LifeZette ingraham 2

this is LI 2

congrats tag 1219 ingrm (she hannity and tucker are triumvirate that holds trump base together)

see bak

bad trinity: LI hannity and tuckerhold base together, wall ~ impeachment (base poll # do not change, start contrast to all other groups)

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her basic schtick is grievance, inversion of true victims (white xian)

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women for thomas --> IWF (funded by old white MEN]

...The IWF’s Elizabeth Larson, in the organization’s Women’s Quarterly magazine, called sexual harassment an issue drummed up by “a growing number of women, many spurred on by Anita Hill’s example … [who] find it more profitable to litigate than to work.” After the 1994 passage of the Violence Against Women Act—spearheaded by then-Sen. Joe Biden in what was widely seen as atonement for his mishandling of the Thomas hearings—the IWF argued that the legislation should be repealed or receive zero funding; IWF spokeswoman (and ’90s right-wing It Girl) Laura Ingraham referred to VAWA as feminist “pork” with a “tear-jerker” title.The group also took on affirmative action, headlining a Women’s Quarterly article on the topic “That’s No White Male, That’s My Husband”—a phrase that revealed a lot about IWF constituents’ racial identities and loyalties. (“You can’t have white guys saying you don’t need affirmative action,” Ledeen told the Washington Post when asked why the anti-feminist IWF had organized as women in the first place.)....

https://www.mediamatters.org/laura-ingraham/here-are-52-examples-laura-ingrahams-racism

News’ Laura Ingraham has drawn widespread rebuke following a racist anti-immigrant rant on the August 8 edition of her Fox show. During her far-from-subtle diatribe, Ingraham bemoaned “massive demographic changes, … changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don't like,” and complained, “In some parts of the country, it does seem like the America that we know and love doesn't exist anymore.” Later in the program, she questioned whether “Black-on-Black” crime is a larger issue for the Black community than the racism that infects the criminal justice system. Her comments are a nearly perfect parallel of the rhetoric used by white supremacists and were embraced and commended by former KKK leader David Duke. Outside of white supremacist circles, however, politicians, activist groups, and other media figures widely condemned the rant.

[david duke praise retweet]

Following the criticism, Ingraham defended her comments, arguing that the goal of her monologue was “to point out that the rule of law, meaning secure borders, is something that used to bind our country together.” Ingraham’s deflection, however, is disingenuous and undermined by her history of racist commentary and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Her Fox News show, The Ingraham Angle, is less than a year old, but Ingraham has already turned it into a racist, extremist cesspool.

It isn’t difficult to find examples of Ingraham’s boundless hostility toward immigrants and her obvious apathy towards non-white communities. Here are just a few highlights from over the years (seriously, there are many more):

Ingraham has spent years demonizing and mocking immigrants.

On The Ingraham Angle, she dismissed asylum claims from Hondurans fleeing violence because, according to her, “it’s not our problem.”
She claimed that children torn from their parents as a result of the Trump administration policies and who were not yet reunited with their families were being protected by the administration because, “due to domestic or drug abuse, many of these parents are now deemed unfit to care for their children or dangerous for their children.” [many more]

2019

https://www.mediamatters.org/laura-ingraham/hate-lies-and-misinformation-laura-ingraham

ingraham has a long history of spreading hate speech, from her prime-time Fox News show, former radio show, and, now, new podcast. Ingraham has made scores of racist and anti-immigrant statements, including echoing white supremacists. On numerous occasions, she has propagated the popular white nationalist “replacement theory,” wherein non-white citizens “replace” white citizens. More recently, Ingraham came under fire for defending white nationalist Paul Nehlen. In the past, advertisers have fled from her show after Ingraham mocked a Parkland school shooting survivor and when she attacked the concept of diversity, saying, “Massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don't like.” Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

Racism, race-baiting, and other race-based statements

Ingraham called Planned Parenthood “butchers” responsible for what her guest termed a “Black holocaust”

LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): We are calling you on the hypocrisy of saying “Black Lives Matter,” when many in your leadership do not believe that, because they countenance what Planned Parenthood has done, in selling this lie of abortion to the African American community. Selling this, as some type of solution, when it's ended up slaughtering African Americans who could be leading great lives today.

So, when people say “Black Lives Matter” -- you bet, you bet they matter. So, why allow these -- these butchers into your communities? Why let them do this to you? Of course, why -- white people -- why, any of these people? Big money. It's about big money in politics, and their PACs, their political action groups, all -- they rake in money.

RAYMOND ARROYO (AUTHOR) A lot of Black pastors will tell you they are incensed by this. There is an awakening in the Black community, particularly in the Black churches in the inner city, and they are outraged that other leaders in the past have not only been embraced by Planned Parenthood, but embraced them back, and actually supported their work in the community.

And now they realize what -- what many of these Black pastors have told me, is a Black holocaust. They see this as a Black holocaust in their community, a Black genocide. [4/4/19]

Ingraham claimed former Rep. Stacey Abrams (D-GA) called out racism against her because of her “entitlement mentality”

LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): Stacey Abrams was on Morning Joe, and she's claiming now that people dismiss her for one reason.

…

It's not about the issues, it's about “Look at me, this is me, my truth” -- it's that same thing with “my truth.” It's a -- well, a kind of -- it's a -- you know, it's an attempt at coming across as confident, but underneath that is an insecurity, in my view.

…

That's entitlement. That's an entitlement mentality.

…

“I'm a -- I'm a Black woman with a sturdy build” -- I literally don't think anyone I know even cares about that, at all. [4/4/19]

Ingraham told Democrats to concentrate on white voters

LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): Wages for most Americans are going up now, not because of government mandates, but because of Trump's policies. What are they? Lower taxes, less regulation, pressure on China trade cheating, and a tighter labor market for all working people. So, the Democrats' answer is higher taxes, more regulations, more low-wage laborers flooding into America.

That's exactly the opposite of what most working-class voters want. Oh, oh, for those liberals who put all their hopes in being saved by changing demography, well, here's a news flash: This is the percentage of white non-college graduate voters in a handful of key states.

In Iowa, they make up 62% of the population. In Michigan, 54% of the population, Ohio, 55%, Pennsylvania, 51%, and Wisconsin, 58%.

Trump does really well with that group, obviously.

...

Today's radicalized Democrat Party has moved further away from the voters they need to win in 2020. They still have no clue. It's unbelievable, really -- how to speak to the working-class white voters, let alone how to get their votes. They look down their elitist noses at all working people of all backgrounds. And their values? Come on. [4/8/19]

Ingraham asked if the cast ofHamilton is guilty of cultural appropriation for playing white people

LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): Is that not that culturally appropriating the other race? Like if it’s, if it’s just about cultural appropriation, does it only go one way? That's interesting. I didn't think about that Hamiltonthing until just now. I love Hamilton. See, I think it's fine, I think it's all cool. [2/7/19]

Ingraham: “Because you're a minority, you get special standards, special treatment”

LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): This is what was referenced as minority privilege last week by yours truly. What do I mean by that? That because you're a minority, you get special standards, special treatment in the eyes of some. And it's not fair to other people. [1/23/19]

Ingraham said America is plagued by “white-aphobia”

LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): Well, back to the collectivism mindset. But she forgot Christophobia and I guess white-aphobia -- we're running out of phobias and isms here, Dr. Steele. I'll let you take a swing at that one. So you can't talk about identity politics -- another way for them to shut conservatives up.

SHELBY STEELE (AUTHOR): They're on the defensive because identity politics are inherently racist. They divide us up by color, by ethnicity, by gender and so we're automatically set at odds. I mean, identity politics is every bit as divisive as segregation was, as racism of old was. [2/28/19]

Ingraham mocked and imitated Rep. Ilhan Omar's (D-MN) accent, claiming she “doesn't sound like Minnesota” ...[many more]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/heres-the-real-reason-bill-barr-has-re-emerged-to-give-us-a-double-dose-of-crazy/

no lnx

Here’s the real reason Bill Barr has re-emerged to give us a double dose of crazy

Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon April 10, 2020

New White House chief of staff Mark Meadows announced this week that onetime Trump campaign spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany will become the White House press secretary. The campaign is looking for a replacement and it seems that Attorney General William Barr may be auditioning for the role. Judging from his two-night interview with Laura Ingraham, he is as enthusiastic about the boss as one of the famed Mar-a-Lago Trumpettes.

We hadn’t heard much from Barr since he was scathingly chastised by a federal judge last month for his “lack of candor” in public descriptions of the Mueller report, saying that Barr had “distorted the findings” of the April 2019 report in his notorious press conference and a letter to lawmakers. The judge demanded a full copy of the Mueller report to review in order to decide whether to reveal the entire document, without redactions.

