When Sen. Bob Dole accepted the Republican nomination for president in 1996, his speech hit on the themes of “honor, decency and straight talk.” He proudly mentioned the great Republican Abraham Lincoln and explicitly denounced racism.

“The Republican Party is broad and inclusive. It represents many streams of opinion and many points of view. But if there’s anyone who has mistakenly attached themselves to our party in the belief that we are not open to citizens of every race and religion, then let me remind you — tonight this hall belongs to the party of Lincoln. And the exits, which are clearly marked, are for you to walk out of as I stand this ground without compromise,” Dole said.

The speech was held up in 2016 as an example of how wonderful Republican candidates for president used to be before Donald Trump. So it’s interesting to also look back at how this speech was received by its critics. For example, then-Senior White House Adviser George Stephanopoulos called it “partisan, negative and divisive.”

Fast-forward 24 years to the present. Once again a prominent Republican gives a speech with themes of honor and decency and straight talk. Once again the prominent Republican explicitly and repeatedly denounces racism. The Republican praises Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Frederick Douglass, the Wright Brothers, the Tuskegee Airmen, Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, Jesse Owens, George Patton, Louie Armstrong, Alan Shepard, Elvis Presley, Muhammad Ali, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Irving Berlin, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and Bob Hope.

And once again critics claim that the speech is “dark and divisive.” //

[Martha Raddatz ] opined that Trump had delivered “anything but a message of unity” and a “very grim message for America.” Raddatz further shared her anti-Trump campaign narrative: “This speech was not the only time in the past few weeks the president has seemed eager to turn the attention back to the issues of race in this country, how does he expected to get re-elected with a message like that?”

It may seem quaint to do so in this day and age of fact-free opinion, but let’s look at the actual words of the Trump speech that Raddatz claimed was grim and racist:

We believe in equal opportunity, equal justice, and equal treatment for citizens of every race, background, religion, and creed. Every child, of every color — born and unborn — is made in the holy image of God. (Applause.)

We want free and open debate, not speech codes and cancel culture.

We embrace tolerance, not prejudice. //

As if orders went out from a central director, nearly every major media outlet flat-out lied about Trump’s speech. Whether they were engaged in reflexive “political advisor” mode like the Stephanopoulos of old, whether they had pre-drafted their reports based on dubious theories about what would be in the speech, or whether they simply decided that the best way to counter an effective political message was to simply lie about it, lie about it they did.

The New York Times in 2017 falsely reported that the Trump campaign had 'repeated' contacts with Russian intelligence officials during the 2016 campaign, and instead of being held accountable for publishing lies, the story's authors received Pulitzer prizes. //

The FBI official who ran the investigation into whether the Donald Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election privately admitted in newly released notes that a major New York Times article was riddled with lies, falsehoods, and “misleading and inaccurate” information. The February 2017 story was penned by three reporters who would win Pulitzers for their reporting on Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia.

The FBI’s public posture and leaks at the time supported the now-discredited conspiracy theory that led to the formation of a special counsel probe to investigate the Trump campaign and undermine his administration.

“We have not seen evidence of any individuals affiliated with the Trump team in contact with [Russian Intelligence Officials]. . . . We are unaware of ANY Trump advisors engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials,” former FBI counterespionage official Peter Strzok wrote of the Feb. 14, 2017 New York Times story “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence.” That story, which was based on the unsubstantiated claims of four anonymous intelligence officials, was echoed by a similarly sourced CNN story published a day later and headlined “Trump aides were in constant touch with senior Russian officials during campaign.”

Strzok’s notes are the latest factual debunking of these stories, which were previously shown to be false with the release of Robert Mueller’s special counsel report finding no evidence whatsoever in support of the Hillary Clinton campaign assertion that Trump affiliates colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. A report from the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General on just one aspect of the investigation into Russia collusion — FBI spying on Trump campaign affiliates — also debunked these news reports. //

The New York Times declined to retract or correct the article three years ago, even after Comey testified it was false, on the grounds that the anonymous sources who fed the false information remained pleased with the initial story.

The damage this false story caused the Trump administration can not be overstated. It’s a story worth recounting here.

“The leaks are real, the news is fake,” President Donald Trump said on February 16, 2017, when ABC News’ Jonathan Karl asked him at a press conference to respond to The New York Times’ explosive report. As other reporters asked more questions related to the New York Times story, he went on to deride the media for writing negative and false stories based on anonymous sources.

