New York Times

Did Officer Brian Sicknick Die From Injury Sustained By Rioters? (Tucker)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Final Update!

“Whatever happened to Brian Sicknick was very obviously not the result of violence he suffered at the entrance to the Capitol. This tape overturns the single most powerful and politically useful lie the Democrats have told us about January 6.”

Update (1-8-2023)

Fox News host Tucker Carlson reflects on the January 6 Capitol breach two years later on ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight.’

UPDATE (4-27-2021)

The medical examiner rejected the idea of bear spray being an issue regarding the death of Brian Sicknick. “D.C. Chief Medical Examiner Francisco J. Diaz has determined that Brian Sicknick, the United States Capitol Police officer who died following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, died of natural causes” (ABC). The WASHINGTON TIMES also notes that “Prosecutors told a federal judge Tuesday that U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was assaulted with Mace — not the more dangerous bear spray as originally reported — debunking another false narrative that emerged after the officer’s death the day after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.” CNBC also notes the following:

  • Police officer Brian Sicknick suffered strokes and died of natural causes a day after he grappled with pro-Trump rioters at the Jan. 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol, Washington’s chief medical examiner ruled.

And finally, THE DAILY WIRE notes the following:

…The New York Times reported on Jan. 8 that two unnamed law enforcement officials said Sicknick died after being hit with a fire extinguisher. House Democrats cited the report as part of its case to impeach Trump on charges that he cited an insurrection at the Capitol.

“The insurrectionists killed a Capitol Police officer by striking him in the head with a fire extinguisher,” the Democrats wrote in a memo for the impeachment proceedings.

There has also been speculation that Sicknick died from a reaction to bear spray that was dispensed at the Capitol. Federal prosecutors charged two men last month with hitting Sicknick and several other police officers with the chemical irritant outside the Capitol.

Diaz’s ruling appears to rule out bear spray as a cause of death….

UPDATE (2-15-2021)

(AMERICAN GREATNESS)

Like so many fake news stories about Donald Trump and his supporters, millions of Americans believe the Sicknick story as truth; even a correction won’t change their minds.

In a quiet but stunning correction, the New York Times backed away from its original report that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was killed by a Trump supporter wielding a fire extinguisher during the January 6 melee at the Capitol building. Shortly after American Greatness published my column Friday that showed how the Times gradually was backpedaling on its January 8 bombshell, the paper posted this caveat:

UPDATE: New information has emerged regarding the death of the Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick that questions the initial cause of his death provided by officials close to the Capitol Police.

The paper continued to revise its story within the body of the original January 8 story: “Law enforcement officials initially said Mr. Sicknick was struck with a fire extinguisher, but weeks later, police sources and investigators were at odds over whether he was hit. Medical experts have said he did not die of blunt force trauma, according to one law enforcement official.”

What’s missing, however, is how the Times first described what happened to Sicknick. “Mr. Sicknick, 42, an officer for the Capitol Police, died on Thursday from brain injuries he sustained after Trump loyalists who overtook the complex struck him in the head with a fire extinguisher, according to two law enforcement officials.”

The account of Sicknick’s death was reported as fact, not speculation or rumor. Further, it appears that the anonymous sources were not law enforcement officials but people “close” to the police department—which means they could have been anyone from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to inveterate liar U.S. Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to the Democratic mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser.

Not only was the Times’ untrue story about Sicknick’s death accepted as fact by every news media organization from the Wall Street Journal to the Washington Post, political pundits on the NeverTrump Right also regurgitated the narrative that Sicknick was “murdered” as did lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

[….]

*The Times’ correction might be one reason why Democrats on Saturday reversed their demand to subpoena witnesses. House impeachment managers cited the original January 8 Times’ article as evidence in their impeachment memo: “The insurrectionists killed a Capitol Police officer by striking him in the head with a fire extinguisher.”

Any arrangement to compel testimony would have provided Trump’s legal team with an opportunity to expose yet another myth in the Democrats’ “incitement” case against the former president.

Now that the Times has essentially retracted its explosive article, will other news organizations, pundits, and lawmakers follow suit? Unfortunately, like so many media-manufactured stories about Donald Trump and his supporters, millions of Americans already believe the Sicknick story as truth; even a Times’ correction won’t change their minds.

The truth in all matters related to Donald Trump is only of secondary concern, if at all. And once again, reporters who egregiously exploited a man’s untimely death to score political points against a man they revile won’t be held accountable. Another hoax down the memory hole.

I, like other conservative outlets, believed this story. I linked to RIGHT SCOOP regarding the story and agreed (and still do — if the story was true — not just in this situation):

  • I hope they have on video exactly who hit this brave officer with a fire extinguisher and prosecute them for murder. This cannot go unpunished.

*ANOTHER REASON WHY NO WITNESSES CALLED

RPT NOTE: As well as the first witness called would have been Nancy Pelosi, who was IN CHARGE of Capitol Hill security… the Buck didn’t stop with her apparently…. the DEMS couldn’t afford the narrative to break!

GATEWAY PUNDIT notes the “moving on” timeline:

It is well known that Pelosi, Bowser and Mitch McConnell refused to increase security on January 6th for the US Capitol.

Senator Ted Cruz agreed this morning that the Trump legal team will call in Speaker Pelosi to testify along with Mayor Muriel Bowser.

Following this announcement, the House Impeachment Managers backed off from calling witnesses.

They moved on to closing arguments.

REMEMBER AS WELL

Mark Levin discusses Mark Meadows revelation from February 7th (TRUMP WAR ROOM). I do not listen to Mark all that much, but this is the maddest I have heard him (at the end: 6:03 to 6:15 mark).

…Meadows told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo that even though Trump was vocal about offering Capitol Police and National Guard presence at the Capitol on multiple occasions prior to January 6, his offers were rejected “every time.”

“We also know that in January, but also throughout the summer, that the president was very vocal in making sure that we had plenty of National Guard, plenty of additional support because he supports our rule of law and supports our law enforcement and offered additional help,” Meadows told Bartiromo.

“Even in January, that was a given, as many as 10,000 National Guard troops were told to be on the ready by the Secretary of Defense,” Meadows said. “That was a direct order from President Trump and yet here is what we see … all kinds of blame going around but yet not a whole lot of accountability.”…

(DJHJ MEDIA)

What is not known by the typical cable news watcher, probably, is that both the Capital Police and the mayor of D.C. turned down offers to help secure the government areas before and as the mob of crazed Lefties and Righties descended on the Capital:

    • …Three days before the riot, the Pentagon offered National Guard manpower. And as the mob descended on the building Wednesday, Justice Department leaders reached out to offer up FBI agents. Capitol Police turned them down both times, according to senior defense officials and two people familiar with the matter. Despite plenty of warnings of a possible insurrection and ample resources and time to prepare, police planned only for a free speech demonstration. (WASHINGTON TIMES)
    • Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser told federal law enforcement to stand down just one day before a mob of Trump supporters breached the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, smashing windows, entering the chambers, and forcing lawmakers and congressional staff inside into lockdown. “To be clear, the District of Columbia is not requesting other federal law enforcement personnel and discourages any additional deployment without immediate notification to, and consultation with, MPD if such plans are underway,” Bowser wrote in a letter to acting U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, and Secretary of the Army Ryan D. McCarthy. According to Bowser, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department in coordination with the U.S. Park Police, Capitol Police, and Secret Sevice were well-equipped to handle whatever problems could come up during the Trump rallies planned for Wednesday. (THE FEDERALIST)

FIRST POST (2-10-2021)

(RIGHT SCOOP) At the open of his show tonight, Tucker Carlson had a great monologue about the lies Democrats are telling about what happened on January 6th… The monologue runs for just over 12 minutes, but you can keep watching if you want (HERE). The part I wanted to highlight specifically is what Tucker reported about Officer Sicknick’s death. It was reported widely that Sicknick was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher by a rioter and that he later died. But according to Tucker, that’s not what happened:

In this short clip, Tucker reveals that Sicknick’s own brother said that Sicknick texted him the night of the Capitol riot, after it was over, and said that he’d been pepper sprayed twice but was in good shape. His brother then noted that Sicknick collapsed in the Capitol and that he was resuscitated with CPR. The family was told that he was in the hospital on a ventilator after having had a blood clot and a stroke.

Tucker says that there is zero evidence that Sicknick was ever ‘bludgeoned’ with a fire extinguisher despite CNN, MSNBC, and other major media outlets having reported it. And Democrats are still saying it….

(BTW, I hope every rioter in these scenes is arrested. But this is the only fire extinguisher video [1:40 mark] I could find)

This is not the entire article… and I suggest reading the entire thing… however, I wish to post part of it here as i think it important (AMERICAN GREATNESS):

What Happened to Officer Brian Sicknick? No one should discount the idea that Democrats and the news media would intentionally promote a totally fabricated story to destroy Donald Trump and vilify his supporters.

The claim is so pervasive as not to be questioned: Five people died as a result of the January 6 “insurrection” at the Capitol building, killed by blood-thirsty Trump voters at the president’s behest, out for revenge over a stolen election.

Even though only one death—the shooting of Ashli Babbitt by a still-unidentified police officer—is provable by video evidence, the other fatalities nonetheless are accepted as an article of faith to stoke public outrage about what happened that day.

[….]

NARRATIVE vs. EVIDENCE

Democrats wasted no time exploiting Sicknick’s untimely death. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) immediately ordered flags flown at half-staff at the Capitol; news and opinion outlets on both the Left and NeverTrump Right blamed the so-called “insurrectionists” for killing Sicknick.

