alyssa farah spox

along w cassidy H, called a ho by garett ziegler

AN 5 26

A CNN panel found itself in the uncommon position of ganging up on one of its own panelists after she defended the proposal of a slush fundentirely orchestrated by President Donald Trump’s handpicked board members.

“I mean, I would push back on that a little bit. What you call the slush fund I call the anti-weaponization fund,” right-wing podcaster Emily Austin. “I'm sure on both sides of the aisle, we all have friends whose lives have been absolutely ruined, whether they were innocent. And you said that this is going to people who assaulted police officers on January 6^th, ^But the truth is, we don't know where this money is going yet. … But I actually I view this as something very altruistic. Trump did not take the money and put it in his pocket like he could have.”

“Well, there lies the root of the problem,” said U.S. Democratic candidate Isaiah Martin. “You just said the very simple fact that we're not going to know exactly who gets this money. I know that there was this testimony inside of the United States Congress in which they said that there's really no rules behind what's going to happen. … You don't think that that's absurd, that the president of the United States can create a fund and divvy payments to people, and we don't know who the money goes to?”

Host Alyssa Farah Griffin asked Austin her opinion of Trump’s second proposal removing the IRS's power to investigate or prosecute him or his family over taxes, forever.

“Obviously, optically, it looks horrendous,” Austin answered.

“Because it ishorrendous,” quipped Martin.

“But there's also an unprecedented amount of persecution when it comes to the Trump and the Trump family. There has never been a president that has been persecuted as much as Donald Trump,” Austin insisted.

“We’ve never had a president who did what he did,” inserted author and panelist Josh Rogin, referencing Trump’s many indictments, ranging from hiding illicit hush money to attempting to overthrow a legitimate U.S. election. “… This is a pattern of the president of the United States pilfering from the national coffers to serve his own political and personal ends. We have the Board of Peace, billions of dollars of taxpayer money without any congressional authorization or oversight. You've got all of the stock trades that he's made, $750 million worth of stock trades on issues that he's adjudicating. This is a level of self-dealing and corruption that no one has seen before. And you have to view this slush fund in that context.”

“If President Obama sued his own department or his own IRS and settled with himself, I guarantee you that you and every conservative on Fox would be running around screaming for impeachment,” Martin told Austin. “You guys would be trying to throw him an Alligator Alcatraz.”

an 12 24

Throughout the course of his third bid for the White House, President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly promised to use the full powers of the federal government to prosecute his political enemies. Now, President Joe Biden appears to be taking those threats seriously.

According to a Wednesday report by Politico's Jonathan Martin, Biden is now weighing preemptive pardons for several people Trump has directly targeted, including Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) — who won California's U.S. Senate race in November — and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who was vice chair of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

Martin wrote that Biden was "deeply concerned" about the fate of the people Trump has singled out, particularly after the president-elect nominated Kash Patel to be the next potential FBI director. According to the Hill, Patel has referred to Schiff — who led Trump's first impeachment effort — as a "government gangster," and has accused Cheney of being "the main architect of this disinformation campaign."

"[Cheney] and her band of miscreants suppressed evidence that completely exonerates the Jan. 6 defendants from their ginned-up charge of insurrection," Patel wrote in a May email.

Biden is also reportedly weighing a pardon for Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Martin didn't name any other potential recipients of a preemptive pardon, but Patel is reportedly eyeing both Democrats and Republicans alike for prosecution, including former Attorney General Bill Barr, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper and other former Trump White House staffers who later opposed him publicly, like Sarah Isgur Flores, Alyssa Farah Griffin and Stephanie Grisham.

"If it’s clear by January 19 that [revenge] is his intention, then I would recommend to President Biden that he provide those preemptive pardons to people, because that’s really what our country is going to need next year," Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) told WGBH.

Journalist Eleanor Clift recently called on Biden to issue preemptive pardons for Cheney and Schiff, along with former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who also publicly opposed Trump during the 2024 election cycle. Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly — who both called Trump a "fascist" — have also been recommended for pardons.

Click here to read Martin's full article for Politico in full.