The response was roundly mocked by a media class that asserted it was unimaginable that intelligence officials might be leaking anything but the most accurate information. CNN’s Jake Tapper, echoing other Democrat activists, called the press conference “unhinged.” //

Trump was right that the leaks were real but the news was false. Trump campaign aides did not have repeated contacts with Russian intelligence, contrary to what Michael S. Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti, and Matt Apuzzo breathlessly reported. Flynn was not a secret Russian agent. Neither was former Sen. Jeff Sessions. //

Comey did offer to brief congressmen and senators that the New York Times report was completely false. When those members said publicly that the New York Times report was false, that too was characterized as something nefarious.

Earlier this week over 280 journalists, editors, and other employees at the Journal and their parent company Dow Jones criticized the Journal’s opinion section in a leaked letter to the Journal’s publisher Almar Latour, calling for better labeling of opinion pieces and stronger fact-checking of op-eds, specifically attacking the publication of a recent essay by Vice President Mike Pence on the coronavirus.

“Opinion’s lack of fact-checking and transparency, and its apparent disregard for evidence, undermine our readers’ trust and our ability to gain credibility with sources,” the staff’s letter read, while also demanding more coverage of race and inequality.

The “Note to Readers” said that people were responding to the leaked letter concerned that the Journal will move to change their “principles and content,” but the authors reassured readers the Journal “… won’t respond in kind to the letter signers”.

“… the opinion pages will continue to publish contributors who speak their minds within the tradition of vigorous, reasoned discourse. And these columns will continue to promote the principles of free people and free markets, which are more important than ever in what is a culture of growing progressive conformity and intolerance.” //

“But we are not the New York Times,” the editorial board wrote, taking a jab at their competitor and alluding to recent events at the Times, like the resignation of the editorial page editor after widespread criticism of an op-ed by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton

This weekends outrage at Trader Joe's proves how outlets like the New York Times use phony anger to make companies and politicians do what they want. //

up an article claiming “Ford Pressured to Stop Selling Police cars” because of a petition with a tenth of the signatures as a call for more updates to “EA Battlefront 2,” see it for what it is. Likewise, when you see articles covering outrage about splash mountain with half the support of anger at Ms. McLernon, kicking police officers out of schools with just 2,000 signatures, and of course, claims that Trader Joe’s is imperialist with 1,500, recognize the outrage was manufactured. The vast majority of Americans could not care less about a grocer selling Chinese food labelled with ‘Trader Ming.”

These articles say a lot more about confirmation bias than they do about popular opinion.

Google appeared to test its ability to blacklist conservative media Tuesday from its monopolized search engine which dominates 94 percent of internet searches.

Four days, six comment requests, and one follow-up story later, The Atlantic issued major corrections that confirmed The Federalist's investigation,

Grab the popcorn. //

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

They put politics over people. ///

Media lied, people died

We have the advantage of truth... //

As Carlson points out in his remarks, they hate Trump because he can’t be controlled, because he says truths that fly in the face of their efforts to control, that he refuses to go along with the narrative the left wants to push about America, that he trumpets

He speaks about Trump’s speech and highlights some of the most important parts, defending against the ripping down of both our statues and history, and the basic concepts of the goodness of America. That contrary to what the folks on the left tend to push, America has been great largely because America has been transformatively good, that America has defeated both fascism and Communism, because of our formation, our principles of liberty were copied around the world, more people threw off the yoke of monarchy and other tyrannical governments. It’s why we became a beacon for the world. It’s why people came here in droves from other countries. It’s why Hong Kong in declaring its desire for liberty flies our flag as a symbol.

From White House:

We believe in equal opportunity, equal justice, and equal treatment for citizens of every race, background, religion, and creed. Every child, of every color — born and unborn — is made in the holy image of God. (Applause.)

We want free and open debate, not speech codes and cancel culture.

We embrace tolerance, not prejudice.

We support the courageous men and women of law enforcement. (Applause.) We will never abolish our police or our great Second Amendment, which gives us the right to keep and bear arms. (Applause.)

We believe that our children should be taught to love their country, honor our history, and respect our great American flag. (Applause.)

We stand tall, we stand proud, and we only kneel to Almighty God. //

As Carlson points out, media like The Washington Post out and out lied about Trump defending Confederate statues and “white domination” when he never said any such thing and nothing he said could even come close to supporting their lie. But they don’t care because they know many will never hear the speech, so they can lie about it as they did.