National Review claimed, without evidence, that Sicknick was “murdered.” The president and his allies in the Senate, pundits raged, were accomplices. “When he told followers to ‘STAND UP,’ they listened and murdered a cop while storming the Capitol,” one Washington Examiner writer tweeted about the role of Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). “Make him pay.”

Lawmakers of both parties paid their respects to Sicknick last week during a rare Capitol ceremony; his body lay in honor in the Rotunda on February 3 following a brief memorial service. When Joe Biden and his wife walked away from the display, the president shook his head in grief.

The widely-accepted circumstances surrounding Sicknick’s death are part of the Democrats’ impeachment crusade against Donald Trump. “The insurrectionists killed a Capitol Police officer by striking him in the head with a fire extinguisher,” House impeachment managers allege in a memorandum detailing their evidence.

But that inflammatory accusation isn’t backed by an autopsy report or any hard evidence such as a video clip. It isn’t backed by charging documents filed against anyone suspected of killing Sicknick; nearly five weeks later, no one has been accused of murdering the officer even though federal law enforcement officials have arrested more than 200 people tied to their involvement in the January 6 melee.

No, the only proof the House impeachment managers can find is the January 8, New York Times article that relied not on evidence but on background from “two law enforcement officials.”

STRUGGLING TO BUILD A CASE

If Sicknick is the face representing the carnage of January 6, Democrats are at risk of losing their most compelling sympathy storyline just as the impeachment trial gets underway. 

“Investigators are struggling to build a federal murder case regarding fallen U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, vexed by a lack of evidence that could prove someone caused his death,” CNN disclosed last week. “Authorities have reviewed video and photographs that show Sicknick engaging with rioters amid the siege but have yet to identify a moment in which he suffered his fatal injuries.”

A medical examiner’s report has not been released and law enforcement authorities are tight-lipped; in a January 26 email to me, an FBI spokeswoman refused to comment on the status of the investigation. The District of Columbia medical examiner’s office told me Monday by email they “will release the cause and manner of death when this information is available.”

Sources, however, told CNN that the medical examiner “did not find signs that the officer sustained any blunt force trauma . . . and early reports that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher are not true.” Investigators also couldn’t confirm that Sicknick died as a result of reaction to pepper spray.

Messaging from the FBI does little to inspire trust in the Sicknick storyline. The agency at first issued a statement that claimed 37 suspects were under investigation for the officer’s death but later said the statement was in error and relied on “incorrect internal information.”

During a January 12 press briefing on its sweeping investigation into the events of January 6, the assistant director for the FBI’s D.C. field office twice referred to Sicknick as having “passed away,” with no mention of his having been “murdered” or “killed.” A distinction, in this matter, with a big difference.

WILL OPTICS TRUMP THE TRUTH

Comments from Sicknick’s family also raise legitimate suspicions about what happened to their loved one. 

“Many details regarding Wednesday’s events and the direct causes of Brian’s injuries remain unknown, and our family asks the public and the press to respect our wishes in not making Brian’s passing a political issue,” his older brother wrote in a statement released January 8.

[….]

The more likely explanation is that Sicknick wasn’t murdered but died of other causes that neither law enforcement nor the family wants made public. It’s certainly the family’s prerogative to keep it secret; it is not, however, acceptable for the FBI to continue avoiding questions while at the same time feeding the public a false account of what happened to him. And since the medical examiner’s office hadn’t confirmed the cause of death, it’s beyond irresponsible for anyone, particularly a reporter, to describe it as murder…..

New York Times Calls Free Speech “Proto-Fascism”

Published by Papa Giorgio

…because we all know that Fascist and Communist countries encouraged “free speech”

Some of the change in positions noted… Musk, like Trump, cause a “coming out” as THE FIVE notes:

Dennis Prager (a little under the weather) shares his thoughts on the New York Times calling free speech “proto-fascism.”

A clip from the NEW YORK TIMES and FOX NEWS also covers it:

…This is why his deal to purchase Twitter is so dangerous. In recent years, there has been progress toward positive freedom of speech — real work to give everyone, truly everyone, more meaningful occasion to speak. Mr. Musk apparently wants to shut that down. Instead, in a moment of proto-fascism on the political right, his priority seems to be to undam the flood of bile and bigotry and bullying and disinformation.

The country already faces the very real prospect, starting at noon on Jan. 20, 2025, of a descent toward racist authoritarianism and a protracted slide away from liberal democracy. If your idea of what the country needs in this moment is less clamping down on hate and lies and more rightists gone wild, whew….

MINISTRY OF TRUTH

The only “Fascistic” enterprise from Musk buying Twitter is our government wants to counter with a Ministry of Truth, via ACE OF SPADES:

Good morning, kids. Thursday and information, misinformation, disinformation, dat information and bullshit remains the hot topic of conversation. Elon Musk’s “Grabbe”-ing Twitter by the weeping Vajaya has caused both the wailing and rending of garments on the Left and exultation for us normal people. While I would caution us not to commence a venturi effect on our nether regions just yet, Musk has been saying the right things about economics and taxation for quite some time, earning him the ire of all the wrong people. The actions of the EPA in blocking the construction of a SpaceX launch facility in Boca Chica is textbook government retribution. And that’s just for starters. Whatever his motives may be, he has painted a big fat target on himself.

Our ability to communicate freely via the internet hangs in the balance even now. We barely escaped that Orwellian (what the hell isn’t these days?) “Net Neutrality” Act — for now. The internet absolutely broke the stranglehold on both the crafting and mass dissemination of information that Leftist propagandists had had for decades and, along with talk radio, both confirmed what many had feared to be the true nature of who and what has been running the government and society and, more importantly, revealed those truths to a vast audience that was heretofore unaware.

All of that said, Musk acquiring Twitter, in and of itself, is not going to win the war for free speech. But it may very well be the moral equivalent of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. It both absolutely shocked Imperial Japan, who had not been attacked in centuries and electrified American morale, which had taken a pounding since Pearl Harbor. Afterwards, the Japanese set about to finish off America once and for all, or so they had hoped. Same thing with the junta in power.

The Department of Homeland Security is setting up a Disinformation Governance Board in an attempt to combat “misinformation” online.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas spoke about the “just established” governance board during a congressional hearing on Wednesday, arguing it would help reduce domestic threats to the United States.

Nina Jankowicz, a fellow for the Wilson Center, confirmed reports that she would direct the board, sharing her official government portrait on her social media profile.

“Cat’s out of the bag: here’s what I’ve been up to the past two months,” she wrote.

She claimed the new board was created to “maintain the Department’s commitment to protecting free speech, privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties”…

… Jankowicz has long been an advocate for social media censorship and regulation.

In October 2020, Jankowicz testified to the House Select Committee on Intelligence on the dangers of misinformation and conspiracy theories and how to stop it online.

“Disinformation is a threat to democracy,” she warned and criticized the government and social media platforms who have “all but abdicated their responsibility” to address ”domestic disinformation.”

Just fucking wow. I mean, where does one even begin to try and unpack this hideous farce? Aside from the fact that this hag was pimping the now proven lie that the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation, there’s this thing called THE FIRST AMENDMENT that, like Charlie Gibson, she apparently has never heard of. The government does not get to decide what is and what is not misinformation. There are laws governing things such as slander and libel, as well as this thing called common sense which is supposed to, in theory, give the individual pause before shooting his mouth off as well as the right to discern for oneself what is and what is not truth. The consequences for either of those being on the individual.

Moving on from the philosophical, under what authority does this “politburo” have the right to exist in the first place? What regulatory power, completely illegitimate that it is, will it wield in supposedly maintaining the DHS’ “commitment to protecting free speech, privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties?” Will it amass dossiers – pun absolutely intended – on people who object to the sexualization, disfiguring and brainwashing of their children? On those of us who consider the very government that is forming this commission illegitimate on the basis of the mountain of evidence proving the 2020 election was stollen?

And once it has amassed those dossiers, what is the punishment for spreading disinformation, otherwise known as stating one’s opinion? Considering the Junta and its supporters define what happened on January 6th as the greatest threat to our precious democracy (*vomit*) since the Civil War, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 combined, one assumes there will be 3:00AM raids followed by incarceration in the Garland Archipelago if not Gitmo, incommunicado and indefinitely.

I’m suddenly reminded about the arguments around the limitations or even abolition of the Second Amendment. The Left always insisted that the Founders never anticipated automatic weapons and machine guns back in the 18th century. The counter to that argument was, should we abolish the First Amendment since they never anticipated massive printing presses, television, radio and — wait for it — the internet either? Well, I guess the answer to that is a big old “yes!”

If the Second Amendment was always the final firewall between liberty and tyranny, the First Amendment I guess was the penultimate and, at least in theory, the strongest. Much of this also centers around the battle for who controls the speech. This whole notion of “safe spaces” from being offended has both crippled the last few generations as well as been used as a weapon with which to terrorize us into submission via group coercion, be it at work or even at home. The nature of being free runs antithetical to being safe. Those who argue for safety will hide behind the veneer of being benign and doing things “for our own good.” What was that thing that’s supposed to be paved with good intentions?

That said, I’m not buying that anymore. There are no good intentions with those who seek to silence us. They do these things not for our own good but for theirs. If agents or informants of this pathetic Ministry of Truth are reading this, come and get me and the publishers who wrote my book.

You can also round up Anthony Fauci. He claimed yesterday that the pandemic was over.

Whoops! Did he say the pandemic was over? No! What he really said was it’s NOT over.

