Who said it: The authors of the Politico Playbook newsletter published Wednesday morning.

Context: The Politico journalists were discussing how Gov. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.) had hoped to overcome "a deluge of negative headlines" and "hit the reset button" by taking part in "a rare sitdown interview with a mainstream, nonpartisan media outlet: CNN."

However, the journalists wrote, DeSantis's big plans were thwarted by former president Donald Trump, who "stole the headlines" on Tuesday by announcing that he may soon face charges in connection with the storming of the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.

More context: The "deluge of negative headlines" about Ron DeSantis were published in so-called mainstream media outlets such as Politico and CNN that desperately want Trump to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2024.

CNN, for example, enjoyed soaring ratings and record profits during Trump's presidency. Ratings and profits have plummeted since President Joe Biden took office in 2021. Accordingly, Trump does not have to work very hard to steal headlines in media outlets desperate to write about him.

Why it matters: Most "mainstream" journalists are Democratic activists who falsely present themselves as "nonpartisan" arbiters of truth. It is important to hold them accountable for their lies.

Analysis: The facts do not support the claim that CNN is a "nonpartisan media outlet." Such an outlet would not employ a professional fact-checker who spends all his time fact-checking Trump and various right-wing Facebook memes while ignoring the gibberish routinely spouted by President Biden, the most powerful politician in the world.

• Chris Licht, the network's former CEO, tried to make CNN less partisan. It cost him his job.

• Given CNN's precipitous ratings decline, it seems like a stretch even to describe the network as "mainstream."

Go deeper: CNN Is a Clown Network Run By Creeps.

Verdict: We rate this claim 4 Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Clintons.

The post FACT CHECK: CNN Is a 'Nonpartisan Media Outlet' appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

After anonymously teasing its "strong" figures earlier in the week, the Biden campaign on Friday released only the totals it raised in combination with the Democratic National Committee—along with a lot of hype. The resulting headlines read like Biden campaign press releases.

NPR: "President Biden Posts 'Blockbuster' Three-Month Fundraising Total: $72 Million":

President Biden is starting his reelection campaign with tens of millions of dollars in the bank, dwarfing second-quarter fundraising totals already announced by the campaigns of former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

CNN: "Biden Raised $72 Million in His First Quarter of Fundraising Since Announcing Reelection Bid":

President Joe Biden raised $72 million for his reelection effort and for the Democratic Party in his first quarter of fundraising since launching his reelection bid in April, his campaign announced Friday.

The showing could help quell some concerns about the president’s ability to fundraise as he seeks a second term. His campaign boasted an average contribution of $39 from nearly 400,000 donors and said 97% of all donations were less than $200.

Biden’s campaign, which has yet to open a headquarters and maintains a skeletal staff several months in, also boasted a sizable war chest, with $77 million in cash on hand at June 30, the end of the quarter.

USA Today: "Biden Raises $72 Million Since Announcing Reelection, Doubling Trump Over Same Stretch":

President Joe Biden's reelection campaign said Friday it raised a combined $72 million with the Democratic National Committee in the second fundraising quarter, doubling the amount former President Donald Trump raised during the same three-month period.

MSNBC: "Biden Surrogate Messina Touts Fundraising Haul: ‘Biden Outraised All The Republicans Combined’":

"There's a whole bunch of Democrats this morning, taking a big sigh of relief. These numbers are just incredibly impressive," said [Biden campaign surrogate Jim] Messina. "And the other number that really strikes out is that Biden outraised all the Republicans combined."

New York Times: "Biden and D.N.C. Announce $72 Million in Fund-Raising, a Substantial Haul":

President Biden’s campaign announced on Friday a combined fundraising haul of more than $72 million from April through June alongside the Democratic National Committee and a joint fund-raising committee, a figure that far surpasses what former President Donald J. Trump and other leading Republican presidential candidates have announced. ...

"This is proof positive that this party and its people and the country believe in Joe Biden and the accomplishments of this administration," said Henry R. Muñoz III, a former Democratic National Committee finance chairman. "This reaffirms Joe Biden’s appeal to the working people and everyday heroes of this country."

Axios: "Biden Campaign Raises $72M in Second Quarter":

President Biden raised over $72 million with the Democratic National Committee and joint fundraising committees from April to June, the campaign announced Friday.

Why it matters: The numbers may quell some private concerns over his early fundraising numbers, and they give the first major look at the war chest behind his reelection campaign.

Acknowledged NBC News White House correspondent Mike Memoli: "The numbers we're talking about today are the numbers the campaign wants us to talk about heading into the weekend before everyone tunes out and the report lands with more specifics."

WATCH: President Biden's campaign says it and the DNC raised $77 million in the second quarter.@mikememoli: 'There is a lot to like for Democrats who have a lot of other numbers they’re worried about, especially 80, which is the president’s age." pic.twitter.com/Ycbw13wgHF

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) July 15, 2023

Liberal Twitter seized on the news.

Biden raised more than Trump and DeSantis combined pic.twitter.com/qiny7gBbdf

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 17, 2023

so Biden got more than 2X fundraising that Trump did. Sad !

— Jennifer Now at Threads Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) July 14, 2023

New: Joe Biden just announced his campaign has raised $72 million since he announced his re-election effort in April.

97% of donations were small-dollar grassroots donations.

For comparison, Trump raised $35 million and DeSantis raised $20 million. pic.twitter.com/jyoaQWKhrx

— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) July 14, 2023

Then came Saturday, the deadline to disclose full fundraising figures from April 1 to June 30. In context and without the padding of the DNC numbers, Biden's performance looked a lot more like the slow start the media had been fretting about for months.

According to a New York Times analysis of the disclosures:

-Biden individually raised less money than DeSantis.

-Biden had less cash on hand than Trump or even GOP Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.).

-Biden barely spent $1 million—less than Democratic challenger Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or some senators.

New York Times: "Biden, With Sluggish Small Donations, Waits for Liberal Energy to Rise":

Democrats involved with Mr. Biden’s campaign and the world of online fund-raising detailed a host of reasons for Mr. Biden’s relatively low small-dollar haul.

Google and Apple have made it harder for email senders to see data about who has opened solicitations. Inflation slowed political donations across the board. Donors are exhausted by the unending flow of emails asking for money, and recipients are responding to far fewer of them.

At the moment, Democrats aren’t quite as fired up as they were in 2018 and 2020, when Donald J. Trump’s presidency opened floodgates of liberal money, or ahead of the 2022 midterms, when the Capitol riot, the rise of the election-denial movement and the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade all motivated donors.

And Mr. Biden is not an insurgent candidate who is motivating students to put up posters of him on dorm-room walls, as Mr. Obama or Senator Bernie Sanders did in their campaigns. His low-key White House and bare-bones campaign haven’t yet motivated supporters to rage-donate to his campaign.

Axios: "Charted: Biden's inflation-adjusted war chest":

Why it matters: Fundraising totals provide a snapshot for which campaigns will have the resources to go the distance. But they are also a barometer for party enthusiasm about a candidate.

Some outlets softened the whiplash by couching the new information in reports focused on the Republican candidates' money challenges.

CNN: "Alarm Bells For DeSantis, Pence Falls Behind And Biden Stays Frugal: Takeaways From New Campaign Finance Reports":

Despite talking up the big numbers he’s raised with the DNC, Biden’s campaign is a bare-bones operation, his new filing shows–a slow start that’s sure to only deepen worries among some Democrats about the president’s reelection preparations.

NBC News: "Fundraising Reports Have Warnings for DeSantis, But He’s Still the Top Trump Challenger":

Biden’s filing, like DeSantis’, was a good reminder why we preach caution around campaign finance deadlines. While Biden and the Democrats spent Friday spiking the football on a combined $72 million haul between the campaign, the Democratic National Committee and state/territorial parties, the late-Saturday night filing showed Biden’s campaign itself only directly raised a little more than a quarter of that.

That’s significantly less than the $46 million former President Barack Obama’s campaign raised during his first quarter running for re-election, despite changes in campaign finance practices and law allowing Biden to raise larger sums.

ABC News: "Pence Struggles, Trump is Ahead of DeSantis and More Presidential Fundraising Highlights":

The figure itself is not gargantuan -- in the second quarter of 2019, during his last campaign, Biden raised $22 million while running in a contested primary.

However, his team is keeping their war chest well-stocked by running a lean operation. They spent a paltry $1.1 million during the three months, paying only four full-time staffers and dishing out less than $1,500 on travel, accommodations and airfare.

Biden was slow to kick off 2024 campaign events after his announcement, holding his first -- and so far his only -- campaign rally nearly two months after he declared. But the president and his team have since made a big push on fundraising.

Others just kept spinning.

Joe Biden is redefining presidential campaign frugality https://t.co/XDfdj1EcNk

— POLITICO (@politico) July 16, 2023

The post Media Fall Hard for Biden's Reelection Fundraising Spin appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Those were mainstream media narratives in the last week or so. As usual, I’ve got the receipts.

"We got it wrong."

"More People Actually Moved Out of Florida than New York or California in 2021" was briefly a headline on a prominent news site.

https://twitter.com/desantiswarroom/status/1678824963095031823

Then, Insider, formerly Business Insider, was forced to admit it had the numbers exactly backwards. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis's freedom-loving approach to the COVID-19 pandemic actually helped make Florida the fastest growing U.S. state for the past two years.

"We Got it Wrong," read the corrected headline.

Give credit to Insider. CBS's 60 Minutes still won't acknowledge it was wrong about DeSantis’s handling of the pandemic.

https://twitter.com/BrentHBaker/status/1381404388690960387

"The leading theory remains that it was left by one of the hundreds of visitors"

After the Secret Service closed its investigation into who left a bag of cocaine in the White House, CNN scooped that it totally wasn't President Joe Biden's recovering crack addict son.

According to the report, which relied on two anonymous sources, "the leading theory remains that [the cocaine] was left by one of the hundreds of visitors who entered the West Wing that weekend for tours."

Not convinced? As the media have already explained: Back off!

MSNBC's @clairecmc: "Everybody needs to back off Joe Biden about this. He loves his son. Back off. It is OK for him to love his son & there’s nothing wrong with it. They have no evidence of any wrongdoing by Joe Biden & it infuriates me they’re using this .. against Biden" pic.twitter.com/r7Hj3hwt1m

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 20, 2023

"Militant co-conspirators with white conservatives."

"As the death of affirmative action showed, Asian American conservatives are active, militant co-conspirators with white conservatives," writer Promise Li argued in the Nation.

But we must be clear about one thing: Asian American anti–affirmative action activists have not been simply "used" by white activists and duped into this white supremacist policy. They are active, militant co-conspirators with white conservatives. They are building a key flank for the right wing across the nation, and the left must urgently recognize that right-wing politics precisely gain power by recruiting conservative ideologies among communities of color that overlap with, but retain distinct aspects from, white supremacy. ...

These Asian Americans are those who feel most at ease with the paradigm that Claire Jean Kim observes in her theory of "racial triangulation," which characterizes how Asian Americans have long been recruited into functioning as a "model minority" to reinforce the structural oppression of Black people and the privilege of white people. Despite the fact that they cannot fully assimilate into whiteness, certain Asian Americans do enjoy privileges in Kim’s framework. Indeed, as she wrote in The Nation, "It is the convergence of this nascent, conservative Chinese immigrant nationalism with an older, conservative white nationalism that is driving anti–affirmative action politics today."

The media's big tent of white supremacy just keeps getting bigger.

. @Erika_D_Smith wrote a columm on Larry Elder that went viral earlier in this election. It warns that Elder is the "Black face of white supremacy"https://t.co/YBXzicjMJ3

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) September 15, 2021

The Rise of Latino White Supremacy | The New Yorker https://t.co/wL7jJ3XRLd

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) May 30, 2023

"White House Takes a Victory Lap"

Joe Biden gloated after getting some of the best inflation numbers of his inflation-plagued presidency, and the media were here for it.

June's CPI shows inflation has dramatically plunged from its peak, suggesting the end of a crisis that dragged down Biden's approval rating and gave Republicans political ammunition for nearly two years. https://t.co/ucqFBOUXCc

— Axios (@axios) July 13, 2023

The resiliency of the US economy is defying expectations — and the odds of a 'soft landing" are improving, said Lael Brainard, President Biden’s top economic adviser https://t.co/NLoHrjvL2T

— CNN (@CNN) July 12, 2023

White House takes a victory lap after inflation report comes in cooler than expected https://t.co/Nuwd6SvRna

— CNBC (@CNBC) July 12, 2023

Adding context to the coverage would have just been a downer. So what if almost 7 in 10 Americans are unsatisfied with the economy and Biden's handling of it?

.@PuckNews' @WilliamCohan runs cover for the Biden economy: 'I don’t have an explanation for why people think it’s bad because objectively, it is good. It’s hard to imagine it could be much better ... People like being unhappy about a lot of things in America right now" pic.twitter.com/431SWhUfP4

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 13, 2023

That’s enough media for now. See you next week.

