RIGHT ANGLE: Mattis for SECDEF? Bill Whittle Channel via YouTube, November 22, 2016
Posted tagged ‘Trump appointments’
RIGHT ANGLE: Mattis for SECDEF?
November 23, 2016The ‘Big Lie’ Is Back
November 22, 2016The ‘Big Lie’ Is Back, Center For Security Policy, Frank Gaffney, Jr., November 22, 2016
Source: Breitbart
In 2011, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to use “some old fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming” against those whose exercise of free speech “we abhor.”
At the time, she had in mind specifically perpetrators of what the OIC, the Muslim Brotherhood, other Islamic supremacists and their enablers on the Left call “defamation of Islam.” But the same playbook – in the tradition of Mrs. Clinton’s mentor, Saul Alinsky – is now being followed with a vengeance against what is abhorred by the cabal best described as the Red-Green Axis.
Much in evidence among such “old-fashioned techniques” now being employed is what’s known as “the Big Lie.” It entails the endless repetition of outrageous falsehoods to defame, and ultimately silence, one’s political opponents.
Three good men Donald Trump has selected for key strategic and national security positions are currently getting the Big Lie treatment: his White House Counsel Steve Bannon, Attorney General-designate Senator Jeff Sessions, and incoming National Security Advisor Lieutenant General Michael Flynn. They are being relentlessly vilified as “racists,” “bigots” and “haters.”
I feel these able public servants’ pain. Indeed, I know what it’s like to be subjected to the Big Lie. For years, the Islamists and their allies on the hard Left – notably, the discredited (for example, here and here) Southern Poverty Law Center – have used character assassination and vitriol against me (for example, here, here and here) to protect what they otherwise cannot defend: the totalitarian program its adherents call Sharia. The false assertion last week that I had been asked to serve on the Trump transition team sent these rogues into fresh paroxysms of hateful denunciation, repeated like a mantra by their media echo chamber (for example, here, here, here and here).
I am hardly alone in being diagnosed by such charlatans with the made-up condition of “Islamophobia.” Indeed, I am proud to be included in the company of men and women being pilloried for what Islamic supremacists and their enablers would have us believe is “defamation of Islam.” In fact, it is simply informed, astute and courageous truth-telling about the global jihad movement and threat it poses. Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions and Mike Flynn are under assault for doing the same in this and other contexts.
It seems that critics are particularly unhinged by the clarity of these three men and the president they will serve about the fact that Islamic supremacism is not simply a menace overseas. The Red-Green types are determined to prevent Donald Trump from operationalizing the plan of action he described in a major address on the topic on August 15, 2016. Among its highlights are the following:
Our new approach, which must be shared by both parties in America, by our allies overseas, and by our friends in the Middle East, must be to halt the spread of Radical Islam. All actions should be oriented around this goal….Just as we won the Cold War, in part, by exposing the evils of communism and the virtues of free markets, so too must we take on the ideology of Radical Islam….
In the Cold War, we had an ideological screening test. The time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today. In addition to screening out all members or sympathizers of terrorist groups, we must also screen out any who have hostile attitudes towards our country or its principles – or who believe that Sharia law should supplant American law. Those who do not believe in our Constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted for immigration into the country….
Finally, we will pursue aggressive criminal or immigration charges against anyone who lends material support to terrorism. Similar to the effort to take down the mafia, this will be the understood mission of every federal investigator and prosecutor in the country. To accomplish a goal, you must state a mission: the support networks for Radical Islam in this country will be stripped out and removed one by one. Immigration officers will also have their powers restored: those who are guests in our country that are preaching hate will be asked to return home. (Emphasis added)
In short, the Red-Green Axis is having conniptions because the American people have now chosen to lead them a president and an administration that will not just be sensible about this threat. It is also determined to do the job Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and their minions have adamantly shirked: protecting us against, rather than accommodating, Sharia. So the Big Lie and “other techniques of shaming and peer pressure” are now being applied with abandon to outstanding public servants in the hope of reducing their effectiveness and that of the presidency they will serve.
The transparent falsity and political agenda being served by such lies should, instead, discredit their perpetrators. For that to happen, however, the so-called “mainstream press” will have to stop lionizing the Big Liars and uncritically promoting their handiwork.
Will Team Trump Air Obama’s Iran Secrets?