---

https://www.mediamatters.org/cnn/cnns-conservative-contributors-still-pushing-false-notion-fox-has-separate-straight-news-and

The latest filing in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News further demonstrates that there is no difference between the network’s purported “straight news” and opinion divisions. However, during CNN’s coverage of the filing, conservative commentators, includingDavid Urban,Alyssa Farah Griffin, and Jonah Goldberg, continued to claim otherwise — contradicting CNN’s own journalists.

On February 27, the latest filing in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit was released to the public and revealed that Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox News’ parent company Fox Corp., and other executives knew that claims about Dominion and election fraud during the 2020 presidential election were false, but allowed hosts and guests to continue to push them.

The filing also included new details about how decisions around reporting were made to appease the network's pro-Trump viewers, rather than on the basis of facts. In one instance, the filing revealed that Murdoch instructed Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott to fire then-Managing Editor Bill Sammon, who oversaw the network’s call of Arizona for now-President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election and drew ire from former President Donald Trump, his supporters, and hosts such as Tucker Carlson. The filing also showed that Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch complained that coverage of a Trump rally was too critical, telling Scott, “News guys have to be careful how they cover this rally. So far some of the side comments are slightly anti, and they shouldn’t be. … The narrative should be this is a huge celebration of the president.”

Since the release of the filing, which clearly laid out how Fox personalities on both the “straight news’ and opinion sides were influenced to deprioritize factual information, some mainstream media figures, including a CNN host and some reporters, acknowledged that Fox News does not truly have separate “straight news” and “opinion” divisions. Yet, some of CNN’s paid contributors, who have ties to the Trump administration, Fox News, or conservative circles, have continued to push the fiction that Fox distinguishes between real reporting and opinion.

CNN pundits are still pushing Fox talking points, saying that there is a distinction between “straight news” and opinion at the network

Conservative CNN contributors Urban, Griffin, and Goldberg continued to defend Fox’s reputation as a news outlet during CNN’s coverage of the latest filing.

Urban said that there’s a difference between “hard news and entertainment” on Fox, calling shows like Hannity or Tucker Carlson Today “the news equivalent of the WWE.” Urban has been a paid contributor at CNN for years, and Media Matters has previously highlighted numerous ethical problems with the arrangement, as the network has repeatedly failed to disclose Urban’s lobbying efforts and role in the Trump campaign. Most recently, Urban participated in discussions about the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, during which the network failed to disclose that Urban lobbied for the train operator Norfolk Southern. On the February 27 edition of CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper, Urban pushed the false notion that Fox has separate news and opinion divisions.
[ vid]
jaKE TAPPER (HOST): And David, Fox viewers heard these false claims night after night after night, and Murdoch apparently, according to Oliver, said it was damaging. What was it damaging though?

DAVID URBAN (CNN CONTRIBUTOR): You know what it was damaging? Their brand. Their price. How much the company — how much Fox was valued at, right? That’s what it was damaging. They weren't concerned about damaging the body republic. They were concerned about damaging corporate profits and that's what I think is the most troubling. And what Fox viewers, and what people don't understand is there's a difference between hard news and the entertainment it is, you know, 7 p.m. on, on Fox News, right. Hannity, Tucker, and those shows, which are purely — they’re the news equivalent of the WWE.

Griffin placed blame on Trump for Fox News hosts spreading conspiracy theories in hopes of retaining their viewership, while claiming that “there’s a lot of really good journalists at Fox, dayside programming I don’t have really any major problems with.” CNN formally hired Griffin in December 2021, despite her lengthy history of lies and distortions, including during her tenure as a spokesperson for the Trump administration. In December 2020, Griffin had appeared on Fox News and claimed there had been voter fraud in the election[ vid]

aLYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN (CNN CONTRIBUTOR): Donald Trump is a big part of this by the way, because he started to create the narrative after he spread the election lies that, you know, Newsmax is where we should go, One America News Network is where true believers are going. So there was a sense of fear within Fox that they were going to lose market share to the outlets. The reality is that they never even picked up enough that it in a major way affected the very high viewership that Fox News had. But you can just see sort of the fear he instilled in the big-time hosts, the prime-time hosts. And I just want to say, like there’s a lot of really good journalists at Fox. Dayside programming I don't have really any major problems with. But prime-time is where they make their money and it has descended into conspiracy-mongering. It is basically anything to get people to tune in and drive viewership and not risk losing to the fringier outlets.