The post Drew's Receipts: Media Failures of the Week, July 15 appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

• Celebrity actress Kristen Bell earlier this week posted a photo on Instagram featuring Tapper and his wife, Jennifer Marie Brown, enjoying a fancy dinner at the South Fork Lodge in Idaho.

• They were joined by a large group of celebrity couples, nearly all of them proud members of the white race.

• Social media users were stunned that the rich and socially enlightened liberal celebs would engage in such a flagrant act of white supremacy.

What they're saying: "Serious question for well-meaning white people. When you show up at a get-together like this, do you notice there are zero Black people, or nah?" wrote Twitter user Jay Perkins, a biracial black man and "antiracist" higher ed lawyer. "If so, do you say or do anything about it? To who? Please be honest. This is a safe space (unless you say something dumb or racist)."

What it means: The racially homogenous partygoers were most likely celebrating the Supreme Court's June 29 decision striking down race-based affirmative action in college admissions, an outcome backed by the vast majority of Americans.

• There appears to have been only one non-white celebrity couple in attendance. David Chang, the Korean-American restaurateur, was spotted at the dinner with his wife Grace, a Korean-born immigrant.

• The Supreme Court's ruling found that race-based affirmative action in college admissions violated the Constitution because it explicitly discriminated against Koreans and other students of Asian descent.

By the numbers: More than 82 percent of Idaho's population is white, according the U.S. Census Bureau, making it one of the whitest states in the country.

• The celebrity dinner party was even whiter. At least 90 percent of the guests were white, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis.

• Approximately 0 percent of the guests were black, meaning the dinner party was demographically equivalent to a Pete Buttigieg campaign rally.

White power party: In addition to the Tappers, a bunch of other fancy white people attended the now-notorious dinner party in Idaho.

• Jennifer Aniston, star of Friends, one of the whitest shows ever made; Courteney Cox, star of Friends, and boyfriend Johnny McDaid of Snow Patrol, one the whitest bands in the world; Jason Bateman, host of the all-white podcast SmartLess, and his white wife; art gallery owners Heather Taylor and Alex De Cordoba; actress Shiri Appleby and restaurateur Jon Shook; Jimmy Kimmel and wife; Jimmy Fallon and wife; Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard; comedian John Mulaney and his half-Vietnamese mistress Olivia Munn; David Chang and wife; actor Adam Scott and wife; YouTube celeb Mark Rober; improvisational comedian Tim Curcio and wife.

Why it matters: At a time when many of our nation's journalists insist on touting the so-called benefits of diversity and inclusion, we applaud Tapper's courageous decision to reject phony moral values and embrace the "taboo" of "white racial solidarity."

• There's simply nothing wrong with a rich white journalist wanting to hang out with a bunch of rich white people (and a handful of Asians) at a fancy lodge in Idaho. It's a free country.

• The vast majority of Americans oppose the explicit racial preferences struck down by the Supreme Court. If that is indeed what the mostly white partygoers were celebrating, there's nothing wrong with that, either.

Bottom line: For rejecting diversity and refusing to live his life according to the "enlightened" moral code espoused by his colleagues in the corporate media, Jake Tapper is the Washington Free Beacon Hero of the Week.

Go deeper: CNN's Jim Acosta Celebrates Painfully White Staff in Majority Black City

The post HERO OF THE WEEK: CNN's Jake Tapper Toasts Demise of Affirmative Action at All-White Dinner Party appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

At the end of the segment, which included interviews with people from Nashville and Chicago about the continuing controversy surrounding Bud Light’s partnership with Mulvaney, national correspondent Ryan Young referred to Mulvaney with male pronouns.

"One bar was telling us, basically, they’re not going to serve [Bud Light]," Young said, "because they don’t like the way Dylan Mulvaney was treated after this whole controversy started."

"He of course is the transgender person they were going to sponsor and go along with, with Bud Light. They didn’t like how Bud Light didn’t stand by him after all this."

CNN anchor Kate Bolduan issued an apology the following day.

"Yesterday in a segment about transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who was featured in Bud Light’s recent campaign, she was mistakenly referred to by the wrong pronoun and CNN aims to honor individuals’ ways of identifying themselves and we apologize for that error."

Bud Light has faced sustained backlash and boycotts after partnering with Mulvaney in early April. The brand lost its spot as America’s top-selling beer in June, with sales plummeting by over 25 percent compared to last year.

The post WATCH: CNN Anchor Apologizes for 'Misgendering' Dylan Mulvaney appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

It's hardly the first time the overwhelmingly white press corps have misrepresented black opinion, and the error always seems to point in one direction.

Since the Supreme Court's June 29 ruling, headlines have blared dire predictions about the future of black students in American higher education—many by black college students and activists.

'If affirmative action was to go away, the diversity of schools would decrease and we would see the Black population be poorly represented," rising senior Gabrielle Wilson said before the ruling. pic.twitter.com/JG9F3fjUHa

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 30, 2023

ABC News: "Students React to Landmark Supreme Court Affirmative Action Decision"

For Bunmi Omisore, a student attending Duke University, addressing in an essay how race has impacted her as an African American woman would be difficult. "If I were applying to college today, I would have to write about those traumas in my Common App essay. I would have to write about those traumas and those very hard experiences for admissions officers to accept the overwhelming truth that we all know—which is that it is hard to be a Black person in America. And I don't think that's fair," Omisore told David Muir in an ABC News Special Report.

For students applying under the new standard, it is "going to be hard to see themselves as someone outside of their race" if they can only address it through an essay, as opposed to simply disclosing it as one factor among many considered in the admissions process, Omisore said.

NBC News: "Without Affirmative Action, Advocates Fear Students of Color at Elite Colleges May Feel Disenfranchised"

That's why leaders Friday concurred that it's more important than ever for colleges to ensure all students feel like they belong on campus. They said they intend to do so by publicly embracing diversity and inclusion, as well as rejecting and condemning racism.

While leaders were reassuring students like Agustín León-Sáenz, a sophomore at Harvard, that they belong on campus, many students on the school's campus Thursday were expressing concern about how the ruling will affect aspiring college students of color.

"This is literally high stakes for my family," León-Sáenz told MSNBC. He said he thinks about how it will affect his little brother, who will apply for college in a few years, and his cousin, who will apply for college in the fall. It makes him think about "the people from my community, specifically from the state of New Mexico, where I am one of two students from New Mexico in my school year. So this has immediate impacts."

CNN: "The Gutting of Affirmative Action is a ‘Clear and Present Danger’ to Equal Education, Critics Say"

Wisdom Cole, national director of the NAACP Youth & College Division, called the rollback of affirmative action a "dark day in America." "Affirmative action has been a beacon of hope for generations of Black students," Cole said in a statement Thursday. "It stood as a powerful force against the insidious poison of racism and sexism, aiming to level the playing field and provide a fair shot at a high-quality education for all. Students across the country are wide-awake to the clear and present danger encroaching on their classrooms."... 

Apparently, however, elite college students and racial justice activists are not representative of black America. An Economist-YouGov poll published last week finds more black Americans than not approve of the Supreme Court's ruling against affirmative action.

A new poll finds an overwhelming majority of Americans—including a solid plurality of black and Hispanic Americans—back the Supreme Court’s ruling against race-based affirmative action. | @mccormackjohn https://t.co/vLgV3WibIU

— National Review (@NRO) July 11, 2023

Just 19 percent of black Americans feel affirmative action impacts them, and only 11 percent of those feel the policy affects them "positively," according to the survey. The poll is not an outlier, as political reporter Aaron Blake details in the Washington Post.

Journalists similarly stretch when they try to make black Americans avatars of progressive views on crime, abortion, and transgender rights.

Opposition to policing is often portrayed as a grassroots movement by and for black Americans.

For many Black Americans, real change still feels elusive despite the Chauvin verdict. The trial "is addressing a symptom, but we have not yet dealt with the disease." ⁦@abscribe⁩ ⁦@amy_harmon⁩ ⁦@stavernise⁩ ⁦@emilymbadger⁩ https://t.co/ttUH1wlbhl

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) April 21, 2021

But polls show again and again that black Americans overwhelmingly support maintaining or increasing police funding.

The Grio/KFF poll:

Only 17% of Black voters want to decrease police funding.

34% of Black voters want to increase police funding.

48% want to keep it the about the same.https://t.co/oSSoX21msr

— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) October 26, 2022

Abortion is regularly covered as a black "civil rights" issue.

Black men know the Black women in their lives will suffer some of the gravest consequences of Roe v. Wade’s reversal.

'For the Black man, it’s all painful, because these women mean so much to us," professor Rodney Coates told @NBCBLK.https://t.co/zfTEZ2octe

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 30, 2022

But black Americans are less supportive of abortion rights than most Democrats, surveys show.

Black Americans are increasingly at the center of LGBT advocacy coverage, particularly on transgender issues.

Rally for Black trans lives draws enormous crowd in Brooklyn. https://t.co/J3qlK0r89X

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 15, 2020

But a large majority of black Democrats—like Americans in general—reject progressive ideas about gender identity.

NEW: Black Democrats differ from other Democrats in their views on gender identity, transgender issues https://t.co/SZvGLH7naA pic.twitter.com/ZVd0ZF82GF

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) January 4, 2023

With the media so out of touch with black America, it's no wonder some leading Democrats have lost the plot, too.

Joe Biden said on Friday that black voters torn between voting for him or President Trump 'ain’t black." His comments came at the end of a testy exchange with Charlamagne Tha God on 'The Breakfast Club."https://t.co/uG4l7F4piD

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 22, 2020

The post On Affirmative Action, Media Once Again Prove They Have No Idea What Black People Think appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The account—which is dedicated to opposing California Assembly Bill 957, a controversial piece of legislation that would punish parents who do not "affirm" their child's gender identity—was deactivated hours after it was created on Wednesday. The parents appealed the decision, and Instagram restored the account, @StopAB957, on Friday. A spokeswoman for Instagram parent company Meta, formerly known as Facebook, said the account had been incorrectly flagged as violating the website's community guidelines.

"The account has no violations at current," the spokeswoman told the Washington Free Beacon.

Instagram's targeting of @StopAB957, which boasts just 113 followers and 4 posts, came the same day the company launched a fast-growing Twitter alternative, Instagram Threads, that free speech watchdogs have already accused of censoring conservative users and critics of left-wing gender ideology.

"It's hard to say [the suspension of @StopAB957] was censorship because we had barely said anything," said Nicole Pearson, an attorney who contributed information about the legislation for the Instagram account. "They didn't even let us say anything to censor."

Three of the account’s posts criticized A.B. 957, which would require judges in custody disputes to disfavor parents who fail to affirm their child's gender identity. The fourth featured a video of a parents' rights activist questioning Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.) about California's policies encouraging sex changes for minors. The account has made no new posts since it was reinstated.

A volunteer who manages @StopAB957 and who asked to remain anonymous for fear of professional retaliation said that Instagram never responded to her questions about why exactly the account was suspended. In an email to the Free Beacon, Meta suggested the suspension was a technical error rather than ideological overreach.

Meta has leveraged its two billion users to make Instagram Threads the fastest-growing website ever, drawing more than 100 million sign-ups in less than a week. In the launch announcement, Meta promised to keep Threads "positive" in implicit contrast with the unrestrained discourse allowed on Twitter under billionaire owner Elon Musk.

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, told the New York Times last week that Meta decided to create Threads specifically to respond to "product changes and decisions" that Musk made at Twitter.

"Right now it's just very friendly in there," Mosseri said of Threads on Thursday. "Now, we'll see what it looks like when the gates blow open and anyone and everyone can join. But the vibes are good in there right now."

Meta cofounder Mark Zuckerberg, who in 2019 strongly defended free speech, has acknowledged that the company censored true information about COVID-19 at the behest of experts, along with stories about Hunter Biden's laptop after an FBI warning. National Democrats and liberal critics faulted Meta, however, for amplifying "misinformation" in support of Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign, and the company has since stepped up content moderation.

"Since 2016 we've invested more than $16 billion in building up the teams and technologies needed to protect our users," Meta said in announcing Instagram Threads, "and we remain focused on advancing our industry-leading integrity efforts and investments to protect our community."

The post Instagram Suspends Tiny Parents' Rights Account Amid Bid for 'Friendly' Social Media Dominance appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The media began gushing over Jackson even before President Joe Biden nominated her to the Supreme Court last year, fulfilling his campaign pledge to pick a black woman for the job.

Now, the media are marveling at Jackson's stunning and brave "voice"—even if her influence on the conservative-dominated Court remains "at the margins," as the New York Times delicately puts it.

The Times: "In Her First Term, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘Came to Play’":

The first Black female member of the Supreme Court wasted no time in finding her footing, asserting herself in dissents, alliances and questions from the bench.