Dear Lord how I hate these people. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out, especially if Musk purges the Goebbels acolytes from the Twitter ranks. The Left has already “woke” (heh) a sleeping giant with the assault on children. Let’s see how they react if they are silenced and/or threatened because they use Twitter as a means to communication…..

(More at ACE OF SPADES)

NYT Reporter: Jan 6 Media “Overreaction”

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here is the video description:

Pulitzer Prize Winning New York Times Reporter: January 6 Media Coverage ‘Overreaction,’ FBI Involved, Event Was Not Organized Despite Ongoing Narrative

  • NYT National Security Correspondent, Matthew Rosenberg, contradicts his own January 6 reporting: “There were a ton of FBI informants among the people who attacked the Capitol.”
  • Rosenberg: “It was like, me and two other colleagues who were there [January 6] outside and we were just having fun!”
  • Rosenberg: “I know I’m supposed to be traumatized, but like, all these colleagues who were in the [Capitol] building and are like ‘Oh my God it was so scary!’ I’m like, ‘f*ck off!’”
  • Rosenberg: “I’m like come on, it’s not the kind place I can tell someone to man up but I kind of want to be like, ‘dude come on, you were not in any danger.’”
  • Rosenberg: “These f*cking little dweebs who keep going on about their trauma. Shut the f*ck up. They’re f*cking b*tches.”
  • Rosenberg: “They [media] were making too big a deal. They were making this an organized thing that it wasn’t.”
  • Rosenberg RESPONDS: “Will I stand by those comments? Absolutely.”

[NEW YORK – Mar. 8, 2022] Project Veritas published a bombshell video on Tuesday showing Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times correspondent, Matthew Rosenberg, speaking about the events of January 6, 2021, in a way that contradicts his own reporting.

Rosenberg, who covers national security matters for the Times, says on the undercover video that “there were a ton of FBI informants among the people who attacked the Capitol.”

This revelation is a break from Rosenberg’s reporting on the matter where he characterized such a notion of FBI informants in the crowd as a “reimagining of Jan. 6.”

This was not the only time Rosenberg’s commentary to Project Veritas’ undercover reporter directly contradicted his own published words. Despite telling a Veritas journalist that January 6 was “no big deal,” his article says that downplaying the events of that day was “the next big lie.”

Soundbites of Rosenberg published Tuesday show him saying, “They [media] were making too big a deal. They were making this an organized thing that it wasn’t.”

Project Veritas founder and CEO James O’Keefe revealed that Rosenberg’s article titled, “The Next Big Lies: Jan 6 was No Big Deal, or A Left-Wing Plot,” was written around the same time as he was making contradictory statements to a Project Veritas undercover reporter.

In the video, Rosenberg also revealed that January 6 was “fun,” a contradiction to his reporting that January 6 was “a violent interruption to the transition of power in American history.” 

Rosenberg said, “It was like, me and two other colleagues who were there outside and we were just having fun.”

He even appears to make fun of his New York Times colleagues in one soundbite saying, “I know I’m supposed to be traumatized, but like, all these colleagues who were in the [Capitol] building, and are like, ‘Oh my God it was so scary!’ I’m like, ‘f*ck off!’” He adds, “I’m like come on, it’s not the kind place I can tell someone to man up but I kind of want to be like, ‘dude come on, you were not in any danger.’”

Rosenberg concludes, “These f*cking little dweebs who keep going on about their trauma. Shut the f*ck up. They’re f*cking b*tches.”

More Media #FakeNews (“Genius” and “Savvy”)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Clay Travis and Buck Sexton wade through the left’s lies about our interview with Donald Trump. These journos have nothing else left but to gaslight and demonize Trump.

REAL CLEAR POLITICS notes the out of context nature of the MSM narrative:

BUCK: Mr. President, in the last 24 hours we know Russia has said that they are recognizing two breakaway regions of Ukraine, and now this White House is stating that this is an “invasion.” That’s a strong word. What went wrong here? What has the current occupant of the Oval Office done that he could have done differently?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, what went wrong was a rigged election and what went wrong is a candidate that shouldn’t be there and a man that has no concept of what he’s doing. I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, “This is genius.” Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.

So Putin is now saying, “It’s independent,” a large section of Ukraine. I said, “How smart is that?” And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s strongest peace force… We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy… I know him very well. Very, very well.

By the way, this never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened. But here’s a guy that says, you know, “I’m gonna declare a big portion of Ukraine independent,” he used the word “independent,” “and we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.” You gotta say that’s pretty savvy. And you know what the response was from Biden? There was no response. They didn’t have one for that. No, it’s very sad. Very sad.

Marco Rubio says of the interview:

Former President Donald Trump was being “sarcastic” when he referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “genius,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Tuesday. 

“I heard that interview,” Rubio said during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “I’m not going off the press reports. I heard the interview. I didn’t hear him say that. I heard what I heard. A guy who was being sarcastic. He was saying, Oh, look at this guy, he’s a genius, this, that and the other.”

Trump came under fire last week after his comments on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton radio show, on which he referred to Putin as being “savvy” and a “genius.”

[….]

“If it wasn’t for what the Trump administration did and laid the groundwork for, there’s no way Ukraine would still be able to hold out today,” Rubio said.

(NEWSMAX)

RED STATE rightly notes what Clay and Buck did when speaking about what the Left and Press has run with counters basic English context when “referring to someone as a ‘genius’ can carry with it, alternative meanings.”

…Certainly, Trump’s talk on Putin has been at times sycophantic, something this author will not discount. However, referring to someone as a “genius” can carry with it, alternative meanings.

For instance, when it comes to people like David Axelrod or Rahm Emanuel, I can admire their genius within politics and hold them in utter contempt because of how they choose to use their gifts. Adolf Hitler was a genius as an orator, but a genocidal sociopath. I do not presume to understand Trump’s motivations in his less-than-polished statements about the Russian leader; however, I simply state that Trump can believe Putin is a genius and a sociopath. While I can think Trump is a genius in manipulating the media (and trust me… he is), I can disagree with him on things like increasing deficit spending and his lowest-common-denominator rhetoric.

When it came to Putin though, the left and the media (but I repeat myself) did their damnedest to tie Trump to Putin and Russia, despite the total lack of evidence of such a connection. Whether it was Russia-gate, in which Trump and his officials were never charged, or lofty stories of Trump and his behavior with Russian prostitutes, or even flat out fabrications, like was spun regarding Russian bounties on American servicemen in Syria, the media went to all lengths to make Trump appear weak against Putin and the Russians.

Yet one stark reality cannot be ignored: Putin took no action against any of his neighbors during the Trump Administration.

Regardless of Trump’s statements (which I often took issue with), the result of his foreign policy led to the lack of the entry of the US in any additional foreign conflicts for the first time in decades. That includes saber-rattling with any foreign powers.

Meanwhile, when you look at Trump’s predecessor, the same cannot be said.

Beginning immediately in 2009, Obama faced Russian games in Crimea in Ukraine. Russia, which had been exerting influence in the region towards the end of 2008 (after Obama’s election but before he took office) thrust the new leader (Obama) into a place many felt he was unprepared to be. Obama sat idly by and watched as Putin and the Russians pushed the area to the brink of war.

In the months leading up to the conflict, the Russians had been issuing Russian passports to residents of other countries, an act which granted those people the rights of other Russian citizens, including the protection of the Russian military, should they need it. Protests, largely organized and funded by Russia, began popping up in Crimea, sending the region into chaos. Of course, this was the goal of the Russians, so they could use this conflict as a reason to enter Ukraine to reestablish peace on behalf of the (new) Russian citizens living in that region.

Obama did nothing….

(RIGHT SCOOP also responds to Meghan McCain)

Hillary Clinton jumps into the fray and gets walloped! PJ-MEDIA has a great post in which I will steal two tweets from:

Clay Travis and Buck Sexton break down Hillary Clinton’s lies about our interview with Donald Trump. How much wrong can the Democrats fit into just one year?

The N.Y. Times Called Birthirism A “Right Wing Conspiracy”

Published by Papa Giorgio

MIKE B. posted a link to a NEW YORK TIMES story that in the first paragraph reminds me why I cannot stand almost the entirety of the Gray Lady. Here is the first paragraph:

  • When called upon to believe that Barack Obama was really born in Kenya, millions got in line. When encouraged to believe that the 2012 Sandy Hook murder of twenty children and six adults was a hoax, too many stepped up. When urged to believe that Hillary Clinton was trafficking children in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor with no basement, they bought it, and one of them showed up in the pizza place with a rifle to protect the kids. The fictions fed the frenzies, and the frenzies shaped the crises of 2020 and 2021. The delusions are legion: Secret Democratic cabals of child abusers, millions of undocumented voters, falsehoods about the Covid-19 pandemic and the vaccine.

So, let’s deal with some of this first paragraph.

BIRTHIRISM

This is included in the NYT’s list of right-wing conspiracies.

Which I find odd.

Because the first time this idea was put into the public’s mind was by Barack’s own publisher. Here is an highlighted portion of the above which was on Obama’s publishers brochure in 1991 (to the right), and found elsewhere online till 2007. And the publisher of “Dreams of my Father” So far from it having a “Genesis” in some right wing “conspiracy” — for over a decade it was viewable by Obama and fans of his book.

I say “the first time this idea was put into the public’s mind” because my belief is that he lied to unlock grants, gain access and recognition at Occidental College, his publisher, etc.… similar to Elizabeth Warren. (Or, Carrie Bourassa up in Canada, or Ward Churchill, or the MANY others. There is some gain to claiming “other”.)