Goldberg placed blame on Fox CEO Suzanne Scott for her “lack of leadership,” claiming that, when it comes to Fox’s role in the lawsuit, “the opinion side basically became the dog wagging the tail instead of the other way around, and the news side basically became sort of this cleanup crew.”Goldberg is a former Fox News contributor and founding editor for conservative magazine National Review, who now simultaneously works as a CNN contributor and editor-in-chief of right-wing online magazine The Dispatch[ vid]
jONAH GOLDBERG (CNN CONTRIBUTOR): I know too many people who work in the Fox News division to this day who are serious, honest, and sincere journalists trying to do the job right. There are too many people, including who work at CNN, who got their starts or worked at Fox for a while and have warm things to say about it, to just say that it was always a political operation. I think the problem that happened at Fox was that the opinion side was allowed to run free. Everyone likes to think that this was some grand policy, the transformation of Fox, set from above. It was really the lack of leadership under Suzanne Scott, the CEO, to reign in, curtail, discipline the prime-time people in any way to the point where the opinion side basically became the dog wagging the tail instead of the other way around. And the news side just became sort of this cleanup crew. Even in the Dominion filings, the news division comes out OK in this. Bret Baier and Special Report fact-checked this stuff.

CNN’s own journalists point out that there is little difference between Fox’s opinion and news branches

Others at CNN, such as host John King and reporters Oliver Darcy and Phil Mattingly, have emphasized that the most recent Dominion filing shows Fox’s lack of news credibility because “news networks are supposed to inform viewers what's the truth.”

CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy has repeatedly pointed out the lack of distinction between opinion and news at Fox.On Monday, he said, “I think this really actually exposes the fact that Fox is not at its core a news network. News networks -- they deliver the truth as they know it to viewers. They do the best job to attain the truth and sometimes it's not perfect but that's what they do.” CNN, *Anderson Cooper 360*, [2/27/23]
When asked if he would call Fox News a “news organization” on Tuesday’s edition of CNN’s This Morning, Darcy said: “No, and that’s because news networks are supposed to inform viewers with the truth. In this case we know that Fox News knew the truth and refused to not only tell their viewers but they actually fed them lies to keep their audience because of the financial incentive. That's not what news networks do. That's what maybe, you know, propaganda outlets might do, but it's certainly not what a news network would do.” CNN, *This Morning*, [2/28/23]
Darcy also wrote an analysis on some of the biggest revelations from Dominion’s legal filing, saying that Fox “continues to be exposed for the dishonest organization that it is – this time, with the help of its billionaire owner.”He later continued, “In totality, the documents continue to underscore that at its core, Fox News is not a news network. News networks work hard to deliver the truth to their viewers. … The documents lay bare that the channel’s business model is not based on informing its audience, but rather on feeding them content — even dangerous conspiracy theories — that keeps viewers happy and watching.” CNN, [2/28/23]
Darcy said that “the perception that they are a news company is crumbling.” According to Darcy, “To preserve these business relationships they have to at least, have some reputation they're a legitimate news company. And I have been saying obviously that that's not the case. But the perception that they are a news company is crumbling, and this could result in damage to the actual Fox Corp. brand and really result in problems for shareholders.” CNN, *This Morning*, [3/1/23]
On Inside Politics with John King, King claimed that “Fox is not about news, it's about opinion.” King then played clips of Fox hosts airing claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election and said, “It was not just once, it was not twice. It was this over and over and over again.” CNN, :{Inside Politics with John King:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, [2/28/23]
In response to King, CNN reporter Phil Mattingly said, “These filings are laying bare the fallacy of the idea that there is a separation between opinion and editorial.” CNN, :{Inside Politics with John King:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, [2/28/23]

an maya b

1 23

Newly released records from the Jan. 6 committee expose a text message conversation between Julie Radford, Ivanka Trump’s former aide, and Hope Hicks, a former White House political advisor. In the message conversation, the two aides reveal their candid reactions to Donald Trump’s handling of the insurrection, CNN reports.

Hicks, who previously served as Trump’s communications director, wrote that any Trump staffers who “didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed.” She continued, “I’m so mad and upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now.”

Referring to Trump’s targeting of then-Vice President Mike Pence after he refused to help Trump overturn the election, Hicks also said in the texts, “Attacking the VP? Wtf is wrong with him?"