As I noted last month, in spite of the various frenzied left-wing campaigns to cancel him and his program, Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson is leading in the cable news ratings wars. One journalist even described Carlson’s current numbers at the time as being “through the roof.”

Fast forward just a few weeks from that and we find out that not only is Carlson continuing to destroy his competition, but he can now take credit for having the highest-rated quarter of any other in the history of cable news networks.

Pulitzer Prize winner Nikole Hannah-Jones is now peddling ridiculous conspiracy theories. //

Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer prize-winning author, lead writer of the 1619 Project, and it often seems the owner and operator of The New York Times, appears to have deleted her Twitter account after promoting an insane conspiracy theory on Sunday. “Read this,” Jones insisted as she quote tweeted an account alleging that the government is providing fireworks to black and brown teenagers in an effort to sow chaos.

According to the tweet thread endorsed by today’s leading intellectual journalist the “government,” not sure if that is state, local, or federal but somehow I’m sure it’s Trump’s fault, is handing out fireworks not just to make New York City appear more violent, but to deprive people of color of sleep to disorient them. The totality of the evidence provided for this bizarre claim is that the author of the tweet and his neighbors think it might be what’s happening. In fairness that is a better factual basis than much of what Hannah-Jones wrote in the 1619 Project. //

But there is a deeper question here that must be grappled with. If a conservative, say a staff writer here at The Federalist, took to Twitter to claim with absolutely no evidence that Black Lives Matters was giving out fireworks in a false flag operation to make the NYPD look bad, that person would almost certainly be fired. Not only that, The Federalist itself would come under harsh attack with calls to deplatform the website.

The sad fact is that Nikole Hannah-Jones has been applauded by her employer, by the Pulitzer committee and by a bunch of women pretending to read “White Fragility” for their book club, for telling half-truths at best about the history of our nation. Now she has moved on to vile conspiracy theories about our present. Will there be any repercussions for this? Color me skeptical.

What is becoming increasingly clear is that the progressive left has no use for facts. In fact, facts are irrelevant to them. Truth is not measured by Hannah-Jones or The New York Times by what actually happens, but rather by whether it will lead to their goals of supposed social justice. Hannah-Jones knows that Mayor Bill de Blasio, or whoever, isn’t giving kids illegal fireworks, but it doesn’t matter. Her lie is for the cause and thus justified.

The cold, harsh fact, the one that almost got The Federalist defunded by Google after NBC News went to the manager, is that the news media is lying to us. They are doing it everyday, they know they are doing it, but they assume since they went to fancy schools we are too dumb to notice.

Michael R. Pence

Vice President of the United States

In recent days, the media has taken to sounding the alarm bells over a “second wave” of coronavirus infections. Such panic is overblown. Thanks to the leadership of President Trump and the courage and compassion of the American people, our public health system is far stronger than it was four months ago, and we are winning the fight against the invisible enemy.

While talk of an increase in cases dominates cable news coverage, more than half of states are actually seeing cases decline or remain stable. Every state, territory and major metropolitan area, with the exception of three, have positive test rates under 10%. And in the six states that have reached more than 1,000 new cases a day, increased testing has allowed public health officials to identify most of the outbreaks in particular settings—prisons, nursing homes and meatpacking facilities—and contain them. //

The media has tried to scare the American people every step of the way, and these grim predictions of a second wave are no different. The truth is, whatever the media says, our whole-of-America approach has been a success. We’ve slowed the spread, we’ve cared for the most vulnerable, we’ve saved lives, and we’ve created a solid foundation for whatever challenges we may face in the future. That’s a cause for celebration, not the media’s fear mongering.

This op-ed appeared in the Wall Street Journal on June 16, 2020

The media thinks we don't understand arithmetic. //

The truth is that new hospitalizations of people coming in for serious coronavirus infections are actually extremely low. What they are actually counting are the extra people coming in for all of the delayed health care caused by the lockdown. But thanks to universal testing in hospitals, they are discovering more asymptomatic cases than ever before, which had nothing to do with the original purpose of the hospital stay. Thus, they are blaming the fallout of the lockdown on the easing of the lockdown! //

The total number of “positive” COVID-19 patients currently using beds in the hospital system is high. Now you might wonder how cumulative numbers could be so high if the new daily intake is so low? //

