On Friday’s Fox & Friends, Kurt Knutsson gushed over Microsoft’s NewsGuard blacklist as “fair” and a “good idea.”
Knutsson said:
This is a filter. So Microsoft has decided, in their latest mobile browser called Edge, that they’re going to make this as part of the browser that you can just simply see a badge. … What it does is it comes in red if it’s “unreliable,” and it comes in green if it’s “reliable” or trustworthy sources.
…
The [browser] add-on is from NewsGuard Tech and its former journalists … that run it. There are actually human beings behind it, and it’s actually a good idea. When I looked pretty closely at it, it’s pretty fair. They’re giving some criticism to the left, to the right–pretty right down the middle, and they’re calling it like it is.
Watch the full segment here at the 36-minute mark.
Knutsson’s only concern is if Silicon Valley, is if Facebook grabs control of NewsGuard, but as is, with establishment types running the blacklist, he thinks it’s pretty freakin’ awesome.
Well, of course, the backstabbers at Fox News love this blacklist. Why wouldn’t they? 1) Fox News is not blacklisted and 2) Fox News’s competition at Breitbart News and other right-leaning sites are blacklisted.
And so, what we have here from Fox News is a perfect example of “I’ve got mine” or “I’m going to appease the alligator, hoping he eats me last.”
Question…
What is Fox News going to do when Microsoft and NewsGuard add Fox News to this blacklist?
Seriously, what is Fox going to do now that it is on record gushing over just how “fair” and “down the middle” NewsGuard is? In brief, what is Fox News going to say for itself when Fox is blacklisted just in time for the 2020 presidential election, which is probably what’s going to happen?
Fox News has no principles.
This is a news outlet that will rage against Silicon Valley when Silicon Valley harms Fox News.
But if a Microsoft (which I believe is part of Silicon Valley, Kurt) launches a blacklisting tool and Fox News is not blacklisted, well, then, Hell, yeah, this thing is awesome! And it hurts our competition and it might send more advertisers our way and since we have no principles, we love this thing, Hoss, and so should you!
Fox News is also misleading its viewers into believing Microsoft’s NewsGuard is “fair” and “straight down the middle” because, as Breitbart News reported, NewsGuard is blacklisting Breitbart News only for the sin of reporting stories the establishment does not want reported.
In its lengthy critique of Breitbart News, NewsGuard did not list one story — not one — that Breitbart got wrong. All the blacklisters do is whine about our opinion pieces (which are clearly marked opinion) and crybaby over our accurate reporting on things NewsGuard does not want the public to know. It is all laid out right here.
Meanwhile…
While NewsGuard is blacklisting Breitbart News for telling the truth, this very same NewsGuard is marking as “credible” proven hoaxes and news so fake they have been retracted.
Behold NewGuard’s mighty green checkmark informing readers that first lady Melania Trump was an illegal alien, the Russians hacked Vermont’s electric grid, and so on and so forth…
Microsoft’s NewsGuard is nothing less than a hoax site with two functions: 1) As you can see in the Google search screenshot above, NewsGuard is marking as “credible” the grossest lies about President Trump, so this is all about misleading voters in 2020. 2) NewsGuard wants to sucker advertisers into believing it is credible as a means to starve publications like Breitbart News that dare to report (accurately) stories the establishment does not want reported.
No decent American is okay with any kind of central authority backed by a multinational corporation like Microsoft abusing its power to publish blacklists.
But if you watch the video above, you will see the pathetic suck-up that is Fox News lapping up every treat the establishment throws its way while selling out the rest of us…
Why in the HELL is Trump listening to this little metro-sexual man.
White House adviser Jared Kushner is urging President Trump not to declare a national emergency at the United States-Mexico border that would allow the administration to take steps to build a wall to stop soaring illegal immigration and a deadly inflow of drug trafficking.
Kushner has “cautioned against” Trump declaring a national emergency at the southern border, sources tell the Washington Post, despite no clear insight as to how a split GOP-Democrat Congress will approve even a fifth of border wall funding.
“But Kushner has told others in the White House that Democrats are coming along — and that a deal will be done,” the Washington Post reports. “For his part, Trump has told advisers he could still declare a national emergency, a route Kushner has cautioned against.”
As Breitbart News noted, Kushner has also reportedly taken over immigration negotiations at the White House amid the government shutdown:
[Jared] Kushner has emerged as an omnipresent and assertive player in the now-33-day impasse, despite deep skepticism on Capitol Hill about his political abilities and influence, according to more than a dozen Trump associates, lawmakers and others involved in the discussions.
