Tag: conspiracy theories

RFK Jr. And Elon Musk: Two Great Dicks That Taste Like Sh*t!

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sure has come a long way from 2014, when he angered fossil fuel lobbyists by saying that climate change deniers should be jailed. Or maybe not such a long way; by 2005 he was already spreading the anti-vax gospel and falsely claiming that childhood vaccines cause autism. And now he’s running for president and everyone is reminding you what a complete freakass whackaloon he is.

We’ll do our part. Hey, remember that long-ago time in 2022 when he said, of COVID vaccine mandates, that at least in Nazi Germany “you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”

Kennedy did his part to help out that educational endeavor Monday night by sitting down with chief Twitter troll Elon Musk, who seems to love conspiratorial bullshit nearly as much as Kennedy does. He started out by thanking Musk for ending all the terrible “censorship” on the platform — by making it a free-for all for COVID and vaccine disinformation, not to mention for Nazis, far-Right conspiracy theories, and rampant hatred of transgender people, but also by actually censoring people on behalf of authoritarian governments. Kennedy also explained that in 2021, “the government pressured Mark Zuckerberg” to ban him from Instagram, although now his account has been restored because he’s running for president. Talk about ineffective censorship!

Rolling Stone reports that for the first 40 minutes of the Twitter Spaces chat, Kennedy barely talked about his candidacy, because he and Musk were too busy telling each other how much they admired each other for being courageous and shit, which is honestly what free speech is for.

At one point, Kennedy asked where Musk got the courage to be like one of America’s Founders by being “willing to take this huge, massive, unspeakable economic hit on behalf of a principle for a country in which you weren’t even born?” Musk, who does kind of have US citizenship after all, replied, “I should say I do very much consider myself an American.” Musk also acknowledged that advertisers had deserted the platform because he was so very committed to democracy, at least for people who think he’s cool, so it’s been “frankly a struggle to break even” (he is not breaking even) and then everyone with an $8 blue checkmark felt very warm that they had done their part to save America and/or Twitter.

After they both agreed that free speech is the very best, and that they both really love free speech the most, Kennedy bemoaned the sad fact that “we’re no longer living in a democratic system,” because Big Pharma controls the government and silences brave advocates of medical disinformation, which would explain why we only hear from anti-vaxxers everywhere on social media but not yet in (most) doctors’ offices.

Among other great trolls, Musk and Kennedy were joined by Tulsi Gabbard and Michael Shellenberger, author of books about how environmentalism is bad for everyone and global warming is happening but is honestly no big deal, yeesh, calm down. UPDATE/CORRECTION: I initially had a brain fart and confused Shellenberger with a different “contrarian” dipshit, Alex Berenson, formerly of the New York Times. Wonkette regrets the error.

Kennedy and Musk agreed that America shouldn’t be supporting the Ukrainian government, since as Kennedy put it, the Ukrainian people are “almost equally” victimized by America as by Russians. Musk added that the war was kind of our fault anyway, since “We are sending the flower of Ukrainian youth and Russian youth to die in the trenches, and it’s morally reprehensible,” and when you think about it, we probably shouldn’t be ordering Russia’s youth flowers around like that, how would we like it huh?

The conversation got even more sane when Gabbard added that

the U.S. had turned Ukraine into a “slaughterhouse” and blamed the conflict on an “elitist cabal of war-mongers” who had seized control of the Democratic Party.

Those war-mongers, Kennedy warned, hadn’t just taken control of the Democratic party: They were in control of the Deep State as well.

He recalled being told by Donald Trump’s former CIA Director Mike Pompeo that the “top layer of that agency is made up almost entirely of people who do not believe in the American institutions of democracy,” which is pretty rich coming from a top guy in the Trump administration.

Kennedy also said he opposed an assault weapons ban, because the Second Amendment is pretty awesome, and anyway, the problem isn’t guns, it’s antidepressant meds, which turn people into mass shooters, explaining that

“prior to the introduction of Prozac, we had almost none of these events in our country. […] The one thing that we have, it’s different than anybody in the world, is the amount of psychiatric drugs our children are taking.” He then alleged that the National Institutes of Health won’t research the supposed link between these drugs and shootings “because they’re working with the pharmaceutical industry.”

