Newsbusters

Joe Rogan knows a thing or two about Fake News.

The Spotify star contracted COVID-19 in 2021 and watched media outlets spread false information about his treatment regimen.

Some scribes dubbed Ivermectin “horse paste” even though it previously won a Nobel Prize for use on humans. CNN allegedly doctored footage of the ex-“Fear Factor” host to make him look more yellow and sickly.

Rogan even roasted CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta to his face on “The Joe Rogan Experience” for pushing the “horse paste” narrative.

Now, Rogan is setting the record straight on Kamala Harris’s failed attempt to join his podcast late in the presidential campaign. The comedian says he has the “receipts” to back it up.

 

🚨BREAKING: Joe Rogan confirms that the Kamala Harris campaign LIED about Joe “not making time for Kamala.” He says that they refused to commit to a time, lied that he was unavailable, pretended they sent someone to view his set, and this lie was Kamala’s team covering their ass. pic.twitter.com/P8K9yBL6H4
— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) February 4, 2025
 

The initial story came from “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House” authors Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. Allen is a Senior National Politics Reporter for NBC News and Parnes is a Hill senior political correspondent.

They allege, based on interviews with Harris campaign officials, that Rogan made it hard for the Vice President to appear on his show. the book suggests his camp misled her campaign.

The unspoken reason? Team Rogan wanted Trump to win.

Now, Rogan is fighting back. And he’s calling Harris’ representatives liars.

 

 

“I wanted to release both of [the interviews] on the same day. [That was] my goal. I even offered to do it late that [same] night. So the night that Trump came on, I’m like, ‘What if we do her when she’s done in [Houston], if she came here?’ But no one ever committed to doing it. This is really important, because they keep pretending that I lied.”

Harris’ handlers had all sorts of restrictions on any possible Rogan interview, Rogan says. The chat had to be roughly an hour long, even though his show often runs three hours in length. They demanded a stenographer be present during the recording as well as Harris staffers.

Plus, some insiders worried about the show’s lack of editing. All of the above made sure the proposed interview never happened.

Now, Rogan is disputing the account from “Fight.”

“We have all the receipts, by the way,” Rogan added. “Of course, I have a whole list of conversations that took place … I think it’s someone trying to cover their ass for the fact that she never did it, and if she did do it, it might have had a positive effect. [If] we got along great, and [it improved the] ‘young male vote’ things could have been different.”

The most embarrassing part?

Rogan says the book’s authors never bothered to contact him to get his side of the story. Now, if a reporter is working on deadline that kind of miscue is more forgivable. Time matters, and getting important news to the public fast may mean every “T” can’t be crossed.

These authors had all the time a book project offers, and, according to Rogan, they didn’t reach out for his side of the story. Do they have proof that they reached out in the first place?

We’ll see.

“[The authors] supposedly talked to 150 different people [about] what happened with her coming on the show. They didn’t talk to us, and which is kind of crazy. They didn’t even ask. But they said things that just weren’t true.” Rogan said on his Jan. 4 episode.

The Rogan kerfuffle is one more reason Harris lost to Trump on Nov. 5. Even her team couldn’t land the one interview that might have changed the campaign’s momentum.

At NewsBusters, we use the term “MSNBC Republican” to describe the kind of tame Republican the liberal network can count on to echo its talking point o’ the day.

But even “MSNBC Republican” is stretching it when it comes to Susan Del Percio. Appearing on Saturday’s edition of The Weekend, co-host Symone Sanders introduced her as [see screencap] a “Republican” strategist, with emphasis on the R-word.

Del Percio is no kind of “Republican strategist” at all. You’d have to go back almost 20 years to find a Republican for whom Del Percio strategized. For that matter, she hasn’t advised any politician in over a decade. And that was Andrew Cuomo—when he was the Democrat governor of New York.

But MSNBC uses her fake-GOP labels for opinion pieces like “I’m a Republican strategist. Here’s why I’m confident about Kamala Harris’ campaign.”

