Riffed from the Headlines is Townhall’s daily VIP supplement that examines deeply flawed aspects of journalism in the country. We will seek to hold accountable the blunders, misdeeds, wrongdoings, manipulations, unfair practices and fabricated narratives in the mainstream media.
Chris Hayes looked at the upcoming midterm elections and began speculating. He considered what it might look like if Republicans won control of Congress. Listen, he feels the economy could get worse.
– “They will do everything in their power to sabotage the economy in order to best position themselves to win the White House in 2024.”
Oh, where to begin? First, he thinks the GOP will work to make the economy worse. Second, why he thinks creating a terrible economy will make people want to elect them is… a mystery. But last, for his little claim to actually sound like something worthwhile, he first has to sell the idea that we are not currently in terrible economic conditions.
“If we give Republicans the keys to the house, they will tear up the floors!!!” https://t.co/2L2JBaLAV4 photo: twitter.com/MzSOd1aZ8V
— Brad Slager: Armageddon I’m so infirmed of this! (@MartiniShark) (*6*)October 13, 2022
Legalized press-titution – CNN
Today, the January 6th Committee returned to its fruitless toil, but few noticed. CNN apparently picked up on the general apathy, as the committee and press desperately cry out to influence voters’ intentions. CNN’s Stephen Collinson even put this previously unspoken goal into words.
“Given the increasingly vocal warnings from committee members about the threat Trump-backed candidates pose to democracy, it’s hard not to see Thursday’s, Jan. 6, hearing as an intervention in the midterm elections. And with Trump already the hot favorite to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, warnings from committee members from both parties that he should never hold office again are, by definition, highly political.”
The real revelation is that the press is beginning to sense that this year-long effort to change people’s minds has led to a decline in interest, fewer people blaming Trump and/or the Republican Party for the riots, and the Capitol riots have fallen to the bottom of the list of issues that matter most to voters. CNN laments the fact that you really care more about how you’re going to feed yourselves than about this partisan witch hunt. The audacity of you selfish people!
“Polls repeatedly show that voters see the economy – a far more pressing issue in everyday life than the threat to American democracy – as their top concern” | Analysis https://t.co/09XnJ1Kzmi
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) October 13, 2022
Pathological media amnesia – DIFFERENT SOCKETS
- Shouting for a hearing for a candidate who suffered a stroke was no gigantic deal when a Republican was dealing with the aftermath.
NBC reporter Dasha Burton continues to face criticism from members of the press for daring to write about the condition she witnessed firsthand, with some calling it “ableism,” and many suggesting it’s inappropriate to record a stroke victim’s disability.
I should add to that last sentence, “…today.” That’s because in 2016, it wasn’t considered a problem that Senator Mark Kirk was struggling with the aftereffects of a stroke while running for reelection.
I wonder where the idea came from that a stroke disqualifies a politician??? https://t.co/HOwwgIfjeA photo:twitter.com/oAuXFblg1D
— Brad Slager: Armageddon I’m so infirmed of this! (@MartiniShark) October 13, 2022
At the time, he was struggling with the after-effects of a stroke that had happened four years ago, not four months earlier. But at the time, it was acceptable to question his condition because he was a Republican, and there was no controversy that he should not be elected because of his condition.
Given that the Nashville editor is deeply concerned about Pennsylvania politics, I have to ask:
Was it “medical malpractice” when a Chicago newspaper endorsed a Senate candidate because a stroke victim was not deemed incapacitated? https://t.co/DmoLgZvGv6 photo:twitter.com/6nQP8Ku3SE— Brad Slager: Armageddon I’m so infirmed of this! (@MartiniShark) October 13, 2022
Fact checking by fact checkers – POLITYFACT
- Based on their own data, they reveal only a miniature part of their arguments.
You can clearly tell who fact-checking teams favor by the way they describe each candidate. In the Ohio Senate race, for example, PolitiFact focused heavily on Republican candidate J.D. Vance. Last week, we reported here how the site took Vance’s 100% precise claim that Tim Ryan voted with Nancy Pelosi 100% of the time and called it a “half-truth.” In another recent hit, PolitiFact called it “mostly false” when Vance accused Ryan of calling the police “the new Jim Crow.” And that’s despite their explanations.
– “Rep. Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat, said at a 2019 town hall that he believes today’s criminal justice system is ‘racist’ and compared it to the Jim Crow laws in the South before the civil rights movement.”
To see how biased PolitiFact is, just look at their own candidate metrics. Vance gets seven recent fact checks, and four of them are Mostly False-False-Pants On Fire. Meanwhile, of the 16 verified facts about Tim Ryan, 13 were marked as True-Mostly True.
During an October 10 Ohio Senate debate, JD Vance said that Tim Ryan two years ago “supported a ban on fracking both on public lands and generally.” The statement is partially true, but it omits crucial details about Ryan’s record on the issue. https://t.co/wg53PyxmVt photo:twitter.com/PLGsWZFIh3
— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) October 13, 2022
The Presentation Paradox – DIFFERENT SOCKETS
- The future of the Supreme Court appears to depend on the favor of the press.
Let’s go back to the summer for a moment, when the official decision to repeal the ban was made. Roe v. Wade and sent abortion legality back to the states. There was a lot of angst and pearl-clutching in the press at the time, with many suggesting that the Court had been corrupted by conservatives on the bench. Some even went so far as to suggest that it was time to disband the Court altogether.
Now comes the ruling, in which the justices unanimously rejected Donald Trump’s legal team’s motion to dismiss the federal seizure of Mar-a-Lago documents. Interestingly, we hear no fuss about how imbalanced our top legal team has become, without any cries about shutting down the Court.
URGENT: Supreme Court rejects Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents request. No objections noted
— Robert Barnes (@scotusreporter) October 13, 2022
