Category: CNN

A Heart-Warming Story That Every Patriotic American Can Celebrate

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This is guaranteed to bring a smile to your face:

Former liberal media darling and frequent CNN guest Michael Avenatti was recently held in a “rat-infested” jail cell for a 10-day stretch and “and was able to shower only twice in about two weeks,” according to The Washington Post.
Citing a letter Avenatti’s attorney sent to a judge, the Post reported that the former lawyer to porn star Stormy Daniels had a rough time during a lockdown at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan, where he’s being held since last month after being found guilty of trying to extort Nike.
A New York jury found Avenatti, 48, guilty on three counts, including extortion, wire fraud and transmission of interstate communications with intent to extort. He faces up to 42 years in prison [when he is] sentenced later this year. According to the Post, Avenatti’s attorney said inmates lacked soap and or hot water to wash their hands and faced “deplorable” conditions.
“Avenatti’s cell was ‘infested with rats,’ and the facility ‘reeks of urine,’ the Post reported.

 

Yes, let us smile as we recall the Creepy Porn Lawyer announcing — on the Fourth of July, no less — his intention to challenge Trump in 2020:

Media Research Center director Tim Graham wrote last month that “CNN and MSNBC gave Avenatti 230 interviews in one year.”
Back in 2018, an MRC study revealed that Avenatti appeared on CNN a whopping 74 times over a 10-week period and the network’s in-house media critic Brian Stelter famously declared the now-disgraced porn lawyer was a legitimate threat to challenge Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
Stelter told Avenatti on air, “Looking ahead to 2020, one of the reasons why I’m taking you seriously as a [2020 presidential] contender is because of your presence on cable news.”

In addition to trying to blackmail Nike, Avenatti has been accused of several other crimes, including fraud, perjury and tax evasion. Oh, I’m sure his friends at CNN and MSNBC will miss their favorite guest, who is now where he has always belonged, in a rat-infested cell.

(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)



 

Eric Ciaramella’s Name Is Not a Secret, and #TeamTrump Only Hires Winners

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NATIONAL AFFAIRS DESK, Martinsburg, W.Va.
Working from a McDonald’s here this morning because my brother Kirby has an all-day doctor’s appointment at the VA Medical Center, and contributions to the tip jar would be sincerely appreciated. Meanwhile, in the Historic Impeachment™ drama, Jake Tapper is a whiny bitch:

Trump campaign deputy director of communications Matt Wolking retweeted this tweet by Paul Sperry, which features the name of the alleged whistleblower:

And CNN’s Jake Tapper is on it:

Does Wolking’s retweet constitute a “formal threat” or nah?

Honestly, it’s kind of strange for Tapper to be hyperventilating about this. For better or for worse, Eric Ciaramella’s name has been out there for a while now.

This entire Historic Impeachment™ drama — which has done no real harm to Trump, but turned into a debacle for Democrats — was begun when Ciaramella decided, on the basis of hearsay, to play tattletale. He is not an actual “whistleblower,” since he had been kicked out of the White House for suspicion of leaking to the media and thus had no direct knowledge of the Ukraine phone call that was allegedly the “high crime” for which Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi decided that Trump needed to be impeached. The fact that someone as untrustworthy as Ciaramella continues to be employed at the CIA is the real scandal.

The reason that Jake Tapper and others want to pretend that Eric Ciaramella’s name is a secret — and, as I’ve noted, Facebook will ban you for saying the name of the “whistleblower” — is because knowledge of what actually happened contradicts the Democrats’ narrative.