It’s pretty convincing until you remember that antidepressants are prescribed worldwide, but in countries where there aren’t more guns than people, there aren’t a bunch of school shootings. Also, maybe someone could have pointed out that only about a quarter of mass shooters use antidepressants, while 100 percent of them use firearms, albeit not usually with a doctor’s prescription.

Along the way, Kennedy also insisted that COVID was a “bioweapon,” lied that after the passage of the Affordable Care Act the “Democrats were getting more money from pharma than Republicans” (it’s the other way around, according to STAT News, but then STAT News believes vaccines work), and promised to go to the US-Mexico border to “try to formulate policies that will seal the border permanently,” so he really sounds like the mainstream Democrat that everyone on the far Right has been looking for, the end and OPEN THREAD.

[Rolling Stone / Insider / NYT]

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Cool TN Lady Gonna Fill The Social Studies Standards With Awesome Stuff Like ‘Barack Obama Did The Tornados’

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The Education Wars just never go away, and in today’s dispatch from the front lines we’ll look at Tennessee, where a rightwing conspiracy theory fan and anti-Muslim bigot has just been appointed to the committee that sets standards for the state’s social studies curricula.

Yr Wonkette already introduced you last year to Laurie Cardoza-Moore, the nutball Tennessee bigot lady, when she was a member of the state textbook commission that was tasked with making sure only “age appropriate” materials were in them. You may recall that Tennessee was considering a measure that would have required state approval of every last item in the collections of school libraries; the bill’s sponsor charmingly said that any materials not approved by the commission should be burned. Ultimately, the Lege settled for a different plan that gave the textbook commission the power to hear appeals of book challenges brought by parents, so the state could ban library books even after a local school board had gone through a challenge process and approved them. Hooray for compromise.

We guess that Ms. Cardoza-Moore must have either done a bang-up job on that commission, or at the very least that she has powerful friends in Tennessee, because clearly it’s the latter thing. She was chosen for the Tennessee Standards Recommendation Committee by Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R), the slimebooger we came to know and loathe during the kangaroo court proceedings that expelled Democratic state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson in April. Sexton also appointed her to the textbook commission in 2021, which is quite the coincidence.

In her new job, Cardoza-Moore will have a say in setting state standards for social studies classes, although we suspect she’ll just photocopy the course offerings at Hillsdale College and say “Done!” As Judd Legum points out in his Popular Information newsletter, Cardoza-Moore doesn’t actually believe in public schools; she’s homeschooled her own five kids, and she’s simply horrified that US history texts teach historical facts that make America look bad, such as the fact that the Constitution provided a framework for oppression of African Americans. In a 2020 Fox News interview, she blamed Common Core, because why not? She claimed, falsely, that schools no longer teach about the founding of the US, but instead skip ahead to the Civil War and Reconstruction so they can harp on all the slavery, those monsters.

“This is an outrage,” Cardoza-Moore exclaimed. “It poses the greatest national security threat to our constitutional republic.”

So yeah, she’s a real peach. She somehow also took issue with a textbook’s factual statement that the Republican Party was originally founded to fight the spread of slavery beyond the states where it was already allowed, complaining that it was “disinformation” because Lincoln was anti-slavery, which, yeah, that’s what the book said. She was mostly upset the book didn’t say that Democrats were pro-slavery and KKK, and also what about that Klansman Robert Byrd, huh?

Cardoza-Moore initially made her name in Tennessee politics by fearmongering about Islam, back when that was the thing the Right was certain would destroy America, because Barack Obama was president. She led some of the most paranoid opposition to a mosque being built in Murfreesboro, claiming that fully 30 percent of Muslims are terrorists and that the mosque would be a base for “radical Islamic extremists” bent on destroying Nashville’s Christian music industry.

During her 2021 confirmation hearing for her seat on the textbook commission, she explained that bad school textbooks are directly responsible for wrecking America and of course the riots that burned all cities in America to the ground in 2020, several of them more than once.

