Tag: HUNGARY

Hungary PM: Europe “Doomed to Fail” If it Follows Liberal Media

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Without its nations, Europe would lose its spiritual and cultural identity, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said, addressing a European People’s Party (EPP) congress in Helsinki on Thursday.

“Europe will either be a Europe of nations or it will cease to exist,” Orban told the congress ahead of a vote on the lead candidate for the post of European Commission president. The “accession of central European nations have made Europe more peaceful, stronger and richer,” he said. The continent’s strength has always been based on strong nations, he said.

Orban accused the liberals, socialists and greens of wanting a rootless Europe devoid of its spiritual and psychological identity. “Our vision is a Europe with 27 faces, one that is Christian and democratic simultaneously,” he said.

Orban called the EPP “a party of victors” which preferred keeping its feet on the ground rather than championing world-redeeming ideologies. “By now, however, the situation has changed,” he said. Over the past few years, the EPP has given the leadership of Europe, so it has to take responsibility for “failure to keep Britain in the union and the migrants outside it.” While in 2011, sixteen member states were governed by EPP parties, now that number is down to six, he said. “No wonder our confidence has been shaken.”

“To return to the path to victory,” the EPP should restore its unity, find its roots again and proclaim the “renaissance of Christian democracy”, the prime minister said. “Absurdities like praising Fidel Castro or Karl Marx should be forgotten,” he added.

Orban warned that the EPP should not heed its adversaries and should not accept the standards of the left and the liberal media, he said. “If we try to live up to their expectations, we are doomed to fail,” he said.

The prime minister emphasized that the EPP should appreciate its successes. “Those who do not value their victors deserve failure,” he said. As the European elections are won in the member states, “the EPP as a victors’ party needs victorious prime ministers,” he said.
The key to success is to take the side of the people, Orban said. “Let’s protect them from illegal migration, terrorism, crime and economic hardship,” he said. “Let us once again put the old slogan on the banner: [a government] of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Orban said that ruling Fidesz backed Manfred Weber, EPP’s incumbent parliamentary leader, as lead candidate for EC president. He thanked Weber for visiting Hungary during its election campaign earlier this year. “We respect you as a man who knows when it is time for controversy and when for unity,”he said.

Orban noted that Friday will be the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. “We, the states thrown into the claws of the Soviet Union . knew that we can only regain our freedom in a united Europe,” he said. The Fidesz party was born in the fight for that reunification, in 1988, and invited to the European People’s Party by German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, “who understood that members of a family are always united, even if they disagree,” Orban said.

You can read this article as it originally appeared at Hungary Journal here.

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Trump signs order denying asylum to illegal migrants, as caravan approaches US

Trump signs order denying asylum to illegal migrants, as caravan approaches US

President Trump has signed an immigration order requiring asylum seekers to make their claim at their point of entry to the US, and barring illegal immigrants from requesting asylum.

“We need people in our country but they have to come in legally and they have to have merit,” Trump told reporters on Friday, before departing for Paris.

The order comes after weeks of Trump promising to crack down on illegal immigration, as a caravan of several thousand migrants makes its way toward the US’ southern border from Central America. The caravan is currently around 600 miles from the United States.

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The directive is a temporary measure, and circumvents current laws that state anyone who applies for asylum in the US is eligible to have their case heard, no matter whether they arrived legally or illegally. As such, it is likely to be challenged in federal courts.

Those denied asylum under the new order will still be able to apply for ‘withholding of removal’ – a limited form of asylum that doesn’t allow for green cards or family members to join the applicant; or asylum under the United Nations Convention Against Torture. In both cases, the applicant has to demostrate a credible threat if they were to return home.

It forms one part of the president’s latest efforts to tighten border security and clamp down on immigration. Before the midterm elections, Trump mulled ending birthright citizenship – the policy that ensures all children born on US soil are automatically citizens – by executive order.

“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits,” Trump told Axios. “It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end.”

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US militia patrolling the Mexico border in TexasIs there really a ‘militia caravan’ traveling south to protect US border from marching migrants?

Any executive order ending birthright citizenship would likely provoke a Constitutional debate and be challenged in the Supreme Court, as birthright citizenship is currently guaranteed under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.