At any rate, that was the first the world heard of the “born in Kenya” idea. It was in the public eye from 1991 until April 2007…

…and then….

Hillary ran for office.

And this story went from public to through the Hillary Clinton “propaganda machine.”

PERCENTAGE OF BELIEVERS
Some of this is from: Comparing Two Conspiracy Theories: Birtherism vs. 9/11 Conspiracies

Since this had it’s origins as an idea via Democrats, it would be safe to assume many Democrats believed it.

Seems logical. While it was half [essentially] of Dems, it is still pretty high. I will combine polls from two conspiracies [Birthers and Truthers] to make a point.

Polls from RASMUSSEN (and others compiled at WIKI) that show an amazing thing. What is this “amazing thing,” you rightly ask?

Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure. 

(RPT)

Not sure? Not sure? To be clear, Democrats by over a majority believed Bush either knew directly or they said they were [basically] “still on the fence.” Here is more:

I’ve been looking for a good analogue to the willingness of Republicans to believe, or say they believe, that Obama was born abroad, and one relevant number is the share of Democrats willing to believe, as they say, that “Bush knew.”

There aren’t a lot of great public numbers on the partisan breakdown of adherents to that conspiracy theory, but the University of Ohio yesterday shared with us the crosstabs of a 2006 poll they did with Scripps Howard that’s useful in that regard.

“How likely is it that people in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East?” the poll asked.

A full 22.6% of Democrats said it was “very likely.” Another 28.2% called it “somewhat likely.”

That is: More than half of Democrats, according to a neutral survey, said they believed Bush was complicit in the 9/11 terror attacks….

(POLITICO)

What is the percentage of Republicans that believed (at it’s height of belief) Obama was not born in America?

  • 31% of Republican think/thought that Obama was not born in the states…

How many Democrats?

  • 15% of Democrats believe the same… [as well as 18% of Independents]

However, a third who believe him to be born out of the country approve of him (ABC-NEWS and my RPT post).

So it is clear the “BIRTHIRISM” is not just a “right-wing” conspiracy.

Various Conspiracies and Ironies

However, I do not believe the New York Times has ever said 9/11 Trutherism is a “left-wing conspiracy.” From the beginning of the next paragraph from the NYT article:

  • While much has been said about the moral and political stance of people who support right-wing conspiracy theories, their gullibility is itself alarming.

This article is for the gullible, as you will see.

ALEX JONES

Some of these listed conspiracies in the paragraph quote from the NYT are via Alex Jones…. whom I have an entire section of my main conspiracy-debunking page (some isolated here)… so I do not know who my friend is thinking is a “big conspiracy/gullible” person, as, I refute many conspiracies on my site.

I think my mom is the only person I know who believes almost every conspiracy named. Flat-earth, energy beams from space starting fires, the pizza “trafficking kids” thing, and the like. But she is getting senile.

SEX TRAFFICKING

What is ironic is that Hillary wasn’t trafficking underage kids… they were being trafficked to Bill Clinton (“Slick Willy”).

  • Clinton’s presence aboard Jeffrey Epstein’s Boeing 727 on 11 occasions has been reported, but flight logs show the number is more than double that, and trips between 2001 and 2003 included extended junkets around the world with Epstein and fellow passengers identified on manifests by their initials or first names, including “Tatiana.” The tricked-out jet earned its Nabakov-inspired nickname because it was reportedly outfitted with a bed where passengers had group sex with young girls. (FOX | See also TOWNHALL)

NEW GEORGIA REVELATIONS

What prompted the NYT post was my posting a story about new video compiled by True the Vote after collecting and going over CCTV of the area around drop-boxes in Georgia. The collecting, viewing, and then isolating these many videos was a time consuming project. Here is a snippet from JUST THE NEWS:

….The group informed the secretary its evidence included video footage from surveillance cameras placed by counties outside the drop boxes as well as geolocation data for the cell phones of more than 200 activists seen on the tapes purportedly showing the dates and times of ballot drop-offs, according to documents reviewed by Just the News.

The group also said it interviewed a Georgia man who admitted he was paid thousands of dollars to harvest ballots in the Atlanta metropolitan area during the November election and the lead-up to Jan. 5, 2021 runoff for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats, which were both captured by Democrats and ended GOP control of Congress. The group has yet to identify the cooperating witness to state authorities, referring to him in the complaint simply as John Doe.

Raffensperger confirmed in an interview aired Tuesday on the John Solomon Reports podcast that his office has deemed the allegations credible enough to open an investigation and possibly seek subpoenas from the State Election Board to secure evidence.

Here is BREITBART’S take:

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Tuesday he initiated a probe into possible illegal ballot harvesting in the 2020 election.

While former President Trump lost the state of Georgia by a 12,000 vote margin, True the Vote submitted a complaint to Raffensperger’s office on November 30 that details digital data of 242 people making visits to drop boxes to dump mail-in-ballots, with about 40 percent of the trips occurring between midnight and 5:00 a.m., Just the News reported.

The True the Vote evidence reportedly includes phone data correlated with video that shows individuals dropping ballots at 5,662 ballot drops during the 2020 pandemic. Breitbart News reported on a True the Vote document in August:

In other words, what the document says is that True The Vote was able to take cell phone ping data on a mass wide scale and piece together that several people—suspected ballot harvesters—were making multiple trips to multiple drop boxes, raising potential legal questions in a number of these states.

Raffensperger told Just the News:

We do have some information. And we are going to investigate that. We did deploy drop boxes that were under 24/7 surveillance, and because they were then that really, you know, can indicate who dropped that information off, and we’re really just going through that.

“If people give us, you know, credible allegations, we want to make sure that we do that,” Raffensperger continued. “And we have that right now as an ongoing investigation.” ….

CONVO

When MIKE B. saw a phone screen capture of a Gateway Pundit story on this from their site, he said:

  • Silly tweet

I asked Why – to which he said:

  • because it is not based on fact.

I said:

  • There is video (in fact MANY hours). And someone who was part of delivering these illegal ballots was being paid?

To which MIKE B. notes:

  • all bs. Investigated by republican investigators. Look no further then Arizona recount. 6 months of investigation. Nothing found. And by a biased investigator. Time to move on from 2020. Trump lost.

Apparently, many people believe that the Arizona Audit didn’t find anything. (Many of these same people believe conspiracies about: yellow cake uranium; that we supplied most of Iraq’s weapons; that the Iraq war was over oil; that Halliburton was given “no bid contracts”; that the CIA trained Osama Bin Laden; or that there weren’t WMDs in Iraq — to name a few examples)

I refuted the Arizona Audit not finding anything a while back, which was part of my next comment:

Arizona? Lol. You need to leave the NYT cocoon. Here are two examples from my post:

  • Nearly half of the votes flagged as suspicious — 23,344 — fell into a category called “ballots cast from individuals who had moved prior to the election.” They included 15,035 who moved within the county before the registration deadline, 6,591 who moved to another state before the registration deadline and 1,718 who moved to a different county before the registration deadline.
  • Found 34,448 votes from those who voted more than once in Arizona in the 2020 election. 17,000 votes that NEVER should have been included in the audit!

RPT’s Thoughts on Arizona Audit (9-25-2021)

That is what led him to simply post the URL to the NYT article.

To wit, let’s talk about the NYT a bit.

NEW YORK TIMES Lies About History

One big lie which required the paper supporting the rewriting of history was the 1619 Project. One left leaning professor of history at Northwestern University, Leslie M. Harris, wrote a piece for POLITICO stating essentially after the NYT’s approached her to fact check the article because she is an historian of African American life and slavery, she said she was ignored.

Weeks before, I had received an email from a New York Times research editor. Because I’m an historian of African American life and slavery, in New York, specifically, and the pre-Civil War era more generally, she wanted me to verify some statements for the project. At one point, she sent me this assertion: “One critical reason that the colonists declared their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery in the colonies, which had produced tremendous wealth. At the time there were growing calls to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire, which would have badly damaged the economies of colonies in both North and South.”
 
I vigorously disputed the claim. Although slavery was certainly an issue in the American Revolution, the protection of slavery was not one of the main reasons the 13 Colonies went to war.

The editor followed up with several questions probing the nature of slavery in the Colonial era, such as whether enslaved people were allowed to read, could legally marry, could congregate in groups of more than four, and could own, will or inherit property—the answers to which vary widely depending on the era and the colony. I explained these histories as best I could—with references to specific examples—but never heard back from her about how the information would be used.

Despite my advice, the Times published the incorrect statement about the American Revolution anyway, in Hannah-Jones’ introductory essay. ….

Over time via pressure, the NY Times began correcting the record. NATIONAL REVIEW headlines some major faux pas: Leaving Out Unwelcome Facts about Slavery; Smearing the Revolution; Distorting the Constitution; Misrepresenting the Founding Era; Misrepresenting Lincoln.

A more recent article found at the same place is by Professor Wilfred Reilly, associate professor of political science at Kentucky State University and the author of Taboo: 10 Facts You Can’t Talk About, as well as Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War. Both of which I have read.

April of last year was a big “correcting month” for the NYT, as the NEW YORK POST notes:

April was the month the narratives died. 

On April 15, the Biden administration acknowledged there was no evidence that Russia ever offered bounties on American troops in Afghanistan, walking back a report that wounded former President Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2020 election. 

Four days later, the Washington, DC, medical examiner revealed that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick had not been murdered by rampaging Trump supporters during the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, as reports had claimed, but had died of natural causes. 