From her first week on the Supreme Court bench in October to the final day of the term that ended last week, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did something remarkable for a junior justice: She established herself as a distinctive voice on the court. … 

Justice Jackson is a member of a three-justice liberal minority, which means she typically does not have much power to affect the outcomes of major cases. But sometimes she may be able to make important contributions at the margins.

Washington Post: "Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Bold Debut and Independent Streak":

Jackson on Friday completed her rookie term as the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court, making a forceful debut from the bench and in writing while showing signs of an independent streak. As anticipated, she was most often aligned with the court’s two other liberal justices—Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan—putting her on the losing side of high-profile, contentious decisions involving affirmative action in college admissions, gay rights and President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.

But Jackson also demonstrated a willingness to part ways with her liberal colleagues, even when they were on the same side of an issue, to express her own vision of the law. She authored more solo dissenting opinions—three—than any of the three most recent justices to join the court did as newbies. …

Biden "may have been looking for a Black woman, but she wasn’t just any Black woman," [New York University law professor Melissa] Murray said. "She was excellent and prepared and made a critical difference in a number of cases."

Reuters: "For Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Self-Assured and Forceful U.S. Supreme Court Debut":

Boston College constitutional law expert Kent Greenfield said Jackson's presence on the bench may have helped shape those rulings in part by bringing a different life experience to the table."She's a person of heft, a person of high intellect and she's not being quiet," Greenfield said. "She's very self-aware of the role she's playing."

NBC News: "'Unabashed': Justice Jackson Marks Her First Year on the Supreme Court Unafraid To Stake Her Own Position":

Although Jackson, 52, is clearly a solid part of the liberal minority on the 6-3 conservative-majority court, her opinion in Glacier Northwest v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters illustrated how she was forthright and eager to have her voice heard, even when she was out on her own. …

Jackson made her presence felt on her first day in the Supreme Court's ornate courtroom in October, asking a series of polite but insistent questions, setting a trend that would continue throughout the term."Let me try to bring some enlightenment to it," she said on that first day, when the court was hearing a knotty case about federal authority to regulate wetlands under the Clean Water Act.

Bloomberg Law: "Justice Jackson Didn’t Win Often, But What She Said Mattered":

Opinion: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson deftly used oral argument questions in her first term to make an impact in cases—even those she lost, writes @TonjaJacobi. https://t.co/bM1v9avMlJ

— Bloomberg Law (@BLaw) July 7, 2023

Any mention of glaring weaknesses in Jackson's decisions was almost entirely relegated to right-leaning media—even when the justice got basic facts wrong, as happened last week.

National Review: "Justice Jackson’s Abysmal Affirmative-Action Dissent"

Jackson took great umbrage at the Court’s striking down race-based college admissions in the case involving the policies of Harvard and the University of North Carolina. (She recused herself from the Harvard part of the ruling.)

Her much-praised handiwork, though, hardly qualifies as a legal opinion. It reads like a guest essay by "anti-racist" guru Ibram X. Kendi in the New York Times. 

Wall Street Journal: "Justice Jackson’s Incredible Statistic"

Even Supreme Court justices are known to be gullible. In a dissent from last week’s ruling against racial preferences in college admissions, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson enumerated purported benefits of "diversity" in education. "It saves lives," she asserts. "For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live."

A moment’s thought should be enough to realize that this claim is wildly implausible. Imagine if 40% of black newborns died—thousands of dead infants every week. But even so, that’s a 60% survival rate, which is mathematically impossible to double. And the actual survival rate is over 99%.

Ben Shapiro: "The best proof that affirmative action elevates the unqualified to high office are the recent dissents from Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor."

Meanwhile, the media are amplifying calls to remove the Supreme Court's other black justice, whose decades of conservative jurisprudence paved the way for many of this term's most significant rulings.

Calls to remove Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas have grown louder amid a new report detailing lavish trips he has taken with a powerful Republican donor.

Only one other justice has ever been impeached, and it was more than 200 years ago. https://t.co/N4AKwEYF4I

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) April 7, 2023

The post Irrelevant, Mistake-Prone Liberal Justice Is Supreme Court's 'Voice,' Media Say appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Those were mainstream media narratives this Fourth of July. As usual, I’ve got the receipts.

"It started in 2020 when the Black Lives Matter movement …"

Once again, the media amplified the voices of those who prefer to spend a nice, summer holiday criticizing the United States.

Here's the New York Times quoting a teenager who thinks celebrating America is a bad thing:

Growing up in Benton, Ark., Malaya Tapp loved celebrating the Fourth of July with her family. "We would go to parades and see firework shows and hang out with friends," she said. "It was always such a fun holiday."

But now that she is an adult—she’s 18 and entering college next year—commemorating the holiday isn’t so simple.

It started in 2020 when the Black Lives Matter movement spotlighted many of the injustices across the country. "I lost a lot of my patriotic feelings," she said.

Ms. Tapp, who now lives in Atlanta, also realized that many festive components of Fourth of July aren’t that palatable for her.

There are the fireworks. "It’s hard to tell the difference between guns and fireworks, and here there is always something on the news about a shooting or something, so it makes me nervous," she said. "They are also bad for the environment. They release a lot of toxic chemicals."

This year she is skipping the holiday altogether, opting instead to travel with her church youth group to visit a Navajo nation community in Arizona, but the trip was canceled because of a Covid outbreak.

The Washington Post also found some Independence Day Scrooges:

While enjoying the festivities, Prewitt, a Black woman, said her hope in America is tainted by the current climate and the recent rejection of affirmative action in college admissions by the Supreme Court. "I don’t have hope," she said. "If the right people were to get in place I would, but right now, I don’t."

For D.C. resident Kesi Chestnut, 45, embracing patriotism felt strained. Chestnut brought her family from D.C. and Georgia to support her niece, a flutist in the Stockbridge High School Marching Band from Stockbridge, Ga. "Usually as natives we try to avoid these crowded events, but there’s no better way to bring the family together than to celebrate," Chestnut said. While spectators laughed and cheered in their patriotic attire, Chestnut, who is Black, said she felt ambivalent.

"I’m feeling the least patriotic I’ve ever felt as a woman and a minority in this country, and with everything going on with the Supreme Court," Chestnut said. "There’s always hope. We always have to hang on, even if it’s a sliver. We have to see the good in experiences like this, which are trying to bring us together."

"… are fireworks fading?"

Freedom is once again under attack as liberals and their media allies try to kill another source of joy. NPR reports:

There's been a fresh push in recent years to use safer, cheaper and greener drones for light shows.

RICK BOSS: It's definitely a great alternative if you're worried about localized pollution that's happening when the fireworks go off and leave debris that might leave some heavy metals in the area.

SCHMITZ: That's Rick Boss, the president of Sky Elements Drone Shows. 

Meanwhile, the Washington Post worried that fireworks could compound the smoke from recent Canadian wildfires:

It may come as a surprise, but the federal holiday stands out as the most polluted day of the year in many locations across the nation, according to air quality data. Fireworks—the staple of Independence Day celebrations—light up the sky but also launch harmful pollutants. In some cases, the pollution levels from the pyrotechnics are similar to severe wildfire smoke.

This year, those smoky celebrations may compound air quality issues in areas already suffering from Canadian wildfire smoke, as well as blazes in Colorado and other states. Forecasts suggest that areas near the border with Canada, near Montana and Minnesota, could see a dose of wildfire smoke, and New England could see a slight smoky haze ahead of the holiday.

"Need some help with that BBQ banter?"

Both declining patriotism and environmental concerns are among the "fun conversation starters" that NPR published to help its readers make it through the Fourth of July:

4. Feelings of pride and patriotism in the U.S. are at a low
According to a 2022 Gallup poll, only 38% of Americans consider themselves extremely proud to be American. Still, according to the National Retail Federation, some 87% of Americans are planning to celebrate Independence Day this year.

5. Fireworks displays can significantly worsen air quality
As parts of the U.S. battle air quality issues caused by smoke from Canadian wildfires, there's concern about how some large fireworks displays can contribute to worsened air quality. Some regions are experimenting with drone shows to replace traditional fireworks displays.

And if leaving the house is too much, NPR had alternatives:

8. It has never been easier to celebrate from the comfort of your home
Livestreams of this year's Independence Day celebrations will be happening across the nation. This year's A Capitol Fourth will stream festivities from Washington, D.C. The event will feature live performances from, among others, Chicago, Babyface and Belinda Carlisle—and will include what organizers call the "greatest display of fireworks in the nation," captured by 20 different camera views.

"The holiday has accounted for the most mass shootings …"

Instead of fireworks, the media associate Independence Day with gun violence. Here's CNN:

On a holiday where Americans gather to celebrate their country’s history and culture, gun violence has been woven into that story, with mass shootings spiking over the Fourth of July holiday in recent years.

Notice the use of "their country" rather than "our country" from a U.S.-based journalist writing for an American publication.

MSNBC's Joy Reid can't even leave the house as a result:

MSNBC’s @JoyAnnReid: ' I did not go out on July 4th & would not. The idea of going to a mass gathering, a parade, or a big fireworks thing outside seems insane to me, to be blunt, in America, because America is awash with guns & people … seem to want to shoot people." pic.twitter.com/MGWo8ebkTj

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 6, 2023

"There's good news and bad news about inflation."

About two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Biden's handling of the economy. NPR used Independence Day as an opportunity to try to win hearts and minds with a piece titled: "Here are the 5 Things To Know About the State of the Economy This Independence Day."

Although economists had warned the Fed's higher interest rates could dampen the job market, it hasn't turned out that way so far.

In fact, employers have added more than 4 million jobs in the last year, or an average of more than 338,000 jobs a month. The unemployment rate has been below 4% for 16 months in a row — the longest such stretch since the 1960s.

And the unemployment rate for African Americans hit an all-time low of 4.7% in April, before climbing slightly the following month.

Even inflation gets some good news, at least from the media:

This time last summer, the U.S. was facing the highest inflation in four decades. Gasoline prices had hit an all-time high, topping $5 per gallon in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the cost of a Fourth of July cookout was soaring.

Since then, inflation has moderated significantly, dropping to 4% in May from 9.1% last June. Gasoline prices have fallen to around $3.53 per gallon according to AAA. And grocery bills have dipped slightly in the last three months.

NPR is carrying on an important White House tradition:

Planning a cookout this year? Ketchup on the news. According to the Farm Bureau, the cost of a 4th of July BBQ is down from last year. It’s a fact you must-hear(d). Hot dog, the Biden economic plan is working. And that’s something we can all relish. pic.twitter.com/7h9qLauIbC

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) July 1, 2021

That’s enough media for now. See you next week.

The post Drew's Receipts: Media Failures of the Week, July 8 appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Journalists, meanwhile, expressed dismay that the injunction would make it harder for the government to censor conservatives.

• New York Times, "Ruling Puts Social Media at Crossroads of Disinformation and Free Speech":

The case is a flashpoint in the broader effort by conservatives to document what they contend is a liberal conspiracy by Democrats and tech company executives to silence their views. It taps into fury on the right about how social media companies have treated stories about the origins of COVID, the 2020 election, and Hunter Biden, the president's son.

The final outcome could shape the future of First Amendment law in a rapidly changing media environment and alter how far the government can go in trying to prevent the spread of potentially dangerous information, particularly in an election or during emergencies like a pandemic.

The government's actions at the heart of the case were intended largely as public health measures. But Tuesday's order instead viewed the issue through the filter of partisan culture wars—asking whether the government violated the First Amendment by unlawfully threatening the social media companies to censor speech that Mr. Biden's administration found distasteful and potentially harmful to the public. …

The judge's preliminary injunction is already having an impact. A previously scheduled meeting on threat identification on Thursday between State Department officials and social media executives was abruptly canceled by officials, according to two people familiar with the decision, which was reported earlier by The Washington Post.

• NPR, "U.S. is barred from combating disinformation on social media. Here's what it means":

The government's ability to fight disinformation online has suffered a legal setback that experts say will have a chilling effect on communications between federal agencies and social media companies.

A Tuesday ruling by a federal district judge in Louisiana could have far-reaching consequences for the government's ability to work with Facebook and other social media giants to address false and misleading claims about COVID, vaccines, voting, and other issues that could undermine public health and erode confidence in election results. …

The case, brought by the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, addresses what has become a highly contested subject: the demands by some conservatives for "free speech" on social media platforms, versus the desire to rein in misinformation and disinformation that could lead to real-world harm. …

Social media companies have a wide range of relationships with governments, she says, from informal conversations to formalized reporting mechanisms to regular private meetings. These interactions accelerated after the 2016 election, reflecting criticism that tech platforms had not done enough to combat Russian efforts to interfere in the presidential race, and again during the pandemic, when officials worried that false and misleading social media posts could erode confidence in vaccines and advice from public health experts.

