Tag: mainstream media

ICYMI: Video Of RFK Jr. Pile-Driving Bill Maher Over Vax on His Own Show – Left Audience Applauding for Kennedy

Sometimes, one needs reminding that the public debate over the efficacy of COVID vaccines has always pitted faith against reason.

No one, of course — certainly no one who reads The Western Journal — should denigrate faith in general. But the object matters. Faith in what exactly?

In April 2024 — four months before he allied with now-President Donald Trump — now-Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was running as an independent presidential candidate.

He appeared on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” and delivered what any reasonable person would regard as a knockout blow to the host’s pro-vaccine argument.

Maher, however, would not concede defeat. After all, as a liberal, his faith in science — particularly COVID vaccine science — amounts to a kind of religion.

Clips of the exchange began circulating again this week on the social media platform X. It became even more relevant on Monday, when Trump used his social media platform Truth Social to demand that “Drug Companies justify the success of their various Covid Drugs.”

Moreover, last week, the Trump administration fired Director Susan Monarez from the Centers for Disease Control. This prompted resignations from four other CDC officials.

In short, the debate over COVID vaccines has taken center stage once again. And this time, there isn’t a Biden administration around to censor it.

Thus, the Kennedy-Maher exchange reminds us of why this debate remains so maddening to skeptics of coronavirus vaccinations.

In a clip posted to YouTube, Maher began by asking about Kennedy’s vice-presidential running mate, Nicole Shanahan. The host noted that Shanahan wanted to recall the Moderna vaccine, which Maher happened to have gotten.

Kennedy responded by citing polls on the subject.

“There’s 25 percent of Americans who believe that they know somebody who was killed by a COVID vaccine,” Kennedy stated.

“Killed?” Maher queried.

“Killed — 25 percent. Fifty-two percent of Americans believe the vaccines are causing injuries, including death,” Kennedy continued. If nothing else, that amounts to a significant public-perception problem for the drug companies.

Kennedy also mentioned clinical trial studies of the Pfizer vaccine.

“People who got the vaccine had a 23 percent higher death rate from all causes at the end of that study,” he said.

Then came the remarkable exchange that ignited huge applause.

“But that could not be the disease itself?” Maher asked.

“If it is, then the vaccine doesn’t work, does it?” Kennedy replied.

The laughter and applause from the crowd practically drowned out the host’s protests.

“Well, no, no that’s … not true at all,” Maher insisted, appearing annoyed at his own audience.

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…And The Legacy Media Wonders Why Nobody Trusts Them

Last year when I was asked to write a chapter for a US book on the incredible inroads and attacks on our civil liberties during the thuggish Covid lockdown years I decided, in part, to rank the worst offending groups. The lawyerly and doctorly castes were bad. They were woeful in fact. But the politicians as a class, the ones who ultimately made the calls, were worse – and there were very few exceptions to that generalised claim, as any Australian knows who looks for politicians who, say, resigned from Cabinet on principle (nada, zero) or who spoke up publicly and loudly against the massive authoritarian over-reach and aping of the policies of the Chinese Communist Politburo (a mere handful at most). 

So I gave the silver medal for thuggish lockdown commitment and stalwart thuggery to the political class. However, in terms of letting all of us citizens down I reserved the gold medal for the journalists of the legacy media. As a class they exhibited no scepticism. No thinking for themselves. They were fearmongers and PR agents for the modellers, public health gurus, ‘nudge’ manipulators and politicos. Yes, there were some brave exceptions. But very few. What we got from the legacy media was a sort of attempt to play the type of media you’d see in George Orwell’s 1984, dealing in Big Brother doublethink. And all of that is on top of the verifiably huge drift towards the political Left of the legacy media over the last few decades.

Well, if you were hoping things would get noticeably better after the lockdowns ended, they haven’t. 

For just one instance, let me take you to the murders of two young children and the wounding of at least 17 others in Minneapolis, Minnesota last week. It took place at a Catholic school with the murderer shooting at random through a stained-glass window during the first school mass of the academic year. The legacy media embarrassed itself reporting on this because it went against all the progressive class’s and legacy media’s (but I repeat myself) deeply held shibboleths and Left-wing bromides. You see the murderer was a man, Robert Westman, who back in 2020 had changed his first name to Robin and come out as transgender. He said he was now a female. And he hated Donald Trump. And he left behind a sort of manifesto that oozed antisemitism along with other bits of nastiness.

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Stupiditywatch: The confederacy of dunces on the left who wish Trump dead

Beyond words pathetic!  

It’s so pathetic that when some moonbat wishfully speculated on social media that Trump was dead because he had not been on T.V. for ten minutes, they all jumped on board.   