It’s not every day that the attorney general of the United States is personally castigated by a federal judge. But it was obviously too much to hope that Barr had taken his criticism to heart and had decided to play it straight. His return to the spotlight this week showed that while he may not have contracted the coronavirus, his Fox News brain rot is still raging out of control.

Ingraham has two main hobbyhorses at the moment. She believes that the response to the virus is an attack on civil liberties and that the quick cure for the disease is Dr. Trump’s magic elixir, hydroxychloroquine. She also believes that anyone who disagrees with this is part of a plot to take down her beloved president. So it was within that framework that Barr gave his interview, and he did not disappoint.

Under intense questioning about whether freedom of religion was being infringed by the shutdown, he managed to say that public health measures are acceptable for a short period and then went on to parrot Trump’s maxim that “the cure can’t be worse than the disease,” and even suggesting that more people will die of cancer because researchers are unable to continue their work during the shutdown. He made it clear that he thinks the government should be opened sooner rather than later:

I think we have to be very careful to make sure this is — you know, that the draconian measures that are being adopted are fully justified, and there are not alternative ways of protecting people. And I think, you know, when this — when this period of time is — at the end of April expires, I think we have to allow people to adapt more than we have and not just tell people to go home and hide under the bed,

The “adaptations” he had in mind were unclear, recommending vague “protocols” for restaurants and throwing around terms like “PPE” as if he were the head epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health.For all his alleged concern with civil liberties he seemed to indicate that he thinks restrictions on travel would be a positive consequence of this crisis. At least that’s what it sounded like, since he talked about stricter border laws being a good way to prevent pandemics. After all, viruses don’t recognize citizenship or nationality. If you can’t let people come in, in an attempt to protect yourself from infection, you can’t let people out either. Otherwise, they might bring it back.

It was obvious that Barr has been spending a lot of time watching Fox News. Unprompted, he let loose with a hydroxychloroquine rant worthy of Sean Hannity himself:

Acyn Torabi

@Acyn

Barr says he’s disappointed about partisanship during the pandemic because the President has acted statesmanlike and worked with all the governors while dealing with gotcha questions from the media.He goes on to accuse the media of leading a jihad against Hydroxychloroquine

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Barr apparently missed this exchange on his favorite channel the other day in which Dr. William Haseltine, a renowned biologist and retired Harvard professor, took Fox News host Dana Perino to task for pushing this drug with little evidence to back it up.

Lis Power

@LisPower1

Fox anchor: Can you tell me your thoughts on the drug that is used normally to treat malaria.

Dr. Haseltine: It's sad to me that people are promoting that drug.

Anchor: But what about the anecdotal evidence?

Haseltine: That's complete and utter nonsense. Irresponsible.

Embedded video

The blowback over this alleged miracle cure being relentlessly touted by Trump and his friends at Fox News isn’t coming from the press or the Democrats. It’s coming from the medical community, which is appalled that the president of the United States would use his platform to push unproven drugs based on the recommendation of TV quacks and his own “feelings.”

I guess everyone’s an armchair epidemiologist these days, but the Fox News coronavirus coverage is actually dangerous. The fact that the president and the attorney general consider their blather as a basis for policymaking is kind of terrifying.

i do not get this ingraham? she as bad as any?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/matt-gaetz-get-brutally-taken-down-on-fox-news-for-minimizing-coronavirus-and-costing-lives/

no lnx vid

pix of LI laffing

Matt Gaetz get brutally taken down on Fox News for minimizing coronavirus — and costing lives

C-SPAN

Written by Matthew Chapman / Raw Story April 10, 2020

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) received a public rebuke on Fox News for his minimizing of the threat of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Gaetz infamously wore a gas mask to mock the disease.

Asha Rangappa

@AshaRangappa_

Just watched a Fox Clip with @RepMattGaetz where I was reminded of this photo, of him mocking people ringing the alarm bells about COVID. It was only about a month ago. It sounds like he wants people to forget it...so please do not retweet

View image on Twitter

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8:00 PM - Apr 9, 2020

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Gaetz was brutally taken to task on Laura Ingraham’s show by Democratic strategist Chris Hahn, a former advisor to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

Watch:

Acyn Torabi

@Acyn

Omg Matt Gaetz just got destroyed on Fox News

Embedded video

Acyn Torabi

@Acyn

Wow

Embedded video

fox

News’ Laura Ingraham tried to insult Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — but it completely backfired

Walter Einenkel / Daily KosApril 3, 2020

Early Friday morning, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted out a reminder that while viruses do not by nature care what race or class or position you hold in society, the pandemic adversely affects…

### Tactic 4: Attack science

The backbone of most climate disinformation is a feigned or real mistrust of science and scientific evidence. It is from this place that climate science, scientists, and the institution where they work are attacked by those whose narratives, worldviews, or values they inconvenience, including Fox News.

The spread of the coronavirus has put our experts in the scientific community in the national spotlight as we rightfully turn to them for information and sound recommendations. It has also triggered one of Fox News’ most oft-employed attacks on the scientific community: They are politicized and therefore compromised.

On the March 6 edition of *Lou Dobbs Tonight*, Fox’s Dr. Marc Siegel claims coronavirus concerns are being intentionally overblown to hurt Trump politically by dismissing the World Health Organization as “overly political” and “incompetent.”

On the :{March 4 edition of :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:***The Ingraham Angle***, host Laura Ingraham’s guest attempted to discredit the Center for Disease Control by calling it a “highly politicized organization.”

### Tactic 5: Legitimize and spread conspiracy theories

The most notorious climate change conspiracy theory -- originating from then-future President Trump -- is that it is a hoax “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” Another commonly cited conspiracy theory is that climate scientists distort findings or tamper with evidence for financial gain. This claim, which Fox has peddled, was the basis for the manufactured scandal “Climategate,” which Fox News seized on and ferociously promoted.

As the lethal outbreak of coronavirus spread around the world and the U.S. government warned that it would spread within the United States, Fox News was among the right-wing media outlets spreading conspiracy theories. That included one of the most prominent theories, which claims that coronavirus was manufactured and leaked by the Chinese government, and one of the most racist claims, that it was a result of people consuming animals alive.

On February 10, Fox News prime-time host Tucker Carlson speculated about the unsubstantiated bioweapon theory, asking his guest whether COVID-19 is “not a naturally occurring virus” or was “somehow created by the Chinese government.” His theory was debunked by his guest Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a medical director of a chain of urgent care clinics.

Even though this theory has been widely debunked (even on air during a Fox program), on February 25, Fox Business host Lou Dobbs claimed that “we don’t know yet whether or not this was an engineered virus” and said that there is “a research lab some 300 yards from the epicenter of this outbreak.”

Carlson, on his January 23 show, also blamed the emergence of the virus on Chinese culture, advancing the unproven theory that it was a result of people consuming animals “alive.”

While many of the tactics Fox News has used to misinform and mislead its views about the climate crisis and the coronavirus outbreak are the same, its goals are different. As applied to the climate crisis, Fox wields these tactics in an attempt to blunt aggressive climate action. As applied to the coronavirus, Fox has deployed them to shield Trump from political backlash. Either way, these tactics are shameful and dangerous -- and their impact is not easily corrected.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/fox-news-is-a-fascist-network-propping-up-an-incompetent-buffoon-of-a-leader-coronavirus-proved-it/

no lnx

Fox News is a fascist network propping up an incompetent buffoon of a leader. Coronavirus proved it

Written by Hunter / Daily Kos March 17, 2020

Only hours after Donald Trump on Friday gave a press conference begrudgingly admitting the scope of the COVID-19 pandemic he had been insisting was “under control” for nearly a month, Fox News’ most toxic hosts revised their own previously denial-heavy rhetoric to match. Once again, it demonstrates the status of the network as “state news” operation devoted near-exclusively to the needs of conservative propaganda.

If the line from Dear Leader is that alarm over the virus is a “hoax” intended to damage him, that is what Sean Hannity will also say—even knowing that his words will kill some of the network’s own viewers. If the line from Dear Leader is that alarm over the virus is now warranted, Sean Hannity is himself freed to declare that alarm is warranted. But this, too, will be used primarily as a launching point for further praise of the self-promoting, incompetent Dear Leader.

Here is Sean Hannity on Friday, the evening after Trump shifted tone from sneering at administration critics to declaring a national emergency, while still sneering at administration critics. “Tonight, we are witnessing what will be a massive paradigm shift in the future of disease control and prevention. A bold, new precedent is being set, the world will once again benefit greatly from America’s leadership. It will give us reason to be proud as a country. The federal government, state governments, private businesses, top hospitals all coming together, under the president’s leadership, to stem the tide of the coronavirus.”

Note the use of the word “bold,” one of the otherwise near-illiterate president’s favorite adjectives. It is Dear Leader’s “leadership” that has allowed the United States to finally do what it has done in every similar crisis; declaring a national emergency is now not a longstanding designation allowing our or any government to take specific, defined steps to combat a new threat but a “bold new precedent” from Dear Leader, for the “benefit” of the world.

