‘60 Minutes’ Runs Fake News Hit
Piece Against DeSantis
Why anyone still takes CBS’s “news” show “60 Minutes” seriously after its long history of blatantly deceptive promulgation of demonstrably false narratives is anybody’s guess. That “60 Minutes” is still considered reputable journalism by many is a testament to the manipulative power of popular media. In truth, the show is nothing more than a leftist propaganda program masquerading as investigative journalism. This reality was once again brought home over the weekend when the program was exposed for deliberately spinning a false narrative against Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis via a deceptively edited interview.
The “60 Minutes” story is nothing other than an anti-DeSantis hit piece aimed at smearing the governor’s impressive and successful leadership in handling the ChiCom Virus pandemic and specifically vaccine distribution. CBS’s Sharyn Alfonsi, who covered the segment, claims that DeSantis engaged in “pay-to-play” schemes for COVID vaccine distribution that favored white and affluent areas.
None of the allegations are true, and DeSantis throughly debunks them when questioned by Alfonsi during a press conference.
“Publix, as you know, donated $100,000 to your campaign, and then you reward them with exclusive rights to vaccination in Palm Beach,” Alfonsi asserts. DeSantis explained, “You had the counties, you had some drive-thru sites, you had hospitals that were doing a lot, but we wanted to get it into communities more. So we reached out to other retail pharmacies: Publix, Walmart, obviously CVS and Walgreens had to finish that mission, and we said we’re going to use you as soon as you’re done with that.” However, rather than showing DeSantis’s full response, CBS deceptively edited out the majority and most significant portions of his answer, and then continued parroting its demonstrably false narrative. Joseph Goebbels would be proud.
In fact, so blatantly misleading and downright false was the “60 Minutes” “reporting” that a local Democrat official, Jared Moskowitz — who happens to be the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management and no friend of DeSantis — blasted it as “absolute malarkey.”
Another Democrat, Palm Beach County Mayor Dave Kerner, stated unequivocally, “The reporting was not just based on bad information — it was intentionally false. I know this because I offered to provide my insight into Palm Beach County’s vaccination efforts and ‘60 Minutes’ declined. They know that the governor came to Palm Beach County and met with me and the county administrator and we asked to expand the state’s partnership with Publix to Palm Beach County.” Kerner further noted, “The media is making it worse. They are hellbent on dividing us for cheap views and clicks. ‘60 Minutes’ should be ashamed.”
Publix also criticized “60 Minutes” for false reporting, stating, “The irresponsible suggestion that there was a connection between campaign contributions made to Governor DeSantis and our willingness to join other pharmacies in support of the state’s vaccine efforts is absolutely false and offensive.”
Fox News’s Brit Hume observed, “It’s worth noting that one of the reasons DeSantis [is praised] is that Florida has been mostly open … for most of the year and yet its infection and death rates are no worse in states like California that had all the draconian lockdowns that did such terrible damage to their local economies not to mention the secondary effects of those lockdowns." Indeed, Florida has shunned the extreme lockdowns, but as DeSantis said, "There are 26 states that are higher than Florida, per capita mortality, and 40 states that are higher in 65 and up mortality rates." New York Governor scumbag/liar-Andrew Cuomo, call your office.
It’s clear that mainstream media outlets like CBS, which have long been political action committees for Democrats, fear an effective Republican leader like DeSantis gaining in popularity, thus the baseless hit piece. If this weren’t the case, then "60 Minutes” would have been banging on Cuomo’s door long ago, as this is a real scandal that any genuine investigative journalist worth his salt would be champing at the bit to expose. ~The Patriot Post
Mitch McConnell Lays Into Corporate America
Much has been made of the rift between Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell, but there seems to be precious little daylight between the two of them when it comes to corporate America’s craven capitulation to the woke Left and its simultaneous abandonment of its traditional Republican allies.
Over the weekend, the former president called for boycotts of Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, JPMorgan Chase, ViacomCBS, Citigroup, Cisco, UPS, and Merck, all of whom have given to swapping spit with the woke Left. “For years,” Trump said, “the Radical Left Democrats have played dirty by boycotting products when anything from that company is done or stated in any way that offends them. It is finally time for Republicans and Conservatives to fight back.”