Report: Anti-Trump Complainant
Eric Ciaramella Worked With Brennan,
Biden, and DNC Operative Chalupa
— American Greatness, Oct. 30, 2019

Open Society Emails Show Anti-Trump
CIA “Whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella
Was Updated on George Soros’s
Personal Ukraine Activities
— Gateway Pundit, Nov. 17, 2019

Whistleblower Was Overheard
in ’17 Discussing With Ally
How to Remove Trump
— Real Clear Politics, Jan. 22

Those are just three headlines that Jake Tapper and the rest of the “fake news” media don’t want Americans to know about, because they show that the origins of the Historic Impeachment™ drama are connected to the origins of the “Russian collusion” hoax which, as everyone now knows, was a phony “scandal” ginned up by Hillary Clinton’s campaign using the Steele dossier as a pretext for surveillance of the Trump campaign. So now Jake Tapper is trying to play tattletale on Matt Wolking, as if the Trump campaign’s deputy communications director doesn’t know what he’s doing? Oh, baby, was Jake ever wrong about that!

This is the “Streisand Effect” in action — by pretending that we have to treat Eric Ciaramella’s name like it’s top-secret classified information, Tapper and other Democrat operatives in the media have inadvertently made everyone curious to know the identity of the “whistleblower.”

Matt Wolking is a guy I’ve known about 10 years, and I’ve known his wife longer than that. She was working the registration desk at a Young America’s Foundation conference I covered in 2007, and she was so cute that I never forgot her name. Alisa was among the guests (along with Andrew Breitbart, Ace of Spades and Mary Katherine Ham) at the notorious CPAC party that Matt Vadum and I threw in 2008, where the hotel security showed up to shut us down just about the time Rep. Bob Barr arrived. Then, when I was covering the giant Tea Party rally in Washington in September 2009, Alisa spotted me in the crowd and talked me into getting her backstage where she chatted up an Indiana congressman named Mike Pence. Anyway, she and Matt have two kids now, and Matt’s working for the Trump campaign, getting paid to make a fool out of Jake Tapper. Life is good. Winning is good.

 

So here I am at the National Affairs Desk, where breakfast cost me $6.55, and Kirby just called from the VA Medical Center to say they’ll give him a lunch break at noon and he wants me to bring him a Quarter Pounder With Cheese ($4.59) for lunch, so I’ll once more remind our readers that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Thanks in advance. We’re winning, but we still gotta eat.





 

Republicans ‘Punch Back Twice as Hard’ With Ad Targeting CNN Elitists

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In 2009, when the Obama administration was trying to ram its agenda through Congress, White House chief of staff Jim Messina told nervous Democrats not to worry about criticism: “If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard.” That line has since become a regular meme at Instapundit — Democrats can’t stand it when we “punch back” — and apparently the folks at GOP headquarters are paying attention:

The Republican National Committee (RNC) launched a new digital campaign ad and a fundraiser on Tuesday in response to CNN’s Don Lemon mocking Trump supporters during a segment on his show that went viral on Monday night. . . .
The segment featured Lemon, far-left op-ed writer Wajahat Ali, and anti-Trump establishment Republican Rick Wilson who mocked Trump supporters as being uneducated rednecks who could not read, spell, or use maps.
“CNN anchor Don Lemon, The New York Times’ Wajahat Ali and winless carnival barker and scam PAC artist Rick Wilson let everyday Americans know what the establishment thinks about them: President Trump’s supporters are just a bunch of illiterate idiots deserving of the elites’ smug derision,” RNC Spokesman Steve Guest told The Daily Wire in a statement. “In a matter of seconds, CNN summed up the elite left’s disdain for half of America.”
Guest added, “Reminder for voters: As Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders campaign across the South for your vote, Lemon, Ali, and Wilson just summarized what these candidates really think of you as they shake your hand and pose for selfies.”

 

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) Meanwhile, the “let’s mock 62.9 million Republican voters as retards” gang took to Twitter to pose as victims — climb up on that cross, Rick! — and their pathetic crybaby routine even got retweeted by anti-American Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Evidently envious of the attention being showered on Rick Wilson, his bloated soulmate Tom “The Expert” Nichols had some thoughts to share.