Demonstrating just how abjectly Del Percio has thrown in with the Dems, co-host Michael Steele quoted Susan Glasser from The New Yorker about USAID: “The point is not a policy fight. It’s an execution. They are killing one agency to terrify a thousand others.” Trump: executioner!

Del Percio readily agreed: “Well, that’s absolutely the case because it makes headlines.” 

And there are at least 1,000 federal agencies in addition to USAID? That alone demonstrates that the government has metastasized beyond anything the Founders could have imagined. 

Then, exemplifying just how far Del Percio has moved from being anything recognizably Republican, Del Percio propagated an anti-Trump theory so far-fetched as to be bizarre:

“He nominated a cabinet to make him 25th Amendment-proof.”

Steele [an actual MSNBC Republican!] absurdly agreed: “Good point.” And Sanders could be heard murmuring her approval.

If ever there were a 25th-Amendment-worthy president, it was Joe Biden — but Democrats didn’t have the courage to press the ejection seat button. Instead all these MSNBC Democrats and former Republicans eagerly covered everything up.

The utterly incapacitated Woodrow Wilson, another Democrat, would also have been a prime candidate for 25th Amendment action — but the Amendment hadn’t yet been adopted at his time in office.

Here’s the transcript.

MSNBC
The Weekend
2/8/25
8:02 am ET

SYMONE SANDERS: Joining us now is MSNBC political analyst and Republican strategist, Susan Del Percio. 

MICHAEL STEELE: Good morning, Susan. You know, I thought that Susan Glasser summed this up so perfectly in her New Yorker piece, noting, “[If] cutting the federal government is what this is all then Trump and Musk would not be bothering with tiny USAID, whose estimated budget is less than 1% of the federal government’s. The point is not a policy fight. It’s an execution. They are killing one agency to terrify a thousand others.” 

Your thoughts? 

SUSAN DEL PERCIO: Well, that’s absolutely the case because it makes headlines. This an agency which, USAID does so much good around the world. But like a lot of government agencies, there are things that you can pick out and pull that thread and say, why are we funding something like this? And I think that’s why they chose it to go after. 

. . . 

STEELE: Marco Rubio at the State Department. I’ve always looked at Donald Trump selecting him as a way to punk the hell out of him. Because this is a guy I’m going to tell you why, because this is a guy who has a core. I’ve known Marco a long, long time. And this is a guy who always, as particularly in the Senate, fought very openly about the democracy piece, and how important it was for the U.S. to use its soft power through agencies like USAID.

. . . 
[Quoting a New York Times story] “Secretary of State Marco Rubio has long been a champion of policies that advance human rights and promote democratic practices. In the Senate, Rubio was a lead sponsor of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which had broad support from both parties in Congress.”

But now, here he is firing 60 contractors working on those very issues. Those little issues are no longer a priority because they aren’t a priority for this president. What do you make of this? 

I call it the punking of Republicans by Trump to get them to do the things that they know they would never do otherwise. 

DEL PERCIO: Well, they should have known going in, Michael, that they were going to have to bend to Donald Trump’s will every single time. They are not there to be a, to inform and to advise, they are there to carry out orders. 

Frankly, I think he nominated a cabinet to make him 25th-Amendment-proof if anything should really go by. That’s what I think it’s all about —

STEELE: Good point.

DEL PERCIO: That’s it. So that way he had everyone falling in line behind him. 

Recently, NPR shamed President Donald Trump for pledging to rescue two stranded astronauts on the International Space Station because, according to them and despite months of their own reporting to the contrary, they are not stranded. On Friday CBS Evening News host John Dickerson became the latest media personality to do the same thing.

During an interview with Sunita Williams, one of the astronauts in question, Dickerson asked, “Last week, President Trump said you and Butch Wilmore, who’s your Starliner crewmate, had been virtually abandoned. Do you feel abandoned up there, commander?”

