The MRC's Right-Wing Narratives Fall Apart, Part 2
The Media Research Center continued to be unable to deal with its bogus, partisan narratives about immigrant crime and Tim Walz being exposed as such by fact-checkers.
The Media Research Center hates fact-checkers like PolitiFact because they have a tendency of exposing the lies and misinformation peddled by right-wing politicians and media. ConWebWatch has documented the MRC’s whining that its partisan narratives keep getting proven blown up, and it endorsed the lies told by J.D. Vance about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio (didn’t happen) and a purported takeover of a Colorado town by Venezuealan gangs (just a couple of apartment complexes, caused most by mismanagement of the properties).
As such, the MRC stayed busy during the campaign trying to defend Donald Trump and Vance against getting busted for their falsehoods. Alex Christy groused in an Aug. 9 post:
Following days of controversy, PolitiFact officially gave GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance a “mostly false” rating on Friday for claiming his Democratic counterpart, Tim Walz, abandoned his National Guard unit prior to its deployment to Iraq. However, PolitiFact omitted some key details from those who served with Walz that could’ve changed the truth-o-meter.
In the “if your time is short” summary, Sara Swann writes, “Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz served in the Nebraska and Minnesota National Guards for 24 years. Walz has said he retired in May 2005 to run for Congress; he submitted retirement paperwork five to seven months beforehand.”
She also insists, “After Walz filed candidacy paperwork in February 2005, his battalion received a March 2005 notification for a potential — not definite — deployment within two years, not immediately.”
Finally, she maintains, “Walz’s battalion was not officially ordered to go to Iraq until July 2005, two months after Walz retired.”
Swann does mention the fact that people who served with Walz have come out and criticized his decision. She cites Doug Julin, “who served as a more senior command sergeant major in Walz’s battalion, said Walz went over his head to get retirement approval before the unit’s deployment was official, because Julin would have ‘analyzed it and challenged him,’ the New York Post reported Aug. 8. Others who served in Walz’s battalion have said he ‘ditched’ them and his actions were ‘dishonorable,’ Fox News reported.”
However, for some reason, that does not appear to have affected PolitiFact’s conclusion.
Perhaps that’s because filing all required paperwork to leave the military does not constitute any reasonable definition of abandonment, and someone’s opinion does not constitute fact — something Christy does not want to admit.
An Aug. 29 post by Tim Graham complained that PolitiFact didn’t use right-wing anti-transgender terminology when it busted Vance for misleading about Walz again (needless bolding in original):
PolitiFact writers Grace Abels and Loreben Tuquero took after Sen. J.D. Vance on Tuesday, with a subhead claiming he “misrepresents Minnesota law on kids seeking “gender-affirming care.” The fact-defying term appears 18 times in the PolitiFact copy (include the subhead and a caption).
Their “Truth-o-Meter” ruling was “False.” But it’s not as False as claiming breast and genital amputations and hormone-blockers and the like are “gender-affirming.”
This was the bulletin-board Vance quote. as he mocked what Minnesota Democrats called the “Trans Refuge Act.”
“I think it’s pretty weird to try to take children away from their parents if the parents don’t want to consent to sex changes,” Vance said Aug. 7 at a campaign event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. “That’s something that Tim Walz did.”
PolitiFact conceded, yes, “Walz has taken action to support access to gender-affirming care in Minnesota. But Vance’s claim mischaracterizes the reach of the Walz-approved law on parental custody.”
Graham then parroted the arguments of anti-trans activists who made claims about what the law might do:
When the bill passed last year, local critics were pointing out what they found by reading the legal lingo: talk of creating “temporary emergency jurisdiction” — for the express purposes of providing “transition” surgeries and therapies, potentially against the wishes of parents of minors. Opposition to the trans agenda is equated with “abuse” and “abandonment.”
So their hope is the state of Minnesota takes custody of the child just for the temporary purpose of a permanent “sex change.”
Graham censored the fact that the PolitiFact article points out that “temporary emergency jurisdiction” orders involve cases where another state is involved: “under temporary emergency jurisdiction, a court can issue only temporary custody orders with short-term expiration dates and must immediately communicate with the home state. And a Minnesota court couldn’t change a preexisting home-state issued custody order.” Which means Graham is falsely fearmongering about this. Rather than tell the truth, Graham launched personal attacks against the PolitiFact researchers, accusing one of being funded by “a radical LGBTQ philanthropy.”
Christy spent a Sept. 5 post complaining that PolitiFact pointed out that words mean things (with added whataboutism):
In 2020, PolitiFact gave Georgia Sen. David Perdue a “pants on fire” rating for claiming that rival Jon Ossoff was a socialist. Now, PolitiFact is at it again, giving Donald Trump a similar “pants on fire” on Wednesday for rating for labeling Kamala Harris a communist.
