PolitiFact Has Egg on Its Face

Here's a great piece, debunking the biggest fool in the debunking business. At the Washington Examiner, "PolitiFact retracts Wuhan lab theory ‘fact-check’" (via Memeorandum).

The Sovietization of the American Press

A great piece, from the surprisingly amazing Matt Taibbi, at his Substack page:

I collect Soviet newspapers. Years ago, I used to travel to Moscow’s Izmailovsky flea market every few weeks, hooking up with a dealer who crisscrossed the country digging up front pages from the Cold War era. I have Izvestia’s celebration of Gagarin’s flight, a Pravda account of a 1938 show trial, even an ancient copy of Ogonyek with Trotsky on the cover that someone must have taken a risk to keep.

These relics, with dramatic block fonts and red highlights, are cool pieces of history. Not so cool: the writing! Soviet newspapers were wrought with such anvil shamelessness that it’s difficult to imagine anyone ever read them without laughing. A good Soviet could write almost any Pravda headline in advance. What else but “A Mighty Demonstration of the Union of the Party and the People” fit the day after Supreme Soviet elections? What news could come from the Spanish civil war but “Success of the Republican Fleet?” Who could earn an obit headline but a “Faithful Son of the Party”?

Reality in Soviet news was 100% binary, with all people either heroes or villains, and the villains all in league with one another (an SR was no better than a fascist or a “Right-Trotskyite Bandit,” a kind of proto-horseshoe theory). Other ideas were not represented, except to be attacked and deconstructed. Also, since anything good was all good, politicians were not described as people at all but paragons of limitless virtue — 95% of most issues of Pravda or Izvestia were just names of party leaders surrounded by lists of applause-words, like “glittering,” “full-hearted,” “wise,” “mighty,” “courageous,” “in complete moral-political union with the people,” etc.

Some of the headlines in the U.S. press lately sound suspiciously like this kind of work:

— Biden stimulus showers money on Americans, sharply cutting poverty

— Champion of the middle class comes to the aid of the poor

— Biden's historic victory for America

The most Soviet of the recent efforts didn’t have a classically Soviet headline. “Comedians are struggling to parody Biden. Let’s hope this doesn’t last,” read the Washington Post opinion piece by Richard Zoglin, arguing that Biden is the first president in generations who might be “impervious to impressionists.” Zoglin contended Biden is “impregnable” to parody, his voice being too “devoid of obvious quirks,” his manner too “muted and self-effacing” to offer comedians much to work with. He was talking about this person:

Forget that the “impregnable to parody” pol spent the last campaign year jamming fingers in the sternums of voters, challenging them to pushup contests, calling them “lying dog-faced pony soldiers,” and forgetting what state he was in. Biden, on the day Zoglin ran his piece, couldn’t remember the name of his Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and referred to the Department of Defense as “that outfit over there”:

It doesn’t take much looking to find comedians like James Adomian and Anthony Atamaniuk ab-libbing riffs on Biden with ease. He checks almost every box as a comic subject, saying inappropriate things, engaging in wacky Inspector Clouseau-style physical stunts (like biting his wife’s finger), and switching back and forth between outbursts of splenetic certainty and total cluelessness. The parody doesn’t even have to be mean — you could make it endearing cluelessness. But to say nothing’s there to work with is bananas.

The first 50 days of Biden’s administration have been a surprise on multiple fronts. The breadth of his stimulus suggests a real change from the Obama years, while hints that this administration wants to pick a unionization fight with Amazon go against every tendency of Clintonian politics. But it’s hard to know what much of it means, because coverage of Biden increasingly resembles official press releases, often featuring embarrassing, Soviet-style contortions.

When Biden decided not to punish Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi on the grounds that the “cost” of “breaching the relationship with one of America’s key Arab allies” was too high, the New York Times headline read: “Biden Won’t Penalize Saudi Crown Prince Over Khashoggi’s Killing, Fearing Relations Breach.” When Donald Trump made the same calculation, saying he couldn’t cut ties because “the world is a very dangerous place” and “our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the paper joined most of the rest of the press corps in howling in outrage.

“In Extraordinary Statement, Trump Stands With Saudis Despite Khashoggi Killing.” was the Times headline, in a piece that said Trump’s decision was “a stark distillation of the Trump worldview: remorselessly transactional, heedless of the facts, determined to put America’s interests first, and founded on a theory of moral equivalence.” The paper noted, “Even Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill expressed revulsion.”

This week, in its “Crusader for the Poor” piece, the Times described Biden’s identical bin Salman decision as mere evidence that he remains “in the cautious middle” in his foreign policy. The paper previously had David Sanger dig up a quote from former Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross, who “applauded Mr. Biden for ‘trying to thread the needle here… This is the classic example of where you have to balance your values and your interests.’” It’s two opposite takes on exactly the same thing.