While America slept, the hearts, minds and souls of our students were being influenced by disinformation. Tragically we have seen the result over the past few months; our streets have been filled with rioting destructive American young people who have not been taught the values entrusted to us by our nation’s founders … nor have they been taught our nation’s history — history which many seem intent to destroy

See, if only kids been made to memorize more facts about how George Washington was a Christian and God wrote the Constitution, there might be a few more cities still standing in our great land.

As Legum details, Cardoza-Moore doesn’t seem to have met a conspiracy theory she didn’t glom on to. She’s said that 9/11 was an “inside job,” that Donald Trump was the true winner of the 2020 election, and that January 6 was a false flag attack by “Antifa.” I’m just disappointed that she doesn’t appear to have said anything about chemtrails. But she came kind of close in 2011, as Legum explains, when she

claimed that former President Barack Obama was causing “horrific tornadoes” because he made a speech that discussed the plight of Palestinians. Asked if she still held these views, Cardoza-Moore did not respond.

She also runs her very own “Christian Zionist” nonprofit called “Proclaiming Justice to the Nations,” which recently ran a press release on her appointment to the social studies standards job. In it, we learn that she has previously helped the Florida Department of Education screen textbooks, “a successful review effort that ‘caught and corrected dozens of books to prevent political indoctrination of Florida’s children,’ a spokesperson for Governor Ron DeSantis noted.”

In the press release, Cardoza-Moore reflected on the important task ahead of her, because

“The materials we will be reviewing can only accomplish the mission of educating good American citizens if our Tennessee textbooks are devoid of left-aligned historic revisionism and the toxic material found in the antisemitic Critical Race Theory; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Social-Emotional Learning and Ethnic Studies.”

Impressive how she got all the rightwing shibboleths in there!

The statement also emphasized that Muslim groups opposed her appointment to the textbook commission, presumably because if she has the right enemies, that just shows what a great job she’ll do for Tennessee students.

We can hardly wait to see what happens to Tennessee social studies standards. Haha, we kid, of course, because we read the history standards that Donald Trump’s “1776 Commission” came up with, so we have a pretty good idea. Good luck, kids!

[Popular Information]

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Ron DeSantis Wants Very Own Chinese Exclusion Act

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Fresh on the heels/heel turn of his stupid fight with Disney, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seems to have found another strategy to be awful to Floridians and to damage Florida’s economy in the pursuit of the 2024 GOP nomination. The Florida state House yesterday passed a bill aimed at preventing the Chinese Communist Party from buying land in Florida, but goes well beyond that by forbidding anyone who’s “domiciled” in China from owning any real estate in Florida, unless they’re a US citizen or permanent resident. The bill also includes other restrictions on some foreign ownership of properties near military bases or “critical infrastructure,” but the blanket ban on owning any property in Florida applies only to Chinese nationals.

By golly, it’s a throwback to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, when America decided it could admit loutish Irish, swarthy sex-crazed Italians, and anarchist Rooshians, but Chinese immigrants were some kinda threat.

Supporters of the measure, Senate Bill 264, claim it’s absolutely necessary for US national security, and for that matter some say that anyone opposing it is probably a Chinese agent too.

That’s exactly the kind or rhetoric that has led real estate interests and Asian Americans in Florida to say that the bill is rooted in xenophobia, and will lead to anti-Asian discrimination, particularly since, as the Miami Herald explains,

it would require home and land buyers to sign an affidavit that they’re not prohibited from buying land. Realtors would be subject to “civil or criminal liability” if they have “actual knowledge” that the transaction violates the law.

At hearings on the Senate version of the bill last month, the Herald notes, more than 100 people testified that they’ve been subjected to racist slurs already as paranoid rhetoric about China “gobbling up” huge tracts of US land has ramped up in rightwing media. On Saturday, Asian Americans across Florida rallied against the bill, arguing that it will lead to stereotyping and more acts of discrimination, and that it could imperil their own small businesses if they run afoul of the law, which requires Chinese “domiciled” owners to divest their Florida properties within two years.