Radford had noted that “In one day [Trump] ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local Proud Boys chapter,” and that she’d been “crying for an hour.”

Hicks reiterated, “This made us all unemployable. Like untouchable. God I’m so f***ing mad.”

“I know, like there isn't a chance of finding a job,” Radford replied.

In a clear reference to Alyssa Farah Griffith’s resignation from her White House Communications Director role one month prior to Jan. 6, Hicks mentioned to Radford that “Alyssa looks like a genius."

The day after the attack, Politico published a Q&A with Griffith titled “I Stepped Down Because I Saw Where This Was Heading.”

When asked about why she resigned, the current co-host of The View, said "I was advised by the campaign to stand down. That wouldn’t be the message. We weren’t going to be acknowledging the loss, and they were going to pursue avenues to reconcile that. And I’m of the mind that it’s foundational to our democracy that if you think there was fraud or irregularities, the president absolutely should pursue legal recourse to determine if there was."

In the article, Politico reported that despite her stepping down, Griffith's Twitter account showed that she "remains mostly supportive of the Republican Party and the conservative movement."

revert to norm? 9 22

A Republican campaign advisor got it from both sides on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday morning after he attempted to defend Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) over his sending immigrants seeking asylum to Martha's Vineyard in what is universally being considered a political "stunt."

During the panel segment, Jennings said what DeSantis was doing was important because it helps illuminate the problems at the border, which led both a liberal and a conservative co-panelist to call him out for disregarding the human factor of shipping people around the country to make a political point.

Former Barack Obama senior adviser Daniella Gibbs Léger got in the first shot at Jennings, telling him, "You know what? You can make a point about border security and we can have a conversation about comprehensive immigration reform and adding more money to support border states, but using people as political pawns -- these are people fleeing communism."

"I thought the Republican Party was the one against communism," she lectured. "To ship them to a place that doesn't have the facilities to take care of them -- you say blithely 'only there for a day.' Martha's Vineyard doesn't have capacity to do that. The Republican governor sent them to a place where there were facilities to take care of them. "

She added, "This is MAGA extremism taking over this party. I get emotional talking about this because I remember when we were separating children, babies from their parents at the border with no care about reuniting them. This is what this is too. These migrants were lied to and misled; they thought they were going someplace else and were given appointments across the country for Monday. So they're setting them up for failure."

Former Donald Trump administration officialAlyssa Farah Griffinthen jumped in.

"Here's the thing," she began. "We have a crisis at the border, humanitarian, national security, full stop. Vice President Kamala Harris said on another network last week the border is secure -- it's not."

"That said, I disagree with the stunt on almost every level," she continued. "We know the Biden administration is relocating people within the country, migrants within the country to take some of the strain off the border states, but we cannot use human beings as pawns."

"If this was a serious effort by Governor DeSantis, he would have called [Massachusetts Republican] Governor Charlie Baker and say, 'I need all resources available, we need to house these people, set up places where they can process asylum claims and meet with you all.' This was meant purely for Twitter and to drive the conversation."

Watch below or at this link:

7 22

Top Secret Service agents who tried to undermine former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony to the Jan. 6 committee have hired private lawyers and are refusing to cooperate with the investigation, members of the panel said over the weekend.

Hutchinson, who worked as a top aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified last month that she was told by deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato that former President Donald Trump was so irate that his security detail would not take him to the Capitol with his supporters on Jan. 6 that he lunged at Secret Service agent Bobby Engel, the head of his detail. Hutchinson said Ornato, who made the unusual leap from working at the Secret Service to working for Trump before returning as a senior Secret Service official, described the incident with Engel present and he did not dispute it.

After her testimony, journalists citing anonymous sources reported that Engel and the driver of Trump's vehicle were "prepared to testify under oath" to dispute Hutchinson's account and that Ornato denied telling Hutchinson that Trump "grabbed the steering wheel or an agent."

Hutchinson's lawyer, Jody Hunt, a former aide to Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions, said that she stood by her account and urged the Secret Service agents to testify under oath. Several witnesses, including a D.C. police officer assigned to Trump's motorcade, testified that Trump got into a "heated" confrontation with his security detail when he was told he could not go to the Capitol.