The old con of the Manufacturing Consent era of media was a phony show of bipartisanship. Legitimate opinion was depicted as a spectrum stretching all the way from “moderate” Democrats (often depicted as more correct on social issues) to “moderate” Republicans (whose views on the economy or war were often depicted as more realistic). That propaganda trick involved constantly narrowing the debate to a little slice of the Venn diagram between two established parties. Did we need to invade Iraq right away to stay safe, as Republicans contended, or should we wait until inspectors finished their work and then invade, as Democrats insisted?

The new, cleaved media landscape advances the same tiny intersection of elite opinion, except in the post-Trump era, that strip fits inside one party. Instead of appearing as props in a phony rendering of objectivity, Republicans in basically all non-Fox media have been moved off the legitimacy spectrum, and appear as foils only. Allowable opinion is now depicted stretching all the way from one brand of “moderate” Democrat to another...

Keep reading.

 

The Los Angeles Times Hails Biden as the New 'F.D.R.'; Meanwhile, 'China Joe' Lies About His Administration's Vaccine Rollout (VIDEO)

Again, you have to go to Duck Duck Go to find any decent conservative videos, especially for Tucker Carlson (and I don't know why Fox doesn't upload more of them, except to say, maybe they're afraid they'll lose even more audience share, despite Tucker's continuing killer ratings metrics). 

And if you missed it, you gotta watch Tucker's interview with Alex Berenson from Wednesday night, which was just amazing, "Tucker Carlson Tonight 2-10-21 Alex Berenson."

But don't miss it! The Los Angeles Times has found its new "New Dealer" in the 78-year-old mumbo-jumbo "China Joe."

See, "Biden’s early win on COVID-19 relief could be hard to repeat. Or he could be FDR":

WASHINGTON — President Biden’s first big legislative victory, the $1.9-trillion package he calls the American Rescue Plan, squeaked through an evenly divided Senate by the narrowest of margins, along party lines, foreshadowing the challenges ahead for his other priorities — on infrastructure, voting rights, immigration and climate change.

But the accomplishment — and the potential economic and public health impact of the wide-ranging relief program — could also mark a big step toward Biden fulfilling his Rooseveltian ambitions.

“This is going to be the biggest legislation affecting social and economic justice in decades, and it’s been achieved in the early days of an administration,” said Bob Shrum, a longtime Democratic operative.

Building on this early success won’t be easy, given Democrats’ razor-thin Senate and House majorities and the nation’s deep partisan divisions. Few of the president’s other policy initiatives are likely to be as broadly popular as combating a painful year-old pandemic. But his first 50 days have given Democrats reason to believe that the experienced, grandfatherly Biden is well-suited to capitalize on the opportunities opened up by the confluence of twin health and economic crises and a divided, distracted opposition party.

“He’s been underestimated all along ... and then he pulled off the biggest popular vote defeat of an incumbent president since Herbert Hoover lost in 1932,” said Shrum. “Nobody would have predicted this, but Biden’s not on a path to being a transitional figure. He’s on a path to being a transformational figure.”

With Republicans failing to mount a blitz against him, Biden kept his focus on his pandemic response. He amped up vaccination efforts, mourned the more than 529,000 Americans killed by COVID-19, and built public support for his relief bill, much of which — direct payments, extended unemployment benefits, a child tax credit — is targeted toward the country’s neediest families.

The fact that not a single Republican voted for the package belied its broad popularity, which Biden said was critical for passage. In a poll released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, 70% of Americans surveyed said they supported the proposal, including 41% of Republicans. And Biden, set to deliver a prime-time address Thursday to mark one year since the country first locked down to limit the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID, continues to earn high marks for his response.

“He just seems like the right person at the right time, and this is a totally unprecedented time,” said Mack McLarty, President Clinton’s first chief of staff. “He’s very self-aware, and after being vice president and serving in the Senate, he’s at a different place in his life and career. He’s very secure in himself; he’s experienced loss and that’s shaped him.

“He’s been decisive and bold, but in a very statesmanlike manner,” McLarty continued. “So far, it’s been effective.”

Republican strategist Mike DuHaime said Biden benefits from the low bar Donald Trump set by his outlandish conduct as president.

“It’s a very basic level of competency and a lack of controversy,” DuHaime said of Biden. “Just by being boring, he is clearing the bar.”

Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher said Biden also benefits from “being an old white guy.”

Belcher, who is Black, added: “It’s hard for Republicans to scare middle-of-the-road Republicans about Joe Biden.... But he’s also someone minorities have rallied around. And that makes for a combination we don’t see very often in our politics.”

Biden and Democrats have been guided by hindsight and an oft-avowed determination not to repeat perceived mistakes from President Obama’s first year by going too small on a recovery package, waiting too long for Republican support, or failing to tout its benefits.

The example of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt has also been influential for Biden and his team. Chief of Staff Ron Klain and other senior aides made a point of studying FDR’s Depression-era presidency during the transition period, and Biden hung his portrait in the Oval Office.

But past experience is only so helpful.

“It’s good to learn from the past. It’s more important to recognize changed circumstances when you’re in the moment,” said Jennifer Palmieri, who was a communications director for Obama. “The Biden team, as much as they’re relying on their experience, they’re seeing and appreciating that they’re in uncharted territory.”