And yesterday, in the wake of Major League Baseball’s utterly disgraceful boycott of Georgia, whose democratically elected officials had the temerity to pass a modest and sensible series of anti-fraud voter reform measures, Senate Minority Leader McConnell came out swinging — and his first punch was a straight right hand to the chops of socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden, who lately has proven himself to be a race-baiting scoundrel of the first order.
“We are witnessing a coordinated campaign by powerful and wealthy people to mislead and bully the American people,” McConnell began. “The President has claimed repeatedly that state-level debates over voting procedures are worse than Jim Crow or ‘Jim Crow on steroids.’ Nobody actually believes this. Nobody really thinks this current dispute comes anywhere near the horrific racist brutality of segregation. But there’s an old cynical saying that ‘history is just the set of lies agreed upon.’ And a host of powerful people and institutions apparently think they stand to benefit from parroting this big lie.”
For the normally reserved McConnell to have attacked a sitting U.S. president — a president who was for decades his Senate colleague — in such a way is telling. But Biden deserves every bit of it. Indeed, it’s hard to recall a more despicable series of utterances from a sitting president than socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden’s “Jim Crow” and “un-American” and “sick” and “atrocity” smears regarding Georgia’s voter-integrity law. Not even the hard-left Washington Post could keep from giving him four Pinocchios.
Nor did McConnell spare corporate America, whose relationship with the Republican Party is now publicly unraveling. “It’s jaw-dropping to see powerful American institutions not just permit themselves to be bullied,” he said, “but join in the bullying themselves. Wealthy corporations have no problem operating in New York, for example, which has fewer days of early voting than Georgia, requires excuses for absentee ballots, and restricts electioneering via refreshments. … Our private sector must stop taking cues from the Outrage-Industrial Complex. Americans do not need or want big business to amplify disinformation or react to every manufactured controversy with frantic left-wing signaling.”
What’s behind the Left’s efforts to both bully and woo corporate America? To drive a wedge between its political enemies and the business sector? HR 1, that’s what — and real, honest-to-badness voter suppression. As McConnell continues, “This disinformation has a purpose. Washington Democrats want to pass a sweeping bill that would let them rewrite all 50 states’ election laws and turn the Federal Election Commission into a Democrat-run partisan body. This power grab is impossible to defend, so the left wants to deflect. Instead of winning the debate, they want to silence debate by bullying citizens and entire states into submission.”
The time for choosing is upon us — and more than that, it’s on corporate America. Will you respect the political beliefs of all Americans? Or will you continue to segregate us by political color? ~The Patriot Post
Ignoring the Big Lies Is Not an Option
The recent decision by Major League Baseball to move the All-Star Game from Atlanta is a form of economic sanctions. Those sanctions, costing the Atlanta area over $100 million, are based on a big lie — that wanting fair, secure elections is somehow supporting the next iteration of Jim Crow.
For those who know American history, Jim Crow is rightly viewed with repugnance. That regime of discriminatory laws (passed by Southern Democrats) treated millions of Americans as second-class citizens (if not as subjects) based on the color of their skin. Obviously, it was wrong to mandate segregation based on one’s skin tone. Yet Georgia’s new law is nothing like the voter suppression employed against blacks in America until 1965.
It replaces the subjective signature verification with a more objective means of verifying one’s identity. It allows Sunday voting. It permits ballot drop boxes more liberally than was the case in 2018.
On that note, when it comes to absentee balloting, Georgia’s law should be strengthened. It should ban drop boxes (as was the case in 2018 and prior) and ballot harvesting entirely and instead require the use of certified mail with return receipt for applications and ballots both ways — with the postage for the applications and ballots to be returned via certified mail being prepaid by state and local election authorities while being tied to the certified mail tracking number — to strengthen the chain of custody for these ballots and reduce the possibility of bulk-mail vote fraud.