Ornato, Engel, and the unidentified driver of Trump's vehicle have since hired private counsel, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., told reporters last week.

"Some of the officers said that they would be coming and talking under oath," said Lofgren, a member of the committee. "They have not come in, and they recently retained private counsel, which is unusual but they have a right to do that."

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., one of the two Republicans on the panel, told ABC News on Sunday that "it is not our decision that they have not [testified] so far."

Asked if the Secret Service is refusing to cooperate, Kinzinger replied, "that's a question you have to ask the Secret Service, you have to ask those particular people."

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the committee's vice-chair, told that "we have not had the kind of cooperation that we really need to have" from the Secret Service.

Questions have swirled about Ornato and Engel's credibility since Hutchinson's testimony. Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig, who wrote the book "Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service" during the Trump administration, told MSNBC that both men were "very, very close to President Trump."

"Some people accused them of at times being enablers and 'yes men' of the president—particularly Tony Ornato—and very much people who wanted to do what he wanted and see him pleased," she said, adding that "both of these individuals lose a little credibility because of how closely they have been seen as aligned to Donald Trump."

Ornato made an unusual transition from working for the Secret Service to working directly for Trump at the White House, serving as deputy chief of staff for operations. Former White House spokeswoman Alyssa Farah accused Ornato, who helped coordinate Trump's infamous clearing of protesters at Lafayette Square for a photo-op at a nearby church, of lying about the incident. "There seems to be a major thread here… Tony Ornato likes to lie," Kinzinger tweeted last month.

The committee members also called out the Secret Service over missing text messages from around the time of the Capitol attack. The Secret Service said that agents' text messages were deleted during a system migration in Jan. 2021. The agency turned over just one text message thread in response to a subpoena from the committee. Joseph Cuffari, the top watchdog at the Department of Homeland Security, was aware of the deleted texts since February but did not inform Congress, according to The Washington Post. Cuffari's office has since opened a criminal investigation into the destruction of the text messages, NBC News reported last week, after the committee accused the agency of potentially violating federal record-keeping laws.

The committee, which held eight televised hearings over the last six weeks and plans to hold three more in September, vowed to continue its investigation, including into the "extent to which there are no text messages from the relevant period of time," Cheney said Sunday.

"Those are all the things the committee is going to be looking at in more detail in the coming weeks," Cheney told Fox News.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/what-happened-to-alyssa-farah/

no lnx

What Happened to Alyssa Farah?

Then-White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah participates in a TV interview at the White House in Washington, D.C., October 4, 2020.(Erin Scott/Reuters)

By NATE HOCHMAN

July 14, 2022

In going from the Trump White House to a media career, she has made adaptations.

In a February 2021 appearance on CNN, Alyssa Farah, who had recently stepped down as a communications director for the Trump White House, said it was “important for members of Congress to step up and condemn” the January 6 riot at the Capitol. “And many have done that. I think Kevin McCarthy — you know, I give the leader credit — spoke out very plainly about the president’s role in it.” But when pressed on censuring President Trump, she demurred: “I think it’s an open question for Congress — I’m not going to play judge and jury on that,” she told the CNN host. “But I also think the country needs to move on from this moment. I don’t think we benefit from re-litigating, over and over, what happened that day. We need to be moving forward.”

[TOP STORIES

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Three months later, the former Trump official appeared on MSNBC with a different message: “This isn’t going away. So to my friends, to the Kevin McCarthys of the world — this is not just something that you’re going to brush aside.” Five months after that, Farah, who had by then secured a spot as a CNN contributor and was auditioning for the nominal right-wing seat on The View, took an even more forceful line: “We are just acting like this is kind of normal, I feel like we’re just glossing over January 6 and moving on, and we absolutely shouldn’t. The committee is working on it, I hope they get to the bottom of it. But it’s devastating.”

The change in tone and emphasis was part of a broader transformation for Farah, now Farah Griffin. The 33-year-old got her start in right-wing politics at World Net Daily — the blog run by her father, Joseph Farah, that is widely credited with popularizing the Barack Obama birther conspiracy. After her stint at WND, she entered the Republican Party fray as a communications director for the House Freedom Caucus. In 2017, she joined the Trump administration as a press secretary for Mike Pence, later moving to a similar role in the Department of Defense. Then, in April 2020, she took a job as director of strategic communications for the White House Office. Prior to her departure from the White House that December, Farah was, by all accounts, a conventionally partisan Republican operative. But as she has pivoted to presenting herself as fervently anti-Trump — and sometimes anti-Republican — her statements have shifted dramatically. On a number of controversies surrounding Trump, she has gone from defending his actions to condemning them. In tandem, she’s blasting many Republicans whose rhetoric aligned with her own not so long ago.

