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In the years since the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, which was spurred by then-President Donald Trump’s attempt to retain power, right-wing media figures have repeatedly whitewashed the violent attack, pushed misinformation and conspiracy theories about it, and defended its participants.
As a result, the initial consensus of the horrors of the day has disappeared, with Republicans reportedly “now less likely to believe that Jan. 6 participants were ‘mostly violent,’ less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the attack, and … slightly less likely to view Joe Biden’s election as legitimate.”
The following right-wing media personalities have been critical in the push to downplay January 6, and they have continued their apologia for the violent crowd that sought to overturn an election.
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Darren Beattie
Beattie was a speechwriter and policy aide for then-President Trump who was fired in 2018 for attending a white nationalist conference two years before. In 2020, he founded right-wing site Revolver News, with Trump himself praising the outlet’s commentary. Beattie has repeatedly pushed the baseless conspiracy theory that the FBI, in connection with an undercover agent named Ray Epps, helped to incite the January 6 riot.
2021: Beattie spread a conspiracy theory that Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick’s death was not a result of injuries sustained in the attack, calling his claims “the most important story Revolver has ever run.” Fox’s Tucker Carlson also highlighted the story, calling it an “exhaustive and fascinating new analysis.” [Media Matters, 2/12/21]
2022: Beattie and his news outlet, Revolver News, were crucial in pushing the false claim that Capitol rioter Ray Epps was an undercover FBI agent who duped the crowd into entering the Capitol building. Epps has sued Fox News, and his suit describes Beattie as “the principal person driving the false story that Epps was a federal agent planted as a provocateur to trigger the Capitol violence on January 6th.” [Media Matters, 1/19/22; The New York Times, 7/12/23]
2023-present: Beattie has continued to falsely allege that Epps was a federal agent, claiming he was treated leniently for that reason. In posts on X from September, Beattie claimed that “charging Ray Epps now for ‘disorderly conduct’ is not going to make the Feds' credibility problem go away.” Beattie additionally called the government’s case against Epps “a phony charge” that “will only make things worse for the Fed narrative.” He also suggested that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was a false flag and said that the Justice Department and FBI should “at least do us the courtesy of a high effort cover up like you did with OKC” for January 6. [Media Matters, 9/21/23; Twitter/X, 9/19/23, 9/19/23, 9/19/23, 9/19/23]
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Julie Kelly
Kelly is a prolific conspiracy theorist who has written for a number of conservative outlets, mainly American Greatness, National Review, and The Federalist. Then-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gave Kelly and former Trump adviser John Solomon special access to security camera footage from the Capitol attack, as she claimed that conservatives were being unjustly persecuted.
2021: Kelly called January 6 Metropolitan Police Department officer Michael Fanone a “crisis actor.” [Media Matters, 7/27/21]
2022: On One America News, Kelly pushed a conspiracy theory that the FBI fabricated pipe bombs that were discovered at the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C. the night before the January 6 riot. Kelly also published a book where she claimed that the Biden administration is weaponizing January 6 to persecute conservatives and criminalize political protest. [One America News, Tipping Point with Kara McKinney, 2/16/22; Google Books, accessed 1/5/23, Post Hill Press, accessed 1/5/24]
2023-present: Kelly repeatedly spread the Epps conspiracy theory, and when Epps was charged, she questioned why he wasn’t charged with more crimes, posting, “No obstruction felony? No civil disorder charge? Not even a trespassing on restricted grounds misdemeanor?” Kelly also claimed that the Biden’s Justice Department has “successfully criminalized political speech and activity.” In May, then-Speaker McCarthy reportedly gave Kelly special access to security camera footage from the Capitol attack. [Media Matters, 9/21/23, 5/31/23; The Washington Post, 6/6/23; Premiere Networks, The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, 3/23/23]
Julie Kelly claims that January 6 prosecutions are a silencing free speech and destroying lives
MARCH 23, 2023
Julie Kelly claims that January 6 prosecutions are a silencing free speech and destroying lives
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CitationFrom the March 23, 2023, edition of Premiere Networks' The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
Tucker Carlson
As a Fox prime-time host, Carlson relentlessly downplayed the January 6 insurrection and promoted the conspiracy theory that Ray Epps, whom he posited was a federal agent or FBI informant, incited the riot. Carlson also repeatedly hosted Beattie and Kelly to push misinformation about the attack.
2021: Carlson put out a revisionist January 6-focused series that suggested the attack was a “false flag.” In an interview with Kelly, Carlson said the left used officer Brian Sicknick’s death “as a political weapon” and that his state funeral was “fake.” “Completely fabricated,” agreed Kelly. Carlson also hosted Beattie and cited an article in which he suggested the January 6 attack may have been orchestrated by FBI operatives. [Media Matters, 11/2/21, 11/4/21, 6/16/21, 6/17/21; Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 11/1/21]
2022: Carlson defended the rioters as “passionately patriotic Americans” “who genuinely love America” and on the one-year anniversary of January 6 he downplayed the violence as “just barely” a riot. As a guest on Carlson’s show, Beattie also called January 6 “a clear hoax” planned and carried out by “the feds.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 6/8/22, 1/6/22, 6/9/22]
Early 2023: Carlson continued to downplay the severity of the January 6 riot, calling the rioters “nonviolent … protesters” and “patriotic Americans.” He also said January 6 was “probably second only to the 2020 election as the biggest scam in my lifetime.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 3/21/23, 3/14/23]
April 2023-present: After Carlson was fired in April from Fox, he appeared on a Spaces live chat on X (formerly Twitter) and continued to downplay the insurrection. [Twitter/X, 12/12/23]
:{Video
CitationFrom a December 12, 2023, X Space
Steve Bannon
Since he left the Trump administration in 2017, Steve Bannon has hosted War Room — a podcast for Real America’s Voice — where he has frequently defended those involved in the insurrection. Bannon has also hosted both Beattie and Kelly to also push conspiracy theories about January 6.
2021: Leading up to the January 6 insurrection, Bannon bragged on his podcast about his role in working to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election. [Media Matters, 10/29/21]
2022: Bannon defended the Proud Boys ahead of one of Congress’ January 6 hearings, referring to the organization, whose leaders have since been convicted for their role in the January 6 attack, as a “rag tag beer drinking group.” Bannon also repeatedly made false claims that U.S. Senate sergeant-at-arms Michael Stenger’s death was an intentional homicide, comparing it to older right-wing conspiracy theories around the suicide of Clinton administration official Vince Foster. [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 6/9/22; CNN, 9/1/23; Media Matters, 6/29/22]
2023-present: Bannon is still hosting his podcast, War Room, where he has continued to downplay the insurrection, including dismissing Trump's role by stating that Trump was “doing his duty” to “make sure that the 2020 election had been fairly decided” and continuing to insist that the 2020 election was stolen. [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 8/2/23]
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CitationFrom the August 2, 2023, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
Charlie Kirk
Charlie Kirk, who co-founded the right-wing organization Turning Point USA, has repeatedly downplayed the insurrection and accused Ray Epps of being a federal agent.
2021: In the immediate aftermath of January 6, Kirk downplayed the attack, saying that “just because you do something that is regrettable does not mean that you are planning an armed insurrection against the United States government." [Newsweek, 1/12/21]
2022: Kirk pushed the Epps conspiracy theory, posting to X that Epps “texted his nephew ‘I orchestrated it’” and claiming that he is the “only man caught on camera actively calling for people to enter the Capitol and riot.” In another post, Kirk said, “If the FBI knows who Ray Epps is, why haven't they arrested him yet?” [Twitter/X, 1/11/22, 12/30/22]
2023-present: Kirk continues to run Turning Point USA and has repeatedly promoted far-right talking points, including false claims about January 6. On his eponymous show, Kirk has primed his audience to prepare for “another January 6” over Trump’s various indictments and called on a future administration to “get some pardons done” for the January 6 insurrectionists. [Media Matters, 9/22/23, 11/21/23; Real America’s Voice, The Charlie Kirk Show, 1/3/24, 12/7/23, 7/28/23, 1/6/23; Twitter/X, 9/19/23]
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The Gateway Pundit
The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing website that frequently pushes conspiracy theories and hoaxes, and Editor-in-Chief Jim Hoft have repeatedly claimed that the January 6 insurrection was a false flag operation organized by federal law enforcement.
2021: The Gateway Pundit was reportedly a favorite source for Donald Trump in the lead-up to January 6. According to The Washington Post, “In the weeks before he left office in 2021, Trump brandished printouts of Gateway Pundit articles questioning the results of the election.” In May 2021, a few months after the insurrection, Hoft published an article claiming that someone inside the Capitol unlocked the doors for the rioters, citing an anonymous member of the Oath Keepers — a group with several members who have since been convicted for their roles on January 6. [The Washington Post, 1/3/24; The Gateway Pundit, 5/24/21; Politico, 1/23/23]
2022: Hoft doubled down on the claim that “someone inside the security booth at the US Capitol opened the doors” in a Gateway Pundit article titled “WE WERE RIGHT. ” In another article, Hoft claimed that instead of investigating the Oath Keepers’ involvement in January 6, “the FBI would have better luck if they looked at their trained operatives instead who were leading the charge on the Capitol building.” [Twitter/X, 6/13/22; The Gateway Pundit, 1/29/22, 8/24/22]
2023-present: Hoft and The Gateway Pundit remain a source of conspiracy theories about January 6. Hoft has penned several stories alleging that Ray Epps’ criminal charges and sentencing are proof that he was a federal agent and said President Joe Biden “will use the J6 anniversary to accuse Trump supporters of being white supremacists.” [The Gateway Pundit, 1/2/24, 9/19/23, 1/3/24]
Laura Ingraham
Fox News host Laura Ingraham has used her prime-time platform to repeatedly claim that January 6 was a “false flag operation” orchestrated by “antifa” or federal agents.
2021: Ingraham suggested “antifa sympathizers” were behind the January 6 attack, citing a Washington Times article that was later debunked. [The New York Times, 3/1/21]
2022: Ingraham cited Darren Beattie’s Revolver News on her show on Fox to argue that “Epps may have led the breach team that first entered the Capitol on January 6.” [Media Matters, 1/19/22]
2023-present: Ingraham has used her prime-time slot on Fox News to continuously defend Trump and attack those who are involved in the legal cases against him over his alleged role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election. She has also whitewashed the Capitol insurrectionists as “old ladies walking through the halls of Congress taking selfies.” [Media Matters, 11/01/23; Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 10/10/23, 8/7/23, 3/29/23]
:{Video
CitationFrom the March 29, 2023, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle
Infowars
Prolific conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars co-host Owen Shroyer were part of the crowd on January 6. Shroyer has since celebrated the insurrection while Jones has claimed that any violence that occurred was caused by antifa or federal agents.
2021: Jones responded to the FBI’s investigation into his involvement in the insurrection by claiming that “we know who did it: antifa with some paramilitary groups all together, which are going to turn out to be feds with idiots they provocateured to be part of it, the Q people,” calling it “the modern Reichstag 2.0.” Shroyer stated that “we should have been proud of what happened on January 6.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 1/14/21, 5/17/21]
2022: Jones claimed that when investigated by the January 6 committee, he pleaded the Fifth Amendment “almost 100 times.” [Texas Tribune, 4/28/22]
2023-present: Jones celebrated Tucker Carlson’s revisionist history of the insurrection, claiming the footage Carlson aired showed that “January 6 was an inside job.” In the days before Shroyer was sentenced to two months in prison for leading a portion of the crowd on January 6, Jones claimed that the government was “asking for prison time for a man that did nothing and was there with me trying to stop people going to the Capitol because he still says he thinks the election was stolen.” [Media Matters, 2/28/23; Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 9/6/23; PBS, PBS NewsHour, 9/12/23]
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CitationFrom the February 20, 2023, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show
Newsmax’s Greg Kelly
In the wake of January 6, Newsmax prime-time host Greg Kelly has repeatedly whitewashed the violence at the Capitol on his show, claiming that Trump supporters were allowed into the building or set up by federal law enforcement and unfairly prosecuted.
2021: Kelly claimed that the insurrection was “a trap to make Trump supporters, the MAGA movement, look bad,” and alleged that police were “not doing anything” and had ushered insurrectionists into the Capitol. Kelly later claimed the insurrection was a “false flag operation” staged by federal law enforcement. [Newsmax, Greg Kelly Reports, 9/16/21, 11/3/21]
2022: Kelly continued to claim that Capitol Police and other federal agents “stood by” and that insurrectionists were “let in” to the Capitol. He also claimed that the rioters who called for Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged were “speaking metaphorically” and downplayed the makeshift gallow that were erected nearby. [Newsmax, Greg Kelly Reports, 6/16/22]
2023-present: Kelly doubled down with the claim that January 6 insurrectionists were invited into the Capitol by police, claiming that it is “actually not true” that rioters violently breached the Capitol. He has also repeatedly defended Trump’s increasingly hostile campaign rhetoric, dismissing comparisons of the former president to Adolf Hitler and saying he is “a madman, and that is a good thing.” [Newsmax, Greg Kelly Reports, 11/17/23, 11/13/23, 10/19/23]
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CitationFrom the November 17, 2023, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports
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https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/right-wing-media-continues-defend-january-6-insurrectionist-couy-griffin
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-role-spreading-conspiracy-theories-one-january-6-defendant-using-his-trial
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january 6 defendant Alan Hostetter will reportedly rely on three conspiracy theories at his trial, each of which he could have seen repeatedly on Fox News.
