Tag: media

JD Vance Accuses Politico of ‘Journalistic Malpractice’ Over New Report: ‘It’s a Foreign Influence Operation’

Vice President JD Vance has taken a blistering shot at one of the White House’s most notorious rivals: the media.

On Friday, Politico released a critical report that took aim at one key member of President Donald Trump’s administration — and Vance wasn’t standing for it.

Alongside the blaring headline of “‘His inexperience shines through’: Steve Witkoff struggles to manage Russia as Trump peace envoy,” Politico spilled quite a bit of digital ink calling out the alleged inefficacy of Trump’s special envoy for Peace Missions.

Specifically, Politico’s Felicia Schwartz chronicled the struggles that Witkoff was purportedly having while trying to bring about an amicable end to the Russia-Ukraine war.

“Some frustrated U.S., Ukrainian and European officials say part of the problem is the go-it-alone style of Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy for peace missions and go-to negotiator on Ukraine,” Schwartz reports. “He has refused to consult with experts and allies, leaving him uninformed at times and unprepared at others, according to seven people familiar with internal discussions.”

The report added, “Two said he misses the mark by viewing the conflict through a real estate lens, like a land dispute.”

Enter: Vance.

The vice president took to X shortly after the report’s publication and did not mince words when it came to what he thought of the Washington, D.C.-based outlet — and Schwartz.

“This story from Politico is journalistic malpractice,” Vance posted Friday. “But it’s more than that: it’s a foreign influence operation meant to hurt the administration and one of our most effective members.

“Notice how all of the people attacking Steve are on background? That means it’s two or three deep staters who are angry that Witkoff has succeeded where they’ve failed.

“You know what this ‘reporter’ left out to make room for anonymous quotes? The full quote from the sitting vice president, on the record. A quote from the secretary of the state, on the record. A quote from Jared Kushner, on the record.

“The full quote from the UK’s Jonathan Powell, one of the most respected national security people in the Western World, who defended Steve vigorously from these malicious smears.”

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The War On Reality is Over

Unwittingly, that New York Times headline is a wondrous case of the self-solving mystery. You come here to understand the many social and political mysteries of the day. I will attempt to unravel this hairball.

Most obviously, the suspect, now dead, in Wednesday’s Minneapolis school shooting was not a “her.” He was a him, a 23-year-old male, Robert Westman, who had been pretending to be a female for some years since undergoing puberty, with the encouragement of his parents and the cultural leaders of his city, including Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey, backed by the expressed principles of the national Democratic Party.

The essence of all that was a gigantic game of pretend, a broad and deliberate dissociation from reality for the purpose of maintaining a political racketeering operation, which is what the Democratic Party had become. Pretend that men can become women. Pretend that Covid vaccinations are safe and effective. Pretend that national borders don’t matter. Pretend that crime is not a social problem. Pretend that riots are mostly peaceful. Pretend that our elections are free and fair. Pretend that “Joe Biden” is president. Pretend that Ukraine is fighting for democracy. And so on. All pretend.

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MSNBC Panel Talks Banning All Firearms After Trans Shooter Targets Catholic School: ‘Do What Australia Did’

When modern liberals casually reveal their true authoritarian natures, believe them.

They did it during the COVID scare, when they embraced lockdowns, masks, and vaccine mandates. And they do it in the wake of every mass shooting.

Rarely, however, do they go as far as journalist Mike Spies of the anti-gun outlet The Trace.

Wednesday on MSNBC, Spies appeared in a round table discussion with host Katy Tur and others. Earlier in the day, a transgender murderer had opened fire at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, killing two children and injuring 17.

Thus, the panelists discussed the shooting and how to prevent such violence moving forward. Naturally — this being MSNBC — they focused on the weapons and not the mental-health crisis at the root of transgender ideology.

“You have to be honest and say what will actually work, which is what nobody wants to hear, which is that there are just simply way too many firearms, and they are way too accessible,” Spies said.

“And they’re too powerful?” Tur asked.

“And they’re too powerful,” Spies replied, “even handguns too. Again, that’s why in Australia — it doesn’t matter if it’s not politically acceptable to say it. I’m not here as a politician or anyone who works in politics. I’m a journalist — whether or not you like it, the only thing that really works, if you really wanted to bring down gun violence, was to do what Australia did and to do what many other countries in Europe do.”