• CNN, "What to know about the order blocking the Biden administration from communicating with social media companies":

Legal experts say that the order is overly broad and scholars on online misinformation warned that it could have a chilling effect on the government's efforts to curtail lies about public health emergencies and elections. …

And in an extraordinary comparison to George Orwell's novel "1984," Doughty invoked the book when he said "the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario." …

The federal government has coordinated over the years with social media companies to help combat crime, but the coordination evolved in recent years as the government sought to rid the internet of misinformation and disinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and elections. …

Ethan Porter, an expert on online misinformation, said the ruling's effects may be felt in future years, as opposed to an immediate impact.

"Over the longer term, you can imagine future administrations being somewhat more hesitant to engage with social media companies when the next pandemic emerges, as it inevitably will," Porter said. "And that's troubling, because I think there's good reason to suspect that people’s responses to COVID-19 are in some way shaped by misinformation."

• Associated Press, "Judge's order limits government contact with social media operators, raises disinformation questions":

The injunction—and Doughty's accompanying reasons saying the administration "seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian 'Ministry of Truth'"—were hailed by conservatives as a victory for free speech and a blow to censorship.

Legal experts, however, expressed surprise at the breadth of the order, and questioned whether it puts too many limits on a presidential administration.

"When we were in the midst of the pandemic, but even now, the government has significantly important public health expertise," James Speta, a law professor and expert on internet regulation at Northwestern University, said Wednesday. "The scope of the injunction limits the ability of the government to share public health expertise."

The implications go beyond public health.

Disinformation researchers and social media watchdogs said the ruling could make social media companies less accountable to label and remove election falsehoods.

• PBS, "Biden administration blocked from working with social media firms about 'protected speech'":

Administration lawyers said the government left it up to social media companies to decide what constituted misinformation and how to combat it. In one brief, they likened the lawsuit to an attempt to put a legal gag order on the federal government and "suppress the speech of federal government officials under the guise of protecting the speech rights of others."

"Plaintiffs' proposed injunction would significantly hinder the federal government's ability to combat foreign malign influence campaigns, prosecute crimes, protect the national security, and provide accurate information to the public on matters of grave public concern such as health care and election integrity," the administration says in a May 3 court filing.

• The Hill, "Court ruling prompts fears of 'Wild West of disinformation'":

The ruling left experts concerned about a "chilling effect" on attempts to moderate false information online.

"If we end up with basically no meaningful content moderation, then it is going to be a Wild West of disinformation," said Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation. …

Alice Marwick, principal researcher at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life, said the ruling perpetuates a narrative that cracking down on disinformation—false information meant to mislead—is code for government suppression. …

In the years that have followed the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020 presidential election—events during which misinformation and disinformation exploded online—social media companies have already begun taking less stringent approaches to moderating content on their platforms.

Trump-appointed judges have issued odd edicts before, but as @stevebenen writes, a Fourth of July injunction blocking U.S. officials from interacting with social media companies was uniquely ridiculous. https://t.co/MMX1GuVz0k

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) July 6, 2023

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked key Biden administration agencies and officials from meeting and communicating with social media companies, in an extraordinary injunction in an ongoing case that could have profound effects on the First Amendment. https://t.co/OLfCEROp2S

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 5, 2023

The cancellation of regular meetings between Meta and U.S. government agencies shows the immediate impact of Tuesday’s order by a Trump-appointed judge. The order is a win for the right in a battle over the role of social media in shaping online speech. https://t.co/aCbL4hQGpe

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 5, 2023

Absent from these reports—any mention of the fact that the ruling comes after Biden administration officials repeatedly pressured social media companies to remove posts critical of the White House, its allies, and the Biden family:

1. THREAD:

THE TWITTER FILES: HOW TWITTER RIGGED THE COVID DEBATE

– By censoring info that was true but inconvenient to U.S. govt. policy
– By discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed
– By suppressing ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s *own data*

— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022

Zuckerberg tells Rogan Facebook suppressed Hunter Biden laptop story after FBI warning https://t.co/FSzckP4xBT pic.twitter.com/uLGGS0LedU

— The Hill (@thehill) August 26, 2022

Today's cover: FBI pressured Twitter, sent trove of docs hours before Post broke Hunter laptop story https://t.co/bnjS5AFKrr pic.twitter.com/v9EgkdXL9n

— New York Post (@nypost) December 20, 2022

The media haven't always been so defensive of government pressures on social media companies:

Trump signs executive order to modify a law that protects social media companies after Twitter tagged his tweets for fact checking pic.twitter.com/kgU83M7PnT

— Reuters (@Reuters) May 28, 2020

The post Media Worry That Conservatives Can Post Freely on Social Media appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The drugs were reportedly discovered in a restricted part of the White House, and on a day when public tours were not offered. To most people, this would suggest the drugs belonged to someone senior in the Biden administration or in the Biden family.

But those theories are too simple for the media, who have instead suggested that a White House visitor carried the cocaine past heavy security, at considerable personal risk, only to leave the drugs behind.

The powdery substance discovered by Secret Service at the White House on Sunday is confirmed to be cocaine. A leading theory by law enforcement officials is that the bag of cocaine was brought in by an individual on a tour of the West Wing, CBS News' @weijia reports. pic.twitter.com/IEXQvnmMGK

— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 5, 2023

• The Washington Post: "Cocaine Found in White House Near Where Guests Enter West Wing":

Jean-Pierre added that Biden was briefed on the matter, and she stressed that many outsiders set foot in the area where the cocaine was found." This is a heavily traveled area of the campus of the White House," she said. "It is where visitors to the West Wing come through." Law enforcement officials cautioned that because the area where the cocaine was discovered is so highly trafficked, it may be difficult to determine who was responsible for bringing the drug into the White House.

• The New York Times: "Secret Service Investigating Who Brought Cocaine Into the White House":

The small plastic envelope was found in an area of the West Wing that visitors and staff members often pass through during the day. When staff members want to bring relatives or friends on tours of the West Wing, they usually do so at night and on the weekends. A person familiar with the investigation said that the baggie was found near an area where guests are screened for security and leave their phones in small cubbies. The Secret Service would not say where exactly the substance was found in the lobby or whether the agency was working with the White House to review guest logs. People familiar with the investigation say that the area is frequented so often by so many groups of people that it may be hard to find the person who left the baggie.

Curiously absent from these reports is any mention of the fact that President Joe Biden's son, Hunter, who has struggled with cocaine addiction, is reportedly living in the White House. Nor do the stories note that Hunter Biden was photographed alongside his father on the West Wing balcony the day the baggie was found.

But the press doesn't seem interested in finding a culprit. In fact, they've simply declared that we'll never know who brought the drugs.

• NBC News: "Lab Test Confirms White Substance Found at The White House is Cocaine":

It is unclear how long the bag was in the White House. The blurry timeline and the number of people who walk through the area where the cocaine was found could make it difficult to determine who was responsible, an official familiar with the investigation said.

• CNN: "Lab Tests Show Substance Found at White House Was Cocaine":

The Secret Service, the official said, is doing "everything possible" to try and identify who brought what the official described as a "dime-sized bag" into the West Wing. The official noted that identifying the culprit may be difficult because of the size of the bag and the number of people who would have had access to the area.

The whole situation is just silly anyway, per CNN:

CNN jokes about cocaine being found in Joe Biden's West Wing.
"I want to know blow-by-blow who was responsible for this." - Sara Sidner while snickering.
"There is no 'too soon' ... It's an illicit drug at the White House. Why can't you have a little bit of fun?" - Kate Bolduan pic.twitter.com/mtR6VEPH6M

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) July 5, 2023

And nothing new.

I'm going to venture that Hunter Biden is not the only person who has stepped foot into a White House to have once used cocaine. In fact — you may wanna sit down for this — Barack Obama dabbled with it earlier in his life

— Sam Stein (@samstein) July 5, 2023

The post Cocaine in the White House: Nothing To See Here! appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

• The pair enjoyed a sunset dinner on Ponza, a swanky island enclave near the Amalfi Coast, while attending the wedding of Hollywood talent agent Jay Sures. They were joined by Lemon's husband, Tim Malone, and Zucker's mistress, Allison Gollust.

Why it matters: Zucker and Lemon are rumored to be "plotting a bid for the embattled network," according to the Daily Mail.

Crucial context: CNN's ratings have persistently declined since former president Donald Trump left office.

• Zucker was ousted in early 2021 for failing to disclose his relationship with Gollust, a subordinate executive.

• Chris Licht, who succeeded Zucker as network president, was fired last month for attempting to purge CNN of left-wing partisan hackery.

• Lemon, a partisan hack, was fired in April for being an obnoxious misogynist.

What they're saying: The Washington Free Beacon has semi-legally obtained a recording of Zucker and Lemon's dinner conversation in Italy. What follows is a partial transcript of that conversation. Please enjoy responsibly.

DON LEMON: I don't believe you. [laughing]

JEFF ZUCKER: Never happened. Why? Did you guys have a three-way with Chris Cuomo?

LEMON: F— off! [laughing]

TIM MALONE: Too much roid rage.

LEMON: I bet you'd be up for it though, right? Chris and Andrew at the same time. Jeff can watch.

ALLISON GOLLUST: Hard pass. [laughter]

LEMON: Well, clearly your standards are low.

ZUCKER: Clearly?

LEMON: What are you, late 50s?

GOLLUST: I'll be 51 in October, thanks for asking.

LEMON: Same age as Nikki Haley. Just saying. [laughing]

GOLLUST: I beg your pardon?

LEMON: Pre- or post-menopause? You know I'm fascinated by this stuff.

GOLLUST: We know.

ZUCKER: Calm down, Don.

WAITRESS: More wine, signore?

ZUCKER: Yes, please.

LEMON: Ah sì, I like-ah s'more-ah wine-ah. [laughing]

MALONE: Slay.

WAITRESS: Sì, signore.

LEMON: What's your name, doll?

WAITRESS: Giovanna.

LEMON: Yo quiero three cube-ohs de ice-o.

WAITRESS: Ice cubes for the wine?

LEMON: Three.

WAITRESS: Certo.

LEMON: You speak English, right?

WAITRESS: Yes.

LEMON: How many fingers am I holding up?

WAITRESS: Three, signore.

ZUCKER: Don, let's talk.

LEMON: Hold on, Zuck. Excuse me? [snaps fingers]

WAITRESS: Sì, signore.

LEMON: What are you doing?

WAITRESS: Bringing more water for—

LEMON: Excuse me. I thought you said you understand English.

WAITRESS: Yes.

LEMON: Were you listening five seconds ago? I asked you to bring me three ice cubes for the wine. Tres ice cubes. This many. Three.

WAITRESS: Of course, signore.

LEMON: No, I meant right now. Bring them now. Not after you fill up her water or flaunt your tits at Guido over there.

MALONE: He's a celebrity. I'm sure you understand.

WAITRESS: Certo.

LEMON: No, I'm not sure she does understand.

ZUCKER: Don, let it go. We have business to discuss.

LEMON: In a minute. You, girl, come here. [snaps fingers]

ZUCKER: This is why they fired him.

GOLLUST: Yeah, that and his crappy ratings.

LEMON: See these driving moccasins? They're Italian, like you. [laughing]

WAITRESS: Yes, I see.

LEMON: Cordovan leather. How much do you think they cost?

WAITRESS: I don't know.

LEMON: Of course you wouldn't know. But I want you to guess. How much?

WAITRESS: Your shoes are very nice, signore.

LEMON: I'm sorry. No, lay off, Zuck. She's speaking English, so I know she understands.

WAITRESS: Yes, I understand.

LEMON: I am telling you to guess how much you think I paid for these Italian leather driving moccasins. Guess.

WAITRESS: One thousand.

LEMON: A thousand. [laughing]

MALONE: As if. [laughing]

GOLLUST: Good, she's going.

ZUCKER: Finally.

LEMON: Four thousand five hundred. Euros. Where'd she go?

ZUCKER: To get your ice cubes. Now, sit down, Don. As you know, I'm putting together a bid for CNN. That Polish prick Zaslav is in over his head. We hear he'd happily let it go for pennies. Do you want in on the action?

LEMON: You know I do. This face belongs on television.

ZUCKER: I agree, but no more female cohosts. That was a disaster.

LEMON: Women don't get my sense of humor.

ZUCKER: They clearly don't. We need to get a lineup together.

LEMON: Let's do it. When I got fired I went out to the Hamptons and took a bunch of ayahuasca. Between that and the intermittent fasting, I came up with a ton of good ideas.

ZUCKER: I'm sure you did. So a few things are already locked in. Andrew and Chris are filming a pilot next week for Cuomo and Cuomo.

LEMON: Kinky.

ZUCKER: Shut up. Stelter has agreed to lose 80 pounds so he can hide in the bushes at Mar-a-Lago and try to get some voyeur shots of Trump taking a dump. We gotta do something to get the ratings up.

LEMON: I love it.

ZUCKER: Hunter Biden has been in touch about a special correspondent role.

LEMON: Nice.

MALONE: He's really hot for his age.

ZUCKER: We could send him on an art tour of the Gulf states, or to investigate illicit prostitution in European capitals. We'll figure something out. Those were his ideas.