SeanHannity spent weeks lying about the virus, downplaying its dangerousness and its spread. Now that the game is up and members of his audience will, with near-certainty, be dying in large part due to Dear Leader’s inaction and Sean Hannity’s teleprompter, Sean Hannity will now spend weeks praising Dear Leader’s “boldness” with a North Korean polish and a distinctly Fox News sneer. The Washington Post notes that Hannity was matched in this new revision of state propaganda by Laura Ingraham, among others. Go only so far as Dear Leader himself is willing to; follow Dear Leader as Dear Leader meanders his mental way through each new moment of revelation. No further.

Devil-among-us Jerry Falwell Jr., a frequent Fox guest, was on the network Friday morning telling the Fox & Friends couch that his Liberty University would not be shuttering during the crisis, displaying the trademark Fox sneer while downplaying virus scares as “hype,” and saying “maybe now this is their next attempt to get Trump.” After Trump’s Friday declaration, Falwell changed his own tune to acknowledge the severity of the crisis—sort of. In practice, he defended his original decision but said that the Virginia governor’s ban on gatherings of 100 or more people “left us no practical choice.”

This week, after a “somber” Trump once again bowed to realities his advisers had never before been able to drill into his skull, Fox News hosts matched his new rhetoric as well. Useful network idiot Jesse Watters changed his tune over the weekend. Not because of the presidential about-face, certainly not. It was “mom.”

“She is suspicious that I might have coronavirus. I wore the gloves all afternoon in the house. That’s what it is. I didn’t take the social distancing that seriously Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night, I went out to dinner here in the city. And I woke up this morning I realized that was not the right move.”

Do we really believe that Watters had not noticed that the world outside the Fox News studio was incongruent with the reports from inside until a morning revelation? Or was Monday morning the first moment in which it was safe to note it without penalty?

I am tired of this. I am very, very tired of the pretense that anything this scabby sore of a network does revolves around anything but propping up the most narrow and most radical of agendas; demonization of Dear Leader’s enemies and maudlin praise for Dear Leader’s boldness. It is a fascist network using the bog-standard rhetorical tools of fascism to prop up a fascist, incompetent buffoon of a leader. They will attack anyone on Dear Leader’s behalf. They will let their audience die—they will provide the crematory, if needed—if Dear Leader needs to just one more evening of adulation to get him through the next day without full-on emotional collapse.

Sean Hannity goads his viewers into support for ignoring even a pandemic until the moment it can no longer be ignored. He will goad his viewers again, this time into believing it was Dear Leader who limited the deaths to whatever horrific number they may rise to. Very, very rich men who want just a bit more money than they already have will watch him do it, and allow him to do it, and will pay him to do it.

They will, if anything, order that more flags be added to the network graphics.

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mma

:{fox’s Ingraham Angle labels Michael Bloomberg a “puppet master”:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

03/05/20 10:36 PM EST

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/furious-trump-fans-barrage-conservative-columnist-who-admitted-coronavirus-is-a-real-problem/

no lnx

Furious Trump fans barrage conservative columnist who admitted coronavirus is a real problem

Written by Brad Reed / Raw Story March 2, 2020

A conservative columnist who is generally a supporter of President Donald Trump recently found himself getting barraged by the president’s fans because he admitted coronavirus could be a real problem for the global economy.

As the New York Times reports, Republican Rob Maness recently wrote a column for the conservative LifeZette website that outlined potential negative economic impacts from coronavirus, including the disruption of supply chains.

“The most significant major concern in America is the impact on pharmaceutical supply,” Maness wrote in his column. “Large numbers of drugs used to treat serious medical conditions are manufactured or their key components are produced in China. Medicines such as antibiotics amoxicillin, doxycycline, penicillin and other’s availabilities will be impacted as China continues its lock-down of factory workers because 90% of their sourcing is in China.”

While this analysis was fairly straightforward in breaking down the economic risks of a viral pandemic, Maness tells the Times that many Trump supporters were furious with him for bringing up unwelcome facts.

“I got accused of being alarmist and trying to hurt the president,” he said. “I actually said the government’s doing a pretty good job.”

Trump spent the last few days attacking media coverage of the virus andaccused the Washington Post of being the “ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE” after it published a devastating report showing his administration was scrambling to respond to the outbreak.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-trump-feedback-loop-channeling-trumps-coronavirus-attacks-journalists-democrats

Public health officials are struggling to contain the novel coronavirus COVID-19, which has now spread to at least 47 countries. The Centers for Disease Control is warning that it expects to see an expanded outbreak in the United States and is planning for a worldwide pandemic. In addition to the substantial health risks posed by the disease, the interconnected nature of global supply chains means that the epidemic could spur an economic crisis. Careful leadership is needed from the president of the United States, who must manage a complex interagency and international process, mustering the nation’s resources and expertise to limit the damage.

But at this delicate moment, the feedback loop between Fox News and President Donald Trump is powering the president’s response. The network hosts who influence Trump the most are fixating his attention on Democrats and the media, who they claim are deliberately politicizing coronavirus in order to damage his reelection campaign. And Trump is apparently listening to them and is spouting the same talking points.

Trump is ignorant, incompetent, and generally uninterested in the aspects of his job that don’t involve promoting his narrow personal interests. His response to coronavirus has not diverged from this baseline. He spent the last few years systematically dismantling U.S. pandemic response capabilities, dissolving the National Security Council’s global health security unit and slashing funding to the CDC’s global health section. And since the coronavirus outbreak began, Trump has been largely detached from managing the government’s response.

Trump’s Fox propagandists spent the early weeks of the outbreak praising his purported success at “constraining” its spread. But after stocks fell dramatically on Monday and Tuesday amid fears of a global pandemic, they needed a new angle. And so Fox personalities began lashing out at journalists for their coverage of coronavirus and at Democrats for their criticism of the administration.

“Sadly, the left is already, yup, politicizing tragedy,” host and close Trump ally Sean Hannity said on Tuesday night, hammering Senate Democrats for saying that the administration had sought too little funding to deal with the mounting crisis.

“Watching the media coverage today, it seemed like some of the Trump haters were actually relishing in this moment,”Laura Ingraham said on her show the following hour. “A new avenue it was, coronavirus, that is a new pathway for hitting President Trump. How sick that these people seem almost happiest when Americans are hurting.”

“It is absolutely disgusting that Democrats are seeking to use this complex virus to score cheap political points,” she added.

Trump was apparently watching -- he tweeted a quote from a different segment of the same Ingraham broadcast -- and taking notes. On Wednesday morning, he went after the media and Democrats on Twitter.

Trump lavished praise on himself and his administration while attacking congressional Democratic leaders for criticizing the response during a press conference on the coronavirus outbreak that night.

Fox got the message. Its hosts and personalities targeted the media and Democrats for their treatment of coronavirus throughout Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

This is dangerous. The hours of Fox coverage Trump watches each day shape his worldview -- and direct his often inchoate rage. The potential global crisis on his doorstep does not appear to be slowing his consumption of propagandistic cable news content. As we’ve seen so many times before, he is getting distracted by his television, which is encouraging him to carry out his worst impulses.

The attacks on the press, long a staple of Trump and Fox, are particularly concerning now. The American public needs trustworthy information about the coronavirus outbreak in order to make good decisions about how to respond to it. And the president is telling people that they can’t trust news outlets that aren’t in the tank for his administration, warning that those journalists will deliberately overstate the danger in order to hurt his reelection chances. That’s a recipe for disaster.

And things can still get worse. Some pro-Trump commentators, including conservative radio hostRush Limbaugh, have argued that the top CDC official who warned that a larger U.S. outbreak was inevitable is a deep-state plant who is trying to take down Trump. Fox hosts have largely steered clear of those conspiracy theories thus far. But what happens if the situation worsens, and the Fox Cabinet starts telling the president that he needs to purge the public health bureaucracy of anti-Trump traitors?

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-nation/laura-ingraham-dismisses-climate-change-receding-glaciers-are-why-we-have-rocky

RAYMOND ARROYO: We almost did the story the other night, the Glacier National Park have signs up that says by 2020 these glaciers will have melted. They're still there. So now they're changing the signage because, apparently, the climate forecast were off. I'd say.

...

LAURA INGRAHAM: Let me say, north of Glacier in Jasper and the Canadian Rockies, I did walk on some of those glaciers and they are receding. But the glaciers in the Rocky Mountains receded which is why we have the Rocky Mountains. I mean the glaciers, when they recede, they leave pointed peaks.

ARROYO: It's called nature. It happens.

This is all an act’: Fox News host Laura Ingraham mocks Lisa Page for speaking out against Trump

Matthew Rozsa / Salon

:{Ingraham: “Attempted bribery isn't in the Constitution”:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

11/14/19 10:34 PM EST

Republicans began publicly questioning where Vindman’s loyalties lie.