In a texted statement to National Review, Farah Griffin wrote:

I reject the premise that my fundamental views have changed. But I’m fiercely anti insurrection. I’m a conservative who believes in limited federal government and a robust national defense. I do, however, think that most people who have served in the highest levels of government, who hold the highest level security clearances, as I do, often become less dogmatic in their views as they learn more and are exposed to more.

When asked, as a follow-up, whether she regretted working for Mark Meadows, she did not respond.

Nevertheless, the public posture of the Alyssa Farah Griffin of 2022 is very different from the one she had while in the Trump administration. Today, Farah Griffin has made her outrage over the Capitol riot a centerpiece of her persona, live-tweeting the January 6 hearings and routinely denouncing Republicans — including Republicans such as Ron DeSantis — for not being forceful enough in their condemnations of the riot, the election-fraud claims, and Trump and his allies. But these recent vociferous critiques of the GOP’s line on these issues stand in stark contrast to her own comments in the months leading up to and following the election.

In December 2021, Farah Griffin slammed Georgia Senate candidate David Perdue for “wink, winking and nod, nodding to the election fraud myths.” But she herself employed similar rhetoric during, and even after, her time in the White House, repeatedly raising concerns about election fraud and even alluding to a “rigged election.” In May 2020, she defended Trump for “rais[ing] concerns about across the board mail-in voting w/out reason because of its potential for fraud,” and argued: “If you care about the integrity & security of our elections, you should care about protecting against potential voter fraud.” In November 2020, on a radio segment discussing the Trump campaign’s legal challenges to the Pennsylvania vote count, she attacked state election officials for “putting their thumb on the scale” to help Democrats. In a January 2021 Fox News appearance, she defended Trump’s leaked phone call with Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, arguing that “what he’s saying he wants to do is get to the bottom of irregularities, and it’s not just in Georgia, it’s in other states.” In February 2021, she criticized Democrats for having “refused outright to have serious conversations about voter fraud in this country,” adding, “This is something Republicans have been, you know, tooting the horn on for years.” Perhaps most notably, in a December 2020 appearance on Fox, discussing election-integrity efforts in the upcoming Senate runoffs in Georgia, she said:

The Georgia Republican Party has . . . efforts underway to ensure that we have signature verification, that we have poll watchers. But what we’re really trying to convey to voters — and listen, understanding that millions of Americans have concerns about irregularities and fraud that we saw in the 2020 elections — what we’re conveying to Georgia voters, is that if you . . . don’t want a rigged election, you absolutely have to get out and vote.

The shift in tone goes beyond the question of January 6 and the 2020 election. In a December 2020 Fox appearance, for instance, Farah said that Hunter Biden’s corruption was “a huge issue that we’ve got to get to the bottom of” — a point she reiterated a month later, tweeting: “Under a Democrat controlled Senate, Republicans can kiss their ability to investigate issues like FBI abuse and Hunter Biden’s China & Russia connections goodbye.” But a few months later, in September 2021, she was maintaining that “while the public 1,000% had a right to see it,” she had “advised Trump world against making Hunter a focal point of the campaign.” In March this year, she argued that while the Department of Justice should “thoroughly investigate any potential impropriety,” Hunter Biden’s “actions don’t even rank in the top 100 issues facing American voters.”

