AUDIO:

Limbaugh observed that the 2009 Swine [...]]]> Among the “right-wing pundits” the New York Times has criticized for not believing the liberal coronavirus narrative, Rush Limbaugh has been particularly outspoken. In fact, he was downright fired up on Thursday, or as he remarked, “I’m not panicked. I am ticked off like you cannot believe.”

AUDIO:

Limbaugh observed that the 2009 Swine flu was far worse than the epidemic we are experiencing now, with 300,000 Americans hospitalized (and an estimated 13,000 deaths).

But at that time, the media-favorite Obama was president, so no criticism was heard from the press about the state of public health in the nation.

But today the media criticizes the president’s every move, even though the press had no interest at all in the previous Swine flu epidemic.

Remember the Swine Flu Panic of 2009? No, You Don’t, RushLimbaugh.com, March 12, 2020

RUSH: I’m always interested in people’s reaction to this program. I think I have a lot of empathy, and I think one of the reasons why the relationship you and I have is good is ’cause I know how you hear this show. That, I think, is a key ingredient. It’s called empathy. I know how you hear it.

So when I check emails and get questions from people, usually I’m not surprised, and I’m not surprised that I got beaucoup number of questions: “Rush, you don’t sound panicked over any of this. The last two days, you don’t sound panicked, and yet everybody’s panicked. I’m panicked,” people say in their email. “I’m scared to death. I mean, I’ve looked, the stock market was pulling up to 30,000. Now it’s down to 21,000. The Democrat Party, every move they’re making is designed to grow government, make government bigger, and you don’t seem alarmed.”

Folks, panic is… I don’t know. I’m not panicked. I am ticked off like you cannot believe, and I am really having a conversation with myself about how far to go in explaining why I’m mad, ’cause I’m mad about the politics of this. For example, let me give you some statistics. How many of you even remember the swine flu 2009, 2010? I don’t remember it. I mean, I remember we had it. But I don’t remember any panic about it. I don’t remember a thing about the swine flu.

I went back and looked at the stats and I was stunned. Are you ready for this? The swine flu outbreak in this country in 2009 and 2010, 60 million Americans were infected. Do you remember that? Sixty million were infected. Dr. Siegel, one of the Fox doctors was on TV explaining this last night. He was not my primary source for it, but he ended up confirming it. Sixty million people were infected.

Do you know how many people were hospitalized in 2009-2010 with the swine flu? Three hundred thousand were hospitalized. So 60 million people infected, 300,000 hospitalized. And nobody even remembers it. And why? Well, because we had a different president. We had a Democrat president by the name of Barack Obama, and the news then was how wonderfully well Obama was handling it, how expertly well Obama was dealing with it.

There wasn’t any media panic. The Republican Party did not politicize it at all. They made not one single effort that anybody can find or remember to try to make political hay out of it. It was treated as a health issue from top to bottom. Sixty million Americans infected, 300,000 hospitalized. I don’t know what the death toll was. The numbers with the coronavirus are not even close. They are barely a fraction of a percentage compared to the swine flu.

And then we also had Ebola. And I do remember a little bit more about Ebola, and once again, the Drive-By Media was praising the skills and the composure and the brilliance of Barack Obama in dealing with it. And I remember being kind of ticked off about that because there wasn’t anything anybody can do about Ebola. Ebola is like any of these other viruses. There’s nothing we can do to contain them.

See, the reason I’m not panicked is I don’t have enough emotion left for panic ’cause I’m too mad. I’m too ticked off at this. We’re watching the U.S. economy be wrecked here. There’s some people enjoying it. And it makes me mad. There’s some people’s lives here that are being seriously damaged over this. And you know what’s gonna happen? It’s gonna end. We are going to overcome it. It’s going to fizzle out like all of these do.

How did we ever survive 60 million infected with the swine flu? But we did to the point that hardly anybody remembers it. And that’s just 10 years ago, 300,000 hospitalized. So we overcame it. We overcame Ebola. This is gonna end, it’s gonna pass. And I’ll tell you what else is gonna happen. Because of the actions President Trump has taken, like this travel ban from Europe, that has really put the Democrats in a dicey position.

