Privileging More Republican Lies
The Media Research Center melted down when Donald Trump's lies about FEMA money going to illegal immigrants instead of hurricane victims and fearmongering about immigrant gangs were called out.
The Media Research Center’s Jorge Bonilla made a big show of defending J.D. Vance’s lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, because it advances the anti-immigrant narrative promoted by his employer and the Republican Party as a whole. In that vein, he huffed in an Oct. 3 post:
Part of what makes the Regime Media the Regime Media is their propensity to hide stories that cast the Regime in an unfavorable light. One such story is the announcement, made by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that, with a month remaining, FEMA lacks the funds to make through hurricane season.
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Portions of the Carolinas have been obliterated, many persons remain unaccounted for, and the agency in charge of backstopping state assistance is out of money? That’s terrible. And yet, despite having ample time to include this in their hurricane coverage, none of ABC, CBS, NBC did so during their evening network newscasts.
NewsMax did, though.
Of course Newsmax did — like Bonilla and the MRC, it’s part of the Trump Regime Media. He continued:
Now why wouldn’t the Regime Media want to highlight the need for additional hurricane relief funding at such a critical juncture? Because that might expose the American public to the fact that FEMA has spent approximately $1 billion dollars in Shelter Services funding of illegal migrant housing over the last couple of years.
[…]
The article cites research done by Oilfield Rando, who works in the energy industry and researches government waste, such as…FEMA dropping $183K on a diversity, equity, and inclusion study.
It is unclear which is more infuriating: FEMA’s overall mismanagement or the Regime Media suppressing the story so as not to damage the Regime’s electoral prospects. In all likelihood, they are waiting for a Trump-negative angle with which to report the story- that is, to “Trumpwash” prior to publication.
Bonilla gave us no reason an anonymous rando who calls him/herself Oilfield Rando should be trusted on anything simply because that mysterious person spouts right-wing-friendly narratives. As it turns out, not only is this claim false, it ignores the fact that Trump himself raided FEMA money for migrant-related purposes, as the Washington Post documented:
There’s no evidence that any money from the disaster fund was used to help migrants.
“These claims are completely false,” DHS said in a statement Thursday night. “As Secretary Mayorkas said, FEMA has the necessary resources to meet the immediate needs associated with Hurricane Helene and other disasters. The Shelter and Services Program (SSP) is a completely separate, appropriated grant program that was authorized and funded by Congress and is not associated in any way with FEMA’s disaster-related authorities or funding streams.”
Trump has a habit of assuming other politicians act in the same way as he would. So we wondered why he would accuse Biden of raiding the FEMA disaster fund to handle undocumented migrants.
It turns out that’s because he did this. In 2019, the Trump administration, in the middle of hurricane season, told Congress that it was taking $271 million from DHS programs, including $155 million from the disaster fund, to pay for immigration detention space and temporary hearing locations for asylum seekers who had been forced to wait in Mexico. “The U.S. is facing a security and humanitarian crisis on the Southern border,” the administration said in its notice that it was redirecting the funds.
Bonilla concluded by whining: “It isn’t too much to ask for the so-called ‘mainstream media’ to act as journalists and ask these questions, as opposed to acting like courtesans and sycophants. Especially when lives are literally at stake.” Yet it’s apparently too much to ask for Bonilla to tell his readers the full truth instead of acting like a pro-Trump courtesan and sycophant.
Bonilla returned for an Oct. 9 post complaining that the media called out Trump’s lies about FEMA’s response to the hurricane:
Now that former President Donald Trump has made a series of statements regarding the federal response to Hurricane Helene, elements of the Regime Media have found their angle with which to cover the recovery. The real scandal is not the slowness of response or hurricane emergency funding shortfall, but Trump’s statements. The story of Hurricane Helene recovery is in the process of being Trumpwashed.
