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OPINION

‘Snooze Fest’: Internet Mocks Trump’s ‘Extremely Boring’ and ‘Low Energy’ CPAC Speech

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White Nationalist One-Term Twice-Impeached Former US President Speaks to Right Wing Group From Nazi-Inspired Stage

For the first time since he incited an insurrection last month the disgraced former American president, Donald Trump, on Sunday delivered what many are calling a “low-energy” and “extremely boring” speech to attendees of CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, in Orlando, Florida late Sunday afternoon.

The ex-president, who started his speech 100 minutes late, looked and sounded far older than he did on January 6, attacking President Joe Biden and insisting that his five weeks performance should be enough for “Democrats to lose the White House” in 2024.

“Actually, as you know, they just lost the White House,” Trump told supporters, adding: “I may even decide to beat them for a third time, who knows?”

The crowd, a mostly over-50 group of white Americans, roared, even though Trump has won only one election, and never the popular vote.

Trump’s speech was very similar to his past stump speeches, filled with racism, white nationalism, and lies about his opponents and the 2020 election that he lost – which he continues to refuse to admit. The “fake news” media, transgender people, and NIH Director Dr. Anthony Fauci were also the target of his attacks.

He also tried to re-instill the perceived victimization of conservatives that fueled his presidency, claiming for example that Americans will no longer be able to hire attorneys because undocumented immigrants are taking them all away from U.S. citizens, which is a lie.

Other lies included that wind energy is bad for the environment,

Some responses:

 

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OPINION

‘Hunger Games at NBC News’: New McDaniel Revelations Have ‘Enraged’ Staffers, Report Says

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The backlash from NBC News’ hiring of Ronna McDaniel is not over. New reporting from Puck, CNN, and The Washington Post reveals the considerable efforts from top NBC and MSNBC brass to recruit, hire, and support the former RNC chair who promoted false election claims, was allegedly involved in helping Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and refused to say Joe Biden had been elected fairly.

Staffers at NBC News and MSNBC were outraged at McDaniel’s hiring, but new details about behind-the-scenes efforts reportedly have increased that outrage.

Some critics are either calling for resignations of NBC News and MSNBC  leadership, or questioning how long they can ride out the mess.

“What is Brian Roberts going to do?” CNN‘s Oliver Darcy asks. “The Comcast boss is watching an unceasing five-alarm fire rage at 30 Rock, scarring the reputation of NBC News and threatening to consume multiple parts of the Cesar Conde-run NBC Universal News Group.”

“Conde has lost control of his organization, prompting industry insiders to wonder how he continues to remain in his role as chairman of the NBC News Group. In the words of one veteran media executive I spoke to Wednesday, ‘It’s inconceivable that he should,'” Darcy writes, saying Conde’s actions and those of his top executives have “hosed gasoline” on the scandal.

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That scandal involves these revelations from Puck’s Dylan Byers, who reports, “bringing McDaniel to 30 Rock had been part of a nearly two-month-long effort that was spearheaded by Budoff Brown and her boss, NBC News President Rebecca Blumenstein, with buy-in from Conde and his deputies at both NBC News and MSNBC.”

“Rashida Jones,” he adds, “the president of MSNBC, was very interested in having McDaniel appear as a contributor on her network, as well.”

But this bombshell has drawn a good deal of attention. Noting how Chuck Todd led off the very public pushback against the hiring of McDaniel, Byers reports, “On Sunday, Budoff Brown reached out to McDaniel’s aide and former chief of staff at the R.N.C., Richard Walters, to see if there were any friends or colleagues who could speak up on her behalf.”

“The two sides also discussed having these folks call attention to what they saw as a double standard—after all, this was the same network that was turning Psaki, a former Biden White House Press Secretary, into a Maddow-adjacent prime time star. Walters later assured Budoff Brown that they’d been able to advance conservative pushback on social media against Todd, specifically, and that this might give NBC News some cover, for which Budoff Brown thanked him.”

CNN, pointing to those details, adds, “staffers inside NBC News are enraged at the fact an executive would have engaged in such behavior.”

Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacobs, who now writes about politics and the media, called for the firing of Jones, Blumenstein, and Budoff Brown.

Other critics are expressing concerns on multiple fronts.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“It’s like the hunger games at @NBCNews. Every day new, horrible stories of journalism & corporate malpractice. Every single one of these managers must go,” observed Jennifer Schulze, a media critic who was a Chicago Sun-Times executive producer, WGN news director, and adjunct college professor of journalism.

She also highlights a Washington Post report that ropes NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt into the mess.

“Every @NBCNews exec who thought hiring a reputed liar & phony elector co-[conspirator] needs to resign or be fired,” Schulze says.

“The @NBCNews managers who recruited & signed an election denier should be out the door, too,” she adds. “Not only was it downright offensive to hire Ronna, it was journalism AND corporate malpractice.”

Pointing to his newsletter, former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer writes, “NBC’s ill-fated decision to hire Ronna McDaniel is a story of a media outlet unwilling to accept the ways Trump changed politics, but it’s also one of the best arguments for Dems need to build our media ecosystem ASAP.”

READ MORE: Comer Refuses to Investigate Trump Family Member Over ‘Influence Peddling’ Allegation

He calls McDaniel’s hiring “evidence” the media has “yet to accept the reality that this is not a normal election between a Republican and a Democrat.” And adds, “An [industry] that prizes objectivity above all else, is incapable of accurately covering an election where one candidate is a normal politician and the other is an insurrectionist. Many in the media would rather stumble into autocracy than take a side.”

Veteran journalist and Sirius XM host Michelangelo Signorile observes, “We couldn’t have asked for a better situation to shine a bright light on the corruption of the corporate media—and its impulse to legitimize MAGA extremism and lawbreakers for profit—than NBC’s hiring former RNC chair, election denier, and Trump enabler Ronna McDaniel.”

And he warns, “The forces that made the coup-plotting former RNC chair a paid contributor are still shaping news and information about this pivotal election.”

 

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OPINION

Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

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Right-wing talk radio show host Hugh Hewitt is facing backlash after declaring former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, who was ousted after her hiring cost NBC News a tumultuous five days, a “normal” person who has “never denied the election.”

Last summer, The Washington Post‘s Philip Bump reported McDaniel “is still elevating 2020 election skepticism,” and “won’t say the election was fair.”

“I don’t think he won it fair. I don’t. I’m not going to say that,” McDaniel had said to CNN.

“CNN teased an upcoming interview between host Chris Wallace and Ronna McDaniel,” Bump wrote. “In the clip, Wallace asks McDaniel when she stopped being an ‘election denier’ — that is, someone who espouses skepticism about the validity of the election results. And, surprise! McDaniel never stopped.”

Bump also explained the danger in election denialism: “McDaniel won’t say Biden was legitimately elected because the base doesn’t want to hear it — but the base doesn’t want to hear it in part because leaders such as McDaniel won’t simply admit without qualifications that Biden won.”

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“Establishing a system in which any loss can easily be framed as illegitimate means establishing a system in which no loss is accepted as valid,” Bump continued. “It means institutionalizing the idea that elections are inaccurate gauges of public opinion and, therefore, that the winners of those elections have no mandate to serve.”

On Wednesday Hewitt, a Washington Post columnist and former Reagan White House aide, said on Fox News that McDaniel “is a fine Republican. She is not an election denier. She has never denied the election.”

Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh responded to that clip.

Bullshit Hugh. With Trump, she pressured MI canvassers to not certify the results; with Trump, she pressured other state attorney’s to sue & invalidate results in MI, PA, & WI; she worked with Trump on the fake electors scheme; she lied about charges of voter fraud well after those charges had been debunked. No major party chair in American history has done more to dispute a legit election. Shame on you,” Walsh wrote.

Media Matters’ Eric Kleefeld, also responding to that clip: “Somebody who helped coordinate fake electors and passed a resolution calling Jan. 6 ‘legitimate political discourse’ is not normal, and we must at all steps refuse to treat them as such.”