…
“Apparently, Jared has become an expert on immigration in the last 48 hours,” Trump said, according to three people familiar with the exchange who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Insiders tell Breitbart News that recent meetings at the White House have been to urge organizations and their activists to support a compromise budget deal that ties an amnesty for about a million illegal aliens and foreign nationals to $5.7 billion in border wall funds.
The budget deal — a product of meetings between Kushner, Vice President Mike Pence, White House Legislative Affairs Director Shahira Knight, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — spends about ten times as much on foreign aid as it does on the border wall, and pro-American immigration reform groups have rejected the deal.
Trump Budget Spends 10X More on Foreign Countries than Border Wall
Trump’s compromise budget funds about $5.7 billion in border wall construction while spending about ten times as much on foreign countries.
breitbart.com
18 people are talking about this
Regardless of support from those organizations invited to the White House yesterday, the deal is set to fail in the Senate.
Kushner is not the only figure around Trump to lobby against the president using his national emergency powers to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.
Republicans like Graham, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Sen. John Thune (R-SC), and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) have all said they want Trump to strike a deal rather than declare a national emergency.
The latest suggestion from a handful of Republican Senators, including Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and Kushner, has been to craft a deal that gives green cards — and eventually U.S. citizenship — to at least 700,000 illegal aliens enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Those amnestied illegal aliens would be allowed after five years to bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country, a process known as “chain migration.” This could trigger a chain migration inflow just from the amnestied DACA population of anywhere between 2.2 to 4.2 million foreign nationals arriving in the U.S.
Border crossings in November 2018 — the last month from which data is available — hit close to 52,000, marking the highest level of illegal immigration in the month of November since 2006. Projections indicate that illegal immigration for next year will reach 600,000 border crossings, the highest level of illegal immigration in more than a decade. Last year alone, about 2,000 illegal aliens convicted of murder and those suspected of murder were arrested by federal agents.
Meanwhile, drug overdoses in 2017 killed an unprecedented 72,287 U.S. residents, nearly three times the number of individuals killed by global terrorism. Nearly 50,000 of those deadly overdoses were caused by either heroin or fentanyl.
The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will allow President Donald Trump to temporarily enforce restrictions on transgender individuals serving in the military.
As is typical of orders of this nature, the Court gave no reason for its decision, though Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan noted their dissent.
The Trump administration first petitioned the Supreme Court to decide directly on the legality of the trans-soldiers ban, after federal trial judges in California, Washington, D.C., and Washington state issued orders prohibiting its enforcement. The plaintiffs in those lawsuits argue the policy violates a range of constitutional rights including the First Amendment, equal protection, and due process.
The government said the Court’s intervention was necessary because the lower court decision “require the military to maintain a policy that, in its own professional judgment, risks undermining readiness, disrupting unit cohesion, and weakening military effectiveness and lethality.”
Subsequent to that request, the Department of Justice filed a second petition proposing an alternative: in the event the Court denied the first request, the justices could allow enforcement of the ban while litigation continues in the lower courts. The Court granted that request Tuesday.
The case will now return to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for further proceedings. Should the administration lose before the 9th Circuit, they can return to the Supreme Court for a definitive ruling on the legality of its restrictions on transgender soldiers. (RELATED: Judiciary Committee Democrat Floats Perjury Probe Of Brett Kavanaugh)
Tuesday’s decision is a strong indicator that the government would prevail if the high court has to issue a final ruling in the dispute.
Another district court order from Maryland that was not before the Court prohibits the government from enforcing its restrictions on trans military personnel. Though that order remains in effect for the moment, it will likely terminate in the near future.
The president abruptly announced on Twitter that the military would not permit trans personnel to serve in the military. Thereafter, former Defense Secretary James Mattis convened a panel of military experts to conduct an independent review of the subject. Their findings served as the basis of Mattis’ February 2018 memo which implemented Trump’s request.
That memo provides that individuals with a history of gender dysphoria — a clinical term referring to anxiety triggered by the conflict between one’s biological sex and the gender with which they identify — may enlist provided they are willing to serve in their biological sex and have not suffered gender dysphoria for a continuous three-year period prior to recruitment. Active personnel who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria may continue to serve provided they do so in their biological sex.
Estimates vary as to the number of transgender individuals in the military: some studies place the figure between 1,000 and 6,000, while others suggest there are as many as 8,000.
OutServe-SLDN, a non-profit that provides legal services to LGBT soldiers, promised to continue fighting the administration’s restrictions.