Hostetter, a former police chief, was initially charged alongside four other January 6 defendants who the government has accused of being Three Percenters — an extremist, anti-government ideology. The judge severed his case, however, “in a nod to the unusual nature of Mr. Hostetter’s proposed defense,” according to the New York Times.
The Times further reports:
Acting as his own lawyer, Mr. Hostetter has said that he intends tofight charges of conspiracy and obstruction based on what he calls“three fundamental pillars”: that the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald J. Trump; that he and other rioters had no desire to disrupt the challenges to the vote results that were taking place inside the Capitol on Jan. 6; and that, therefore, the assault on the building had to have been staged by “federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.”
Fox News embraced Hostetter’s first false claim — that the 2020 election was stolen — across nearly the entire network.Fox cast doubt on the election results almost 800 times in the two weeks after it called the race for President Joe Biden, and falsely claimed machines run by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic were unreliable or had been hacked to change vote totals. Dominion sued Fox for defamation, forcing a massive settlement on the day the trial was set to open. Smartmatic also filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox, which is ongoing.
Fox News also pushed Hostetter’s second inaccurate claim,that the rioters were simply tourists or otherwise not looking to disrupt the transfer of power. As recently as this March, prime-time host Laura Ingraham argued the insurrectionists were “old ladies walking through the halls of Congress taking selfies.” In January, her guest Miranda Devine, a Fox News contributor, claimed “most of the people that they've been rounding up are just guilty of trespassing. A lot of them were confused.” Fox’s Mark Levin said the rioters were simply “parading on public lands,” and compared them to “people in the civil rights movement.” On the day after the riot, Fox & Friends insisted the insurrectionists were at the Capitol to “voice their concerns” and to “defend our Republic.” That type of language was a fixture of Fox’s coverage, with on-air talent and guests calling the rioters “nonviolent” and “political prisoners." [twt]
hostetter’s final claim, that the insurrection was an inside job orchestrated and manufactured by federal law enforcement, was also a mainstay on Fox News. Like much of the network’s January 6 revisionism, this particular myth was largely, but not exclusively, driven by former marquee star Tucker Carlson. He filled his prime-time show and a documentary-style series called Patriot Purge with unsupported allegations that the riot was driven by FBI agents or informants, a claim that doesn’t stand up to even the mildest scrutiny.
Carlson promoted the series on Fox & Friends, during which co-host Brian Kilmeade asked, “Do you think maybe, perhaps and maybe you don't want to give away your series, you find indications that the FBI was actually pushing for this invasion?”
Hostetter recently criticized the network’s decision to fire Carlson in a rambling, incoherent defense motion that also referenced the JFK assassination and The Wizard of Oz. Prior to his ouster, Carlson had defended Hostetter as a victim of deep state persecution.
But Carlson wasn’t alone in spreading the conspiracy theory that the federal government was behind the attempted insurrection. Ingraham devoted a segment in October 2021 to the conspiracy theory that a man named Ray Epps was an FBI informant who had surreptitiously provoked the riot. She suggested in March of this year that FBI informants were “working the crowd either before they entered the Capitol or while they were in the Capitol.” Her guest in that segment was American Greatness’ Julie Kelly, a leading January 6 conspiracy theorist, who frequently pushed the same line on Carlson’s program as well.Levin interviewed Kelly in November 2021, asking, “Was this attack on the Capitol building instigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on January 6?” And a guest on the radio program of Fox’s Sean Hannity recently suggested that then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi “planned and conjured up” the riot to add drama to her daughter’s documentary film.
As the Times reports, prosecutors in Hostetter’s case are worried about the trial devolving to a “circuslike atmosphere.” If it does, Fox News will have played no small role in providing the elements for Hostetter’s spectacle.
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https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/02/07/what-the-media-isnt-telling-you-about-jan-6/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyfBjjBHIFU&t=102s
During the month of June, lawmakers in Washington, D.C., plan to hold six public hearings on the events that took place on Jan. 6. Two of them are even scheduled during primetime TV in an effort by Democrats to maximize their attempt to frame what happened that day at the U.S. Capitol.
But there’s another side to the story that you won’t hear from the likes of Reps. Bennie Thompson, Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney, or other members of the House select committee. They determined long ago who to blame and what narrative to tell.
Now, thanks to a new documentary called “Capitol Punishment,” Americans are able to hear stories from the people who were there on Jan. 6—in their own words and the ordeals they’ve faced since that day.
Joining me on “The Daily Signal Podcast” are two people who made the movie, actor Nick Searcy and director Chris Burgard. Listen to the full show or read a lightly edited transcript below.
Rob Bluey:Let’s start at the beginning. Let’s go back to that day on Jan. 6. What was your experience in Washington, D.C., like on that day?
Nick Searcy: Part of the reason we wanted to make the movie is that Chris and I were both there and we were in different places. And our experience on that day was so different from what the media was showing us.
We saw people, hundreds of thousands of people, biggest crowd I’ve ever seen. And most of them were singing hymns and saying the Pledge of Allegiance and waving flags. And I saw people of all races, all creeds. It was a very happy, joyful time, really.
And then as the day went on and after the speech was over, I personally saw the police moving barricades and allowing people to go into the Capitol. So the things that we saw on television, that it was a few hundred crazed, right-wing, Trump-supporting white supremacists, was not anything like what I saw when I was there.
Chris Burgard: The difference in what we saw that day versus what was on the news was so dramatic that we just couldn’t just sit by and watch a day in history and the government be stolen.
I had been in Central America during attempted regime changepreviously, and my bells and whistles were going off, especially when Nick called me and said, “They just moved the barricades. They’re letting people in the Capitol.”
I just said to my wife, I said, “Look—”. We were still marching down to the Capitol. Nick was ahead of us. I said to my wife, I said, “Look at all these peaceful images.Look at this, over a million people here. And there’s no cameras. That leads me to believe that there’s going to be an orchestrated event at the end of this. And that’s the agendas that they want to run with.” EXCEPT EVERYONE CARRYING MOST USING ONE]
And when Nick called just at that time and said, “Look, they’re moving the bike racks. They’re letting people in,” I looked to my wife and I said, “I got bad deja vu. And I’m afraid someone’s going to die today.” And that’s exactly what it was.
It was just a day of orchestrated events that anybody that knew what they were looking for saw it. I mean, we saw people changing from Antifa black-block into MAGA clothes.
These same people were trying to get us to attack the police, the Capitol Police. We said, “No.” And when we went to the FBI that was on the ground and said, “Hey, you’ve got bad guys here trying to start violence and recruit others to violence. Do you want me to show you who they are?”, the FBI said, “No.” I’m like, “Do you want to take a report? My family can give you witness. I was there with my wife and my daughter,” and the FBI agents on the ground just said, “No, we’re OK. Thank you.” So, there was clearly a disconnect.
Bluey: One of the things that strikes me as I watch the film, and I think so many of the people who do will see this with their own eyes, are the many images and the videos that you have collected and compiled into this one powerful documentary. Share more about the types of people who you interacted with on that day.
Searcy: Like I said, most of the people there were very patriotic people, and people of all races and creeds, and they were not there to cause any violence. And they had come to make their voices heard, thatthey believed that there were things about the election that didn’t make sense. They wanted the certification to be paused for 10 days so that this could be investigated.
They weren’t there to disrupt any process that was going on in the Senate, which is what most of them have been charged with, is trying to disrupt an official proceeding. They wanted what was happening in the joint session of Congress to happen. [Sens.] Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and other people were making the argument that this needs to be paused for 10 days.
There’s no reason for the people that came there to make that happen, for them to disrupt the proceeding, which made us begin to put together—when we were making the film—that the fact of the matter is the people that were trying to disrupt the proceeding or the people that … instigated people to go into the Capitol Building were not people that supported Donald Trump. They were not people that wanted the proceedings to be stopped.
And what happened? As soon as the Capitol was breached and all the violence happened, they suspended the session of Congress and they went ahead and certified the election. We can’t have any more discussion. It’s too dangerous.
So the people that went inside, a majority of them, I would say, at least a significant number of them, were not Trump supporters.
Burgard: Yeah, it was pretty obvious. You saw this mass of possibly up to 2 million people headed to the Capitol.And if you could have seen—and picture a huge herd of cattle, but this cattle was mostly, there was a lot of church groups there, families, two and three generations of folks. And then there was a lot of groups from a former communist country, people that had escaped communist countries.
There were Chinese organizations on the ground.There were Americans who were—nationals who were Vietnamese heritage. All these different groups saying how great America was and warning against China and warning against this country moving to socialism because they had escaped that and come to America.
There was just so many good kids there with their parents. [RECONN TOUR DEFENSE] And like Nick said earlier, they were praying, they were singing. And the people that you saw at the Trump rally, the people that you saw around the Washington Monument, the people that you were with marching to the Capitol Building is a completely different crowd than what we’ve been seeing over and over again in the attack videos.
Just for your audience alone, anybody that looks at a video of what happened at the Capitol, if the people had a mask on or if the mask was dropped below their chins, they were probably operatives. They were in there to capture this operation.
Because we went through almost 2 million people waiting to go see Trump, seeing Trump and marching back, and I think I saw maybe seven or eight people wearing masks. I mean, the Trump supporters just weren’t wearing them.
Searcy: No, because we Trump supporters are heartless. And remember, we want grandmas to die. We won’t wear our masks.
Bluey: Nick, tell me about the various people that you feature in the movie. There are many stories that I think Americans probably have never heard of.
Searcy: Well, as the movie went on, we started talking to people who had their doors broken down by the FBI. And we interviewed a number of people, Derek Kinnison, Tony Martinez, man named Easton Cantwell, Simone Gold, the America’s Frontline Doctors. And all of these stories were pretty similar.
Six a.m., no phone call, no nothing. FBI shows up at their door. In Derek and Tony’s cases, they came with an overwhelming show of force, armored vehicles driving through their little suburban neighborhood, battering rams, flashbang grenades [outside?] . They treated these people as if they were drug cartel members or leaders or serial killers, and most of these people had never been arrested for anything in their lives.
And as they tell their stories in the movie, you start to realize, you start to ask yourself the question, what is the government doing? Why is the government treating these people this way?
Simone Gold even says so in the movie, somebody like her, who’s a public figure, no history of violence, they could have just called and said, “We’d like to speak to you,” but no, they come and they treat them like criminals. And they do that to send a message. They are doing this on purpose.
This like a terror tactic. They’re trying to instill fear in the citizenry, that if you stand up to the government or if you stand up and say, “I believe that the election was stolen and shouldn’t have been certified,” then you were committing some vile act and the government is going to come down on you and treat you like this. And they’re trying to send a message to everybody: “Do not ever resist us again or this is what will happen to you.”
And this is an ongoing terror campaign against these people. There’s still people in jail that have been there for over a year, most of whom are charged with misdemeanors, and the people in our movie are still going through their trials.
And this is judicial harassment. These people don’t have much of a chance. They are facing a D.C. jury. They have to have a D.C. attorney because of the rules in the District of Columbia and a D.C. judge.
All of these are 96% Democrat, all of whom hate Trump, all of whom are biased against Trump supporters.So they go in with all these charges against them and they try to get these people to take a plea deal so that they don’t face 80 years in prison or something insane.
And most of the people in our movie never even went in the building. The only two people that went in the building are two 74-year-old twin sister grandmothers who went into the building, asked the police if they could be there, they took a couple of pictures, they walked out, and three weeks later, the FBI’s banging on their door.This is a terror campaign against American citizens who disagreed with the Democrat Party.
Bluey: Chris, let me ask a follow-up question to that. As you went through the process of identifying the people to feature in the film, what was it like talking to them, getting them to tell their stories? And some of them might be apprehensive to speak publicly about this given the circumstances that they currently face, as Nick said, awaiting their judgment.
Burgard: Never underestimate the power of fear to control people,because there were more people than we put in the movie that didn’t go in the movie because they were so afraid.
We actually had to take one person out of the film who did not go into the Capitol. And he was former law enforcement. He was a retired police chief, and we thought he was going to be the strongest guy in the whole film. And over the course of our production, what happened to him and the continuing pressure that the government put on him, he backed out of the film.
So the folks that are still in the film, the biggest thing I can say about them is what good people they are and how brave they are. …
A common thread we saw in this, like Nick was saying, Tony Martinez and Derek Kinnisonnever went into the building, but what did they have in common and what did some of the other people who were arrested have in common? They were leaders in putting together Trump caravans or helping their community, small business band together when [Black Lives Matter] was coming to protest in their communities or put together anti-mask rallies, but they didn’t go inside the Capitol.
So then you have to ask yourself, “Well, what’s going on here? Are they really going after people they think broke the law? Or is this a political purge?” And that’s something we saw, like with Simone Gold.
I mean, why did they arrest Simone Gold? Because she followed the crowd into the building when the police said it was OK, or did they arrest her because she had previously stood on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court with a bunch of other Frontline Doctors and said, “This pandemic is a hoax. This pandemic is treatable.If we use common sense in good medicine, no one has to die”? That’s what we saw over and over.
