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By Kristine Marsh
After Kellyanne Conway and President Trump blasted the very liberal Democrat candidate running for the Alabama Senate seat against Republican Roy Moore, the liberal media reacted with an uproar at the audacity of Republicans encouraging voters not to vote for Democrats.
MSNBC took the crassest stance they could take, alleging that President Trump and Republicans in general now support pedophilia and would be known now as the “party of pedophiles.”
The name-calling started Tuesday evening with faux conservative MSNBC analyst Charlie Sykes calling the administration’s handling of the Roy Moore situation a “catastrophe” on The Last Word.
Sykes claimed that every Republican should wear a scarlet “P” for pedophile, from now on:
You know, Ana asked whether this was the floor, and you would hope. This is not only bad, it is obscenely bad. This moment that we're in which you have this remarkable cultural shift taking victims seriously, listening to the women who courageously come forward. And the President of the United States is doubling down, going become to his playbook from the Access Hollywood video. Believing, believing Roy Moore. What a catastrophe this is for the conservative movement and the Republican party. What he has done is put a scarlet P for pedophile on the forehead of every Republican in this country that does not strongly repudiate this.
He continued:
[T]he President of the United States is putting the prestige of his office behind this craziness because, well, it's a binary choice, right? At least he is not a Democrat. He is going to vote for the tax cut bill. Look, this train is headed for Donald Trump again. And if he thinks he is going to be able to play this and skate the way he did a year ago, I think he is misreading the cultural moment, which is a truly extraordinary shift that we're seeing going on right now.
The following morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, hosts Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and their guest analysts repeatedly slammed Trump for not asking Moore to step down from the race.
Over and over again in the three hour show, the hosts accused Republicans of becoming the party of pedophiles, or child molesters:
WILLIE GEIST: Think about the politics, we have the President of the United States now saying clearly and out loud that he takes the side of Roy Moore, he takes the word of Roy Moore versus the word of the nine accusers. He made that very clear yesterday. So if your moral code doesn't dictate you come out strong against someone who’s been accused of these things, maybe a political strategic argument would prevail on the president, which is, you win this seat, this Senate seat for Roy Moore, it's a pyrrhic victory you will be saddled as you all have just said as the party of a pedophile for the rest of Roy Moore's term. Be the way the president will be saddled with that, saying you stood up in this moment of truth, you stood up and took the side of an accused pedophile.
...
JOHN HEILEMANN: And in that case you get the worst of all worlds, you lose the seat and in the process of losing it, you’ve ended up becoming the party of pedophiles which is a double whammy that the president's trying to pull off here.
SUSAN DELPERCIO: It is, it has echos of Charlottesville when you think about it, he says there are good people out there when there were neo-nazis marching, killing one person. We look at it today. Well, he said he didn't do it. Well the president basically admitted I'd rather have a child molester in the Senate than a Democrat. He set the standard for our country. Bob Corker back in Charlottesville says he doesn't understand paraphrasing, he doesn’t understand the character of the country. Once again clearly Donald Trump doesn't get it, we don't want child molesters in the U.S. Senate.
...
SUSAN DELPERCIO: As far as the party goes, I have been a Republican in New York, which is not an easy feat, for 25 years. As much as we have had to endure as a party, being a woman in the party at times, this is the worst it's ever been. To have the president to back a child molester just makes it even -- how do women continue to support this party. It's a challenge. And it’s a challenge I’m hearing more and more of.
… JOE SCARBOROUGH: So let's get serious now and talk about what's going on with Donald Trump, Roy Moore, the state of the Republican party. They have to be very concerned. Democrats and a lot of never Trumpers and also conservatives are starting to say, if Donald Trump and the Republicans back Roy Moore and seat him, they are going to be the party of pedophiles. That's harsh talk. But how concerned are Republicans on the Hill?
