a final determination and suggested that congress has the authority to take action in that regard.
But Barr enraged reporters by arguing it was necessary to take “context” into consideration when assessing potential obstruction. He said Trump faced an “unprecedented situation,” “relentless” media speculation and held a “sincere belief”that the investigation was “undermining his presidency.”
He also noted that Trump “took no act” that deprived Mueller of documents necessary to conduct the investigation and said he believed there had been no “corrupt intent” to hamper it. Not only that, but Barr also told shell-shocked reporters that Trump had not exerted executive privilege over parts of the report (as he legally could have done), “in the interests of transparency.”
Russiagaters masked their disappointment by trying, in endless formations, to spin the situation into a vindication of their theories; ‘Barr is lying for Trump!’ ‘Maybe Mueller was in on it?’ ‘He didn’t investigate the right things!’ ‘It wasn’t about collusion, it was about obstruction!’ – and the most pathetic of all attempts: ‘It doesn’t matter anyway, we know in our hearts collusion is real!’
The fact that the report was partly redacted (“standard for prosecutors handling sensitive information,” as the New York Times put it), triggered yet another meltdown from Democrats and Russiagate media stalwarts in advance of its publication. Casual observers of this seemingly never-ending saga might have been led to believe the report would be redacted beyond all comprehension. Indeed, it appears as though that’s what Russiagate truthers would have preferred. The more redactions, the bigger the scope for new conspiracy theories to emerge. Sadly for them, Barr also said an almost completely unredacted version would soon be made available to a bipartisan group in congress.
In a sign of just how desperate they had become, Democrats also spiralled into a total frenzy on Wednesday upon hearing that the aforementioned press conference would be held before the report was handed over to Congress. They genuinely seemed to believe that Barr might stand in front of the entire news media and lie about the contents of a document he was about to post publicly online a couple of hours later.
Why did it matter that he held a press conference summarizing its findings before the release? It didn’t matter, of course, but it was something to cling to. Remember, the Democrats and the media spent two years convincing Americans that Trump and members of his family were going to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the White House in handcuffs – so, at this point, they’ll latch on to anything.
Focus will now shift to Mueller’s expected testimony before Congress, which is due to happen no later than May 23 – and some are still holding out hope that the investigator will pull through at the last minute and say or do something to rehabilitate the entire narrative.
Journalist Aaron Mate, who has painstakingly covered the Russiagate drama, noted on Twitter that Mueller at times used “suggestive wording” in his report while simultaneously acknowledging that no evidence of collusion actually exists. This is likely what Democrats will be watching for during his testimony; any shred of doubt or uncertainty from Mueller on even the tiniest of details.
At the end of the day, however, the fact will remain that Mueller overturned every Russiagate rock and did not charge or arrest even one American for conspiring or colluding with Moscow, despite issuing more than 2,800 subpoenas, 500-plus search warrants and interviewing about 500 witnesses in excruciating detail.
But Russiagate was really always about Democrats and their inability to accept two basic truths: Hillary Clinton lost the election because she ran a terrible campaign – and because of the abject failure of the US political system to deliver basic changes that Americans want and need. Trump offered them hope, however false, of something new – and he won. There is no bigger mystery.
But the cries of “collusion!” will continue for months, if not years, and the media will meticulously pick apart the pages of the Mueller report for weeks, hoping to land on something that can credibly carry the conspiracy forward – and as they do so, they will be handing Trump a great gift going into the 2020 election.
Years from now, when Trump is hosting some post-presidency reality TV show or living out the rest of his days at Mar-a-Lago (rather than in a prison cell), Rachel Maddow will probably still be ruminating over the finer details of the investigation and inviting the most discredited analysts onto her nutty show to help figure out how it all went wrong. Luke Harding is likely gearing up to write a sequel to his “COLLUSION” best-seller as we speak. Maybe he can call the next one“COVERUP” and profit off Russiagate for another two years.
The elaborate and demented conspiracies of Russiagate could fill a library, but the strangest thing of all about this saga might just be how much they fiercely wanted it to be true.
CNN DISCUSSES MUELLER REPORT WITH 8 PEOPLE WHO ALL COMPLETELY AGREE WITH EACH OTHER
Anti-Trump network goes into meltdown after Barr confirms no collusion
APRIL 18, 2019
Will they ever learn?
CNN is responding to the release of the redacted Mueller report with a panel consisting of eight people who all completely agree with each other.
Because there’s nothing like diversity of opinion!
“CNN has 8 people talking about this & they all vehemently agree with one another on every last thing,” tweeted journalist Glenn Greenwald. “This has been a major part of the problem from the start. All humans are more likely to err or worse if they are insulated from challenge or dissent. It’s inherently corrupting.”
“I’ve honestly never seen the type of media meltdown that I’m seeing on CNN. They are so emotionally invested in the storyline that they’ve been pushing for 2+ years and they know what Mueller did to it and how this will forever reflect on them,” he added.
CNN’s credibility is in meltdown following US attorney general William Barr’s confirmation that no one connected to the Trump campaign, and no American whatsoever, colluded with Russia to interfere in the presidential election.
Remember, this is the same media which routinely lobbies Big Tech to deplatform people for “fake news” yet just spent the last 2+ years peddling the biggest piece of fake news in modern political history.
Now watch the best bit from Barr’s press conference when he completely owned a journalist.
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