Bluey: One of the most powerful parts of the movie, in my experience, was hearing from Aaron Babbitt, the husband of Ashli Babbitt, who tragically died on that day. Nick, [let’s] start with you, what was the experience like talking to Aaron and hearing his perspective on this?
Searcy: So, it was overwhelming. I mean, what the media has done to Ashli Babbitt after she was murdered is as much of a crime as her actual death.They have vilified her as some sort of rabid Trump-supporting zealot. And in fact, nothing can be further from the truth.
Footage that we’ve found since the movie was released of what she was doing before she was killed was, she was telling the people to stop breaking the doors, stop trying to break in. She was talking to the police, saying, “We need more reinforcement up here.” She was actually up there trying to stop the violence rather than cause it, as she’s been portrayed.
And just to hear Aaron recount what it’s like to actually see your wife, your loved one, your partner in life, see her killed on television and be powerless to do anything, to reach her, to be there—I mean, it is heart-rending.
And one of the things we wanted to do with the movie is really humanize Ashli Babbitt and just let people know what she was really like, rather than the way the media has lied about her.
Bluey: And Chris, what are some of the things that you would like our listeners to know about Ashli Babbitt that they might not hear elsewhere?
Burgard: Ashli Babbitt wasn’t only a 14-year military veteran, she was a law enforcement specialist. She had served her country on some very difficult situations in Iraq. She had been previously injured, seriously. She knew what was going on that day. She was there.
Not only, she went there as someone to support her president. She was very excited about the day. You’ll see in the film, she was streaming her thoughts as she was walking toward the Capitol.
But in that moment, the footage that we have of her that we’ve since found, you cansee she’s acting as a law enforcement professional, telling these young cops that I’m sure had much less experience than she did, she’s like, “You need backup in here. There’s a force of people coming. You need to get help now.”
And there’s a guy named Zachary Alam. If you see the footage in the movie, this is the guy that’s trying to break the window. He’s leading the violence against the Capitol. He’s got a military helmet and he’s trying to crack the glass with the military helmet. He’s hitting it with everything he can.
In this other angle that we have, you see Ashli Babbitt grab him. He jerks away from her. She grabs him again, and she throws a left hook into his face and actually knocks his glasses off. This is mere seconds before she gets shot.
As a law enforcement professional, I mean, Aaron thinks, and I agree with him, that due to her claustrophobia and due to the situation getting more and more out of hand, he thinks she actually might have gone through that window trying to escape or get to a better vantage point to try to stop the violence.
In any case, as a law enforcement professional, she knows the procedure for that you follow before use of deadly force, the use of deadly force continuum. She knew as a military law enforcement personnel what the Capitol Police training was, and they did not do their job.
There was no vocal warning. There was no visible presence. There was no use of nonlethal force. So the last thing that woman thought as she was going through that window was, “I’m going to get shot for doing this.”
You look at the footage of [Lt. Michael] Byrd and how he handled his weapon, that was not a professional.
Bluey: I want to ask you both about a couple of the families who are featured in the film. Let’s start with Tony Martinez. You’ve been able to pull some of the actual footage of the FBI raiding Tony’s home. You spoke to Tony and his teenage daughter. Nick, what was that like, hearing from this 13-year-old girl about the experience of having her home raided?
Searcy: It’s heartbreaking. I mean, they basically terrorized and traumatized [this] family. And by treating them, like I said, like they were hardened criminals. These are decent, hardworking Americans, church-going people, never been arrested for anything before. A man and his wife and three children, and they threatened to break down his door and then literally break the sliding glass door in the back.
And Tony and his daughter Isabelle were frantically trying to get them to pause long enough for them to control the family dog. And because the dog was traumatized, of course, and they couldn’t control the dog, the dog [pit bull] ran away, was gone for a week.
And they pulled this 13-year-old girl out of the house and handcuffed her on the sidewalk, and it’s nonsensical. You can’t explain why they would do this in any other way than they are intentionally trying to traumatize people. And it’s heartbreaking to hear them tell the story.
Bluey: Nick, the other family that you interviewed was Derek Kinnison and his daughter, and you have footage from the Ring doorbell camera, essentially that you include in the film, and what’s Derek’s story?
Searcy: Derek and Tony were friends and they went there together. They felt called to go and they were there with first-aid gear. Basically, they had received some reports on the internet that there might be some Antifa presence there, and they wanted to be there to be present to help people.
There are no weapons. They weren’t carrying anything except first-aid gear. And Derek was treated much the same way as Tony. And when you see the footage of the armored vehicles, it’s surreal. It looks like something in a crazy, futuristic movie, or something that you might see in the streets of Afghanistan.
It looks like a raid. A raid on a terrorist is what it looks like. They’ve got armored vehicles, battering rams, 20 SWAT team members. Derek said, when he stepped out of his house, there were red dots all over his chest. He’s got his hands up. It’s surreal. It looks like a raid on a terrorist camp.
Bluey: Chris, let me ask you this question, because we are just about to embark on the Jan. 6 committee set up by [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi, stacked with Democrats and a couple of Republicans who are Republican in name only. And they are presenting a narrative that is quite different from what we’ve just heard you and Nick talk about. As Americans see coverage of these hearings, what are some of the things you want them to remember and think about in the context of the film that you’ve made?
Burgard: I would like them to know that everything the J6 committee is pushing is a lie. Everything that they’re telling you is a lie.
If the J6 community was, congressional committee was interested in the truth,they would’ve subpoenaed somebody like Millie Weaver, who is an investigative journalist, who has a track record of infiltrating groups and providing information to the Capitol Police and to Secret Service, and the FBI that has been used in actionable law enforcement actions to protect senators like Lindsey Graham and other VIP personnel.
Before this film, she had infiltrated a call that had not only far-left groups planning an event just like this that was carried out, but on that call were actually members of our own government.
Now, that footage is in the movie. Why don’t they subpoena her and bring her in so that she can show the evidence that she brought up that was never used? Why don’t they subpoena the foreign Isabelle, the 13-year-old girl that was dragged out of her bed and handcuffed? How about her 4- and 7-year-old brothers and sisters that are still completelysuffering from PTSD from being woken up with flashbangs and having their door smashed in?
These are what I’d like America to see, is the whole story, the real story. They’re not getting that. They’re getting a false narrative.
Basically, you’re seeing one of the biggest psy-ops this country’s ever gone through. And the congressional committee in tandem with the fake news media is working hand and foot to bring this fiction and push it into the minds of the American people. I’d like to see the truth.
Bluey: Will there be a point when Americans say, “Enough is enough. We’ve watched ‘Capitol Punishment.’ We’ve read other sources. We’ve read Julie Kelly’s book. We’re not standing for this anymore”? When will that moment come?
Searcy: I think that moment has to come when somebody in the Republican Party stands up for these victims. So far we haven’t had anybody, very few people. Maybe [Reps.] Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, Matt Gaetz, maybe a few others have really tried to call attention to the fact that these people are not only being held in jail, in D.C. jails for misdemeanor charges, for month after month after month with their trials continually pushed forward,[BY DEFENSE?] but also that the people who have been awaiting trial now for over 18 months or almost 18 months, they keep having their adjudications continued and everything because the government wants to bleed them out.
The government is trying to bleed these people of their resources and make them so desperate that they just accept a plea deal just to get it over with. And it is so criminal, so wrong what is happening to these people. We need someone, even if it’s President Trump himself, we need someone to stand up for these prisoners and these people that are being tortured. And until that happens, until the Jan. 6 committee is given all this legitimacy; treated, taken seriously—
The Jan. 6 committee is a clown show. It is a joke. It is there simply to draw this out so that they can try to use it for the narrative on the next election to say, “We’ve got to stop these evil white supremacists, these domestic terrorists,” blah, blah, blah.
There’s no truth in it whatsoever. And until our side stands upand forcefully calls it out, I don’t see it ending anytime soon. And if it actually does impact the election and it works for them, they’re never going to let it go.
Bluey: Let me ask you this as we start to wrap-up here. Chris, I’ll begin with you. This was obviously a massive undertaking on your part and Nick, and so many of the other people who were involved in making “Capitol Punishment,” what was it that motivated you to devote the time to doing this?
Burgard: My kids love for this country. Nick and I could not stand to sit and see this day in history stolen. Somebody had to tell the truth and that’s what we did. And this is now the most censored movie in America.
There’s a reason why the Silicon Valley algorithms and the mainstream media have done everything they can to cover this film up, because this film completely destroys the false Jan. 6 narrative. It completely destroys the agenda of the J6 commission. The Democrats are going to double down on J6. And it’s been working for them.
I mean, people on our side are so afraid to be branded as violent insurrectionist, they won’t look at the truth. This movie completelydestroys their agenda.The Democrats are going to double down on this all the way through the 2020 elections. And with what I’ve seen, them abuse the law to average citizens, I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to charge Trump with something else so that instead of running for a fair election in 2024, he’s fighting off some sort of indictments.
The abuse I’ve seen of our legal system in this film is incredible.My dad went to the 109 Session, FBI Academy. My dad was law enforcement. He must be rolling over in his grave with the abuse of power that’s been going on legally here.
The truth is the only thing that will beat this. And if there’s a tipping point of truth, of enough people see with their own eyes what happened that day, everything falls apart. Big shifts, big things happen, big doors open on very small hinges.
And the hinge that makes everything fall apart is Jan. 6, because people can see with their own eyes what really happened that day. They can see with their own eyes what our government is doing to innocent Americans and to small children. And they will stand up and they will say, “This should not be happening in the United States America. This is Third World. This is what happened in the revolutions in Venezuela, in Ukraine, in Egypt. It put the Muslim Brotherhood in power. That same thing should not be happening in America, but it just did.”
Bluey: Nick, I’ll give you the last word here. What was it about this day and your being involved there that led you to embark on a project like this, to tell the story of Jan. 6 from this perspective?
Searcy: Well, to be honest, I must say, at the beginning I was reluctant because I was scared. And so many of the people that we talk to, we interview a number of people in the movie, but there’s an equal number, if not more, that were afraid to speak tous.
Because when you see the way the government is treating these people, it makes you wonder, “Is it worth it?” But as we kind of got going, and Chris and I, “OK, we’re going to make this movie,” and we started talking to people as it went on, it became something that I knew I had to do. We had to finish this. We had to see it through. …
I was appalled at my own government and I really never wanted to think this. I never wanted to think that this is what my government is like, but it is. And we have to expose it. We have to get the truth out there and people need to confront it.
I’ve always said from the beginning, even if you disagree with us, please, would you just please watch this movie and tell me if you think this is the way Americans should be treated, no matter what side they’re on.
Even if they were there protesting a Republican president, do you think this is correct? Do you think this is the way our government should operate? And a lot of the problem that we have is a lot of people on the left, they’re afraid to look at it. They don’t want to see the movie. They call it propaganda. They’re just afraid to look at something that might disturb their worldview.
But I really believe that if more people will confront the truth of what happened about Jan. 6 and see through the government’s lies, we’re all going to be better off for it. We can still save this country, but people have to confront the truth of what is actually happening right in front of their faces.
Bluey: And what’s the best way for our listeners to watch the film?
Searcy: Right now, there’s a number of places, but the best one right now is: Go to givemelibertynow.org. … And you can also find it at capitolpunishmentthemovie.com.Both those places, the movie’s available.
Bluey: We will be sure to include links to those, both in the transcript of this interview and the notes for this podcast. As somebody who’s watched it myself, I’m certainly grateful that you’ve given us the time today to explain what motivated you to make the movie, and also why you are so passionate about telling those stories of the Americans who’ve suffered as a result.
Searcy: Thank you, Rob.
Burgard: Thanks for having us on, Rob.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.
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https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/chris-buskirk-supposed-be-respectable-face-new-peter-thiel-backed-far-right
when The New York Times disclosed the existence of a new multipronged right-wing project, the Rockbridge Network, backed by multibillionaire Peter Thiel in April, the paper named only one person with an official position in the new organization: its founder, Chris Buskirk. Little is known about the new venture, and Buskirk himself remains relatively obscure, although he maintains considerable access to mainstream media outlets.
In reporting on the new organization, the Times didn’t mention that the website Buskirk edits and publishes, the far-right and nationalist outlet American Greatness, is home to an array of January 6 conspiracy theories, supplemented with defenses of military coups and a combination of thinly coded and occasionally overt racism. In general,American Greatness aims to stay just barely inside the mainstream discourse, typically avoiding the kind of open white nationalism that can relegate an outlet to being rejected by legacy right-wing media.
Given the near-total secrecy around Rockbridge, it’s difficult to know what its exact plans are, but the Times reported that the group is planning to spend “more than $30 million on conservative media, legal, policy and voter registration projects, among other initiatives.” It’s not hard to determine what kinds of candidates it’ll back — both Thiel and Buskirk are supporters of far-right Senate candidates J.D. Vance and Blake Masters. As for its media ambitions, the group budgeted $8 million in 2021 towards the goal of creating a “new conservative ecosystem.” It’s not clear who got that money, but Thiel is rumored to have funded the efforts of a cadre of right-wing nationalist media figures. Whether that was through his foundation or Buskirk and Rockbridge is unclear. Regardless, Buskirk is an admirer of the late Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, and the best window into the types of projects the organization is likely to support — or is already supporting behind the scenes — is probably his site, American Greatness.