LEMON: Here's what I was thinking. The White Face Chronicles.

ZUCKER: Go on.

LEMON: Don Lemon goes undercover as a straight white man to expose the racist underbelly of American society.

ZUCKER: Sure. Let's table that for now. What else you got?

LEMON: Tears of Equity: Billionaire businessman Don Lemon travels back in time to lead a slave rebellion in South Carolina. But he's too successful, right? He ends up freeing all the slaves and the Civil War never happens, and Barack Obama's white ancestors are killed in the uprising, so Don Lemon becomes America's first black president.

ZUCKER: Okay.

LEMON: But then the real Barack Obama travels back in time to stop Don Lemon from killing his family. At first they fight, but then they fall in love.

ZUCKER: Yeah, that's pretty interesting.

WAITRESS: Your ice cubes, signore.

LEMON: Are you serious right now? These are round. Do you not know what a cube looks like, you stupid bitch?

The post EXCLUSIVE: Here's What Don Lemon and Jeff Zucker Discussed on Vacation in Italy appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Fortunately Biden has some allies in the fight.

• New York Times, "Biden Says He Is 'Turning Things Around' on the Economy":

President Biden began a concerted campaign on Wednesday to claim credit for an economic revival in America, powered by policies that he said represent a fundamental break from the Republican approach "that has failed America's middle class for decades."

Flanked by blue signs with the word "Bidenomics," Mr. Biden delivered what aides called a cornerstone speech of his presidency. In it, he hailed the impact of his economic agenda as the 2024 campaign cycle heats up.

• CNN, "The 'Bidenomics' plan, explained":

Move over, Reaganomics. President Joe Biden is attempting to usher in the era of "Bidenomics."

This economic theory—which rejects the idea of "trickle-down" policies in favor of focusing on the middle class—will be a centerpiece of Biden's 2024 reelection campaign. The president highlighted the achievements he's attributing to Bidenomics in a major speech in Chicago on Wednesday.

Growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up—not the top down—is Biden's mantra.

• NPR, "Remember Reaganomics? Freakonomics? Now there's Bidenomics":

Bidenomics. It's the term the press (and the White House) are now using to sum up the president's economic agenda.

"Bidenomics… I don't know what the hell that is," Biden said at a union rally this month. "But it's working."

Perhaps it is. Unemployment is low. The economy is growing. But in surveys, voters disapprove of the president's economic leadership.

In a conversation on Morning Edition, host Steve Inskeep spoke with Biden's top economic adviser Jared Bernstein about Bidenomics.

• Washington Post, "Embracing 'Bidenomics,' president seeks to turn insult into strength":

The White House's new embrace of Bidenomics is, in a sense, a reflection of political reality. A president almost always gets saddled with the economy, regardless of its condition and who is responsible. For the past two years, that has at times meant Americans were blaming Biden for inflation without crediting him for job creation, or punishing him for higher grocery prices without recognizing lower drug costs.

But despite enormous job growth and a fast-paced recovery from the pandemic, Biden and his advisers have long been frustrated that the president is not getting more credit for an economy that by many measures is thriving. Employers added nearly 340,000 jobs last month, defying predictions and continuing a blistering expansion of the labor market.

• Bloomberg, "The U.S. Middle Class's Economic Anxiety Will Decide the 2024 Election":

Joe Biden is obsessed with the American middle class. It's the very spine of the U.S. economy, as the president regularly puts it, and the deliberate target of everything from his administration's efforts to rewrite economic policy and seed an industrial revival to its foreign policy and geopolitical competition with China.

The core premise of Bidenomics is that the middle shall come first.

"Bidenomics is about building an economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down," Biden said in a Chicago speech last week, laying out his vision of a boom fueled by a surge in government investment.

According to the Associated Press, the White House lifted the term from positive reports on the president's economic ideas, some of which preceded his inauguration.

• October 2020, the Economist, "Bidenomics: the good, the bad, and the unknown":

Fear of just such a leftward lurch under Mr. Biden is circulating among some American business leaders. However … the charge is wide of the mark. Mr. Biden has rejected the utopian ideas of the left. His tax and spending proposals are reasonable. They imply only a modestly bigger state and attempt to deal with genuine problems facing America, including shoddy infrastructure, climate change, and the travails of small business. In fact, the flaw in Mr. Biden's plans is that in some areas they are not far-reaching enough.

• November 2020, Associated Press, "Bidenomics: More stimulus, tougher regulation, and gridlock":

Biden's election victory makes another shot of stimulus spending more likely, though probably not until after his inauguration in January. A package of $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion would add as much as 4.5% to growth next year, according to Capital Economics. That would be enough to return the economy to its pre-pandemic level by the end of 2021. Most economists note that the economy's painfully sluggish recovery from the 2008-2009 Great Recession was due in large part to government spending limits that took effect in 2010.

• November 2020, Bloomberg, "Bidenomics: What Middle-Class Joe Means for Business and the Economy":

President-elect Biden will probably bring a less confrontational tone on trade, a return to the Paris climate accord, and help for Americans who aren't rich.

But even the media admit that the economy has suffered under Biden:

Economists at the Federal Reserve said they expect a "mild" recession later this year, an escalation from their previous assessment. https://t.co/oePJZEPBdg

— ABC News (@ABC) April 14, 2023

Inflation, interest rates, bank failures.

On #TheAssignment, @AudieCornish asks economists why it’s so hard to predict what will happen next and about the pandemic’s long-term effect on the economy. https://t.co/e4hOdpunlF pic.twitter.com/kgEhQX8CP0

— CNN (@CNN) March 25, 2023

Charitable contributions fell in 2022 for the first time since the Great Recession as households adjusted their budgets to historically high inflation and record stock market losses, according to reports from philanthropical foundations. https://t.co/nHr8K92u95

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 29, 2023

Consumer spending in the U.S. slowed sharply last month — good news for policymakers worried about inflation, but also a sign that a crucial engine of the economic recovery could finally be losing steam.https://t.co/9coZ0DDVKK

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 30, 2023

Not even a "Bidenomics" media blitz can distract Americans from those problems:

In Chicago, the president says the economy is getting past pandemic woes — even as polls show continued worry. https://t.co/HqiAAqze8i

— HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) June 28, 2023

The post Media Try To Sell a Dubious Public on the Benefits of 'Bidenomics' appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Here are some of the strangest takes.

"We're coming for your kids—kidding!"

The 'coming for your children" chant has been used for years at Pride events, according to longtime march attendees and gay rights activists, who said it’s one of many provocative expressions used to regain control of slurs against LGBTQ people. https://t.co/2VvDAKyyWy

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 28, 2023

• NPR, "Ahead of Father's Day, We're Hearing Voices of Dads From Different Backgrounds":

Kayden Coleman is one of the dads we're hearing from this week in honor of Fathers Day. The educator and transgender dad talks about what being a father means to him....

COLEMAN: Especially for someone like me who is also Black, also low-income, things of that nature. Especially 10 years ago, people weren't interested in learning about transmasculine people navigating pregnancy. So I had to do a lot of advocating for myself, and I experienced a lot of pushback and discrimination within the medical system based off of preconceived ideas of what a pregnant person is supposed to look like.

• CBS News, "Gender-Affirming Care For Trans Youth: Separating Medical Facts From Misinformation":

Gender-affirming care is a broad term for many distinct treatments provided to children, teens, and adults. Puberty blockers, for example, are medications that inhibit puberty by suppressing the body's production of sex hormones, while hormone therapy is the administration of testosterone or estrogen to alter secondary sex characteristics.

One common misbelief heard when legislation is discussed is that gender-affirming medical interventions are provided immediately to any trans or nonbinary kid who walks into a gender clinic....

The age at which trans minors receive gender-affirming hormone therapy depends on the patient's ability to provide informed consent for the treatment, which can happen when they're as young as 12 or 13 years old....

Most medical centers require individuals to be at least 18 years old for bottom surgery and chest, or "top," surgery, though some do perform top surgery on younger teens if the patient, their parents, and health care providers agree the procedure is appropriate.

• ABC News, "'Genocidal': Transgender People Begin to Flee States With Anti-LGBTQ Laws":

Susan has a 7-year-old transgender daughter, Elsa, whose parents asked that she be referred to by a pseudonym for safety reasons, who they say may one day need such care.

Elsa's parents describe her as wise beyond her years. She had expressed that she was a girl from an early age and guided her parents through her gender journey – asking to wear dresses, change her name, and to be referred to as a "daughter" by her parents.

"When she was 3, one day, she told me, 'I'm a girl person,'" Susan said in an interview with ABC News. It was National Daughters Day, "and she said, ‘Can I be your daughter?’ – which made me cry.

But it wasn't all controversy. The media were there to put a Pride spin on everyday life:

• New York Times, "What Financial Planning Looks Like for L.G.B.T.Q. People":

Of course, I knew people were given money for their weddings, but this seemed like an abstract, heterosexual concept to me: free money, for loving someone? In my experience, nothing about being a lesbian came without, at minimum, a metaphorical price tag.

But that’s just my experience. In June, which is Pride Month, many people honor the history, struggles and joys of L.G.B.T.Q. people. It’s also a time to celebrate the ways we are different and how we relate to the world around us — which got me thinking about money.

• Washington Post, "10 Recipes For Pride Month as Colorful as the Rainbow":

The gay tea dance originated in New York and spread across the country in the 1950s and '60s. "At a time when same-sex dancing was criminalized and club raids were common, the afternoon soirees functioned as discreet spaces for gay and lesbian people to socialize safely," Post style reporter Janay Kingsberry wrote. Thankfully, there have been a number of advancements for LGBTQ+ rights since then — along with some setbacks — and I for one am looking to celebrate this Pride Month to the fullest.Should you want to throw your own tea dance and hark back to the original inspiration of afternoon tea with snacks and beverages, here are some recipes that are fun and colorful to celebrate LGBTQ+ pride this month....

Pride started as a riot, so should you want to light something on fire, this take on the fruit salad is the way to go.

There were achievements to celebrate:

The giant canvas pink triangle that is one of the LGBTQ+ community’s Pride month symbols in San Francisco is bigger than ever this year. Volunteers said they are taking a stand for their rights amid a national pushback from conservative lawmakers. https://t.co/teT4iTOFxY

— The Associated Press (@AP) June 22, 2023

• NBC News, "Pride 30: Drag performers Who Made 'Herstory'":

Now that the centuries-old art of drag has become a preferred target in the current culture warfare, we chose to dedicate this year’s annual NBC Out Pride 30 list to the performers who have put this art form on the map. …

Lady Bunny got her start go-go dancing with her friend RuPaul while living in Atlanta in the early 1980s. The pair moved to New York City together in 1983, and Lady Bunny spent much of this period in the city’s nightclubs, a place where other "club kids" were experimenting with outrageousness, gender, art and fashion. In 1984, Lady Bunny organized the first Wigstock, an annual drag queen festival in Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood. With a wide-ranging and diverse oeuvre, Lady Bunny is now considered one of the most legendary drag queens working today.

The media were there for the highs:

This Pride Month is @DarcyDrollinger's first year as San Francisco’s official drag laureate. She takes the new position, in a year that has seen a record number of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation introduced across the country. @AliRogin speaks to Drollinger for more. pic.twitter.com/8Bqw2CwUbi

— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) June 25, 2023

• Washington Post, "LGBTQ+ Pride Month Reaches Its Grand Crescendo on City Streets From New York to San Francisco":

Thousands of effusive marchers danced to club music in New York City streets Sunday as bubbles and confetti rained down, and fellow revelers from Toronto to San Francisco cheered through Pride Month’s grand crescendo.New York’s boisterous throng strolled and danced down Fifth Avenue to Greenwich Village, cheering and waving rainbow flags to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall uprising, where a police raid on a gay bar triggered days of protests and launched the modern movement for LGBTQ+ rights.

• New York Times, "'Padam Padam': You Hear It and You Know It’s Pride":

Kylie Minogue’s latest single appears to be on the fast track to gay-classic status. We asked D.J.s booked for Pride events to weigh in on the track’s devoted cult following.

… and the lows.

• MSNBC, "Drag Queens Describe a Pride Month Like No Other":

While many are celebrating Pride Month, the community remains under attack. Stephanie Ruhle sat down with a roundtable of drag queens on those threats and what America doesn’t understand. Rosé, Julie J, Nicky O and Mariyea join.

• Bloomberg, "Pride Planners: How We’ll Celebrate Despite Anti-Drag, Anti-LGBTQ Laws":

In America’s ever-more-polarized political environment, annual celebrations of diversity are as fraught as ever. Here’s what’s happening with festivals big and small in states inundated with anti-LGBTQ legislation.

• ABC News, "Target Faces Criticism From Artists Involved With Pride Month Products Over Response to Boycott: 'Quick to Fold'":

Kennedy Davenport, a drag queen, rejoiced when she learned last year that she would be featured on apparel in the forthcoming Pride collection at Target.