In addition to policy changes, Trump has also beefed up the physical security of the US’ 2,000-mile border with Mexico.

Over 5,200 US troops have been sent to the border to erect razor-wire fences and provide surveillance and logistical support to the National Guardsmen and Customs and Border Patrol agents already there.

The president said last week that “anywhere between 10,000 and 15,000 military personnel” may be deployed to the border, if the current contingent is not enough.

Trump also underscored that anyone who does cross the US border illegally will be detained in “tent cities” and other immigration detention facilities, as “we’re not doing releases” anymore. Trump has been a long time critic of the Obama administration’s ‘catch and release’ policy, under which apprehended immigrants would be released and asked to return for a court hearing at a later date. Unsurprisingly, many do not.

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ITALY: Afghan Migrant Beat Baby Daughter, Tortured Wife – Because He Wanted a Son

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By Dan Lyman

An Italian court has convicted an Afghan migrant of a variety of crimes stemming from extensive physical abuse inflicted upon his newborn daughter and wife, local media reports.

“He wanted a boy but fate brought him a baby girl, and he decided to beat his newborn daughter and kick, punch and strangle his wife, whom he married in Pakistan when she was 15-years-old,” Leggo reports.

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The 30-year-old Afghan has received an “abbreviated” sentence of three years, eight months in prison.

The man slapped his baby daughter on multiple occasions because she wasn’t a boy, according to court filings.

“Several times, he threatened his wife by saying, ‘If you call the police I kill you,’ and ‘I throw you off the balcony,’ and even in the presence of the younger daughter, beat her with kicks and punches, with the battery charger and with a strap of a purse, and several times forced her not to look up from the ground.”

He also injured his wife with a knife, and forcibly raped her on at least three occasions, according to the court.

Additionally, he was convicted of kidnapping, as he had locked his wife in the house on multiple occasions to prevent her from leaving.

The story was shared on Twitter by Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who wrote, “Monstrous. No integration for those in 2018 who mistreat and humiliate women and children. #ZeroTolerance”

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The woman and her daughter are now living in a shelter community.

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FACEBOOK DELIVERS FOR DEMOCRATS: Erased 2 Billion GOP Page Views in Purge, Eliminated Conservative Content to Suburban Females

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By Jim Hoft

“What big tech has done to conservative and other undesirable publishers is nothing short of a digital Kristallnacht.”
— Andrew Marchs, filmmaker

On Tuesday night, after the votes were counted, Democrats took control of the US House of Representatives.

Wealthy suburban voters and women are being credited for the win.

At least 35 Republican lawmakers lost their seats on Tuesday night.

Democrats have a huge advantage over Republicans with their partners in the media complex, Hollywood, and academia.

And, unlike 2016, this year Democrats can also can give a huge amount of credit to Tech giants Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Suburban voters and women no longer were reading conservative articles on Facebook.  Facebook eliminated at least 1.5 billion links to conservative articles since 2017.  If you add additional websites like The Gateway Pundit, Infowars, Young Cons, Right Wing News, etc. the number tops 2 billion easy.  And it likely made a difference on Tuesday night.  80% of women age 18-49 have Facebook accounts.  These are the women who get their news from Facebook.  Facebook knows this and eliminated conservative content on their platform so their would be no repeat of 2016.

It’s no secret that the Silicon Valley tech giants discriminate against conservatives and conservative content.

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In August President Trump warned Google about it’s biased practices against conservatives and conservative content in their search feature.

Facebook has been shutting down traffic to conservative websites since the 2016 election.

The Gateway Pundit recently spoke with two of the top conservative publishers in America.

Floyd Brown is a conservative author, speaker and media commentator. In 2008 Floyd launched Western Journalwhich quickly became one of the top conservative websites in America. By 2016 Floyd’s organization of Western Journal and other conservative websites under his umbrella had more than a billion page views. Since 2016 Floyd’s organization lost 75% of its Facebook traffic.

Likewise, we spoke with Jared Vallorani from Klicked Media. Jared traveled to Washington DC with The Gateway Pundit and website owners at 100%FedUp in June to discuss Facebook targeting against conservative publishers with Republican lawmakers. Jared told The Gateway Pundit his organization Klicked Media, which hosts over 60 conservative websites, lost 400 million page views from Facebook in the last six months if you compare the traffic to a year ago.  Jared said, “We lost 70% to 80% of our traffic if you compare January to May 2017 vs Jan to May 2018.”