“To our transgender siblings-in-arms, veterans, and hopeful recruits: This battle is not yet over. You will not be left behind or forgotten,” OutServe said in a tweet following Tuesday morning’s decision.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s congressional delegation (CODEL) to Belgium, Egypt and Afghanistan garnered extra attention after President Donald Trump banned her from using military aircraft, but the trip would not have been the first time she used Air Force money to travel the world.
Pelosi’s trip to Italy and Ukraine from July 30 to Aug. 6, 2015, cost the Air Force $184,587.81, according to documents released Saturday under a 2015 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit by Judicial Watch. Her delegation was made up of nine other members of Congress, including Democratic Reps. Anna Eshoo of California and Marcia Fudge of Ohio.
Four family members, including Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi, were on the trip. The delegation dined at restaurants including James Beard American Restaurant in Milan, where a five-course meal cost up to $190, according to Fine Dining Lovers. The lawmakers also toured the Vatican and met up with Italian dignitaries, including President Sergio Mattarella and then-Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, according to their itinerary.
Pelosi’s team apparently had some pretty specific requests for the Air Force officials working with them to coordinate the trip. (RELATED: Trump Brings Pelosi’s Multimillion Dollar Vineyard Into Shutdown Fight)
“You’re going lo love this …. CODEL Pelosi is requesting the crew they had on this earlier attached trip. Apparently they were very pleased with their service. I already told the escort chances were slim,” an unidentified Air Force official wrote in an email July 9, 2015.
Overall, Pelosi’s European excursion cost the Air Force about the same amount of money it would take to send a student to Harvard University for four years. Judicial Watch compared the trip to Republican Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner’s CODEL trip with multiple stops in east Asia in August 2015. The trip led by Gardner, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, cost at least $26,009.03 for commercial flights and per diems, according to records cited by Judicial Watch.
Judicial Watch has called out Pelosi for “abuse” of travel perks since 2009. The conservative watchdog group wrote in a statement Jan. 14, 2016:
Beginning in 2009, after the media failed to follow up on concerns raised about Nancy Pelosi’s use of luxury Air Force jets to travel between her congressional district and DC, Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information act requests exposed her abuse of this travel perk. Judicial Watch uncovered that Pelosi’s military travel cost the United States Air Force $2,100,744.59 over one two-year period — $101,429.14 of which was for in-flight expenses, including food and alcohol.
Pelosi blamed Trump after she canceled her congressional delegation (CODEL) to Afghanistan, reasoning that Trump’s public suggestion that she fly commercial had made the trip too high-profile and dangerous.
The speaker was planning to embark on a trip to Belgium, Egypt and Afghanistan Thursday when Trump essentially canceled it last-minute via letter.
“Due to the shutdown, I am sorry to inform you that your trip to Brussels, Egypt, and Afghanistan has been postponed. We will reschedule this seven-day excursion when the shutdown is over,” Trump wrote. “In light of the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay, I am sure you would agree that postponing this public relations event is totally appropriate.”
Trump’s letter came a day after Pelosi sent him a letter Wednesday seeking to delay his State of the Union address until after the shutdown ends. Trump’s address is scheduled for Jan. 29.
Many congressional Republicans have floated plans to allow Trump to bypass Pelosi’s invitation to deliver the address. Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul suggested Trump bypass the House of Representatives entirely and deliver the speech from the Senate floor Thursday.
The Daily Caller News Foundation requested comment from Pelosi’s office but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
These so-called new networks will never stop lying.
CNN and MSNBC collectively used the word “impeach” nearly 200 times on Friday before the Special Counsel’s office disputed a bombshell report by BuzzFeed News.
According to a Daily Caller review of TV clipping service Grabien, personalities on CNN and MSNBC used the words “Impeach,” “Impeachment,” or “Impeachable,” 179 times.
The review included only original Friday programming and ran up until each network learned that BuzzFeed’s report was in dispute — shortly before 8 pm.
CNN mentioned impeachment 82 times while MSNBC mentioned it a whopping 97 times.
While some anchors and pundits hedged that the BuzzFeed story could only lead to impeachment proceedings “if true,” others repeated the story more uncritically and suggested that the president would be forced to resign and might even face obstruction of justice charges.
MSNBC’s Katy Tur, for example, stated at the top of her show that “Donald Trump is facing themost damming report to date forhis presidency.A story that could lead to hisimpeachment.”
Both outlets also interviewed a number of Democratic congresspeople to get their thoughts on the possibility of impeachment of the president. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, for example, spoke to Democratic Rep. Jim Himes about the implications of the BuzzFeed report if it turned out to be verified, while MSNBC host Chris Matthews brought on Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu.