"You never imagine opportunities like this," Davenport told ABC News, comparing the breakthrough to her previous role competing on the TV show "RuPaul's Drag Race.

"For Davenport, elation turned to disappointment last month when Target announced it would remove some Pride products from stores in response to anti-LGBTQ harassment faced by employees, she said. Davenport says she does not know whether products with her image were removed.

• CNN, "Pentagon Cancels Drag Show at Air Force Base as Pride Month Begins":

The Pentagon forced an Air Force base in Nevada to cancel a drag show at the start of Pride Month that had already been approved, according to three officials familiar with the situation.

The drag show at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada was scheduled for June 1 and recognizes the importance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender service members and civilian personnel. According to a military official, it would have been the third annual drag show held at Nellis, known as "The Home of the Fighter Pilot" and the Air Force’s center for advanced fighter training.

Despite the previous two events being held at the base, this one was not allowed to move forward after the Pentagon intervened on Wednesday, according to two defense officials, forcing the base to cancel the event or move it to a different location.

There was plenty of coverage of the media's favorite villains:

Drag activist Sister Roma was honored during an annual LGBTQ+ Pride Month ceremony in the state Capitol. She was welcomed with a standing ovation in both the Assembly and Senate, while some Republicans walked off in protest as Roma was recognized. https://t.co/ve7e2pIxGy

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) June 6, 2023

Congressional Republicans from Mississippi are demanding the Department of Veterans Affairs remove a temporary pride flag from the Biloxi National Cemetery, arguing its presence is disrespectful to veterans. https://t.co/ASseVzjxI3

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 6, 2023

Throughout June, many Republicans including presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis have sharply criticized Pride celebrations, and some have resurfaced fights over same-sex marriage. https://t.co/aDUkw3u5dW

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 30, 2023

And tons of… unique opinion pieces:

• New York Times, "Yes, We’re in an L.G.B.T.Q. State of Emergency":

I recently spoke with several leaders of L.G.B.T.Q. groups and historians who have documented the community’s history, and they all raised the alarm about the severity of what we’re seeing.

There have been other periods of backlash against the queer community, including with the passage of oppressive legislation, but this one has moved with alarming political calculation and efficacy.

"This is a terror campaign against our community," said Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and chief executive of GLAAD, the pre-eminent L.G.B.T.Q. media advocacy organization.

• CNN, "Opinion: How to clap back against anti-LGBTQ attacks this Pride month":

Here’s how to clap back against the anti-LGBTQ vitriol this Pride:...

Encourage passive allies to step up and become active ones. Change your social media profile image to the Progress Pride flag and consider that a starting point, not the sum total of expressed allyship. Honor that symbol by calling out misinformation about LGBTQ people that others share on social media....

Young adults can check out Maia Kobabe’s "Gender Queer," the most banned book in America in 2022, and André Aciman’s "Call Me by Your Name," about a romance between two young men....

For every handful of rainbow glitter we throw at a fabulous pride celebration, let’s spend time helping to correct the record and defend LGBTQ family, friends and community members against the onslaught of attacks. Don’t underestimate the inherent power of that bedtime story, that emailed article, that conversation struck at the bus stop or dinner table. It may just be the catalyst that tips us into a safer, brighter and more equal future.

And finally, there was the reason for the season—sales:

• New York Times, "Gay Pride? There’s a Candle for That":

Every year, millions of people flock to Manhattan festooned in rainbows and feathers and leather to celebrate the annual Pride March. Many of them will traipse down Christopher Street, home of the Stonewall Inn, the epicenter of the modern gay rights movement in New York.

But have you ever stopped to wonder what that smells like? What scents waft through the air, mixed with the ever-present aromas of summer in the city?

No? Well, there’s a candle for that. It smells like jasmine and sandalwood.

• NPR, "LGBTQ+ Creatives Rely on Pride Month Income. This Year, They're Feeling the Pinch":

Leggett, the nonbinary designer behind the gender-fluid sustainable clothing company Official Rebrand, said companies that usually reached out to them for sponsored partnerships ahead of Pride Month have not approached them this year.

After talking with their peers, Leggett said they realized, "it wasn't just me."

"It's just been a really stark contrast from years before," they said. "Every single year, my friends and I and my colleagues always get these additional jobs."

In recent years, businesses big and small have seen June as an opportune time to position themselves as inclusive and to show their support of LGBTQ+ communities with Pride Month campaigns. Brand allyship has come in the form of collaborations with queer influencers and creatives with significant online followings.

Until next year!

The post The Media's Weirdest Pride Coverage of 2023 appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

All that and more were mainstream media narratives last week. As usual, I’ve got the receipts.

"It's the West Coast. It's late at night..."

MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell offered an interesting defense of President Joe Biden calling Chinese president Xi Jinping a "dictator" as his secretary of state was in China trying to mitigate the damage:

"It's the West Coast. It's late at night. He's done four of these [fundraisers], plus that meeting on artificial intelligence earlier in the day, so he's had a very busy schedule."

Some journalists might worry that the leader of the free world doesn't have the mental stamina to speak at night. But not Mitchell:

Andrea Mitchell recounts a short history of illness and health scares of former presidents following news that President Biden has tested positive for Covid-19, adding, "it's very important in the modern age for presidents to be as transparent as possible" https://t.co/Oh0cOuxvx1 pic.twitter.com/SIGCQBkSTJ

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) July 22, 2022

WATCH: President Biden makes jokes about his age, Fox News, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ron DeSantis, Trump's legal troubles, and more at this year's White House Correspondent's Dinner. https://t.co/bo1CwTNaVb pic.twitter.com/FqYYtwfkbc

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) April 30, 2023

"Sleep apnea is a common disorder..."

The media finally found something about Biden's health they want to talk about: his sleep apnea. From the New York Times:

President Biden has begun using a CPAP machine in recent weeks to help deal with sleep apnea, a common disorder in which one’s breathing is interrupted as one sleeps, White House officials said Wednesday. When Mr. Biden left the White House on Wednesday morning for a speech in Chicago, he had indentations across both sides of his face from having worn the device, known as a continuous positive airway pressure machine. "Since 2008, the president has disclosed his history with sleep apnea in thorough medical reports," said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman. "He used a CPAP machine last night, which is common for people with that history."

The media jumped all over this story, with reports from CNN, Reuters, the Associated Press, NPR, and beyond. Bloomberg's Jennifer Jacobs got the original "scoop":

Scoop: Biden has begun using a CPAP machine, per sources. The device is to treat longstanding sleep apnea, one of the people said. As Biden departed the White House this morning for Chicago, indentations from the CPAP straps could be seen on his face. Story by @jendeben and me. pic.twitter.com/U4Chkp16Pq

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) June 28, 2023

Just don't ask about his mental well-being:

• CNN: "Republicans keep trying to make Biden’s mental capacity an issue":

During the course of the 2020 campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly tried to make Joe Biden’s mental state a major issue....

The Point: This is the sort of gross, lowest-common-denominator politics that drive people away from public life. If Republicans have some sort of proof that Biden is declining, they should bring it forward. If they don’t, they should stop doing what they’re doing. Immediately.

"...all but ensuring that elite institutions become whiter..."

The media melted down in response to the news that the Supreme Court had struck down the use of racial affirmative action in college admissions. The New York Times had a response that seemed... pretty racist.

Breaking News: The Supreme Court rejected affirmative action at Harvard and UNC. The major ruling curtails race-conscious college admissions in the U.S., all but ensuring that elite institutions become whiter and more Asian and less Black and Latino.https://t.co/SlMCRldkvN pic.twitter.com/flnORE7sHa

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 29, 2023

To help make the ruling relatable, the Times caught up with some prospective students touring Harvard University:

The teenagers seeking shade as their tour groups crisscrossed leafy Harvard Yard on Thursday knew that they would be among the first students to feel the effect of the Supreme Court’s ruling on race-based admissions when they applied to colleges.

What they didn’t know was exactly how it would affect their chances. But many high school students, visiting Harvard University and beyond, said they were concerned to see long-established admissions practices giving way to something new and unfamiliar.

Suffer the (wealthy, privileged) children!

"It's the story leading the broadcast evening news..."

The media are outraged that the submersible that exploded looking for the Titanic got more attention than a shipwreck that killed dozens of migrants. CNN media critic Oliver Darcy explains:

But questions have also been raised about whether the press is going overboard focusing on the story. Is the high volume of coverage and breathless nature of it warranted? Should a missing tourism vessel for the ultra-wealthy take precedence over other consequential stories happening around the world?...

Meanwhile, as the furious coverage of the missing vessel entered its third day, growing more feverish with time, critics pointed out that other tragic maritime accidents have received far less attention from the press.

"The media obsession with the Titanic submersible is in contrast with the relative meagre coverage of the drownings in the Mediterranean Sea," the Irish journalist Vincent Browne pointed out on Wednesday, referring to the boats carrying scores of migrants that have sunk in recent months in a desperate attempt to reach Europe.Just last week, Pakistani authorities said that more than 300 people were killed when a fishing boat packed with people sunk off the coast of Greece. Ylva Johansson, the European Union commissioner for home affairs, described the horrific incident as perhaps "the worst tragedy ever" in the Mediterranean Sea. And yet, the disaster did not inspire a level of coverage close to what major news organizations have devoted to the ocean submersible.

Darcy's urging fell on deaf ears... at least at CNN, where over a week later, the submersible is still front-page news.

The Greek migrant crisis? Not so much.

"One of many provocative expressions used to regain control of slurs against LGBTQ people."

The media's bizarre Pride coverage reached a peak when NBC News excused marchers' chants of "we're coming for your children" as some kind of cheeky inside joke:

Over the weekend, a short video circulated widely on social media of an unidentified person at a New York City march during Pride festivities saying, "We’re coming for your children."...To conservative pundits, activists and lawmakers, the video confirmed the allegations they’ve levied in recent years that the LGBTQ community is "grooming" children. But to Brian Griffin, the original organizer of the NYC Drag March, if that’s the worst they heard, it’s only because he wasn’t there this year. Griffin said he chanted obscene things in the past, like "Kill, kill, kill, we’re coming to kill the mayor," and joked about pubic hair and sex toys during marches. People at the Drag March regularly sing "God is a lesbian."...

The "coming for your children" chant has been used for years at Pride events, according to longtime march attendees and gay rights activists, who said it’s one of many provocative expressions used to regain control of slurs against LGBTQ people.

The real victims here, to hear NBC News tell it, are the Pride parade attendees.

Conservative politicians and pundits have increasingly referred to advocates for LGBTQ rights as "groomers," associating people who oppose laws that restrict drag performances or classroom discussions of gender identity with pedophiles. The charge is an echo of a decades-old trope anti-gay activists have used to paint the community as a threat to the country’s youths, an allegation that some advocates say endangers LGBTQ people. And the intense reaction to the video has scared some attendees, who insist the quip has been taken out of context. "It’s really scary to us," said Fussy Lo Mein, a drag performer and activist who was at this year’s march and declined to give their real name because of safety concerns. "It doesn’t represent everybody — it represents that individual. I thought it was a dumb idea, and I started chanting on top of it with alternate verses."

"An I.R.S. investigator’s testimony ... is at odds with the version laid out by Attorney General Merrick Garland."

The New York Times buried an important detail about an IRS whistleblower who worked on the Hunter Biden investigation deep in a recent piece, as the Washington Free Beacon's Chuck Ross caught:

NYT buries in the 21st paragraph that it has an independent source who confirms the two IRS whistleblowers' claim that David Weiss said he was blocked from bringing charges against Hunter Biden in California. https://t.co/nH55AVQAJq pic.twitter.com/wSPKT4aiMG

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) June 27, 2023

Why would the Times take so long to mention that they had corroborated the allegations? Well, one possible theory:

In providing accounts of internal discussions at odds with Mr. Garland’s testimony, Mr. Shapley gave Republicans a fresh opening to raise questions about the case and to cast doubt on the Justice Department’s repeated statements that Mr. Weiss had complete control of the investigation with no political interference.

That’s enough media for now. See you next week.

The post Drew's Receipts: Media Failures of the Week, July 1 appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The California State Library this week announced $8.1 million in grants to 62 news outlets to raise awareness about hate crimes, according to a press release. That includes $100,000 to EDI Media, which is registered as a foreign agent of China. The library awarded $100,000 each to Sky Link TV and U.S. News Express, both of which publish a steady stream of pro-China content. The grants are the second round of funding for ethnic media outlets. The first round provided $100,000 to Sing Tao, a Chinese state-owned outlet that is registered as a foreign agent.

The grants could raise questions about the Newsom administration funding pro-Beijing mouthpieces as California stares down the barrel of a $32 billion budget deficit. Newsom, who has reportedly considered running for president in 2024 or 2028, has proposed cutting billions of dollars in spending on public universities, transportation, and climate initiatives to save money.