Many senior aides, Palmieri noted, are on their third tour of duty at the White House after serving Presidents Clinton and Obama.

“You learn to trust your instincts,” she said. “And you come to know that to some degree, you’re damned [politically] if you do and if you don’t. So it becomes: Position yourself to actually solve the problems.”

When Biden and his aides began sketching out a relief bill before the inauguration, they didn’t start with a price tag. “We spent weeks assessing and analyzing what more the federal government could do to meet this challenge more effectively, more aggressively and more forcefully,” said Biden counselor Steve Ricchetti. “The total number and nature of the package reflected that analysis. The president had assessed that this was what was needed to address the crisis.”

Biden never budged from the $1.9-trillion bottom line, arguing that Obama’s 2009 stimulus package suggested the greater risk was spending too little. Emboldened by two Senate victories on Jan. 5 in Georgia, where the Democratic candidates won after campaigning for larger relief payments, Biden also refused to reduce the $1,400 provided for most Americans in the bill.

Once the Georgia elections suddenly put Democrats in control of the Senate, they could use a procedural option for budget bills, known as reconciliation, to pass the measure with just 50 votes — without Republican support.

Biden, who spent 36 years in the Senate, leveraged his relationships with lawmakers in both parties. He was unsuccessful in cajoling moderate Republicans, but helped negotiate a last-minute compromise on unemployment benefits to secure the decisive 50th vote from centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia.

The victory unified a Democratic caucus that had been divided over parts of the bill, in particular over a minimum wage increase that was ultimately removed on procedural grounds...

I should say, I hope the authors of this piece, Eli Stokols and Chris Megerian, had an extra set of clothes handy, after obviously drooling all over themselves while writing-up this hasty hagiography. (*Eye-roll.*)

"Everybody today is talking about this Time magazine story by Molly Ball, which looks an awful lot like a secret plan to rig the election, but you're not allowed to say 'rigged' or 'stolen,' because if you do, you’re an 'extremist' and potentially a terrorist..."

 At great piece, at the Other McCain, "You Can’t Say ‘Rigged’":

One of the things you learn, if you spend as many years in the news business as I have, is that the news is not random. That is to say, the question of what stories will appear on the front page of the New York Times is not merely matter of what happened the day before, because all kinds of things happen every day, and there is only so much space on the front page of a paper. Actual choices have to be made, by human beings called “editors,” to determine what’s front-page news, what gets stuck back on Page A14, and what never gets reported at all.

The process of deciding what is “news” is not random, as I say, even though some events are of such unquestioned importance that they must be at the top of the front page. If you picked up any American newspaper on Sept. 12, 2001, this was rather obvious, but such historic events are rare, and on most days the question of what goes on A1 leaves a fair amount of leeway to the editors to make their own choices. There may be one or two stories of such unquestioned importance that they must be on the front page, but when it comes to the rest — Story 3, Story 4, Story 5, etc. — the editor’s have more room to exercise discretion.

Trust me, there is often a lot internal disagreement over such things. When I was at The Washington Times, some reporters would get very angry if a story they had pitched for A1 didn’t make the cut. It was generally the policy that A1 would have at least one Metro story, and on most days also there would be something from Sports or Features on the front page, so that out of a total of seven or eight front-page stories, the National desk would only get five or six. Well, if Bill Gertz had a story about the Chinese military that he felt deserved to be on A1, he’d get rather peeved — and understandably so — if his story was bumped back to Page A3 so that we could have, say, a feature about Georgetown University basketball on the front page. It happens.

Human beings make decisions about what counts as front-page news, and there is a certain amount of selectivity involved. You know who figured this out? Matt Drudge. The story is that when he was working as the overnight clerk at a 7-Eleven in the Maryland suburbs of D.C., he would read all the newspapers to pass the time in the wee hours when there were no customers. Reading the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Times, the New York Post, USA Today, etc., back-to-back every day for weeks on end, Drudge began to notice the different choices reflected in the content of the papers. From that insight sprang his subsequent approach to aggregating news at the Drudge Report (which, alas, he seems to have turned over to a gang of liberal dimwits in the past couple of years). Thanks to the Internet, all of us now have more access to different sources than was possible for most people back when Drudge was reading all those newspapers at 7-Eleven, so there is more widespread understanding of how media bias operates.

“Why is this story national news?”

That’s the question you have to ask, whenever a crime story makes it to CNN or to the network evening news broadcasts. Because America is a very large country, with more than 325 million people, the vast majority of crime in the United States is strictly “local news.” There were more than 16,000 murders in America in 2019, which works out to about 45 murder per day. How many of those murders even get mentioned on CNN? Not many. So when something like the Trayvon Martin shooting or the death of George Floyd becomes national news — hourly updates 24/7 on CNN — this means that a decision was made by someone. These stories didn’t just coincidentally become national news. On the day that George Floyd died, about 40 other Americans were shot to death, but none of those other deaths were deemed newsworthy by CNN...