November 21, 2016Will Team Trump Air Obama’s Iran Secrets? Power Line,
For years, Republicans and conservatives have charged that President Obama has shielded embarrassing intelligence and other information regarding Iran in order to limit opposition to the Iran nuclear deal and Obama’s conciliatory approach to Tehran. The charge seems well-founded. After all, it took Sens. Tom Cotton and Rep. Mike Pompeo to discover secret side agreements attached to the nuclear deal.
Eli Lake suggests that the Trump administration may well stop covering for the mullahs. Certainly, as Lake argues, Trump’s early high level personnel picks suggest so.
Trump’s nominee for CIA Director is none other than Mike Pompeo. Not only did he and Sen. Cotton uncover side deals to the nuclear agreement, he also pressed hard for answers about the cash payments the U.S. delivered to the mullahs in exchange for the release of hostages.
Pompeo wrote to Attorney General Lynch asking for answers as to how the cash payments were approved by the Justice Department. Lynch stonewalled him. Perhaps Jeff Sessions will be more cooperative.
Mike Flynn is the other key appointment for purposes of airing Obama’s Iran secrets. Lake points out that in 2011 General Flynn ran a team at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that reviewed the troves of material captured in the 2011 Osama bin Laden raid.
Under Obama, only a small fraction of these documents have been declassified and released. After he retired from the military, Flynn charged that the disclosures were selective.
Flynn noted, for example, that some documents captured in the bin Laden raid show a much tighter relationship between Iran and al-Qaeda than previously disclosed. In The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies (written with Micheal Ledeen), Flynn states: “One letter to bin Laden reveals that al-Qaeda was working on chemical and biological weapons in Iran.”
Given Obama’s desire to deal with Iran and, indeed, for a rapprochement, you can see why the administration shielded such intelligence. Given the well-deserved contempt by Pompeo and Flynn for Obama’s Iran policy, you can see why they might want relevant facts to come to light. As a general matter, these are facts the public has a right to know.
If such facts are made public, Obama won’t have much standing to complain. Lake reminds us:
Obama himself in 2008 campaigned against the sitting president’s policies on waterboarding and enhanced interrogation. One of the first things his government did when he took office was to declassify and release the legal memos that justified and revoked these practices.
It looks like the Republicans are about to return the favor.
Hamas-linked CAIR urges Trump to “cut ties” with “anti-Islam conspiracy theorist”
November 19, 2016Hamas-linked CAIR urges Trump to “cut ties” with “anti-Islam conspiracy theorist,” Jihad Watch,
America’s largest Muslim advocacy organization urged President-elect Donald Trump to cut ties with a national security adviser the group described as an “anti-Islam conspiracy theorist.”
The Hill doesn’t mention the Hamas ties and opposition to counter-terror efforts of “America’s largest Muslim advocacy organization.” The “anti-Islam conspiracy theorist” in question is Frank Gaffney. Considering that the source of this label is CAIR, it’s a compliment to Gaffney. Islamic supremacists and their leftist enablers are now quaking in their boots at the mere thought of Trump in the White House — all the more because he is surrounding himself with strategists who support freedom, democracy and Israel. CAIR’s gig as flourishing unindicted co-conspirators may well be drawing to a close.
Frank Gaffney
“Muslim group to Trump: Drop ‘anti-Islam conspiracy theorist’ as adviser,” by Mark Hensch, the Hill, November 18, 2016:
America’s largest Muslim advocacy organization urged President-elect Donald Trump to cut ties with a national security adviser the group described as an “anti-Islam conspiracy theorist.”
“Discredited conspiracy theorists like Frank Gaffney should not come within 100 miles of any administration that seeks to maintain credibility on the world stage or uphold longstanding American values of religious diversity and inclusion,” Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a statement Wednesday.
“With these kinds of associations, President-elect Trump is dividing America at a time when we are most in need of unity.”
Reports emerged Tuesday that Trump’s transition team has added Gaffney as a national security adviser.
Gaffney, who served in the Pentagon under former President Ronald Reagan, is now a radio host and founder of the Center for Security Policy.
Reports added that Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and former Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) also joined Trump’s transition team alongside Gaffney. The trio was brought on after former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and lobbyist Michael Freedman were fired earlier this week.
Gaffney reportedly backed the theory that President Obama is Muslim and born outside the U.S. The former Reagan administration official has also insisted the government has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, describes Gaffney as “one of America’s most notorious Islamophobes.”