[…]
It took about a week, but the Regime Media have stepped up and made Trump’s statements the real scandal. Consider how ABC World News Tonight covered a single sentence where Trump quotes someone else, and makes that into the scandal:
Bonilla, being a loyal Trump Regime Media denizen, then sought to justify Trump’s lie that there was “no FEMA” response:
That single sentence from Trump took over a minute to frame as “dangerous misinformation.” But the fact is that there were and remain many individuals with grave concerns over the early response to Helene. There is still an indeterminate number of bodies to be recovered from the muck and water. And there is zero doubt that, were a Republican president today, the Regime Media would be covering these response deficiencies onsite.
Bonilla then whined: “Here, again, the purpose of this story is to forward a narrative of competence, which would be untruthful. And, as I foretold, Trump’s statements are the story of Helene recovery, instead of the people.” Bonilla isn’t exactly demonstrating competence by defending Trump’s lies.
Tim Graham joined in bashing the media for calling out Trump’s lies in his Oct. 9 podcast:
Now that Trump has slammed Team Biden’s slow response to Hurricane Helene, media outlets have claimed the real scandal is not the FEMA response or the emergency funding shortfall, but Trump’s statements. ABC ran footage from The View of Kamala Harris saying criticism of FEMA is “the height of irresponsibility, and, frankly, callousness.”
That’s amazing. Because when George W. Bush, then, it was the liberal Democrat media that was easily defined as the irresponsible, callous opportunists.
Graham then played whataboutism by complaining about criticism of President George W. Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The next day, Graham grumbled some of about Trump’s lies being called out:
ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news shows all led into the impending arrival of Hurricane Milton by promoting President Biden and Vice President Harris trashing Donald Trump for spreading hurricane “misinformation.” Only NBC allowed the view that the Federal Emergency Management Agency might not be doing a stellar job after Hurricane Helene.
ABC’s World News Tonight sounded more like “KJP News.” They ran a fifty-second soundbite of Biden ripping Trump as “un-American,” when soundbites are typically less than ten. There was no clip of anyone else. Then anchor David Muir turned to KJP clone Mary Bruce to repeat the messaging for more emphasis:
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CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell had the same spin: “President Biden is not pulling any punches today, calling out what he says is reckless and harmful disinformation about the federal government’s hurricane response, and he has made it clear, he blames former President Trump, today calling his lies un-American.”
Graham, however, refused to concede that Trump was lying. He then tried to spin the lie about FEMA money going to “illegal aliens”:
Reporter Nikole Killion aired a clip of Trump saying, “You know where they gave the money? To illegal immigrants coming in.” She said “But even before Trump set foot in his home town, Biden fact-checked the former President.” Biden said “Former President Trump has led this onslaught of lies.”
Then Killion turned to Trump supporters in MAGA gear who said FEMA is giving money to settling illegal aliens (true), and Killion told them “You believe those claims, even though FEMA has said they’re not true.” FEMA disaster-relief money wasn’t diverted to illegal aliens, but FEMA is spending a lot of money on “emergency” support for them.
Curtis Houck tried to downplay the lies about FEMA as “vague”:
Thursday’s White House press briefing appropriately had a central focus of late Wednesday’s landfall of Hurricane Milton on Florida’s Gulf Coast and tornadoes across the state, but the partisan shills chose to ask a slew of questions emphasizing about this vague “misinformation” campaign they claim has had catastrophic consequences in the south as somehow on part with apocalyptic physical devastation and incalculable loss of life and fortune.
CNN’s Kayla Tausche first went there with this question to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who obviously went along with angry but also vague claims:
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The worst behavior came from Disney’s resident North Korean news lady for the Biden-Harris regime, Mary Bruce:
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Ah, yes, Mary. Definitely put FEMA workers at the center of one’s pity, not those who lost everything in Helene and/or Milton.
Given that FEMA and other disaster relief personnel were receiving threats as a result of those lies, some concern is warranted — unless, of course, the MRC hates government employees so much that it believes they deserve to be violently threatened.
Graham returned to grouse some more in an Oct. 13 post that Trump and Republicans were being held to account for their hurricane misinformation:
The Friday night pundits on the PBS News Hour worried out loud about how Kamala Harris is slipping, and David Brooks upset Jonathan Capehart by saying it was a “major mistake” for Harris to say she’d do nothing differently than Biden. But at the end, they came back around to screaming about hurricane disinformation from the Republicans.