Keep reading.

And at the American Spectator, "Why Is Identity Politics Destroying America?"

CNN's Big Trump Ratings Bubble Begins to Collapse

Anyone with a half-working brain could see this coming, and I've personally called out the "stupid" and "idiotic" hacks on the air constantly at CNN, especially the revolting Jack Tapper, who has been let loose by the Time-Warner higher-ups in Atlanta (or wherever) to spew non-stop lies and hate towards anything related to Trump, Trump's voters, the alleged "insurrection" on Capitol Hill, and on and on. It's actually sick. The dude needs to get some help, sheesh. 

Sad too, because I've always enjoyed watching the "Situation Room," with Wolf Blitzer, and even a pretty decent and fair-mined guy like him has been kowtowing to this fake outrage inflamed by lies. It's disgusting, to say the least.

And thinking about it, amid the network's ratings collapse, I've been posting Tucker Carlson videos, and just you watch, he'll soon again have the Number 1 rated prime-time cable show, in just a matter of days and weeks, if not very much longer. Regular people can't stomach non-stop hatred on the news shows all the time, so they're naturally gonna tune out. That's an obvious point the Einstein's at CNN have systematically avoided. 

At Red State:

In all fairness, this is one week into it, and short-term data is not always the most reliable. But, this dip was anticipated by most media observers, and it’s a large part of the reason networks are still so focused on Trump, his impeachment, and stories regarding the last days of his presidency. They are trying to keep that high going.

It’s also why they are laser-focused on politicians like Marjorie Taylor-Greene. Not because it’s abnormal for politicians to hold weird or controversial views, but because they want to tie those views to the larger Republican base. The Democratic Party is all-too-happy to take advantage and keep the spotlight on these issues, but at this point, they are all fairly moot.

CNN has been one of the biggest disappointments of this era. While CNN has always had a left-of-center lean, they had good folks on the air and several who genuinely tried to stay relatively balanced. But as the editorial edicts came down, it was clear that there was a marketing decision that was made to make everything as much about Trump as possible, and there was more than enough leeway given to otherwise balanced guys like Jake Tapper to absolutely let loose with all their biases. It has been tragic to see.

RTWT. 

An Emboldened Extremist Wing Flexes Its Power in a Leaderless G.O.P.

Pfft.

It's the Old Gray Lady, back up to her stupid, hypocritical tricks.

Because, you know, there is no "extremist wing" in the Democrat Party; oh no, A.OC. and "the Squad" don't count, because they're on NYT's side. Ditto for the Bernie Sanders "wing" in the upper chamber of Congress, most of whom are to the left of the Castro regime in Cuba.

But FWIW, which admittedly, isn't much, except that the newspaper's "screeds" do give us a glimpse into how privileged and stunningly un-self-aware are the "journalists" who write up all this agitprop for the country-club-socialists who live and die by every word published in that rag, and the same folks can't wait to get their marriage announcements into the paper's society pages (hello Jessica Valenti!). 

I read this crap so you don't have to: Have a look and judge for yourself, because that's exactly what the stupid, hypocritical "editors" at the paper DON'T expect you to do, but would rather have just tune out and burn out by avoiding their "mainstream news" and instead "radicalize yourself" on Fox News (which contrary to the most feverish of progressive dreams, is the only cable outlet right now actually reporting real news; and don't get me going about the "balanced" coverage we see daily at the corporate-big-tech-controlled CNN).

Here:

As more far-right Republicans take office and exercise power, party officials are promoting unity and neutrality rather than confronting dangerous messages and disinformation.

WASHINGTON — Knute Buehler, who led Oregon’s Republican ticket as the candidate for governor in 2018, watched with growing alarm in recent weeks as Republicans around the nation challenged the reliability of the presidential election results.

Then he watched the Jan. 6 siege at the United States Capitol in horror. And then, to his astonishment, Republican Party officials in his own state embraced the conspiracy theory that the attack was actually a left-wing “false flag” plot to frame Trump supporters.

The night after his party’s leadership passed a formal resolution promoting the false flag theory, Mr. Buehler cracked open a local microbrew and filed to change his registration from Republican to independent. “It was very painful,” he said.

His unhappy exit highlighted one facet of the upheaval now underway in the G.O.P.: It has become a leaderless party, with veterans like Mr. Buehler stepping away, luminaries like Senator Rob Portman of Ohio retiring, far-right extremists like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia building a brand on a web of dangerous conspiracy theories, and pro-Trump Republicans at war with other conservatives who want to look beyond the former president to the future.

With no dominant leader other than the deplatformed one-term president, a radical right movement that became emboldened under Mr. Trump has been maneuvering for more power, and ascending in different states and congressional districts. More moderate Republicans feel increasingly under attack, but so far have made little progress in galvanizing voters, donors or new recruits for office to push back against extremism.

Instead, in Arizona, the state Republican Party has brazenly punished dissent, formally censuring three of its own: Gov. Doug Ducey, former Senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, the widow of former Senator John McCain. The party cited their criticisms of Mr. Trump and their defenses of the state’s election process.