The cumulative number chart, on the other hand, counts any “positive or suspected inpatient COVID-19 patients.” Now that the number of people coming into hospitals in general, for any reason, is much higher than during the peak of the epidemic and also testing has become standard, they are likely counting anyone who tests positive as a COVID-19 patient in that chart, even if they came in for chest pains or trauma. //

How can it be that the same government website showing literally no more than five new COVID-19 admissions a day this week also shows record emergency room COVID-positive patients? The answer is that the virus is much more widespread, asymptomatic, and less deadly than it was before. The ER patients are coming in, as the Arizona state health director, Dr. Cara Christ, said, because of the bottleneck of much-needed care and serious ailments that were ignored during the lockdown. All but the few who actually came to the ER because of COVID-19 symptoms likely never knew they had it. This is why we are not seeing a big spike of deaths in any of the states where the media is warning about an increase in detected cases.

The very states that are seeing increases in hospitalizations are the ones that barely had patients – COVID-19 or otherwise – for six weeks because the virus didn’t hit hard but the panic and suspension of certain procedures caused the admissions to plummet (unlike in New York, for example, where there were enough COVID-19 patients to fill hospitals). Now that the lockdown is over, states like Texas, Arizona, California, and North Carolina have many more people coming in to hospitals than in April. Paradoxically, it makes sense that there will be more people testing positive now than even during the peak, especially because testing is universal and rapid. //

The media, as always, are engaging in headline panic news and fudging math that proves the exact opposite of their headlines. It’s similar to what they are doing with accusations of executive force, in light of George Floyd’s death, against black criminals while ignoring the fact that black criminals commit an even greater share of violent crime, which proves shooting of white criminals is even more common per capita. They think we don’t understand arithmetic.

And speaking of Minneapolis, if small-scale reopening in these other states led to a spike in the virus, then don’t you think jam-packed protests beginning over two weeks ago in Minneapolis would have caused a spike, rather than a drop, in hospitalizations?

A flurry of newsroom revolts has transformed the American press

Taibbi: The American left has lost its mind.

A group of anti-fascist and Black Lives Matter demonstrators march on the campus of the University of Virginia after a rally to mark the anniversary of last year’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 11, 2018. (AP Photo/Steve Helber) Once Upon a Time in Conservative Media, Andrew Sullivan was a provocative original thinker who brought a generally conservative world view to the | <a class="moretext" href="https://www.redstate.com/shipwreckedcrew/2020/06/06/andrew-sullivan-has-been-defenstrasted-by-the-new-york-woke-media/">Read More »</a>

When these sources cannot find a reason to toss blame then it really is a lack of proof.

It was always political and never about health. //

Matt Walsh
✔
@MattWalshBlog
So what we've learned is that if you want to protest during a pandemic, do it safely by burning down buildings and beating the hell out of random bystanders. That way you'll escape criticism from the media.

The $10 million suit was a defamation case, where OAN stated that Maddow had slandered the network on-air when she declared it was an outlet of ‘’paid Russian propaganda’’. What has not been properly acknowledged is that in order for her to evade responsibility in the case Maddow took on the defense that she was not delivering fact-based news on her program that evening, something the judge agreed was accurate.

“Maddow had inserted her own colorful commentary into and throughout the segment, laughing, expressing her dismay (i.e., saying ‘I mean, what?’) and calling the segment a ‘sparkly story’ and one we must ‘take in stride,'” Judge Cynthia Bashant wrote Friday. //

Here lies the real humor in this decision. In the process of denigrating OAN as an illegitimate news source, Rachael Maddow had to rest on the defense that what she was delivering was itself illegitimate ‘’infotainment’’. By her own admission, the primetime hostess has declared her own words to be little more than sparkly storytelling. While the network has appealed the decision, in a manner OAN has won a victory.

It managed to get Rachael Maddow to declare in court records that she is a fabulist whose reporting does not need to be taken as the least bit accurate. It is not to be taken lightly when a major name in the media universe has gone on the record to declare what she traffics in on the air is fake news.

Pushing disinformation again... //

Did you catch that? They’re paying social media influencers to promote Democrats/Democratic issues. So that person whom a young person may be following for fashion is now going to be covertly pushing Democrats. //

Translation: we’re paying them to be covert propagandists for us and trick people that they aren’t obvious political stooges.

Matt Whitlock
✔
@mattdizwhitlock
Very interesting -- Democrat groups are now paying non-political social media "influencers" to attack Republicans online, hoping it looks more organic.

Makes you wonder how much online conversation you see is real and genuine.