That quibble with Georgia’s law aside, this is not the first time such big lies have been told, often without consequences. While leftists often harp about words having consequences when it comes to the exact terminology President Donald Trump used to describe COVID-19 and tie it (falsely) to hate crimes against Americans of Asian descent, there is remarkable silence on the likely consequences of the big lies that have been told about conservatives.
We’ve heard them, from phony comparisons to Nazis, to being called racists, to seeing our support for the Second Amendment making us domestic terrorists, to being called sexists for opposing abortion on demand. The late John Lewis famously made a frivolous play of the Nazi card in the 1995 debate on welfare reform.
Letitia James campaigned to be New York’s attorney general by claiming the National Rifle Association was a domestic terrorist group, and she is now seeking its dissolution on dubious grounds. Anyone with common sense knows the NRA’s real “crime” is its advocacy for the Second Amendment.
Loyal Patriot Post readers need to only re-read what Dennis Prager noted multiple times to see the potential consequences. The constant lies that Republicans are the next iteration of Nazis/Jim Crow segregationists who embrace white supremacy and are secretly plotting an insurrection while driving LGBT youth to suicide arguably convinced certain people in positions of power to “fortify” the 2020 election. After all, a lot of otherwise decent people would agree that getting the next iteration of Nazis out of power would certainly justify a departure from the norms.
One of the biggest litmus tests going forward for those who seek to lead Republicans, conservatives, and grassroots Patriots is going to be a willingness to confront those big lies. Trump was taking those lies on and earned a lot of loyalty from grassroots Patriots as a result. Perhaps others will learn this lesson before it’s too late. ~The Patriot Post
Manchin’s Calculated ‘Objections’ to ‘Infrastructure’ Bill
Does anyone out there still care about the national debt? Not really, even if a bipartisan group of lawmakers is rather half-heartedly highlighting the fact that the debt has reached $85,210 per person. “I’m concerned about it in terms of generational equity, the long-term implications for your generation and the generation that comes after,” said Maine Senator Angus King, an “independent” who caucuses with the Democrats. “And it bothers me from a sort of ethical point of view that where my generation is … spending your money.”
Does it bother him or any other Democrat enough to oppose the latest spending sprees? Nope.
Just ask Democrat Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia (Donald Trump by 39 points). He’s come out with a show of harrumphing about the Democrats’ “infrastructure” boondoggle, saying, “As the bill exists today, it needs to be changed.”
But Manchin’s quibbles are small potatoes. He said last month that increasing the corporate tax rate to “at least” 25% would be necessary to “pay for” the spending, even though we noted last week how woefully inadequate and wrongheaded the tax hike to 28% is. Manchin objects to 28%, saying, “There’s six or seven other Democrats who feel very strongly about this. We have to be competitive, and we’re not going to throw caution to the wind.”
Somebody ask him what he thinks about the estimated $200 billion in unemployment fraud in the Not COVID Relief spending. Or ask him about King’s remarks regarding generational debt.
Meanwhile, Alabama Congressman and Senate candidate Mo Brooks took the debt comments even further: “We’re going to blow through the $30 trillion debt mark sometime this year. And after a while, citizens’ eyes tend to get a little bit classy. But they need to understand that American citizens are responsible individually for paying that entire debt and each citizen’s share … is $90,000.” And if you really do the math of who pays the taxes, he says, “$720,000 is the average debt burden of each family of four in the United States of America.”
That is stunning. Or it should be.
Manchin gave away his own power play when he said, “If I don’t vote to get on it, it’s not going anywhere.” But make no mistake, this is Senate Majority Leader Chuck scumbag/liar-Schumer’s plan, too. Indeed, Manchin’s objections are all part of the strategy. Democrats roll out their big plans, allow him and a couple of others to say slow down a tad, make some adjustments to show how moderate and careful they’re being, and then pass it without any Republican support.
Doubt that’s what will happen? Consider that the Senate parliamentarian ruled Monday that Democrats can pursue reconciliation on additional spending legislation, meaning they can circumvent the filibuster without eliminating it. That means massive spending bills that enact hugely consequential shifts in big sectors of the economy, all without needing a single Republican vote.