There’s some real positives if you want to find ’em here, and I, of course, have, and I’ll share them with you in a minute. The point is we’re gonna rebound from this, and when we do, you had better get ready and hold on tight, because this market’s gonna rebound. The people who are selling right now and getting out of it are panicking, and they don’t want to be selling. Everybody’s doing this from a very defensive posture and point of view.

And it’s adding… Like we get news that Tom Hanks and his wife have coronavirus. “Oh, no, it’s all going (mewling)! It’s over. Oh, my…” And then his kid — his kid, Chet — goes on TV, tries to calm everybody. “They’re fine. They’re in Australia. They’re fine. They’re not suffering at all. Everything’s fine!” It doesn’t matter. They’ve got it.

Anyway, this is gonna end, and this market is gonna rebound like you can’t believe because the people who have been selling off want to get back in it. And we are taking economic procedures right now that are going to serve to further reignite the economy when all this passes. And when we get back into the growth trajectory, some of the proposals the president’s making regarding payroll taxes, Small Business Administration loans, even a tax holiday?

You just wait until people have no more emotion left to be panicked and get tired of this and want to go a different direction. And that day is gonna happen. The day’s gonna come where people are gonna wake and say, “I’m tired of living this way. I’m fed up with being panicked every day. I’m fed up,” and then — because of the actions the president’s taken — we’re not gonna have that many brand-new infections. (Continues)

As [...]]]> The New York Times is shocked, shocked that some Americans are suspicious of the politicization of the coronavirus illness. The press is stirring up an absolute panic over a sickness that is minor in terms of deaths — now in the low dozens in this country while the seasonal flu has killed 18,000 Americans.

As a result of the fake epidemic, the stock market has dropped by thousands of points with trillions of dollars lost to investors. The NBA has shut down for the season after one player in the Utah Jazz tested positive for corona. The travel industry has been hard hit, with airlines losing passengers and the president’s 30-day travel ban adding to that. Colleges are sending students home where they will take their classes online.

The list of business casualties could go on and on, given the major assault of the media against Trump’s successful economy. Clearly the press cares zero about the human pain they are creating in terms of job layoffs and the huge disruption to normal society.

Conveniently for Democrats, the presidential election is just eight months off, and the left hopes the corona troubles will succeed in ousting President Trump when impeachment failed.

Note to New York Times — not everyone has been fooled by the full court media press on the corona fraud. Yes there is a communicable disease out there, but it is hardly worth the crazed reaction. On March 9, the number of deaths in the US was 26, with an average age of 77. A report from March 11 put the deaths at 37 with the average age being 78.

On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) designated the corona disease a pandemic. For a little history, NBC observed:

The last pandemic was the 2009 swine flu, caused by the H1N1 virus. That pandemic, which was first detected in Mexico, killed an estimated 200,000 people and hit young adults and children hardest.

The coronavirus pandemic is killing mostly older adults with underlying health conditions. As of Wednesday, there are more than 120,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in 114 countries, with 4,373 deaths.

So clearly the use of the word “pandemic” has become degraded and politicized now.

For an even bigger pandemic than the swine flu, there was the 1918 influenza (aka the Spanish flu) that swept the world, killing 600,000 in America alone. A couple years back, PBS made a film about the event, Influenza 1918. Here’s a clip:

So America has suffered genuine pandemics, but that is not the situation we have now. Instead, the liberal press is overstating a relatively minor public health threat in order to ruin the American economy in hopes of taking down President Trump.

And people who don’t accept the propaganda are in denial of the approved liberal narrative, according to the Times.

How Right-Wing Pundits Are Covering Coronavirus, New York Times, March 11, 2020

Sean Hannity used his syndicated talk-radio program on Wednesday to share a prediction he had found on Twitter about what is really happening with the coronavirus: It’s a “fraud” by the deep state to spread panic in the populace, manipulate the economy and suppress dissent.