As the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, riot prepares to present to the American people, starting this week, facts and evidence about the events of that day and those leading up to it, the need to examine the role Buskirk’s website has played in spreading misinformation about the attempted coup is especially urgent – particularly since Buskirk’s money-man, Thiel, wrote in 2009, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Thiel also has close ties with figures who openly opine about their anti-democratic ideologies, and it's worth considering that one of Thiel’s main interests in Buskirk may be his site’s attacks on the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
Buskirk himself serves two audiences. As publisher of American Greatness, he’s the ringmaster of a motley collection of firebrands and trolls looking to find how far they can push the concept of “nationalism” before it crosses into something more openly ugly.In his own writing and public speaking, he’s not a provocateur but a kind of human Botox that smooths out the rough edges of the far-right, presenting its palatable if slightly anesthetized face. “‘Build the wall’ … — that’s like a shorthand version of saying ‘let’s have a more sensible immigration policy,’” he implausibly
in an interview with Charlie Kirk in 2020.
Unlike many of the writers he publishes, he presents as a fairly mainstream figure. He is a contributing writer to the Times op-ed page, though he hasn’t published a piece there in over a year. He has written for The Washington Post and has appeared numerous times on PBS and NPR. In 2019, he spoke on a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival, criticizing mainstream outlets for writing profiles of the white nationalist Richard Spencer. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to give oxygen to that sort of thing,” Buskirk said. It’s a fair point, if a bit misleading, because his site has also provided a platform to Spencer.More generally, American Greatness has given oxygen to a host of far-right, anti-democratic ideas.
Buskirk in his own words
Buskirk sees himself as a champion of the working man as a household provider, albeit one calcified by Fordist-era nostalgia. And while he will regularly rail against “elites,” he has no problem with billionaires like Thiel as such. “The problem isn’t that rich people are getting richer. It’s that almost everyone else is, at best, running to stand still,” Buskirk wrote in December 2020.
Because Buskirk is committed to preserving capitalism while adopting an anti-elitist pose, his analysis is often superficial. He has railed against “globalism,” which he argues “wants two things above all others: consumers and cheap labor.” There is, of course, an economic mode of production and accompanying ideology that demands cheap labor and the constant flow of commodities; it is called capitalism.
Buskirk’s anti-“globalism” and facile pro-worker affect is a common strain among reactionary nationalists across the world, alliances Buskirk and company hope to deepen. Toward that end, he dined with far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in 2019, and he has referred to Italy’s far-right politician Matteo Salvini as a “charismatic” candidate with “powerful ideas.” Salvini is virulently anti-migrant and often makes barely hidden allusions to fascist tropes or ideas. The neo-fascist group Forza Nuova supported Salvini as well.
When Buskirk approaches the right’s more extreme ideas, it’s often with a degree of plausible deniability, carefully calibrating his message to satisfy readers of his site without losing access to mainstream outlets like NPR or PBS. He recently retweeted an endorsement of “Christian nationalism,” which one scholar of the far-right has described as a way to “cool down the idea of fascism without losing the fascism.” Similarly, in 2018 he quoted a piece he’d published pushing a toned-down version of the racist “great replacement” theory....twt]
his belief in the theory is to be expected, given his admiration of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, the person most responsible for mainstreaming it. Carlson “is the most articulate spokesman for a set of principles and priorities that are important to middle America, but anathema to the bipartisan ruling class,” Buskirk wrote in 2019.
Buskirk hasn’t appeared on Carlson’s show often, but in one segment ostensibly about how conservatives can protect the environment in which Buskirk was a guest, Carlson pushed eco-fascistic talking points. “Crowded places are ugly places. I mean, you could make a really strong case for restricting immigration on environmental grounds. We've made that case on the show,” Carlson said. Buskirk did not contradict or challenge Carlson, which is not surprising given that Buskirk had previously exploited a family’s tragedy to argue for lowering immigration levels.
In 2018, the death of Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts became an anti-immigrant propaganda tool for the xenophobic right, because her killer had entered the country without authorization. “The way many people see it, if a foreign national, apparently in the country illegally, kills an American citizen, it underscores the urgency of Trump’s message of putting Americans first,” Buskirk wrote in the Times, passing off the xenophobia off on to “many people” rather than owning it himself. (Tibbetts’ family asked the right to stop using her death to demonize immigrants.) His writers don’t bother with the act, though. On June 1, Daniel Oliver asked whether immigrants, specifically Muslims, know how to “behave in a ‘civilized’ society?”
Like most in the Trump wing of the conservative movement, Buskirk supported Judge Roy Moore in the Alabama Republican Senate primary in 2017. After multiple women came forward to report that Moore sexually assaulted them, including one who was 14 at the time of the incident, Buskirk continued to back Moore. Buskirk dismissed Moore’s behavior as “actions while he was single” and suggested the candidate was “someone who appears to have lived a life of personal probity since then.” Moore was in his early 30s during the alleged incidents.
That wasn’t the first time Buskirk had downplayed abusive behavior toward women. After tapes of Trump bragging about grabbing women “by the pussy” were revealed in October 2016, Buskirk dismissed the recording as “comments about the women he [Trump] tried to have sex with,” writing that the occasion “offered the GOP’s prissy moralizers yet another opening to leap on top of a soap box.” Most importantly for Buskirk, “Trump’s lewd and crude comments 11 years ago do not diminish the dangers of a Clinton election in 30 days” (emphasis original).
As for Buskirk’s ambitions with the Rockbridge media project, his praise of Roger Ailes may provide clues. “It wasn’t until Ailes built Fox News into a powerhouse that broke the monopoly of Left-liberal legacy media on television news that he became public enemy number one,” Buskirk wrote. “It’s a role he seems to have relished.”
“Ailes was energetic, ambitious, unorthodox, creative, brilliant, charming, disarming, and a bunch of other things that made all kinds of different people yell, at critical moments, ‘Get Ailes!’” Buskirk gushed. “I didn’t know him, but I wish I had.”
American Greatness and the January 6 attempted coup
American Greatness, and specifically senior writer Julie Kelly, is one of the key sources of conspiracy theories and misinformation about the January 6 insurrection. Kelly is a regular guest on right-wing media outlets, including appearing at least 17 times on Fox News to discuss the riot and its aftermath. Her purported investigations have propelled much of the manufactured confusion about that day.
Kelly has referred to January 6 as an “inside job,” suggested it was a false flag, and pushed a conspiracy theory that the FBI planted pipe bombs at the offices of the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee the day before the riot. [vid?
July 2021, Kelly tweeted that Washington, D.C., police officer Michael Fanone – who was testifying before Congress about the January 6 attack at the time – was acrisis actor. She said that prosecution of the insurrectionists is an attempt to “silence political dissent,” and said it is “encouraging” that Republican voters “do not think that Joe Biden was fairly elected in 2020.” Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander praised Kelly, along with Tucker Carlson, as “patriots that are doing great work out there.”
Buskirk is a consistent champion of Kelly, calling her “indispensable,” and although he typically stays away from outright election denial, he walks up to the line. One day after the 2020 election, Buskirk tweeted in support of a “protect the vote” rally in Maricopa County, Arizona, one of the states Trump’s allies targeted in their effort to change the election results. In a recent interview on America First with Sebastian Gorka, he said a ridiculous new Dinesh D’Souza film about the election was “very, very well-researched” and “the evidence it presents, I think, is conclusive.” His site took a similar line, running a piece with the headline “2000 Mules Documentary Provides Compelling Evidence That 2020 Election Was Stolen.” The Washington Post, on the other hand, captured the reality of the film: “‘2000 Mules’ offers the least convincing election-fraud theory yet.”
Beyond Kelly, American Greatness regularly runs pieces that downplay January 6 and has accused liberals of being the real coup-plotters. Immediately after the election, the site published a conspiracy theory-addled piece alleging voting irregularity with Dominion Voting Systems, which was completely unsubstantiated at the time and remains so today. (Dominion sued Trump-affiliated lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell for making similar claims.)
John Eastman, whom the New York Times recently described as “the architect of a strategy to overturn the 2020 election,” has written for American Greatness, including about his own role in attempting to keep Trump in power. In a piece headlined “Trying to Prevent Illegal Conduct From Deciding an Election Is Not Endorsing a ‘Coup,’” Eastman repeated the lie that there was significant illegal voting in 2020. He also argued that a legal memo he wrote, outlining various other ways the electoral vote could be certified in Trump’s favor, was simply advice on how to defend the legitimacy of the election. “The memo outlined ways to ensure election integrity in the face of significant and demonstrable violations of state election law,” Eastman wrote in his own defense.
Far from how he portrays himself in his American Greatness blog, Eastman appears to have been intimately and proactively involved in overturning the election results, including working behind the scenes to get a Pennsylvania legislator to “strip Mr. Biden of his win in that state by applying a mathematical equation to accepting the validity of mail ballots, which were most heavily used by Democrats during the pandemic.”
In reality, there was never any evidence of voter fraud that could change the outcome of the election. In March, a federal judge concluded that Trump and Eastman probably committed felonies in their pursuit of overturning the election, which he referred to as “a coup in search of a legal theory.” According to Judge David Carter’s findings, Eastman participated in two meetings in the immediate run-up to January 6 “explicitly tied to persuading Vice President Pence to disrupt the joint session of Congress.”
Others with direct ties to Trump’s effort to overturn the election have also written for the site. American Greatness has published Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who was recently subpoenaed by the House January 6 committee because, the committee said, she “promoted false claims of election fraud to members of Congress.” She was on a phone call when Trump tried to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “‘find’ enough votes to reverse his loss there,” according to the New York Times.
There’s also no shortage of hyperbole and exaggeration in American Greatness pieces regarding the aftermath of the insurrection and subsequent prosecutions. “American conservatives are, right now, on a course for being every bit as ostracized and alienated from broader society as Jews were in the years leading up to Nazi Germany,” wrote Eric Lendrum. He added that January 6 defendants were being abused by prison guards because of “their race and political beliefs.” Two defendants were, in Lendrum’s telling, “forced to undergo political indoctrination from judges and prosecutors” when they “were ordered by the courts to declare that Joe Biden was legitimately elected, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”
And when American Greatness isn’t whipping up conspiratorial frenzies or allowing coup-plotters to rewrite their own narrative, it just does straight revisionism. “The immense and justified outrage of President Trump and his 75 million followers never led to violence or illegality and the gathering in Washington on January 6 demonstrated solidarity with the outgoing president,” wrote Conrad Black, in March 2021.
American Greatness’ bigotry
American Greatness generally eschews open racism in favor of barely coded dog whistles, but not always. One of the site’s most overtly racist pieces was a poem called Cuck Elegy. The anonymous poem was published after “Never Trump” conservative David French confronted Buskirk about harassment he’d received from Kelly regarding comments French’s wife had made about Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Separately from Kelly, French had been subjected to racist harassment from alt-right trolls regarding his Black adopted daughter, suggesting that the child was the product of French’s wife sleeping with Black men. Kelly was not implicated in that harassment, but she had alluded to it in a tweet to French. Shortly after French confronted Buskirk about Kelly’s harassment, American Greatness published Cuck Elegy and included a photo of French with the post. The piece has since been removed from the site, but a tweet from the official American Greatness account promoting it is still up.[aud]
far more common on the site are familiar complaints against wokeness and claims that anti-racism efforts are the real racism. The headline of one piece referred to Juneteenth as “George Floyd’s Critical Race Holiday.” The subheading elaborated that the decision to make the day a federal holiday is an “enormous win for the racism industrial complex.” The piece called the holiday an act of “reifying unjustified contemporary black grievance” and suggested it “could at least be combined with Martin Luther King Day.” Another argued that anti-racism is simply “thinly veiled anti-white hate.”
Apocalyptic visions of armed Black people are common on the site as well. “The African American militants who were allowed by the Democratic big-city mayors to ransack urban America all summer and were rewarded for their murder, vandalism, and looting with the defamation and defunding of the nation’s urban police forces, are agitating and threatening with redoubled vigor,” wrote Conrad Black, in March 2021. He added, “Many of the great anti-Trump newsrooms are being overrun by belligerent white-hating minorities.”
Another recurring theme is writers lamenting a perceived deficiency in Black culture. “Unfortunately, American blacks were made to think that because of landmark legislation [of the civil rights era], their major socio-economic problems could be solved through direct political action—a disastrous misconception,” wrote Paul Gottfried. “There could be no substitute for communal cooperation, hard work, and the maintenance of the family bonds that existed in the black society that I observed as a child.” He added that the Voting Rights Act has resulted in “a radicalized black electorate that has empowered the racially divisive, antiwhite Congressional Black Caucus.” Another piece enumerated the “pathologies of inner-city black culture,” including: “fatherlessness, crime, nihilistic alienation, and the exaltation of thuggery.”