If you combine the total number of page-views lost by just these two conservative online publishers you are looking at a loss of over 1.5 billion page-views from Facebook in one year.

These are numbers from just two of the top conservative publishers in America.  This does not include the thousands of other conservative publishers across the country who lost all of their traffic coming from Facebook.  Here at The Gateway Pundit our Facebook traffic has been effectively eliminated after we were ranked as the 4th most influential conservative publisher in the 2016 election.

The fact that Facebook is targeting conservative publishers should not be a surprise to Gateway Pundit readers.

We have been reporting on this for several months now. In July we released a study where we looked at several top conservative websites and discovered that the publishers had lost an average of 93% of their Facebook traffic.

This is a bloodbath.  Facebook has wiped out conservative content to American subscribers.

This influence map below by Columbia Journalism Review shows the top influencers during the 2016 election.

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And here is that same map showing the conservative publishers who have been targeted by Facebook since 2017.

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Facebook has eliminated content from a vast majority of top conservative publishers since 2017.

In 2016 suburban voters and women would check their Facebook pages and get conservative news.  That is no longer the case.  And on Tuesday these voters chose Democrats.

Facebook has wiped out conservative publishers. Americans will no longer see articles from conservative websites even if you follow them. Facebook took advertising dollars from all of these businesses and then changed their business plan after the 2016 election.

Facebook wants to pretend this was not a political decision. Yet, several top liberal activist groups: Media Matters, Share Blue, CREW and American Bridge, made it a priority in early 2017 to work with the liberal tech giants to undermine President Trump and ensure that liberals gain control of Congress and the presidency in 2020.

The tech giants did just that.

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DEMOCRAT RASHIDA TLAIB DANCES WITH PALESTINIAN FLAG AT VICTORY PARTY

Democrat Rashida Tlaib Dances with Palestinian Flag at Victory Party

Tlaib is one of two Muslim women elected to Congress on Tuesday

By Joel B. Pollak

Democrat Rashida Tlaib danced wearing the Palestinian flag at a victory party in Tuesday evening, after she won a largely uncontested race for the open seat in Michigan’s heavily Democratic 13th congressional district.

Tlaib is one of two Muslim women elected to Congress on Tuesday, along with Ilhan Omar, who replaced outgoing Rep. Keith Ellison in Minnesota’s 5th congressional district. Ellison was the first Muslim elected to Congress. Both Tlaib and Omar have extreme anti-Israelviews. Tlaib is the first Palestinian-American elected to Congress.

In the video, Tlaib delivered a victory speech in which she acknowledged her family watching from abroad in the Palestinian Authority-administered West Bank. She dedicated her victory, in part, to the Palestinian cause: “A lot of my strength comes from being Palestinian,” she said.

After Tlaib won her primary race in August, she published several anti-Israel tweets, and re-tweeted a fan who declared that Tlaib’s “first fight was for Palestine, always Palestine.”

Tlaib explicitly supports the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel and its replacement of a unitary Palestinian state. That position caused her to lose the endorsement of the far-left group J Street — which, while often adopting anti-Israel positions, nominally supports a two-state solution.

One other Palestinian-American was on the ballot on Tuesday: Ammar Campa-Najjar, the grandson of a Palestinian terrorist who was Yasser Arafat’s deputy and was involved in the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, lost in California’s 50th congressional district.

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VIDEO: LEFTIST REPORTERS OPENLY CALL TRUMP A RACIST TO HIS FACE

Video: Leftist Reporters Openly Call Trump A Racist To His Face

White House press conferences are out of control

Steve Watson | Infowars.com – NOVEMBER 8, 2018

White House press conferences are out of control, owing to the fact that leftist “reporters” are using them as a way of pushing their flagrant bias and anti-Trump agendas.

In the same conference that garnered headlines Wednesday for CNN’s Jim Acosta pushing a female aide around in order to continue arguing with the President, two other “journalists” essentially called Trump a racist to his face.

Both individuals posed their insults as questions, essentially saying ‘A lot of people say you are a racist, there is evidence to suggest you are a racist, are you a racist?’