"It seems very clear that he is incredibly concerned about Ukrainian defense,” former GOP congressman Sean Duffy said on CNN on Tuesday morning. “I don't know that he's concerned about American policy.” Fox News host Laura Ingrahamposited that Vindman was “advising Ukraine while working inside the White House apparently against the president’s interest,” leading former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo to respond, “some people might call that espionage.”

Story Continued BelowThe talking point has been condemned by members of both parties as a smear of a decorated war hero. House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney of Wyoming called it “shameful” on Tuesday. Vindman’s wife called her later that day to express her appreciation, and Cheney again denounced the smear, according to two people with knowledge of the call.Despite the bipartisan outcry, the insinuation made its way to the deposition room. At one point, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) began asking questions implying that Vindman had been working both sides, expressing alarm that Vindman “gave the Ukrainians guidance” and asking how many times he spoke with Ukrainian officials, one of the people in the room at the time said.“That’s literally part of Vindman’s job as the NSC’s Ukraine director,” this person said. “Zeldin was pretty quickly rebuked over that line of questioning by the Democrats.”

A spokesperson for Zeldin’s office denied that he had implied Vindman had dual loyalties. "This is just another reason why these transcripts should be immediately released," the spokesperson said. "You’d see just how badly your sources are misleading you about what’s actually happening behind closed doors."

Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe also challenged Vindman— who wrote in his opening statement that he was concerned by Trump’s July 25 call because he “did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen” — to show the investigators where the word “demand” appeared in the call record.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/trumps-right-wing-defenders-earn-the-deplorable-label-with-their-vicious-attack-on-the-latest-impeachment-witness/

no lnx

Trump’s right-wing defenders earn the ‘deplorable’ label with their vicious attack on the latest impeachment witness

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly October 29, 2019

It was only a week ago that a chorus of people on both the left and right rose up to defend Tulsi Gabbard from Hillary Clinton’s statement that “she’s the favorite of the Russians” by pointing to Gabbard’s military service. The point was that someone who has served honorably should never have their loyalty to America questioned.

Trump’s enablers, however, are in a very difficult position right now. With every witness being deposed in the House impeachment inquiry, the picture of an American president pressuring a foreign government to smear his political opponents grows more clear. They are now the ones who are attacking the loyalty of someone who served honorably in the military.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, is set to become the first current White House staffer to testify. Danny Hakim reports on what he will say in his prepared opening statement.

He will be the first White House official to testify who listened in on the July 25 telephone call between Mr. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that is at the center of the impeachment inquiry, in which Mr. Trump asked Mr. Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

“I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine,” Colonel Vindman said in his statement. “I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained.”…

“This would all undermine U.S. national security,” Colonel Vindman added, referring to Mr. Trump’s comments in the call.

Vindman didn’t think what Trump did was “proper” because it wasn’t. For those of us who deal in facts, that is the bottom line. But if your task is to defend the president, no matter what he does, your job is a little more difficult. That is why congressional Republicans have relied almost exclusively on criticizing the process of the impeachment inquiry rather than the substance of the testimony being provided.

With Vindman’s testimony looming, Trump’s enablers have decided that their only defense is to attack the messenger. But how do you do that for someone with this resume?

Alexander S. Vindman and his twin brother, Yevgeny, were 3 years old when they fled Ukraine with their father and grandmother, Jewish refugees with only their suitcases and $750, hoping for a better life in the United States.

In the 40 years since, he has become a scholar, diplomat, decorated lieutenant colonel in the United States Army and Harvard-educated Ukraine expert on the White House National Security Council.

If you are Sean Duffy, CNN’s latest Trump-enabling commentator, you question his loyalty to the United States.

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

Sean Duffy on CNN on Army Lt. Col. Vindman: "It seems very clear that he is incredibly concerned about Ukrainian defense. I don't know that he's concerned about American policy ... we all have an affinity to our homeland where we came from ... he has an affinity for the Ukraine."

Embedded video

It seems very clear that [Vindman] is incredibly concerned about Ukrainian defense. I don’t know about his concern [for] American policy, but his main mission was to make sure the Ukraine got those weapons. I understand it: We all have an affinity to our homeland where we came from. Like me, I’m sure that Vindman has the same affinity…He’s entitled to his opinion, he has an affinity, I think, for the Ukraine, he speaks Ukrainian, he came from the country, and he wants to make sure they’re safe and free.

It was actually Laura Ingraham who first leveled this kind of attack on Vindman Monday night. She zeroed in on this part of the report from Danny Hakim.

While Colonel Vindman’s concerns were shared by a number of other officials, some of whom have already testified, he was in a unique position. Because he emigrated from Ukraine along with his family when he was a child and is fluent in Ukrainian and Russian, Ukrainian officials sought advice from him about how to deal with Mr. Giuliani, though they typically communicated in English.

Ingraham twisted that into an accusation that Vindman was working as a double agent, saying “Here we have a U.S. national-security official who is advising Ukraine, while working inside the White House, apparently against the president’s interest.” Her guest, John Yoo, responded by saying “You know, some people might call that espionage.” Note the rather Freudian slip from Ingraham in accusing Vindman of working against “the president’s interest.” Even she can’t suggest that what Giuliani was doing in Ukraine was in the country’s national interest.

So is this a case of “both sides do it,” with both Clinton and Trump enablers questioning the loyalty of people who have served in the military? Not even close.

First of all, Clinton never questioned Gabbard’s loyalty. She merely pointed to something that was already in the public record: “she’s the favorite of the Russians.” In other words, there is evidence to support Clinton’s claims.

On the other hand, Trump’s enablers have zero evidence when it comes to their attacks on Vindman. Coming to this country as a 3 year-old refugee is the quintessential American story. Duffy’s charge is reminiscent of that time when Trump questioned the impartiality of a federal judge because of his Mexican heritage. Using someone’s ethnicity or country of origin as a way to question their loyalty to this country is the definition of what we mean when we use the word “deplorable.”

At the time that Vindman was attempting to advise Ukrainians about the pressure they were getting from Giuliani, the official public position of the United States was to assist that country in their defense against Russian incursion. Giuliani has made it abundantly clear that his efforts were to assist his client, Donald Trump, not to promote our national interests. So you can understand why the Ukrainians were confused and went to a trusted source for guidance.

In the end, military service is no defense against charges of criminality or corruption. Anyone who doubts that should simply look at what transpired with Michael Flynn. Just as with any other American, it is the facts that matter. The smears against Lt. Col. Vindman aren’t deplorable because he served in the military. They deserve that characterization because they are devoid of evidence and are therefore nothing more than an attempt to attack the messenger.

mma

uS. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor was deposed this week in a closed-door hearing before three House committees. In testimony obtained by several media outlets, Taylor explained in detail how Trump worked to withhold aid from Ukraine in exchange for announced investigations into the Bidens. Following Taylor's detailed and credible testimony, Republicans and right-wing media worked tirelessly to discredit Taylor, a career civil servant.

Taylor's testimony on Tuesday contradicted the administration's insistence that Trump did not pressure the Ukrainian president, laying out explosive details of exactly how Trump urged President Zelensky to "go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of [Democratic presidential candidate Joe] Biden and 2016 election interference." This is an explicit quid pro quo arrangement.

While a large focus of right-wing media's spin has focused on disputing the meaning of a quid pro quo arrangement, conservative media has also spent ample time tearing down Taylor's testimony and credibility. Here are some examples of both.

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade said that "you have to suspend disbelief" to believe that Trump denied aid to Ukraine based on Taylor's testimony.
Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt said, "It sounds like Bill Taylor didn't like the Rudy Giuliani track. He was disappointed with the way the president was handling things and Rudy Giuliani was Rudy Giuliani was handling things. It doesn't mean that there was quid pro quo."
On The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham smeared Taylor as "a 'Never Trumper' himself" before implying that strong reactions to his testimony from members of Congress are all "spin."
Conservative commentator Bill Mitchell said on Twitter that Taylor "is clearly a#DeepState hack.His wild accusations against Trump were destroyed under Republican cross examination."

After right-wing media spent days attacking Taylor, the lawyer for U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland told the Wall Street Journal that Sondland told House investigators that Trump's actions amounted to a quid pro quo.

https://www.mediamatters.org/laura-ingraham/laura-ingraham-calls-impeachment-revenge-globalists

i:{ngraham: “Powerful globalists including a George Soros-affiliated group” are funding efforts to abolish the Electoral College:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

05/30/19 11:01 PM EDT
### Laura Ingraham blames “globalists” for the rise of nationalism

04/03/19 6:01 PM EDT

### Laura Ingraham Warns That The “Global Order Insists That America Stand Down” On The Second Amendment

https://www.mediamatters.org/laura-ingraham/laura-ingraham-calls-impeachment-revenge-globalists

October 22 edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle:

LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): I want to get back to what I stated in the -- in that mini Angle at the top. I really believe in reading this, Ambassador Taylor -- I don't know him. I mean, he's a career diplomat, he was with the Bush administration, but they despise his -- the president's style, his distrust for the global elite, and they are the global elite.