Both stories were based on anonymous, unidentifiable sources, but had become deeply enmeshed in the public consciousness. Both confirmed the assumptions of the nation’s left-leaning media and academic elite, while damaging their political enemies. 

And both were driven by The New York Times, where malicious misreporting has been the practice for a century, argues journalist and media commentator Ashley Rindsberg. 

“My research churned up not mere errors or inaccuracies but whole-cloth falsehoods,” Rindsberg writes in “The Gray Lady Winked” (Midnight Oil), out now, which examines how the nation’s premier media outlet manipulates what we think is the news. 

The “fabrications and distortions” he found in the Times’ coverage of major stories from Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia to Vietnam and the Iraq War “were never the product of simple error,” Rindsberg contends. 

“Rather, they were the byproduct of a particular kind of system, a truth-producing machine” constructed to twist facts into a pattern of the Times’ own choosing, he says. 

Rindsberg argues that Times reporters have followed the same playbook since the 1920s. 

Star reporters cite fuzzily identified sources and make sweeping assertions to support a narrative aligned with the corporate whims, economic needs and political preferences of the patriarchal Ochs-Sulzberger family, which has helmed the operation since 1896, he writes. The chosen narrative, reinforced from multiple angles, is entrenched through a network of stories over time. 

“We toss the term ‘fake news’ around as if it’s something whimsical,” Rindsberg told The Post. 

“But creating what I call a false media narrative is really hard,” he said. “It takes coordination, deliberation, and a lot of resources. And there aren’t many news organizations that can do it.” 

With close to $2 billion in annual revenue, the Times has the money, prestige, experience and stature to set the narratives that other news outlets almost invariably follow. 

“When the Times breaks these stories, it’s wall to wall,” Rindsberg said. “MSNBC, CNN — everywhere you look, you’ll get that story. 

“And with the Times, it’s never just one false claim,” he said. “They make a concerted effort over time that they dig into and won’t let go.” 

The paper’s coverage of Adolf Hitler’s Germany in the decade before World War II is an early example of its narrative manipulation, Rindsberg writes. 

So glowing was its picture of the regime that the Nazis regularly included New York Times reports in their own radio programs. 

That’s because the Times bureau chief in Berlin, Guido Enderis, was a Nazi collaborator,” Rindsberg said. ………

See also some audio uploads of mine on the NYT:

NYT’s PULITZER

I have listened to Dennis Prager for years, and this is only the second time I have heard him this mad:

It should also be noted that without the Press, Stalin and Communism would not have had a pristine veneer. The Pulitzer prize winning New York Times writer, Walter Duranty, is quoted in THE WEEKLY STANDARD as an example:

  • “There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be.”
    –New York Times, Nov. 15, 1931, page 1
  • “Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda.”
    –New York Times, August 23, 1933
  • “Enemies and foreign critics can say what they please. Weaklings and despondents at home may groan under the burden, but the youth and strength of the Russian people is essentially at one with the Kremlin’s program, believes it worthwhile and supports it, however hard be the sledding.”
    –New York Times, December 9, 1932, page 6
  • “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
    –New York Times, May 14, 1933, page 18
  • “There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.”
    –New York Times, March 31, 1933, page 13

And here is a great recap by NEWSBUSTERS:

The New York Times doesn’t change. The paper is atrociously biased today and it was 85 years ago when columnist Walter Duranty proved himself to be a useful idiot for Soviet propaganda. Talking about a famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, he insisted: “There is no actual starvation… There is no famine.”

Another example from This Week in Media Bias History: CNN founder Ted Turner claimed global warming will kill “most of the people” with the survivors resorting to cannibalism. 

Below are Rich Noyes’s collected tweets from the 14th week of This Day in Media Bias History. To get the latest daily examples, be sure and follow Noyes on Twitter. To see recaps of the first 13 weeks, go here.) 

The blow article is about the real reporter who risked his life to tell the truth. The NYT’s should strip Duranty of the Pulitzer and ask for it to be transferred to Gareth Jones (click pic to enlarge):

More:

Conclusion

So to post a link (URL) to an article that starts off badly and doesn’t touch on the papers conspiracy views of it’s own (another example):

…New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has for years now delved deep into partisan hackery. But now with the election of Donald Trump, he’s plunged headlong into crazy conspiracy theory. It’s amazing to watch.

Forget that Trump incest stuff. This is the real wacky theory, and there’s no chance the New York Times is going to fire him for it, either:

That’s right, he just suggested Donald Trump would intentionally allow a major terrorist attack to kill thousands of Americans, just to raise his approval rating.

This is a tiny step from the old “Bush Knew” 9/11 truther theories out there, and this is from a columnist from a major left-wing newspaper, too. This guy is respected as an expert. Yet he comes up with this stuff. He posts theories like this and nobody pulls him back from the brink…

Russia Gate: Glenn Greenwald’s “Media MOAB” and More

Published by Papa Giorgio

Shepard Smith at one point reported [and believed] the Steele Dossier as fact, or at least not disproven. Which at that time it was — both in conservative news sources, Congressmen (like Devin Nunes), and the like — shown to be a fabrication. We even knew quite some time ago that the FBI knew it was a complete fabrication. EVEN personalities on FOX NEWS were saying it was bunk! And these three indictments by Prosecutor Durham, the most recent of Igor Danchenko, prove this contention.

I will combine snaps of the Tweets with other media in them by Glenn Greenwald as well as text provided by THREAD READER:

GLENN’S THREAD

The employees of these media corporations know, deep down, what they did. They did the worst thing you can possibly do while calling yourself a “journalist”: they drowned US politics for years in a fake conspiracy theory funded and concocted by criminals for partisan gain.

But we have heard so little about these indictments from these media figures. Why? Because they know that as long as they stay united in silence, the only people who will point out what they did are those they have frozen out of their circle and trained their audience not to hear

The NYT, the WPost, CNN, NBC and the digital liberal outlets are all vastly more guilty of what they have spent years claiming Trump and the GOP are: they basically ran a dangerous disinformation campaign, full of lies, in conjunction with CIA/FBI, and now won’t own up to it.

From the start, Russiagate — which drowned US politics and dangerously ratcheted up tensions with a major nuclear-armed power — was concocted from whole cloth by serial liars paid for by the Clinton campaign and spread by their media servants: David Corn, Isikoff, Frank Foer.

They all made gigantic profit from this set of lies: all of them. Their ratings skyrocketed by scaring liberals about Kremlin control of the US. They wrote best-selling books and gave themselves Pulitzers based on this massive fraud. FBI lied to the FISA court. CIA fueled it all.

The indictments “cast new uncertainty on some past reporting on the dossier by news organizations, including The Washington Post?” LOL The dossier wasn’t just paid for by the Clinton campaign – which they lied about for a year – but the info in it came from a Clinton operative.

What Rachel Maddow in particular did makes her one of the most disgraceful and unhinged media figures ever to work for a major media corporation. Her derangement and lies were off the charts. Yet the liberal networks are bidding for her: because DNC disinformation is their model!

Anyway, for all of those who lied to the public for years — the NYT and WPost reporters, the rich and insulated CNN and NBC hosts, the countless charlatans and politicians like Adam Schiff & John Brennan who wrote bestselling books — none of this will matter. Lies are rewarded.

Polarization of media means virtually every major media corporation — CNN, NBC, NYT, WPost, NPR -have an exclusively Dem audience. These Dems don’t want to hear that they were lied to and, even if they knew, they’d be fine with it: for the right cause. So zero consequences.

But if you are someone who hates these media outlets and the liars who work for them to your core, know that your hatred is valid, justified and righteous. They are a toxic force in US political life. They don’t lie, smear and propagandize on occasion: it’s their core function.

MEDIA….

Jesse Watters

Jesse Watters discusses how the media latched on to the Russia collusion narrative on ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight.’

(Key in the below is that he worked for a Russian energy company. Why would Russians want Trump out? See my past “Bullet Points” on the issue.)

Dan Hoffman

Former CIA station chief Dan Hoffman reacts to federal agents arresting the primary sub-source who contributed to the Trump-Russia dossier

Jonathan Turley

Brett Tolman

Former federal prosecutor Brett Tolman reacts to the principle source of the Steele Dossier being charged with five counts of lying to the FBI.

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY

TWITCHY hat-tip:

Bari Weiss Wrecks CNN’s Brian Stelter!

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Just note “far right” is believing that gender/sex is binary) Bari Weiss, a former editor at The New York Times, spoke to CNN’s Brian Stelter about the tens of millions of regular Americans who know this to be true (despite what the mainstream media tells you to believe): “The world has gone mad.”

Brian Stelter is wrong… YouTube is increasingly removing (along with Twitter and Facebook and other social media outlets) any push back on “gender fluidity” and MANY other topics. Corporations disallow many a person’s views that tend toward conservative ideals. The schools and universities? Fuhgeddaboudit! And while Barry Weiss might have had CNN medical contributor Dr. Leana Wen remarked in June that any investigation of the lab theory shouldn’t lead to anti-Asian discrimination mixed up with this science writer for The New York Times who says promotion of the theory that the virus was manufactured in a Wuhan, China lab and escaped is “racist.” Glenn Greenwald notes the Tweet:

Stelter may also start with the Yale Law administrators who suggested a student’s membership in the Federalist Society could be grounds for discipline, including preemptive disbarment. I could go on, but I need to go to work.

Make Orwell Fiction Again (Dems Slide Leftward | Repubs, Not-So-Much)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is an extension of a series I started, the first installment being: “Make Orwell Fiction Again (Hunter Biden Edition)” — I was going to include this, but chose to put it here to keep the other post more on it’s “censorship” topic.