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The Disaster That Was George W. Bush

In a recent New York Times column, David French in one of his usual anti-Trump screeds, created a hagiographic picture of the presidency of George W. Bush, comparing him to Donald Trump’s current term of office. Wrote French:

Bush was interventionist; Trump is far more isolationist. Bush expanded the social safety net with Medicare Part D; Trump cut Medicaid. Bush implemented PEPFAR, the successful program to combat AIDS in Africa that has saved more than 20 million lives; Trump has gutted PEPFAR. While both men nominated pro-life judges (a Bush appointee, Justice Samuel Alito, wrote the Dobbs decision), Trump ran on a watered-down platform that removed traditional Republican support for a “human life amendment” to the Constitution that would effectively outlaw abortion.

Bush is a devout Christian. Those words, to put it mildly, are not how one would describe Trump.

Indeed, the Trump presidency has so unnerved his opposition to the point where many of his former opponents have praised him, contrasting his so-called unifying presidency as opposed to the Trump White House, which has created division:

Bush’s video was part of “The Call to Unite,” a 24-hour livestream featuring Oprah Winfrey, Sean Combs, Bill Clinton, and a host of other celebrities. Clinton’s message struck similar notes: “We need each other, and we do better when we work together,” he said. “That’s never been more clear to me as I have seen the courage and dignity of the first responders, the health care workers, all the people who are helping them to provide our food, our transportation, our basic services to the other essential workers.”

The message is clear: whether one agrees with everything about the Bush presidency, at least Bush is a decent, Christian guy (not like Trump) and is a humanitarian to boot. Although the political rhetoric from Democrats during the administration of POTUS 43 was anything but unifying, it seems that all is forgiven as Democrats and Never-Trump Republicans join to fight Trump.

Although some may be nostalgic for Bush, perhaps we should be reminded of his disastrous record as president, a record that still is creating negative dividends to this very day. Forget the rhetoric about how “this guy is decent.” The term “decent” is no way to describe Bush’s two terms in office.

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The Media Dismissing The Transgender Factor In This School Shooting Are Enabling Another One

It’s truly as if the news media wish for more transgender psychotics to commit mass murders before offing themselves. Why else would they look at what happened in Minneapolis this week and continue insisting there’s no correlation at all between a potentially violent mental break and the irrational belief that a man can become a woman?

After a gunman identified as 23-year-old Robin Westman — originally Robert before his mother apparently allowed him to legally change his name at 17 — shot up a Catholic school’s church in Minneapolis on Wednesday, the media got to work, both treating the suspected killer as if his gender dysphoria was entirely incidental and belittling anyone who suggested otherwise.

The New York Times captured that dynamic best under the headline, “Minneapolis Suspect Knew Her Target, but Motive Is a Mystery.” The “her” was a deliberate word choice for a person we’re still learning about a day later. And what we did learn was that, according to the New York Post, Westman deeply regretted his attempts to become female, writing in a journal, “I only keep [the long hair] because it is pretty much my last shred of being trans. I am tired of being trans, I wish I never brain-washed myself.”

But the Times wants the public to believe there’s nothing significant about being a shooter who tried swapping his gender, so — it’s ma’am!

Throughout the article, the Times refers to Westman as “she” and “her” and then, nine paragraphs in, attacks the people who dared notice that this isn’t the first, second, or third time in recent years where a “transgender” person has committed mass violence. “On social media,” the article said, “some conservative activists have seized on the shooter’s gender identity to broadly portray transgender people as violent or mentally ill.”

Or, more accurately, people who have a memory recalled that similar tragic episodes were carried out by individuals identified as being deep into pronoun play and gender bending ideologies. That includes: 36-year-old Genesse Ivonne Moreno in February of last year (also went by “Jeffrey Escalante”); 17-year-old Dylan Jesse Butler the month prior (suspected gender queer activist); 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale in March 2023 (used male pronouns); 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich in November 2022 (claimed to be “nonbinary”); 16-year-old Maya “Alec” McKinney in May 2019 (identified as male); and 26-year-old Snochia Moseley (suspected to be transgender).