But isn't -- I mean, I hate to say it so, just, crassly, but it seems like it's the revenge of the globalists here. They -- they're so angry that he has been successful on so many levels, and his success reflects badly on them. I think it's actually a very prideful way of going about things.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/laura-ingrahams-own-brother-condemns-monstrous-fox-news-host-for-cruelly-mocking-teen-activists

Ingraham’s brother strongly condemned the Fox News broadcaster for cruelly mocking teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg.

The Fox News host compared the 16-year-old, who has Asperger syndrome, and other young climate activists to characters in Stephen King’s “Children of the Corn,” and Ingraham’s older brother — and outspoken critic — denounced her.

“Clearly my sister’s paycheck is more important than the world her three adopted kids will inherit,” the elder Ingraham tweeted. “I can no longer apologize for a sibling who I no longer recognize. I can and will continue to call out the monstrous behavior and the bully commentary born out of anger.”

...

819 3x mass shooter several ppl note that he and laura I (and trump?) hannity

soft peddle white nat'l

‘A new low’: Washington Post media critic blows up Tucker Carlson’s absurd lies about white nationalism

Alex Henderson August 7, 2019

On Saturday, August 3, El Paso became the scene of a terrorist attack that left 22 people dead — and the suspect, according to police, had written a manifesto indicating…

Trump 2020 reelection campaign sponsors Laura Ingraham’s podcast

Trump 2020 reelection campaign sponsors Laura Ingraham’s podcast Fox News

written by Alex Henderson May 29, 2019

Although some of the less overtly partisan figures at Fox News will occasionally criticize President Donald Trump when they believe it is warranted, Fox News’ opinion hosts remains an overtly…

Although some of the less overtly partisan figures at Fox News will occasionally criticize President Donald Trump when they believe it is warranted, Fox News’ opinion hosts remains an overtly pro-Trump. And one of Trump’s most vocal defenders at Fox has been Laura Ingraham — who is so pro-Trump that her May 28 podcast was sponsored in part by the president’s 2020 reelection campaign.

“The Laura Ingraham Podcast” is not part of Fox News but rather, is a side hustle for Ingraham — who was a far-right AM radio star long before Fox hired her. But like her cable show on Fox, the podcast underscores her overtly pro-Trump and anti-Democrat viewpoint. And one of the sponsors of her May 28 podcast was theTrump Make America Great Again Committee, a joint fundraising effort by Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee (RNC).

At the end of the May 28 episode, Ingraham said, “I want to thank all of our sponsors for supporting this show: Brush Hero, SeroVital and the Trump Make America Great Again Committee.”

In 2019, the 55-year-old Ingraham has transitioned from having a daily AM radio show to having a daily podcast. “The Laura Ingraham Podcast” is a show she does for PodcastOne, and a Fox News spokesperson stressed that Ingraham’s podcast is separate from her work for Fox — telling the Hollywood Reporter, “Laura Ingraham’s podcast is run independently of Fox News, and we have nothing to do with its sponsorships.”

It isn’t uncommon for prominent figures at Fox News to host audio programs on the side. Sean Hannity has a radio show, and Bill O’Reilly had a radio show while he was hosting “The O’Reilly Factor” (before Fox fired O’Reilly and canceled the program due to sexual harassment allegations that were frightening advertisers).

Ingraham previously worked for Fox News in 2008, hosting “Just In with Laura Ingraham” for only three weeks. But a much more lucrative deal with Fox came about when she was hired to host “The Ingraham Angle” in 2017.

Ingraham announces Trump's reelection campaign PAC is an official sponsor of her podcast

the May 28 edition of Podcast One’s *The Laura Ingraham Show Podcast*, Fox’s Laura Ingraham did a live read of an ad for President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again Committee, a joint fundraising committee for his 2020 reelection campaign.

[pix]

Ingraham’s ad read is just another example of the unethical conflicts of interest posed by the unofficial alliance between the Republican Party and right-wing media, especially Fox News. Media Mattersreporting has shown that multiple Fox hosts, including Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Pete Hegseth, and Jeanine Pirro have received over $500,000 combined in speaking fees from Republican groups during their time at the network. Members of Fox’s purported “news” division, including Shannon Bream and Neil Cavuto, have also headlined conservative events and appeared alongside Republican officials. In November 2018, Fox host Hannity even joined Trump onstage at a campaign rally, despite promising his audience that he would not appear. An advertising partnership between a prominent prime-time cable news personality and the incumbent president’s reelection campaign is a glaring conflict of interest.

Previously:

**Laura Ingraham: Tax cuts mean nothing if we "lose the country because of this huge demographic shift"**

**Laura Ingraham on undocumented immigrants: "This is an invasion of the country ... they want to tell you you can't say that anymore. They are invading the country"**

**Laura Ingraham: "The Democrats want to replace many of you" **

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/05/24/On-Fox-Laura-Ingraham-airs-a-deceptively-edited-clip-of-Rep-Ilhan-Omar-to-accuse-her-of-ha/223792

On the May 23 edition of her prime-time show, Fox News host Laura Ingraham aired a deceptively edited clip of a speech by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) to imply that she opposes people practicing their religious faith, despite the fact that Omar is a practicing Muslim.

On May 22, Omar gave a speech on the House floor about the wave of anti-abortion bills being pushed in states across the country and criticized the hypocrisy among the “religious right” on such policy decisions. Omar called out “religious fundamentalists” who she said are “trying to manipulate state laws in order to impose their beliefs on an entire society.” She mentioned a recently defeated Texas bill that would have opened the possibility of giving the death penalty to people who get an abortion, saying, “If that was being proposed by any other country, we would be calling it a dangerous violation of human rights. But because it’s happening here, with the support of the ultra-conservative religious right, we call it religious freedom.” Omar also listed Republicans whose personal actions contradicted policies that they fought to push on the American public, and said, “How could it be that an entire century has passed [since women got the right to vote] and we are still forced to fight for our rights as women, as human beings, and as Americans. This should outrage every single person. It certainly outrages me, and we can no longer stand for it."

[vid twit]

In her show, Ingraham aired the clip of Omar saying, “I am frustrated every single time I hear people speaking about their faith and pushing that onto other people.” Ingraham also played a clip from earlier in the speech in which Omar criticized “those that talk about their faith and want to push policies because of their faith” when they are “the ones that simply are caught with the hypocrisy of not living it out in their personal lives.” Ingraham mischaracterized her comments by saying, “I guess we are offending her by speaking about faith.” Ingraham also questioned Omar’s understanding of what it means to be American, saying, “This is a fundamental misunderstanding, purposeful or not, of what we are.” Her guest, Faith & Freedom Coalition Chairman Ralph Reed, agreed, adding, “There are few things, Laura, that are more distinctly and characteristically American than bringing your faith into the public square and using it to impact the culture for the common good.”

This isn’t the first time that Fox figures have questioned Omar’s understanding of American values: Hosts have repeatedly doubted Omar’s loyalty to America, going as far as calling her “anti-American” and suggesting that her hijab means that she’s against the constitution. It's also not the first time Fox has deceptively edited a video of a sitting member of Congress to misrepresent their words -- last year, Fox & Friendsaired a deceptively edited clip of Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) to claim she was “confused” about Trump’s family separation policy.

From the May 23 edition of Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle

[vid]

LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): Did you know that we were talking about faith and that -- just the fact that we were talking about faith upsets a certain congresswoman. Watch.

[BEGIN CLIP]

REP. ILHAN OMAR (D-MN): I am frustrated every single time I hear people speaking about their faith and pushing that onto other people. Those that talk about their faith and want to push policies because of their faith are the ones that simply are caught with the hypocrisy of not living it out in their personal lives.

[END CLIP]

INGRAHAM: So I guess we are offending her by speaking about faith.

RALPH REED (CHAIRMAN, FAITH & FREEDOM COALITION): Wow. Wow. So the people who poured out of African-American churches in the 50s and 60s and marched on Washington and sat at church counters because of their faith, because they believe that God's law and natural law required that they be treated the same as whites.

INGRAHAM: Well America wouldn't have been founded if we didn’t have people of faith who prayed for strength and resolve in every battle, at the end of every war, to bring the country together. I mean, this is -- but this is a fundamental misunderstanding, purposeful or not, of what we are and who we are as a people.

REED: Of American character. I mean, there are few things, Laura, that are more distinctly and characteristically American than bringing your faith into the public square and using it to impact the culture for the common good.

INGRAHAM: Yeah, and inform who we are. I mean, what’s supposed to inform who we are? You know, Hollywood? Ralph, great conversation, I’m sure it offended all the right people.