Anchor Geoff Bennett touted a “great piece” on misinformation attacking the Republicans. Bennett began with a bizarre tweet from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene implying nefarious people can control the weather:
Of course, Graham had to spin away Greene’s conspiracy theory with a little whataboutism:
PBS pretends only strange Republicans tout weather-control conspiracies, when right in Washington DC, they never noticed in 2018 when Democrat city councilman Trayon White warning during a snowfall of the “climate control” of the Rothschilds (Jewish bankers). If PBS had an actual conservative pundit, they could point out Democrat disinformation, or rebut Warzel. But you have two pundits who just want to bash Trump and MTG the Weather Girl all day and into the weekend.
Graham apparently doesn’t see the difference between a local city councilman and a sitting U.S. congresswoman. Nevertheless, he wrote a post the next day downplaying those threats against FEMA because they could be considered to be incited by Trump:
Both CBS Mornings and NBC’s Today pounced on a Washington Post story which promoted an email alleging there was an “armed militia” speaking darkly of “hunting FEMA.” Both CBS and NBC connected this alleged threat to clips of Donald Trump speeches.
Washington Post reporter Brianna Sacks, whose bio proclaims she “explores how climate change is transforming the United States through violent storms, intense heat, widespread wildfires, and other forms of extreme weather,” promoted the usual Anonymous Sources making unproven claims:
[…]
The story came with a clip of Trump saying “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants.”
On CBS, reporter Nicole Sganga didn’t even admit the shaky sourcing.
Graham didn’t admit the shaky sourcing behind the Trump’s false FEMA smear. Instead, he peddled more Katrina whataboutism: “The networks reviled FEMA as an inefficient gang of bunglers under President Bush after Hurricane Katrina, and now they surround FEMA like a journalistic Secret Service, decrying how this phantom of Trump-inspired ‘armed militias’ is ruining government efficiency.” Well, those armed militias weren’t exactly helping government efficiency, are they?
Donald Perkins spent an Oct. 16 post complaining that those lies were being fact-checked:
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been exposed for running a vast government censorship enterprise and yet he made a new call to fact-check views that taint the image of the department he oversees.
Sec. Mayorkas joined CBS host Margaret Brennan on the Oct. 13 edition of Face the Nation following the tumult of Hurricane Milton. During the show, Mayorkas ranted about the threat of so-called misinformation about the DHS’s response to the recent hurricane disasters. “Well, I’ll tell you what we need. We need individuals, elected officials, people who have the platform to really debunk this false information and we are not having enough of that and I find that to be incredibly irresponsible,” he said.
Brennan teed up Mayorkas for his rant against alleged misinformation with her question about “dangerous misinformation being amplified online,” She asked Mayorkas, “Are you concerned when you see this and how widespread it is that it is a preview of what is to come with the upcoming US election as well, an attempt to manipulate people.”
Mayorkas responded by saying that he was “incredibly concerned,” defining disinformation as “false information deliberately spread to impact people’s behavior” and claiming the issue is “extremely pernicious.”
The so-called “false” information Mayorkas referred to included online outrage aimed at the DHS-led FEMA response to Hurricane Milton. For example, X owner Elon Musk took to his platform to highlight a message from a SpaceX engineer warning him about FEMA’s misdeeds. “The big issue is FEMA is actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own. It’s very real and scary how much they have taken control to stop people helping.”
But Musk provided no actual evidence that “FEMA is actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services,” and Perkins cited other no verification of Musk’s claim. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg denied any such blocking has happened, accusing Musk of spreading misinformation.
The same day, Mark Finkelstein complained that a CNN commentator pointed out how “statements Trump has made have made people distrustful [of] FEMA” and that “The reason why this began, with the hurricane disinformation about FEMA and everything, is because Donald Trump is talking about it.” He didn’t defend Trump, perhaps knowing there is no defense for Trump’s lies.
Curtis Houck continued the fact-check whining in an Oct. 22 post:
ABC’s Good Morning America delivered another remarkably partisan 2024 reports on Tuesday’s show, panning former President Trump for “debunked,” “false,” and “increasingly incendiary rhetoric” about FEMA aid, immigration, and “transgender rights” and fawning over Vice President Kamala Harris making an “aggressive push” and “inroads with suburban conservative voters.”