 

‘Credulous Boomer Rube Demo’

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The word “demo” is, of course, short for demographic:

CNN’S DON LEMON: Oh as I said, NPR is standing by their reporter after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused her of lying. It is the latest in a growing list of incidents involving Pompeo and journalists.
Joining me now to discuss, CNN Contributor Wajahat Ali and Rick Wilson. . . .
So, Rick, who do you think is a liar here?
RICK WILSON, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Look, Mike Pompeo has become one of the high priests of Trumpism. In the core of Trumpism is a war on the media. And so I think Mike Pompeo is trying to cast himself as this hero and to please Donald Trump. This isn’t about whether or not she could correctly identify Ukraine on a map, this is part of their performative, you know, media hatred that they engaged on the daily.
LEMON: Wajahat, I want to bring you in. Mary Louise Kelly told NPR, an NPR co-host that before ending the interview, Pompeo, quote, leaned in and glared at her and then he tried to give her a pop quiz. I mean, what is with this intimidation mode?
WAJAHAT ALI, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, this is the pathetic insecurity of the spineless amoebas of men such as Mike Pompeo and the other men in Trump’s administration, right? . . .
WILSON: Of course. Of course. It’s — he’s just trying to demean her, and obviously it’s false. And look, he also knows deep in his heart that Donald Trump couldn’t find Ukraine on a map if you had the letter U and a picture of an actual physical crane next to it. He knows that this is, you know, an administration defined by ignorance of the world, and so that’s partly him playing to their base and playing to their audience, you know, credulous boomer rube demo that back Donald Trump, that wants to think that Donald Trump’s a smart one, and y’all — y’all elitists are dumb.
ALI: You elitists with your geography and your maps and your spelling even though —
WILSON: Your math, your reading.
ALI: Yes, your reading, you know. Your geography knowing other countries. Sipping your latte.
WILSON: All those lines on the map.
ALI: Only them elitists know where Ukraine is. . . .

(Hat-tip: Ace of Spades.) Here we have “Republican strategist” Rick Wilson laughing it up with his two left-wing buddies about how only illiterate and uneducated people voted Republican in 2016. Rick and his CNN friends didn’t vote for Trump, thereby proving that they are so much smarter than the 62.9 million “credulous boomer rubes” who did.

Notice that Wajahat Ali uses the phrase “spineless amoeba” to describe Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a West Point alumnus who served five years as an Army officer in the 7th Cavalry Regiment. Oh, what excellent people “Republican strategist” Rick Wilson chooses as his friends.


 

Category: CNN

Elizabeth Warren’s Media Helpers Try to Revive Her Campaign at Bernie’s Expense

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Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate was so white that Antifa would punch it in the face, and moderators for CNN made it clear who they favored among the six white Democrats assembled on the Des Moines stage. We haven’t seen the memo from CNN chief Jeff Zucker, but it was obvious that the assignment was to (a) attack Bernie Sanders and (b) boost Elizabeth Warren. Perhaps many Sanders supporters — who saw their candidate get cheated out of the 2016 nomination by DNC insiders working for Hillary Clinton — will now agree with President Trump’s assessment of the media as “the enemy of the people.”

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass:

What CNN did to Bernie Sanders in the Iowa Democratic presidential debate — stabbing him with the gender card on behalf of a weakened Elizabeth Warren — was cheap and unfair.
And it was shameful. . . .
What happened on CNN in Iowa was bad for journalism. But it sure was good for Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden.
Sanders, the authentic candidate on the left in this cycle, as he was in the last, was surging in the Iowa polls. Warren, also on the left, was fading, desperate and in full panic. She began waving her gender card on that dangerous Intersectionality Highway where Democrats, addicted to identity politics, often crack up.
Just before the debate, CNN ran a story portraying Sanders as misogynist who thinks a woman couldn’t be elected president. That’s ridiculous. He doesn’t believe that.
And at the CNN debate, moderator Abby Phillip took Warren’s gender card, fashioned it into a knife and stabbed Sanders just weeks before the Iowa caucuses.
“Sen. Sanders, CNN reported yesterday, and Sen. Warren confirmed in a statement, that in 2018 you told her that you did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that?” Phillip asked of Sanders.
“Well,” Sanders said, “as a matter of fact, I didn’t say it.
“I don’t want to waste a whole lot of time on this, because this is what Donald Trump and maybe some of the media want,” Sanders added. . . .
Before Sanders was shivved, Democratic establishment candidate Biden looked lost and frail and unsure.
Biden was like some elderly Uncle Joe retiree in line at 4 p.m. for the early bird dinner with the free Jell-O.
But who remembers that after Warren pointedly refused to shake her “friend” Bernie’s hand? Biden wasn’t even touched by CNN’s debate moderators. His questions were wrapped in pillows.
You might think all this is a coincidence, but then, you might be a moron. . . .