“May be true,” Mr. Hannity declared to millions of listeners around the country.

As the coronavirus spreads around the globe, denial and disinformation about the risks are proliferating on media outlets popular with conservatives.

“This coronavirus?” Rush Limbaugh asked skeptically during his Wednesday program. “All of this panic is just not warranted.”

The Fox Business anchor Trish Regan told viewers on Monday that the worry over coronavirus “is yet another attempt to impeach the president.”

Where doctors and scientists see a public health crisis, President Trump and his media allies see a political coup afoot.

Distorted realities and discarded facts are now such a part of everyday life that the way they shape events like impeachment, a mass shooting or a presidential address often goes unmentioned.

But when partisan news meets a pandemic, the information silos where people shelter themselves can become not just deluded but also dangerous, according to those who criticize conservative commentators for shedding any semblance of objectivity when it comes to covering the president. (Continues)

It seems there is a belief on the right that “the media and some politicians are playing up the threat of coronavirus to hurt President Trump.”

Wherever would these citizens get such an idea?

Speaker Pelosi is acting alone as [...]]]> The leftist press is clearly thrilled to have the proposed removal of a president to report, even though it’s not a real impeachment since the House has not voted on it. As attorney Andrew McCarthy recently wrote, If the House Won’t Vote, Impeachment Inquiry Is Just a Democratic Stunt.

Speaker Pelosi is acting alone as the leader/instigator-in-chief in order to protect her members who were elected in Trump-supporting districts. So she marches around firing up the media to treat her impeachment-lite campaign as the real thing, and they are complying.

Speaking of the media, on Wednesday the Rasmussen pollsters reported that the press ranks #1 in the public’s anger these days, worse than politicians even:

Voters Are Madder at the Media Than at Trump or His Foes, Rasmussen Reports, October 02, 2019

Voters are mad at President Trump and his political opponents, but they’re angriest at the media these days.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey shows that 53% of Likely U.S. Voters are angry at the president, with 39% who are Very Angry. Forty-six percent (46%) are not angry at Trump, including 34% who are Not At All Angry. [. . .]

But 61% of voters are angry at the media; 38% are not. This includes 40% who are Very Angry and just 19% who are Not At All Angry. Fifty-three percent (53%) were angry at the media in June of last year, but a high of 66% felt that way in June 2010, early in Barack Obama’s presidency. (Continues)

So the majority of voters know that the press is trying to manipulate them.

On Friday Tucker Carlson analyzed the media cheerleading about impeachment now happening, as well as what some members of the Democrat party are planning.

Pushing Pelosi to the far left is the Squad, a group of diverse freshmen women in the Congress who have appealed successfully to the press to magnify their effectiveness. As Tucker observed, Squad member Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michiganistan wants President Trump’s cabinet locked up.

This is your new Democrat Party, ready to imprison political opponents who have been accused of no crimes at all.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, good evening and welcome to “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” We’re nearing the end of our second full week of total saturation Ukraine coverage — that means every channel, every hour of the day.

So at this point, you’d think it would be obvious what exactly the fuss is about. After this much talking, you would assume every person in America would understand what crimes Donald Trump is being accused of committing.

But no, even now, the story still feels obscure and strangely light. There’s nothing mysterious or weighty about it. We already know all of the facts, there’s a transcript, and yet they still don’t seem very shocking.

And so maybe for that reason, our news anchors have been doing their very best to keep the blood pressure high. The game is boring, so the cheerleaders have to work overtime, twice as hard.

For example, here was MSNBC’s best attempt to get you to care:

MSNBC HOST CHUCK TODD: I don’t say this lightly. But let’s be frank, a national nightmare is upon us. The basic rules of our democracy are under attack from the President.

We begin tonight with a series of admissions by the President that all but assures his impeachment in the House of Representatives.

This moment should arguably be a national emergency. The Founding Fathers would have considered it a national emergency if the President publicly lobbied multiple foreign governments to interfere in the next election. It’s tough to say lightly. But this is the moment that we’re at.