 

 

Trump was clearly talking about abandonment in the physical sense, but Williams, not wanting to throw her NASA colleagues under the bus on national TV or ignore other astronauts currently on the International Space Station, used the word in the more emotional or communicative sense, “No, I don’t think those words are quite accurate. You know, we’re part of something bigger than ourselves. We are part of the International Space Station. So no, we don’t feel abandoned. We feel like we are part of the team, and that is a huge honor.”

The mission was supposed to last eight days but is now in its eighth month. Nevertheless, Dickerson asked, “So to think of you as being stuck up there or abandoned, does that basically misunderstand the role of an astronaut?”

Over the past several months, there have been multiple CBS stories that used the words “stuck” or “stranded” to describe Williams and Wilmore.

For her part, Williams was again more diplomatic as she played up the idea it’s all part of the job, “I would say that’s absolutely true. You know, I don’t think I’m abandoned. I don’t think we are stuck up here. We’ve got food, we got clothes. We have a ride home in case anything really bad does happen to the International Space Station.”

While Williams can be commended for her ability to adapt in the face of adversity and putt a happy face on the situation, there is no reason why Dickerson and CBS need to change their tune on how they described her and Wilmore just because Trump commented on it.

Here is a transcript for the February 7 show:

CBS Evening News

2/7/2025

6:44 PM ET

JOHN DICKERSON: Last week, President Trump said you and Butch Wilmore, who’s your Starliner crewmate, had been virtually abandoned. Do you feel abandoned up there, commander?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: No, I don’t think those words are quite accurate. You know, we’re part of something bigger than ourselves. We are part of the International Space Station. So no, we don’t feel abandoned. We feel like we are part of the team, and that is a huge honor.

DICKERSON: So to think of you as being stuck up there or abandoned, does that basically misunderstand the role of an astronaut?

WILLIAMS: I would say that’s absolutely true. You know, I don’t think I’m abandoned. I don’t think we are stuck up here. We’ve got food, we got clothes. We have a ride home in case anything really bad does happen to the International Space Station.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes took his book tour to HBO and Friday’s episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, where he urged Democrats to double down on telling Republicans to “just stay the fuck out of their business” when it comes to parents wanting to give their children gender-altering “health care.”

Maher had just finished lamenting that the recent forum for the DNC chair election, complete with a land acknowledgment and other progressive cringe-inducing antics, showed the party hasn’t learned anything when Hayes replied, “I think that, I don’t think there’s anyone who hasn’t had a moment across the political spectrum of some form of progressive communication that’s either left them bewildered or a little like ‘Eh, I don’t know about that,’ but at the same time, there is a message of what I would call common sense patriotic pluralism. That is a majority message.”

 

 

The first example he reached for was, “If some father and mother have health care for their kid lined up, who is trans, just stay the fuck out of their business. Like, and let them make that decision. That’s their decision to make. You don’t have to make that for your family. I’m not going to tell you what to do with your family.”

Maher pushed back, “I mean, but the argument is whether the child should make the decision.”

Hayes strained credibility to add, “But the child is never making the decision. The parents are always making the decision. Parents consent to medical care.”

Eventually, Maher would add, “They would say it’s disfiguring a child.”

Hayes was unmoved, “I think they should mind their business; I really do. I think they should mind their business, and I think that’s true about a lot of things.”

Since he was on Bill Maher’s show, Hayes probably felt the need to moderate himself so as not to appear to be a complete crazy person. Previously, he and his podcast guests have mused that four-year olds are mature enough to change genders. With that in mind, his desire to just trust the parents doesn’t hold water because if self-styled doctors believe that, they can just pressure or bully the parents into it. There is also the fact that left-wing governments overseas don’t even believe that this “health care” should be available to minors.

Here is a transcript for the February 7 show:

HBO Real Time with Bill Maher

2/7/2025

10:15 PM ET

CHRIS HAYES: I think that, I don’t think there’s anyone who hasn’t had a moment across the political spectrum of some form of progressive communication that’s either left them bewildered or a little like “Eh, I don’t know about that,” but at the same time, there is a message of what I would call common sense patriotic pluralism–

MAHER: Yeah.