We are not a real estate lawyer, but we can imagine how that could screw with a small business that’s operated by a Chinese American family but owned by a relative in China. If the American branch of the family can’t come up with the capital to buy out the relative, or the relative doesn’t want to sell — or give it as a gift and eat the tax losses — well, here come the fines, and the forfeiture of the property. The LA Times notes that such property grabs were a common feature of anti-Asian laws back in the 19th Century, too.

In an editorial yesterday, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel argued that DeSantis’s push for the property ban and other anti-immigrant legislation will “cast a spotlight on anyone who talks with an accent. Or wears clothes that reflect a different heritage. Or speaks a language other than English,” regardless of their actual citizenship or immigration status, which of course is the point for DeSantis.

The editorial argues that the impact of the bill will be pretty obvious:

Anyone who looks Asian will become much more likely to be questioned or turned away from financial transactions, and potentially have their homes or businesses seized. We can’t imagine anything in modern law that comes close to that.

Now, sure, realtors who simply refuse to sell to Asian Americas may then face discrimination lawsuits, but they may end up trying to balance which set of potential legal penalties they’d rather face. Discrimination suits have only civil penalties, while knowingly selling land in violation of the law would also have criminal penalties.

As we mention, the prospect of being in jeopardy for good faith business transactions has the Florida real estate bidniss worried too, and those folks have some serious economic interests in the state.

Bizarrely, some Florida pols are suggesting that the bill is actually super popular with Chinese Americans, but that you’re only seeing protests by opponents because that’s exactly what the CCP wants, and welcome back to McCarthyism. State Rep. David Borrero (R) insisted that “Chinese Americans and Chinese residents who are here in Florida have been silenced, likely by China, for merely speaking out in support of this bill,” and Democratic co-sponsor Katherine Waldron

told lawmakers that she heard the protesters were bused in from Texas. She and Borrero said they know of Chinese Americans who have been threatened from speaking in favor of the bill and silenced on WeChat, the dominant phone app in China.

“Do not be intimidated by the vocal and aggressive actors we’ve seen in the past few weeks, who do not have our country’s best interests in mind,” Waldron said. “The communist threat to our nation is real.”

Ergo, no “good” Asian Americans really oppose the bill; those people saying it’ll lead to discrimination are OUTSIDE AGITATORS AND COMMUNIST AGENTS TRYING TO WHIP UP FEAR BECAUSE THEY HATE AMERICA. Please remain calm and purge them, so we can institute government by conspiracy theory.

The Miami Heraldhelpfully fact checks that claim about non-Floridians testifying against the bill, noting that

Records from the meeting show that nearly all of the opponents of the bill listed Florida addresses, and several were quickly verified through home ownership records. Several of the speakers said they were professors at Florida universities.

DeSantis has not yet demanded an investigation into whether the Miami Herald is secretly run by the Chinese Communist Party, but for all we know he’s too busy drafting a ban on any cast members at Walt Disney World depicting characters from Mulan.

SB 264 doesn’t only direct its fear toward China, although Chinese nationals who “domicile” in China are the only people outright banned from owning property in Florida. The bill originally prohibited nationals of “countries of concern” — Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, and North Korea, just in case there are any property moguls from Pyongyang — from owning land within 20 miles of any “military installation or critical infrastructure,” like airports, refineries, or power plants, but the House amended that to just one mile, so the Senate will have to pass the revised version again before it goes to DeSantis for a signature. Current targeted owners of such properties would also have to divest them within two years of the bill becoming law.

Yr Wonkette would say more about what a terrible idea this law is, but we have to hurry up and meet with our CCP spymaster soon, comrades. Why don’t you play some solitaire to pass the time?

[National Archives / Miami Herald / Sun-Sentinel / LAT / Florida SB 264 / Photo: John Spade, Creative Commons License 2.0]

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Arizona House, In Weird Twist, Expels Member Who Deserved It

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The Arizona House of Representatives got on the expel-a-member bandwagon started by Tennessee last week, voting Wednesday to expel first-term Republican state Rep. Liz Harris for inviting a loonypants election denier to testify before a legislative committee in February. Harris no doubt thought that would be fine, since she herself is a loonypants election denier who insisted that her own election last fall was full of fraud and needed to be rerun.