From Omar’s May 22 speech on the House floor:

[vid]

REP. ILHAN OMAR (D-MN): I rise today to defy the horrifying attacks happening against women’s reproductive rights all across this country. Religious fundamentalists are currently trying to manipulate state laws in order to impose their beliefs on an entire society, all with complete disregard for voices and the rights of American women. The recent efforts, like those in Alabama and Georgia, are only the latest in a long history of efforts to criminalize women for simply existing -- to punish us when we don’t conform to their attempts to control us. A new proposal in Texas would go as far as to threaten women who obtain an abortion with the capital punishment. If that were not being proposed by -- If that was being proposed by any other country, we would be calling it a dangerous violation of human rights. But because it’s happening here, with the support of the ultra-conservative religious right, we call it religious freedom. It’s simply unthinkable. But this anti-choice movement isn’t only unjust, it is dangerous because history has proven that when abortion is criminalized, the number of abortions do not simply go down. The number of deaths and injuries to women increase.

Let’s just be honest. For the religious right, this isn’t simply about their care of concern for life. If they cared about, or were concerned about, children, they would be concerned about the children that are being detained and those that are dying in camps across our borders. Or the children who are languishing in hunger and facing homelessness. This isn’t about religious morality or conviction, because we’ve seen time and time again those that talk about their faith and want to push policies because of their faith are the ones that simply are caught with the hypocrisy of not living it out in their personal lives. I just remember recently, not too long ago, a Republican congressman who had to retire -- Tim Murphy -- because he asked his mistress to abort their baby while pushing for a ban on abortion. Or I remember the anti-LGBT rights Republican Larry Craig who was found soliciting sex in a bathroom in Minneapolis airport.

I am frustrated every single time I hear people speaking about their faith and pushing that onto other people because we know those so-called religious politicians, when it comes to their life, their choices, they want to talk about freedom. But when it comes to other people’s lives and other people’s choices, they want to talk about religion. I feel that we must point out how ironic it is that women now are facing these challenges to their freedom in the week that we’re marking the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. How could it be that an entire century has passed and we are still forced to fight for our rights as women, as human beings, and as Americans. This should outrage every single person. It certainly outrages me, and we can no longer stand for it.

Laura Ingraham guest says transgender people want to create a “new species” that is “human and part machine.”

Transgender people have been baselessly accused of all sorts of horrific things by conservatives, from harming military readiness to giving sexual predators cover in bathrooms.

But Paul Nathanson, a right-wing gender relations professor, offered a bizarre new warning on Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s podcast on Wednesday: according to him, transgender people want to become cyborgs that will destroy gender.

“I think that the trans people have taken it one step further because by abandoning gender altogther, not simply re-writing it, they’re basically trying to use social engineering to create a new species,” said Nathanson. “Which is what, in fact, the transhumanists have been doing for the past half century. Using medical and other technologies to develop a new species. So the goal is really quite radical. We’re not talking about people who want to simply do a bit of reform here and there, add a new category. They want, they must, in fact, destroy whatever is in order to replace it with what they think should be. We’re talking about revolution, not reform.”

“And the new species will be looking like what?” said Ingraham. “Will be part human part animal?”

“I think human and part machine,” replied Nathanson.

It should go without saying that neither Nathanson nor Ingraham offered any evidence that this dystopian fantasy of transgender robots is actually in the works.

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/03/12/video-years-laura-ingraham-s-anti-immigrant-commentary/223057

In the fall of 2017, Fox News announced it was giving its prime-time 10 p.m. slot to longtime conservative commentator Laura Ingraham, who has a history of vile, racist, and anti-immigrant commentary. The choice has proven costly for Fox; Ingraham’s time slot was reportedly “down at least $16 million in ad revenue in 2018.”

Ingraham has spent years demonizing and mocking immigrants. In an August rant that directly echoed white supremacist talking points, Ingraham warned, “Massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don't like. From Virginia to California, we see stark examples of how radically, in some ways, the country has changed. Now, much of this is related to both illegal and, in some cases, legal immigration that, of course, progressives love.” She dismissed asylum claims from Hondurans fleeing violence because, according to her, “it’s not our problem.” She referred to detention centers for migrant children as “essentially summer camps.” She defended then-candidate Donald Trump’s claim that Mexico is sending rapists to the United States and argued that Mexicans “have come here to murder and rape our people.” She claimed that a lot of immigrants “have wreaked havoc upon communities.”

And there’s so much more.

Video]

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/fox-news-host-laura-ingrahams-guest-says-the-country-is-in-a-civil-war-and-people-should-buy-guns/

On a disturbing episode of Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s “The Laura Ingraham Show Podcast” Thursday, guest Joe diGenova echoed the calls of some of the darkest parts of the far-right movement in the United States.

“We are in a civil war in this country,” diGenova, as first pointed out by Media Matters for America. “There’s two standards of justice, one for Democrats one for Republicans. The press is all Democrat, all liberal, all progressive, all left — they hate Republicans, they hate Trump. So the suggestion that there’s ever going to be civil discourse in this country for the foreseeable future in this country is over. It’s not going to be. It’s going to be total war. And as I say to my friends, I do two things-- I vote and i buy guns [video]

One particularly odd fact about his claims is that they seemed to come out of nowhere. Ingraham had just ended a diatribe about how liberals supposedly shifted attention away from discussions about the imperiled Democratic leadership in Virginia government to allegations of a hate crime made by actor Jussie Smollett, who has since been arrested on charges of filing a false police report. It was a bizarre and twisted theory, completely out of line with reality. but it had nothing to do with a supposed “civil war.”

But for many on the fringes of the far right, casual talk about political divisions in the United States easily slips into discussions of open warfare and violence.

President Donald Trump, it should be noted, once announced that he was hiring diGenova for his legal team, but he never came on board.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes noted on Twitter that a man prosecutors say was a domestic terrorist, Chris Hasson, had, according to a court filing, googled “civil war if Trump impeached.”

“Where could he possibly get such an insane idea?” Hayes asked — and then he linked to diGenova’s comments. “Oh.”

Hasson was also found with an apparent “hit list” of Democratic politicians and media figures, according to prosecutors — a list that included Hayes.

===

google witch hunt

Among elected officials, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has taken up the right-wing cause of a war on “shadow-banning” and other supposed Silicon Valley suppression of right-wing content.

Speaking of Twitter last September onFox News Channel’s “Ingraham Angle,” McCarthy explained, “What happens onshadow-banning is you put something up; nobody sees it.”

In fact, back in August, McCarthy accused Twitter of shadow-banning a Laura Ingraham tweet because it showed up in his feed with its content obscured by text saying “This Tweet is not available because it includes potentially sensitive content.” This prompted a torrent of responses pointing out that McCarthy received that message in lieu of Ingraham’s tweet content because of McCarthy’s own personal settings on his Twitter account. Not that he’d let that keep him out of the shadow-banning wars.

Kevin McCarthy

@GOPLeader

https://www.alternet.org/heres-why-proud-boys-claim-self-defense-when-defending-ring-wing-violence-total-joke

amanda m

When far-right groups like the Proud Boys or Patriot Prayer get into street brawls, they have a go-to rationalization: It was self-defense. The argument is that fringe right-wingers are out there peacefully protesting or attending speeches, and that the violence that often seems to erupt afterward is merely a reaction to leftist provocation.

"Antifa terrorists attacked us, not the other way around," argues a typical post at the Proud Boys Facebook page, after members of the group were filmed beating up anti-fascist protesters after Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes gave a speech at New York's Metropolitan Republican Club.

Conservative media has picked up this talking point and has aggressively defended and promoted far-right groups — who have also gotten into street fights in Portland, Oregon, and Providence, Rhode Island, in the past month — painting them as victims who only engage in violence as a last resort to defend themselves.

On her Fox News show, Laura Ingraham interviewed Joey Gibson, the head of Patriot Prayer, who denied "any intention to get violent" and said the violence in Portland was purely self-defense.

Sean Hannity, on his own Fox News show, put the blame on for these outbreaks of violence on Democratic rhetoric he considers rude, even though none of the figures or incidents he mentioned were anywhere near these events. He explained what happened last week this way: "A bunch of anarchists go to the New York GOP club, Republican club, whatever it happens to be, and they’recommitting vandalism, anarchist signs that they’re putting up, etc., and then there’s a confrontation on the street there."

...

https://www.alternet.org/laura-ingrahams-demographic-changes-rant-not-matter-law-and-order-its-rallying-cry-trumps-base

digby

The big earthquake of the 2018 primary season so far has been the unseating of powerful Democratic House leader Joe Crowley by 28-year-old democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Ortez in New York. This isn't a common occurrence, needless to say, but it does happen from time to time, most recently four years ago when an obscure economics professor named David Brat unseated GOP House leader and "young gun" Eric Cantor in Virginia. At that time, much of the chattering class chalked the defeat up to "all politics is local," saying that Cantor had neglected his district. That analysis was wrong. Brat won because of one very hot issue that was boiling over in the right-wing media: immigration.