Obviously it was not a coincidence: The CNN moderators were there to trash Sanders, support Warren and — by ginning up conflict between these two left-wingers — thereby help “moderate” Joe Biden in the Iowa caucuses, by preventing Bernie from surging to a solid victory on Feb. 4.

It’s media malpractice like this that causes people to believe in conspiracy theories — the fix is in and the game is rigged — because it doesn’t require any evidence to see what is happening in front of our eyes and realize that it could not be happening by mere coincidence. No, some actual human beings at CNN decided that this would be the script for the Iowa debate, and it’s plainly obvious that CNN is against Bernie Sanders just as much as it is obvious that CNN is against Donald Trump.

Elizabeth Warren to Bernie after debate:
“I think you called me a liar on national TV”

Was this narrative of Bernie being a sexist who doesn’t believe a woman can be president manufactured by the “fake news” media? It doesn’t matter — Bernie’s supporters recognize it as a dirty trick. Whatever it was that Bernie actually said to Warren in that meeting, the timing of the story in the run-up to Tuesday’s debate was clearly not a coincidence. The people in charge at CNN want Biden as the 2020 nominee, and anyone can look at the polls as an explanation of what happened Tuesday.

 

In early September, according the Real Clear Politics average of Iowa polls, Biden had a commanding lead in the state, 28.5%, with Warren and Sanders neck-and-neck in second place at 18% and 17.5% respectively. A month later, Warren moved into the lead (23% to Biden’s 18% by Oct. 1) but then, over the next six weeks, however, Warren faded badly while Pete Buttigieg surged to first place in Iowa. Then in December, Buttigieg began fading, and Bernie moved into first place as Warren dropped into fourth place. Who benefits from CNN’s promotion of Warren at the expense of Sanders? It’s not just Warren they’re helping, it’s Biden — the Democratic establishment candidate in the same sense that Hillary was the establishment candidate four years ago.

As I say, this kind of blatant manipulation by the media feeds into the paranoid mentality of the left-wing populists who support Sanders. Regardless of who wins Iowa, Bernie’s supporters now have more reason than ever to believe that a corrupt establishment is attempting to prevent their candidate from winning. If the only way Biden can get the nomination is to have CNN and other establishment media do his dirty work for him, what will that mean for Democrats in November?



 

Devin Nunes Sues CNN and Daily Beast Over ‘Demonstrably False’ Stories

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Breitbart News reports:

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence ranking member Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) intends to file lawsuits against both CNN and the Daily Beast over fake hit pieces the outlets have published about him in recent days, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.
Two pieces recently published in both outlets — one from Daily Beast earlier this week, and one from CNN published late Friday — alleged that the Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, who is now indicted on unrelated charges, helped Nunes with a variety of matters when digging into Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on behalf of Democrats.
The Daily Beast story, from Betsy Swan (formerly Woodruff), alleges that Parnas helped Nunes set up a variety of meetings on Ukraine matters. The CNN story, from Vicky Ward, goes even further, alleging that Nunes arranged a secret trip to Vienna and met there with Victor Shokin, the Ukrainian prosecutor that former Vice President Joe Biden pushed to have fired when Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, the natural gas company paying Biden’s son Hunter Biden $83,000 per month. It is unclear at this time how much of these reports are blatantly false, but most of each of them appear to be inaccurate, according to sources familiar with the matter.
As such, Nunes is planning to sue both the Daily Beast and CNN over each story.
“These demonstrably false and scandalous stories published by the Daily Beast and CNN are the perfect example of defamation and reckless disregard for the truth,” Nunes told Breitbart News late Friday night. “Some political operative offered these fake stories to at least five different media outlets before finding someone irresponsible enough to publish them. I look forward to prosecuting these cases, including the media outlets, as well as the sources of their fake stories, to the fullest extent of the law. I intend to hold the Daily Beast and CNN accountable for their actions. They will find themselves in court soon after Thanksgiving.”