In Wyoming, Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, headlined a rally on Thursday to denounce Representative Liz Cheney for her vote to impeach Mr. Trump. Joining Mr. Gaetz by phone hookup was Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s son, who has been working to unseat Ms. Cheney and replace her with someone he believes better represents the views of her constituents — in other words, fealty to his father.

In Kentucky, grass-roots Republicans tried to push the state party to pass a resolution urging Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, to fully support Mr. Trump in next month’s impeachment trial. The effort failed.

And in Michigan, Meshawn Maddock, a Trump supporter who pushed false claims about voter fraud and organized buses of Republicans from the state to attend the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, is running unopposed to become the new co-chairman of the state party. While marching from the Ellipse to the Capitol on Jan. 6, Ms. Maddock praised the “most incredible crowd and sea of people I’ve ever worked with.”

Nothing is defining and dividing the G.O.P. more than loyalty to Mr. Trump and his false claims about the election.

“You’ve got 41 percent of the country, including a lot of independents, who think the election was stolen,” said Scott Reed, the former political director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a veteran Republican consultant. “That’s an amazing number. It takes months for a party that loses a national election to re-gel.”

There are still Republican officials who are responsible for the party’s political interests — but these people are under their own kinds of pressure, preaching unity to factions that have no desire to unite.

Perhaps the most prominent party official right now is Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee and a close ally of Mr. Trump’s. In an interview on Friday, she condemned the “false flag” resolution passed by Oregon Republicans and sounded exasperated at the public brawling in her party.

“If you have a family dispute, don’t go on ‘Jerry Springer,’” Ms. McDaniel said. “Do it behind closed doors. It’s my role to call them and explain that if we don’t keep our party united and focused on 2022, we will lose. If we are attacking fellow Republicans and cancel culture within our own party, it is not helpful to winning majorities.”

At the same time, Ms. McDaniel made clear that she was not going to impose top-down decision making on the party, noting that the role of the R.N.C. was to stay neutral in primaries. She said she planned to do so in the 2022 midterm elections, barring more extreme behavior emerging...

Still more at that top link, if you stomach can it, sheesh.

 

Jake Tapper Insinuates Rep. Josh Hawley as Anti-Semitic

This is something else.

Click through at the links and read all the tweets. Tapper got torched.

Here, "Facts First: CNN’s Jake Tapper Dishonestly Insinuated Josh Hawley Is An Anti-Semite And It Did Not Go Well."

Via Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "This is CNN."

Dennis Prager Featured at the Los Angeles Times

Prager's interviewed at the piece, so, despite the radical left's mass media agenda, I was still taken aback at how harsh the piece treated mainstream conservative views. Mind-boggling sometimes.

See, "How a Los Angeles-based conservative became one of the internet’s biggest sensations."

.@latimes' attack on @prageru indicates how crucial the platform is in this climate. Lib MSM bashes @DennisPrager for making case for God-based moral system but deems @Google restricting access to their videos unnewsworthy making no mention in the article. https://t.co/OYG2UE862E pic.twitter.com/XMF2EBnvHB

— Adam Milstein (@AdamMilstein) August 26, 2019

Dazed and Confused

Previously, "Mueller Tesimony: Dueling Circus Realities."

And at VodkaPundit, "Drunkblogging the Mueller Hearing."

Matt @DRUDGE has gone a little TDS lately, but this is on the money. pic.twitter.com/7lbzdmPHGy

— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) July 24, 2019

Mueller Tesimony: Dueling Circus Realities

The Mueller testimony is live right now, and I'm unimpressed.

Here's Politico, "Mueller refutes Trump’s ‘no collusion, no obstruction’ line."

Actually, this whole thing's a dud. Mueller claims he hadn't heard of Fusion GPS.

I just tuned in, though I'll post highlights this afternoon.

Meanwhile, at this morning's LAT, a pre-analysis, "Democrats and Republicans prepare for Mueller testimony, but with competing goals":

WASHINGTON —  As a senior Justice Department official and then FBI director for 12 years, Robert S. Mueller III carefully guarded his reputation as a straight shooter in the midst of political upheaval and partisan warfare.
His square-jawed, just-the-facts approach will be put to the ultimate test Wednesday when the former special counsel testifies for five hours in nationally televised House hearings about the Russia investigation, which examined Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election and President Trump’s attempts to shield himself from the probe.

Democrats and Republicans are plotting ways to transform his testimony — first to the House Judiciary Committee and then to the House Intelligence committee — into a series of politically charged sound bites they can use to attack or defend the president.

Democrats plan to steer Mueller toward the most damning parts of his final report, particularly incidents where Trump directed underlings to fire Mueller — none did so — or discourage witnesses from cooperating with the special counsel’s office.

The key question is whether Democrats can get Mueller to say point blank that Trump would have faced criminal charges if he weren’t the president, a declaration that would further blunt Trump’s false claims of full exoneration.