In terms of Trump himself, Farah Griffin maintains that she “didn’t have any illusions about who the president was.” In a glowing May Vanity Fair profile, replete with glamorous photos of Farah sipping cocktails and posing in limos, she argued: “I’m not somebody who drank the Kool-Aid for five years and then magically found Jesus on January 6.” But that, too, is at odds with her public statements in the White House. In one video taken during her time in the administration, she describes her first time meeting Trump: “I was smiling so wide because I was just excited to see him.” In having “gotten to spend quite a bit of time with him” in following months, she added, “I remember this every day as I walk on the campus — just to stop, say a quick prayer of thank you and gratitude” every day “that I get to serve this particular president.” She went on: “He’s a remarkable man. The more time you spend with him behind closed doors, the more you understand what makes him such a strong leader for our nation.” At the same time, she attacked Miles Taylor — the erstwhile midlevel Trump official who penned the infamous anonymous New York Times op-ed about the “resistance” within the White House — as “confirm[ing] that “Never Trumpers are trying to thwart POTUS.” In January 2021, she told Politico that she didn’t “have respect” for Taylor. A year later, however, she was participating in group phone calls led by Taylor “to discuss efforts to fend off [Trump’s] efforts to, in their view, erode the democratic process,” according to CNN.

Early life and education[

Farah was born on June 15, 1989 in Los Angeles.^[4] Her father Joseph Farah, who is of Syrian and Lebanese descent, is a journalist who was executive news editor at the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner before moving to Northern California to become editor of The Sacramento Union in 1990. He later founded WorldNetDaily, a far-right publication.^[5] Her mother, Judy, (née Smagula) is a Sacramento-based journalist who has written for HuffPost, the Associated Press, and Comstock's Magazine.^[6][7] Farah is of Lebanese and Syrian descent.^[8]

Farah earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism and Public Policy from Patrick Henry College.^[9]

Career[

Farah began her career as an intern for Congressman Tom McClintock. She then worked as the communications director for the Freedom Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives serving under chairmen Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows.^[10] She previously worked as the communications director for Congressman Mark Meadows. Farah previously worked as an associate producer on The Laura Ingraham Show.^[11]

While serving as Press Secretary to the Vice President, she traveled with Mike Pence on several trips, domestic and foreign.^[12]

At age 30, Farah was the youngest Pentagon Press Secretary in history.

In April 2020, it was reported that Meadows, now Trump's Chief of Staff, has considered bringing Farah on as a White House Press Secretary.^[13] She joined the White House Office as the White House Director of Strategic Communications on April 7, 2020.^[14] In August 2020, The Washington Post reported that Farah played an important role in shaping the Trump administration's coronavirus response.^[15]

References[

^ Collins, Kaitlan (August 14, 2019). "Alyssa Farah, Pence press secretary, expected to move to Pentagon". cnn.com. Retrieved April 7, 2020.
^ "Alyssa Farah > U.S. Department of Defense > Biography". defense.gov.
^ "Top Pence aide to become Pentagon press secretary". msn.com. Retrieved March 8, 2020.
^ Lippman, Daniel. "Birthday of the Day: Alyssa Farah, press secretary for Vice President Pence". Politico. Retrieved March 8,2020.
^ Wallsten, Peter; Fiore, Faye (January 27, 2010). "Joseph Farah found his calling in Obama-bashing". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 31, 2020.
^ Krepel, Terry; Matters, ContributorFounder of ConWebWatch; former senior editor at Media (December 20, 2017). "Pence's Press Secretary Is Daughter Of Right-Wing Conspiracy Site's Founder". HuffPost. Retrieved March 8, 2020.
^ Roig-Franzia, Manuel (April 2, 2019). "Inside the spectacular fall of the granddaddy of right-wing conspiracy sites". The Washington Post. Retrieved March 31, 2020.
^ Nussbaum, Matthew; Sherman, Jake. "Pence taps top Freedom Caucus aide as press secretary". Politico.
^ "Alyssa Farah > U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE > Biography". defense.gov. Retrieved March 8, 2020.
^ Nussbaum, Matthew; Sherman, Jake. "Pence taps top Freedom Caucus aide as press secretary". Politico.
^ Santiago, Ellyn (January 6, 2019). "Alyssa Farah: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know". Heavy.com. Retrieved March 8, 2020.
^ Parker, Ashley. "Top Pence aide will move to Pentagon as new press secretary". Washington Post.
^ Treene, Jonathan Swan,Alayna. "Mark Meadows considers new White House press secretary". Axios. Retrieved April 3,2020.
^ McGraw, Meredith; Cook, Nancy (April 7, 2020). "Kayleigh McEnany replaces Grisham as White House press secretary". Politico. Retrieved April 7, 2020.
^ "The lost days of summer: How Trump struggled to contain the virus". The Washington Post. 2020.

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