HAYES: — that is a majority message, which is like if some father and mother have health care for their kid lined up, who is trans, just stay the fuck out of their business. Like, and let them make that decision. That’s their decision to make. You don’t have to make that for your family. I’m not going to tell you what to do with your family.

BILL MAHER: I mean, but the argument is whether the child should make the decision.

HAYES: But the child is never making the decision. The parents are always making the decision. Parents consent to medical care.

MAHER: Well, here, in California, you’re allowed to hide it from the parents, if the kid — thank you the one person who knows that. Somebody knows that is the case.

HAYES: I think in the vast majority, hearing from parents right now who’s kid’s medical care has been interrupted. I think there’s a way to talk about —

MAHER: Well, of course, they would say it’s not medical care.

HAYES: Sure, that is what they are saying.

MAHER: They would say it’s disfiguring a child.

HAYES: I think they should mind their business; I really do. I think they should mind their business, and I think that’s true about a lot of things. I think there is this sense in which there was this, sort of, backlash politics, some of which I understood, some of which people I knew felt that way. 

I don’t think what they wanted was for the women CIA agents at the CIA to be told that they couldn’t get together once a month to, like, celebrate former women’s spies. I think fundamental parts of this country, the traditions of pluralism, which is what this country is and pluralism is another word for diversity. If we’re not going to use that one, let’s use pluralism. That fundamentally, there is a majority that understands that, like, we come from different places, and part of what makes this country work is that we acknowledge and we negotiate those differences, and that’s a thing that I think Democrats can win back a majority of. 

Hollywood awards shows have been tiptoeing around their natural inclination to arrogant left-wing speechifying and caustic insults of the Trumps. That trend ended at the Critics Choice Awards on Friday night, as MRC’s Brent Baker revealed. “Comedian” Chelsea Handler compared Melania Trump to a prostitute. 

Chelsea Handler hosting Friday night’s #CriticsChoiceAwards: “It was a huge year for biopics….Anora, about Melania Trump.” (IMDb on Anora: “A young sex worker from Brooklyn meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch.” pic.twitter.com/qiZGajwHAW
— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) February 8, 2025
It’s a weird flex for Handler, who shot a get-out-the-vote ad topless (except for “I Voted” stickers over her nipples). 

Handler also mocked actress Cheryl Hines, the wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. She said nominees who didn’t win an award “will just be in the background, questioning your life choices, like Cheryl Hines at a Senate confirmation hearing.” 

Then there was comedian Hannah Einbinder, who won an best-supporting actress award in comedy for the HBO series Hacks. She went on a tear about Big Oil and climate: 

“Just like off the top of my head I would say that we are on the brink of a really dark era of climate denial” – Hannah Einbinder, whom I’ve never heard of, in accepting award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy series at #CriticsChoiceAwards. “I have the facts on my phone.” pic.twitter.com/7SCuyjrSEs
— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) February 8, 2025

We are on the brink of a really dark era of climate denial and um, Chevron scientists knew in the ’70s that plastic recycling was not efficient.  They knew that only nine percent of plastic is actually recycled, and even from that nine percent, it’s only recycled one time. The fossil-fuel industry is to blame for the climate crisis and they need to pay to clean up the mess that they made!

So I just want to encourage everyone to fight for each other. This isn’t super-eloquent. I have the facts on my phone. Hopefully we can all use our voices on this issue because planet Earth will be fine. It’s humanity that’s in trouble.

The best supporting actor in the comedy category, openly Michael Urie, spoke out about his parents accepting him and his “queer” sister. 

Finally, in the Best Adapted Screenplay category, Peter Straughan won for the film Conclave, a Catholic-bashing film where the cardinals end up electing a Pope who is “non-binary,” so there goes the patriarchy. He knocked Trump after stating “I was gonna talk about a line from the film that’s to do with certainty being the enemy of unity.”