Take a look below:

PBS reporter Yamiche Alcindor firstly accused President Trump of being the leader of the White Nationalist party.

Trump hit back with the response “Why do I have the highest numbers with African Americans… You’re a racist.”

Secondly another reporter with Yahoo News just outright asked Trump ‘have you ever used racist remarks?’

“No. I would never do that, and I don’t use racist remarks and, you know what? If I did, you people, you would have known about it,” Trump responded.

“I’ve been hearing there are tapes for years and years,” Trump said. “Number one, I never worried about it because I never did. I never used racist remarks. I have never used racist remarks.” the President added.

The Yahoo reporter wouldn’t let up and kept yelling into the mic about a “point of fact” that Trump’s poll numbers with black voters are not high, despite a Rasmussen poll showing a 40% approval rating among black respondents.

“When you talk about division, it’s people like this that cause division, great division,” Trump said, adding, “Point of fact is that I never used a racist remark. That’s the point of fact.”

Earlier in the conference, the same Yahoo reporter pestered the President about his tax returns. A dead horse that anti-Trumpers have been kicking for over two years, and refuse to relent on.

These people are following a blatant anti-Trump agenda, unsurprising given that almost everything on the networks they work for constitutes a constant effort to attack the President and claim he is a racist.

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DC Antifa Dox Home Addresses Of Tucker Carlson & His Brother, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity & Neil Patel

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By Chris Menahan

Hours after Antifa filmed themselves threatening Tucker Carlson at his home in DC on Wednesday night, DC Antifa doxed the home addresses of Tucker Carlson, his brother Buckley Carlson, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and The Daily Caller’s Neil Patel on Twitter.

The Gateway Pundit first broke the story and shared this photo of the dox:

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The account, “ShutItDownDC,” has almost 4,000 followers and is still active on Twitter.

They deleted that first dox and then posted another, which I captured above, around 40 minutes later. They also deleted the second dox, perhaps to avoid being reported.

The tweet linked to a post on Pastebin with what is allegedly all their home addresses. The Pastebin post is still active.

They followed it up with these threatening tweets:

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The antifa group “Smash Racism DC,” which they appear to be affiliated with, organized outside of Tucker Carlson’s home in Washington DC and threatened him saying, “we know where you sleep at night!”

After widespread outrage the tweets were deleted but their Twitter account with nearly 10,000 followers is still up.

The same group harassed Ted Cruz and his wife at a restaurant in DC in September and doxed Gavin McInnes by sharing his phone number and telling their followers to call him and “tell him you love white genocide.”

As a reminder, Alex Jones was banned from Twitter for “harassing” a CNN “journalist” by making fun of him at a public hearing on censorship.

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Police Met With “Irate, Irrational” SoCal Mass-Shooter In April, “Didn’t Feel He Warranted Psych Hold”

By Tyler Durden

Update 3: More details have emerged about the shooter, 28-year-old Ian David Long, who opened fire at let off at least 30 shots from a Glock with an extended magazine. Long, a former-marine, was dressed in all black during the shooting and eventually turned the gun on himself after police officers arrived. 

Police say they have “had several contacts with Mr. Long over the years for minor offenses.”

He was a victim of assault and battery in a bar in 2015. The police then confirmed that in April of this year, officers were called to Long’s house: “officers went to his house, he was somewhat irate, acting a little irrationally.”

The officers then called out their Crisis Intervention Team, “and mental health specialists who met with him, talked to him, and cleared him, didn’t feel he was qualified to be taken under 5150.”

As a reminder, 5150 refers to the California law code for the temporary, involuntary psychiatric commitment of individuals who present a danger to themselves or others due to signs of mental illness. It has been more generally applied to people who are considered threateningly unstable or “crazy.”

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Update 2: A man interviewed by the local ABC station said that multiple friends inside Borderline had survived the Route 91 country music festival shooting at the Mandalay Bay casino in Las Vegas just over a year ago.

“A lot of my friends survived Route 91,” he said. “If they survived that, they will survive this.”

The Las Vegas massacre was the deadliest shooting in US history after gunman Stephen Paddock opened fire on a crowd, killing 58.

Ron Helus, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. killed in the gunfire was set to reitre next year. He is survived by his wife and son.