In the “if your time is short,” section, Amy Sherman summarizes, “Marxism refers to the school of thought inspired by Karl Marx’s analysis of capitalism. Communism is a political system of government or a party that abolishes private property.”
Additionally, she notes Harris’s “campaign pledge to pass a federal ban on price gouging on food drew criticism, but experts said it does not amount to communism.”
In the main article, Sherman warns, “These attacks echo those of 1950s McCarthyism, when Sen. Joe McCarthy, R-Wis., led hearings on what he alleged was communist infiltration in high levels of the federal government.”
If you go on PolitiFact looking for the pants on fire ratings of the left calling Trump, or any Republican, a fascist, you won’t find it. What you will find is a “half true” rating on Madeline Albright comparing Trump’s “drain the swamp” rhetoric to Benito Mussolini. When President Joe Biden compared GOP voting laws to Jim Crow, PolitiFact claimed the subject was too complicated to give him a rating despite admitting the laws were nothing like Jim Crow.
Christy concluded by whining: “If political insults that aren’t 100 percent literal are going to be given ‘pants on fire’ ratings, then PolitiFact should start applying that standard equally.” Then again, the MRCis quite sloppy about the political tags it gratuitously hangs on people and organizations it doesn’t like, so Christy has little room to complain.
Walz and ‘banned’ teachers
A couple weeks back, we busted WorldNetDaily for falsely claiming that Minnesota under Gov. Tim Walz banned Christians from teaching in public schools. Christy spent an Aug. 31 post trying to defend the claim that Walz banned Christians from teaching in public schools — which ConWebWatch debunked when WorldNetDaily pushed the falsehood — and then bash Snopes for debunking the claim by pretending that words don’t mean anything, making the bizarre headline claim that this was “One Of The Worst Fact-Checks Ever Written.” He began:
Fact-checks should be, as the name suggests, about checking facts, but a Friday piece from Alex Kasprak at Snopes showed aspiring fact-checkers how not to do their jobs as he defended Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz on the accusation he banned Christians, Jews, and Muslims from teaching in the state.
Kasprak writes, “In late August 2024, several far-right media outlets rehashed an old talking point about Democratic vice-presidential candidate and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz: That he passed a law that “bans Christians, Jews, Muslims from teaching.”
Underneath three screenshots of headlines, Kasprak proceeds to violate the central fact-checking commandment: thou shall not torch strawmen, “Given such bold headline claims, one might be led to believe that Tim Walz passed a law that bans Christians, Jews, or Muslims from teaching at Minnesota public schools. He did not. These headlines are an aggressive and inflammatory reading of teaching licensure guidelines set to take effect in July 2025.”
Kasprak then cites the updated regulations, “[Foster] an environment that ensures student identities such as race/ethnicity, national origin, language, sex and gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical/developmental/emotional ability, socioeconomic class, and religious beliefs are historically and socially contextualized, affirmed, and incorporated into a learning environment where students are empowered to learn and contribute as their whole selves.”
If Kasprak had cited the actual articles and not just their headlines, he would’ve found that exact same paragraph. Nobody accused Walz of being so blatant that he passed a literal religious test.
In fact, the headlines that Christy wants us to ignore do exactly that. The WND headline specifically (and falsely) states: “Tim Walz ban on Christian teachers set to hit schools in just months.” That the articles are apparently somewhat more accurate than the headlines does not make the headlines irrelevant — in fact, those headlines are the first thing readers see and make judgments on whether to read the entire article. The Snopes writer did do a fact-check and demonstrated that those headlines are wrong. Christy offered no explanation for why those false headlines should simply be ignored, nor did he explain why it’s a “strawman” to point out clearly false claims in a headline.
Christy then whined the fact-checker pointed out that this false talking point was being “pushed aggressively by Koch-linked, dark money conservative legal groups opposed to teacher licensing requirements,” going on to huff:
In his subheading, Kasprak writes, “Merely repeating a talking point ad nauseum does not make that talking point become true.”
You could say the same thing about Kasprak’s “fact-check” because religious people have always believed in certain ideas of right and wrong, and Minnesota is giving them a choice: embrace falsehoods and sin or quit being a teacher. They didn’t need “Koch-linked, dark money conservative legal groups” to tell them that.
The existence of LGBT people is not a “falsehood,” and it’s merely opinion whether it’s “sin.” Why must teachers be allowed to viciously hate the mere existence of certain students? Christy doesn’t explain. He continued to whine:
Kasprak wasn’t done, he next violated a third and fourth law of fact-checking: thou shall not use ad hominem attacks and thou shall not cite left-wingers as objective sources, “The most recent round of headlines originated with a story in The Federalist written by Joy Pullman — author of a book arguing that “queer politics mean the end of America.” Pullman published a nearly identical article about the new licensing requirements in January 2023. Her sources included the Koch-linked Upper Midwest Law Center, and the Minnesota-based Child Protection League, described as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
That’s an ironic complaint given how his employer is incredibly eager to link anything not sufficiently right-wing as the diabolical creation of George Soros.