Variations on white pride abound as well. A post written by Jeremy Carl argued that Democrats have “attacked, on a relentless and increasingly hysterical basis, white Americans, who as the overwhelming majority population, were the primary developers of America’s cultural, intellectual, and political heritage.” Carl went on to echo sentiment from the white supremacist movement of the 1980s and 1990s, which called for the creation of a white ethnostate in the American West and Pacific Northwest. “We must begin to relocate physically to welcoming local geographies and rebuild our capacity for independent action by creating parallel institutions to the existing corrupted ones,” he argued. Another piece, dripping with resentment, argued that the “media and elite-driven” message is “white America will always be guilty and white America can never put the past behind it.”
The site is often virulently anti-trans as well. A recent post about a fascist attack on a drag show in Dallas used the bigoted term “transvestite” to refer to a drag queen. Buskirk himself called the drag performers “evil people” who were “coming after kids,” arguing “there is almost nothing that can be done that is over the line to stop this.” Sean Ross Callaghan used the deliberately offensive term “transexuals” in a post in 2021. Another discussed “the evil of children’s transgenderism,” and yet another focused on “the insanity of transgenderism.”
These are the arguments that Buskirk is happy to feed with oxygen. He has the backing of Thiel and other multimillionaires and at least some access to mainstream platforms. Right now, American Greatness barely punches at its weight, much less above, but it would be a mistake to underestimate the effect the Rockbridge Network could have on the country.
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https://thebreakthrough.org/people/julie-kelly
https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/dumbassery-conservative-editor-calls-out-right-wing-medias-bad-takes-on-deadly-coronavirus-pandemic/
no lnx
‘Dumbassery’: Conservative editor calls out right-wing media’s ‘bad takes’ on deadly coronavirus pandemic
Written by Alex Henderson March 17, 2020
As the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic continues to grow in the United States and many other countries, one thing The Bulwark can take pride in is the fact that — unlike so many other right-wing media outlets — it didn’t spend weeks trying to convince readers that coronavirus was merely a liberal hoax or “fake news” designed to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency. The Never Trump conservatives at The Bulwark always took the pandemic seriously, including The Bulwark’s senior editor, Jim Swift — who lambasts some of the incredibly moronic things that various Trumpistas and far-right media figures have said about coronavirus recently.
“The internet being what it is, and politics being what it is — and 2020 dumbassery being what it is — there are a lot of bad covid-19 takes floating around,” Swift asserts. And he cities Newsmax writer John Cardillo as a glaring example.
On March 13, Cardillo went to Twitter and said of coronavirus, “Treat it like the flu. The panic and hysteria created by the media is criminal. They are destroying lives, businesses, and the economy to make Trump look bad and again screw with elections.”
In response to Cardillo’s tweet, Swift writes, “Sure, John. The news media aren’t covering this story because it’s important and deadly, they’re only covering it because they want to take down President Donald J. Trump.”
In other words, treat it like the flu.
The panic and hysteria created by the media is criminal.
They are destroying lives, businesses, and the economy to make Trump look bad and again screw with elections. https://t.co/Pmclsy25wJ
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) March 13, 2020
Swift also slams Liberty University’s Jerry Falwell, Jr. Appearing as a guest on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends,” Falwell argued that Americans are “overreacting” to coronavirus and that all the media coverage of the pandemic is merely an “attempt to get Trump.” Moreover, Falwell claimed that coronavirus is a North Korean bioweapon.
On Fox & Friends, Jerry Falwell Jr claims people are “overreacting” to coronavirus, the national response is “their next attempt to get Trump,” and the virus itself is a North Korean bioweapon. pic.twitter.com/2JPuNBW7C3
— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) March 13, 2020
Swift goes on to lambast Infowars’ Alex Jones and “old-school televangelist grifter Jim Bakker” for “hawking” bogus treatments they claim will cure coronavirus. And Swift cites a March 12 tweet from The Federalist’s Sean Davis as another example of idiocy: Davis tweeted, “Corporate political media hate you, they hate the country, and they will stop at nothing to reclaim power to rule over you. If that means that they destroy the economy via a panic that they helped incite, all while running interference for the communist country that started it, so be it.”
Truly deranged, InfoWars level stuff from The Federalist. pic.twitter.com/FzBTldunsg
— andrew kaczynski?? (@KFILE) March 13, 2020
Sarcastically describing Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt as an “aviation expert…. not to be confused with Amelia Earhart,” Swift notes her recent comment, “It’s actually the safest time to fly. Everyone I know that’s flying right now, terminals are pretty much dead.”
Ainsley Earhardt: “It’s actually the safest time to fly. Everyone I know that’s flying right now, terminals are pretty much dead.” (It is not the safest time to fly.) pic.twitter.com/a3BnajAbj5
— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) March 13, 2020
AmGreatness’ Julie Kelly, who Swift describes as a “nutty, bad-faith operator,” has called social distancing a left-wing plot to “get control” that is “far scarier than any virus.”
Scientists and health officials say social distancing (reducing contact, temporarily) is an effective way to reduce infections. Naturally, some are claiming it’s a leftist plot to gain control of the country. pic.twitter.com/TDMJM6ddir
— Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) March 13, 2020
At this point I think you have a greater chance of being attacked by Joe Biden than catching coronavirus
— Julie Kelly (@julie_kelly2) March 10, 2020
China. https://t.co/VULqyrceUH
— Ron Coleman (@RonColeman) March 13, 2020
Good news on the coronavirus you won’t find anywhere else:
-China has closed down its last coronavirus hospital. Not enough new cases to support them.
-Italy is hit hard, experts say, because they have the oldest population in Europe (average age of those that have died is 81).
— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) March 13, 2020
Swift concludes his article by warning that as coronavirus “spreads” in the U.S., Americans will do themselves a favor by not taking nonsense from Fox News seriously.
“Things are going to get worse — not only as the pandemic spreads, but as the bad takes spread too,” Swift warns. “If you’re stuck at home, I’d encourage you not to watch cable news — and encourage your family to avoid it, too. Especially Fox News.”
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bs blurb:
da election of Donald Trump in 2016 didn’t just shock the country, it jolted the Republican Party and forced an overdue reckoning between rank-and-file Republicans and party leadership. Long-held beliefs promoted by the Republican Party establishment were smashed in real time as Republican voters, and millions of Obama voters especially in the Midwest, rejected the bi-party consensus on illegal immigration, international trade pacts, and losing foreign wars. The GOP?and the conservative movement?was upended by a brash Manhattan mogul who connected with coveted working-class voters in a way no other Republican presidential candidate had in three decades.
Stung by his ascendancy as Republican voters rejected one establishment candidate after another during the presidential primaries, exiled conservative leaders banded together to form what is known as “NeverTrump.” This cabal of self-proclaimed conservatives includes two former Republican presidential nominees, former Republican lawmakers and Bush administration officials, campaign consultants, and editors and writers at top conservative publications.
After failing to stop Trump in 2016, NeverTrump became part of #TheResistance, a crusade primarily organized by the Left to sabotage Trump’s presidency. The very same people who had used the Republican Party as their vehicle for power, fame, and influence are actively working to destroy the party’s leader and punish Trump-supporting Republicans in Washington. NeverTrump helped deceive the public about nonexistent Russian election collusion and supported impeaching the president. Some jumped on the Left’s mob against Brett Kavanaugh and the Covington Catholic High School students. NeverTrump opposed nearly every Trump policy without offering any alternative to what they derisively called “Trumpism.”
At the same time, NeverTrump became what they claimed to despise about Donald Trump: petty, vengeful, bombastic, reactionary, and abusive. As a result, it’s imperative that those associated with NeverTrump never hold a place of influence in the GOP again.
“Disloyal Opposition is a deft exposé of NeverTrump, a small group of former conservatives, nearly all of them occupying posts in Washington, who never came to terms with the election of Donald Trump and have spent the last three years working against everything they once believed. Julie Kelly names names in this rapid-fire account, describing how these formerly influential conservatives joined with Democrats and left-wing philanthropists in a campaign to bring down the most conservative president since Ronald Reagan.”?James Piereson, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and president of the William E. Simon Foundation
“Julie Kelly offers a bombshell description of the descent of the so-called NeverTrump Republicans from initial opposition to Trump to bitter and often ugly derangement?ending, as she points out, in political irrelevance, echo-chamber banality, Beltway neuroticism, hypocritical renunciations of most of their own prior positions, useful idiocy in service to the billionaire Left, and careers reduced to Twitter obsessions. Throughout her entire j’accuse exposé, Kelly names names and pulls no punches in a lively, carefully documented, and damning anatomy of one of the strangest cases of collective political suicide in modern memory.”?Victor Davis Hanson, the Hoover Institution, Stanford University
“Rarely have dismalness of subject and liveliness of treatment come together in such a delightful way. Julie Kelly gives us a blow-by-blow treatment of the Washington Generals’ team bus catching fire, spinning out of control, and speeding off a cliff. The spectacle is horrible, yet you can’t help feeling that the people on board deserved it.”?Michael Anton, lecturer and research fellow, Hillsdale College
“It’s no surprise the Left wants to destroy President Trump. But some people who call themselves ‘Conservatives’ have the same objective. Find out who they are and what they’ve done by reading Julie Kelly’s Disloyal Opposition. President Trump broke the establishment, including fake Conservatives like Bill Kristol. Julie Kelly’s Disloyal Opposition is essential reading for all who believe in Making America Great Again.”?Sebastian Gorka, host of America First and former strategist to President Trump
Julie Kelly shows how many Republican publicists have masqueraded their growing identity with America’s leftist ruling class by pretending mere opposition to Donald Trump’s peculiarities. Disloyal Opposition performs a valuable service by demonstrating that the Never Trump movement opposes not one man, but rather the American people’s priorities - in short, that politics has consequences. --Angelo M. Codevilla, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University
About the Author
Julie Kelly is a former political consultant in suburban Chicago and a stay-at-home mom. She is a senior contributor to American Greatness. Her past work can be found at the Federalist, National Review, the Hill, and the Wall Street Journal. Kelly wrote about food policy, agriculture, and climate change before covering politics in the Trump era. She lives in Orland Park, Illinois, with her husband and two daughters.
Product details
Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: Encounter Books (July 7, 2020)
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https://www.alternet.org/environment/koch-funded-anti-climate-group-tells-women-ignore-concerns-about-toxic-chemicals
At a recent soiree at Union Station, the D.C. power elite gathered in an anti-public health confab dressed up as a celebration of women that should concern anyone who cares about the health and rights of women and children.
The Independent Women’s Forum drew an impressive array of Republican politicians to its annual gala sponsored by, among others, the American Chemistry Council, the tobacco company Philip Morris, the cosmetics industry trade group, Google and the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council.
Speakers included House Speaker Paul Ryan and Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, who won the IWF Valor Award for being a “passionate advocate for limited government” who does not embrace “the idea that being a woman is a handicap.” Conway is also an IWF board member.
So what is the Independent Women’s Forum? IWF got its start 25 years ago as an effort to defend now-Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as he faced sexual harassment charges. The group has since raised millions from the secretive foundations of the Koch brothers and other right-wing billionaires to carry out its mission of “increasing the number of women who value free markets and personal liberty.”
In the world of the IWF—a group Joan Walsh described in The Nation as “the ‘feminists’ doing the Koch’s dirty work”—that means defending the freedom of corporations to sell toxic products and pollute the environment, while trying to frame that agenda as good for women and children.
E-cigarettes should be approved because of the unique biological needs of women, for example, and climate science education is too scary for students. (The e-cig letter is “standard Philip Morris PR,” says tobacco industry expert Stan Glanz, and Greenpeace classifies IWF as a “Koch Industries climate denial front group.”)
Women can also benefit by ignoring “alarmist” concerns about toxic chemicals, according to an IWF lecture series sponsored by Monsanto.
To give you a sense of the messaging on chemicals: Moms who insist on organic food are arrogant, snobby “helicopter parents” who “need to be in control of everything when it comes to their kids, even the way food is grown and treated,” according to Julie Gunlock, director of IWF’s “Culture of Alarmism” project, as quoted in an article titled “The tyranny of the organic mommy mafia” that was written by an IWF fellow.
At the IWF gala, Gunlock posed for a photo op with Monsanto staffer Aimee Hood and Julie Kelly, who writes articles casting doubt on climate science and pesticide risk, and once even called climate hero Bill McKibben “a piece of shit.”
Gunlock and Kelly are “rock stars,” Hood tweeted.
“I’m framing this,” Monsanto employee Cami Ryan tweeted in return.
Put a frame around the whole shindig and behold the absurdity of corporate-captured politics in America, where policy leaders openly embrace an anti-women “women’s group” that equates “freedom” with eating toxic pesticides, at an event sponsored by the chemical industry, a tobacco company, an extremist group that wants to do away with a voter-elected Senate and the world’s most influential news source.
Meanwhile in the rational world
In just the past few weeks, the Journals of the American Medical Association published a Harvard study implicating pesticide-treated foods in fertility problems, a UC San Diego study documenting huge increases in human exposure to a common pesticide, and a physician’s commentary urging people to eat organic food.Recent science suggests that if you want to get pregnant and raise healthy children, you should reject the propaganda that groups like the Independent Women’s Forum are trying to sell.
I wrote about those studies in more detail here, “Trying to get pregnant? Science suggests: eat organic and regulate the pesticide industry”.
Mainstream groups have been giving similar advice for years.