Previously, On The Expulsion Chronicles:

Arizona Republican Demands Election She Won Be Overturned

TN House GOP To Expel Democrat Terrorists Who Called For Saving Kids’ Lives Without Permission

Forgive Them Lord They … Oh Wait. They Do. Tennessee House Lets Its Racist Freak Flag Fly.

OK, so maybe the only thing Harris’s situation has in common with the travesty in Tennessee is that it ended with expulsion. Unlike the Kafkaesque railroading of Democrats for a minor decorum violation in Tennessee, Harris was only removed — by a bipartisan vote — after an investigation by Arizona’s House Ethics Committee, which allowed Harris to present a defense. It probably didn’t help her case that the committee’s nine-page report determined that Harris had fibbed when she told the committee she absolutely did not know what her invited guest would say.

So no, not at all like the Tennessee expulsion, where the Republican supermajority ignored due process and just made things up as it went along. That said, we do think “Kafka Railroad” would be a really good name for a band.

And hoo boy, the Tennessee Three’s brief, unrecognized protest for gun control sure can’t hold a candle to Harris’s decision to invite a fellow election denier to testify in February before a hearing held by Arizona’s joint House and Senate Election Committee. Harris’s guest witness, Scottsdale insurance agent Jacqueline Breger, managed to out-crazy the average run of the mill election conspiracy tale, even in a state where the loser of the 2022 gubernatorial election, Kari Lake, insists she’s actually the governor.

Here’s the Arizona Republic’s summary of Breger’s testimony:

Breger shocked officials with accusations that Gov. Katie Hobbs, House Speaker Ben Toma, lawmakers, judges, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and others conspired with a Mexican drug cartel and received bribes through a scheme using property deeds.

Breger failed to mention that two women she claimed were key players in the scheme were the ex-wife and former mother-in-law of her boyfriend, John Thaler, a lawyer with a suspended license, who was the source of the claims. Thaler had previously outlined the same bribery scheme in court proceedings related to this divorce and child custody case; two separate judges in federal and Maricopa County Superior courts called the narrative “delusional.”

That brief overview barely scratches the surface of what a clownshow the February hearing was; the committee report also notes that Breger claimed the bribery scheme involved elected officials at every level of government in the state, from city court judges to the state supreme court, as well as members of the Legislature, city and county prosecutors, and “mental health providers as in court-appointed advisors, and related specialists.”

She also insisted that the LDS church secretly controls Arizona government agencies and is “integral to the laundering activities” that got the cartel bribes to what sounds like half the people in government jobs in Arizona. The weird fear of Mormons certainly fits with a lot of Evangelical folk belief, in which Mormons are a dangerous cult, almost as bad as Unitarians.

At one point during Breger’s testimony, a member of the elections committee asked how Breger had been invited to testify. When Breger said she’d been invited by Harris,

Representative Harris made a gesture moving her hand across her neck and mouthed something to Breger. […] Representative Harris subsequently stated that she hoped that the hearing was being presented by all national networks.

Harris got at least part of her wish. Breger’s claims blew up in righting media and, as the Arizona Republic reports,

Hundreds, if not thousands, of Arizona constituents and social media users apparently believed Breger’s testimony. Calls for the arrest of the governor spread on social media immediately afterward.

Later, Harris insisted she was simply helping a constituent voice concerns about the possibility of election integrity issues, in hopes of preventing “mal-administered elections.” When the Ethics Committee asked if she was aware what Breger would present to the Elections Committee, Harris replied, “Absolutely, positively, 100 percent no.”

Big surprise: The investigation found text messages between Harris, Breger, and Thaler, and they even consulted with each other on coming up with a title for Breger’s presentation that would be vague enough to not tip off anyone that it was a load of conspiracy cacadoody.

The Ethics Committee found that Harris “committed disorderly behavior, thereby violating Rule 1 of the Rules of the Arizona House of Representatives and damaging the institutional integrity of the House,” and referred the case to the House for discipline. The vote to expel her was 43-13, with 18 Republicans voting to remove her. All 13 votes against expulsion came from Republicans.