Gaffney told Breitbart News Daily the day after Trump’s White House win the billionaire should focus on curbing Muslim Brotherhood influence on the U.S. when he takes office, saying an early goal should be “stopping, designating, rolling up the Muslim Brotherhood in America as the terrorist organization it is.”
“It’s going to be vital to everything else he’s trying to do. We’ve got to stop taking counsel from them, direction from them, and allowing them to operate in our midst subversively, and that’s what’s been going on for some 50 years now,” he said…
Freakout by Elizabeth Warren [Updated]
November 19, 2016Freakout by Elizabeth Warren [Updated], Power Line,
The left is going to make attacking Jeff Sessions the cornerstone of its early resistance to Donald Trump. Elizabeth Warren, a possible presidential contender in 2020, sounded the call almost immediately, asserting a moral imperative to block Sessions’ confirmation.
The alleged moral imperative is based on stale and, in some cases, disputed claims of mildly racist comments that were alleged 30 years ago when Sessions was denied confirmation for a federal judgeship. Warren stated:
Thirty years ago, a different Republican Senate rejected Senator Sessions’ nomination to a federal judgeship. In doing so, that Senate affirmed that there can be no compromise with racism; no negotiation with hate. Today, a new Republican Senate must decide whether self-interest and political cowardice will prevent them from once again doing what is right.
But did the Senate get it right 30 years ago? Arlen Specter, who cast the deciding vote against Sessions, later concluded it did not. Specter, who has never big on confessing error, called his vote a “mistake” that “remains one of my biggest regrets.”
Specter was right. Let’s look beyond disputed allegations about stray remarks to Sessions’ record.
Mark Hemingway points out:
As a U.S. Attorney, [Sessions] filed several cases to desegregate schools in Alabama. And he also prosecuted the head of the state Klan, Henry Francis Hays, for abducting and killing Michael Donald, a black teenager selected at random. Sessions insisted on the death penalty for Hays.
When he was later elected the state Attorney General, Sessions followed through and made sure Hays was executed. The successful prosecution of Hays also led to a $7 million civil judgment against the Klan, effectively breaking the back of the KKK in Alabama.
In Warren’s terms, Sessions refused to compromise with racism and negotiate with hate.
Sessions also voted across party lines to confirm Eric Holder as the first African-American U.S. Attorney General. If he were a racist, it would have been easy for Sessions to join the 21 of his conservative Republican colleagues who voted “no” on Holder’s confirmation.
At the time Sessions said he was sure Holder would be “a responsible legal officer and not a politician.” Even the best Senators make mistakes.
Opposition to Jeff Sessions isn’t a protest against racism. Even Sen. Warren must know that Sessions isn’t a racist.
The attack on this good man is in part an attempt to lash out at Donald Trump and in part an effort to rile up African-American voters who, collectively, weren’t sufficiently riled to deliver the votes Hillary Clinton needed in cities like Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Detroit.
In Warren’s case, this probably is also an attempt to boost her credentials with civil rights leaders in case she runs for president. (Ironically, Sessions and Warren have something in common; both were elected to the Senate after failing to be confirmed by that body.)
The Democrats don’t have the votes to block Sessions’ confirmation. Thanks to rules changes pushed through by Harry Reid, it no longer requires 60 votes to confirm presidential appointees.
The filibuster is dead when it comes to such confirmations. Posturing is alive and well.
UPDATE: Watch Tucker Carlson take on Roll Call’s Jonathan Allen on the issue of alleged racism by Sessions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp7jyFzflW4
Crying Wolf on Race: Top Sessions Critic Gerry Hebert Has History of Making it Up
November 19, 2016Crying Wolf on Race: Top Sessions Critic Gerry Hebert Has History of Making it Up, PJ Media, J. Christian Adams, November 18, 2016
Gerry Hebert, the leading critic of the appointment of Senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general, has a history of making things up about racial issues — so much so, in fact, that a federal court imposed sanctions in one of Hebert’s voting cases.
Reporters like Cameron Joseph at the New York Daily News (@cam_joseph) have already used quotes from Gerry Hebert, a former Justice Department lawyer, to portray Senator Sessions as a racist. Almost 30 years ago, Hebert and his allies in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department were responsible for sabotaging a judicial nomination for Sessions.
Gerry Hebert
The reporters using Hebert as a source do not mention Hebert’s history of making up stories about purported racism, yet documentation of that history is easily located in the public record. Hebert’s exaggerations about racism in one federal court case resulted in sanctions being imposed by a federal judge, costing the United States taxpayer $86,626.
