Brad Wilmouth
Latest from Brad Wilmouth
In a Saturday article titled, "Virginia's Latest Attempt to Marginalize Minorities," the Washington Post editorial board slams Virginia Republican Delegate Robert Marshall for proposing a bathroom bill similar to that in North Carolina that would bar men from using women's restrooms. As it wrongly claims that there are no examples in Virginia of men pretending to be women to victimize them in such public places, the article even likens the "obnoxious" legislation to racism in the Jim Crow South and suggests that some Republicans would support it because they like "marginalizing minorities."
On Friday's CNN Newsroom with Carol Costello, host Costello devoted a four-minute segment to a pair of liberal women who are hoping to get 200,000 women to march in D.C. on Donald Trump's first day in office as President Even though the group is obviously left-wing, not only were there no ideological labels used to describe their views, but they were even allowed to promote themselves as if they were nonpartisan as the CNN host introduced them as not belonging "to any political group."
Once Congress came into session and the process of planning for an ObamaCare repeal actually began, it didn't take long for CNN to try to undermine the effort by finding individual examples of Republicans to highlight who support ObamaCare in spite of voting for Donald Trump and presumably taking a conservative view on other issues.
As Thursday's CNN New Day covered the horrendous story of a white special needs man being tortured by four black teens in Chicago while they made anti-white and anti-Donald Trump taunts and live streamed the assault on Facebook, CNN co-host Alisyn Camerota fretted that "right-wing websites" like Breitbart, The Blaze, and Townhall are going too far in making the story "political."
Appearing as a panel member on Tuesday's CNN Tonight, CNN presidential historian Douglas Brinkley repeated as if were fact the claim that Ronald Reagan's campaign in 1980 pressed the Iranian government to delay the release of the Americans held hostage to hurt President Jimmy Carter's reelection chances. Neither host Don Lemon nor fellow CNN presidential historian Timothy Naftali noted that a Democratic Congress failed to find evidence of such illicit activity when they investigated the October Surprise conspiracy theory in the early 1990s. Brinkley: "Ronald Reagan was taking on Jimmy Carter, and there was the October Surprise meeting keeping the hostages in Iran. William Casey, people in the Reagan administration were interfering with foreign policy then saying, 'Keep the hostages in until after the election.' So it has happened before."
On Tuesday's CNN Tonight, host Don Lemon cued up author Michael Higginbothum to claim that there was "racial amnesia" and a "Jim Crow mentality" around white voters being willing to vote for Donald Trump in spite of him using "a lot of racial rhetoric" in the campaign. Higginbothum -- author of Ghosts of Jim Crow -- went on to liken modern times to the era after Reconstruction when former Confederates celebrated the Ku Klux Klan and denied that slavery was primarily to blame for the American Civil War.
On Monday's CBS Evening News, in a report devoted to the increased rates of homicide in Chicago, correspondent Jericka Duncan suggested a link to the police making fewer stops after being scrutinized over the police shooting death of Laquan McDonald in 2014. But, unlike the previous night's report on CBS 60 Minutes by correspondent Bill Whitaker, Duncan's piece did not mention that the Chicago police superintendent blamed less aggressive policing on lawsuit threats by the American Civil Liberties Union that have led to the police facing more restrictions on when to make contact with criminal suspects.
On Monday's New Day on CNN, as the RNC's Sean Spicer complained about Senate Democrats planning to obstruct some of President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet nominees, co-host Alisyn Camerota incorrectly recalled that Republican Senator Mitch McConnell stated that his goal was to make Barack Obama a "one-term president" before Obama was even sworn in, and disputed Spicer's claim to the contrary that it was "a year after he got into office." Camerota: "I think your timeline might be wrong. I will check that, Sean, because I think it was right when President Obama was elected..."
On Thursday's New Day on CNN, during a segment pitting liberal CNN political commentator Peter Beinart against former CIA director James Woolsey, Beinart bristled at Woolsey's warnings that Jews trying to live in a Palestinian Arab state would be in grave danger of being attacked and killed as he asserted that it was a "racist claim" for the former CIA director to make. Beinart found comfort that "many" Palestinians do not kill Jews as he admitted that "some" do. Beinart: "The claim that Palestinians would inevitably kill Jews in the West Bank, I have I have Jewish friends, Israelis who live in the West Bank. It's frankly a racist claim to suggest that Palestinians would inherently kill Jews. That's -- some Palestinians commit terrorism and many don't."