Only a society that can effectively block and censor news, and shut down free expression is the kind the sticker refers to. Non-conservative ideas and news stories can be found readily in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle, ABC, NPR, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, etc.

In fact, almost every newspaper WITH THE EXCEPTION of the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, and the New York Post, and at times FOX NEWS, have a more conservative leaning bias and news stories to be considered.

L.A. TIMES EXAMPLE

One example is that years ago the L.A. Times carried columns by Dennis Prager (and other conservative voices). Today they carry zero. Here is a good letter to the editor:

To the editor (OCT. 3, 2020): I had to laugh when I read the statement that the L.A. Times’ future depends on diversity in its staff and stories. (“The Times’ reckoning on race and our commitment to meaningful change,” Sept. 27)

The Times’ future — and that of its cohorts in the widely distrusted and reviled “mainstream media” — does indeed depend on diversity. But not the diversity The Times is talking about, a surface diversity of skin color, national origin and sexual orientation.

No, The Times’ future depends on ideological diversity, something it lacks entirely.

The Los Angeles Times of 2020 is a daily Democratic Party mailer, and a particularly vituperative one. More and more of the paper is devoted to opinion, and ostensible news stories themselves resemble op-ed articles. All of it, of course, leans in the same far-left direction.

This does special disservice to the largely left-leaning readership of The Times, who still, four years after Donald Trump’s election, have no idea why much of the country holds them in contempt.

The Times should in fact commit itself to diversity — of thought. For every left-leaning columnist who appears in its pages, The Times should commit to hiring one conservative — and not never-Trump conservatives like Jonah Goldberg, but fierce, proudly pro-Trump conservatives who can expose your readers to facts and arguments they otherwise never have to confront.

Sure, some of these readers would threaten to cancel their subscriptions, and a few may. But The Times would become a must-read instead of the partisan rag it is today.

Jordan Chodorow, Los Angeles

NEW YORK TIMES EXAMPLE

Here for instance is Larry Elder noting Dean Baquet’s, executive editor of the New York Times, admission to the Left not wanting to hear thoughtful disagreement:

Dennis hasn’t changed (I know, I have listed to him for 2-decades), the Democrats and the Left in general have moved leftward.

PEW DATA

The Pew data, however, make it clear that the shift toward the extreme has happened among Democrats, not Republicans.

A new study from the Pew Research Center shows a growing partisan gap in opinions on major issues, driven in part by Democrats’ leftward drift.

Pew found Democrats have moved substantially left on a variety of issues while Republicans’ views remain relatively constant. That was true across social and economic issues; Pew claimed that the split between Republicans and Democrats is more pronounced than any divides by race, gender, or socioeconomic status.

“This poll and some other recent ones show that Democrats are pulling more strongly to the left and Republicans are not pulling quite as strongly to the right as a general matter,” said Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who specializes in American public opinion.

[….]

“The party is being pulled in a more liberal direction, there’s no question about that,” Bowman said. “I mean Elizabeth Warren’s comment a few weeks ago essentially that this isn’t Bill Clinton’s party, we’re not the party of welfare and crime. I think she’s reflecting the views of many of the people in her party. And I think a lot of it happened during the Obama years.”

(FREE BEACON)

BERNIE SAYS THEY WILL PUSH OL’ JOE

…Now, while Joe Biden is the new president, it’s Bernie Sanders and his allies who will often be in the driver’s seat making policy. “We’re going to push Joe — the president — as far as we can,” Sanders told CNN.

Wherever that ends up being, it will move this country further to the left than most people thought possible a year ago. Bernie Sanders is proof that if you’re persistent enough, you don’t have to be elected president to be in a position to accomplish your goals.

(NATIONAL REVIEW)

DECADES OLD NON-PARTISEN TRACKER

Senator Kamala Harris is the most left wing Senator — even more Left” than Bernie:

In 2018, Harris was ranked the fourth-most left-wing. But by 2019 — a year she spent running for president — Harris had moved to the furthest extreme.

She was an early co-sponsor of the Senate version of the “Green New Deal” of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), as well as the “Medicare for All” bill introduced by Sanders, which would have eliminated all private health insurance.

Harris also supported granting free health care to illegal aliens, slashing military budgets, and other radical proposals.

GovTrack explained its ratings: “Our unique ideology analysis assigns a score to Members of Congress according to their legislative behavior by how similar the pattern of bills and resolutions they cosponsor are to other Members of Congress. The score can be interpreted as a conservative—liberal scale, although of course it only takes into account a small aspect of reality.” The most conservative score is 1.00; the most liberal score possible is 0.00.

Harris ranked #100 — the “least conservative,” or most liberal, Senator on the list, and the only one to score a “0.00”:

#90 0.16 Sen. Chris Van Hollen [D-MD]
#91 0.15 Sen. Richard Durbin [D-IL]
#92 0.14 Sen. Amy Klobuchar [D-MN]
#93 0.12 Sen. Richard Blumenthal [D-CT]
#94 0.10 Sen. Edward “Ed” Markey [D-MA]
#95 0.09 Sen. Mazie Hirono [D-HI]
#96 0.07 Sen. Cory Booker [D-NJ]
#97 0.07 Sen. Jeff Merkley [D-OR]
#98 0.03 Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand [D-NY]
#99 0.02 Sen. Bernard “Bernie” Sanders [I-VT]
#100 0.00 Sen. Kamala Harris [D-CA]

The New York Times called Harris a “pragmatic moderate” in its coverage of Harris’s announcement as Joe Biden’s running mate. [RPT editorial: LOL!]

(BREITBART)

AXIOS’ JONATHAN SWAN OPINES

Axios’ Jonathan Swan reports on the increasing leftward shift of Democrats, calling it “striking,” while noting that many formerly liberal fringe ideas are now mainstream in the Democrat Party. Be sure to like, subscribe, and comment below to share your thoughts on the video.

Here is more via AXIOS:

What’s happening: You see it in many of the major domestic debates of our times.

Show less
  • Support for a big government “Green New Deal” to fight climate change. Watch the 2020 candidates jump on this bandwagon. 
  • Support for Medicare for All, calling for a much bigger government role in health care, beyond the Affordable Care Act.
  • A rush away from tough-on-security as crucial to immigration reform, which until recently was seen by most Democrats as essential to not looking soft on crime or terrorism.

In all three cases, these topics are shaping up as the new litmus tests for liberal activists heading into 2020.

  • Why it matters: These ideas and their champions are coming to the fore at a moment when there are real opportunities to begin to realize them.

You can see this shift in one important number: the number of Democrats proudly calling themselves liberal.

  • Gallup said yesterday that 51% of Democrats self-describe as liberal, a new high “following gradual increases since the 1990s.”
  • In 1992, when Clinton first won, 25% self-identified as liberal, 25% as conservative and the rest as moderate.
  • And across the spectrum, the country’s traditional lean in favor of conservatives has narrowed: 35% of Americans told Gallup they’re conservative, 35% moderate and 26% liberal………

Make Orwell Fiction Again (Hunter Biden Edition)

Published by Papa Giorgio

A family member commented on a sticker on the back-window of my van by affirming the idea of “Make Orwell Fiction Again.” (Click to Enlarge) [This will be a continuing series to address this idea]

However,  knowing that his only form of news is essentially late-night [political] comics, CNN, and NPR… he meant it in a differing way than both the novel, and I meant it. So, below will be the beginning of a series of articles with small excerpts that I will continually add to in other posts. And note as well that what we have is a marriage of Orwell as well as Huxley as expressed in the quote from Joshua Charles’ book, Liberty’s Secrets: The Lost Wisdom of America’s Founders, found here: Orwell vs. Huxley (Big Tech Update)

MOST MEDIA EXCLUDES CONSERVATIVE IDEAS

Only a society that can effectively block and censor news, and shut down free expression is the kind the sticker refers to. Non-conservative ideas and news stories can be found readily in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle, ABC, NPR, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, etc.

In fact, almost every newspaper WITH THE EXCEPTION of the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, and the New York Post, and at times FOX NEWS, have a more conservative leaning bias and news stories to be considered.

One example is that years ago the L.A. Times carried columns by Dennis Prager (and other conservative voices). Today they carry zero.

TWITTER/FACEBOOK CENSOR MAJOR NEWS STORY

THE NEW YORK POST was censored for many weeks… scrubbed from Twitter as well as Facebook. Here is what my past Twitter looked liked when trying to share the story:

This was all common knowledge [for the most part] because of Peter Schweizer’s March 2019 book, “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends“. And the NEW YORK POST had a wonderful article that Facebook, Twitter, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, NYT, WaPo — essentially ignored or censored.

EVEN LEFTIE GLENN GREENWALD CENSORED

Armstrong and Getty cover Glenn Greenwald resigning from the “free speech” news outlet he founded. The article mentioned them of Glenn’s is this one: “Article on Joe and Hunter Biden Censored By The Intercept”. [As an aside, I added MUCH MORE of the Tucker interview.]:

In Glenn’s article, this stood out (SUBSTACK):

….The U.S. media often laments that people have lost faith in its pronouncements, that they are increasingly viewed as untrustworthy and that many people view Fake News sites are more reliable than established news outlets. They are good at complaining about this, but very bad at asking whether any of their own conduct is responsible for it.

A media outlet that renounces its core function — pursuing answers to relevant questions about powerful people — is one that deserves to lose the public’s faith and confidence. And that is exactly what the U.S. media, with some exceptions, attempted to do with this story: they took the lead not in investigating these documents but in concocting excuses for why they should be ignored.