“Ron was a hardworking, dedicated sheriff’s sergeant. He was totally committed, he gave his all and tonight, as I told his wife, he died a hero. He went in to save lives, to save other people,” said Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean.

Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ron Helus. (credit: CBS)

Update 1: The suspect has been identified as 29-year-old veteran and former Marine David Ian Long, according to ABC. 

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As we detailed earlier, at least 13 people, including a sheriff’s deputy and the suspected shooter, have been killed, while multiple others were injured during a shooting at the country western dance hall Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, Calif. The bar was holding a “College Country” night event when the shooter reportedly stormed the entrance, per NBC News.

Media reports claimed hundreds of people were inside the venue at the time of the shooting, which began at around 11:30 pm local time.

Vox

Thousand Oaks is situated in Ventura County about 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

One witness interviewed by local TV station ABC7 said that the shooting started when the gunman approached the entrance to the bar, located at 99 Rolling Oaks Drive, and shot a security guard and cashier. He then lobbed a smoke bomb inside the building as he continued to fire into the crowd.

According to a local CBS affiliate station, witnesses described the suspected gunman as a man who was wearing a trench coat and had a scarf on his face, or possibly a beard. Another described him as being dressed in “all black.”

One survivor described how he threw a stool through a window and escaped during a lull in the shooting.

“We heard shots, I looked up and knew exactly what was happening. I tried to pull down as many people as I could,” he said. “As soon as we heard a break in the shooting we knew he was reloading and we threw a couple of bar stools through the closest to us so we could get out.”

He said the shooter entered and turned to the door counter and coat check area before eventually working his way to the bar.

“He didn’t say anything, at least not that we could hear,” Estron added. “Everyone was just trying to get out.”

The shooter, who has been identified as a male, was reportedly shot and killed by police inside the bar; no other details about him have been released.

Witnesses described hearing numerous loud gunshots ring out inside the club, which sent patrons scrambling for cover. Many got down on the floor.

“I just started hearing these big pops,” said the witness, a man who was not identified. “The gunman was throwing smoke grenades.”

Then, panic ensued as people tried to flee.

“He just kept firing,” the witness said, adding that “people were trying to get out the window” to run away from the gunman, who was wearing a hat and a black jacket and had “a big handgun.”

The shooting unfolded as patrons were in the middle of dancing, hanging out and having a good time.

“There were people in the middle dancing and just hanging out and having a good time and you hear that and you just know something’s up,” Erika Sigman said. “In this community, it’s very hard for me to comprehend it because I’ve been here all my life and to think that – I’ve never experienced it, I’ve just never experienced it.”

One couple told the CBS that their daughter had been wounded during the incident.

“She was probably on the [dance] floor when this was going on, because she comes here every Wednesday night,” the victim’s father said. “Things are a little sketchy – we don’t have a lot of information right now.”

Another witness who had been hanging out on the bar’s patio said another patron saved her.

“A guy who I don’t even know who had seen me there was like, ‘Get down.’ He threw me under one of the tables and then you couldn’t see anything because I guess there was smoke. And then one of the guys who was there started throwing tables out the window and they picked us up and they threw me and my girlfriend out the window. They carried us and then I reunited with my friends, and I was lucky to get out. I was only there for a good 10 minutes but I just – there’s like no words. Those are my people and it’s just not fair, it’s not fair,” she said.

Videos published to social media showed young people dressed for a fun night out crying and hugging one another outside the bar.

One woman shared her horror during an interview with the press and described how she heard the gunshots and saw the shooter throwing smoke bombs.

One young bar patron who spoke with the Washington Post said she heard four loud bangs then ducked for cover. She fled the bar after spotting an accessible exit.

Rochelle Hammons, 24, told The Post that she heard four shots before she was able to flee.

“All of a sudden we heard four shots, you know, ‘bang, bang, bang, bang.’ Everyone got down on the floor. Everyone ducked and covered each other,” she said. “As everyone crouched down on the floor, I figured that my only chance would be to run out to the nearest exit. I saw the nearest exit, and I ran out as fast as I could.”

From inside her car, she saw the first police officer arrive, she said. She rolled down her window and told him there was an active shooter inside.