The right-wing star most responsible for pushing that issue into the GOP mainstream was talk radio host Laura Ingraham.

Before her promotion to Fox News primetime host, Ingraham used her talk radio show to stump for Brat and rail against Cantor. She even went to the district to campaign for Brat, solely on the basis of his hardcore stance against the unaccompanied minors from Central America who were in the news at the time gathering at the border seeking asylum. Ingraham was on a tear during that crisis, ranting daily about the ungrateful little wretches coming to our sacred borders asking for an undeserved handout. When she heard that some of these refugees weren't taking to the food in their detention centers she described them as spoiled whiners and mocked them by playing an old TV commercial with the slogan "yo qiero Taco Bell?". She made this declaration to the kids themselves:

Oh no you won't. This is our country... Our borders matter to us. Our way of life and our culture matter to us. Our jobs and our wages matter to us. No you won't.

During this period Donald Trump was seriously considering jumping into the presidential election and he had his friend Roger Stone's hired hand, Sam Nunberg, listen to thousands of hours of talk radio and report back to him about what they were talking about. He didn't have any strong feelings about immigration at the timebut when he got a strong response at the conservative CPAC gathering that year for saying “we either have borders or we don’t,” he was all in. He rode that anti-immigration wave all the way to the White House.

Meanwhile, the Republican establishment had been trying to tamp down this growing xenophobia because their 2012 presidential campaign "autopsy" made it very clear that the GOP was in grave danger of becoming an all-white party in a country that was becoming less and less white. The lesson that the activists like Ingraham took from that was to try to reverse the trend and rid the country of as many people of color as possible. And they were joined by a faction in the US Congress led by the man who would become one of Trump's earliest supporters, Senator Jeff Sessions.

In 2015, he and his aide, now Senior White House adviser, Stephen Miller, drafted a documentthat laid out a plan to end not only illegal immigration but put a stop to all legal immigration as well, arguing that the country could not "absorb" any more people from other cultures. It pointed to the 1924 Immigration Act, which curbed immigration of most non-whites, Catholics, Jews, Arabs, southern Italians for several decades, as its model. From the moment Sessions signed on with Trump (and subsequently submitted to Trump's ongoing ritual humiliation of him for recusing himself from the Russia investigation), it has been clear that he did so because he saw the best opportunity he's ever had to advance this nativist and racist agenda.

The Attorney General has no greater supporter in that effort than Laura Ingraham who caused some big ripples again this week with a xenophobic rant on her Fox News show in which she attacked both legal and illegal immigration as "The left's effort to remake America":

She went on to describe lurid details of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in much the same language President Trump commonly uses to paint them as deviant and subhuman. And then she asked the president to give an address to the nation from the Oval Office:

The president can be so persuasive, so give us the whole truth, Mr. President, the good, the bad, and yes, the uncomfortable. This is a national emergency and he must demand that Congress act now. There is something slipping away in this country and it's not about race or ethnicity. It's what was once a common understanding by both parties that American citizenship is a privilege, and one that at a minimum requires respect for the rule of law and loyalty to our constitution.

After another round of widespread backlash in reaction to her rant, Ingraham returned to Fox News on Thursday to insist that "despite what some may be contending – I made explicitly clear that my commentary had nothing to do with race or ethnicity, but rather a shared goal of keeping America safe, and her citizens safe and prosperous.”

First, it is not a national emergency. Border crossings are far below what they were a decade ago. And this president is the last person on earth to make a case for the rule of law and loyalty to the constitution since he demonstrates on a daily basis that he has no respect for the first or even a rudimentary understanding of the second.

Nonetheless, this policy is being implemented. The Muslim ban, ICE deportations and the horrifying separation of families at the border are just the beginning. NBC News reported this week that Trump's unctuous factotum Stephen Miller has written a proposal to "make it harder for legal immigrants to become citizens or get green cards if they have ever used a range of popular public welfare programs, including Obamacare." The purpose is to reduce the number of immigrants who obtain citizenship and, therefore, the right to vote. That's what's known as a "win-win" in the Trump administration.

Yesterday it was announced thatMelania Trump's parents got in just under the wire. Sponsored by their daughter and her husband under the much-maligned "family migration" system they became US citizens. It's unknown just what "merit" the president believes they have that qualifies them under his new proposals but one can't help but notice that they are Caucasian. So Laura Ingraham no doubt has little concern that they will be polluting our precious American culture like those little children at the border.

Fox News' Laura Ingraham on Tuesday doubled down on the widespread overreaction to a few mild protests of members of President Donald Trump's administration, this time drawing an absurd comparison to the "racist South."

"When you get crowds of people around an individual... if they feel another person is subhuman, I mean, we saw this in the racist South," she said. "People were considered subhuman, and they felt like they could do anything to black America."

She continued: "And now, you get the sense that we're in that really scary place now. That, to me, is terrifying."

It's not clear why Ingraham thinks protesters see Trump officials as "subhuman." In fact, holding someone responsible for the lies they tell and the cruel policies of their administration only makes sense if one sees that person as human.

Of course, the whole line of argument is self-refuting on its face. After a barely disruptive incident in which she was asked to leave a restaurant because her presence made the staff uncomfortable, press secretary Sarah Sanders will now reportedly be receiving Secret Service protection.

The people Ingraham is comparing to the slave and sharecroppers subject to a violent regime of white supremacy are actually a part of the ruling party in charge of running the most powerful government in the world.

In other words: they're not victims.

What's notable, of course, is who Ingraham and her ilk don't think are victims. She didn't seem to think that the immigrant children ripped away from their parents after only being accused of a misdemeanor were victims — instead, she said the detention centers in which they were imprisoned were "essentially summer camps."

===

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer kicked off a press briefing today by calling a reporter from Lifezette, the conservative outlet led by radio host Laura Ingraham.

As Media Matters pointed out, Lifezette only a few months ago posted a video starring Augusta Cassada, who now works at the Heritage Foundation, suggesting that Bill and Hillary Clinton murdered several people whom they feared would hinder their political ambitions.

It seems that the video, which was based on completely discredited claims, has been scrubbed from Lifezette’s website and Facebook page, but it can still be found online, with its ominous music and absurd just-asking-the-question conspiracy theorizing:

[vid]

A separate Lifezette article titled “10 People Under the Clinton Curse,” which claimed that it was “hard to deny that being close with the Clintons could kill you,” has also disappeared, although it is still available via Google cache.

Ingraham, coincidentally, has been angling for a White House position and may run for U.S. Senate in Virginia.

Tags: Laura Ingraham

Clinton Cash at Cannes

Exclusive LifeZette interview with author of explosive new documentary

by Ashley Pratte | Updated 16 May 2016 at 11:49 AM

Peter Schweizer, the author of The New York Times bestseller “Clinton Cash,” is set to debut an hour-long documentary based on his explosive book at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday. The film will hit the big screen in the United States on July 24, just days before the Democratic National Convention — inconvenient timing for Hillary Clinton.

“We’ve been told FBI agents investigating Hillary Clinton are required to read ‘Clinton Cash’ as a backgrounder.” — Peter Schweizer

What’s more, just before the “Clinton Cash” documentary hit the screens, more news broke of the Clinton Foundation’s shady dealings. The Clinton Global Initiative, an initiative of the Clinton Foundation, was found to have given $2 million to Energy Pioneer Solutions, a for-profit company headed up by friends and political allies of the Clintons. This transaction may have the Clintons in hot water with the feds, since tax-exempt charitable organizations aren’t supposed to act in private interest.

https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/laura-ingraham-lifezette/

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EXTRAORDINARY PHENOMENON of fake news spread by Facebook and other social media during the 2016 presidential election has been largely portrayed as a lucky break for Donald Trump.

By that reckoning, entrepreneurial Macedonian teenagers, opportunists in Tbilisi and California millennials have exploited social media algorithms in order to make money — only incidentally leading to the viral proliferation of mostly anti-Clinton and anti-Obama hoaxes and conspiracy theories that thrilled many Trump supporters. The Washington Post published a shoddy report on Thursday alleging that Russian state-sponsored propagandists were seeking to promote Trump through fabricated stories for their own reasons, independent of the candidate himself.

But a closer look reveals that some of the biggest fake news providers were run by experienced political operators well within the orbit of Donald Trump’s political advisers and consultants.

Laura Ingraham, a close Trump ally currently under consideration to be Trump’s White House press secretary, owns an online publisher called Ingraham Media Group that runs a number of sites, including LifeZette, a news site that frequently posts articles of dubious veracity. One video produced by LifeZette this summer, ominously titled “Clinton Body Count,” promoted a conspiracy theory that the Clinton family had some role in the plane crash death of John F. Kennedy, Jr., as well as the deaths of various friends and Democrats.

