Louis Farrakhan
In the aftermath of House Speaker Paul Ryan's announcement that he will retire from Congress, amid the speculation about who might replace him as top Republican in the House, the Washington Post ran an AP story by Alan Fram which repeats the debunked claims that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was a speaker for a David Duke-founded white supremacist group without even acknowledging any of the evidence that he was not. In fact, at this point, in spite of media silence, there's more evidence that prominent Democrats have directly associated with Louis Farrakhan than there is that Scalise was ever connected to Duke.
Several black activist groups conducted a lobbying effort Monday against a GOP House resolution condemning Louis Farrakhan, a person even the usually conservative-bashing Southern Poverty Law Center has condemned for his anti-Semitic, anti-white, and other racially hateful remarks. This is not news in the establishment press, and probably never will be. That's because Monday's effort exposes the groups involved — The New Black Panthers, Black Lives Matter, and Al Sharpton's National Action Network — as unrepentant defenders of hate, and would, if widely known, discredit their claims to speak for the broader black community.
On Wednesday morning, MSNBC anchors Stephanie Ruhle and Ali Velshi both on separate occasions highlighted a Nazi and perennial congressional candidate in Illinois who won the Republican nomination by default because no other candidates filed to run in the heavily Democratic district. Ruhle did not mention that Republicans have condemned his most recent congressional run -- only noting that they have done so in the past -- as she hinted that the GOP had "decided" this time not to run a candidate against him and that they were essentially "Yup, that's our guy."
On the March 10 midnight edition of Fox News @Night, Juan Williams disingenuously made three attempts to create a false equivalence between Congressional Black Caucus leaders' political and physical embraces of National of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and Donald Trump's non-existent relationship with the KKK. Host Shannon Bream and the Daily Caller's Vince Coglianese weren't having any of it, but Williams wouldn't let go.
While interviewing Democratic Congressman Gregory Meeks (N.Y.) on Wednesday morning, CNN Newsroom anchor John Berman pressed the Congressman about his past connections with the controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Meeks responded by attacking the news organization that reported Meeks attended a meeting with Farrakhan, The Daily Caller, as a "fringe, right-wing tabloid."
The Washington Post broke into reporting on Louis Farrakhan and the Democrats on Sunday with a “Fact Checker” column by Glenn Kessler. On page A-4, Kessler gave Rep. Keith Ellison – deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee – a “four Pinocchios” rating for insisting he had no involvement with Farrakhan since 2006.
Until Friday, the New York Times had not mentioned Louis Farrakhan in a serious story since October. The Old Gray Lady tried mightily to avoid covering Democrats' and leftist leaders' past and recent embraces of the controversial Nation of Islam leader before finally — but very incompletely — giving in. Jonah Engel Bromwich's story failed to mention Congressmen Keith Ellison and Andre Carson, and ignored a days-earlier call by a Republican Jewish group for the resignations of seven "Farrakhan-connected" congresspersons.
God bless Jake Tapper. The other day, NewsBusters reported: "CNN’s Jake Tapper Breaks Through Media Blackout, Covers Louis Farrakhan Controversy." Tapper noted that “despite the anti-Semitism and homophobia inherent in that clip, several leaders of the Women’s March were — are supporters of Farrakhan and have not condemned him” plus “[m]embers of the Congressional Black Caucus.”
On Thursday evening, the broadcast network evening news casts all ignored the current controversy over Democratic ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan sparked by his most recent spate of racist and anti-Semitic comments, as the Republican Jewish Coalition has called on seven congressional Democrats to resign, including DNC deputy chair Keith Ellison. In fact, with the exception of CNN's Jake Tapper on Monday, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and PBS have all completely ignored the controversy -- which contrasts with their eagerness in late 2016 to hype a white nationalist meeting in Washington, D.C., which infamously featured Nazi salutes, as the media tried to tie it to President Donald Trump.
On Thursday morning, uniquely among the day's morning shows, FNC's Fox and Friends gave attention to the Republican Jewish Coalition calling for the resignations of seven congressional Democrats who have ties with National of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, in light of a recent speech in which he attacked "Satanic" Jews and whites.
After offering a slew of tweets about the mounting evidence of anti-Semitic and anti-gay comments by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, CNN’s Jake Tapper broke with the rest of his establishment media colleagues on Monday by spending nearly three minutes during The Lead.
ABC and NBC on Friday skipped the news that a photographer in 2005 agreed to cover up the photograph he took of then-Senator Barack Obama and notorious Jew hater Louis Farrakhan. Only CBS This Morning covered the story that a meeting took place between Obama, Farrakhan and the Congressional Black Caucus.