It would be a good idea for journalists to be wary of any anti-Israel or left-leaning guests making claims about how much foreign aid the U.S. grants Israel each year, since on two occasions just Wednesday, CNN guests managed to pass off wildly overstated claims about how much the U.S. spends in supporting the Jewish state and only liberal democracy in the Middle East. On CNN's Wolf show, pro-Palestinian activist Diana Buttu claimed that Israel gets $38 billion a year. In reality, Israel receives about $3 billion a year.
Appearing as a panel member on Wednesday's CNN Newsroom, Jason Johnson of The Root ridiculously claimed, during a discussion before Secretary of State John Kerry's speech on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that the United States "gives the vast majority of its foreign aid to Israel." In fact, according to the Washington Post, of the approximately $50 billion dollars the U.S. is expected to grant in foreign aid for FY 2017, Israel would only receive about $3 billion.
Over the past couple of days, as CNN has updated its viewers on efforts to repeal the North Carolina bathroom law, the news network has again been misinforming its audience on whether transgender individuals would be able to arrange to use the public restroom of their preferred gender. Even though North Carolina state law allows people to change their gender designation on their birth certificate if they undergo surgery to change their gender, CNN not only does not inform its viewers of this alternative, but sometimes even suggests that such alternatives do not exist.
On Wednesday's New Day, during a discussion of President Barack Obama issuing a record number of pardons and commutations before leaving office, CNN commentators Errol Louis and David Gregory both spoke up in defending his actions. Louis even repeated the term "mass incarceration," which in recent years has been commonly used on the left when complaining that too many criminals are in prison.
On Tuesday's The Situation Room on CNN, substitute anchor Brianna Keilar not only worried that President-elect Donald Trump was "jumping the gun" by calling the attacks in Turkey and Germany "radical Islamic terrorism" too soon "before any information was out there," but she also fretted that Trump was "dangerously close to making this look like a religious war."
Some liberals can find the strangest things to worry over in the aftermath of a deadly terrorist attack. Appearing as a guest on Monday's CNN Tonight, liberal CNN political commentator Peter Beinart bristled at President-elect Donald Trump referring to the Berlin terror attack victims as "Christians," as the liberal analyst worried that the way Trump, Michael Flynn, and Steve Bannon "view this entire conflict is very dangerous" because they portray a "struggle between the West and Islam."
On Sunday's AM Joy on MSNBC, during a discussion of "fake news" and Facebook's plans to screen news with fact checkers, host Joy Reid not only wrongly claimed that MRC founder Brent Bozell was "conceding" that "a lot of the things that are put out on the right aren't real" by pressing Facebook over how they would factcheck fairly, but panel member and former CNN president Jon Klein declared that it was "frightening" that over the past 30 years, right-wing media have caused people to distrust "mainstream news organizations."
On Sunday, NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd displayed the ability for some on the left to blame Republicans for anything. During a discussion of the recent hackings from Russia that were revealed months before the presidential election, Todd asked former Bush and Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates if Republican critics of President Obama actually provoked the hackings by accusing Obama of being "too soft on Russia" in previous years.
On Sunday's New Day on CNN, during a discussion of Donald Trump's choice of David Friedman as ambassador to Israel, and his stated support for relocating the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel's capital of Jerusalem, CNN political commentator Errol Louis worried that such a move would be equivalent to "giving" Jerusalem to Israel because the Palestinian Authority has expressed a desire to place the capital of a Palestinian state in Jerusalem.
Appearing as a guest on Friday's New Day, liberal New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman fretted over what he viewed as the "shear madness" of Donald Trump choosing attorney David Friedman to be the next ambassador to Israel, and the likelihood that a Trump administration will finally relocate the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Imagine if any prominent Republican politician had a history of a mutual relationship with a political activist who either openly expressed sympathies with the KKK or those who violently attack abortion clinics -- and even helping each other fundraise and endorsing each other's political campaigns. There would rightly be near universal condemnation for a willingness to associate with that kind of extremism.But Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison's history of such an association with a man -- Dr. Esam Omeish -- who was already known for publicly praising Palestinian terrorists waging "jihad" against Israel, which he attacked as a "brutal Zionist entity," has received little attention from the dominant media.