Millions of these dimwits gleefully accepted this bit of nonsense, believing it was true despite there being absolutely not a shred of evidence.  

They said he was incommunicado, but he was holding a four-hour cabinet meeting, which was being streamed. He golfed with his granddaughter.  He is hardly off of Truth Social for more than a few minutes.  

And yet they fell for it.  They are the most willing dupes on the planet.  They want him dead so badly.  

All their attempts at destroying the man failed. Their wholly unconstitutional lawfare failed; their plan to ruin him financially failed. The assassination attempts, the ease with which they occurred, suggest that the skids were greased; some very evil people wanted those assassins to succeed. Why was CNN present only at that Butler rally?  Someone knew there was a plan. How many were in on it?  That is the question of the day.

Since the past weekend, we’ve been treated to all manner of imbecility from the left.  

The despicably clownish governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, waxed rhapsodic about the possibility of Trump’s death.  

He thinks he’s funny, but he is ghoulish.  To think this man might have been vice president gives one serious pause, just as the thought of Kamala Harris as president is well and truly frightening.  

Then there is Jen Psaki, who is in the gutter of anti-Trumpism with mendacious Joy Reid, the always blindingly partisan Chuck Todd, Jake Tapper, and every reptile on MSNBC and CNN, etc.  

That so many members of our mind-numbed media fell for the suggestion that Trump was dead or ill shows just how unqualified they are to read their fabricated news to us.  

They broadcast their wishful thinking without a shred of evidence to support “theories” made up out of whole cloth.  

Here is a partial list of columns addressing this farce curated by the always reliable Issues and Insights:

Tim Walz Appears to Fantasize About President Trump’s Demise: ‘There Will Be News Sometime’ – Breitbart

After Days of Claiming Trump was Dead, Leftists Get a Nasty Shock – PJ Media

President Trump is alive and well after bizarre, false online speculation suggested he died – NY Post

Anti-Trump Judge James Boasberg Releases Woman Arrested for Threatening to ‘Sacrificially Kill This POTUS’ – Breitbart

#TrumpIsDead, #TrumpIsDeadParty Go Viral on X As Leftist Ghouls Engage In Wishful Thinking – X

What an embarrassment!  

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Reuters Withdraws Xi, Putin Longevity Video After China State TV Pulls Legal Permission to Use It

Reuters News on Friday withdrew a four-minute video containing an exchange between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese lead Xi Jinping discussing the possibility that humans can live to 150 years old, after China state TV demanded its removal and withdrew the legal permission to use it.

The footage, which included the open mic exchange from the military parade in Beijing marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, was licensed by the China state television network, China Central Television (CCTV).

The clips were edited by Reuters into a four-minute video and distributed to more than 1,000 global media clients including major international news broadcasters and TV stations around the world. Other news agency licensees of CCTV also distributed edits of the footage.

Reuters removed the video from its website and issued a “kill” order to its clients on Friday after receiving a written request from CCTV’s lawyer. The letter said the news agency exceeded usage terms of its agreement. The letter further criticized Reuters “editorial treatment applied to this material” but did not specify details.

Reuters said in a statement that it withdrew the videos because it no longer held the legal permission to publish this copyrighted material.

Representatives of CCTV and CCTV’s global arm, China Global Television Network, did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The video and story of the Xi and Putin exchange were widely shared by broadcasters and on social media globally.

“The editorial treatment applied to this material has resulted in a clear misrepresentation of the facts and statements contained within the licensed feed,” wrote HE Danning, legal supervisor of CCTV News Agency, in the letter to Reuters on Friday.

“We stand by the accuracy of what we published,” Reuters said in its statement. “We have carefully reviewed the published footage, and we have found no reason to believe Reuters longstanding commitment to accurate, unbiased journalism has been compromised.”

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AP Jerusalem chief participated in secretive Israeli govt anti-BDS event, leaked files reveal

The Israeli massacre of five journalists in broad daylight on August 24, 2025 at Nasser Hospital in Gaza’s Khan Younis city prompted a sternly worded statement to the Israeli government from the Associated Press and Reuters, which each employed a reporter murdered by the IDF. The AP subsequently published a detailed investigation demonstrating that the Israeli military knowingly attacked a civilian target, then carried out a double tap strike after a rescue team and journalists arrived on the scene.

While the AP’s statement of outrage about the killing of its photographer in Gaza, Miriam Dagga, has brought the leading wire agency’s tension with the Israeli government to its height, the relationship with Tel Aviv was not always so adversarial.

The Grayzone has reviewed leaked documents revealing that the AP’s news director for Israel-Palestine, Josef Federman, participated in a private 2018 panel discussion aimed at assisting “Israel’s ability to effectively portray its narrative.” His host was a secretive Israeli government outfit dedicated to combatting the global BDS campaign to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. Called the Global Coalition For Israel (GC4I), the event was convened in Jerusalem on June 18, 2018 by Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Diplomacy – the de facto propaganda arm of the Israeli government.