“You gotta hurry, you gotta get in there,” she urged him.

During an early morning press conference, Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean described how police responded to the shooting after receiving multiple calls, and how California Highway Patrol officer Ron Helus, a 29-year-veteran looking to retire soon, confronted the shooter inside the bar before being shot, per NBC.

During an early morning press conference, Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean described how police responded to the shooting after receiving multiple calls, and how California Highway Patrol officer Ron Helus, a 29-year-veteran looking to retire soon, confronted the shooter inside the bar before being shot, per NBC.

“He went in to save lives,” Dean said, his voice cracking. “He went in to save other people.”

A bomb squad was combing through the scene after some reported smoke bombs going off during the gunfire.

Mitchel Hunter, 19, from Simi Valley, said he saw the gunman. He described him as having light skin with black hair. He said he had a short-barreled semi automatic pistol with a big magazine.

He said he emptied the magazine and reloaded.

“I saw him walk in,” Hunter said. “And he started shooting.”

Hunter said his friend, Tim Munson, 19, also from Simi Valley, was hospitalized.

Was there a link to terrorism? At this point, “we have no idea.”

“We have no idea if there is a terrorism link or not,” Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean told reporters outside the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Local police from Thousand Oaks and the surrounding towns have responded the incident, as have multiple federal agencies, including the FBI.

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MEDIA SIDES WITH ACOSTA AFTER PHYSICAL CONFRONTATION WITH FEMALE WHITE HOUSE STAFFER

Media Sides With Acosta After Physical Confrontation With Female White House Staffer

Imagine if the roles were reversed

 | Infowars.com – NOVEMBER 7, 2018

The establishment media instantly sided with CNN activist in chief Jim Acosta after he became involved in a brief physical confrontation with a female White House staffer during today’s Trump press conference.

Acosta once again tried to make himself the center of attention with a series of rants directed at Trump that were dressed up as questions.

When Trump attempted to move on, Acosta refused to give up the platform.

A female White House aide whose job it is to hand the microphone to journalists then walked up to Acosta in a bid to retrieve it.

Acosta clearly uses his left arm to physically resist/restrain the woman.

The two then engaged in a brief physical confrontation, with Acosta wrestling back control of the mic.

NBC News reported the incident as follows;

“White House aide grabs and tries to physically remove a microphone from CNN Correspondent Jim Acosta during a contentious exchange with President Trump at a news conference.”

“This doesn’t describe what happened properly at all. It was her job to move the mic to the next person and he wouldn’t surrender it,” responded John Podhoretz.

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Another ABC affiliate reported that the female staffer wrestled the microphone away from Acosta when he in fact overpowered her.

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“Will @CNNPR address @Acosta assaulting a young woman working for the White House, or will they just congratulate him for his “courage”?” asked the Daily Caller’s Derek Hunter.
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“There is more evidence Jim Acosta assaulted a women than Brett Kavanaugh,” quipped Jack Posobiec.
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Imagine this had happened under Obama with the journalist being a conservative. The media would have undoubtedly reported the man as the aggressor.

One wonders whether or not Acosta would have tried to wrestle this woman if she’d been more insistent in trying to retrieve the microphone.

And how would the media have reported that?

‘White House aide violently assaults brave superhero Jim Acosta for speaking truth to power’?

Watch the entire exchange between Trump and Acosta below.

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Midterm madness shows US media more divisive than the American people

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By Robert Bridge

As witnessed by the midterm elections, the US is cracking up along political and cultural lines. The mainstream media must accept a large part of the blame for this dangerous period of partisanship that only promises to worsen.

Ever since Donald Trump crashed the White House, the US media has dropped all pretensions of being a fair and impartial observer of the political scene. The gloves of objectiveness have come off and journalists now compete in the political ring as full combatants, as opposed to neutral ringside announcers reporting the action as it happens.

That much was proven on Monday, the day before midterms, when popular Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro appeared on stage with Trump at a political rally in the blood-red state of Missouri. This stunt unleashed the predictable howls of protest from sea to shining sea.

“By taking part in the rally, Mr. Hannity was crossing the line that had traditionally separated those in the news media… from the people they are supposed to cover,” The New York Times wailed. “Fox News entered new territory — a thicket in which it’s hard to tell where the network ends and the president begins.”