Matthews was perhaps the most eager cable television host to prop up BuzzFeed’s report, even insisting after the Special Counsel’s office’s statement that, “not accurate … it doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
BuzzFeed’s story, dependent on two anonymous sources, alleged that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was directed by President Donald Trump to lie about business deals in Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign.
A spokesperson for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team disputed the crux of the report within 24 hours of its publication, stating, “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate.”
Bob Mueller Office Says BuzzFeed Report Claiming Trump Directed Michael Cohen Testimony Is A Lie
A spokesperson for special counsel Robert Mueller’s office released a statement Friday disputing a BuzzFeed report alleging President Donald Trump directed his former attorney Michael Cohen to make false statements to Congress regarding a proposed real estate deal in Russia.
“BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate,” special counsel spokesperson Peter Carr said in a statement.
BuzzFeed, citing two unidentified law enforcement officials, alleged in a Thursday evening report that President Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress and that he regularly briefed the president and his family on the Trump Tower project in Moscow. BuzzFeed claimed Cohen told Mueller that President Trump personally instructed him to lie about the timing of the project in order to obscure Trump’s involvement. No other news organization was able to confirm the report nearly 24 hours after it’s publication.
Further, BuzzFeed said Mueller’s investigators learned about President Trump’s directive “through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents.” The report says Cohen then acknowledged Trump’s instructions when he was interviewed by the Mueller team. “We are continuing to report and determine what the special counsel is disputing. We remain confident in the accuracy of our report,” Ben Smith, BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief, said in a statement on the special counsel’s dispute of its reportage.
The special counsel’s statement came hours after several prominent news organizations, including Breitbart News, expressed deep skepticism about the report. In a Friday morning opinion-editorial, Breitbart News’s John Nolte wrote that report’s co-author, Jason Leopold, has gotten in hot water for erroneous reporting. Columbia Journalism Review has described Leopold “serial fabulist,” who falsely claimed Karl Rove would be indicted for leaking CIA operative Valerie Plame’s name to the media. Further, Nolte also pointed out that President Trump is not an avid user of email or text messages — thus leaving little other means to corroborate BuzzFeed’s story. Speaking with CNN’s New Day Friday morning, Leopold’s co-author, Anthony Cormier, stood by the report, though he did admit he had “not personally” seen the underlying evidence.
Earlier Friday, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said “any suggestion — from any source — that the President counseled Michael Cohen to lie is categorically false.” In addition, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the allegation “absolutely ridiculous.”
The report comes as House Democrats have promised a thorough look into Trump’s ties to Russia, and as Mueller is investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and contacts with the Trump campaign.
Giuliani noted that Cohen had pleaded guilty to lying and quoted federal prosecutors in New York who chastised him for a “pattern of lies and dishonesty over an extended period of time.” Mueller’s team, however, has called him a credible witness.
“Today’s claims are just more made-up lies born of Michael Cohen’s malice and desperation,” Giuliani said in a statement.
Lanny Davis, a Cohen adviser, declined to comment on the matter. Though Republicans stayed mostly silent, two Democrat committee chairmen in the House vowed to launch inquiries.
Reacting to the report, House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) pledged to “do what’s necessary to find out” if the report was true. He said the allegation that President Trump directed Cohen to lie in his 2017 testimony “in an effort to curtail the investigation and cover up his business dealings with Russia is among the most serious to date.”
Adam Schiff
✔@RepAdamSchiff
The allegation that the President of the United States may have suborned perjury before our committee in an effort to curtail the investigation and cover up his business dealings with Russia is among the most serious to date. We will do what’s necessary to find out if it’s true.
BuzzFeed News
✔@BuzzFeedNews
BREAKING: President Trump personally directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow in order to obscure his involvement. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/trump-russia-cohen-moscow-tower-mueller-investigation?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc …
Calling the allegations a “counterintelligence concern of the greatest magnitude,” Schiff said his committee had already been working to secure witness testimony and documents related to the Moscow deal. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), a fellow House Intelligence Committee member demanded that the president resign or be impeachment, once again, contingent upon the report’s accuracy.
“If the @BuzzFeed story is true, President Trump must resign or be impeached,” the lawmaker tweeted.
Joaquin Castro
✔@JoaquinCastrotx
If the @BuzzFeed story is true, President Trump must resign or be impeached.
Some of President Trump’s closest allies and media boosters, including his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., mocked BuzzFeed on social media over its now-dispute story:
Donald Trump Jr.