In 2012, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended reducing children’s exposure to pesticides due to a growing body of literature that links pesticides to chronic health problems in children, including behavioral problems, birth defects, asthma and cancer.
In 2009, the bipartisan President’s Cancer Panel reported: “the true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated.”
The panel urged then-President George W. Bush “most strongly to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our Nation’s productivity, and devastate American lives.”
Unfortunately for our nation, acting on that advice has not been possible in a political system indentured to corporate interests.
Corporate capture of health and science
For decades, pesticide corporations have manipulated science and U.S. regulatory agencies to keep the truth hidden about the health dangers of their chemicals.
The details are being revealed by hundreds of thousands of pages of industry documents turned loose from legal discovery, whistleblowers and FOIA requests that have been examined in government hearings and by many media outlets.
For a synopsis of Monsanto’s “long-running secretive campaign to manipulate the scientific record, to sway public opinion, and to influence regulatory assessments” on its herbicide glyphosate, see this essay by my colleague Carey Gillam in Undark magazine.
As one example of government/corporate collusion: in 2015, on the Obama administration’s watch, the EPA official in charge of evaluating the cancer risk of glyphosate allegedly bragged to a Monsanto executive about helping to “kill” another agency’s cancer study, as Bloomberg reported.
Suppressing science has been a bipartisan, decades-long project. Since 1973, Monsanto has presented dubious science to claim the safety of glyphosate while EPA largely looked the other way, as Valerie Brown and Elizabeth Grossman documented for In These Times.
Brown and Grossman spent two years examining the publicly available archive of EPA documents on glyphosate, and reported:
“Glyphosate is a clear case of ‘regulatory capture’ by a corporation acting in its own financial interest while serious questions about public health remain in limbo. The record suggests that in 44 years—through eight presidential administrations—EPA management has never attempted to correct the problem. Indeed, the pesticide industry touts its forward-looking, modern technologies as it strives to keep its own research in the closet, and relies on questionable assumptions and outdated methods in regulatory toxicology.”
The only way to establish a scientific basis for evaluating glyphosate’s safety, they wrote, would be to “force some daylight between regulators and the regulated.”
Limited government means freedom to harm
In Trump’s Washington, there is no daylight at all between the corporations selling harmful products and the agencies that are supposed to regulate them.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is pushing scientists off advisory boards and stacking the EPA with political appointees connected to the oil, coal and chemical industries, many of whom are connected to climate science deniers.
As one of his first official actions, Pruitt tossed aside the recommendation of EPA’s scientists and allowed Dow Chemical to keep selling a pesticide developed as a nerve gas that is linked to brain damage in children.
“Kids are told to eat fruits and vegetables, but EPA scientists found levels of this pesticide on such foods at up to 140 times the limits deemed safe,” Nicholas Kristof wrote in a scathing NYT op-ed. “Trump’s most enduring legacy may be cancer, infertility and diminished I.Q.s for decades to come.”
Pruitt has gone so far as to put a chemical industry lobbyist in charge of a sweeping new toxics law that was supposed to regulate the chemical industry.
It’s all so outrageous – but then, it has been for a very long time.
That sweeping new toxics law, which passed last year in a hailstorm of bipartisan glory, was opposed by many environmental groups but lauded by—and reportedly written by—the American Chemistry Council.
“The $800 billion chemical industry lavishes money on politicians and lobbies its way out of effective regulation. This has always been a problem, but now the Trump administration has gone so far as to choose chemical industry lobbyists to oversee environmental protections,” as Kristof described it.
“The American Academy of Pediatrics protested the administration’s decision on the nerve gas pesticide, but officials sided with industry over doctors. The swamp won. The chemical industry lobby, the American Chemistry Council, is today’s version of Big Tobacco…”
“Someday we will look back and wonder: What were we thinking?!”
The character of our country
A decade ago, the Independent Women’s Forum presented its Valor Award to Nancy Brinker, founder of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the nation’s largest breast cancer organization – a group that has also drawn criticism for taking money from polluting corporations and promoting unhealthy food and toxic products.
At the 2007 IWF gala, in an acceptance speech she called “The Character of our Country,” Brinker warned that millions of lives will be lost unless America acts to avert the coming “cancer tsunami.”
But then, she said: “My friends, this is not a problem of politics. When it comes to cancer, there are no Republicans or Democrats, no liberals or conservatives.”
Rather, she said, invoking vagueness as she stood before a group that tells women not to worry about pesticides, at an event awash in corporate cash, beating cancer is a matter of summoning the will to make cancer a “national and global priority!”
But that is exactly a problem of politics. It’s about Republicans and Democrats, both of whom have let Americans down by failing to confront the chemical industry. It’s about summoning the political will to get chemicals linked to cancer, infertility and brain damage off the market and out of our food.
In the meantime, we can take the advice of science: eat organic and vote for politicians who are willing to stand up to the pesticide industry.
This article first appeared in Huffington Post.
Stacy Malkan is co-director of U.S. Right to Know,
hoover arts w/ miller:
How The Administrative State Serves Clients And Hurts Citizens: The Case Of The Non-Organic, Organic Food
by Henry I. Miller, Julie Kelly via American Greatness
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
The late economist and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman used to say that only in government, when a program or project fails dismally, the instinctive response is to make it bigger.
Articles
Federal Subsidies To Organic Agriculture Should Be Plowed Under
by Henry I. Miller, Julie Kelly via Forbes
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
The House Committee on Appropriations is scheduled to meet today [July 12] to consider the full committee markup of the FY2018 Agriculture Appropriations Bill. We hope it will reflect a guiding principle articulated in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial: “if you’re going to propose cutting a program, you might as well try to eliminate it. The political pain is as great and if you succeed the payoff is greater.”
Articles
No, California, Roundup Won't Give You Cancer
by Julie Kelly, Henry I. Millervia Los Angeles Times
Thursday, April 27, 2017
The chemophobes who run California are at it again, siding with environmental activists and pseudoscience rather than evidence and common sense.
Articles
March For Science, Or Against Republican Politicians?
by Henry I. Miller, Julie Kelly via Forbes
Thursday, April 20, 2017
The April 22 March for Science, focused on Washington, D.C., but accompanied by some 400 complementary events worldwide, promises to be a motley affair. According to one of the young scientist-organizers, it is intended to help inexperienced science advocates develop the skills they need “to make their concerns heard” and to “have an effect on politics,” while maintaining a nonpartisan atmosphere.
Articles
Organic Labeling Program Should Be Plowed Under
by Julie Kelly, Henry I. Miller via San Diego Union-Tribune
Saturday, April 1, 2017
The “skinny” budget proposed by the White House a few weeks ago will undergo significant changes as it wends its way through the maze of congressional committees, but it’s clear that the president and his economic advisers really do want to take a scalpel to programs that are marked by waste, fraud and abuse.
Articles
Will The Trump Administration Usher In An Era Of Less Cronyism And Pay-To-Play?
by Henry I. Miller, Julie Kellyvia Forbes
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
“You know I am your chief lobbyist in the campaign.” –Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta to Gary Hirshberg, chairman of Stonyfield Farm organic yogurt company and foe of biotechnology, in a WikiLeaks email.
Articles
The Phony Case Against Glyphosate
by Julie Kelly, Henry I. Millervia National Review
Thursday, August 11, 2016
Green zealots pressure the EPA to ban valuable weapons against hunger and disease.
Articles
Mark Bittman Eats His Words--And Chokes
by Julie Kelly, Henry I. Miller
Monday, May 16, 2016
What happens when a sanctimonious, know-nothing foodie who has made a career out of peddling false and misleading information about food production technologies and big agribusiness decides to cash in by exploiting his favorite food fads?
Articles
The GMO Circus Comes To Congress And It's Not Fun
by Julie Kelly, Henry I. Millervia Forbes
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Like Nero fiddling while Rome burned, some politicians have a hard time setting priorities.
Articles
Bittman Of The 'Times' Finds The Real World Harder Than He Expected
by Julie Kelly, Henry I. Miller via Forbes
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
What happens when a liberal New York Times activist-food columnist decides to start his own business? Grab your organic, non-GMO, gluten-free, locally-sourced, free-trade popcorn, because this will be good.
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usrtk
Kelly is a food writer and cooking instructor who emerged in 2015 as a fierce advocate for the agrichemical industry, with articles defending pesticides, arguing against GMO labeling and attacking the organic food industry. Her work has appeared in the National Review, The Hill, Huffington Post, the Wall Street Journal and Forbes.
Kelly has not disclosed her funding sources.
Julie Kelly’s husband, John Kelly Jr., is a lobbyist for the agribusiness giant ADM, among other corporate clients including Blackstone and CVS; and government clients including DuPage County where Julie Kelly formerly worked as a policy consultant to county board chairman Dan Cronin.
Articles Dropped from Forbes
In August 2017, Forbes deleted articles by Julie Kelly that share a byline with Henry I. Miller, a Hoover Institution fellow, following revelations that Monsanto ghostwrote an article attacking the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which Miller published under his own name in Forbes.
The New York Times reported on Aug. 1:
Documents show that Henry I. Miller asked Monsanto to draft an article for him that largely mirrored one that appeared under his name on Forbes’s website in 2015. Forbes removed the story from its website on Wednesday and said that it ended its relationship with Mr. Miller amid the revelations.
Retraction Watch further reported: Forbes “has pulled down all of Miller’s articles on its site, because he violated the terms of his contract” which calls for authors “to disclose any potential conflicts of interest and only publish content that is their own original writing.”
The emails, posted here, show how corporations work with with writers like Miller to promote industry talking points while keeping their collaborations secret. In this case, a Monsanto executive asked Miller to write a column and provided him with a “still quite rough draft” as “a good start for your magic.” The rough draft appeared a few days later, largely unchanged, under Miller’s name in this Forbes column.
Kelly and Miller have co-written at least a dozen articles together, promoting pesticides, arguing for deregulation and attacking the organic industry. Kelly articles removed from the Forbes website include, among others: “Federal Subsidies to Organic Agriculture Should be Plowed Under” (7.12.17), “Will the Trump Administration Usher in an Era of Less Cronyism and Pay-to-Play?” (11.16.16) and “How Organic Agriculture Evolved from Marketing Tool to Evil Empire” (12.2.15).
Inaccuracies
A July 12, 2017 article attacking the organic industry — removed from the web by Forbes because of the co-byline with Henry I. Miller — Kelly and Miller cited an Academics Review report attacking the organic industry as a reputable, independent source. Documents show Academics Review was set up as a front group with the help of Monsanto and with industry funding to attack the organic industry and critics of GMOs.
A Dec. 2, 2015 article in Forbes co-written by Kelly and Miller falsely claimed that University of Florida Professor Kevin Folta “turned over almost 5,000 emails” in response to pubic records requests, “only one of which showed any connection with Monsanto.” In fact, the New York Times posted 174 pages of Folta’s emails showing many interactions with Monsanto and Ketchum, the agrichemical industry’s PR firm.
Kelly has claimed, inaccurately, that genetically engineered foods lead to lower pesticide use and create huge advantages for farmers; in fact, GMOs have led to higher overall herbicide use due to herbicide-tolerant GMO crops and farmers have experienced many problems.
Manufacturing Doubt about Climate Science / Pesticide Risk
Julie Kelly’s work includes:
Casting doubt on the science of climate change in the National Review
Attacks on climate activists, for example tweeting to Bill McKibben, “You are a piece of shit.”
Calling on Congress to defund the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm, in The Hill.
Kelly’s frequent co-author Miller is a member of the “scientific advisory board” of the George C. Marshall Institute, which is famous for its oil and gas industry funded denials of climate change. In articles co-bylined with Miller, Kelly has:
Argued that organic farms are “an affront to the environment.”
Promoted DDT as an effective pesticide that should not have been banned, and argued that “green zealots” and “ignorant ideological activists” could ruin the food supply by pressuring EPA to ban Monsanto’s glyphosate.
Described the Trump Administration as likely to usher in an era of “greater governmental transparency and accountability, and a more level playing field” that could be a huge boon to the GMO industry.
The Hoover Institution, which promotes Kelly’s work, has a mission to “limit government intrusion into the lives of individuals.” Its top funder is the Sarah Scaife Foundation, which was identified in a 2013 Drexel University study as among “the largest and most consistent funders of organizations orchestrating climate change denial” and a foundation that promotes “ultra-free-market ideas in many realms.”
Chemical Industry Allies
USRTK has compiled a series of fact sheets about writers and PR groups the agrichemical industry relies on to manufacture doubt about science that raises concern about risky products and argue against environmental health protections.
– Why You Can’t Trust Henry I. Miller
– Why Forbes Deleted Some Kavin Senapathy Articles
– The American Council on Science and Health is Corporate Front Group
– Jon Entine of Genetic Literacy Project: The Chemical Industry’s Master Messenger
– Trevor Butterworth / Sense About Science Spins Science for Industry
– Does Science Media Centre Push Corporate Views of Science?
Follow the USRTK investigation of Big Food and its front groups: https://usrtk.org/our-investigations/
Food For Thought, Our Investigations American Council on Science and Health, Bill McKibben, climate change science denial, Henry Miller, Hoover Institute, Julie Kelly
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https://web.archive.org/web/20170624063725/https://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2016/11/16/will-the-trump-administration-usher-in-an-era-of-less-cronyism-and-pay-to-play/2/#5dc220803151
Henry I. Miller , CONTRIBUTOR
I debunk junk science and flawed public policy..