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The NYT Just Nuked the Left’s Narrative About the Bolton Raid

When news hit last week that federal agents had raided John Bolton’s Maryland home and Washington office, the reaction was as predictable as it was hysterical. The left immediately leapt into hysterics, spinning the story as proof of Trump’s alleged obsession with revenge, tying it to Bolton’s bitter falling-out with him. Within hours, the usual chorus was screeching the same tired lines: Democracy is under attack! Trump is a dictator! This was pure political retribution!

Only it wasn’t.

A new report from—if you can believe it—the New York Times has thrown cold water on that absurd little storyline. According to their reporting, the roots of this investigation don’t trace back to Trump at all. In fact, the probe gained traction under the Biden administration—an inconvenient truth that blows up the liberal media’s theory of political retribution. 

The investigation into President Trump’s former national security adviser, John R. Bolton, began to pick up momentum during the Biden administration, when U.S. intelligence officials collected information that appeared to show that he had mishandled classified information, according to people familiar with the inquiry.

The United States gathered data from an adversarial country’s spy service, including emails with sensitive information that Mr. Bolton, while still working in the first Trump administration, appeared to have sent to people close to him on an unclassified system, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive case that remains open.

Sources say the emails at the heart of the case were written by Bolton himself and contained information pulled from classified documents he had access to while serving in the White House. Even worse, those messages were allegedly sent to people close to him as he pieced together his infamous 2020 anti-Trump book, The Room Where It Happened.

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Even the media’s Gaza ‘investigations’ hide the real story of Israel’s atrocities

An investigation by CNN into Israel’s strike on the Nasser Hospital this week – an attack that killed more than 20 people, including emergency workers and five journalists – is a case study in how even well-intentioned journalism, ostensibly examining Israeli crimes, ends up concealing more than it reveals.

CNN’s detailed examination of footage of Monday’s strike on the hospital in Khan Younis found that Israel’s so-called “double-tap” actually involved three missiles.

The first strike hit a fourth-floor stairwell close to a hospital upper balcony. Then, 10 minutes later, as emergency crews and journalists scrambled to help the victims, a second and third strike hit precisely the same spot.

A munitions expert who examined the footage notes that the second and third missiles were almost certainly fired from two different tanks in very close succession.

As he and CNN conclude, that removes any last trace of doubt on whether the attack on the hospital was, as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims, “a tragic mishap”. Rather, it was a highly coordinated precision strike.

CNN reiterates a further and important contextual point that should obliterate Israel’s subsequent justification for its attack, following what Israel terms an “initial investigation”.

Let us note in passing that the Israeli military is pretending to investigate itself only to dampen the rare furore that has erupted over the strike, chiefly because the new atrocity was caught on camera and killed journalists working for major western news organisations. Israel has abandoned almost all of its previous investigations as soon as the western media could be provided with a fresher atrocity to report on. And Israel seems to have an endless production line of atrocities with which to distract them.

All too predictably, Israel’s “initial investigation” found a “Hamas” excuse.

According to the Israeli military, it hit Nasser Hospital’s stairwell because it had identified a camera there supposedly being used by Hamas.

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MSNBC guest blames COVID lockdowns and video games for latest trans shooting

Leftists are twisting themselves into knots trying to explain away the cause for a mass shooting in Minnesota as anything but another transgender who acted out murderously against innocent children.

In the aftermath of the shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, MSNBC featured a guest who suggested that Robin Westman – formerly Robert Westman – may have been influenced to open fire on kids in a religious setting by bad parenting, playing video games and the COVID lockdowns.

During Wednesday’s edition of “Chris Jansing Reports,” national security analyst Christopher O’Leary speculated about the possible motivations of the alleged shooter who had posted disturbing video online along with a manifesto that was quickly removed after the incident that left two kids dead. The MSNBC expert also pointed to online radicalization in forums on Reddit during the conversation.

“So when you talk about radicalization, you talk about writings that reference suicide, extremely violent thoughts and ideas, and those multiple videos that are posted online. What do these groups do when you say they radicalize?” Jansing asked.

“So, you know, whether it’s a terrorist organization or, you know, the variety of ideologies that different people follow, they’re following them because they have susceptibility,” O’Leary responded. “There’s various push-pull factors. Maybe it’s some kind of mental break. Maybe it’s their life has, you know, gone down the toilet and they have no hope.”