Newsom touted the grant program after the first round of funding last year, saying they will "increase awareness of the valuable services provided by the Stop the Hate Program, reduce stigma surrounding the reporting of hate incidents, and promote community healing."

The grants will fund "specialized reporters," news briefings, and social media content for outlets that cater to Asian, African-American, LGBT, Hispanic, and Arab communities. Other recipients included Black Voice News, Hispanic LA, Outward Magazine, and Slavic Sacramento.

Newsom has boosted Chinese propagandists before. He hailed Sing Tao for its "journalistic integrity" and "balanced news stories" at its annual gala in 2021. That was shortly after the news outlet registered with the U.S. government as a foreign agent of China, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

EDI Media, which registered as a Chinese foreign agent last year, publishes newspapers for Xinmin Evening News, which the State Department has declared a state-controlled propaganda outlet.

In 2015, Reuters revealed EDI Media’s secret links to China Radio International, the Chinese state radio channel. According to Reuters, EDI Media owner James Su has described his plans to use media outlets in the United States to promote Chinese government policy. In 2003, he described plans to set up a media company that complies with U.S. law but would "endorse China’s ideology."

The two other grant recipients—Sky Link TV and U.S. News Express—are not registered as Chinese foreign agents, though they often promote Chinese government policies.

According to a report from the Hoover Institution, Sky Link TV "follows and quite often reports verbatim the official line" on international relations from Chinese state media. China’s Ministry of Commerce hailed Sky Link TV as a "cultural export" in 2014.

U.S. News Express, based in San Francisco, has promoted some of China’s foreign influence initiatives. In 2019, the outlet organized the Silk Road Americas Forum to promote the Belt and Road Initiative, the massive international infrastructure program that Beijing has used to influence foreign countries. U.S. News Express was also represented at a journalism forum organized by the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department in 2019.

The California State Library and Newsom’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

The post Newsom Doles Out Taxpayer Funds to Chinese Foreign Agents appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Some of their reactions were kind of racist:

Breaking News: The Supreme Court rejected affirmative action at Harvard and UNC. The major ruling curtails race-conscious college admissions in the U.S., all but ensuring that elite institutions become whiter and more Asian and less Black and Latino.https://t.co/SlMCRldkvN pic.twitter.com/flnORE7sHa

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 29, 2023

Some lamented the end of diversity as we know it:

BREAKING: @NBCNews Special Report: Supreme Court bars affirmative action in college admissions in a major blow to diversity efforts. https://t.co/8ohLwlWBGg https://t.co/Eqrn84qZri

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 29, 2023

.@majorcbs lists eight states where using race as a factor in college admissions has been banned.

"There are real world examples of where if you take race out of the equation... it is very hard to reach these goals of diversity that colleges... have set for themselves" pic.twitter.com/wIva8YflIW

— CBS News (@CBSNews) June 29, 2023

• NBC News: "Supreme Court Strikes Down College Affirmative Action Programs":

The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard in a major victory for conservative activists, ending the systematic consideration of race in the admissions process....

The decision was condemned by liberals who argue that affirmative action is a key tool for remedying historic race discrimination....

The court’s decision is a major blow to the most selective universities that say some consideration of race is vital in ensuring they have diverse student bodies.

The small number of schools that have extremely competitive admissions programs are the most affected. They have predicted that rulings against the colleges will lead to a significant drop in the enrollment of minority students and require admissions officers to experiment with new race neutral plans intended to counteract the impact.

The media had been preparing for this ruling for weeks:

• Politico: "How the Supreme Court’s Decision on Affirmative Action May Change the Future of College":

The Supreme Court seems destined to end its term with a big rollback of the tool colleges employ to boost racial diversity on their campuses.

What’s unclear is how schools fashion race-neutral workarounds to fill that gap — or if the ruling pushes colleges to retreat on a goal that’s been a priority for decades.

• NBC News: "Looming Supreme Court Affirmative Action Ruling Has Elite Colleges on Edge":

Late June is normally a peaceful time on college campuses. Not this year.

On Zoom calls, in working groups and in text chains, officials at elite schools are anxiously preparing. Within days, the Supreme Court could bar them from considering race as a factor in the admissions process....

Schools can’t use quotas or set-asides, the court has ruled, but once students check boxes that indicate their race or ethnicity, those part of their identities can be taken into account. Until now, the court’s proffered justification has been that certain "educational benefits" flow from a diverse student body, but a majority of justices have also ruled that lower courts must scrutinize whether schools have tried "race-neutral" alternatives.

For nearly as long as affirmative action has existed, it has had its conservative detractors on the court. The most vocal has been Justice Clarence Thomas, whose former law clerks are now arguing the cases against the schools that the court is about to decide....

The problem, schools say, is the alternatives to race simply don’t produce the same results. Femi Ogundele, the dean of undergraduate admissions at the University of California, Berkeley, says he has seen that firsthand. California is one of nine states that banned the use of affirmative action for public universities. In the immediate aftermath, selective schools in the state had a 50% decline in Black and Latino students admitted. Those numbers have never rebounded.

• Associated Press: "The Supreme Court’s Biggest Decisions Are Coming. Here’s What They Could Say.":

The survival of affirmative action in higher education is the subject of two related cases, one involving Harvard and the other the University of North Carolina. The Supreme Court has previously approved of the use of affirmative action in higher education in decisions reaching back to 1978. But the justices’ decision to take the cases suggested a willingness to revisit those rulings. And when the high court heard arguments in the cases in late October, all six conservative justices on the court expressed doubts about the practice.

The Biden administration has said that getting rid of race-conscious college admissions would have a "destabilizing" effect that would cause the ranks of Black and Latino students to plummet at the nation’s most selective schools.

The press has already started worrying about what the decision could mean for the future of corporate racism:

Now that the Supreme Court has struck down the use of race-conscious admissions at universities, conservative groups say that the private sector should get ready for further challenges to their diversity, equity and inclusion — or DEI — initiatives. https://t.co/UksvWJvBdi

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 29, 2023

Ruling on college admissions could fuel attacks on corporations' diversity efforts https://t.co/z5RJzPUiuV

— POLITICO (@politico) June 29, 2023

The post Media Not Happy About High Court's Affirmative Action Ruling appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

For years, the mainstream media warned about the nefarious influence of parents who dared to run for school board elections after growing concerned with what their children were learning.

Associated Press: "Some School Systems Pause Diversity Programs Amid Pushback":

In some districts, proposals aimed at making schools more welcoming places for students from diverse backgrounds have been reversed as a result of turnover on school boards, while work elsewhere faces a chill from acrimonious debate around topics that have been mislabeled as critical race theory.

School administrators say critical race theory, a scholarly theory that centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions, is not taught in K-12 schools. But that has done little to sway opponents who assert that school systems are misspending money, perpetuating divisions and shaming white children by pursuing initiatives they view as critical race theory in disguise.

In a fraught political climate that already had escalated fights about pandemic mask and vaccine requirements, divisions are taking a toll, said Dan Domenech, executive director of the School Superintendents Association.

ABC News: "Teachers, Librarians Targeted by Angry Parents Over LGBTQ Books Speak Out":

A middle school teacher in Illinois says she was forced to resign from her job after parents called the police on her for including the book "This Book is Gay" in a slate of books made available to students during a reading activity.

Sarah Bonner, who has been a teacher for roughly 20 years, says she is just one of many teachers facing pressure from certain parents to shun LGBTQ identities from classrooms.

CNN: "Activist Moms Spy on Each Other in Culture Wars Over Schooling":

There were no confrontations at the Moms for Liberty meeting held in a Mexican restaurant in Colorado Springs. There was some provocative talk about purported sexual content in library books—Schoening claimed a book about "how do two men pleasure each other" was available to first graders. (She did not name the book or say what school it was supposedly found in.) But the attendees spent more time on how to wield their power.

Associated Press: "‘They’re opposed to government. But now they are the government.’ One county’s hard-right shift":

Shortly after being sworn in last fall, the new majority of the Sumner County Commission in Tennessee acted to update one of its official documents. The new version said county operations would not only be orderly and efficient, but "most importantly reflective of the Judeo-Christian values inherent in the nation’s founding."...

They have been motivated by pandemic restrictions, false claims related to the 2020 presidential election, disagreements over race and gender education, or a desire to reign in what they see as unaccountable bureaucracies, with a goal of taking control of school and library boards, county commissions and city councils. ...

A Republican and mother of two, Aumiller said she became concerned about the rise of the Constitutional Republicans group during the pandemic and attempts to push their agenda in local schools.

"At one point, I was ignorant, totally oblivious with what is going on—whoever is in office, it’s all interchangeable. That’s because I believed there were safeguards," she said. "What I am seeing, they don’t care about laws. They don’t care about rules. I have never seen anything so fragile as our government."

A heated debate in North Carolina on teaching kids about sex highlights the difficulty for many school districts around the country. The Cumberland County board of education voted Tuesday to get rid of its Planned Parenthood sex education program after criticism from some parents pic.twitter.com/N6xVVkfemG

— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 14, 2018

Angry parents battling over critical race theory.

A lawsuit over the use of transgender students’ pronouns.

A raucous school board meeting.

Loudoun County, a wealthy area outside D.C., is fast becoming the face of the nation’s culture wars. Here’s why. https://t.co/7Lzq05oCvz

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 8, 2021

In several states and districts around the country, protesters have been disrupting school board meetings.

They're opposed to mask policies. Vaccine mandates. LGBTQ rights. Sex education. And teaching about race and U.S. history.https://t.co/pZS5Mh9B6d

— NPR (@NPR) October 30, 2021

As parents protest critical race theory, students fight racist behavior in class.

One 15-year-old told her school board: 'It's bad enough we have to deal with racism in the real world — we shouldn't have to deal with it in school."https://t.co/h0NHIb7gry

— NBC News (@NBCNews) December 16, 2021

But the media have finally found a group of parents whose school board candidacies they support.

Spoiler alert: They're progressives.

ABC News: "Progressives Launch Their Own Campaign To Flip School Board Seats Nationwide":

A progressive group plans to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars into an effort to elect hundreds of left-leaning school board members across the country—underscoring how those local races are increasingly drawing the attention of noted advocacy groups and politicians. ...

Some high-profile Democrats are mounting their own campaign from the other side of the spectrum, as seen with Illinois' Gov. J.B. Pritzker's recent outlaw of book bans.

[The Progressive Change Campaign Committee's] fundraising launch on Friday comes just a week before conservative nonprofit group Moms for Liberty holds its annual meeting in Philadelphia, where several Republican 2024 hopefuls, and Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are slated to speak.

Hannah Riddle, director of PCCC's candidate services, told ABC News that she sees efforts from the right as "really serious and not theoretical threats."

PCCC will be focusing its efforts in battlegrounds like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas, as well as Illinois and Virginia, where several school boards seats will see vacancies, Riddle said.

It's the latest in the media's efforts to frame local progressive efforts as democracy-in-action.

NPR: "Local Libraries Have Become a Major Political and Cultural Battleground":

The changes at the library since conservatives took over the governing board have infuriated liberal patrons.

"We're really upset that the library is being used in the culture wars," said Jean Menard, a home-school mom who says she depends on Lafayette libraries for her two teenagers' education. Menard started an anti-censorship Facebook group, Supporters of Lafayette Public Libraries. The group has more than 2,000 members.

"It is not the board of control's position to micromanage the library," she said. "Librarians need to be able to manage the library. This is a public library. It's for everyone. [If] they don't like the programs or materials, don't attend, don't check out the material!"

Associated Press: "Young Climate Activists Take Montana To Court For Its Role in Global Warming":

The plaintiffs and their attorneys were cheered by supporters as they arrived outside the courthouse on Monday. Inside, Seeley’s small courtroom was packed with observers and members of the media. Environmentalists have called the bench trial a turning point because similar suits in nearly every state have already been dismissed. A favorable decision could add to a handful of rulings globally that have declared governments have a duty to protect citizens from climate change.

Conservative efforts to do the same? Not so heroic.

As conservatives target schools, LGBTQ+ kids and students of color feel less safe https://t.co/KIfxzlsZNk

— 9NEWS Denver (@9NEWS) June 7, 2023

The post The Media Demonized Parents' Rights. Now They've Found a Group They Like. appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

But the explosive news could fizzle in the hands of the mainstream press. The media have consistently given Hunter Biden a pass and painted the president's troubled son in the most flattering light. Why stop now?

THEN: The media broke out the kid gloves when Hunter Biden was discharged from the Navy for using cocaine in 2014 and when he started dating his brother's widow in 2017.

In 2019, the media ran interference on allegations involving Hunter and Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, suggesting there couldn't be anything untoward involving the Bidens and a company that paid Hunter over a million dollars per year to sit on its board.

Trump's lawyer Pam Bondi played a clip of Joe Biden recounting how he had pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin.

Bondi claimed that Shokin had been, in late 2015 and early 2016, "investigating Burisma."