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By Nicholas Fondacaro
In a report by Vanity Fairpublished Tuesday, writer Joe Pompeo wrote how “[The New York Times] is ‘torn’ about whether Glenn Thrush should lose his job over sexual-misconduct allegations.” According to the numerous sources, he spoke with inside the Times, the executives were waiting for their internal investigation to turn up more details. The allegations against Thrush included claims he made drunken “inappropriate advances upon women in their twenties,” and he was in his fifties and married.
“Among the multiple current and former Times employees I spoke with (…) people were wrestling with whether the allegations against Thrush warranted his termination,” Pompeo wrote. “A question perhaps complicated by the fact that most of the events occurred prior to his hiring, and did not involve any Times colleagues.”
So far, the only allegations against Thrush had come from women who interacted with him when he worked for Politico. According to the Vox exclusive published on Monday:
Three young women I interviewed, including the young woman who met Thrush in June, described to me a range of similar experiences, from unwanted groping and kissing to wet kisses out of nowhere to hazy sexual encounters that played out under the influence of alcohol. Each woman described feeling differently about these experiences: scared, violated, ashamed, weirded out.
The author of the Vox piece herself was a victim of Thrush’s advances.
According to some of Pompeo’s sources at the Times, the accusations against Thrush were not considered as severe as those against CBS’s Charlie Rose who would strut around naked in front of women who worked for him, or Mark Halperin who would rub parts of himself on female subordinates.
“It was obviously a damning piece; I don’t think anyone would say it wasn’t. But it was also a piece that, like a lot of these things, lived in some gray areas. It’s not an easy call,” one male who worked at the Times told Vanity Fair. And apparently it wasn’t just the men who worked there that were confused about what level of tolerance they should have for Thrush’s behavior:
Others agreed with the amorphousness. “To me,” said another one of my Times sources, a woman, “it makes a difference that [Thrush] wasn’t the boss or supervisor. That mitigates the degree of seriousness.” This person also said that high-level Times figures are “torn” about whether Thrush should keep his job.
“Random House, where Thrush and Maggie Haberman recently landed a significant book deal, was also still processing the news when I checked in with sources there on Monday,” Pompeo added. And Haberman told him to talk with the Times spokespeople.
Pompeo had his own concerns for Thrush’s future. Particularly for Thrush’s ability to go after President Trump for his own history of sexual harassment allegations. “Could it make him vulnerable combatting Sarah Huckabee Sanders in the briefing room,” Pompeo wondered.
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By Nicholas Fondacaro
To mark the anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Wednesday, MSNBC’s radical Joy Reid put out a series of tweets fawning over how “the Kennedys occupy a special place in our national consciousness.” According to her, those “mythical” stories about the Kennedys were part of what held the country together and elevated us.
In a morning tweet (pictures below), she opined about how “JFK had a roguish gallantry. Jackie O had the glamour and pathos of a Hollywood star. RFK had the seeds of goodness and greatness. Teddy chased redemption. Americans love those kinds of narratives.”
Reid’s comments were disgusting when you realize she was romanticizing politically shady philanderers and a man who got away with killing an innocent woman. It’s unclear how “Americans love those kinds of narratives” as she claimed.
But Reid wasn’t done drooling over the Kennedys’ twisted legacy. “America is a land of myths. Those myths are what knit a disparate people together,” she continued in the second tweet. In her follow up tweet (pictured below), she bemoaned how our current leadership didn’t match up to her democratic idols.
Clearly, she had completely disregarded just how highly President Trump’s supporters respected him. To many of them, he represented opportunity and a chance for something greater for themselves. But apparently, she couldn’t understand that.
“Obama gave us that mythical quality too, particularly with his soaring rhetoric, which I suspect is why the Kennedys embraced him,” she wrote in the third tweet. “It may seem weird but America needs that. Presidents typically aim for it — the uniting power of mythmaking.”
But for all of Reid’s pontificating about the greatness of Democrat myths, the irony was, myths are just that: Myths, make-believe fairytales with nothing magical about them. And those fairytales were something she can’t get enough of and was an ace at pushing.
In an article she wrote for The Daily Beast, Reid continued the Democratic myth that Justice Clarence Thomas was a “sexual raptor.” And at the same time, she was minimizing the sexual harassment and rape charges against former President Bill Clinton. Reid also enjoys falsely claiming that Republicans were out to take the right to vote from African-Americans. Again, nothing but fanciful myths.