CARLSON: Well, I think a good cliche bomb just went off. Try to ignore how hackneyed and badly written that speech was. The state of education in this country clearly is in rapid decline. Nobody can write a decent paragraph anymore. Someday we’re going to do a special on that.

But for now, consider the substance of what you just heard, to the sense, if there was any. The basic rules of our democracy are under attack — that’s what they’re telling you. So what exactly are the basic rules of our democracy? Well, the most basic rule of all, is that the people rule.

In a democracy, the big decisions are made by voters in elections. They are not made by left-wing talk show host or by the Washington Post, or even by high level C.I.A. employees acting anonymously as whistleblowers. No.

In a democracy, the main decisions are made by citizens casting ballots — that, for example, is how you remove a President by beating him in an election. That’s always the way we did it here in America. Not any more.

So yes, our democracy is under attack. They are right about that. And yet for all of his faults, Donald Trump is not the attacker. But wait a second, they’re telling you, we understand how grave a decision impeachment is, in fact, we’re praying over it — people of faith that we are.

But in this case, impeachment is avoidable. Soliciting information from foreign countries is corrupt and evil. That’s what they’re telling you. Okay, fine. But let’s at least acknowledge that this standard is a brand new standard, I mean, brand new standard, like 20 minutes ago, because it wasn’t that long ago, less than a year, you’ll remember this — that all of American politics revolved around information solicited from foreign countries. It was called the Steele dossier. And back then, the press corps strongly approved of it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The allegations in this Christopher Steele dossier, and you went through the timeline very well a few moments ago, are stunning.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They’re actually substantial portions of what was in the Steele dossier, which was a raw intelligence document that have indeed checked out.

CNN HOST JIM SCIUTTO: Based on our own reporting and word from numerous official sources, the dossier, in fact, is far from bogus.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think we’re going to actually have to stop calling it the infamous dossier. Increasingly, it’s the accurate dossier. Increasingly, it’s the damning dossier. Increasingly, it’s the dossier that’s going to hang around the neck of the Trump administration and drag them down.

CARLSON: Oh, the dossier. It was totally fine. In case you forgotten, and you may have forgotten because, because why would you remember? But Christopher Steele, who wrote the dossier was a foreign intelligence operative. He gathered his material abroad in foreign countries, some of it clearly from foreign government officials.

At the time, that was absolutely fine with Democrats. They weren’t embarrassed to say so. Clinton campaign staffer, Brian Fallon tweeted this. We can give you many examples. Here’s one, here’s his tweet. “I regret I didn’t know about Christopher Steele’s hiring pre-election. If I had, I would have volunteered to go to Europe and try to help him.”

Oh, okay. And by the way, if foreign interference is such a concern — and by the way, it should be a concern — then why are we more worried about foreign companies sending de facto bribes to the family members of connected politicians? There are a lot of those. We’re picking on Joe Biden’s son because it’s in the news, but it could be a lot of people’s sons, trust me, but in the case of Biden’s son, nobody thinks he’s an expert on Ukrainian energy policy. He got the gig because of his dad. It was influenced peddling, obviously. In this case, that’s okay, though, for some reason.

So let’s just be totally honest. Let’s stop lying if we can, just for a second. I know it’s hard in modern America where everyone is required to lie all the time. But let’s just be honest, for this one moment.

In Washington right now, there are no actual rules. Partisans simply invent standards for the purpose of destroying their political enemies. Just today, Hillary Clinton tweeted this, from the late Democratic member of Congress, this quote. “If the impeachment provision in the Constitution of the United States will not reach the offenses charged here, then perhaps that 18th century Constitution should be abandoned to a 20th century paper shredder.” That’s Barbara Jordan, by the way.

In other words, if the process doesn’t reach the outcome that Hillary Clinton wants it to reach, she thinks we ought to scrap the Constitution. Oh. Probably not a question that that concept appeals to Michigan, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. This week, Tlaib told her constituents that the Democratic Party is now considering ways to arrest members of Trump’s cabinet. Jailing them in Detroit would be a good option, she explained, watch this.