Presumably a shot at Donald Trump, from Best Adaptive Screenplay (for Conclave) winner Peter Straughan: “We’re stronger together and to Hell with the man who’s trying to keep us apart.” #CriticsChoiceAwards pic.twitter.com/MT8cH9DKKq
— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) February 8, 2025
Which part of this remark is sillier? Arrogant leftists trying to tell us they’re not displaying “certainty” in their secular sermons? Or trying to tell us they’re opposed to dividing people? 

Much of the 6 am hour of Wednesday’s edition of CNN This Morning was devoted to criticism and mockery of President Trump’s suggestion that the US could take ownership of Gaza, converting the area into the Riviera of the Middle East, while relocating its population.

But to her credit, host Kasie Hunt did allot the hour’s final 10 minutes to a discussion with Dan Senor, an expert on Israeli affairs and someone, as Hunt described, who often speaks with the principals involved in negotiations. 

Rather than expressing unqualified support for Trump’s proposal, Senor explicated it in these terms:

The Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, the West Bank, and most notably from Gaza, from which Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005, has never worked. Invariably, the areas have been used to commit violence against Israel, culminating in the massacre of October 7th, and Israel has been obliged to go back in to the various areas.

So, repeating the same mistakes of the past is not an option. Rebuilding Gaza while permitting Hamas to remain and attempt to exert control is a recipe for failure. Senor paraphrased Trump this way:

“We keep trying to do the same thing over and over and we keep failing. So let’s try something different.”

Having Israel occupy Gaza is not a good idea, and something most Israelis themselves don’t want.

If Gaza is to be rebuilt, it will take many years, and cannot be successfully accomplished with the 2.5 million Palestinians remaining in the area.

Whether Trump’s plan is realistic in all its aspects, Gaza, given its location on the Mediterranean, does have tremendous potential.

Above all, Trump was putting on notice the leaders of other countries in the region, notably Egypt, Jordan, and the Sunni Gulf states— if they don’t like Trump’s proposal, they need to get “creative” on their own.

Senor unequivocally disagreed with Trump’s suggestion that US troops could potentially be sent to Gaza, saying: “American military personnel should not be deployed in any capacity.”

It was noteworthy that Hunt rarely interrupted Senor’s remarks, did not actually push back on his takes, and was gracious in her interactions. 

But that won’t stop CNN from promptly reverting to form and trashing Trump on his Gaza proposal and any number of other matters! 

Here’s the transcript.

CNN This Morning
2/5/25
6:50 am ET

KASIE HUNT: Joining me now is Dan Senor. He’s the host of the Call Me Back podcast, former foreign policy advisor to the Romney campaign and, of course, for anyone who doesn’t know, clearly very involved, often speaking to many of the principals who are involved in all these negotiations. Dan, thank you so much for being on the show. 

DAN SENOR: Hey, Kasie. Good to be with you. 

HUNT: Dan, can you just help me understand what we saw at the White House last night, the president putting this out there, and whether or not this is something that he’s actually really going to try to do? 

SENOR: Look, um, I think that Israel has tried both in southern Lebanon and Gaza and the West Bank over the last number of decades to experiment with different approaches with getting out of these territories and letting local authorities effectively govern them, right? 

So in the 1990s, Israel gradually withdrew from the west Bank. Obviously, it still has a security presence there, but it handed over governance to most of the West Bank, to what has become the Palestinian Authority. In May of 2000, Israel unilaterally withdrew from southern Lebanon. Hezbollah gradually, as we know, as we’ve seen tragically in recent years, took over. And in 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, hoping that the Palestinian Authority would be able to govern there. 

In each of those three places, Kasie, Israel has effectively had to go back in, right? Israeli soldiers are dying in all of those areas Israel has withdrawn from. 

We’ve seen what’s happened in Lebanon in recent years. We’ve seen what’s happened in the West Bank. Even at this moment, there is Israeli operations in parts of the northern West Bank. And obviously, we saw October 7th in Gaza and what has followed. 

We are on a path right now in Gaza to just rinse and repeat to the same old scenario, which is to say, left to everyone’s own devices, left on the trajectory that things are now on, Hamas is, as Israel has during the ceasefire, has been pulling back, Hamas is going to try and reassert control. The international community is going to help rebuild Gaza with Hamas there. 