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Continued from page 1
TWEET THIS
The WikiLeaks release of hacked emails belonging to Hillary Clinton’s advisers not only offered a peek into the daily machinations of a presidential campaign but also exposed the business-as-usual influence-peddling within the Clinton machine
The safety record of genetically engineered plants and foods derived from them is extraordinary.
Play Video
WikiLeaks’ emails remind us that the Democratic Party is dominated by, in the words of Victor Davis Hanson, “rich, snobbish, and often ethically bankrupt grandees.” Hirshberg, the prototype, portrays himself as a champion of consumers’ rights, claiming GMO labels are all about transparency, and he mocks any lawmaker or company that objects to labels as wanting to “keep consumers in the dark,” but his real reason for pushing mandatory “genetically modified” labels is to use them to disparage the modern genetic engineering techniques that are unavailable to the organic industry.
In a June 2015 email to Podesta, Hirshberg lays out a number of outright falsehoods to convince Podesta why Clinton should support his cause:
…there is [sic] very clear and compelling USDA and USGS [U.S. Geological Survey] data demonstrating a strong likelihood of serious health and environmental threats due to the skyrocketing increases in herbicides associated with GMO usage. Leading agronomists and public health scientists are extremely concerned that these trends are rapidly increasing. To me, this is the key reason why citizens need the right to know and therefore [to] choose…
Reality is very different from the propaganda on Planet Hirshberg. The herbicide that been used in greater amounts in conjunction with genetically engineered plants is glyphosate, a non-selective, broad-spectrum herbicide that targets an enzyme in plants not found in humans. It binds to soils, which prevents it from leaching into ground water, and when it unbinds, it is degraded by soil microbes. Because of its extremely benign safety profile and value to farmers, it has become the most popular herbicide worldwide. (Herbicides are essential in agriculture; they control the weeds that compete with crop plants and reduce their yield, and they eliminate the need for backbreaking weeding by hand.)
Hirshberg’s claims that government agencies have found “a strong likelihood of serious health and environmental threats” from glyphosate is a complete fabrication. These were the findings of the USGS study, which collected water samples from 51 streams in the Midwest and measured levels of various herbicides: “Glyphosate was detected in 36 percent of the samples,” and “the highest measured concentration of glyphosate was 8.7 micrograms per liter, well below the MCL [Maximum Contaminant Level] (700 micrograms per liter).” In other words, the highest concentration found was only about one percent of the level that could conceivably be harmful.
A broad scientific consensus holds that the modern techniques of genetic engineering are essentially an extension, or refinement, of the methods of genetic modification that have long been used to improve the qualities of the foods we eat. Except for wild berries and wild mushrooms, virtually all the fruits, vegetables and grains in our diet have been genetically improved by one technique or another–often as a result of seeds being irradiated, or by “wide crosses,” which involve the movement of genes from one species or genus to another in ways that do not occur in nature. But because molecular genetic engineering is more precise and predictable, the technology is at least as safe as–and often safer than–the modification of food products in cruder, “conventional” ways.
The safety record of genetically engineered plants and foods derived from them is extraordinary. Even after the cultivation worldwide of more than 5 billion acres of genetically engineered crops (by more than 18 million farmers in about three dozen countries) and the consumption of more than 4 trillion servings of food by inhabitants of North America alone, there has not been a single ecosystem disrupted or a single confirmed tummy ache.
HealthGrove | Graphiq
The economic, health and environmental benefits are remarkable. Every year, farmers planting genetically engineered varieties spray millions fewer gallons of chemical insecticides and substantially reduce topsoil erosion and CO2 released into the atmosphere.
Ironically, it is those benefits, which have been demonstrated repeatedly, that motivate the relentless opposition to modern agricultural practices—the fear by Hirshberg and others in the organic industry that the current gap between organic and conventional agriculture will become a chasm, as technologies and products that are unavailable to organic farmers become ever more efficient and productive and more attractive to consumers.
Last Friday, a New York Times columnist wrote about the white working class supporters of Donald Trump, “When steel mills fail to return to Youngstown, or when new trade deals produce no more magic than the old ones, these economic exiles will wonder how they got betrayed.” Maybe the steel mills and Carrier air conditioner plants won’t come back, but it’s just possible that we’ll see greater governmental transparency and accountability, and a more level playing field. There has been far too much cronyism and pay-to-play at the taxpayers’ expense. The Solyndra and Siga boondoggles and the access to Secretary Clinton’s State Department bought by contributions to the Clinton Foundation are egregious examples.
Could it be that the Trump administration will usher in an era of less manipulation, mendacity, cynical self-interest and faux-consumer advocacy?
Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Follow him on Twitter at @henryimiller.
Julie Kelly is a food writer and National Review Online contributor. Follow her on Twitter at @julie_kelly2.
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Julie Kelly Cooks Up Propaganda for the ... - US Right To Know
https://usrtk.org/food.../julie-kelly-cooks-up-propaganda-for-the-agrichemical-industr...
Feb 13, 2017 - In August 2017, Forbes deleted articles by Julie Kelly that share a byline with Henry I. Miller, a Hoover Institution fellow, following revelations that Monsanto ghostwrote an article attacking the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which Miller published under his own name in Forbes. The New York ...
Julie Kelly | U.S. Right to Know
https://usrtk.org/tag/julie-kelly/
Aug 30, 2017 - In August 2017, Forbes deleted articles by Julie Kelly that share a byline with Henry I. Miller, a Hoover Institution fellow, following revelations that Monsanto ghostwrote an article attacking the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which Miller published under his own name in Forbes. The New York ...
Julie Kelly on Twitter: "Prove she's related to Monsanto. Or are you an ...
https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2/status/661653141230911488
Nov 3, 2015 - Julie Kelly · @julie_kelly2. I write about politics, food, climate & science. http://amgreatness.com @NRO @FDRLST. Don't forget, an "expert" designed the parking lot at Walgreens. Orland Park IL. juliekelly.org. Joined October 2014 ...
Julie Kelly (@julie_kelly2) | Twitter
https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2?lang=en
The latest Tweets from Julie Kelly (@julie_kelly2). I write about ... Trump's EPA says the controversial herbicide glyphosate is not harmful to humans, siding with Monsanto in a debate that's been raging for years. ... Just like you are accusing Monsanto of endorsing a homophobe bc you disagree with one of Peterson's views.
Glyphosate Ban Relies on Bad Science | National Review
www.nationalreview.com/article/453196/glyphosate-ban-relies-bad-science
Oct 27, 2017 - by Julie Kelly October 27, 2017 3:30 PM ... In a deposition last month for a court case pending against Monsanto for glyphosate “damages,” Portier admitted he was retained by a law firm representing glyphosate ... While this cabal cheers its victory over Monsanto, European farmers fear for their livelihood.
Julie Kelly | National Review
www.nationalreview.com/author/julie-kelly
Fake Trials, Brought to You by the Anti-GMO Movement. This week, a group of environmental activists will host a faux tribunal in The Hague to pretend to prosecute Monsanto for crimes against humanity. The Missouri-based company sells both genetically engineered seeds and pesticides, which makes them Enemy No.
Julie Kelly Cooks Up Propaganda for the Agrichemical Industry
https://www.organicconsumers.org/.../julie-kelly-cooks-propaganda-agrichemical-ind...
Feb 13, 2017 - Julie Kelly is a food writer and cooking instructor who emerged in 2015 as a fierce advocate for the agrichemical industry, criticizing organic food, GMO ... IARC has noted publicly that it and its scientists have faced intimidation tactics, including broad subpoenas by Monsanto lawyers, as well as a “pattern of ...
No, California, Roundup won't give you cancer - LA Times
www.latimes.com/.../op.../la-oe-kelly-miller-defending-glyphosate-20170427-story.ht...
A farmer holding Monsanto's Roundup Ready Soy Bean seeds in 2008. (Dan Gill / Associated Press).Julie Kelly and Henry I. Miller. The chemophobes who run California are at it again, siding with environmental activists and pseudoscience rather than evidence and common sense. The state Office of Environmental Health ...
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retracted:
Wayback Machine
https://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2016/11/16/will-the-trump-administration-usher-in-an-era-of-less-cronyism-and-pay-to-play/2/
n Will The Trump Administration Usher In An Era Of Less Cronyism And Pay-To-Play?
NOV 16, 2016 @ 05:00 AM 1,681 The Little Black Book of Billionaire Secrets
Will The Trump Administration Usher In An Era Of Less Cronyism And Pay-To-Play?
Henry I. Miller and Julie Kelly
“You know I am your chief lobbyist in the campaign.” –Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta to Gary Hirshberg, chairman of Stonyfield Farm organic yogurt company and foe of biotechnology, in a WikiLeaks email.
The WikiLeaks release of hacked emails belonging to Hillary Clinton’s advisers not only offered a peek into the daily machinations of a presidential campaign but also exposed the business-as-usual influence-peddling within the Clinton machine that helped propel Donald Trump to the presidency. Many of these folks had already been selecting offices in the West Wing and are shell-shocked. But few people are likely as disappointed and rendered as irrelevant overnight as Gary Hirshberg, the wealthy founder of Stonyfield Farm, maker of organic yogurt. Hirshberg, who has been monomaniacal in his opposition to modern genetic engineering applied to agriculture, had a back-channel to John Podesta, the chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.
Gary Hirshberg, chairman and former CEO of Stonyfield Farm, with actresses Gwyneth Paltrow(C) and Blythe Danner(L) (PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)
Over the last several years, Hirshberg has spent a large chunk of his personal fortune pushing for mandatory, disparaging labels on genetically engineered foods, or so-called “GMOs” (genetically modified organisms), as a Trojan horse–a first step toward eliminating such products entirely, which would make over-priced organic food products (not coincidentally including Stonyfield’s), more competitive in the marketplace.
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What’s the connection between Hirshberg and Podesta? Hirshberg and his wife are major Democratic Party donors who have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to lawmakers and candidates. The Podesta Group, the lobbying firm co-founded by Podesta (which he left in 2003, but which is now owned by his brother, Tony) lobbies for the Organic Trade Association, a group also funded by Hirshberg. The OTA has paid the Podesta Group $1.25 million in fees since 2012 to lobby on behalf of OTA issues including mandatory labels.
Hirshberg heavily lobbied Congress to pass legislation to force food companies to print “genetically engineered” labels on their products, insisting the issue is consumer-driven, but the released emails reveal there’s much more to the story. They not only expose Hirshberg’s hypocrisy but also demonstrate that he will stop at nothing, even exploiting mothers who want to provide the most healthful foods for their kids. While Hirshberg was using moms as useful props, a January 2016 email to campaign chairman Podesta reveals what he really thinks about them: “…this is in fact one of those topics that is on many women’s minds, not because they know anything about GMOs, but because GMOs are symbolic of the bigger narrative of our foods being produced by people who care only about profits and not really about what is best for our families.”
In other words, he tells Podesta, attacks on genetic engineering are just a rallying cry, a stalking horse for “Big Ag,” which cares “only about profits and not really about what is best for our families,” but which has managed to produce the most diverse, cheapest and safest food supply in human history.
Henry I. Miller , CONTRIBUTOR
I debunk junk science and flawed public policy..
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
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The WikiLeaks release of hacked emails belonging to Hillary Clinton’s advisers not only offered a peek into the daily machinations of a presidential campaign but also exposed the business-as-usual influence-peddling within the Clinton machine
The safety record of genetically engineered plants and foods derived from them is extraordinary.
Play Video]
WikiLeaks’ emails remind us that the Democratic Party is dominated by, in the words of Victor Davis Hanson, “rich, snobbish, and often ethically bankrupt grandees.”Hirshberg, the prototype, portrays himself as a champion of consumers’ rights, claiming GMO labels are all about transparency, and he mocks any lawmaker or company that objects to labels as wanting to “keep consumers in the dark,” but his real reason for pushing mandatory “genetically modified” labels is to use them to disparage the modern genetic engineering techniques that are unavailable to the organic industry.
In a June 2015 email to Podesta, Hirshberg lays out a number of outright falsehoods to convince Podesta why Clinton should support his cause:
…there is [sic] very clear and compelling USDA and USGS [U.S. Geological Survey] data demonstrating a strong likelihood of serious health and environmental threats due to the skyrocketing increases in herbicides associated with GMO usage. Leading agronomists and public health scientists are extremely concerned that these trends are rapidly increasing. To me, this is the key reason why citizens need the right to know and therefore [to] choose…
Reality is very different from the propaganda on Planet Hirshberg. The herbicide that been used in greater amounts in conjunction with genetically engineered plants isglyphosate, a non-selective, broad-spectrum herbicide that targets an enzyme in plants not found in humans. It binds to soils, which prevents it from leaching into ground water, and when it unbinds, it is degraded by soil microbes. Because of its extremely benign safety profile and value to farmers, it has become the most popular herbicide worldwide. (Herbicides are essential in agriculture; they control the weeds that compete with crop plants and reduce their yield, and they eliminate the need for backbreaking weeding by hand.)