REP. RASHIDA TLAIB, D-MI: So they’re trying to figure out, no joke. They’re trying to figure out well, is it the D.C. Police that goes and gets them? We don’t know. Where do we hold them?

So I just want you to know, I will relay your message. I will tell them they can hold off those people right here in Detroit, we will take care of them. And make sure they show up to the committee hearing. We won’t hurt them.

CARLSON: Yes. Just going to arrest them. That’s not Third World or anything. Arrest the cabinet. You’ve got to give Tlaib credit for honesty, anyway. She is not pretending to be prayerful, like Nancy Pelosi. She is just saying what she really thinks she speaks for, unfortunately, quite a few people in her party.

What we’re watching here, what you just watched in that clip is politics itself breaking down. That’s not politics, of course. That’s not the effort to persuade people, bring them over to your side through reason. No. That’s something different.

Modern partisans on the left don’t want to just win the next election. Electoral power is too transient. Voters might change their mind in the election after that. It happened by the way in 2016. Democrats don’t want to take that risk again.

So they moved on from the goal of winning votes to utterly destroying their opponents, their enemies. They want them imprisoned, as you just heard there. They want their families intimidated. They want their supporters humiliated and demoralized. They want to vanquish rather than win over.

That’s not a good way to run a country. But it’s an awfully effective way to maximize political power.

The New York Times recently was put in the crosshairs by a leaked memo showing the paper intended to shift its fake [...]]]> The mainstream media and its reporters may think they are the champions of truth, justice and the liberal way, but recent polling shows the public thinks scribblers should be subject to fair criticism.

The New York Times recently was put in the crosshairs by a leaked memo showing the paper intended to shift its fake news Trump reporting from Russia to Racism.

Perhaps reporters should stick to their original job of recounting facts rather than trying to shape public opinion, particularly when public distrust of the media remains at a record high.

61% Welcome Public Scrutiny of Big League Reporters, Rasmussen Reports, August 28, 2019

The New York Times and others are complaining that allies of President Trump are targeting hostile reporters by exposing controversial social media postings from their past. But most voters consider these reporters fair game for public criticism.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 61% of Likely U.S. Voters think reporters at major news organizations like CNN, Fox News and the New York Times are public figures who deserve the same level of scrutiny as the people they cover. Just 19% disagree, although just as many (20%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Just over half (51%) say it is appropriate for elected officials to criticize specific reporters and news organizations. Thirty-nine percent (39%), however, view such criticism as a threat to freedom of the press. This compares to 48% and 45% respectively in February 2017 after Trump began criticizing specific news organizations that were targeting him. Ten percent (10%) remain undecided.

Rasmussen Reports bases its surveys on likely voters — those who have a history of voting in recent elections — as opposed to registered voters in general, many of whom historically don’t go to the polls.

A plurality (47%) of voters continues to believe that ideologically speaking the average reporter is more liberal than they are. Just 19% think that reporter is more conservative than they are, while 22% consider them ideologically about the same. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure. This is consistent with findings in surveys for the past several years. (Continues)

What are the odds of such a “coincidence”?? It’s amazing!

As mentioned earlier here, the Times held a big [...]]]> Speaking of leftist media strategies to sink President Trump in 2020, both the New York Times and Washington Post had front-page Sunday stories about presidential advisor Stephen Miller. Both had similar small headshot photos of Miller.

What are the odds of such a “coincidence”?? It’s amazing!

As mentioned earlier here, the Times held a big strategy meeting recently to switch the lies against Trump from the failed Russia hoax to the more easily administered accusation of “Racist!” Apparently the Post has signed on as well, since both articles included unproven charges against Miller.

Such allegations take little effort to deliver since the leftist media assumes anyone who objects to lawless open borders is of course a racist. Why else would a government official want to protect America from criminals, terrorists and job thieves?

Here’s the Times example:

How Stephen Miller Rode an Anti-Immigration Wave to the White House, New York Times, August 18, 2019

WASHINGTON — When historians try to explain how opponents of immigration captured the Republican Party, they may turn to the spring of 2007, when President George W. Bush threw his waning powers behind a legalization plan and conservative populists buried it in scorn.