If you report a fact — e.g., person X met person Y in location Z on a certain date — based on what an unnamed source told you, and this “fact” turns out to be false, you’re going to have a difficult time explaining to a judge that this is not libel per se. This is just basic Journalism 101 stuff, and if the “secret trip to Vienna” did not actually happen, heads should roll at CNN and the Daily Beast. Here’s something else that young journalists ought to be taught: When a source offers you a story on the basis of anonymity, ask yourself what their motive is, and if this motive renders the offered information suspect. Even if a story is basically true — i.e., Parnas was trying to help expose the corrupt connections between Ukrainians and Democrats, so that Parnas and Nunes had reasons to cooperate — the specific facts alleged in your reporting must be provably true, or else you could be at risk of a libel case.


 

Beto Beaten by Buttigieg in Debate

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The very first time I heard Pete Buttigieg speak — during my trip to South Carolina in March — I was impressed by him. Of course, his policy ideas are all entirely wrong, but Buttigieg’s demeanor and delivery are excellent. He combines a policy wonk’s mastery of details with a folksy Midwestern manner in a way that would certainly inspire confidence if (and this is a very important “if”) his ideas weren’t the usual “progressive” prescription of vastly expanding the power (and cost) of the centralized Welfare State. During Tuesday night’s debate on CNN, Mayor Pete delivered a scolding lecture to Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, as Professor Glenn Reynolds observes:

He made mincemeat of Beto O’Rourke, who dodged a question from Anderson Cooper on how he would enforce a ban on assault weapons. Beto was left looking flustered and trying to claim that Mayor Pete was insensitive to victims of violence, which was a bad look for him. . . .
Numerous fellow candidates criticized him for his “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15s” remarks. Between that and the drubbing that Mayor Pete administered, he had a very bad night.

We should be grateful to Buttigieg for his skill in demolishing the Great White Hope of Texas Democrats in front of a national audience.

As to the debate overall, Roger Simon summarizes it well:

If there is one thing that Tuesday night’s Democratic debate showed us — as if we didn’t know it in the first place — it’s just to what degree the media is in the tank for the Democrats. They’re not only in the tank — they built it, filled it with water up to the brim, and would turn up the temperature to boil Donald Trump alive if they could. And maybe they can.
You knew this from the outset when CNN’s lead moderator Anderson Cooper, along with his compatriots, one from the New York Times, opened the festivities with a round of leading impeachment questions, giving each candidate in turn a chance to outdo each other in bashing Trump.

This will do nothing to rescue CNN from the ratings basement, of course. There is no new audience to be gained by Trump-bashing at this point. CNN’s decision to become the “Clinton News Network” in 2016 was a strategic error, but instead of reversing course, they keep doubling down.