So tell me exactly how that looks any different from what Israel and the Palestinian people got between 2005 when Israel withdrew and October 7th of 2023. We’re on a similar trajectory. 

There are two options. Let that happen, or have Israel reoccupy Gaza. Now, nobody wants Israel to reoccupy Gaza, including the majority of Israelis. 

So I think what President Trump is doing is throwing out other ideas. Do I think every detail of what he laid out last night is going to be what we actually see? Who knows? What he is saying is, guys, I think he said to this effect with exact words, we keep trying to do the same thing over and over and we keep failing. So let’s try something different. 

. . . 

I mean, I’ve heard, people around him, you know, Jared Kushner over in the last number of years. And he said he, I’m not just, you know, Jared Kushner has said these things publicly —

HUNT: Yeah.

SENOR: — particularly when he was working on the Abraham Accords and other projects, that it is a shame. It’s tragic that this territory sitting there in the Mediterranean. I’ve been to Gaza. I was struck by it when I was there. I spent time in the Jabali refugee camp. And you sit there thinking, how has this place been left to rot by the local quote-unquote authorities, when it could have been developed into, you know, something much more hopeful for the Palestinian people. 

So I think the president is actually, as he often does, is imagining a pretty ambitious vision for what Gaza could be. 

So, at a minimum, you get everyone thinking, and you’re putting pressure on everyone in the region to start thinking differently. More likely, he’s thinking this could be something that could be a tremendous asset to the region and to the United States.
 
But in order to do any of it, it’s going to take years and years of work. And the reality is there’s two-and-a-half plus million Palestinians living there. If you really want to rebuild this place and you really want to turn it around, it’s going to require a ton of work and a long time. And it’s not going to be doable while all these, while this entire population is there. 

HUNT: Is it realistic that there would be American troops on the ground in Gaza, from a political perspective here in the U.S.? 

SENOR: I have long believed that the best position for the U.S.-Israel relationship, the bilateral relationship, the best position for Israel and the best relationship for the United States, is let Israel fight its wars, let Israel protect itself, let Israeli men and women in uniform do the fighting. 

It’s in the U.S.’s interest to get Israel the tools it needs for Israel to fight its wars, but American military personnel should not be deployed in any capacity. 

. . . 

I think the important point from last night is, the president put the region on notice. We’re not just going to keep doing the same thing over and over. So if you guys don’t like my plan, you better start getting creative, President Sisi in Egypt, King Abdullah in Jordan, the Sunni Gulf leaders. Because we’re just not going to rebuild Gaza with Hamas back in charge and try to hope and pray and cross our fingers that we’re not going to get the same thing we got between 2005 and October 7th, 2023. 

HUNT: All right, Dan Senor, fascinating conversation. Thank you very much for joining us. Come back anytime. 

SENOR: Thanks, Kasie. 

HUNT: See you soon. 

SENOR: Great. 
 

NBC allowed a Republican viewpoint on their “Nightly News” to challenge the reigning fear and anxiety of Elon Musk seeking government efficiency and labor force reduction. Rep. James Comer expressed amusement at “Musk Derangement Syndrome.”

The national media are now focusing a lot of their negative “news” energy on Elon Musk and his drive for government efficiency. CNN is upset about his messing with the Agency for International Development, and Jake Tapper lamented Elon opening “old wounds” with British grooming gangs raping little girls, which is a “distraction” for new prime minister Keir Starmer.

NewsBusters Associate Editor Nick Fondacaro brings the details. In addition to the U.K. struggles, there’s the fight in D.C. over USAID (the Agency for International Development). Yet again, the legacy networks played up small leftist protests as if they represented public opinion as a whole. NBC anchor Lester Holt  touted “Opposition to the billionaire’s unprecedented access and authority, including to certain government systems continues to swell, with protests across the country.” 

These networks couldn’t muster more than a few seconds to tens of thousands of protesters in the annual “March for Life,” but put 100 bureaucrats on a D.C. sidewalk with their “No One Elected Musk” signs, and it’s “swelling across the country.”