The moderator of the panel in which Federman participated was Avital Leibovich, the former spokeswoman for the IDF who has ardently defended the Israeli policy of defining Palestinian journalists as terrorists in order to assassinate them.

Federman has presided over the AP’s coverage of Israel-Palestine since 2014. Throughout Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza began in October 2023, Federman has helped shape a narrative that has subtly but effectively advanced Tel Aviv’s objectives, regurgitating the baseless and comprehensively debunked claim that “Israelis were raped or sexually assaulted” on October 7; legitimizing Israel’s violent invasion and theft of Syrian land as a historical “shift,” and relying on bogus data from an Israel lobby-affiliated researcher to minimize the civilian death count in Gaza – a grim toll which now includes one of his colleagues at AP.

Federman’s penchant for uncritically quoting notoriously mendacious Israeli military officials has helped secure his reputation for biased coverage.

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The Recovery of Thousands of Missing Unaccompanied Minors Should Be a Big Deal; Why Isn’t It?

On Thursday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy gave testimony before the Senate Finance Committee. In his opening remarks, Kennedy mentioned as part of his successes as HHS Secretary, the location of 22,000 of the 476,000 unaccompanied minors that had gone missing from the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) under the Biden-Harris administration.

First, we are doing our part to fulfill the president’s commitment to stop human trafficking, especially of children. We  inherited a terrible humanitarian crisis from the previous administration with its open border policies which allowed the appalling loss of 476,000 unaccompanied children. We have implemented policies now to ensure that that appaling tragedy can never happen again.

We have knocked on 82,000 doors and located 22,000 of those children. I promise you that we will do more in the next three years.

As RedState reported in August of 2024, the Office of Inspector General had documented the number of unaccompanied minors that had gone missing as 290,000. 

In 2020, then-Senator Kamala Harris tweeted about the “outrageous” separation of 545 unaccompanied minors, attaching a link to an NBC article directly blaming the Trump administration. Fast forward to 2024, and under Border Czar Kamala Harris, ICE has now reported that over 290,000 undocumented minors are not only separated from their parent or guardian, but no one in the Biden-Harris administration knows where they are. Not a peep from NBC News, and the few headlines from other news organizations use the generic designation of “The Department of Homeland Security” instead of attaching this gross incompetence to the Biden-Harris administration.

By November 2024, when then-HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra was in the hot seat for his complicity in this debacle, this number had expanded to 320,000. All told, between January 2021, when Biden-Harris first threw open the border, to December 2024, ORR had received more than 470,000 referrals for unaccompanied minor children, and all those children had somehow disappeared into the ether.

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The Statistics War Over School Shootings Since Columbine, Especially By Transgender Shooters

Since the horrific Columbine shooting in April 1999, there’ve been a tragic number of American public and religious school shootings. No matter how “experts” gloss over their statistics, if a single death is a tragedy, mass killings are light years beyond “tragedy.”

Having lost a son in high school – not from shooting, but from another life-altering catastrophe – I can only imagine the tidal wave of grief engulfing the family and friends of those lost children.

Much less reported, though nonetheless a tragedy, is that a disproportionate number of these shootings were perpetrated by those who identify as “transgender.” 

Triggered by this latest shooting, I went looking for the real stats, trying to discover how much tragedy is really out there. I sought what most media shy away from. 

As a trained journalist, I dug deep, recalling that:

If you want to know how many school shootings have occurred, just check the stats. 

I’d learned this in J-School: Numbers never lie. Of course, my pre-Watergate profs assumed credible sources had credible numbers.    

Right? Well, maybe. But don’t count on it.

While citing traditionally credible sources, the one that seems most honest in pointing out that nobody knows which stats to refer to as they judge the horrific impact of school shootings, Al Jazeera – a source I never thought I’d cite – said it clearly on August 28, 2025. 

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Climate Change Group Increasingly Partnering With Mainstream Media

The separation between advocacy and unbiased, independent journalism at a network news operation is being called into question by CBS News’s use of a climate change group as a “partner” in its reporting.

The network has disclosed in recent weeks in both on-air and online reports its coordination with Climate Central, a nonprofit that calls itself “policy-neutral,” though it clearly promotes the notion that mankind is headed for certain disaster because of human impact on the environment.

Fox Digital reported:

CBS News has cited Climate Central research dozens of times since 2021, according to Grabien transcripts. But it wasn’t until July that the network began consistently referring to “our partners at Climate Central” on air.