Four facts Bondi omitted: https://t.co/wtTczCWOLq

— CNN (@CNN) January 28, 2020

• NBC News, "There's no evidence for Trump's Biden-Ukraine accusations. What really happened?"

Biden's response to Trump's Ukraine conspiracy theory

"Trump's doing this because he knows I'll beat him like a drum and he's using the abuse of power and every element of the presidency to try to do something to smear me," Biden said this weekend, telling reporters that Trump had abused his power and "violated the Constitution."

Biden also said he's "never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings."

Still, in a July profile in The New Yorker, Hunter Biden recalled a brief conversation with his father about his work in Ukraine: "As Hunter recalled, his father discussed Burisma with him just once: "Dad said, 'I hope you know what you are doing,' and I said, 'I do.'"

• New York Times, "How Joe Biden Talks About a Touchy Subject: His Son":

At issue is an unsubstantiated theory pushed by Mr. Trump that Mr. Biden took action in Ukraine as vice president in order to help his son, who at the time held a lucrative position as a board member of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company.

The press worked overtime—and in conjunction with the Biden campaign—to dismiss evidence of illegal and unseemly activity found on Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop.

Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say https://t.co/zRdHxTxVsl

— Jen Psaki (@jrpsaki) October 20, 2020

Why haven't you seen any stories from NPR about the NY Post's Hunter Biden story? Read more in this week's newsletter https://t.co/CJesPgmGvo pic.twitter.com/jAi7PnpbZf

— NPR Public Editor (@NPRpubliceditor) October 22, 2020

• USA Today, "A tabloid got a trove of data on Hunter Biden from Rudy Giuliani. Now, the FBI is probing a possible disinformation campaign":

When the New York Post published the alleged contents of a computer hard drive purporting to document the Ukrainian and Chinese business activities of Hunter Biden, the newspaper cast the information as a "smoking gun."

Enter the FBI.

Less than three weeks before one of the most contentious presidential campaigns in history, federal authorities are investigating whether the material supplied to the Post by Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, is part of a smoke bomb of disinformation pushed by Russia.

Since Joe Biden was elected, the media have repeatedly tamped down negative news tied to Hunter Biden, focusing instead on things like his memoir.

• MSNBC, "James Comer's rare skill: He can connect Hunter Biden to anything":

In other words, the ongoing presidential controversy, as far as Comer is concerned, might secretly be connected to the Democrat's son.

This is a weird theory, to be sure, but it's also quite predictable. I'm reminded of a column from The Washington Post's Dana Milbank, published last spring, examining Comer's signature preoccupation.

"So, to recap," Milbank explained, pointing to the GOP congressman's rhetoric, "Hunter Biden controls cobalt in Congo, fentanyl in Mexico, coronavirus in Wuhan, and war in Ukraine. It is just a matter of time until Republicans find a Hunter Biden angle in Jeffrey Epstein's demise and UFOs off the coast of California. 'Where's Hunter?' went the popular refrain at Trump rallies. Now we know. In the Republican imagination, Hunter is everywhere."

• New York Times, "White House Sets Ethics Plan for Sales of Hunter Biden's Art":

The White House has helped develop a system for Hunter Biden to sell pieces of his art without him, or anyone in the administration, knowing who bought them, the latest effort to respond to criticism over how President Biden's son makes his money. …

Mr. Biden has repeatedly defended his son’s work.

Hunter Biden has described painting as a form of therapy after a history of addiction to drugs and alcohol.

• NBC News, "Hunter Biden lawyer shoots down records request from House Republicans":

Hunter Biden's legal counsel on Thursday rejected a request from House Republicans for records and information related to his business dealings.

In a letter to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., the lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said the committee "lacks a legitimate legislative purpose and oversight basis for requesting such records from Mr. Biden, who is a private citizen." Lowell said they would not comply with the Republicans' request but offered to meet with committee members "to see whether Mr. Biden has information that may inform some legitimate legislative purpose." …

In addition to Burisma, Republicans have also zeroed in on Hunter Biden's business dealings in China. During his father's vice presidency, Hunter Biden was involved with an investment firm that sought to raise money in China. In 2019, Trump urged China to investigate the Bidens and falsely accused Hunter of using a 2013 trip he took with his father to China for financial gain.

NOW: In recent days, the press has framed Hunter's legal troubles as a cross between a nothingburger and youthful mischief from the president's 53-year-old son.

Hunter Biden reaches agreement to resolve criminal charges, but investigations into relatives of presidents are nothing new. https://t.co/Xc80LxZnQO

— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) June 21, 2023

• Associated Press, "Booze, drugs, a pet snake, and foreign dealings: Families can cause headaches for a White House":

Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden whose plea deal on federal tax and gun charges was made public Tuesday, is by no means the first presidential relative whose personal troubles have brought unwelcome headlines and headaches for a White House. …

Sometimes the behavior is pure mischief, such as little Quentin Roosevelt (son of Teddy) running his toy wagon through a painting of a first lady. Or Alice Roosevelt, Quentin's sister, who swore, showed up at parties with her pet snake, and was so determined to smoke at the White House that she once called a news conference on its roof and lit a cigarette there.

• Politico on Friday offered readers tips on how to dismiss allegations against Hunter Biden:

— If you happen to be talking to a Hunter hater, tell them not to get their hopes up simply because prosecutors said that "[t]he investigation is ongoing." This could mean many different things (including that the government is still looking at other possible defendants), but by all outward appearances, the Justice Department’s investigation into Hunter’s conduct is over.

— Despite the lack of evidence that the Justice Department missed serious criminal conduct, Republicans will likely continue their meandering inquiry into Hunter’s business dealings.

And since the latest news broke, the press has been primarily focused on denials from the Bidens and Attorney General Merrick Garland.

A White House spokesperson says the White House had no role in decision-making regarding Hunter Biden's federal tax investigation and, separately, that President Biden has no ties to his son's business operations. https://t.co/g1WGs6TXbd

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 23, 2023

Attorney General Garland disputes allegations raised by IRS agents of potential wrongdoing and political influence in the Hunter Biden case. https://t.co/GjPQraAsOh

— ABC News (@ABC) June 23, 2023

FLASHBACK: The response is a far cry from the way the media treated unconfirmed allegations against a different president in recent memory.

Robert Mueller has evidence that Michael Cohen traveled to Prague in 2016, confirming a part of the Steele Dossier, according to one report. https://t.co/LqgPst2DBI

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) April 13, 2018

What if Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987? @JonathanChait reports. https://t.co/IQknIwGoV3

— New York Magazine (@NYMag) July 9, 2018

I used to think there wasn't a pee tape. Now I'm a Peeliever. Here's what changed my mind. https://t.co/OVaHyAlFoS pic.twitter.com/0fhdOqAHG6

— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) April 15, 2018

The post The Media Have Always Carried Water for Hunter Biden. Don't Expect It to Stop Now. appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

This remarkable sentence, uttered by a panicked press aide after his boss, the seven-fingered Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mont.), relieved himself in an organic pea field during an interview with Washington Post journalist Ben Terris, hardly stands out among the array of mind-boggling details recounted in Terris's new book, The Big Break: The Gamblers, Party Animals, and True Believers Trying to Win in Washington While America Loses Its Mind.

Tester's rogue member is merely an aside in this collection of profiles highlighting the unelected power players who survived, thrived, and failed in national politics since Donald Trump annihilated the status quo, violating precious "norms" left and right. Washington may have "felt different" during the Trump presidency, Terris writes, but The Swamp proved as resilient as ever. Rather than being drained as promised, it simply "filled up with new creatures." And, boy, are they something to behold. The Big Break is not for the faint of heart or stomach.

The book opens in December 2021. Leah Hunt-Hendrix, the 38-year-old granddaughter of billionaire oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, is throwing a holiday party at her $2.2 million Victorian mansion in a trendy Washington neighborhood. Her beloved Maltipoo, named after Malcolm X, roams the living room floor scrounging for crumbs. Ryan Grim, editor of The Intercept, is wearing a Harriet Tubman T-shirt and chatting with the half-brother of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The host is trying to gin up support for Mandela Barnes, the left-wing Wisconsin Senate candidate she met at a pool party in Miami around the same time he accused the her grandfather's industry of "destroying the world." He was "riding in one of those inflatable unicorns."

This is normal.

Before moving to D.C., Hunt-Hendrix summered in the West Bank while getting her Ph.D. in religion, ethics, and politics at Princeton under Cornell West. Now she's a professional progressive activist and fundraiser who primarily backs candidates who pledge to abolish the fossil fuel industry. She worries that people are only interested in her because of her family's money, which they obviously are. She's considering adopting a child or writing a memoir about her love life. "I'm pretty anti-elite," the oil heiress tells Terris while sipping a matcha latte.

Hunt-Hendrix is actually one of the more sympathetic characters in the book. That's a low bar, especially when the competition is Sean McElwee, the Democratic messaging guru who cofounded the polling firm and advocacy group Data for Progress. (George Soros is a major donor.) He tells Terris he was "not particularly emotional" about breaking up with his girlfriend of seven years and vows to "have a hot boy summer" with fellow data nerd David Shor. The same girlfriend recalls that while lying in bed with McElwee several weeks into their relationship, he forced her to listen to the eulogy Ted Kennedy gave at his brother Robert Kennedy's funeral in 1968.

Journalists and other liberals hate McElwee now that he's been exposed for gambling on elections—in some cases betting against the Democratic candidates he was also advising—and "consulting" for the brother of crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried. But Terris, who followed McElwee from the height of his power all the way through the "I can't comment on advice of counsel" phase of his downfall, notes that McElwee "could get away with this kind of stuff because Democrats in Washington believed that he was a force for good." That included many "bigwig journalists" with whom he chatted regularly on a group Slack channel, and who would thoughtfully decline to quote him in stories when he said something "offensive."

McElwee is hardly the first obnoxious character given a pass by Democrats and media elites for being a political ally. In fact, the pollster's demise had less to do with the obnoxious behavior than it did with the fact that his midterm polling was so inaccurate. The liberal ruling class has been willing to overlook far worse from people they consider allies—fraudsters such as Bankman-Fried and Carlos Watson, or criminal monsters such as Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein. Yet the Trump era was supposed to have proved that conservatives were uniquely predisposed to excuse bad behavior.

The Republican-aligned characters aren't especially sympathetic either. Those profiled in the book each embody a certain archetype of a creature struggling to navigate The Swamp since 2016: Matt Schlapp, the lobbyist and CPAC chairman (and broccoliniphobe) who went all in on Trump after the Access Hollywood tape and never looked back, even (or especially) after he was accused of having "pummeled" the "junk" of a Herschel Walker campaign staffer. Ian Walters, the CPAC communications director who fell out with Schlapp and the Republican Party over their embrace of Trump and obsession with "fighting." (Not to mention the fact that Schlapp once mused of Walter's recently deceased adopted father: "Wherever [he] is, he's got access to really know what the real vote counts were, what really happened [in the 2020 election].")

Robert Stryk is by far the most colorful. A high school expellee, college dropout, and failed mayoral candidate, Stryk almost accidentally stumbled into a lucrative career as a lobbyist connecting (mostly unsavory) foreign governments to the Trump administration. He "appreciated the chance to be taken seriously" in Washington, but by the end of the book, Stryk has accused the author of being a child predator and lamented the Biden administration's refusal to grant him permission to lobby for Russian ally Belarus after the war in Ukraine broke out. A hero he is not, but that doesn't mean one can't take some pleasure in the angst people like him caused ruling-class liberals who couldn't stand the fact that such an uncredentialed individual could succeed in The Swamp without their permission.

To his credit, Terris is eminently fair to all his subjects, even if they don't necessarily deserve it. That's a good thing. He refrains from the sort of editorializing some liberal media types insist is necessary when writing about conservatives in particular—so-called enemies of democracy. His own paper—the one that prevents democracy from dying in darkness—published a review of The Big Break that argues the book "suffers to an extent" from the author's "larger commendable commitment to showing and not telling" and trusting readers to draw their own conclusions. (Imagine that!) Liberal outlets criticized Terris in 2015 because his profile of Benny Johnson, the ex-BuzzFeed blogger accused of plagiarism, wasn't overtly mean enough.

Most Americans have no idea how politics works in Washington beyond a vague sense that everything is terrible and corrupt. Good for them. Many would be horrified to learn just how petty and dumb things are in The Swamp. That's why anyone eager to learn anything about the federal government would be better off watching Veep than The West Wing, which no doubt inspired scores of Millennial liberals to go into politics and try to "change the world." Presumably, most of them are lobbyists by now. If books are more your style, and you would like a taste of how "normal" Washington really works these days, The Big Break is a good place to start.

The Big Break: The Gamblers, Party Animals, and True Believers Trying to Win in Washington While America Loses Its Mind
by Ben Terris
Twelve, 352 pp., $30

The post Swamp Freaks: Bizarre Adventures in a Grifter's Paradise appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.