Co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos declared in a tease that Trump spent Monday “campaigning in North Carolina, pushing false claims about the hurricane relief response while Vice President Harris barnstorms three battleground states with former top Republican lawmaker Liz Cheney, talking about abortion, trying to make inroads with suburban conservative voters[.]”
ABC’s Rachel Scott — who has religious-like hatred for Trump — sneered that “in the final stretch, Donald Trump using increasingly incendiary rhetoric to attack Vice President Kamala Harris and still pushing false claims about the administration’s response to the hurricane.”
With a chyron bellyaching about “heated rhetoric,” Scott huffed that Trump “push[ed] false and debunked claims that the federal government diverted disaster funds to undocumented migrants” and “refused to condemn” the “disinformation” that’s “led to violent threats against FEMA workers.”
Is Houck cheering violent threats against FEMA workers? Seems like it — which seems disgusting. Houck is clearly giving Trump a pass for his lies.
Fearmongering about gangs
Along with Trump and its fellow right-wingers, The MRC was quick to exploit claims of a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua reportedly causing trouble in Aurora, Colo. Bonilla kicked things off in an Aug. 29 post:
If a violent transnational gang coming over the border and overrunning a Denver suburb doesn’t get covered in the national news media, did it really happen at all? This appears to be the underlying calculus of the Regime Media’s outright refusal to cover a story that is critically adverse to the electoral prospects of Vice President Kamala Harris.
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Tren de Aragua has become something of a household name as of late, with a history of criming all over the nation including, most notoriously, the murder of University of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley. But the taking of Aurora, or significant parts of the city including entire apartment complexes, is unprecedented. Its gross non-coverage stands as one of the worst instances of media bias by omission in recent memory, and that’s saying a lot.
The calculus for continued non-coverage of Aurora by ABC, CBS, NBC, Univision, and Telemundo is simple. Aurora is the rotten fruit of Biden-Harris border policy and the Border Czar, now at the top of the ticket, simply cannot be made to look bad. Wouldn’t be joyous.
At Univision and Telemundo, with their dependence on broken borders for a continuous inflow of viewers, it’s about a general refusal to cover stories that reflect poorly on open-borders policies such as those enacted by Biden-Harris. In those cases, immigration policy is a Precious that must also be protected along with the Democrat du jour.
Because Aurora is a localized event that impacts national policy, the story gets relegated to “local crime story”, not unlike the trial of mass murdering abortionist Kermit Gosnell– a far more horrendous story than Aurora for different reasons but that nonetheless reflects poorly on a core Democrat policy and might trigger an adverse electoral reaction among the electorate from whom the story was suppressed.
Thanks, Jorge, for making it clear that you care only about the story helping your right-wing political narratives and that you would ignore it if it didn’t.
Bonilla hyped it again in a Sept. 2 post whining that ABC’s “This Week” didn’t ask Colorado Gov. Jared Polis about “the violent takeover of certain parts of Aurora, Colorado by the violent Tren de Aragua gang.”
Despite this purportedly being a huge story, Bonilla then ignored it for nearly three weeks (though a Sept. 9 post by Curtis Houck touted a right-wing reporter hyping it on Fox News with “our friend, Trace Gallagher”). Why? This alarmist narrative isn’t exactly true. The city’s (Republican) mayor and other city officials point out that the city has not been overrun by gangs, and what problem there is has been limited to specific properties. It turns out the main issue appears to be negligence and mismanagement by an out-of-state landlord that let apartment properties fall into disrepair, creating conditions that allowed gangs to take over.
Rather than choosing to address this background that does not necessarily benefit his partisan narrative, Bonilla continued to cling to that increasingly dubious narrative when he finally touched on it again in a Sept. 22 post:
CBS Face the Nation and vice presidential debate moderator Margaret Brennan tossed Colorado Governor and Kamala Harris surrogate Jared Polis a huge lifeline when engaging the issue of violent transnational gang Tren de Aragua’s (TdA) activities in Aurora, a Denver suburb.