✔@DonaldJTrumpJr
BuzzFeed News
✔@BuzzFeedNews
UPDATE: A spokesperson for the special counsel is disputing BuzzFeed News’ report. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/trump-russia-cohen-moscow-tower-mueller-investigation?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc …
UPDATE: A spokesperson for the special counsel is disputing BuzzFeed News’ report. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/trump-russia-cohen-moscow-tower-mueller-investigation?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc …
If the media does not spend — minute for minute — the same amount of time on the death of the latest #FakeNews from @BuzzFeed (RIP) that they did speculating about “IF IT’S TRUE !” then they should quit even pretending to be unbiased. What a disgrace. #RIPbuzzfeed
The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow said he turned down the chance to report parts of BuzzFeed’s report, citing a key source who repeatedly disputed the allegation that the president asked Cohen to lie before Congress.
Ronan Farrow
✔@RonanFarrow
I can’t speak to Buzzfeed’s sourcing, but, for what it’s worth, I declined to run with parts of the narrative they conveyed based on a source central to the story repeatedly disputing the idea that Trump directly issued orders of that kind.
In November, Cohen stated in a guilty plea that he lied to Congress about a Moscow real estate deal he pursued on President Trump’s behalf during the heat of the 2016 Republican campaign. He claimed he lied to be consistent with President Trump’s “political messaging.”
Cohen was sentenced December 12 to three years in federal prison after pleading guilty to several charges, including campaign finance violations and making false statements to Congress. Prior to his sentencing, Federal prosecutors in Manhattan asked a judge to sentence Cohen to a “substantial term of imprisonment,” arguing that he had been motivated by “personal greed.”
Reacting to Cohen’s plea, President Trump called Cohen a “weak person” who was lying to get a lighter sentence and stressed that the real estate deal at issue was never a secret and never executed. Giuliani said that Cohen was a “proven liar” and that Trump’s business organization had voluntarily given Mueller the documents cited in the guilty plea “because there was nothing to hide.”
“There would be nothing wrong if I did do it,” the president said of pursuing the project. “I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would have gone back into the business, and why should I lose lots of opportunities?”
Cohen is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee on February 7 about his work history with President Trump.
The Gay Mafia is upset because Rep. Gabbard believes in traditional marriage. Why can’t she believe this and the homosexuals just be tolerant? They want to force us to believe their vile life style. Join Our Video Platform Now: commonsensenation.net/videos/
Democratic presidential contender Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) is under fire for her past activism and statements in favor of traditional marriage and against “homosexual activists.”
Gabbard, described by CNN as “the first Hindu and American Samoan” elected to Congress, made a surprise announcement Friday that she would be running for president in 2020.
She is a left-wing Democrat and Iraq War veteran with a history of iconoclastic stances. In 2016, she resigned from a leadership position on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to support Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), for president, and was one of the first to raise the alarm about then-chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s effort to tilt the Democratic Party presidential primary in favor of establishment favorite Hillary Clinton.
Just last week, Gabbard blasted Democrats in the Senate — including a fellow Hawaiian and fellow “progressives” — for questioning a judicial nominee’s Catholic faith, including his membership in the Knights of Columbus.
Now, however, Gabbard is facing similar accusations after a CNN report by researched Andrew Kaczynski that detailed her family’s past support for traditional marriage.
When Tulsi Gabbard first ran for office she touted her work to pass a measure allowing the Hawaii to ban same-sex marriage as the reason she should be elected.
The organization she worked for supported gay conversion therapy and ex-gay ministries. https://t.co/VxKBt1mQkH
On Twitter, Kaczynski opined that Gabbard’s anti-gay views were “next level.”
The report, “Tulsi Gabbard once touted working for anti-gay group that backed conversion therapy,” accuses her of “anti-gay” stances (original link):
Tulsi Gabbard herself is quoted in a 2000 press release from The Alliance for Traditional Marriage. In it, she attacks gay rights activists who were opposed to her mother Carol’s bid for the state’s board of education.
Tulsi Gabbard’s anti-gay efforts continued after she became a state representative.
Shortly after Gabbard announced her presidential ambitions Friday, her testimony at a hearing opposing a civil unions bill in 2004 resurfaced.
“To try to act as if there is a difference between ‘civil unions’ and same-sex marriage is dishonest, cowardly and extremely disrespectful to the people of Hawaii,” Gabbard said at the time. “As Democrats we should be representing the views of the people, not a small number of homosexual extremists.”
Gabbard has since changed her views and apologized for her past statements in 2012, according to the New Yorker.
The left-wing media seized on the story. “Tulsi Gabbard’s Homophobic Remarks Surface After 2020 Presidential Announcement,” ran a headline at HuffPost. On social media, writer Mark Harris declared Gabbard a “flat no.”
!” then they should quit even pretending to be unbiased. What a disgrace. 