As a result of Trump suing CBS News for the full video and transcript of the Kamala Harris 60 Minutes interview, the FCC was granted the access, and sure enough, CBS sliced and diced the interview to make Harris look more concise in her answers than she actually was.

On CNN, Jake Tapper preached that to “settle the suit would be a white flag of surrender… the network of [veteran CBS broadcaster] Edward R. Murrow… saying, we will not speak truth to power. We will acquiesce to power at the expense of truth.” This is a little mind-boggling because CNN was just found liable for defamation in Florida for a piece on Tapper’s show that clearly claimed an innocent man was a criminal (with his “black market” business evacuating Americans from Afghanistan).

Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you enjoy podcasts. 

 

The latest Twitter Files “Extra” connected the dots on how corrupt Democrats promoted the Russiagate conspiracy theory that Washington elites attempted to tie to three Trump nominees. 

Journalist Matt Taibbi explained in his latest Twitter Files installment that Trump’s cabinet nominees Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were all falsely accused of having ties to a Russian interference effort by members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees during the first Trump administration. 

Take Patel, for instance. In January 2018, the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee submitted a classified memo debunking the infamous Steele Dossier, which perpetuated the Russian election interference narrative. Patel, then a senior counsel for the committee, was reportedly one of the memo’s authors, Taibbi noted. 

When #releasethememo subsequently began trending on Twitter, Democrat members of Congress—then-Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)—complained to Twitter that the hashtag “gained instant attention and assistance of social media accounts linked to Russian influence operations.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), not to be outdone by his colleagues, alleged in another letter that “Russian agents” were propagandizing Americans. 

Related: ‘RUSSIAGATE LIES’: Twitter Files Part 14 Exposes Dems Pressuring Platform on Russia-Trump Collusion Hoax

From the fall of 2017 through 2018 Twitter repeatedly, both privately and publicly, reiterated that it found no evidence to support these senator’s claims of coordinated widespread Russian influence campaigns. However, again and again, Democrats insisted that Twitter was not looking hard enough.

Blumenthal, Feinstein and Schiff based their unfounded claims on the Hamilton 68 Dashboard, which supposedly monitored 600 Russian-linked accounts on Twitter. The website was created by former FBI counterintelligence official Clint Watts and researchers involved with the since-defunct organization New Knowledge. 

ICYMI: Election Interference! Twitter Files Pull Back Curtain on Big Tech-Gov’t Censorship Campaign

Notably, Watts, Hamilton 68 and New Knowledge then became sources for news articles, including media campaigns against disfavored Democrat presidential candidates who became too popular. This reportedly happened to Gabbard during her presidential bid in 2020. 

In the recent Twitter Files Extra, Taibbi referred to a February 2019 NBC article that cited New Knowledge claiming that links related to Gabbard were shared by “social media accounts affiliated with known and suspected Russian propaganda operations.” 

Taibbi further added, “These accusations continued throughout Gabbard’s run. In November of that year, NBC’s Ken Dilanian essentially re-wrote the first Gabbard piece, quoting [Hamilton 68 creator Clint] Watts and mentioning Hamilton 68. As usual, no mention of connections between sources.”

Taibbi also reported that similar tactics were used against Kennedy Jr. and even Sen. Bernie Sanders when they ran for president in 2024 and 2020, respectively. He clarified that the “only difference with Kennedy is the accusations now flowed from other sources (i.e.

@bellingcat) as opposed to Hamilton/New Knowledge, by now discredited.” 

Tellingly, Taibbi noted that the “stories about Gabbard and Patel’s ‘links’ to Russia never stopped,” citing 2024 headlines like NBC News’s “Would Tulsi Gabbard bring a pro-Russian bias to intelligence reporting?” and Mother Jones’s “How Kash Patel Became a Useful Idiot for Vladamir Putin.”

Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

This week the Media Research Center released a study, “Five Reasons to Defund ‘Public’ Broadcasting.” National Public Radio provided still another reason on Tuesday’s edition of All Things Considered. 

Odette Yousef, NPR’s “domestic extremism correspondent” (solely “right-wing” extremism) has previously filed insane stories on a host of topics in that cluster, in 2023 linking the populist anthem “Rich Men North of Richmond” to an “anti-Semitic blood libel.”

But on Tuesday she hurled herself headlong into the abyss, comparing rumors of transgender crimes spread online to Nazism. Host Ailsa Chang set up the appalling segment.

AILSA CHANG, Host: In the hours after a Black Hawk helicopter fatally collided with an American Airlines jet last week, social media erupted with the claim that the craft was piloted by a transgender service member named Jo Ellis, but it wasn’t true. Ellis is a member of the Virginia National Guard, and she took to Facebook to show that she was still alive.

JO ELLIS [archive clip]: It is insulting to the families to try to tie this to some sort of political agenda. They don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve this.

CHANG: Extremism experts say it’s part of a familiar political playbook. NPR domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef joins us now…so I know that you have closely watched how both popular and political narratives against transgender people have shifted over the last several years. How does all of this fit the patterns that you’ve been seeing?

YOUSEF: Well, Ailsa, in recent years, it seems like after every high-profile tragedy, there’s almost always a social media firestorm claiming that the perpetrator was transgender. You know, we saw it after school shootings in Uvalde, Texas; Apalachee, Georgia; Madison, Wisconsin; and Perry, Iowa, just to name a few.

Now, there was one school shooting in 2023 where the perpetrator was indeed a former student who was transgender….it did further feed a picture that some on the right have been trying to paint about trans people as terrorists or mentally unwell.

One only has to peek at the “trans” debate on X or TikTok or especially left-leaning BlueSky to realize how many online trans-activists qualify as unwell.

Yousef spoke to let another unlabeled liberal group, Elizabeth Yates of the Western States Center, “a nonprofit that works to support inclusive democracy.” If there’s no label, you can guess they’re like Yousef, experts on “far-right extemism.” Yates provided the required smearing soundbites.

ELIZABETH YATES: Some people are spreading this narrative because it’s lucrative to pump up their followers on social media and increase engagement and increase revenue….But that is simultaneously increasing the power and visibility of bigoted and authoritarian actors who are promoting this for a specific political agenda.

YOUSEF: So we saw state-level legislators lead anti-trans efforts even a decade ago to restrict trans access to bathrooms and sports teams….now it seems anti-trans measures are politically rewarding. But frankly, it’s not a new political strategy.

Chang set up Yousef by asking her “the history behind this strategy.” She turned to another expert on the far right.

YOUSEF: To answer that, I spoke to Hanah Stiverson of Human Rights First, which is focused on human rights.

HANAH STIVERSON: One of the first trans health clinics in the world was in pre-World War II Germany. It was the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin. And it was one of the very first targets of the rising Nazi party.

Tax-funded NPR offered absolutely no pushback to that scurrilous comparison. Stiverson announced on her LinkedIn page “this is part of a larger fascist strategy to turn the nation against our own citizens.” Yousef seconded it, and the show host also treated it as truth.

YOUSEF: And so the concern here, Ailsa, is that when it becomes OK to dehumanize one marginalized group or minority group, that can easily turn against another population.

CHANG: That is NPR’s Odette Yousef. Thank you, Odette.

Old Glory Bank co-founder and president Mike Ring blasted years of banking discrimination against conservatives and entire industries in a long overdue Senate hearing on debanking.

Ring founded Old Glory Bank as an alternative to banks that gave in to cancel culture and on Feb. 5 he testified before the Senate Banking Committee alongside three other witnesses. Ring told MRC Free Speech America that discussion about the problem of debanking is no longer being hidden now that Republicans control the Senate. Ring explained, “the taboo of debanking is gone, and everyone now gets to joke [about it] and it’s real. And six months ago, people were still denying that debanking was real.” 

[Story Continues on MRC Free Speech America]