As my colleague Lee Fang put it on Sunday: “The partisan double standards in the media are mind boggling this year, and much of the supposedly left independent media is just as cowardly and conformist as the mainstream corporate media. Everyone is reading the room and acting out of fear.” Discussing his story from Sunday, Taibbi summed up the most important point this way: “The whole point is that the press loses its way when it cares more about who benefits from information than whether it’s true.”…

50 FORMER SENIOR INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS WERE WRONG

The NEW YORK POST opines on the recent “discovering” of an old story: “Liberal media ‘snuffed out’ Hunter Biden coverage until after election to help defeat Trump: critics” . But a must read article is this one over at RED STATE: “Ric Grenell Blows Up, Big Time, the Group That Should Be Most Ashamed of What They Did on the Hunter Biden Story“

So we’ve all been talking a lot about the investigation into Hunter Biden and how the mainstream media seems to have finally caught up to the fact that yes, it’s real and it’s Russian disinformation as some tried to claim before the election.

Now that they think Joe Biden won, they’re free to just say “oh, well, here’s this thing.”

Never mind that they consciously suppressed it from the American people and completely failed in their supposed job prior to the election.

We saw a lot of conservatives chastising the media today for what they did.

But I wanted to talk about another group.

We expect the Democrats to cover for Biden. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told CNN it was a “smear” straight from the Kremlin. CNN’s Jeff Zucker said in his morning conference call to impress upon people this stuff about Hunter was just more “Russian disinformation.” A lot of mainstream media has become little more than Democratic operatives at this point.

There’s a group that we don’t expect and for sure shouldn’t be playing this game and that’s the intelligence community.

But they have and they did in this instance as well.

There were 50 former senior intelligence officers who signed a letter saying that Hunter Biden’s emails had all the signs of a Russian disinformation campaign……

MEDIA “DISCOVERED” STORY AFTER BIDEN ELECTED

Except the story was [and still is] 100% true. It was Russian disinformation UNTIL BIDEN WON, then the media discovered it’s veracity.

…After the New York Post’s reporting was dismissed and characterized by members of the media as a “baseless conspiracy theory,” a “smear campaign,” and “Russian disinformation,” Wednesday’s announcement from Hunter Biden was ultimately too much for the media to ignore.

All three major networks’ evening newscasts addressed the controversy, with “NBC Nightly News” spending the most time on the subject, clocking in at roughly one minute and 16 seconds of coverage while “CBS Evening News” came in a distant second, with roughly 45 seconds of coverage, followed by ABC’s “World News Tonight” with roughly just 30 seconds. 

CNN anchor Jake Tapper reported the breaking news as it happened during his program, which was quite the opposite tone that he took during the election when he dismissed the allegations against Hunter Biden as “too disgusting” to repeat on-air.

Tapper’s colleagues Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper also mentioned the explosive development on their shows, while CNN anchors Erin Burnett, Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon avoided the subject….

(FOX)

  • Jake Tapper declares Hunter Biden claims ‘too disgusting’ to repeat on CNN: ‘The rightwing is going crazy’ — CNN is among other major news outlets that continue to downplay the growing Biden controversy (FOX)
  • CNN boss, political director spiked Hunter Biden controversy, audiotapes reveal: ‘We’re not going with’ story — Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe vowed he will release ‘raw recordings’ of the over 50 conference calls every day until Christmas. (FOX)
  • Ric Grenell calls out CNN’s Jake Tapper for belatedly covering Hunter Biden story — ‘This story broke in October. You didn’t do it then,’ former acting DNI scolded the CNN anchor (FOX)

1984 JUMPS TO #1 ON AMAZON AMID EXPANDED CENSORSHIP

JUST THE NEWS notes the jump to #1 of 1984 on Amazon

As “big tech” companies have moved to silence conservative voices on the Internet, mega-marketer Amazon reports on Sunday that its overall top-selling book is 1984, a decades old novel that portrays a society completely controlled by government “Thought Police.”

The spike in sales comes amid a rush of shutdowns in which these moves occurred in rapid succession:

  • Twitter on Friday booted Donald Trump from its platform and erased the entire history of his tweets;
  • Facebook deleted a grassroots organization for disenchanted Democrats, WalkAway;
  • Apple and Google banned the messaging platform Parler from its app stores;
  • and Amazon said it imminently will ban Parler, which is used by many conservatives, from company servers.

As of Sunday morning, Amazon book sales showed that the top-selling book is the dystopian novel published by George Orwell more than 70 years ago. The classic novel, published in 1949, depicts how government Thought Police eavesdrop on citizens in their own homes, searching for heresy of any kind. Anyone whose beliefs deviate from the official norm are declared “unpersons” who never existed.

Reviewers on Amazon drew parallels between the book’s plot and current events in the United States.

“Born and living in communist Romania I went through the same ordeal described in 1987,” wrote Constantin Turculet, who is listed as making a verified purchase. “After 40 years I managed to escape to America, only to find after 35 years of living in freedom that this country is pushed toward the same horror scenario I thought mankind will never forget.”…

CLICK TO ENLARGE

  • Later ages are always surprised by the casual brutality of totalitarian regimes. What those innocent ages neglect is the unshakeable (though misguided) conviction of virtue that animates the totalitarians. The historian John Kekes, writing about Robespierre in City Journal some years ago, touched on the essential point. If we understand Robespierre, “we understand that it is utterly useless to appeal to reason and morality in dealing with ideologues. For they are convinced that reason and morality are on their side and that their enemies are irrational and immoral simply because they are enemies.” That is the position of conservatives in American culture today. (AMERICAN GREATNESS)

WARNINGS YEARS AGO

Tammy Bruce’s book, “The New Thought Police: Inside the Left’s Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds,” was an important salvo in all this. Not the first book, but one of the most relevant for it’s day. Tammy has noted for years the censorship of the Left, one example is an older post:

Well, this explains why I never got a response to my #AskPOTUS questions, “What’s wrong with you?” and “What meds are you on?”

Via Washington Examiner.

A former Twitter CEO took measures to ensure messages critical of President Obama wouldn’t circulate too widely on the platform during a 2015 question-and-answer session, according to a new report.

The incident allegedly occurred during a May 2015 “#AskPOTUS” event on the platform, when former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo purportedly ordered the creation of an algorithm to suppress the messages and used employees to manually scrub any critical content missed by the software.

Costolo kept the decision secret from company executives for fear that someone might object, several sources told Buzzfeed….

Related: NY Observer: Tech Companies Apple, Twitter, Google, and Instagram Collude to Defeat Trump

The tech companies are just emboldened now. That’s all.

TONY BOBULINSKI AND LEFTIE LEGAL SCHOLAR, JONATHAN TURLEY

Yep, there were MANY disgusting videos on Hunter Biden’s laptop: him sexually abusing underage girls, including a family member, smoking crack, etc. But what was more disgusting was covering up a real news story [evidence of pay to play in the Ukraine and China] by almost all news outlets (print or media), as well as the censoring of it on social media. However, as Jonathan Turley notes wisely about NPR….. the designation as “a distraction” shows a bias rather than a news outfit, video precedes Turley’s article for context:

Tony Bobulinski will attend Thursday night’s debate as guest of President Trump.

JONATHAN TURLEY [Lefty Legal Scholar] notes this about Tony Bobulinski giving AMPLE evidence of who “the big guy” is:

A former business partner to Hunter Biden, Tony Bobulinski, has made a bombshell statement that not only are the emails on the Biden laptop authentic but the reference to giving a cut to “the big guy” was indeed a reference to former Vice President Joe Biden. More emails are emerging that show Hunter Biden referring to his family as his asset in these dealings.

The emails that have attracted the most attention refer to an actual meeting of Joe  Biden with these foreign figures and one referring to a proposed equity split of “20” for “H” and “10 held by H for the big guy?” Bobulinski confirms that “H” was used for Hunter Biden and that his father was routinely called “the big guy” in these discussions.

Another email Bobulinski being instructed by James Gilliar not to make any mention of the former veep’s involvement: “Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u [sic] are face to face, I know u [sic] know that but they are paranoid.”

 Bobulinski said he was brought on as CEO by Hunter Biden and James Gilliar and stated that he believes Joe Biden was lying in denying any knowledge of these dealings, stating Hunter “frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals.”  He added that “The Biden family aggressively leveraged the Biden family name to make millions of dollars from foreign entities even though some were from communist controlled China.”

His statement reads in part:

I am the CEO of Sinohawk Holdings which was a partnership between the Chinese operating through CEFC/Chairman Ye and the Biden family. I was brought into the company to be the CEO by James Gilliar and Hunter Biden. The reference to “the Big Guy” in the much publicized May 13, 2017 email is in fact a reference to Joe Biden. The other “JB” referenced in that email is Jim Biden, Joe’s brother.

Hunter Biden called his dad ‘the Big Guy’ or ‘my Chairman,’ and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing. I’ve seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business. I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true, because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line.

I realized the Chinese were not really focused on a healthy financial ROI. They were looking at this as a political or influence investment. Once I realized that Hunter wanted to use the company as his personal piggy bank by just taking money out of it as soon as it came from the Chinese, I took steps to prevent that from happening.

This is obviously just one side and the documents do not show a direct role or benefit for Joe Biden. However, it would seem that between the FBI statement and this witness statement, there is ample foundation for media scrutiny.  Yet, organizations like NPR has dismissed the story on Thursday as a “distraction.”

[….]