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By Brad Wilmouth
Appearing as a guest on Friday's New Day a year after Fidel Castro's death to promote his film about Castro's Cuba, film maker Jon Alpert blamed the United States for the economic failures of communism on the island nation as he charged that the U.S. ruined the Cuban economy by flooding the sugar market in the 1970s.
After noting that Fidel Castro's brother Raul is expected to retire next year, host Chris Cuomo asked his guest's opinion about "whether that place is better off without the Castros, with a real democracy."
Alpert began by claiming that Fidel Castro made some "useful changes" in the early years after gaining power:
Since we spent 45 years, we look at this under a very, very long line, so if you look at Cuba under Batista and the changes that the Castros initiated, those were useful changes. The real tragedy is the ideas -- the things that I agreed with -- I think that you might agree with -- universal free education, better health care for everybody, the alphabetization of the island -- they never really got a chance to put into practice.
He then pushed blame onto the U.S for the failures of communism as he added:
There were some early years back in the '70s when Fidel bet everything on the sugar crop, sugar prices were at an all-time high, the money was flowing in -- they were building schools, hospitals -- they were doing the type of stuff that we want to do here in our country, then the United States took -- and we dumped our sugar reserves on the world market, crashed the sugar price, blew the bottom out of the Cuban economy, the Soviet Union collapsed, 85 percent shrinkage in their economy. At that particular point, they were out of gas, and they stayed out of gas for a long time.
Alpert's been at this for a very long time. In 1986, Rolling Stone hailed Alpert for being a Sixties activist with a camera, and reported Alpert has been boosting the Castros since Nixon was president:
Their big break came in 1974, when they became friendly with members of the Cuban mission to the UN: "We were able to convince them to allow us into the country with our camera," Alpert says. Their Cuba documentary ended up on PBS (The New York Times called it one of the ten best television shows of the year)"...
On CNN, Cuomo pushed back by pointing out the lack of freedom in Castro's Cuba. Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Friday, November 24, New Day:
CHRIS CUOMO: With so much content, with so much experience, you're going to wind up developing feelings over time. They're going to change, they're going to ebb, they're going to flow. Where do you come out now, a year after Castro being gone, about whether that place is better off without the Castros with a real democracy?
JON ALPERT, FILM MAKER: Well, I think, since we've spent 45 years, we look at this under a very, very long time line, so if you look at Cuba under Batista and the changes that the Castros initiated, those were useful changes. The real tragedy is the ideas -- the things that I agreed with -- I think that you might agree with -- universal free education, better health care for everybody, the alphabetization of the island -- they never really got a chance to put into practice.
There were some early years back in the '70s when Fidel bet everything on the sugar crop, sugar prices were at an all-time high, the money was flowing in -- they were building schools, hospitals -- they were doing the type of stuff that we want to do here in our country, then the United States took -- and we dumped our sugar reserves on the world market, crashed the sugar price, blew the bottom out of the Cuban economy, the Soviet Union collapsed, 85 percent shrinkage in their economy. At that particular point, they were out of gas, and they stayed out of gas for a long time.
CUOMO: That's just economics, you know. The criticism's going to be about human rights. Money isn't what made him punish democracy and punish free speech. That's where the criticism is going to come.
ALPERT: So, you know, I have characters in our film that went to jail. We didn't hide that, so I don't think we ducked any of this in terms of the program, and I think the longitudinal look at Cuba -- and nobody has ever done this before -- that's why I think this program is useful.
CUOMO: The perspective has to be beneficial no matter where you're coming from. Thank you for being here.
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By Brent Baker
Where does acting end and reality begin? In a movie now in rotation on HBO, actress Allison Williams, the daughter of MSNBC anchor Brian Williams, declares: “My dad would have voted for Obama a third time if he could have. Like, the love is so real.”
Sounds perfectly plausible that such sentiment would apply to her real life father, the disgraced ousted anchor of the NBC Nightly News.