Mr. Bush was so taken aback, he said he worried about America “losing its soul,” and immigration politics have never been the same.

That spring was significant for another reason, too: An intense young man with wary, hooded eyes and fiercely anti-immigrant views graduated from college and began a meteoric rise as a Republican operative. With the timing of a screenplay, the man and the moment converged.

Stephen Miller was 22 and looking for work in Washington. He lacked government experience but had media appearances on talk radio and Fox News and a history of pushing causes like “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.” A first-term congresswoman from Minnesota offered him a job interview and discovered they were reading the same book: a polemic warning that Muslim immigration could mean “the end of the world as we know it.”  [. . .]

Some of Mr. Miller’s Latino classmates say his comments made them feel personally attacked. In an interview, Jason Islas said Mr. Miller told him he was ending their friendship for reasons that included “my Latino heritage.” He added, “I think he is a racist.”

The Post started with a portrait of Miller as a puppet-master, but at least had the decency to allow him a response to the racism allegation:

How Stephen Miller authors Trump’s immigration policy, Washington Post, August 18, 2019

At President Trump’s speeches and rallies, Stephen Miller often can be found backstage, watching the teleprompter operator. As other White House staffers chat or look at their phones, Miller’s attention remains glued to the controls.

The energy and crowd-thrilling parts of Trump’s speeches usually happen during his impromptu diversions from the planned address. When Trump veers, colleagues say, Miller sometimes directs the operator to scroll higher or lower through the speech, so when the president is ready to pick it up again, he will hit those passages and make those points.

Miller knows where he wants the president to go.  [. . .]

Among Miller’s co-workers are a few who believe he harbors racist views. “I don’t know what other principle could animate such a laserlike focus,” said one former career official at DHS.

Miller bristled at the claim, calling anyone who labels him a racist “an ignorant fool, a liar and a reprobate who has no place in civilized society.”

“It is a scurrilous and scandalous lie born of a complete and total lack of understanding of the harms done by uncontrolled migration to people of all backgrounds, and born of a contempt for this nation, for our law enforcement officers and for the citizens who live here — and oftentimes, I might add, born of a personal grudge against this administration,” Miller said, without pause.

It goes without saying that the leftist media purveyors despise Trump voters as well as pro-sovereignty government.

The big surprise was that the hopelessly liberal Times could pen an [...]]]> The great headline switch perpetrated by the New York Times on Tuesday got a lot of attention on Fox News because the phrase went from positive and accurate (“Trump Urges Unity vs. Racism”) to niggling and political (“Assailing Hate but Not Guns”).

The big surprise was that the hopelessly liberal Times could pen an upbeat headline about President Trump at all.

On Tuesday night, the entertainment and media news blog The Wrap observed, New York Times Reports ‘Higher Volume of Cancellations’ After Trump Speech Headline Backlash.

Tucker Carlson discussed the flap with Mark Penn, a long time Washington insider who once worked as pollster and advisor for the Clintons. Penn recalled that he could never get a headline changed for the Clintons, but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a “phenomenon” in terms of media power to be able to get that switch.

Spare audio:

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it took the New York Times, a daily newspaper published in New York City, less than a day to end a bold new experiment yesterday, running an objective headline.

This morning the paper’s print headline summarized the President’s speech in El Paso and Dayton this way, quote, “Trump urges unity versus racism.” That’s what the President did. You saw it, so the headline was fine. It described what happened.

But online, the left went crazy, even crazier than usual. Cory Booker, apparently still running for President, accused the New York Times of somehow putting lives at risk. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — the pampered moron that she is — said the paper was enabling white supremacy through cowardice. So of course, the paper caved.

Later versions of the article were headlined, “Assailing hate, but not guns.”

Mark Penn is a former adviser of Bill and Hillary Clinton. He joins us tonight.