Last month, CBS News published a story about melting glaciers that also aired on “Sunday Morning.” Ben Tracy was the correspondent on the segment, with his byline at the top of the article. A disclaimer at the bottom read, “Story produced by Chris Spinder, in partnership with Climate Central. Editor: Chris Jolly.”

However, according to Fox’s story on the practice, Tracy and Spinder no longer work for CBS News, but for Climate Central. Only Jolly is a network staffer, according to his LinkedIn page.

Climate Central’s website promotes its “Partnership Journalism” program, which it says contributes “guidance” to reporting and presenting “joint features” about climate to news outlets.

CBS is not its only partner. Fox says Climate Central’s website explains the “Partnership Journalism” program like this:

A partner outlet contributes local reporting, including field reporting, photography and some editing for a story. We contribute data and charts plus a science reporter and an editor. For a text story, we help craft a feature in a way that puts climate change in appropriate and accurate context. For broadcast media, we provide story and interview suggestions and help develop and review scripts. Climate Central’s researchers assist with fact-checking.

The nonprofit’s website says it has garnered more than 50,000 mentions in more than 170 countries with “[a]rticles, stories, and segments using Climate Central content to communicate climate change impacts and solutions reach local audiences nearly every day.”

The organization has been busy for nearly two decades disseminating climate change examples and theories that now routinely show up everywhere from network reporting to comments by local weather forecasters.

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REPORT: According to WSJ – RFK Jr. to Reveal Tylenol Use During Pregnancy and Having a Folate Deficiency Potentially Linked to Autism

Secretary Kennedy is going to release his findings on the vaccine link to autism later this month, possibly on or near September 25th.

This study has Democrats and Big Pharma very, very worried.

* * * * * * * * * *

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will reveal that Tylenol use during pregnancy and a folate deficiency may be linked to autism.

During a Cabinet meeting last week, HSS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared that his department has pinpointed “certain interventions” that are almost certainly causing autism in children.

President Trump pressed the issue head-on during the Cabinet meeting, calling the autism crisis “a tremendous horror show” devastating American families.

Kennedy stunned the room with the numbers. In 1970, he said, a massive Wisconsin study of 900,000 children found an autism rate of less than one in 10,000. Today, official numbers put autism at 1 in 31 children nationwide.

California reports that one in 19 children are diagnosed with autism.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Tylenol and having a folate deficiency are potentially linked to autism.

The Wall Street Journal reported:

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to announce that pregnant women’s use of an over-the-counter pain medication is potentially linked to autism in a report that will also suggest a medicine derived from folate can be used to treat symptoms of the developmental disorder in some people, people familiar with the matter said.

The report, expected this month from the Department of Health and Human Services, is likely to highlight low levels of folate, an important vitamin, and Tylenol taken during pregnancy as well as other potential causes of autism, people familiar with the matter said.

Kennedy’s department also plans to pinpoint a form of folate known as folinic acid, or leucovorin, the people said, as a way to decrease the symptoms of autism, which affected roughly one in 31 eight-year-olds in the U.S. in 2022.

Tylenol, whose active ingredient is acetaminophen, is a widely used pain reliever, including by pregnant women. Some previous studies have indicated risks to fetal development, but others have found no association. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says it is safe to use in pregnancy, though it recommends pregnant women consult with their doctors before using it, as with all medicines.

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Howard Dean: Vaccines Likely the ‘Wedge Issue that Begins to Literally Divide the United States’

Former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean claimed on Thursday’s “The Beat” on MSNBC that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s stance on vaccines could be “the wedge issue that begins to literally divide the United States.”

Host Ari Melber said, “Is RFK Jr. fit for this job?”

Dean said, “No, but he never was fit for the job. He’s a crackpot. But here’s the interesting thing about this, I’ve been thinking about this during the day. This is possibly the wedge issue that begins to literally divide the United States as a result of his nuttiness, and as a result of the victims of his nuttiness, which are going to be children, lots of children. The states in the West Coast, Washington, Oregon and California have essentially put together their own CDC. I think New England is going to join them. Massachusetts has talked about it already. I wouldn’t be surprised if New York and some other places like Pennsylvania joined them. So you’re going to have essentially two authorities, the CDC, run by a crackpot, and then you’re going to have a lot of states ignoring the federal government and making their own rules about all this stuff. That is a big divide and is a big change in the way that government has been operating in the United States for the last hundred years.”

He added, “Here’s the other interesting thing about this. So yesterday, the surgeon general, backed up by the governor in Florida, said that they were going to get rid of all vaccine mandates. Now, would you take your children to Disney World if you thought they might be exposed to whooping cough? Even people who have been vaccinated can be be become troubled and can spread the disease if they’re in a huge tank of people who have no vaccination.”

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