Before the vote, one Republican, state Rep. Alex Kolodin, defended Harris, saying that if she were expelled, the public “will perceive that they don’t have a true voice in this body,” presumably because the bugfuck nutso parts of the public need representation too. Kolodin explained that Harris’s constituents had chosen “somebody to rock the boat,” only to see her expelled, and what a sad day for democracy etc. He did at least acknowledge that Harris’s boat-rocking was “admittedly in the wrong way … a way that should have been better considered.”

As for Harris, TV journalists caught up with her as she was taking stuff from her office to her car, and she insisted the Ethics Committee report was “a lie,” and muttered that Republicans had taken her down to “make an example” of her to make members “toe the line.”

youtu.be

Also one of her supporters yelled that they loved her, and that now she’s been “set free from the vipers” in the Legislature. When a reporter asked Harris how she’s feeling emotionally, the same voice interrupts, “aren’t you relieved to not to deal with these vipers?” No word on whether these vipers are also RINOs, which would make for a cool chimera in a medieval bestiary.

Now that she’s returned to private life, Harris is ready for the wingnut welfare circuit. This morning, in fact, she’ll be doing an interview show at 10 EDT on Rumble with a couple of wingnut “journalists,” so that might generate some quotable lunacy about Mormons and vipers.

[CNN / MSNBC / Arizona Republic / Arizona House Ethics Committee Report]

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Boy, Those Fox News Texts, I Don’t Know

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This morning, Evan brought you a whole bunch of excerpts from the great big legal filing by Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation suit against Fox News, which spread bullshit conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines flipping votes, even though most Fox hosts privately said in texts and emails that they knew Joe Biden won the 2020 election and thought the people pushing the lies about Dominion were nuts. For the sake of brevity and hilarity, Evan focused on some samples from Tucker Carlson, who called the fraud claims “ludicrous” and “totally off the rails” but continued spreading them all the same, because what if Fox’s stock price dropped and he lost money?

But of course, it wasn’t just Tucker; it seems like almost everyone at Fox News thought the conspiracy crap was crap, whether they were in front of or behind the cameras. But by golly, after the Trump crowd started watching Newsmax to punish Fox for calling Arizona for Biden on election night, Fox decided to go all in on the crazy stuff too. So let’s take a peek at what some other muthafoxers were saying about the very people and lies they were pushing at their viewers, shall we?

On Competing With Newsmax:

Fox News President Jay Wallace, November 10: “The Newsmax surge is a bit troubling — truly is an alternative universe when you watch, but it can’t be ignored.”

Host Dana Dana Perino to GOP strategist Colin Reed, November 11:

[T]here is this RAGING issue about fox losing tons of viewers and many watching — get this — newsmax! Our viewers are so mad about the election calls (as if our calls would have been any different. It’s just votes!) So this day of reckoning was going to come at some point where the embrace of Trump became an albatross we can’t shake right away if ever.

Rupert Murdoch Himself, November 16:

These people should be watched, if skeptically. Trump will concede eventually and we should concentrate on Georgia, helping any way we can. We don’t want to antagonize Trump further, but Giuliani taken with a large grain of salt. Everything at stake here.

Sean Hannity, to Carlson and Laura Ingraham, November 12: “In one week and one debate they destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build and the damage is incalculable.”

Fox Senior VP Ron Mitchell, November 18, on Newsmax’s lack of standards:

[T]he lack of any meaningful editorial guidance may be a positive for them at least in the short term. For example, last night on Stitchfield (who?) at 8 pm, the show sourced websites like Gateway Pundit while talking about voter fraud. This type of conspiratorial reporting might be exactly what the disgruntled FNC viewer is looking for.

Gosh, and look what happened!

On Rudy Giuliani:

Sean Hannity, November 11: “Rudy is acting like an insane person.”