Mark, I’m worried because I think every country, this one particularly, deserves two sides that are both sane and capable of rational conversation. If you believe that the New York Times is carrying water for right wingers or white supremacists, you’re delusional, I think.

MARK PENN: Well, look, you could think that either headline was okay. But the process of the headline that was factually correct and frankly, was unifying after these horrifying events would then be complained about by one political faction and changed. That is an astounding development in journalism. I’ve never seen it; maybe it’s happened before.

Why don’t they just run the headlines before AOC before they run them down and not get into the situation? I’ve never seen anything like this. I mean, that would be the way to go to avoid this kind of trouble. Is that journalism today? I don’t think so.

CARLSON: Well, so isn’t the appropriate response — well, I know I’ve been in it for 28 years, I know the appropriate response, which is like, “Up yours. It’s our paper. We will write the headlines we want. And we’re going to tell the truth, whether you like it or not.” Whatever happened to that attitude?

PENN: Well, and that was the old New York Times that I knew. I used to complain when I was working with Hillary and Bill about the headlines all the time, I never got one changed.

Maybe I got a paragraph six graph down changed, but you know, they were the paper of record. They said how they saw it. And that was that.

To actually bend after it is printed to a political faction is to cave in a way that I think will haunt them for some time to come.

CARLSON: So what’s changed? Is it social media?

PENN: Well, what’s changed is, one, there is social media, but regardless of the social media, the paper wanted to please a constituency, and they weren’t willing to stand behind their own headline, and were then willing to change it for that constituency. That is incredible.

CARLSON: It is incredible. It is incredible. So I mean, you’ve been in Washington an awfully long time and known a lot of people in power here. Have you ever seen anybody under 30 with this much political power as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

PENN: No. It’s not political power. You see, Pelosi is right. Pelosi runs the House, but when it comes to media power, right, and the influence across our culture and society, she is a phenomenon that is really quite powerful. I mean, she could change a headline on the New York Times.

CARLSON: Yes. I mean, it’s like a child with a firearm. It’s just — she is scary. I’m glad I’m not a Democratic leader. I’m glad I’m not Nancy Pelosi. It’s probably the first time I ever thought this. I mean, how would you like to have to deal with that? I almost feel sorry for Pelosi – – almost. Mark Penn, great to see you.

Let’s consider. For years, persons concerned about the mass [...]]]> The Washington Post cranks out a lot of objectionable ideas, but its Sunday front page story portraying the sharia murder of two young Scandinavian women as an opportunity for the “far right” went way too far on so many levels, beginning with accuracy and fairness.

Let’s consider. For years, persons concerned about the mass immigration of hostile muslims have pointed out that the “religion” of Islam is more correctly understood as an all-encompassing political system. Dutch political leader Geert Wilders lives under 24/7 security because jihadist thugs in Europe have decided he needs to be murdered due to his resistance to the ideology. When Wilders gave a 2015 speech in Garland, Texas, he had a SWAT team of eight well armed men guarding him.

Wilders discussed the political nature of Islam in a 2017 interview, reviewed in Breitbart.com: Geert Wilders: Islam Is Not a Religion, It’s a Totalitarian Ideology:

GEERT WILDERS: Islam as an ideology does not allow freedom. Look at almost all the countries in the world where Islam is dominant — you see a total lack of civil society, of rule of law, of freedom for journalists, women, Christians, or even somebody who wants to leave Islam, an apostate.

You are allowed to leave Christianity or Judaism and become an atheist or the follower of another religion; you are not allowed to leave fascism, you are not allowed to leave Communism. And still today in Holland, in Germany, in the Arab world, the penalty is death if you want to leave Islam.

And let’s not forget the extreme violence, the murders where muslims kill nonbelievers because the koran says to do so in over 100 verses. There are so many examples — like the 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3000.

It was so shocking that America pledged never to forget.

But the Washington Post has forgotten that Islam is a historic opponent of the West, and the paper should not condemn those of us who do remember and name the enemies of free people.