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Although it was surreal to see Hannity at a rally stumping for the Republicans (a move that Fox News said it did not condone, calling it an “unfortunate distraction”) it was not surprising given the guerrilla-style reporting that passes for journalism these days. Media partisanship has delivered a broadside to the US political system, and the fact that there are media trenches in the first place explains everything we need to know.

Even before Trump got elected, the mainstream media was priming its audiences to disavow the maverick from Manhattan. Did this have anything to with his promise to ‘drain the swamp’ known as Washington, DC? It is a very tantalizing explanation. Whatever the case may be, the left-leaning media organized and published stunningly flawedmedia polls predicting a landslide victory for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

As we now know, just the opposite transpired as Trump sailed to easy victory. The half-deranged disappointment felt by the Democrats was intensified by the unsubstantiated claim that Russia – not the American voter – was responsible for putting Trump into the Oval Office.

That fantastic media story, which can best be described as the conspiracy theory of the century (admittedly, the century is young), snowballed into an FBI investigation known as ‘Russiagate’. Entering its second year, this media-inflamed show trial – starring a colorful cast of porn stars and Ukraine-linked businessmen – has failed to produce a shred of evidence pointing to collaboration between Trump and the Kremlin. Yet the Mueller show grinds on, driving a wedge between Americans, while bringing relations with Russia to the boiling point. And lest we forget, while peddling the ‘Russia meddling’ smokescreen, the media was able to ignore the explosive claim that Hillary Clinton used her personal computer to send and receive top secret government emails, which was the real story all along.

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At this point, battle lines between the Trump administration and the mainstream media were drawn in the sand. The Republican leader, assaulted on a daily basis by every tentacle of America’s six-headed media monster, understandably began denigrating it as ‘fake news’. This led to some very intense press conferences, especially with CNN, which many on the right have come to call the ‘Clinton News Network’.

Although I admit the 45th president of the United States may have some character flaws, I fail to understand why the media has declared a permanent open season on this man. After all, like it or not, Trump won the election fair and square. And let’s give credit where credit is deserved: there are no wars (yet) on the horizon, while the economy, stupid, is roaring. Nevertheless, fair, balanced and objective news reporting has been jettisoned in favor of fantasy. This radical flight from fancy is at least partially responsible not only for the political psychosis that has attacked the nation’s frontal lobe, but for leading the country to the very doorstep of civil war.

In the not-so-distant past, the media could be counted upon to tame the more impulsive reactions of the electorate, blunting controversy with reasoned argument and substantiated reporting. Today, by comparison, it is the media that is responsible for inflaming the passions of the dual constituencies.

An ideal solution to this media mayhem, where the Republicans and Democrats both enjoy their own private propaganda services – is to let journalists from Fox News and CNN labor together inside of the same four walls. I only slightly jest. But think about it. Such a move would help encourage what is so missing today in the torched media landscape: the eradication of barriers and meeting the ‘enemy’ for face-to-face debate. Today, the media seems to be arguing for argument’s sake, not for the sake of promoting the public good.

The bifurcation of the mainstream media into two hostile camps exactly mirrors what is happening in society at large. This is no coincidence. Voters from both sides of the political aisle (the fact that there are only two political sides to choose from also greatly complicates the situation) have barricaded themselves inside of an electric moat known as ‘social media’, which is in reality anything but social. Each side hunkers down behind their Facebook and Twitter accounts, lobbing the occasional verbal grenade from inside their heavily defended echo chambers. The media is equally guilty of such behavior with all of the disastrous consequences we are experiencing today.

In such a sheltered and bitter world, there is no chance for honest conversation among the people nor the media. Political debate has been reduced to short and snarky 280-character ripostes, while the walls between the two camps continue to grow higher. Those inside the media world, where subjective passions must take a backseat to objective reporting, should have resisted the temptation to take sides in the political debate. Instead, they now finds themselves serving as mere pawns on one or the other side of the great game. The public can see through the ridiculous charade, which only damages the credibility of the mainstream legacy media.

This dangerous new development, where the media and the people are split into parallel universes or alternative realities, each clinging to their own false narratives, can only end in disaster for America’s great experiment in democracy.

@Robert_Bridge

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