Republicans are expected to pursue a two-pronged approach. They’ll try to undermine Mueller’s credibility by suggesting his team was politically biased against Trump. They also want to highlight conclusions in the report that benefit the president, such as Mueller’s determination that he could not establish a criminal conspiracy between his campaign and Moscow.

Both Democrats and Republicans have at least one thing in common: They expect to face a reluctant witness with a history of terse, dry answers to overheated congressional questioning.

“I think he will be equally parsimonious with both sides,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

Mueller did not want to testify, telling reporters on May 29 that he would not go beyond the details contained in the 448-page report released six weeks earlier. But he agreed to appear on Capitol Hill after Democrats issued him a subpoena.

Jim Popkin, a spokesman for Mueller, said he’s preparing for the hearing with a small group of former officials from the special counsel’s office.

“This is someone who has prided himself over the years for very careful preparation. He will be extremely well prepared come Wednesday,” Popkin said Monday.

Mueller will make an opening statement and submit a redacted copy of his report for the record.

“I think it’s safe to say that on Wednesday he will stick to the four walls of the Mueller report as much as he can,” Popkin said.

In a Monday letter, the Justice Department told Mueller that his testimony “must remain within the boundaries of your public report” to avoid infringing upon executive privilege and other confidentiality requirements. The letter said Mueller had requested guidance from the department earlier this month, a suggestion that he may rely on it to avoid answering questions he wants to avoid.

Democrats have made no secret of their goals — they worry that Trump paid little price for pushing legal and political boundaries, and they’re concerned that voters struggled to digest the lengthy report.

“Not everybody will read the book, but people will watch the movie,” said a Democratic staff member on the Judiciary Committee, who requested anonymity to discuss preparations for the hearing...

E. Jean Carroll: Rape is 'Sexy' (VIDEO)

The Other McCain posted the other day, "The Worst #MeToo Smear Yet."

And at Althouse, "'Dean Baquet, [the NYT] executive editor, says 'we were overly cautious' in our handling of [E. Jean Carroll’s] allegations against the president'."

Plus, at the Washington Examiner, "Anderson Cooper cuts to commercial after Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll calls rape 'sexy'."

And the cringe-worthy interview on CNN:

“ I think most people think of rape as being sexy…” - E. Jean Carroll to Anderson Cooper

Cooper immediately cut to breakpic.twitter.com/OwN2QLFc6q

— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) June 25, 2019

The Making of a YouTube Radical

I was fascinated with this piece, even though it's a pathetic smear of conservatives. The New York Times was appropriately dragged for it.

.@PatriarchTree The New York Slimes smears “far-right” #YouTube personalities. 🙄 #YouTubePurge cc. @MichelleMalkin https://t.co/87jNXdKpP0

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 8, 2019

See also, the Daily Caller, "The New York Times Somehow Continues to Lose Even More Credibility."

And at Twitchy, "New York Times: The path to YouTube radicalization leads through economist Milton Friedman."

Democrats Crushed as Mueller Report Lands with a Thud

The big, big news yesterday.

I'm visiting my sister's house in Yucca Valley and she had on CNN all afternoon, so I watched for a while. I mean, even leftist Jeffrey Toobin says the report is a big victory for President Trump.

All the latest is a Memeorandum, "AG Barr aims to release Mueller report ‘top-line’ conclusions Saturday night, won't ‘parse words, play games,’ source says."

And at Tucker Carlson's show last night, the analysis from Laura Ingraham:

The Jussie Smollett #MAGA Attack Hoax

I've never heard of Jussie Smollett before this week, but as soon as I heard he was allegedly attacked by white suspects screaming "MAGA country," I totally blew it off as joke. And a joke it is.

See Michelle Malkin, "The MAGA-phobic manure-spreaders of media sensationalism":

Here we go again. If you think the manure-spreaders of sensationalism who masquerade as ethical practitioners of journalism learned anything from last week’s MAGA-bashing Covington Catholic High School hoax, I have three words for you:

Ha, ha, ha.

On Tuesday morning, uncorroborated claims by actor Jussie Smollett that he was the victim of a “brutal” hate crime by Trump supporters in Chicago went viral across social media. Entertainment rag TMZ.com first splashed “exclusive” headlines that the “Empire” cast member was “beaten by MAGA backers” in a “homophobic attack” at around 2a.m. in Chicago. If you have no idea what “Empire” is or who Smollett is, join the club. The TV star is apparently a vocal critic of Trump and attacked “45 and all his white hooded cohorts” on Instagram last week.

But I digress.

Within minutes, the gossip site’s squib on the TV star’s alleged victimization trended on Twitter and rocketed up to USA Today, Variety, CBS, CNN, and the New York Times. The Fishwrap of Record breathlessly reported lurid details of two people who “wrapped rope around his neck,” which multiple outlets characterized as a “noose.” A police statement providing incident background stated that “the offenders began to batter the victim with their hands about the face and poured an unknown chemical substance on the victim,” according to Smollett. Multiple websites reported that the substance was bleach.