I have written for years that Hunter Biden was clearly influence peddling and he contradicted his father’s denial of any knowledge of his dealings.  The media can continue to hold its breath for weeks to try to avoid the obvious in this story.  That could well guarantee Biden the presidency but it will destroy the media’s credibility for years.

THIS CENSORSHIP PUSHED BIDEN INTO THE “WIN” COLUMN

It did guarantee a Biden victory BTW:

OMISSION

Click to enlarge:

(CNS NEWS)

…For the post-election survey, The Polling Company interviewed 1,750 Biden voters in seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, six of which (excluding North Carolina) were called for Biden. The voters were asked about their knowledge of eight news stories, all of which the liberal media had downplayed or censored.

The survey showed “a huge majority (82%) of Biden voters were unaware of at least one of these key items, with five percent saying they were unaware of all eight of the issues we tested,” reported the MRC.

For instance, despite the #MeToo movement and the media coverage it garnered, the survey found that 35.4% of Biden voters were unaware of the serious allegations of sexual assault made by Tara Reade against Joe Biden. Reade had worked for Biden in the 1990s.

“If they had known about Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegations, 8.9% told us they would have changed their vote — either switching to Trump or a 3rd party candidate, not voting for any presidential candidate, or not voting at all,” said the MRC.

“By itself, this would have flipped all six of the swing states won by Biden (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), giving the president a win with 311 electoral college votes,” said the organization.

Another important story buried by the major media was the Hunter Biden laptop story, which showed that Joe Biden was aware of his son’s business dealings in the Ukraine and in Communist China.

Yet 45.1% of Biden voters said they were unaware of the laptop story.

“According to our poll, full awareness of the Hunter Biden scandal would have led 9.4% of Biden voters to abandon the Democratic candidate, flipping all six of the swing states he won to Trump, giving the President 311 electoral votes,” reported the MRC.

Similar results were found when Biden voters were asked about the other six censored stories – Kamala Harris’s radical left-wing policies; positive economic and job reports; Middle East peace deals brokered by Trump; energy independence; and the swift vaccine production as a result of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed.

“Looking at all eight of these issues together, our poll found that a total of 17% of Biden’s voters told us they would have changed their vote if they had been aware of one or more of these important stories,” reported the MRC.

“This would have moved every one of the swing states into Trump’s column, some by a huge margin,” said the MRC. “The President would have trounced Biden in the electoral college, 311 to 227.”

The MRC noted that the Biden voters who said they would have voted differently had they been properly informed by the media, did not have to vote for Trump for the president to have won a second term.

“Just by choosing to abandon Biden, these voters would have handed all six of these states, and a second term, to the President — if the news media had properly informed them about the two candidates,” said the MRC. (Emphasis added.)

(SEE NEWSBUSTERS)

What’s Wrong With The 1619 Project? (PragerU)

Published by Papa Giorgio

In August of 2019, the New York Times published The 1619 Project. Its goal is to redefine the American experiment as rooted not in liberty but in slavery. In this video, Wilfred Reilly, Associate Professor of Political Science at Kentucky State University, responds to The 1619 Project’s major claims.

Are Voting Machines Vulnerable To Hacking/Fraud

Published by Papa Giorgio

(As an aside, I “hear” CNN and other networks and Democrats mention that Republicans and Donald Trump are undermining Democracy. In fact, 4-years of the Democrat Presidential candidate saying Trump is an illegitimate President and Democrats entire lie about Russian Collusion based on a lie about Trump’s involvement with Russia based on a knowable fake dossier which was the brainchild of Hillary. Democrats Chickens Are Coming Home To Roost!)

This was an excellent audio by Larry Elder… I add to the resources both in the audio as well as below:

MORE RESOURCES

  • (NEW YORK TIMES) How I Hacked an Election | NYT – Opinion;
  • (PBS NEWS HOUR) PBS Special on Dominion Voting Systems in Georgia 2020 – October 26, 2020;
  • (SYMANTIC) I Bought a Voting Machine Online … Then Hacked It;
  • (FUSION) A Hacker Shows Us How Easy it is To Manipulate Voting Machines;
  • (CNN BUSINESS) We Watched Hackers Break Into Voting Machines;
  • (NBC) ‘Online and vulnerable’: Experts find nearly three dozen U.S. voting systems connected to internet
  • (CEO SMARTMATIC) Election Company: Venezuela Result was Tampered;

[SIDE NOTE: for last video… election auditors were kept out in many swing state districts that had large Biden “vote dumps”].

NYTs Buries What Trump Paid in Taxes (UPDATED)

Published by Papa Giorgio

UPDATE:

New York Times caves to truth… but Twitter never censored these lies:

It’s not everyday The New York Times undercuts its own Trump-Russia saga by admitting that there’s no evidence President Donald Trump owes money to Russia.

In a shocking story headlined “No, There Isn’t Evidence That Trump Owes Money to Russia,” Times Business Investigations Editor David Enrich wrote: “Lately, liberals and other social media accounts have been spreading rumors, presented as fact, that [Trump] owes [money] to the Kremlin or Russian oligarchs.” The rumors, according to Enrich, “don’t hold up.” 

The rumors, according to Enrich, were based on The Times report on Trump’s tax returns. This would appear to undercut earlier speculation by The New York Times Editorial Board (The Editorial Board) in a 2017 piece headlined “The Trump-Russia Nexus.” In that piece, The Editorial Board attempted to connect Trump’s business dealings to the Russians. But here’s the kicker: “The world would know much more about Mr. Trump’s foreign partnerships if he had released his tax returns, as every president has done for the last 40 years.” [Emphasis added.]

Apparently, since The Times claimed that it finally obtained Trump’s tax returns, it turns out that portion of the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory apparatus didn’t exactly pan out.

Enrich documented some of the false theories liberals had been pushing on Trump’s tax returns. According to one “conspiracy theory,” said Enrich, “Deutsche Bank agreed to make the loans because they were backstopped by Russians — the Kremlin or a state-owned bank or an oligarch.” The theory stipulated that “If Mr. Trump were to default, it would be the Russians, not Deutsche Bank, on the hook for the losses.”  

Enrich outlined another false theory: “[A]fter Deutsche Bank made the loans, it sold chunks of them to Russians. It is common for large loans to be syndicated or securitized — in other words, chopped up and sold to investors. In the late 1990s through the mid-2000s, Deutsche Bank did this with some of its large loans to Mr. Trump.” The theory suggests that “the president would owe the money to Russians, not the German bank.”

But, to reiterate Enrich, “the theories don’t hold up.”

Enrich summarized: “Deutsche Bank didn’t chop up and sell the latest batch of debt — the only portion that is still outstanding, according to bank officials with direct knowledge of the transactions. The loans remain on Deutsche Bank’s books.”……..

(NEWSBUSTERS)

(Just a quick note, Trump’s business ventures — no matter what you think of his success — has hired MANY thousands of people over the years and paid them enough wages to pay for a place to live, send kids off to college, given them health care, and the like. Joe Biden has done none of this. He is a politician for life.)

Mark Levin reads a few sentences from the New York Times article:

...Mr. Trump was periodically required to pay a parallel income tax called the alternative minimum tax, created as a tripwire to prevent wealthy people from using huge deductions, including business losses, to entirely wipe out their tax liabilities.

Mr. Trump paid alternative minimum tax in seven years between 2000 and 2017 — a total of $24.3 million, excluding refunds he received after filing. For 2015, he paid $641,931, his first payment of any federal income tax since 2010….

(NYTs)

What did the NYTs article show?

  • (a) Trump followed the tax laws; (b) did not pay Cohen [as #nevertrumpers and Democrats said for two years]; (c) nor Russians [or get paid by them – as #nevertrumpers and Democrats said for three years]; (d) and was under audit [as Trump said, and #nevertrumpers and Democrats said was not the case]. (e) Also, as it turns out — the only wire transfers from Moscow were into Hunter Biden’s bank account.

Here is the DAILY HOWLER article referenced by Mark Levin:

….Much more significantly, consider what Buettner says about the AMT—the alternative minimum tax.

As Buettner notes, the AMT was created as a type of substitute for the federal income tax.  If, under the tax code’s welter of rules, an individual ended up owing no income tax, he would have to pay the AMT instead.

Sad! According to the Times, in seven years when Trump “paid no income tax,” he did make AMT submissions—and those submissions totaled slightly more than $24 million.

During those seven years, Trump averaged $3.5 million per year in AMT submissions. Did we mention the fact that the AMT was designed as an alternate form of—as a substitute or replacement for—the federal income tax?

During seven of the years in question, Trump paid no “income tax”—but he paid an average of $3.5 million in the alternative minimum tax! Journalistically, that has to be an all-time example of a “distinction without a difference.”

Sadly, it seems to leave us with only three years when the commander paid no income tax. Let’s review the basic concepts:

The T in AMT does in fact stand for “tax.” (The A stands for “alternative.”)

In other words, the AMT was designed as an alternative form of the income tax. It takes the place of the income tax when, under the rules of the game, no “income tax” is owed.

Yesterday morning, Joe and Mika (literally) didn’t know the first thing the Times had said. Beyond that, it’s hard to tell if the new data the Times acquired covers seventeen or eighteen years….

(“THE ERA WHICH WAS: When DJT paid the AMT!“)

After the news came out about Trump paying very low taxes in recent years, Larry Elder was left wondering: Where are all the people who are paying more in taxes than they’re legally required to? How would this possibly make sense to a businessman? Meanwhile, experts say there is nothing wrong with arranging your financial affairs to pay the lowest amount of taxes possible. Everyone does it, rich or poor.