I stumbled upon the line in Get Out (trailer), a horror movie from Universal released in February. In the scene, Williams and her boyfriend discuss their impending trip to visit her parents. Given that he’s black, “Chris Washington,” played by Daniel Kaluuya, seeks assurance he won’t “be chased off the lawn with a shot gun.”
The Williams character, “Rose Armitage,” then makes the promise about her father’s allegiance to Obama. So, her parents “are not racist.”
The movie, written and directed by Jordan Peele from Comedy Central’s Key and Peele, has a clear racial agenda in which a white family does very bad things to black people. IMDb’s plot tease: “It’s time for a young African American to meet with his white girlfriend’s parents for a weekend in their secluded estate in the woods, but before long, the friendly and polite ambience will give way to a nightmare.”
Bradley Whitford and Cathleen Keener play the parents (who, without giving away the plot, definitely don’t come across as people with whom anyone black would want to be friends).
Earlier: “Daughter of Brian Williams on Politics: ‘Who Do I Charm or Bully?’”
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By Kristine Marsh
The tradition of the presidential turkey pardoning every Thanksgiving should be a light-hearted, fun event devoid of politics. But because of the media’s hatred for President Trump, even this pastime has been turned into a political gripe fest. As Trump carried out the annual holiday tradition, cracking jokes along the way as presidents before him have done, journalists took to Twitter to complain about anything and everything they could think to about the pardon, showcasing their inability to take a joke, for even a moment.
MSNBC AM Joy host and self-proclaimed member of the #Resistance against Trump, complained that she can’t enjoy these events anymore with Trump in the White House:
Gotta say these traditions -- the turkey pardon, and other cutesy things presidents do -- are lost to the ether for me when Trump performs them. The legal, ethical and moral clouds over his presidency are like a film on the camera lens.
— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) November 21, 2017
While others used the pardon to make cheap shots against Trump.
TV Writer Jess Dweck:
At tomorrow’s turkey pardon Trump is just going to pardon Joe Arpaio again then stomp both turkeys to death
— Jess Dweck (@TheDweck) November 21, 2017 Jeet Heer, Senior Editor of New Republic:
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) November 21, 2017 Ana Marie Cox:
— ana marie cox (@anamariecox) November 21, 2017 Late night TV host Conan O’Brien:
President Trump didn’t pardon the whole turkey, just the white meat.
— Conan O'Brien (@ConanOBrien) November 21, 2017
Some journalists revealed their obsession with Russia couldn’t stop them from making the turkey pardon about that too.
Jon Lovett, host of the podcast PodSave America:
Trump tries to slip pardon for Don Jr in between turkey a and turkey b.
— Jon Lovett (@jonlovett) November 21, 2017 Will Saletan, writer for Slate:
— Will Saletan (@saletan) November 21, 2017
Others acted as if Trump joking about overturning Obama’s turkey pardons was a real threat.
CNN’s Jim Acosta:
Good gravy... sounds like Trump was considering overturning Obama's final turkey pardon.
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) November 21, 2017 The Hill:
— The Hill (@thehill) November 21, 2017
Or NBC’s Ali Vitali who wrote for NBC News, “Trump pardons two Thanksgiving turkeys, jokes about killing Obama’s birds.”
GQ also couldn't take a joke writing, “Donald Trump Can’t Even Pardon a Damn Turkey Without Mentioning Barack Obama.”
While MSNBC's Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski took the same offense over the tame joke, in this exchange Thursday morning:
"President Trump pardons two Turkeys and joked about killing President Obama's birds," Brzezinski claimed.
"Come on man! That's just uncool. What's wrong with you?" co-host Joe Scarborough scoffed.
Still others felt the need to "fact-check" Trump.
Daniel Dale, Washington correspondent for The Toronto Star tweeted:
Trump says Harry Truman "refused" to pardon a Thanksgiving turkey, says he's going to be "a much nicer president." Truman was given a turkey as a gift, he didn't "refuse" to pardon it. #turkeyfactcheck
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