Is this a setup for passing the grossly misnamed “For the People Act”? ~The Patriot Post
Homicide Spike Tied to Democrats Defunding Police
We’re three months into 2021 and there’s ample evidence that defunding the police has only resulted in a higher rate of violent crime and homicides. Across the nation, 20 major metropolitan areas collectively have seen a 28% jump in homicides from this time last year. Of these cities, nine followed the Left’s social justice anti-police narrative and significantly cut their law enforcement budgets, producing the sadly predictable result: spiking homicide rates.
The city with the highest jump in homicides from this period last year was Portland, Oregon, which has witnessed a whopping 1,900% increase in killings over the first three months of 2021. The raw numbers aren’t huge — one murder as of April in 2020 compared to 20 homicides this April — but the change is drastic. In the wake of George Floyd’s death, Portland cut $16 million (7%) of its police budget and has witnessed 66 homicides since. Over that same time span in 2019, Portland had 17 homicides.
Austin, Texas, which cut its policing budget by $20 million (23%), has seen 19 homicides this year, a 35% jump from last year.
Philadelphia cut $33 million (5%) of its policing budget only to see homicides increase by 25% to 120.
Similarly, Minneapolis cut $9 million (5%) of funding for its law enforcement and saw 19 homicides, a surge of 46%.
Los Angeles eliminated $150 million (2%) from its police budget only to have LA County officials unanimously vote last week to add $36 million in police funding following 77 homicides this year, a 28% rise over this time last year.
That these homicide rates have jumped is as predictable as rain falling from storm clouds. Randy Peterson, a former police officer and senior researcher at the Center for Effective Justice, observes, “When you give up on the idea that the police are going to hold people accountable, it is not surprising that there will be more violence.”
One of the biggest casualties of the “defund the police” movement has been departments cutting back on proactive policing, which has proven effective in dissuading violence before it starts. Temple University criminology professor Jerry Ratcliffe notes, “Defunding is not taking place in huge levels, but pedestrian and traffic stops are down significantly. There are more opportunities for crime because there is less deterrence.”
The Left has sought to blame the spiking homicide rates on everything from the coronavirus pandemic to gun sales, but as far as COVID is concerned, Ratcliffe points out that other countries such as Italy, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have actually witnessed a decrease in homicides and violent crimes since the pandemic hit.
The mere existence of laws does not a lawful people make. Rather, the enforcement of those laws for a moral people does. Without police, the criminally minded have little to fear. Or, as the adage says, when the cat’s away the mice will play. ~The Patriot Post
CAL THOMAS
Take Me Out of the Ballgame
When the NFL decided not to punish players who kneeled during the pre-game national anthem, some fans reacted by refusing to attend games, buy league merchandise, or watch games on TV.
It took several years for the NFL to win fans back and some — like me — broke the habit and never returned, in person, or on TV.
Last season, some Major League Baseball (MLB) players also took a knee, but it did not appear to me to be as regular an occurrence as with the NFL. Perhaps it had something to do with the difference in the number of games each sport plays? Apparently, though, MLB is now trying to play catch-up.
The commissioner announced last week it is moving the 2021 All Star Game from Atlanta to a yet-to-be-determined location. The stated reason is because the league believes a new Georgia law has made it more difficult for African Americans to vote. The charge has been denied by Gov. Brian Kemp, who has demonstrated he has a backbone by refusing to back down in his support of the law, the purpose of which he claims is to boost voter confidence in the integrity of elections. Those who have reportedly read the law say it doesn’t say what critics claim.
Delta Airlines and the Coca-Cola Company, both headquartered in Atlanta and caught between Democrats and Republicans, have appeared to bow to considerable pressure to oppose the voting legislation for fear of bad publicity and widespread boycotts.
Bullies can only be encouraged by these responses. Where are the CEOs and others who have the nerve to stand their ground and oppose people with nothing better to do with their time than to demand the removal of Confederate statues, change the names of highways dedicated to those who held viewpoints they disagree with, and engage in other unproductive behavior, like moving an All-Star game? Why don’t we hear them say “buzz off,” or use even stronger language?