The video, published on Facebook from LifeZette’s verified news account, garnered over 400,000 shares and 14 million views.

Another LifeZette video, picking up false claims from other sites, claimed that voting machines “might be compromised” because a voting machine company called Smartmatic, allegedly providing voting machines “in sixteen states,” was purchased by the liberal billionaire George Soros. Soros never purchased the company, and Smartmatic did not provide voting machines used in the general election.

One LifeZette article misleadingly claimed that theUnited Nations backed a “secret” Obama administration takeover of local police departments. The article referenced Justice Department orders that a select few police departments address patterns of misconduct, a practice that, in reality, long predates the Obama presidency, is hardly secret, and had no relation to the United Nations.

Another LifeZette article, which went viral in the week prior to the election, falsely claimed that Wikileaks had revealed that a senior Hillary Clinton campaign official had engaged in occult rituals. Ingraham’s site regularly receives links from the Drudge Report and other powerful drivers of Internet traffic.

But LifeZette, for all its influence, pales in comparison to the sites run by Floyd Brown, a Republican consultant close to Trump’s inner circle of advisers. Brown gained notoriety nearly three decades ago for his role in helping to produce the “Willie Horton” campaign advertisement, a spot criticized for its use of racial messaging to derail Michael Dukakis’s presidential bid. Brown is also the political mentor of David Bossie, an operative who went to work for Trump’s presidential campaign this year after founding the Citizens United group. In an interview this year, Brown called Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway a .”

Brown now produces a flow of reliably pro-Trump Internet content through a company he co-owns with his family called Liftable Media Inc.,which operates a number of high-impact, tabloid-style news outlets that exploded in size over the course of the election. One of Brown’s sites, Western Journalism, is the 81st largest site in the U.S. with 13 million monthly unique monthly visitors, according to rankings maintained by the site Alexa. Another, called Conservative Tribune, is the 50th largest site with over 19 million monthly unique visitors. Liftable Media is run on a day to day basis by Brown’s son, Patrick, who is the president of Liftable Media.

Brown’s sites churn out bombastic headlines with little regard to the truth. One viral piece shared by Brown’s news outlets claimed that President Obama had redesigned the White House logo to change the American flag to a white flag, “a common symbol for surrender, which has many people wondering if Obama was trying to secretly signal to America’s enemies that he was surrendering.” The Facebook post touted the article with the line, “We all know Obama hates the United States, but what he just did to the White House logo is beyond the pale.”

As the fact-checking website Snopes was quick to note, it was no signal of surrender and the bleached white version of the White House logo, complete with a white flag, was not even an Obama creation. The white logo dates back to as early as 2003, under the Bush administration, which used it for official documents.

The Conservative Tribune and Western Journalism provide a steady stream of similarly deceptive, eye-catching headlines.

“BREAKING: Muslims Ordered to Vote Hillary,” is the headline for one election post that grossly mischaracterized a mundane article about a Pakistani American activist going to door to door to help Clinton’s campaign. “Obama Urges Illegal Immigrants to Vote Without Fear of Getting Caught,” blared Western Journalism, claiming that President Obama had suggested in an interview on issues facing Latino millennial voters that noncitizens could vote and “will never get caught if they do.” The article left out the part of the Obama interview in which he said noncitizens “can’t legally vote, but they’re counting on you to make sure that you have the courage to make your voice heard.”

The hits go on, with posts on a regular basis making claims ranging from the assertion that Clinton went on a “drug holiday” before the Las Vegas presidential debate to rumors that Obama’s birth certificate is under serious scrutiny.

Thanks to views sourced largely to referrals from Facebook, Brown’s websites now outrank web traffic going to news outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, CBS News, and NPR, according to data compiled by Alexa. Both Western Journalism and Conservative Tribune are certified by Facebook as bonafide news providers.

Trump’s relationship with one particularly influential online news site with a history of fabricated stories couldn’t be much closer. Steve Bannon,the chairman of Breitbart News, took a leave of absence from the organization to become the chief executive officer of Trump’s presidential campaign and has been tapped to serve as Trump’s chief strategist in the White House. Trump himself regularly promoted Breitbart stories, including a tweet used to justify his campaign to prove Obama was not born in the U.S.

Breitbart News blends commentary and journalism with inflammatory headlines, in many cases producing fake stories sourced from online hoaxes. The site once attempted to pass off a picture of people in Cleveland celebrating the Cavaliers as a massive Trump rally. The site furiously defended Trump’s false claim that “thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey were “cheering” the 9/11 attacks, a claim that multiple fact-checking organizations have thoroughly debunked.

Other conservative content farms, including WorldNetDaily, maintained ties to the Trump election effort. Campaign finance records show that Great America PAC, a Trump-backing Super PAC, paid WND, known as the largest purveyor of Obama birth certificate conspiracy theories, for “online voter contact.”

The surge of fake news has been much commented on in the mainstream media — and its effect on Trump’s election victory has been widely debated — with little mention of the purveyors close to the Trump campaign.

A Buzzfeed News article that came out shortly before the election famously traced more than 100 pro-Trump websites to young entrepreneurs in a single town in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, who discovered that the best way to generate clicks — at a fraction of a penny per click in ad revenue — is to get their politics stories to spread on Facebook. After the election, New Yorker editor David Remnick described President Obama as “talking obsessively” about that article, and quoted him bemoaning its significance. “[T]he capacity to disseminate misinformation, wild conspiracy theories, to paint the opposition in wildly negative light without any rebuttal, ” Obama said, “that has accelerated in ways that much more sharply polarize the electorate and make it very difficult to have a common conversation.”

The Washington Post interviewed Paul Horner, the “impresario of a Facebook fake-news empire,” who sounded somewhat aghast when he said, “I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything.”

Another Washington Post story described two Southern California slackers turning their website of made-up pro-Trump clickbait in a virtual goldmine. The New York Times profiled a fake news operation run by three brothers in Tbilisi, Georgia, who experimented with a variety of content, sometimes lifted from other sites, at other times made up from whole cloth, finding that pro-Trump material was the most popular, and therefore the most profitable.

Finally, a Washington Post story this week alleged a Russian government role in spreading fake news to help Trump. But its sources were not remotely credible. For instance, it cited a list that characterized as “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda” a number of well-established and well-respected websites including Truthdig, a site published by award-winning journalist and long-time Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer, Naked Capitalism, and Truth Out.

The growth of fake news isn’t confined to Trump or to conservative sites. A number of left-wing political sites have trafficked in demonstrably false stories, including deceptive pieces stoking fear about vaccines. Earlier this year, when critics called for Clinton to release the transcripts of her three paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, as well as to other interest groups, Daily News Bin, a new liberal website specializing in viral hits, published a piece titled, “Video surfaces of Hillary Clinton’s paid speech to Goldman Sachs, and it’s completely harmless.” The video embedded in the piece, however, was not one of Clinton’s paid speeches; it was a public event sponsored by Goldman Sachs. The article was shared over 120,000 times.

“We live in a time when people don’t care about facts,” said Judy Muller, professor of journalism at the University of Southern California.

During the last three months of the campaign, Buzzfeed News found that the top 20 best-performing hoax stories related to the election had more Facebook engagement than the 20 best-performing stories from major news outlets.

Facebook has responded to the recent outcry over fake news websites with promises to crack down on obvious phony sites. Many critics are still worried that Facebook is not doing enough to counter outright lies promoted by the platform; meanwhile, others are concerned that such efforts risk suppressing critical information.

Muller said that if Ingraham is nominated by Trump to be his spokesperson to the press, she will have to distance herself from her growing Facebook content empire.

But the demand for fake news is unlikely to subside.

A recent study by Stanford University researchers found that students have difficulty discerning between fake content, corporate sponsored advertorial content posing as journalism, and legitimate news.

“People only care about opinions that support their own biases,” said Muller. “So they’re not reading other people’s facts, they’re not checking the facts, and they don’t want to know — and that’s the scariest development to me.”

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To make Trump's point, the White House published the list of 78 terror attacks that occurred throughout the world beginning in September 2014 Monday evening.

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White House press secretary calls on pro-Trump fake news site Sean Spicer is legitimizing conspiracy-mongering sites by calling on them during press conferences.

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President Obama and President-Elect Donald Trump made a brief joint appearance at the WhiteHouse Thursday and pledged a smooth transition of power.

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White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer took the first question Tuesday from a reporter from LifeZette, a website founded by Trump supporter Laura Ingraham.

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White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer took the first question at his briefing Tuesday from a reporter who works for LifeZette, a website founded by Donald Trump ...

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But LifeZette, for all its ... executive officer of Trump's presidential campaign and has been tapped to serve as Trump's chief strategist in the White House ...

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