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Hewitt had also told Fox News, “I don’t know who is going to keep MSNBC informed of what normal people think, because Ronna McDaniel is about as normal as they come. She’s a Michigan mom, she’s been in the job seven years. She represents the Republican Party.”

McDaniel, it could be said, does not represent the Republican Party, not the MAGA America First Republican Party of today, neither literally nor figuratively. Donald Trump engineered her ouster and installed his handpicked replacements, including his daughter-in-law and Michael Whatley, a right-wing attorney who was part of the Bush recount team during the contested 2000 presidential election.

The Atlantic’s Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), blasted Hewitt, calling him “an utter disgrace,” while adding, “shame on those like the Washington Post who showcase him.”

Adam Cohen, vice chair of Lawyers for Good Government, pointedly responded to Hewitt: “Hate to tell you this, but normal people don’t try to foment a coup, or deny the truth about election results Like Ronna McDaniel did.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

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‘Abomination’: Fox Hosts Issue Stunning Trump Legal Judgment Critiques

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Hosts on Fox News on Monday made several misleading claims about the American elections system, COVID, the rule of law, and Friday’s $450 million total civil judgment against Donald Trump and his executives.

“I think that these people clearly hate Trump more than they love America,” declared Fox News contributor Lisa Boothe on Monday. “You know, and by the time they finally get him if they ever do, what’s going to be left of the country? I mean, think about all the damage these threats to democracy people have done as they burn the country down to try to get him.”

“No one trusts elections anymore after they upended the system during a COVID virus almost as deadly as the flu as they append to the process that with mail-in balloting and trying to take Trump off the ballot. No one trusts the rule of law anymore. It doesn’t exist, as they’ve used it weaponized it against Donald Trump. The media’s debased itself lying about Donald Trump.”

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It is untrue that “No one trusts elections anymore.” It is false that COVID is deadly than the flu. Mail-in balloting is a safe alternative to in-person voting.

Boothe’s remarks, while inaccurate, expose the effects the Trump campaign has had on confidence in U.S. elections.

“Few Republicans have high confidence that votes will be tallied accurately in next year’s presidential contest, suggesting years of sustained attacks against elections by former President Donald Trump and his allies have taken a toll, according to a new poll,” the Associated Press reported last summer. “The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds that only 22% of Republicans have high confidence that votes in the upcoming presidential election will be counted accurately compared to 71% of Democrats, underscoring a partisan divide fueled by a relentless campaign of lies related to the 2020 presidential election. Even as he runs for the White House a third time, Trump continues to promote the false claim that the election was stolen.”

As for COVID, as recently as today The Mercury News reported, “COVID deaths in California dropped dramatically in 2023 but still 17 times higher than flu deaths.”

Boothe wasn’t the only Fox News host who spread questionable claims on Monday’s show.

READ MORE: ‘Borders on Pathological’: Judge Decimates Trump in Fraud Ruling

Emily Compagno pointed to the recent threatened Truckers for Trump boycott of New York, without mentioning the truck driver who sparked it retracted his video.

“Chicago Ray deleted his original post and shared a new one on Monday in which he distanced himself from the boycott calls and stressed that he was not encouraging anyone to do anything,” Newsweek reports. NewsNation also reports “Chicago Ray backs down on calls for truck boycott.”

Quoting a comment, Compagno read: ” ‘If all of us patriots stand up we will make a difference. We have to push back against the ones trying to purposely destroy our country.’ And I can’t help but underline that is how everyone is perceiving this abomination of a ruling that had no victims.”

“Everyone” does not perceive the civil business fraud ruling against Trump as an “abomination,” nor as adjudicated to “purposely destroy our country.” Some legal experts have supported and praised the judgment. One called it “a powerful predictor of what’s to come in his criminal trials.”

Last year Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems for a reported $787.5 million, called “one of the largest ever in a defamation case.”

“The case held the potential to make public a stream of damaging information about how the network told its audience a story of fraud and interference in the 2020 presidential election that many of its own executives and on-screen personalities did not believe,” The New York Times reported last April. The paper noted the lawsuit was “over the network’s promotion of misinformation about the 2020 election.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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