MLB must know there will be financial consequences to their decision. Atlanta employs many African Americans in front offices, at concession stands, restaurants, hotels, and other businesses, many of which rely on baseball, especially an All-Star game. Atlanta’s economy will take a hit at a time when the pandemic has hurt many businesses.
A statement by the Atlanta Braves said the organization is “…deeply disappointed by the decision. … This was neither our decision, nor our recommendation and we are saddened that fans will not be able to see this event in our city. … Our city has always been known as a uniter in divided times and we will miss the opportunity to address issues that are important to our community. Unfortunately, businesses, employees and fans in Georgia are the victims of this decision.”
Baseball fans will think they are being taken for granted, as did fans of the NFL. They pay top prices for tickets and contribute to advertising dollars by watching sports broadcasts. They don’t want political correctness forced upon them. Sports are supposed to be an oasis where people can escape from the issues and politicians they have to endure elsewhere.
I have been a baseball fan since I was a child. I fondly remember games my Dad took me to when the Washington baseball team was known as the Senators. I have taken my kids and grandchildren to Nationals games in recent years.
This move by Major League Baseball may prove counterproductive to the brand and potentially harm the fan base. Just as I have found other things to do during football season, I can do likewise when it comes to baseball, as painful as that will be.
Washington baseball fans were forced to exist without a team for 33 years. I suspect the District of Columbia and fans of other teams can do without it if MLB doesn’t reverse course. If not, fans won’t be singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” but “Take Me Out OF the Ballgame.”
~The Patriot Post
GARY BAUER
Murder on the Hill
Capitol Hill came under attack Friday. A car rammed a security barrier, striking two Capitol Hill police officers in the process. The driver then jumped out of the car, armed with a knife, and lunged at the officers. The attacker was shot and killed.
Capitol Hill Police Officer William Evans, an 18-year veteran of the department, was killed in the attack. Our hearts and prayers go out to his family, including his two young children. Evans was doing an important job on Capitol Hill, and he deserves to be remembered and honored for his service.
Friday’s attack provided further evidence of how every news event is being filtered through a left-wing narrative in order to mold public opinion. The primary facts about the killer were often left out of most media reports.
The media reported that he quoted the Book of Revelation and that the attack occurred on Good Friday. Was the driver a radical right Christian? Nothing could be further from the truth.
The media initially said that authorities could not find any link between the attacker and extremist groups. That was a lie. The attacker was a black Muslim and a follower of Louis Farrakhan, whose stock and trade is hateful extremism aimed at America, Jews, and whites.
Barack scumbag/liar-nObama and the Congressional Black Caucus know just how extreme Louis Farrakhan is. That’s why they went to great lengths to hide pictures for 13 years of a secret event they held with Farrakhan so the public would not associate scumbag/liar-nObama with the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader.
Just to be clear about this, the man who murdered Officer William Evans was a black supremacist. That is the philosophy of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.
Not only was that phrase not used in any media reporting that I saw, but something even more telling happened. In a country where the media and the political left are obsessed with race, the killer quickly became a man with no race. I did not hear one reporter describe the attacker as a black man.
A Clear Pattern
In case you don’t see the pattern, ponder this. There have been three violent attacks in recent weeks: A white man in Atlanta killed eight people at Asian massage parlors; a Muslim Syrian in Boulder, Colorado, killed 10 white people in a store known for its Kosher foods days before Passover; and a black Muslim attacked Capitol Hill, killing a white police officer.
Is it a coincidence that only one of these three incidents set off another round of media hysteria about hate crimes and America’s systemic racism? But early evidence from the Atlanta murders, including the attacker’s confession, shows virtually no indication of racism.
Meanwhile, authorities are still struggling to figure out what could have possibly motivated the other attacks by two Muslims.
Major League Lies
Spring is here. “Play Ball!” is ringing out in major league stadiums all over America. Baseball is the all-American sport, and it draws fans from every demographic.
But sadly, this season began on a sour note. Major League Baseball decided to go to bat against efforts to restore the integrity of our elections. Of course, that’s not how it described it.
It claimed that the commonsense efforts of Georgia’s elected representatives to ensure that only legal votes are counted was an unacceptable throwback to the days of “Jim Crow” voter suppression.