Perhaps if the press were not so politically correct in protecting the reputation of hostile Islam, the two young women would have thought twice about a hiking trip in Morocco (99 percent muslim). The media adoration of diversity uber alles does not stand up under scrutiny.

Below, Norwegian Maren Ueland (left) and Dane Louisa Vesterager Jespersen were murdered in Morocco by jihadists.

Murder in the Atlas Mountains, Washington Post, June 21, 2019

In a crime apparently intended to impress the Islamic State, two Scandinavian women were brutally slain in Morocco. The killings were seized on by the far right to attack Islam.

MARRAKESH, Morocco — Their screams must have carried for miles in the thin air of the Atlas Mountains, anguished sounds of a terrorist attack that no one was there to hear, see or stop.

Maren Ueland, 28, and Louisa Jespersen, 24, Scandinavian students who revered the outdoors, were descending North Africa’s highest peak in December when they encountered four men searching for Westerners to kill.

The men waited until after nightfall, then approached the women’s tent with knives and misplaced hopes of becoming Islamist heroes. They attacked Ueland, a Norwegian, and her Danish friend, Jespersen, in their sleeping bags, stabbed them until their bodies went limp and severed their heads in a ghastly sequence recorded on a cellphone.

The December 2018 attack, like so many in this age of mass killings and social media, was an act of senseless and performative violence. The killers, poor and uneducated, became absorbed in a violent Islamist universe they saw on the screens of their cellphones, then sought their own place in it. Their overriding aim was to impress the Islamic State, earn the status of soldiers in its apocalyptic struggle and see their own recording distributed across the group’s propaganda platforms.

Reality didn’t follow that script. The targeting of defenseless women and the abysmal quality of the recording managed to violate the standards of a terrorist group not known for having any. The Islamic State did not distribute the video, refused to acknowledge the attack and to this day has ignored the Moroccans’ pledges of loyalty.

The video went viral nonetheless. An attack that had gone unheard and unseen ended up being viewed millions of times by Islamic State supporters who didn’t share the group’s selectivity, by dark-Web bottom dwellers devoted to gore and by the morbidly curious.

The most alarming audience, however, was one that the attackers had not envisioned. Within days, the one-minute, 16-second recording spread rapidly across networks associated with the far-right and white-nationalist movements. Extremists posted gruesome scenes of the women’s deaths on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms alongside condemnations of Islam and calls for a civilizational clash.

“Look at this video of the one girl being decapitated alive,” wrote a far-right figure in Norway as he posted a link to his Twitter account. “It’s God awakening us Germanic men to action. It’s enough now. It’s enough.”

When officials in Norway and Denmark pleaded with the public to stop sharing the video, that effort was denounced by far-right groups as a betrayal of religion and race — censorship of content that revealed the true nature of Islam.

For families of the victims, the aftermath compounded the pain. Their mothers were inundated with messages on Facebook. Many were expressions of condolences, but some were gestures of astonishing cruelty, saying their daughters deserved to die and attaching links to the video of their slaughter.

The attack in Morocco was not of the same magnitude as the mass shooting that killed 51 people at mosques in New Zealand three months later, or the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka five weeks after that, when more than 200 people attending church services were killed. But all are part of a pattern of violence and viral incitement in which the extremes of intolerance react to and further radicalize one another online.

In the Moroccan case, a video that was created to strike a blow for Islamism was almost immediately repurposed and weaponized by those who consider the religion an existential threat to the ethnic and cultural identity of Northern Europe.

The victims were caught between warring ideologies that they had rejected in life. In the days after the attack, far-right activists scoured the women’s social media accounts and mocked them for their tolerant views.

“It is obvious to point out the naivete of the two deceased, but they are, as all, a product of their upbringing,” said an entry on Uriasposten, a Danish, anti-Islamic website. “Perhaps the eternal struggle against ‘prejudice’ has unpleasant side effects.”

This account of the attack in Morocco and its aftermath online is based on Moroccan court records including statements from the suspects; interviews with officials in Morocco, Norway, Denmark and the United States; and friends and relatives of the victims and of the suspects in their deaths. (Continues)