Hannity again, December 22: “F’ing lunatics”

Laura Ingraham, November 12: “Rudy such an idiot”

Anne McCarton, “Lou Dobbs Tonight” producer, November 18: “Keeping in mind his insanity lately…”

Rupert Murdoch, on Rudy’s face-melting presser, November 19: Email subject line: “Watching Giuliani! Text: Really crazy stuff. And damaging.”

Fox Business executive Gary Schreier, November 22: “She [Jenna Ellis] sounds downright sane next to Rudy.”

John Fawcett, Lou Dobbs Tonight producer, January 3, 2021: “Giuliani so full of shit”

On Accurate Reporting:

From the filing:

Fox executives also began to criticize Fox hosts for truthful reporting. On November 9, Fox anchor Neil Cavuto cut away from a White House Press Conference when Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany began making unsubstantiated allegations about election fraud. As Cavuto told viewers, “Whoa, whoa, whoa She’s charging the other side as welcoming fraud and illegal voting, unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue to show you this” and “that’s an explosive charge to make.” […] The brand team led by Raj Shah at Fox Corporation notified senior Fox News and Fox Corporation leadership of the “Brand Threat” posed by Cavuto’s action.

Raj Shah, it’s worth noting, had previously been Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s deputy press secretary in the Trump White House, and before that was an oppo researcher for the Republican National Committee. Whose brand was he worried about?

Fox also carried the Rudy is Melting presser in full, without cutting away, but the filing notes that when then White House correspondent Kristen Fischer factchecked the crazy shit Giuliani and Powell were saying,

Fox’s executives were not pleased. […] Fisher received a call from her boss, Bryan Boughton, immediately after in which he “emphasized that higher-ups at Fox News were also unhappy with it,” and that Fisher “needed to do a better job of… — this is a quote — ‘respecting our audience.'” […]

Fox anchor Dana Perino noted that the claims at the press conference could be enough to prompt Dominion to sue. […] This comment resulted in [Fox News CEO Suzanne] Scott screaming about Dana’s show and their reaction to the Rudy presser. […] Scott explained in an email regarding both Perino and Fisher’s coverage, “[Y]ou can’t give the crazies an inch right now … they are looking for and blowing up all appearances of disrespect to the audience.” […] Scott separately noted, “The audience feels like we crapped on [them] and we have damaged their trust and belief in us. […] We can fix this but we cannot smirk at our viewers any longer.”

The higher-ups at Fox thought it was all completely insane, and mocked the stuff that their viewers thought was proof that Biden had stolen the election:

Fox Executive Ron Mitchell commented: “I’m not mad at either of them. I’m mad at those clowns at the conference who put us in a terrible place.” […] That afternoon, Mitchell asked [Laura Ingraham’s producer Tommy] Firth: “Will you be mentioning the international crime conspiracy to steal the election featuring Soros, Maduro, Chavez, Antifa, Cuba, and China?” […] Firth responded: “Haha nope — basically want to wrangle the argument away from the crazy that was today — it’s easy to dismiss legitimate complaints when you can lump them in with the circus.” Mitchell responded: “Yes. But those clowns put us [in] an awkward place where we’re going to need to thread the needle.”

And that’s how you make real serious news, Charlie Brown!

On Sidney Powell:

Oh dear. There’s just so much!

Carlson to Ingraham, November 18: “Sidney Powell is lying, by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.”

Ingraham replied, “Sidney is a complete nut No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”

Raj Shah, November 22: “shit is so crazy right now. so many people openly denying the obvious that Powell is clearly full of it.”

Alex Pfeiffer, Carlson’s producer, in reply: “She is a fucking nutcase”

Fox Senior VP Bill Sammon, on coverage of Powell, December 2: “It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things.”

Well heck, and we didn’t even get to the headless time-traveling ghost who had a dream — or was one — and then emailed Sidney Powell about how Dominion was flipping votes. Just like us to ignore the headless time-traveling spirit entity in the room like that.

In conclusion, Fox News is a very fine network that had very good reasons for all the lying its hosts did: It’s their business model, have a nice day.

[Dominion v. Fox / WaPo / Opening Arguments on Twitter / Will Sommer on Twitter / NYT]

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