To show its “wokeness,” it moved the All-Star Game, which was scheduled to be played this summer in Atlanta, out of the state of Georgia. And it did so based on a series of lies about the state’s new voter integrity law.
There’s one main thing in Georgia’s new law that the left considers a mortal threat. And that’s requiring an ID to vote. Polling shows that Americans of all races overwhelmingly support voter ID laws, including nearly 70% of black voters. By the way, this is the same Major League Baseball that requires an ID to pick up tickets.
MLB is desperately trying to do business in communist China. The last time I checked, communist China doesn’t have free elections. It regularly oppresses free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly.
It is engaged in a massive military buildup that not only threatens its neighbors but also the future of the United States. Moreover, the communist regime is engaged in genocide against the ethnic Uyghur minority while it persecutes Christians and other faiths.
But evidently Chairman Xi, who has ordered pastors to replace paintings of Jesus with pictures of himself, does not morally offend baseball’s bosses as much as the conservative legislators of Georgia.
Not surprisingly, former President Donald Trump had something to say about the controversy. In a statement, Trump declared, “Boycott baseball and all of the woke companies that are interfering with Free and Fair Elections. Are you listening Coke, Delta, and all!”
I think every Republican should be pointing out that the left is fighting tooth and nail against popular commonsense voter ID laws. That’s not a party fighting for voting rights. That’s a party scared to death it will be caught cheating!
socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden vs. Georgia
President socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden joined the left’s attack on Georgia, urging sports teams and businesses to boycott the Peach State. Small businesses in Georgia, especially in Atlanta, which is heavily Democrat, will lose tens of millions of dollars due to the loss of the All-Star game. Many small businesses that survived the pandemic were counting on this event to help them get back on their feet.
I would love to see a poll asking who Georgians blame for the economic hit they’re about to take. scumbag/ worthless-Stacey Abrams, who is expected to make another run for governor next year, was quick to distance herself from the boycott efforts. That’s very telling.
The fact is socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden can’t get his facts straight. (Neither can corporate America.) socialist/ scumbag/liar-Biden got four Pinocchios from the Washington Post fact-checker for one of his recent attacks on Georgia’s election integrity law. The only reason he got four Pinocchios is because there isn’t a five Pinocchio rating. socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden got the top prize for telling the biggest whopper!
Nuclear Deal Disaster
Talks have started in Europe toward another nuclear deal with Iran. While that was happening, the most significant event may have been an interview with Rob Malley, the Biden administration’s special envoy for Iran. He told PBS that the administration was preparing to lift sanctions against the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.
Malley said:
“We’re prepared to come back into compliance if Iran is prepared to come back into compliance. So we will have to go … [look] at those sanctions and [see] what we have to do so that Iran enjoys the benefits that it was supposed to enjoy under the deal.”
Just to be clear, Iran enjoyed tremendous benefits for several years under the previous scumbag/liar-nObama/ socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden nuclear deal. It did nothing to improve Iran’s behavior. In fact, it got worse. Iran was emboldened by our appeasement.
Needless to say, Malley’s remarks sparked tremendous concern in Jerusalem. Senior Israeli officials said the comments and the outreach to Tehran were “very troubling” since “in the past, the socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden Administration talked about a ‘longer and stronger’ deal,” while Malley seems to be suggesting they are ready to reenter the old deal and give the Iranians some sort of reparations.
Here’s something to consider: The original scumbag/liar-nObama/ socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden deal was never ratified by the Senate. Obama deliberately evaded the constitutional requirement for treaties or major international agreements. Will socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden do so again and ignore the Senate with his deal too? I expect he will because I cannot imagine a nuclear deal with Iran passing on an up-or-down vote in the Senate.
American Values, my nonprofit public policy organization, vehemently opposed the first Iran nuclear deal, as did Christians United for Israel (CUFI). I was a founding board member of CUFI, and I am extremely proud of how the two organizations stood together on this.
I have no doubt that we and many others will stand against any attempt to reward the Islamic Republic of Iran while it continues to demand “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.” ~The Patriot Post
Replies