“Maybe they have bad parenting, a variety of things,” he continued. “The effects of COVID and the isolation and what’s called the gamification influence, where young men are growing up, you know, being raised by video games, all of those things are involved in really people mobilizing towards violence more routinely in these things.”

“But you will also see people get radicalized solely on these video games through headsets. They may never go on the Internet otherwise. So there’s a variety of things that, you know, threat professionals look at now and trends. But we’re seeing this repeated,” O’Leary said.

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Media Hides Gender Identity and Skews Data in Cases Involving Trans Perpetrators

After a transgender individual killed two people and injured 17 others in a shooting at a Minnesota Catholic school on August 27, it took several hours before social media users uncovered the perpetrator’s identity using Department of Justice and other public law enforcement records. Mainstream outlets suppressed this fact.

Conservative commentator Andy Ngo tweeted: “Today’s killing of Christian children at a church in Minneapolis occurred in the context of a surge in far-left trans propaganda encouraging Trantifa and other leftists to take up arms to kill transphobes and ‘fascists.’ Their targets: Christians and conservatives. I have been warning and reporting on this phenomenon for years and am called a liar by liberal media, and targeted with death threats by the far-left.”

This reflects a broader trend: transgender identity is often omitted when individuals are perpetrators, while their victimization receives extensive coverage. Numerous websites track violence against LGBTQ people, but almost none record violence committed by them. In cases involving gender, the media will frequently refer to a man dressed as a woman simply as a woman, or vice versa, omitting the fact that the person is transgender.

The Washington Examiner highlighted this double standard, noting that “The media have bent over backward to downplay, or even refuse to report entirely, the fact that the shooter had been ‘identifying’ as a gender not actually her own” and that “The message is clear: The media will bend over backward to kowtow to transgender ideology when it benefits the gender bender yet will also do backflips to hide a transgender status if somebody might draw negative inferences.”

This bias is reinforced by the way data is collected. There are extensive official and NGO databases tracking violence against transgender people, such as Human Rights Campaign reports, FBI hate crime statistics, and other NGO monitoring systems, but there is no comparable official system tracking cases where transgender individuals are perpetrators. Instead, information relies on “networked agencies and journalists to correctly identify victims’ gender identities,” leaving systematic gaps whenever the offender is transgender.

Ironically, while there is also comprehensive data on transgender suicides, these reports consistently suppress the fact that many occur after individuals have undergone surgical transition, undermining the narrative that surgery reliably improves mental health and stability. This asymmetry in reporting and data collection creates a skewed picture that amplifies victimhood while obscuring cases that challenge prevailing narratives.

One of the most common talking points is the “Do you want more dead kids?” narrative, used to argue that children must transition and that schools should not be required to inform parents. The claim is that if kids who want to transition are denied the opportunity, they will inevitably commit suicide.

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NY Times Slammed For Predictable RFK Health Hit-Pieces

The New York Times came under fire on Monday for running a hit piece against Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s pro-exercise campaign.

The leftist newspaper, as legacy media often does, leaned on so-called experts cautioning “against jumping into a difficult routine suggested by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth.”

Its headline—100 Push-Ups and 50 Pull-Ups in Under 10 Minutes. What Could Go Wrong?—was predictably snarky.

The piece targeted the “Pete and Bobby Challenge,” a social media campaign aimed at raising awareness about fitness and weight loss.

However, according to The Times and their quoted experts, the exercise “may not be for everyone.”

“For the average person, I would definitely recommend building volume in these movements over three to four weeks before giving it a go,” said Utah athlete Dallin Pepper.

The leftist rag then cited Toronto-based personal trainer Chris Smits to say that the regimen proposed by Hegseth and Kennedy is not feasible for most Americans.

Citing experts is a common tactic in legacy media attacks on conservatives.

Self-described journalists pick a topic, guide the experts toward the conclusions they desire and then publish the story.

This cycle allows them to wash their hands by claiming they are simply reporting.

On X, critics piled on The Times, describing the hit piece as predictable as it was laughable.

“The New York Times really hates working out,” wrote Republican communicator Nathan Brand.

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