Meanwhile, Beto’s on MSNBC threatening again to take away your guns:


 

The Worst Week in Media History: O’Keefe Exposes Bias of CNN’s Zucker

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First, there was Ronan Farrow’s exposé of widespread sexual harassment (and official tolerance thereof) at NBC News. Now, James O’Keefe has got undercover video confirming blatant bias at CNN:

CNN President Jeff Zucker has insisted the cable news network has to maximally focus on pushing the story of Democrats trying to impeach President Donald Trump, despite objections by staffers that the push is harming the organization’s journalistic integrity, according to undercover recordings.
“Impeachment is the story,” Zucker said during a recent 9 a.m. rundown call, according to one of the recordings, which were released on Oct. 14 by investigative journalism nonprofit Project Veritas. “You know, I know we’re going to feel a tendency to think we’re doing too much, but this is the story.”
At least some of the recordings were provided by Cary Poarch, a satellite uplink technician who works as a contractor at CNN’s Washington bureau.
“I just want them to own where they’re at,” he said of CNN. “Like, hey, if we lean left, cool, let’s just say we lean left, if we lean right, let it be known.” . . .
Several CNN employees told Poarch or other undercover reporters about their dissatisfaction with Zucker’s approach.
“There’s just nothing we can do if Zucker wants impeachment every single day to be the top story,” said Christian Sierra, media coordinator at CNN, in one of the recordings.
Sierra said he “hate[ed] how everything is like all Trump all the time now.
“Everyone at the network complains about it,” he said. “They hate covering Trump every day.”
Mike Brevna, CNN floor manager, expressed a similar sentiment in another recording.
“It’s the Trump Network, dog. It’s like, it’s everything is all Trump. They not even thinking about, they not even thinking about anybody else,” he said. “They sold themselves to the devil. It’s, it’s sad. Because there’s so much news going on out there, but they don’t cover none of it. All they do is, because of sponsors and everything.” . . .
Zucker seems to have a particular disdain for Fox News, a major competitor that is outperforming CNN in viewership ratings by more than two to one.
“I think what’s going on in America now is really, fundamentally the result of years of fake news, conspiracy nonsense from Fox News that has taken root in this country,” Zucker said during a 9 a.m. rundown call. “And I’m dead serious about this.”
It didn’t seem to be just a personal observation either.
“Fake conspiracy nonsense that Fox has spread for years is now deeply embedded in American society and at the highest levels of the Republican elected officials, as we’ve seen with [Sen.] Ron Johnson,” Zucker said. “Frankly, that is beyond destructive for America and I do not think we should be scared to say so.”
In what appeared to be another rundown call, Zucker noted that “a lot of people at CNN” were “friendly” with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
“Time to knock that off,” Zucker said. “And it’s time to call him out.”

Question: When did that happen? My hunch is that it was during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, when Graham became enraged by the obviously phony accusations of sexual misconduct Democrats used to smear the nominee. As long as Graham was perceived as a potential anti-Trump ally within the GOP, it was OK for CNN staff to be “friendly” to the South Carolina senator; but once the Kavanaugh hearings pushed Graham into the pro-Trump camp, Zucker said “knock that off.”

Almost nobody is watching CNN, as Jim Treacher notes:

If you don’t watch CNN, you’re in good company. It’s consistently the third-rated news network. Last week’s big event on CNN, that LGBTQ town hall, was watched by 1.1 million people. That’s compared to 2.5 million watching MSNBC and 3.7 million watching Fox News. Most Americans don’t get their news from cable TV, and most cable-TV news consumers avoid CNN. . . .
The network’s relentless anti-Trump drumbeat has driven people away. . . . CNN is pure propaganda for the Democratic Party, and most people aren’t interested in that.

This probably explains Zucker’s obsession with Fox News, as well as his idea that CNN’s job is to promote the impeachment of Trump. If you’re the third-place network, and the first-place network attracts mostly conservative viewers, there is a certain market logic in trying to maximize your share of the liberal audience. But that strategy was complicated for CNN by the fact that second-place MSNBC has built its “brand” around being a left-wing propaganda operation. Zucker was thus trying to compete with MSNBC for the kook-fringe Democratic Party base, and climbing aboard the impeachment bus — indeed, climbing into the driver’s seat of that bus — might have seemed to Zucker like a smart strategy. And he has failed, spectacularly so.

What next? Expect that CNN will claim to be a victim of anti-Semitism. It’s all they’ve got left: “Fox New conspiracy nonsense!”

 



 

Category: CNN