As I wrote in my book Injustice, Hebert is not to be trusted as a credible source:
In United States v. Jones, the Voting Section was sanctioned $86,626 for bringing a frivolous case in Alabama. The DOJ brought the suit under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to block over fifty white voters from participating in an election in a majority black district.The appeals court ruled that the lawsuit was filed “without conducting a proper investigation of its truth [and was] unconscionable … Hopefully, we will not again be faced with reviewing a case as carelessly instigated as this one.”
You can read the entire scolding Hebert received from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals — for bringing a flimsy case that relied on trumped-up exaggerations about racism — here.
The court ruled:
A properly conducted investigation would have quickly revealed that there was no basis for the claim that the Defendants were guilty of purposeful discrimination against black voters …Unfortunately, we cannot restore the reputation of the persons wrongfully branded by the United States as public officials who deliberately deprived their fellow citizens of their voting rights. We also lack the power to remedy the damage done to race relations in Dallas County by the unfounded accusations of purposeful discrimination made by the United States.
We can only hope that in the future the decision makers in the United States Department of Justice will be more sensitive to the impact on racial harmony that can result from the filing of a claim of purposeful discrimination.
So ironically — or of course — the media rushed to press using Gerry Hebert as THEcredible source on perhaps THE ONE TOPIC where Gerry Hebert kinda should be scratched off as a possible source.
Hebert is up to his old tricks, now wrongly branding a good man in Senator Sessions. But it’s worse than that.
Notice the scolding the Court gave Hebert about the damage to race relations caused by these Justice Department lawyers. Hebert’s attack on Sessions is now doing the same, using phony stories to smear a good man.
Hans von Spakovsky covered Hebert’s flimsy racial accusations here:
Not only did Hebert lose, but Justice was castigated by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in U.S. v. Jones, 125 F.3d 1418 (1997), for what it concluded was “a very troubling case.” (Hebert is listed as the Justice counsel of record in the district court opinion, U.S. v. Jones, 846 F.Supp. 955 (1994)).
Let’s watch how many reporters continue to rely on Gerry Hebert as a source to smear Senator Sessions.
Let’s see if any of those reporters include Hebert’s history of racial exaggerations, claiming that racism was at play when it wasn’t.
Reporters who take Hebert seriously on charges of racism should be held accountable to their editors.
In the meantime, Hebert is only making it worse for his pals in the Civil Rights Division. Some of the lawyers who attacked Sessions are still working there, and so are their friends and allies. Seems a good time for them to update their resumes.
The Michael Flynn Selection
November 19, 2016The Michael Flynn Selection, Power Line,
Donald Trump has selected Michael Flynn to be his national security adviser. The selection is a natural one. Flynn was Trump’s go-to guy on national security matters during the campaign.
The retired Lt. General is already under attack on a number of fronts, both personal and substantive. The focus should be on substance.
I don’t know Flynn’s views on the full range of national security related topics. I agree with his line on two vital issues — ISIS and Iran. His general view of the threat posed by Islam also strikes me as sound, if not always expressed with sufficient nuance.
As for Russia, Flynn will continue to take fire for his recent trip to Moscow. However, as we noted here, Flynn criticized Russian foreign policy while in Moscow.
Flynn’s recent book, discussed below, also comes down on Russia. It takes issue with the view, advanced by Trump, that Russia can be a reliable partner in the fight against ISIS in Syria.
Keep this in mind as those speaking out against Flynn make him out to be pro-Putin. Critics of the Russian autocrat may end of being pleased that Trump is getting advice from Flynn.
Folks who have heard Flynn speak — be it at the Republican Convention, on cable news, or in person — may share my impression that he isn’t very articulate. Flynn probably comes across well in conversation, though. Otherwise, it’s unlikely that Trump would elevate him to national security adviser, however loyal Flynn has been. Indeed, it’s unlikely that Flynn would gotten Trump’s ear to begin with.
Flynn’s views on the all-important issue of combating radical Islam come through clearly in the book, mentioned above, that he wrote with out friend Michael Ledeen — The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies. In evaluating Flynn’s approach to radical Islam, his book, not his tweets or off-hand comments, should be the touchstone.
Finally, when critics complain that Flynn’s selection is just a reward for his loyalty to Trump, think of Susan Rice, the current national security adviser. She got the job after loyally peddling the Obama-Clinton tale that the attacks in Benghazi were due to an anti-Islam video.