Hirshberg’s claims that government agencies have found “a strong likelihood of serious health and environmental threats” from glyphosate is a complete fabrication. These were the findings of the USGS study, which collected water samples from 51 streams in the Midwest and measured levels of various herbicides: “Glyphosate was detected in 36 percent of the samples,” and “the highest measured concentration of glyphosate was 8.7 micrograms per liter, well below the MCL [Maximum Contaminant Level] (700 micrograms per liter).” In other words, the highest concentration found was only about one percent of the level that could conceivably be harmful.
A broad scientific consensus holds that the modern techniques of genetic engineering are essentially an extension, or refinement, of the methods of genetic modification that have long been used to improve the qualities of the foods we eat. Except for wild berries and wild mushrooms, virtually all the fruits, vegetables and grains in our diet have been genetically improved by one technique or another–often as a result of seeds being irradiated, or by “wide crosses,” which involve the movement of genes from one species or genus to another in ways that do not occur in nature. But because molecular genetic engineering is more precise and predictable, the technology is at least as safe as–and often safer than–the modification of food products in cruder, “conventional” ways.
The safety record of genetically engineered plants and foods derived from them is extraordinary. Even after the cultivation worldwide of more than 5 billion acres of genetically engineered crops (by more than 18 million farmers in about three dozen countries) and the consumption of more than 4 trillion servings of food by inhabitants of North America alone, there has not been a single ecosystem disrupted or a single confirmed tummy ache.
HealthGrove | Graphiq
The economic, health and environmental benefits are remarkable. Every year, farmers planting genetically engineered varieties spray millions fewer gallons of chemical insecticides and substantially reduce topsoil erosion and CO2 released into the atmosphere.
Ironically, it is those benefits, which have been demonstrated repeatedly, that motivate the relentless opposition to modern agricultural practices—the fear by Hirshberg and others in the organic industry that the current gap between organic and conventional agriculture will become a chasm, as technologies and products that are unavailable to organic farmers become ever more efficient and productive and more attractive to consumers.
Last Friday, a New York Times columnist wrote about the white working class supporters of Donald Trump, “When steel mills fail to return to Youngstown, or when new trade deals produce no more magic than the old ones, these economic exiles will wonder how they got betrayed.” Maybe the steel mills and Carrier air conditioner plants won’t come back, but it’s just possible that we’ll see greater governmental transparency and accountability, and a more level playing field. There has been far too much cronyism and pay-to-play at the taxpayers’ expense. The Solyndra and Siga boondoggles and the access to Secretary Clinton’s State Department bought by contributions to the Clinton Foundation are egregious examples.
Could it be that the Trump administration will usher in an era of less manipulation, mendacity, cynical self-interest and faux-consumer advocacy?
Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Follow him on Twitter at @henryimiller.
Julie Kelly is a food writer and National Review Online contributor. Follow her on Twitter at @julie_kelly2.
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Julie Kelly, Author at The Federalist
thefederalist.com/author/juliekelly/
Julie Kelly is a National Review Online contributor and food policy writer from Orland Park, Illinois. She's also been published in the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and The Hill. The Pope's Fixation On Climate Change Endangers His Authority And Entrenches Poverty. At a time of feckless world leadership, ...
Julie Kelly – American Greatness
https://amgreatness.com/author/julie-kelly/
This week has been a vindication for much-maligned Trump supporters. Not only did the president have the best week of his administration, an internecine feud erupted within the “NeverTrump” tribe. First, the great week. The president fulfilled a key campaign promise with his signing this morning of the tax reform bill that ...
Julie Kelly Cooks Up Propaganda for the ... - US Right To Know
https://usrtk.org/food.../julie-kelly-cooks-up-propaganda-for-the-agrichemical-industr...
Feb 13, 2017 - In August 2017, Forbes deleted articles by Julie Kelly that share a byline with Henry I. Miller, a Hoover Institution fellow, following revelations that ... the Forbes website include, among others: “Federal Subsidies to Organic Agriculture Should be Plowed Under” (7.12.17), “Will the TrumpAdministration Usher ...
Julie Kelly | U.S. Right to Know
https://usrtk.org/tag/julie-kelly/
Aug 30, 2017 - Forbes also removed articles co-bylined by Miller and allies including Julie Kelly, Kavin Senapathy and Bruce Chassy – all of whom have claimed ..... the Forbes website include, among others: “Federal Subsidies to Organic Agriculture Should be Plowed Under” (7.12.17), “Will the TrumpAdministration ...
Julie Kelly | HuffPost
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/julie-kelly
Julie Kelly is a cooking teacher and food writer. Her background is in political consulting in Illinois as a policy and communications advisor to many elected officials and candidates. After taking ten years off to be a full-time mom, she got back into politics then started teaching cooking classes out of her home. This led to a ...
Julie Kelly | Hoover Institution
https://www.hoover.org/profiles/julie-kelly
Will The Trump Administration Usher In An Era Of Less Cronyism And Pay-To-Play? by Henry I. Miller,Julie Kellyvia Forbes. Wednesday, November 16, 2016. “You know I am your chief lobbyist in the campaign.” –Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta to Gary Hirshberg, chairman of Stonyfield Farm organic yogurt ...
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capital flows col?
GUEST POST WRITTEN BY
Julie Kelly and Jeff Stier
Ms. Kelly is a cooking instructor and food writer. Mr. Stier is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.
Don’t let his bespectacled, mild-manner fool you: Mark Bittman is the foodie version of a war-monger.
“There’s a war here,” the New York Times columnist proclaimed at a
food conference last year. His battle is America’s next social justice crusade much like civil rights and suffrage. But this time, the oppressors are McDonald’s, Wal-Mart and Monsanto. From soda to sugar to meat, Bittman has declared war on nearly every ingredient in the American food system.
And if the pen is mightier than the sword, Bittman is the literary Napoleon of the progressive food movement. He depicts our food system as enemy territory that must be conquered then ruled by the omnipotent culinary elite in Manhattan and San Francisco with support from taxpayer-funded bureaucrats in Washington, DC.
His latest book, “A Bone to Pick” (Penguin Random House, May 5), is a collection of Bittman’s NYT columns on how to "un-invent this food system" that has been “a major contributor to climate change, spawned the obesity crisis, poisoned countless volumes of land and water, wasted energy and tortured billions of animals.”
Like all good social warriors, Bittman is armed with a plan for victory. The introduction of the book is his “Food Manifesto for the Future,” which lists a number of government-controlled remedies from the rational (limit subsidies) to the banal (mandate more labeling) to the outlandish (offer cooking classes for everyone and even give free cookware and cooking assistance to poor people.) Nearly every solution requires the reach of the federal government—which Bittman refers to as the “entity that is supposed to be vigilant regarding our health and welfare”—and the largess of the American taxpayer.
Other entries are somewhat comical, such as his suggestion to convert suburban lawns into vegetable gardens. “If you want to plant a lawn, that’s fine though it’s a waste of water and energy…Lawns are an attempt to dominate and homogenize nature.” Another column fantasizes about his “dream food label” designed as a stoplight for witless American consumers.
But few of Bittman’s strategies are revolutionary; in fact, many have been tried with limited or no success. Consider his repeated call to limit consumption of soda, sugar and processed foods by children. He cites California’s ban on sugary drinks and restrictions on unhealthy snacks in public schools over the last several years. The result? By 2010, California’s childhood overweight/obesity rate dropped—by 1%. It’s still an eye-popping 38% among adolescents despite massive statewide efforts to stem the crisis.
He often promotes taxing unhealthy food to fund subsidies and access to healthier food, such as his idea to convert “soda machines to vending machines that dispense grapes and carrots.” Pushing fresh produce is a big goal for many urban leaders and is being tried at great expense and unknown results. The CDC’s Putting Prevention to Work fund is one such example: The federal government gave local governments money to reimburse corner stores to buy refrigerators to sell produce.
Even when food corporations try to satisfy Mr. Bittman’s agenda, he questions their motives and integrity. McDonald’s is one example; it’s a frequent target in his book. He mocks the company’s efforts to please him, writing that McDonald’s wants foodies like “…me to stop kvetching and instead acknowledge that they’re making great strides in promoting health.” He sniffs that “only the most gullible will buy” McDonald’s attempts to offer healthier menu choicesadding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2015/05/19/book-review-mark-bittmans-a-bone-to-pick-bites/#12354e6f6e3f
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breakthru inst
National Review Online, The Hill and Roll Call. She s a contributing writer for the Genetic Literacy Project. She lives in Orland Park, IL with her husband, John, and two daughters.
JulieKelly | American Council on Science and Healthwww.acsh.org › profile › julie-kelly
JulieKelly. RSS feed. Julie Kelly. Julie Kelly is a food policy writer in Orland Park, IL and a National Review Online contributor.
My journey from suburban mom and chef to GMO and science ...geneticliteracyproject.org › 2015/05/12 › my-journey-f...
May 12, 2015 - I also began writing a column for two local publications to offer advice about ... We recently co-authored two columns for National Review Online, one about ... Julie Kelly is the owner of Now You're Cooking in Orland Park, IL.
Julie Kelly – Reason.comreason.com › people › julie-kelly
Jun 25, 2016 - Julie Kelly. Julie Kelly is a National Review Online contributor and food/agricultural writer in Orland Park, IL.
Julie Kelly | National Reviewwww.nationalreview.com › author › julie-kelly
The Corner · Bench Memos · The Morning Jolt · The G-File · News · Books, Arts & Manners · All Articles · All Authors · Podcasts · Photos · Games · Videos. Topics.
Missing: Orland ?Park, ?Illinois
Food Stamps Reform - National Reviewwww.nationalreview.com › 2016/12 › food-stamps-ref...
Dec 8, 2016 - A single parent in Lake County [Illinois] who earns $12 per hour brings home just over ... Julie Kelly is a food-policy writer from Orland Park, Ill.
Julie Kelly on Twitter: "There's a big debate over at National ...twitter.com › julie_kelly2 › status
Jun 12, 2020 - Orland Park IL. amgreatness.com/author/julie-k… ... There's a big debate over at National Review about the legitimacy of Tucker Carlson.
Julie Kelly on Twitter: "National Review posted a race-baiting ...twitter.com › julie_kelly2 › status
Jun 11, 2020 - Orland Park IL ... National Review posted a race-baiting column that rivals anything at WashPo or Vox in its ... Julie Kelly? @julie_kelly2 Jun 11.
Julie Kelly, Author at American Greatnessamgreatness.com › author › julie-kelly
Julie Kelly is a political commentator and senior contributor to American Greatness. She is the ... Her past work can be found at The Federalist and National Review. ... She graduated from Eastern Illinois University in 1990 with a degree in ...
Julie Kelly, Author at The Federalistthefederalist.com › author › juliekelly
Julie Kelly is a senior contributor to American Greatness and writer from Orland Park, Illinois. She's also been ... In a national political climate ruled by tribalism, the long-shot candidate for governor of California has no tribe. The PBS Special ...
Missing: review ?| Must include:
review
appeared on the One America News Network to discuss her American ... and a freelance writer in ...
Sep 7, 2017 - Uploaded by Ben Boychuk
Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right Tried?And ...www.amazon.com › Disloyal-Opposition-NeverTrump-...
Her past work can be found at the Federalist, National Review, the Hill, and the Wall ... She lives in Orland Park, Illinois, with her husband and two daughters. ... What Julie Kelly has been writing about since Trump won, is the hypocrisy and ...
Pro-Trump writers promote American Greatness website in ...www.illinoisreview.com › illinoisreview › 2019/11 › pr...
Nov 8, 2019 - Kelly who lives in Orland Park, Illinois, and the website's founder and editor Chris Buskirk led a discussion about current national political news.
EPA Again Delays Report On Safety Of Glyphosate | Science 2.0www.science20.com › julie_kelly › epa_again_delays_rep...
Oct 20, 2016 - Since 2009, the agency has been conducting a registration review of ... Julie Kelly is a National Review Online contributor and food policy writer in Orland Park, IL ... Julie Kelly is the owner of Now You're Cooking in Orland Park, IL. She is a cooking instructor and food writer, but her biggest job is mom. She.
Hirshberg to Podesta: We don't really know anything about ...thehill.com › blogs › pundits-blog › healthcare › 3027...
Oct 25, 2016 - ... Hirshberg's emails to see what's coming next. Julie Kelly is a National Review Online contributor and food policy writer in Orland Park, IL.
The One-Sided Valentine to the Anti-GMO Movement | BIObiotech-now.org › blogs › one-sided-valentine-anti-gmo-...
Julie is a cooking teacher, food policy writer in Orland Park, IL and has been published in the WSJ, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, National Review and The Hill.
Julie Kelly | National Reviewwww.nationalreview.com › author › julie-kelly › page
By Julie Kelly September 13, 2017. “Do you believe in climate change?” is the new, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?”.
Missing: Orland ?Park, ?Illinois
Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right Tried—And Failed ...www.amazon.de › Julie-Kelly-ebook
Follow the author ... Julie Kelly (Autor) Format: Kindle Edition ... Her past work can be found at the Federalist, National Review, the Hill, and the ... She lives in Orland Park, Illinois, with her husband and two daughters. ... No customer reviews.