Watch as Polis fumbles around with a response to the TdA question before getting bailed out, and then pivoting to the failed border deal[.] […]
On the one hand, Brennan asked the question that Regime Media has thus far avoided asking: the Aurora question. It remains to be seen whether this question gets asked on its own in the vice presidential debate, or whether it gets lumped in with Springfield.
On the other, Brennan tossed Polis a lifeline after his initial word salad of a response. An inconvenient fact that often escapes Regime and Regime Media analyses of the migrant crisis: by the time discussions of the failed border deal began in earnest most illegal migrants, if not the vast majority, had already crossed the border and made it into the interior of the United States. Social media is awash with videos of suspected TdA types bragging about the ease with which they made it into the United States back in 2021 and 2022.
Polis took Brennan’s guidance and spun to the failed border deal before the interview ended with a question about affordable housing. But not before giving us insights both into how the Aurora question might get asked at the debate, and into the Colorado governor’s disconnect with this key issue ahead of the election.
Meanwhile, Bonilla demonstrated his disconnect with the facts. He then spent a Sept. 26 post complaining that a news report on the situation accurately quoted city officials pointing that reality doesn’t fit the right-wing narrative:
We have previously defined “Trumpwashing” as the Regime Media’s established practice of willfully sitting on a story until such a time as it can be reported in a Trump-adverse angle. Case in point: Springfield, Ohio, which the media didn’t care about until after the second presidential debate. The media are now trying to Trumpwash Aurora, Colorado.
The Regime Media have been notoriously silent about the activities of violent transnational gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) in the Denver suburb. Or anywhere else, for that matter. As we’ve noted, Univision and Telemundo have consistently been the only national over-the-air newscasts to cover TdA. Until now.
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Think about it: the story is Chernobyl-level toxic to the presidential aspirations of Kamala Harris; proof evident of the current administration’s failures on border policy. Each new report would expose viewers to the idea that the Biden Administration threw open the border and allowed tens of millions of illegal migrants into the country with no vetting.
And so it is that Tren de Aragua in Aurora, which has been the subject of significant reporting, draws Regime Media silence until such a time as there is a Trump rhetorical exaggeration of some sort that can be cited as the factual basis for “targeting” of some sort. Correspondent Gabe Gutierrez performs the Trumpwashing, with each of the now-standard elements: the local who is freaked out that her citizen reporting went viral, the migrant saying no such thing is happening, and the concerned local official.
The story is only “Chernobyl-level toxic” if you ignore the actual facts and hide them from readers, like Bonilla did. He didn’t explain why he’s so mad that Trump was exposed spreading yet another lie. And Bonilla’s concern about Springfield omits that he praised lies about Haitians eating pets because it advanced the correct partisan narrative.
Speaking of Vance, Finkelstein praised him for spreading the distorted narrative in an Oct. 12 post:
When confronted by hostile members of the liberal media, J.D. Vance has demonstrated an almost otherwordly ability to keep his cool and make his case cogently.
Witness Vance’s performance on ABC’s This Week. Host Martha Raddatz was attacking Trump, and by extension Vance, over statements Trump had made about apartment complexes in Aurora, Colorado being invaded by violent migrant gangs.
As Vance began to reply, Raddatz tried to cut him off, saying “I’m going to stop you. The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes.”
Bad move, Martha!
Retorted Vance:
“Martha — do you hear yourself? Only a ‘handful‘ of apartment complexes in America were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem, and not Kamala Harris’ open border? . . . You seem to be more focused with nitpicking everything that Donald Trump has said, rather than acknowledging that apartment complexes in the United States of America are being taken over by violent gangs.”
It was game, set, and match. Raddatz should have cried “no mas” and cut her losses, but made the mistake of trying to score a point in ending the segment: “Let’s just end that with they did not invade or take over the city.”
Vance struck back with some savory sarcasm: “Just a few apartment complexes, no big deal.”
Finkelstein made sure not to mention the negligent management of the complexes that allowed the situation to happen. Narrative over truth, remember?