Flynn may be loyal, but to my knowledge he never spread falsehoods on behalf of Trump.
Is Flynn an ideal national security adviser? Not in my view. However, he’s the voice Trump wants most to hear on national security issues. I believe that most of what Trump hears from Flynn will be sound.
FULL INTERVIEW — Ted Cruz SLAMS the hypocrisy of Democrats over President Elect Donald Trump’s big win!
November 17, 2016FULL Ted Cruz SLAMS the hypocrisy of Democrats over President Elect Donald Trump’s big win! Fox News via YouTube, November 17, 2016
(I had hoped that Senator Cruz would support and help President Elect Trump. He seems to be doing so. — DM)
Transition: The Mainstream Media Does Its Duty – or Not
November 17, 2016Transition: The Mainstream Media Does Its Duty – or Not, PJ Media, Roger L. Simon, November 17, 2016
The mainstream media – whose biased reporting during the 2016 presidential election will be the subject, one imagines, of numerous books – is still trying to justify that bias during the transition to the Trump administration.
Two current memes are the sleazy claims of anti-Semitism against Stephen Bannon and the seemingly more serious allegations that said transition, only just over a week old, is badly disorganized and fraught with infighting.
Just one of many examples of the latter is this morning’s dispatch from Bloomberg: “The news about key contenders for Cabinet positions in the future Trump administration came after the transition team gave its first detailed update on Wednesday night amid reports of infighting and disorganization.”
If you say so.
On a newly-instituted daily press phone briefing regarding the transition Thursday morning, Trump communications advisor Jason Miller and RNC strategist Sean Spicer seemed to me anything but disorganized or indicative of a particularly high degree of infighting, but what I do I know?
For that matter, what does anybody else really know? Common sense dictates that the types of people who aspire to great power in our (or any) society would be jockeying for positions at a time like this. That’s essentially “dog bites man,” but our press is easily willing to abandon such a hoary watchword of reporting for any possible reason to denigrate the man who so deceived them by actually getting elected.
The comic version of all this was the chorus of complaints when Trump snuck out of his Tower without telling the media for dinner with his family at 21. One wag on television insisted the reason this was so dangerous was that no one would know where to find him in case of another 9/11, as if Donald didn’t have the most recognizable face of the planet now that Michael Jackson has expired. (The patrons of the restaurant gave him a standing-o on his arrival.) More to the point, Barack Obama is still president in case of a disaster and easily found, one assumes, at the Acropolis or Peru or somewhere.
Although a good start and worth holding, this first daily briefing was not especially revelatory if you have been paying attention. It mainly consisted of the names – already, for the most part, publicly available – of those who would be meeting with Trump in the next day or so or have met with him. Some of these people are potential cabinet members and others, like Henry Kissinger, at this point hors de combat but on the short list of grey eminences normally consulted.
Many of these cabinet positions – state, defense, attorney general – have been discussed ad infinitum in the press but one that seems to have been relatively ignored – education secretary – may ultimately be the most important. For some time now, the US has been spending close to the most per student of any nation while getting, for a first world country, some of the worst results. Why? When watching what is going on our streets and campuses right now – this revolt of the “snowflakes” – we might be getting a clue. What our kids have been receiving is too often indoctrination, not education. Nothing could be more perilous for our future.
One candidate for education secretary reported to have met with Trump was fellow New Yorker Eva Moskowitz. Though a Democrat, Ms. Moskowitz wandered off the reservation of her party as a strong advocate for charter schools and school choice. According to the AP, she took herself out of the running, but other candidates Michelle Rhee and Jeanne Allen have similar views. If Trump, with the help of one of these women, revitalizes our moribund educational system, he will have achieved changes of lasting significance.
If there is one area where there has been some – in this case very positive – disruption in the transition is the ejection of lobbyists from the team, many associated with Chris Christie. Trump pledged in his Gettysburg speech to disconnect lobbying from public service, promising a five-year ban on such activity after serving. This ban would be permanent when associated with foreign countries. On this one, so far, the president-elect seems to be following through.
A final press claim that Trump was ignoring foreign leaders seems particularly absurd. As of midday Wednesday, he or vice-president-elect Pence had spoken with twenty-nine, including the twin powerhouses Putin and Xi-Jinping. Tonight Trump has his first face-to-face meeting with a leader – Japan’s Shinzo Abe.