This is truly horrible, if true. But color me cautious and skeptical. TMZ initially reported that Smollett had exited a Subway chain restaurant near his luxury apartment when accosted by the racist, homophobic assailants, who allegedly recognized him from his work on “Empire.” Allegedly, Smollett received a hate mail with the word “MAGA” on it addressed to him and sent to his studio in Chicago last week. If this was a premeditated “attack,” the FBI should get to the bottom of it.

But oddities and discrepancies abound:

TMZ quoted one of the “MAGA country” attackers who allegedly hurled epithets at Smollett: “Aren’t you that f***ot ‘Empire’ n*****?”

Question: How many racist, homophobic menaces wander around the upscale Streeterville neighborhood of liberal Chicago at 2 a.m. carrying rope and bleach, yelling about “MAGA country?”

Question: How many racist, homophobic menaces have ever heard of “Empire,” could recognize Jussie Smollett, or know or care anything about his sexuality?

Despite TMZ’s claim that Smollett had the “hell beat outta him” and attackers “broke his ribs” plus subjected him to a chemical attack, an ambulance was not called and he instead “self-transported” to the hospital. CWB Chicago, a local public safety watchdog site, reported on police dispatch records documenting that Smollett’s friend “Frank” refused EMS services for Smollett; no mention of bleach was made; “no or minor injury” was observed; and “officers never sent a ‘flash; message with offender descriptions to field units.”

Weird.

Another assertion not included in the CPD’s initial press release on the incident: Any mention of “MAGA supporters” or any mention of the race of the alleged assailants. Police clarified that they had not received any official information backing TMZ reporter Charles Latibeaudiere’s claim, which he attributed to sources close to Smollett, that the alleged attackers shouted, “This is MAGA country.”

Nor had the police corroborated that the attackers were white, since Smollett had told them their faces and hands were both covered. After launching a search for surveillance video and potential witnesses, the police department reported late Tuesday that “thus far we have not found anything to be able to put out a description.”

I was told that public records requests for the incident report may take “weeks” to be approved. I was also told the Chicago police remain in charge of investigating the alleged incident, while the FBI probe of the alleged hate mail remains separate.

CPD’s public information office also told me late Tuesday that when police responded to the 911 call regarding the incident, Smollett gave them no details about where it occurred or what the attackers looked like. None. They were reportedly on scene for an hour with Smollett. When I asked again how the claims about white “MAGA attackers” were disseminated in the press, the PIO replied:

“We have no idea where that came from.”

Minutes after I hung up the phone with her, a local Chicago reporter tweeted that Smollett did mention the “MAGA” angle in a “follow-up, supplemental interview.” Which is it?

Despite all the holes, contradictions, and unanswered questions, the MAGA hate crime narrative has already calcified. (Sound familiar?) By 5pm Eastern on Tuesday, a search for “MAGA” and “Smollett” on Google yielded 3,520,000 results. And TMZ ended its day of social justice pot-stirring with the Rev. Al Sharpton calling for President Trump to “denounce Jussie Smollett’s MAGA attackers” who have yet to be identified.

Classic manufactured “news:” Report on an uncorroborated hate crime. Plant unverified details. Repeatedly blame white male Trump supporters. Stoke Hollywood outrage. Enlist the Godfather of Hate Crime Hoaxes to call on the president to denounce phantom attackers. Reap clicks and publicity. Indict all skeptics as racists and haters. Repeat.

Smears first. Facts later. How much deader can American journalism get?

Also, at Instapundit, "SHIFTING STORIES CLOUD CLAIMS OF ALLEGED HATE CRIME ATTACK TARGETING EMPIRE ACTOR JUSSIE SMOLLETT: Read the whole thing, and whatever your conclusions, remember the 48 Hour Rule," and "WHAT’S THE FREQUENCY, JUSSIE?"

Chicago police say detectives have reviewed hundreds of hours of surveillance footage but haven’t found any yet that shows the alleged attack on “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett. https://t.co/zj2fs1MUyX

— AP Central U.S. (@APCentralRegion) January 30, 2019

U.S. Officials Cracking Down on Illegal Immigrants Using Fake Documents to Secure Legal Status

The U.S. is seizing documents of so-called "citizens" along the U.S.-Mexico border. It turns out that loads of illegals are claiming dual citizenship --- citizenship in Mexico, where they were born, and citizenship in the U.S. --- where they're using fraudulent papers to scam U.S. taxpayers and help Democrats win office.

The Other McCain has the story, "Fake News, Real Hate":

Fake News, Real Hate: https://t.co/kJoWUFvkyd via @PatriarchTree pic.twitter.com/PhGYbG1b2v

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) September 3, 2018

When President Trump attacks the liberal media as “fake news,” this is treated by the media as a threat to freedom of the press. However, it is the press itself which, by its deliberately one-sided partisan approach to news, is destroying its own credibility. The transparent biases of the media — e.g., CNN’s role as the “Clinton News Network” in 2016 — are not merely harmful to their own journalistic integrity; they are a threat to democracy itself. “Fake news” is bad for America.