Christy concluded by huffing one more time that the truth was told:
In his fifth and final paragraph, Kasprak casts more negative motivations on the authors, “The claim that the new Minnesota licensing requirements ban religious individuals from teaching is a politically motivated, bad-faith talking point. Because the law does not ban Christians, Jews, or Muslims from teaching in Minnesota, the claim is False.”
With that, one of the laziest and most unprofessional fact-checkers ever written mercifully came to an end.
But Christy identified nothing lazy or unprofessional — he’s whining that the fact-checker accurately busted a right-wing narrative and exposed it as such. That would seem to make Christy the lazy and unprofessional one.
Illegal immigrant killers
Christy complained in a Sept. 28 post:
On Friday, ICE revealed that it estimates there are roughly 13,000 non-citizen murderers running loose in the country, but only NBC found time to mention it on their Friday evening newscast. ABC and CBS, meanwhile, not only failed to cover it, but tried to spin the border situation as positive.
But it wasn’t well until the end of his post that Christy, summarizing the report by NBC correspondent Gabe Gutierrez, grudgingly conceded an inconvenient fact that undercuts his narrative:
Gutierrez, however, tried to shield Harris from at least some embarrassment, “A source familiar with the data tells NBC News, many entered the country prior to the Biden administration and that ICE lacks resources.”
Christy concluded by trying to spin the stat to right-wing benefit anyway: “With ICE’s report, maybe the media can stop pretending like illegal immigrant crime is no big deal, but that would require two of the three networks to acknowledge the report.”
The next day, Jorge Bonilla similarly started by hyping the big flashy number in praising right-wing Fox News for reporting it:
One can determine whether a piece of information is damaging to Democrats in power. Judging by the Sunday shows’ response to reports that over 13,000 illegal aliens convicted of murder were released into the interior of the United States: extremely damaging.
[…]
Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute presented the data consistent with Fox’s reporting, including the point about the numbers not being exclusive to this administration. Nonetheless, NBC’s Kristen Welker felt compelled to firefight the data, almost reflexively, and pivot off of that and on to the upcoming vice presidential debate:
Bonilla grudgingly admitted that even Pletka put the numbers in their factual context — though he refused to point out the right-wing bias of her employer — then whined that others did as well before trying to apply his preferred partisan spin:
Pletka correctly noted both that the data went back decades, and that the non-detained docket DOUBLED under Biden-Harris. Nonetheless, [NBC’s Kristen] Welker felt the need to jump in and hammer the point about the data going back four decades before moving on to the debate.
[…] [CNN host] Jake Tapper, like Kristen Welker, had the fact-check at the ready. Graham takes a different course of action than did Pletka, pivoting to those criminal aliens that were released to the non-detained docket under the Biden-Harris Administration, including the man who killed Georgia nursing student Laken Riley- who reportedly has ties to the murderous Tren de Aragua gang that has established multiple beachheads across several U.S. cities.
Somehow, the Regime Media seem to believe that one cannot cite these data because they span a period of time well before Biden-Harris. This doesn’t magically make these data go away, no matter what Welker and Tapper may want to make viewers believe.
More than anything, they are proof evident of a broken immigration system that has been systematically smashed over the past three and a half years. This is what the data actually show, no matter how much the Regime Media may want to make you believe otherwise.
Bonilla, of course, had been spreading bogus fearmongering about Tren de Aragua purportedly taking over a Colorado town.
Geoffrey Dickens was also angry that this right-wing talking point collapsed when hit by reality:
On September 27, ICE revealed that it estimates there are roughly 13,000 non-citizen murderers running loose in the country, but of the three (ABC, CBS, NBC) broadcast networks only NBC found time to mention it on the September 27 Nightly News and on Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press.
It should be noted the mention on Meet the Press (made by Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute) was immediately “fact-checked” by moderator Kristen Welker: “And DHS has said some of those stats actually go back as far as 40 years.”
But at least the stat got airtime on NBC.
[…]
The September 30 print edition (September 29 online version here) of the Washington Post covered the 13,000 number on page 2 but only did so to trash Donald Trump in an article headlined: “Trump Skews Data in Ice Letter to Lambaste Immigrants.”
The fact that ABC and CBS still refuse to report on the number shows how far they are willing to go to cover for the Biden-Harris administration.
None of these MRC writers explained why the full details about that statistic should be hidden from Americans, even if it undercut their preferred right-wing narrative. And if a small minority of those alleged murderers were released under Biden, how can failing to report that statistic equal “cover for the Biden-Harris administration”? That just underscores how desperate the MRC has been hurl dubious claims at Kamala Harris in order to undermine her campaign — which would seem to be the opposite of genuine “media research.”