Despite the press disinformation, these people are indeed moving quickly, possibly quicker than any recent administration. An indication: the phone briefings I was on will continue Saturday and Sunday. There goes the weekend!
Hypocrisy Watch: Networks Pound Bannon, But Ignore Democrat Ellison’s Radicalism
November 17, 2016Hypocrisy Watch: Networks Pound Bannon, But Ignore Democrat Ellison’s Radicalism, MRC News Busters, November 16, 2016
Since Sunday evening, ABC, CBS and NBC (along with a host of other establishment media outlets) have been engaged in a feeding frenzy over Donald Trump’s appointment of Steve Bannon, with reporters relentlessly employing phrases such as “white nationalist,” “white supremacist,” “extremist,” “racist” and “anti-Semitic” to solidify the image of Bannon as a dangerous pick for a top White House position.
But since Friday, those same networks have been blind to the controversies surrounding the top candidate for Democratic National Committee Chairman, Rep. Keith Ellison. Ellison has been accused of ties to the radical Nation of Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood, and once suggested the 9/11 terrorist attacks were akin to the infamous Reichstag fire used to propel Hitler’s Nazi party into absolute power in 1933 Germany.
From Sunday night through Wednesday morning, MRC analysts found the Big Three had already churned out 41 minutes, 46 seconds of coverage devoted to Bannon’s appointment. An analysis finds that nearly three-fourths (74%) of all references to Bannon were negative; the only positive comments viewers heard came from interviews or soundbites with other Trump campaign officials or Republican officeholders.
Reporters threw everything at Bannon, including the kitchen sink. On ABC’s World News Tonight on Monday, correspondent Tom Llamas labeled him “a champion of the alt-right, a conservative movement many say is fueled by racism, sexism and anti-Semitism.” NBC anchor Lester Holt said Trump was “lifting a man with ties to white nationalists into the heart of the White House.”
On the CBS Evening News, reporter Chip Reid told viewers about long-dropped charges of “domestic violence,” and unsubstantiated accusations from Bannon’s ex-wife that he didn’t want his children “going to school with Jews.”
The coverage has been so ridiculously excessive, The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro — who dislikes Bannon — said it was evidence the media had “gone nuts” over the appointment:
They claim that he’s personally anti-Semitic and racist and a white nationalist and anti-Israel, without evidence. This is ridiculous. And all it does is provoke defense from the right. For God’s sake, I’m now defending Steve Bannon! The media can’t stop their overreach, because everybody on the right is Hitler to the media, which means that Bannon must be Super-Duper-Hitler. [italics in original.]
Contrast that with news coverage of a Democrat accused of radicalism. Since he was first mentioned as a potential candidate on Friday, Rep. Ellison’s bid to take over the DNC has received only two minutes, nine seconds of network airtime, and none of it has focused on his controversial comments or associations.
The only spin network viewers heard was positive. On NBC’s Today show on Sunday, MSNBC’s Joy Reid was brought on to sing his praises: “Keith Ellison as a young legislator, as a Muslim, as an African-American, he really feels like sort of an ideal candidate.”
Ellison has been endorsed by incoming Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer, a move which has led to protests against the New York Senator. While CBS has not mentioned those protests, their New York affiliate has done the reporting:
On a trip to Israel last summer, Ellison posted a photo of a sign in Hebron declaring Israel to be an apartheid state. He also proudly defended Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan against accusations of being anti-Semitic.
“(H)is vile beliefs… ought to disqualify him outright,” said Joel Mowbray, a consultant to Jewish groups. “If Chuck Schumer actually did his due diligence and is supporting Ellison anyway, that’s shameful.”
FoxNews.com explained that “in 2007, Ellison made a comparison between Bush and 9/11 to Hitler and the 1933 Reichstag fire.”
“‘9/11 is the juggernaut in American history and it allows… it’s almost like, you know, the Reichstag fire,’ Ellison said, according to a Daily Telegraph report at the time. ‘After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader of that country [Hitler] in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted.’”
Longtime terrorism expert Steve Emerson in 2010 documented that Ellison had financial “donors with a history of Muslim Brotherhood connections.” And in March 2010, according to Emerson, “Ellison attended a private fundraiser at the northern Virginia home of a man who led a group tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Add it all up, and Ellison sounds at least as controversial as Bannon. So, if charges of extremism against a potential Republican White House aide are worth massive network coverage, where is the similar coverage of the radical ties of a Congressman who hopes to lead the Democratic Party?
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