Consider the case of a Washington Post article about efforts by U.S. immigration officials to prevent illegal entry into the country by those using fraudulent documents. This article by Kevin Sieff claims that “U.S. citizens are increasingly being swept up by immigration enforcement agencies.” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert denounced the Post article as “dishonest,” and declared: “This is an irresponsible attempt to create division and stoke fear among American citizens while attempting to inflame tensions over immigration.”

The central claim of Sieff’s article — that there is a “surging” number of people being denied U.S. passports as part of a Trump administration “crackdown” — is false. According to State Department figures, the approval rate for passport applications involving disputed birth certificates has actually increased, from 64.1% in 2014 to 74.2% so far in 2018. Obviously, passport denials cannot be “surging,” if the approval rate is increasing; Seiff’s article is therefore “fake news” — partisan propaganda, an anti-Trump hit job disguised as journalism.

Sieff constructed a textbook example of fraudulent “reporting.” For example, he treats as authoritative the claims of two immigration lawyers in Texas, one of whom says that cases of denied passports are “skyrocketing,” and another who asserts that he is aware of “probably 20 people” who are U.S. citizens that have been sent to “detention centers” by the Trump administration. These anecdotal claims were accepted as fact by Sieff, who nevertheless was unable to identify even one such case by name, so it is impossible to verify if any such cases actually exist.

What is the truth? State Department spokeswoman Nauert explained...

Keep reading.

Selena Zito Under Attack

This is American politics encapsulated.

When you don't like the findings or conclusions, destroy the messenger. And that's what leftists are trying to do to Salena Zito.

This HuffPost hit piece, from scuzzy young leftist (who can't shine Salena's shoes), embeds the anonymous troll twitter attack that got this whole thing going. Ms. Salena was on Face the Nation today and was able respond.

i tried to talk to salena zito about her reporting https://t.co/NCMxUPRFtp

— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) August 30, 2018

My editors "stand behind my work and so do I," @SalenaZito tells @margbrennan, following an article calling into question a lot of Zito's work pic.twitter.com/MlSIVTltxQ

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) September 2, 2018

Commentator Paris Dennard 'Suspended' All of a Sudden (After Vigorously Defending President Trump) as Leftist CNN Hacks Dredge Up Old Sexual Assault Allegations (VIDEO)

I don't know Paris Dennard. I don't watch much cable television anymore, but it sure seems a convenient coincident that he's being suspended from CNN after making hack Philip Mudd literally lose his mind on live TV in a profanity-laced meltdown.

At the Hollywood Reporter, "CNN Suspends Contributor Paris Dennard Following Sexual Misconduct Report."

And watch the meltdown, which received wide coverage. (For example, at the Washington Examiner, "Trump says ex-CIA, FBI official Philip Mudd 'is in no mental condition' to have security clearance.")

CNN's Smirking Gimp Kaitlan Collins Booted from Rose Garden Press Event (VIDEO)

She smirks. The corners of her lips curve upward in the most unbecoming look. She's nasty looking even.

At Politico:

#KaitlanCollins is the smirking gimp of the leftist #FakeNews White House press corp. 🤷‍♂️ #SorryNotSorry https://t.co/QnGt4lz19L

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) July 26, 2018

Take a few minutes an watch the disgraceful #KaitlanCollins video at #FakeNews #CNN. What a total joke. 🙄 #PresidentTrump was right to give these clowns the boot: #MAGA https://t.co/G8OM6A766G https://t.co/UufILKFSLC

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) July 26, 2018

This Is How You Got Trump

This is beyond Trump derangement. Leftists are out and out advocating the slaughter of Trump supporters, and I'm seeing this multiple times a day, and not just on social media.

Sarah Sanders. Pam Bondi. Melania Trump. All of these women have been targeted and threatened by leftist mobs and Hollywood idiots over the last few days.

MSNBC's Donny Deutsch smeared Trump supporters as Nazis, "If you vote for Trump, you're the bad guy."

It feels like we're heading toward open warfare sometimes. That's one of the reasons I went offline during the vacation, and even then I was still on Twitter, so I never really get away from it. It's all leftist hatred all the time, and it's sickening.

Make this idiot famous. pic.twitter.com/SzXLbwv8zx

— R. Wolfe (@WhoWolfe) June 10, 2018

Time Magazine Stands by #FakeCover Story Featuring Crying Migrant Child Who Was Not Separated from Her Mother

I think this is probably the fakest of fake news stories I've ever seen.

I don't have all that much to add to the commentary. I was on Twitter all this last week while on vacation and I tweeted a lot of commentary. My main take: This is a fake crisis, perpetuated by fake journalists exploiting fake migrants, to foist a fake political controversy ahead of the November elections.

The Washington Post has a huge rundown, "The crying Honduran girl on the cover of Time was not separated from her mother."

And at AoSHQ, "#FakeNews: TIME's Open Borders Propaganda Cover Story Is Fake In Every Way An Article Can Be Fake."

Plus, here's Shannon Bream, at Fox News: