Leaked internal Facebook documents, which included conversations among employees of the social media giant, show that staffers last year wanted to censor Breitbart News over its accurate reporting of riots following the death of George Floyd.
The documents were obtained by The Wall Street Journal, which has shared some jarring revelations this week about what has gone on in CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s tech empire.
Facebook is of course used by millions of Americans — almost all of whom are influenced by what the platform allows them to see through its use of algorithms and censorship.
The ability the company has to influence public opinion and sway elections became apparent last year when Big Tech companies ganged up to de-platform former President Donald Trump. That occurred just months after those companies, Facebook among them, prevented voters from hearing about scandals relating to the family of now-President Joe Biden.
But some Facebook employees last June reportedly wanted to control the narrative over riots which sprang up across America after George Floyd died while in the custody of the Minneapolis Police Department. When Breitbart accurately reported on fires set by arsonists, some Facebook staffers allegedly voted to strip the company of its ability to operate as a free and fair news publisher — which it is.
The Journal obtained leaked conversations about blocking the company from reaching its audience while much of the country was burned and looted from Los Angeles to New York.
The desire to block people from getting accurate news was of course rooted in accusations that Breitbart’s reporting was racist.
“Get Breitbart out of News Tab,” one of the Facebook employees reportedly wrote in a message to others.
That person used headlines from Breitbart’s site, including, “Minneapolis Mayhem: Riots in Masks,” “Massive Looting, Buildings in Flames, Bonfires!” and “BLM Protesters Pummel Police Cars on 101.”
There was nothing racist, hyperbolic or inaccurate about those headlines. Example:
I'm manning Breitbart News' livewire coverage on the violent protests in Minneapolis and St. Paul in the wake of George Floyd's death. Tune in below. https://t.co/vgImaB1lg6
But the company’s reporting was problematic for some who worked at Facebook, the Journal reported.
The same person who wanted to yank Breitbart’s ability to be listed as a news publisher allegedly argued those headlines were “emblematic of a concerted effort at Breitbart and similarly hyperpartisan sources (none of which belong in News Tab) to paint Black Americans and Black-led movements in a very negative way.”
According to the report, another employee said that by punishing Breitbart for covering the violent riots, Facebook would be risking repercussions.
“We’re scared of political backlash if we enforce our policies without exemptions,” another person with the company reportedly wrote.
According to the Journal, a senior researcher for the company even noted in one message that if the conservative publisher were to be punished over sharing news which people didn’t trust, other outlets might come under fire.
“I can also tell you that we saw drops in trust in CNN 2 years ago: would we take the same approach for them too?” that person wrote.
None of this reporting is the least bit surprising, especially when considering the censorship of conservatives online throughout the last year. Big Tech has it out for enemies of the Democratic Party and the narratives which are crafted by the establishment media.
Breitbart called looting exactly what it is in the outlet’s coverage of the riots. That countered the establishment media narrative that gatherings where people were harmed or killed — and where property was stolen, damaged or destroyed — were “mostly peaceful.”
If you’ve been following my reporting on the origins of COVID-19, you’ll already know the name EcoHealth Alliance. For those that don’t, EcoHealth Alliance is a non-profit based in New York, which has been conducting research on global pandemics and has been seeking to identify places where pandemics are likely to start, as well as viruses that may be likely to ignite those pandemics. To be frank, their goal is a reasonable and lofty one, however, it is their methodology that I question, as well as their actions in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
EcoHealth Alliance has been around for several decades, however, the present iteration under that name has only been in existence since 2010. In 2014, the group was awarded a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study Bat Coronavirus Emergence Risk, specifically the risk associated with these viruses in China. The project summary is as follows:
Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence Novel zoonotic, bat-origin CoVs are a significant threat to global health and food security, as the cause of SARS in China in 2002, the ongoing outbreak of MERS, and of a newly emerged Swine Acute Diarrhea Syndrome in China. In a previous R01 (Funded Research) we found that bats in southern China harbor an extraordinary diversity of SARSr-CoVs, some of which can use human ACE2 to enter cells, infect humanized mouse models causing SARS-like illness, and evade available therapies or vaccines. We found that people living close to bat habitats are the primary risk groups for spillover, that at one site diverse SARSr-CoVs exist that contain every genetic element of the SARS-CoV genome, and identified serological evidence of human exposure among people living nearby. (clarification added)
While a lot of that sounds like word soup to some of you, let’s break it down and take a look at what they are saying. They start by saying that in a previous research project, they identified bat coronaviruses that were similar to SARS, that could infect the ACE2 receptor in human cells, causing SARS-like illness. The research they are discussing, however, and what is authorized by this grant, is for research on natural “zoonotic” viruses, meaning those found in nature that can jump to humans either directly or through an intermediate host (jumping from bats to another animal, to humans). They found that the population at greatest risk were people who lived close to bat habitats (this will be important later).
As for their aims, I will try to simplify the best I can:
Aim 1: They were to analyze the known natural viruses in the area, collect additional samples if necessary, and genetically analyze the different types of natural viruses to understand which of them could infect humans, and which viruses were at risk for doing so.
Aim 2: They were to analyze where “spillover” (bat to human infection) events were likely to occur and assess the public health consequences of potential infections for SARS viruses.
Thus far, it all seems pretty straightforward and doesn’t raise any red flags. Now, remember this grant has stated several times it is only to study natural viruses. Fauci has been adamant that this funding was only for natural viruses. The problem with that is, the research described in Aim 3, steps way beyond natural viruses.
We will use S protein (spike protein) sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential.
Now, while most of this seems nebulous thus far, there’s something you should know: If you were going to create a virus like SARS-CoV-2, this is the exact type of research you would have to conduct to map how to do so. But while Dr. Fauci and EcoHealth Alliance would like to tell you that this isn’t “gain-of-function research,” it isn’t hard to find out whether or not it was because… The NIH has funded this type of research previously. That same study from yesterday’s article is pretty clear about EcoHealth’s supposed research.
It was no secret regarding the 2015 study that the research they were conducting was gain-of-function research, in fact, the authors of the study not only confirm that it was gain-of-function but go on to explain even more about the risk that research posed:
Together, these data and restrictions (The US Ban on gain-of-function research) represent a crossroads of GOF research concerns; the potential to prepare for and mitigate future outbreaks must be weighed against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens. In developing policies moving forward, it is important to consider the value of the data generated by these studies and whether these types of chimeric virus studies warrant further investigation versus the inherent risks involved. (clarification added)
The three takeaways from this are: 1) that it was unequivocally gain-of-function research; 2) that the research was justified despite the understanding they were creating more dangerous pathogens; and 3) they used chimeric (artificial hybrid) viruses to predict the risk of the outbreak of these viruses.
As a reminder, this very research was approved and funded by the NIH, the NIAID, and EcoHealth Alliance, and involved research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This is factual, inarguable, and cannot be avoided by parsed language.
And what exactly did these studies involve? Well, very suspiciously, they involved procedures that use spike (S) protein sequences, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo experiments, and analysis of receptor binding, and were used to predict the likelihood of a viral outbreak.
Why are the two experiments suspiciously the same? Well, that’s because they are. In fact, in order to predict viral pandemics, which both of these studies sought to do, known viruses in nature are modified to see if the “new virus” might infect human cells. Without that genetic modification and without creating chimeric viruses in a lab, there would be no viruses to test to predict potential future viral outbreaks. As discussed in yesterday’s article, EcoHealth Alliance was warned for not reporting the creation of a chimeric virus which was determined to be an Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogen. I stated in that article a condemnation of the creation of a chimeric virus wasn’t in that letter, just that the results weren’t reported. The 2015 study created a chimeric virus using one of the same viruses. Gain-of-function research and experiments are required for these types of predictions to assess the likelihood of whether or not a virus will mutate and whether or not those mutations will ever infect human cells.
The point? This EcoHealth Alliance grant was always supposed to involve gain-of-function research that could create Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogens. Certainly, the research would not always succeed in creating new viruses, and certainly, those viruses would not always be viable, and certainly, the viable viruses did not always have increased virulence or transmissibility. Regardless, the potential and possibility exist that this research could have created Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogens, which is the exact purpose of this very grant: to identify those potential viruses.
For Fauci to suggest that wasn’t the intent, flies in the face of the very description of this grant, and the history of other similar research which we have shown was, by their own admission, gain-of-function. This research intended to create chimeric viruses to predict the likelihood of those mutations occurring in nature, and whether or not those mutations would ever infect humans. This has been the exact type of research he has been excusing with his defense of gain-of-function for a decade.
Again, do I think that my articles will lead to his firing or arrest? No. But I can hope that when others begin to wake up, you and I can state that we’ve been ready for action against him for a long time.
Remember, admitting you have a problem is the first step towards recovery.
The extent to which corporate media rigs elections for Democrats has been rigorously documented since at least Tim Groseclose’s 2012 book, “Left Turn.” In that book, the political scientist concluded through data-driven analysis that media bias on average shifts the electorate 20 points to the left on a 100-point political worldview scale. Without media bias, he argued, the average American state would be as Republican-leaning as Texas or Kentucky, and those two states would be even more conservative.
Media bias was highly visible even before Rush Limbaugh made it a regular feature of his top-rated radio show that became nationally syndicated in 1988. As the Trump era dawned, however, media coverage moved from biased to outright propaganda.
Corporate media went from picking left-friendly frames and omitting facts that reinforced right-leaning views about public affairs, as Groseclose documented in 2012, to outright mass hoaxing of voters by 2016. While hyperventilating about the minority of Americans who believe conspiracy theories like QAnon, leftist media not only inflamed but also outright fabricated conspiracy theories that the majority of Democrat voters believe.
For example, in 2020, a majority of Americans — including 81 percent of self-described “liberals” — believed the lie that Donald Trump committed treason for Russia. That claim was disproven by a two-year, Democrat-populated special counsel investigation that spent $32 million to find no evidence for this hoax, which effectively hamstrung a president from pursuing what voters put him in office to accomplish.
This corporate media smear machine was only one of the numerous unfair advantages Democrats exploited in the 2020 elections. My colleague, Mollie Hemingway, just put out a new, bestselling book that also documents things like big tech hiding election-shifting news from voters and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg embedding Democrat get-out-the-vote operations inside local election offices — which are supposed to be nonpartisan! What’s more, all these cheats affixed into our nation’s election machinery haven’t been scrubbed away, not by a long shot.
While I work with Mollie and am highly aware of media corruption since it’s our bread and butter here at The Federalist, she still had many surprises for me inside “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.” Here I’ll share a few things she reports in the book that made me gasp out loud.
1. The DNC Controlled All Poll Watchers for 40 Years
I had to read this section of the book two or three times to absorb what it was saying. I couldn’t believe it could possibly be true. Yet it is: “Shockingly, the 2020 contest was the first presidential election since Reagan’s first successful run in 1980 in which the Republican National Committee could play any role whatsoever in Election Day operations.”
What? Next sentence: “For nearly 40 years, the Democratic National Committee had a massive systemic advantage over its Republican counterpart: the Republican National Committee had been prohibited by law from helping out with poll watcher efforts or nearly any litigation related to how voting is being conducted.”
This section in chapter 1 goes on to explain how such an insane thing could be real. Essentially, after Democrats accused Republicans of cheating in a New Jersey race in 1981, a judge banned the RNC from poll-watching and voting litigation everywhere in the country, then kept re-upping the order until 2018, when it finally expired three years after he died.
This handicapped Republicans for almost 40 years while Democrats were free to do things Republicans couldn’t, like give boosts to their voters all along the voting process and track them extensively, challenge ballots, document irregularities, and sue over election disputes. By 2020, then, Mollie writes:
Democrats had spent the last forty years perfecting their Election Day operations while everyone at the Republican National Committee walked on eggshells, knowing that if they so much as looked in the direction of a polling site, there could be another crackdown. As a result, there was no muscle memory about how to watch polls or communicate with a presidential campaign.
That’s a pretty big handicap walking into the election chaos of 2020, in which Americans filled out an unprecedented 65 million mail-in ballots, which are known not only for their margin of error, but also for being structurally biased towards Democrats.
2. Lazy Voting Biases Elections Towards Democrats
Also made clear throughout “Rigged” is that lazier and sloppier elections strongly advantage Democrats. This means long election seasons, mail-in balloting, and loose ballot behavior such as mailing millions and opening dropboxes all tilt elections towards Democrats.
As Mollie writes, “the vote-by-mail system was becoming a major part of the Democratic Party’s get-out-the-vote operation. Regardless of fraud and other concerns, the press saw the success of the mail-in ballot effort in Wisconsin for what it was: an effort to turn out more Democratic voters.” Republican voters, she shows, prefer to vote in person because they want to make sure their votes are reliably counted.
Why Republicans would ever allow voting procedures that structurally advantage their opponents is, to put it bluntly, only understandable as self-hatred. Democrats would never, ever do that, because they actually want to win.
3. Facebook Bought Joe Biden the Election
In 2020, Facebook’s interference in the election was a one-two punch. Mollie notes: “[Mark] Zuckerberg didn’t just help Democrats by censoring their political opponents. He directly funded liberal groups running partisan get-out-the-vote operations. In fact, he helped those groups infiltrate election offices in key swing states by doling out large grants to crucial districts. That funding was the means by which [Democrat] activists achieved their ‘revolution’ and changed the course of the 2020 election.”
Elsewhere in the book, Hemingway notes that Facebook executives have boasted that they can shut off 80 percent of the traffic to any link they want. Facebook and Google blacklisting of conservative news sites such as The Federalist, The Daily Caller, and Breitbart has been documented since 2017.
Atop this were what’s been termed “Zuck Bucks,” the nearly half a billion dollars Zuckerberg gave to essentially fund a shadow elections system that again structurally advantaged Democrats. To list just a few things the book shows Zuck Bucks facilitated: literally designing mail-in ballots and their envelopes; sending partisan activists to “help” local elections offices in conveniently located swing districts; “fix” unclear or illegal mail-in ballots; designing absentee balloting instructions; and collecting absentee ballots.
The details are breathtaking. Mollie gives so many facts about the partisan tilt and effectiveness of Zuckerberg’s grants to local elections offices that it truly leads one to conclude Zuckerberg flat-out bought the election for Joe Biden.
4. The United States Has Republican No-Go Zones
I’d also never heard about this shocking story that illustrates the extent to which political repression is tolerated within the Democrat Party. In her chapter about the 2020 Summer of Riots, Mollie writes:
In 2017, Portland canceled its annual Rose Parade after violent threats from Antifa, which objected to the Multnomah County Republican Party’s being included as one of the many civic groups marching in the parade. Forget Trump; it was unsafe for even an ordinary Republican to walk down the streets of Portland. And in canceling the parade, [Portland Mayor Ted] Wheeler effectively conceded that Antifa ruled the streets.
Mollie later quotes former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr describing how Antifa — a violent group implicated in actual domestic terrorism — “use[s] legitimate demonstrations as a host body.” “Further,” Mollie writes, “they operated in liberal cities in blue states where local authorities were both reluctant to stop them and unwilling to help federal law enforcement go after them.”
In other words, Democrats are willing to concede the safety of Americans’ lives, limbs, and property to ideological allies, even when those allies openly commit violent crimes and threaten more.
5. The FBI Is Systemically Biased Towards the Left
In discussing why Antifa is allowed to threaten peaceful American citizens with violence, Mollie uncovers one of the political problems with addressing this: The FBI is systemically biased on behalf of the left. “[T]he agency had long focused its attention on right-wing extremists and was ill-equipped to deal with threats from the left,” she notes.
Yes, this is the nation’s top law-enforcement agency that helped hatch the Spygate plot to frame a Republican president. Politically biased — you think? Mollie writes further:
…Even though decades had passed, the FBI was still skittish about the criticism it had received for infiltrating radical left-wing groups in the ’60s and ’70s.
The inaction in response to Antifa certainly helped take the pressure off Biden [in the 2020 campaign], who never had to answer for the bricks flying through windows, rampant looting, toppling of statues, and assaults on innocent business owners that defined urban life throughout the summer of 2020. To do so would have been to confront an uncomfortable truth — the Democratic Party and its allies have been tolerating, encouraging, and mainstreaming political violence for decades.
6. It’s No Longer Media Bias, It’s Media Lies
As my opening to this essay explains, I’m aware media bias has been transcended by outright propaganda. In her book, however, Mollie makes an excellent point about this after detailing other cases proving this shift.
She makes it in relation to what I’d call a relatively minor offense — The New York Times publishing a Trump-smearing piece from an anonymous author it described as a “senior administration official,” meaning “someone in the upper echelon of an administration.” Of course, it turned out this person wasn’t any such thing. He was just a mid-level bureaucrat.
After giving the truly asinine details of that story, Mollie makes this comment:
If the New York Times was willing to lie about how high-level an anonymous source was for its very high-profile September 2018 information operation, what lies was it willing to tell about all the other anonymous sources it used? And if this is how one of America’s biggest newsrooms operates, readers are right to ask how much other papers and media outlets were willing to lie in support of their anti-Republican narratives.
If you don’t believe it already, after you read Mollie’s book, you will come away with the inescapable conclusion that Trump was right when he called corporate media “the enemy of the people.”
7. Mail-In Balloting Is More Outrageous Than Anyone Can Imagine
“Up to a quarter of a million votes were cast in Wisconsin’s presidential election without any identification check at all,” Mollie writes on page 66. I already knew a lot about how error-riddled mail-in voting is — I wrote about that when few would. But just encountering this new fact and realizing this represented just one swing state was another mind-blowing moment for me about just how corruption-enabling and confidence-destroying are vote-by-mail-tainted elections.
There are many more shocking things in Mollie’s book, and I’m not even done. I just started the Hunter Biden chapter, and holy mackerel. Until I read further, a few thoughts.
Republicans expect to win a wave election in 2022. How many points will they have to beat Democrats by to prove it? How many dubious ballots will be produced or negotiated away by partisan election workers or judges? How many urban areas run by Democrats will produce suspicious numbers of ballots that outweigh the votes in the rest of their states? How many Republican voters will stay home because they can’t trust elections run by some of the loosest rules in the developed world?
We shouldn’t even have to be asking these questions right now. If Republicans genuinely want to win elections — and that is sadly in doubt — they have no choice but to use whatever power they have to make those elections trustworthy again. That means in-person voting, with ID, for everyone except the truly disabled, and returning to an election day, not an election season.
The left and their media are going to lie about Republicans no matter what they do, so they might as well get secure elections out of the never-ending smear cycle. Republican voters don’t believe the media anyway, so why do any of their elected officials? Remember, admitting you have a problem is the first step towards recovery.
Several U.S. states on Friday mounted multiple federal lawsuits against the Biden administration over its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal workers and contractors.
Texas sued individually in a federal court in Galveston. Another lawsuit, filed in a federal district court in Missouri involves Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Yet another lawsuit, filed in a federal district court in Georgia, involves Georgia, Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, South Carolina, Utah, and West Virginia.
The lawsuits come a day after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced he sued the administration over the same vaccine mandate. As of late Friday, the total number of states suing the Biden administration over the mandate is 19.
President Joe Biden on Sept. 9 issued a far-reaching executive order that requires almost all federal employees to get a COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of employment, including civilian federal employees and contractors. The order goes into effect on Dec. 8. Regular COVID-19 testing isn’t an option, but religious or medical exemptions from vaccination may be granted, according to the order. Contractors that don’t comply may lose out on government contracts.
All 19 states seek to block Biden’s requirement, arguing that the mandate violates federal procurement law and is an overreach of federal power. The states also argue that Biden’s vaccine mandate violates the 10th Amendment that separates the power between federal and state governments; uses federal spending to coerce the states, which is unconstitutional; and did not properly allow for 60 days of public comment.
The Biden administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
‘Subterfuge’
The Texas complaint (pdf), filed in a federal court in Galveston, asks the court to declare Biden’s vaccine mandate unlawful and to issue preliminary and injunctive relief to block it from being enforced.
“The Biden Administration has repeatedly expressed its disdain for Americans who choose not to get a vaccine, and it has committed repeated and abusive federal overreach to force upon Americans something they do not want,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement Friday. “The federal government does not have the ability to strip individuals of their choice to get a vaccine or not. If the President thinks his patience is wearing thin, he is clearly underestimating the lack of patience from Texans whose rights he is infringing.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton at a border town hall in Brackettville, Texas, on Oct. 11, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, praised the lawsuit late Friday. “Under my Executive Order no Texan can be forced to take the vaccine shot,” he said on Twitter, referring to the order he issued on Oct. 11 that prohibits vaccine mandates by any entity. He added, “Biden’s order should be ruled illegal.”
The lawsuit accuses the Biden administration of “using subterfuge to accomplish what they cannot achieve directly—universal compliance with their vaccine mandates, regardless of individual preferences, healthcare needs, or religious beliefs.”
‘Unconstitutional, Unlawful, Unwise’
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson on Friday co-led a ten-state coalition in a lawsuit (pdf) against the Biden administration. The suit calls the administration’s mandate “unconstitutional, unlawful, and unwise.”
“If the federal government attempts to unconstitutionally exert its will and force federal contractors to mandate vaccinations, the workforce and businesses could be decimated, further exacerbating the supply chain and workforce crises,” Schmitt, a Republican, said in a statement. “The federal government should not be mandating vaccinations, and that’s why we filed suit today—to halt this illegal, unconstitutional action.”
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt speaks during a news conference in St. Louis, Mo., on Aug. 6, 2020. (Jeff Roberson/AP Photo)
In explaining how the vaccine mandate violates the Procurement Act, the complaint reads, “Far from increasing economy and efficiency in procurement, the contractor vaccine mandate will have deleterious effects on economy and inefficiency by causing the large-scale resignations of unvaccinated employees of federal contractors. These disruptive consequences will directly oppose both ‘economy’ and ‘efficiency.’”
Among other counts, the suit also contends the administration has violated the Anti-Commandeering Doctrine and the Administrative Procedures Act.
‘Untenable Situation’
Georgia also led a multi-state lawsuit (pdf) against the federal mandates on Friday. A release from Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s office says the complaint, in part, explains how the Biden administration’s mandate has placed Georgia’s state agencies and officials in “an untenable position.”
“In addition to being an unlawful and unconstitutional overreach, this vaccine mandate on federal contractors will only further divide Americans and hamstring our economy,” Kemp, a Republican, said in a statement. “Polling shows 70 percent of unvaccinated Americans say they would quit their jobs if their company required the COVID-19 vaccine. From an employer’s perspective, 9 in 10 fear significant reductions in their workforce if they had to implement vaccine mandates.”
He added, “We will not allow the Biden Administration to circumvent the law or force hardworking Georgians to choose between their livelihood or this vaccine.”
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp speaks during a press conference in Atlanta, Georgia, on Aug. 10, 2020. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
The suit argues that the mandate could only stand if Congress had passed it in a law.
States furthermore argue that a large number of federal contract workers will quit over the mandates, meaning states are caught between breaching the federal contracts either because of not being able to complete all the work due to staffing shortages, or because of retaining unvaccinated workers, thereby violating the federal vaccine requirement.
Vaccine passports harden opposition to getting jabbed, survey finds.
90 per cent of Germans who haven’t taken the COVID-19 vaccine say they won’t get it, with only the remaining 10 per cent saying they will “probably” get it or remaining undecided.
A recent survey carried out by Forsa on behalf of the Ministry for Health found that 65 per cent of Germans say there is “no way” they will get the COVID vaccine over the next two months.
A further 23 per cent said they would “probably not” get the COVID jab in the near future while 2 per cent said they would “definitely not” get the jab at any point.
Out of 3000 respondents, only 10 per cent were still undecided or said they will “probably” get vaccinated in the near future.
According to the Local, the poll results emphasize how, “people who have until now chosen to remain unvaccinated against Covid are unlikely to be convinced.”
The survey contradicts Thomas Mertens from the Standing Vaccinations Committee (STIKO), who claimed that unvaccinated Germans were not “hardliners” but were merely sitting on the fence and could be convinced.
Doesn’t look like it.
Only 5 per cent of respondents said they would get the jab if hospitals were “overwhelmed with patients,” while 89 per cent said it wouldn’t change their mind even if intensive care units reached their capacity.
Emphasizing how vaccine passports actually harden people’s opposition to getting vaccinated, 27 per cent said imposing restrictions on the unvaccinated would make them even more determined not to get jabbed, while only 5 per cent said it would encourage them to get jabbed.
It’s also worth noting that the 10 per cent figure who say they will get the jab or are undecided is probably lower given that some respondents will be telling the pollsters what they think they want to hear, and are actually not planning on getting vaccinated at all.
As we highlighted back in January, German authorities announced that COVID lockdown rulebreakers would be arrested and detained in refugee camps located across the country.
Earlier this summer it was also confirmed that the unvaccinated would be deprived of basic lifestyle activities like visiting cinemas and restaurants.
The editor-in-chief of Germany’s top newspaper Bild shocked some people by apologizing for the news outlet’s fear-driven coverage of COVID, specifically to children who were told “that they were going to murder their grandma.”
China’s New Concept of Bio-based War Includes Vaccines With “Backdoors” As Bioweapons
On February 14, 2020, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Xi Jinping, emphasized the need to incorporate biosecurity into China’s national security system.
In China, biosecurity is a euphemism for “bio-based war” because so much of Chinese military doctrine is devoted to the offensive use of biotechnology.
The 2011 version of “Chinese People’s Liberation Army Military Language” provides the following definition:
Biological warfare refers to the use of biological weapons to injure humans and animals and destroy crops. It was formerly called germ warfare. In combat, biological warfare agents are used in various ways to cause epidemics in the opponent’s army and the rear area, and large areas of crops are necrotic, so as to achieve the purpose of weakening the opponent’s combat effectiveness and destroying its war potential.”
But China’s military distinguishes between traditional biological warfare and “bio-based war” using “military biotechnology.”
In his 2012 article “Development of military biotechnology and the future of bio-based war,” Major General Fu-Chu He wrote:
In future wars, military biotechnology will promote the bio-based weaponry and equipment, bio-based forces and bio-based combat style.”
It is important to note that Major General Fu-Chu He was President of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Vice President of China’s Academy of Medical Sciences, an Alternate Member of the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and Vice Director of Scientific and Technical Committee affiliated to Central Military Commission, which is China’s equivalent of the U.S. Department of Defense’s DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
That is, Major General Fu-Chu He was Xi Jinping’s closest military advisor on matters of “biosecurity.”
The distinction between bio-based war and biological warfare was described in a November 9, 2020 article by retired Colonel Xin Yang, who is a professor in the Department of Military Teaching and Research at Nanjing University.
Colonel Yang views general biological war using traditional bioweapons as having many of the same limitations as nuclear warfare in terms of their potential widespread destructive power.
He prefers the scalpel of bio-based war to the sledgehammer of biological warfare.
Aspects of bio-based war include:
Micro-attack: “Nonlethal” bioweapons is a concept that runs through recent Chinese military doctrine. That is, bioweapons that do not kill humans, animals and plants or attack them at the macroscopic level, but destroy the structure and physiological functions of humans, animals and plants via microscopic molecular structures and functions.
Moderated conquest: Instead of killing the enemy, bio-based warfare agents can temporarily disable the enemy and prevent participation in war or kill and injure by specific race or ethnicity in a limited way using genetic bioweapons.
Biotechnology-information technology superiority: Greatly increase China’s military superiority and deterrence level by fusing information-based warfare with bio-based war using advanced biotechnologies.
Bio-based war operational approaches: Citing the SARS 2002-2004 and COVID19 pandemics as examples, the secret initiation of epidemics during war to reduce the enemy’s fighting capability or in “pre-war” situations to prevent potential adversaries from mobilizing effectively on the eve of war.
Vaccines as bio-based weapons: Vaccines with “backdoors” can be bio-based warfare vectors present as biological time bombs once inside the body or creating vulnerabilities to future bioweapon attacks. The introduction of such “backdoor” vaccines into the U.S. population is especially risky in inadequately regulated joint vaccine production ventures between Chinese and U.S. pharmaceutical companies, not unlike the introduction of Chinese surveillance capabilities inside Chinese instrumentation and software deployed in the United States.
The above-described developments are not occurring in isolation. People’s Liberation Army Colonel Ji-Wei Guo’s 2010 book “Bio-based war—Reconfiguring Military Strategy for a New Era” highlights the necessity for integrating information warfare with bio-based war to manipulate a disease outbreak or pandemic using propaganda, spread disinformation and create chaos and fears, all elements of the COVID-19 experience.
That and other approaches supporting bio-based war have been incorporated in the 2021 Chinese Communist Party’s 14th Five-Year Plan, which mandated the fusion of the biotechnology and information technology research sectors, in particular, artificial intelligence, as well as the massive collection of human genetic (DNA) information into China’s databases from both Chinese people and internationally.
The “success” of the People’s Liberation Army’s first-generation, bio-based warfare agent, COVID-19, has only accelerated China’s military ambitions.
Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. He had a civilian career in international business and medical research. His email address is lawrence.sellin@gmail.com. Anna Chen can be followed on Twitter @2020Gladiator
On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to block a vaccine mandate for healthcare workers in Maine, which thus went into effect that day. The particularly strict mandate has a medical exemption but not a religious one. While the majority on the Court did not give an opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a dissent that was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, as highlighted by Robert Barnes with The Washington Post.
Maine has adopted a new regulation requiring certain healthcare workers to receive COVID–19 vaccines if they wish to keep their jobs. Unlike comparable rules in most other States, Maine’s rule contains no exemption for those whose sincerely held religious beliefs preclude them from accepting the vaccination. The applicants before us are a physician who operates a medical practice and eight other healthcare workers. No one questions that these individu- als have served patients on the front line of the COVID–19 pandemic with bravery and grace for 18 months now.
Yet, with Maine’s new rule coming into effect, one of the applicants has already lost her job for refusing to betray her faith; another risks the imminent loss of his medical prac- tice. The applicants ask us to enjoin further enforcement of Maine’s new rule as to them, at least until we can decide whether to accept their petition for certiorari. I would grant that relief.
The nine healthcare workers using pseudonyms, referred to Maine’s lack of religious exemption as an “extreme outlier,” pointing out in their request to the Court that only Rhode Island and New York also don’t have religious exemptions, though New York’s has been blocked for now.
Maine’s categorical ban on any accommodations for religious healthcare workers is an extreme outlier nationwide. Forty-seven other states have rejected this approach for private healthcare facilities, and just two days ago, the EEOC issued detailed guidance confirming that it directly violates federal law…
…Worse, the [respondents’] brief openly admits that Maine thinks religious objections are merely something a believer “chooses,” while medical concerns—no matter how minor—render people “unable” to take the vaccine. (Id.) As Maine sees it, religious people really “can” take the vaccine but just “choose[]” not to, while medical objectors, for any reason no matter how small, are “unable” and would be “actually harmed” if required to do so.
…
Again, Maine is doing all of this in a way that makes it an extreme outlier compared to the rest of the country. Almost every other state has found a way to protect against the same virus without trampling religious liberty—including states that have smaller populations and much greater territory than Maine. If Vermont, New Hampshire, Alaska, the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, California, and the District of Columbia can all find ways to both protect against COVID-19 and respect individual liberty, Maine can too. And at least on this record, Maine certainly has not shown why it needs a more draconian approach.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett did briefly write an explanation as to why she went along with allowing the mandate to stand. It was joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh:
But she wrote separately in the Maine case to say she was not sure relief was warranted, and the court should not make such a decision “on a short fuse without benefit of full briefing and oral argument.”
Joined by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, she said that was not what the court’s emergency docket should be used for.
“In my view, this discretionary consideration counsels against a grant of extraordinary relief in this case, which is the first to address the questions presented,” she wrote.
As I have covered in the past, Justice Barrett similarly declined to block a vaccine mandate that affected Indiana University students. Justice Sonia Sotomayor similarly declined to block a vaccine mandate affecting New York City teachers.
Barnes also explained that the lower courts upheld the lack of a religious exemption because the point of the vaccine mandate was not aimed at religious exercise.
The state did away with religious exemptions for health-care workers, day-care employees, schoolchildren and college students in 2019. Certain employees have been required to take some vaccines since 1989, Barnes noted.
Healthcare workers were required to get vaccinated by Friday, October 29, or else risk losing their jobs.
Other states are moving in the opposite direction. As Landon reported earlier tonight, Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, announced he plans to sue the Biden administration over what he calls an “unconstitutional” vaccine mandate.
A stunt involving fake Youngkin supporters posing with tiki torches set Twitter ablaze
The disgraced anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project is facing intense backlash for orchestrating the viral hoax involving tiki torch-holding individuals associating themselves with the Youngkin campaign.
Twitter was set ablaze after images of a group wearing white shirts, khakis, baseball caps and sunglasses stood alongside the campaign bus of Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin reportedly vocal expressing support for the Republican, according to local NBC affiliate anchor Elizabeth Holmes.
The imagery of the tiki torches was apparently meant to invoke the white nationalists who participated in the deadly events of Charlottesville in 2017.
These men approached @GlennYoungkin’s bus as it pulled up saying what sounded like, “We’re all in for Glenn.” Here they are standing in front of the bus as his campaign event at Guadalajara started.@NBC29pic.twitter.com/l681ejyBjc
The stunt was seized upon by the left, including staffers from Democrat candidate Terry McAuliffe’s campaign.
“The Unite the Right rally was one of the darkest days in the Commonwealth’s history. this is who Glenn Youngkin’s supporters are,” McAuliffe spokesperson Christina Freundlich tweeted.
Now, after widespread suspicion from Twitter critics that it was orchestrated by Youngkin opponents, the anti-Trump group took ownership of what it called a “demonstration.”
“The Lincoln Project has run advertisements highlighting the hate unleashed in Charlottesville as well as Glenn Youngkin’s continued failure to denounce Donald Trump’s ‘very fine people on both sides.’ We will continue to draw this contrast in broadcast videos, on our social media platforms, and at Youngkin rallies,” the group stated in a press release. “Today’s demonstration was our way of reminding Virginians what happened in Charlottesville four years ago, the Republican Party’s embrace of those values, and Glenn Youngkin’s failure to condemn it.”
A small group of demonstrators dressed as “Unite the Right” rally-goers with tiki torches stand on a sidewalk as Republican candidate for governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin arrives on his bus for a campaign event at a Mexican restaurant in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S. October 29, 2021. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
“Anyone who continues to associate themselves with The Lincoln Project owns this. This is who you are,” Fourth Watch media critic Stever Krakauer wrote.
“I do not think it’s out of realm of possibility that Lincoln Project is taking blame, because they have no shame and their reputation really can’t get any worse,” Washington Free Beacon executive editor Brent Scher tweeted.
“Needless to say, right-wing groups that perpetrated a fraud like this — causing media figures and campaign operatives to spend all day swamping Twitter with an outright racist lie — would be instantly banned from social media,” Substack journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted.
“Apparently, it’s totally fine to dress up as tiki torch nazis as long as you play for the right team,” Daily Caller reporter Andrew Kerr wrote.
“Lincoln Projects biggest grift is they aim all their stuff at liberal Twitter so their funders have no idea how unconvincing and juvenile it is. But it does help them afford the vacation homes,” journalist Zaid Jilani quipped.
“How much more proof do we need that the Lincoln Project is nothing but a bunch of deranged hacks?” Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, asked.
Anyone who continues to associate themselves with The Lincoln Project owns this. This is who you are. https://t.co/QL4oBUj12i
I do not think it’s out of realm of possibility that Lincoln Project is taking blame, because they have no shame and their reputation really can’t get any worse.
Needless to say, right-wing groups that perpetrated a fraud like this — causing media figures and campaign operatives to spend all day swamping Twitter with an outright racist lie — would be instantly banned from social media. https://t.co/Jm2OqY3bBC
Lincoln Projects biggest grift is they aim all their stuff at liberal Twitter so their funders have no idea how unconvincing and juvenile it is. But it does help them afford the vacation homes.
Others questioned whether or not the Lincoln Project was actually behind the stunt and was simply taking credit, comparing it to ISIS taking credit for various terrorist attacks.
“What’s more likely? That the Lincoln Project hired Democratic insiders in Virginia to hold the tiki torch stunt or that they’re taking credit for it after it backfired to keep the backlash away from the McAuliffe campaign?” political commentator Josh Jordan wondered.
The statement comes as Twitter users began claiming they had identified the individuals participating in stunt allegedly having ties to Virginia Democrats. The group issued a statement denying they organized the stunt.
Following the hoax being exposed, McAuliffe campaign manager Chris Rolling tweeted, “What happened today is disgusting and distasteful and we condemn it in the strongest terms. Those involved should immediately apologize.”
The Lincoln Project has managed to maintain its media darling status on the left despite multiple scandals that plagued the group, including allegations that its co-founder John Weaver had sexually harassed young men including minors and growing questions over its shady finances.
Virginia polls, which previously had McAuliffe in a comfortable lead, have not only tightened in recent weeks but appear to be giving Youngkin the edge. A Fox News poll released Thursday showed Youngkin a whopping eight points above McAuliffe among likely voters.
FOX, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS are owned by financial asset management companies Vanguard, State Street, and BlackRock, which also own the four major experimental Covid-19vaccine manufacturers.
QUICK FACTS:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday issued an emergency authorization to use Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine in children aged 5 through 11, just days after an advisory panel recommended it, reportsThe Epoch Times.
Emergency uses of the vaccine have not been approved or licensed by US FDA but have been authorized to prevent COVID-19 in ages 5+. See EUA Fact Sheets: https://t.co/z4TiGgVpgY & https://t.co/fBvr0S4yHx
The advising committee had recommended that regulators authorize Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine for 5- to 11-year-olds, The New York Times notes.
An expert committee advising the FDA on Tuesday recommended that regulators authorize Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine for 5- to 11-year-olds, bringing about 28 million children a major step closer to becoming eligible for shots https://t.co/Bz4WiRasgT
The recommendation and subsequent authorization come despite the fact that “COVID is not a huge threat to children,” as explained by Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and biostatistician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “I don’t think children should be vaccinated for COVID,” Dr. Kulldorff stated, “There is absolutely no scientific or medical justification for vaccinating children, in my opinion.”
“I’m a huge fan of vaccinating children for measles, for mumps,” the professor said. “But COVID is not a huge threat to children.”
The FDA authorization also comes despite the fact that “zero” children have died from Covid-19 without also having a pre-existing medical condition, according to Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Dr. @MartyMakary’s team worked w/ the nonprofit FAIR Health to analyze ~ 48,000 children under 18 diagnosed w/COVID in health-insurance data from April-August 2020. They “found a mortality rate of 0 among children w/out a pre-existing medical condition.”https://t.co/fYXyxIsTS6
Moreover, the safety of the experimental Covid-19 vaccine among children is unknown until children begin receiving the jab, since to date there have been no long-term studies analyzing the drug’s effect on children. “We’re never gonna learn about how safe the vaccine is until we start giving it [to children],” Dr. Eric Ruben of the FDA advisory committee admitted. “That’s just the way it goes.”
MORE – Dr. Ruben on the FDA panel: "We're never gonna learn about how safe the vaccine is until we start giving it. That's the way it goes."pic.twitter.com/vMLFkObAKn
Nevertheless, FOX, CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS continue to publish content promoting the vaccination of American children.
But FOX, CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS are owned respectively by News Corp, AT&T, Disney, Comcast, and Viacom, which in turn are all owned by the same shareholders: The Vanguard Group, State Street Corp., and BlackRock Inc. (here, here, here, here, here).
One video compilation illustrating the financial connection between mainstream news networks and Pfizer recently went viral online and was even commented on by former Texas congressman Ron Paul. See the compilation below.
Such a relationship between mainstream media and vaccine manufacturers represents a conflict of interest, namely in that Vanguard, State Street, and BlackRock increase profits among their pharmaceutical assets by advertising those pharmaceuticals through their media assets.
This relationship could also explain mainstream media’s lack of journalistic criticism and investigation into the negative aspects of child vaccination.
BACKGROUND:
Mainstream media pushes for vaccinating children while one yearlong study following over 600 individuals showed that vaccinated people still spread the Delta variant, Bloomberg recently reported. “People inoculated against Covid-19 are just as likely to spread the delta variant of the virus to contacts in their household as those who haven’t had shots,” Bloomberg notes of the U.K. study published in The Lancet.
Meanwhile, Dr. Brian Dressen—a chemist with an extensive background in researching and assessing the degree of efficacy in new technologies—told the FDA that Pfizer’s vaccine had “failed any reasonable risk-benefit calculus in connection with children.”
“Your decision is being rushed, based on incomplete data from underpowered trials, insufficient to predict rates of severe and long-lasting adverse reactions,” said Dr. Dressen. “I urge the committee to reject the EUA [Emergency Use Authorization] modification and direct Pfizer to perform trials that will decisively demonstrate that the benefits outweigh the risks for children.”
“Injured support groups are growing. Memberships number into at least the tens of thousands. We must do better. Those injured in a trial are a critical piece of vaccine safety data. They are being tossed aside and forgotten. The FDA has known first-hand about her case and thousands of others. The FDA has also stated that their own systems are not identifying this issue and that VAERS is not designed to identify any multi-symptom signals. The system is broken,” Dressen went on to say.
“Until we appropriately care for those already injured, acknowledge the full scope of injuries that are happening to adults, please do not give this to kids. You have a very clear responsibility to appropriately assess the risks and benefits to these vaccines. It is obvious that isn’t happening.”
“The suffering of thousands continues to repeatedly fall on deaf ears at the FDA. Each of you hold a significant responsibility today and know that without a doubt, when you approve this for the 5 to 11-year-old’s, you are signing innocent kids and uninformed parents to a fate that will undoubtedly rob some of them of their life.”
As of October 15, 2021, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports 818,042 Covid-19 vaccine adverse events in total, including 17,128 deaths. However, because a 2010 Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) report conducted by Harvard doctors concluded that only “1% of vaccine adverse events are reported” to VAERS in the first place, a more accurate number of people who have been killed by Covid-19 vaccines is 1,712,800. A more accurate number of people who have been injured by Covid-19 vaccines is 81,804,200.
Abortions dropped by about 50 percent in Texas in September after a new law prohibiting most abortionswent into effect, according to a new study.
The drop was ascertained (pdf) by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project. The group compared the number of abortions performed at Texas clinics this September (2,164) to the amount in September 2020 (4,313).
Researchers were able to gather statistics on abortions performed at 19 of the 24 Texas abortion facilities. Those facilities perform approximately 93 percent of all abortions in the state.
The law, which went into effect on Sept. 1, bars physicians from performing an abortion without first testing for a fetal heartbeat. If the heartbeat is detected, an abortion can only be done if the doctor determines a medical emergency exists.
The drop in abortions shows the law is working, Kimberlyn Schwartz, director of media and communication for the pro-life Texas Right to Life group, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“We’re encouraged by these findings! The Texas Heartbeat Act saves lives every day. The pro-life movement has spent decades serving pregnant women in difficult circumstances, and we are blessed to be able to walk with these women through their journeys,” she said.
The bill’s main sponsor, state Sen. Bryan Hughes, did not return a voicemail.
The Department of Justice is challenging the law and the Supreme Court is set to hear the case in November.
Data indicate that some Texas women are traveling to nearby states to get an abortion since the law took effect. Wait times at facilities in neighboring states like New Mexico have soared in recent weeks, researchers said. Longer wait times could make it more difficult for women to get abortions, as does spending time going to other states.
The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute estimated that the average one-way driving distance to an abortion clinic increased over 14 times, to 247 miles, with the passage of the law.
“For the vast majority of Texas women of reproductive age, their next nearest abortion clinic would be in states that also have policies hostile to abortion (Louisiana for 70 percent of them and Oklahoma for 23 percent ), where patients already struggle to receive care and are subjected to those states’ punitive and burdensome restrictions,” institute researchers said in a recent blog post.
“Due to the many barriers to abortion care in Oklahoma and Louisiana—including a two-visit requirement in Louisiana and the fact that each state has very limited capacity to absorb an influx of new patients—some people traveling from Texas likely would need to go even farther than one state away for care,” they added.
7 Insane Things I Just Learned About How U.S. Elections Are ‘Rigged’
Remember, admitting you have a problem is the first step towards recovery.
The extent to which corporate media rigs elections for Democrats has been rigorously documented since at least Tim Groseclose’s 2012 book, “Left Turn.” In that book, the political scientist concluded through data-driven analysis that media bias on average shifts the electorate 20 points to the left on a 100-point political worldview scale. Without media bias, he argued, the average American state would be as Republican-leaning as Texas or Kentucky, and those two states would be even more conservative.
Media bias was highly visible even before Rush Limbaugh made it a regular feature of his top-rated radio show that became nationally syndicated in 1988. As the Trump era dawned, however, media coverage moved from biased to outright propaganda.
Corporate media went from picking left-friendly frames and omitting facts that reinforced right-leaning views about public affairs, as Groseclose documented in 2012, to outright mass hoaxing of voters by 2016. While hyperventilating about the minority of Americans who believe conspiracy theories like QAnon, leftist media not only inflamed but also outright fabricated conspiracy theories that the majority of Democrat voters believe.
For example, in 2020, a majority of Americans — including 81 percent of self-described “liberals” — believed the lie that Donald Trump committed treason for Russia. That claim was disproven by a two-year, Democrat-populated special counsel investigation that spent $32 million to find no evidence for this hoax, which effectively hamstrung a president from pursuing what voters put him in office to accomplish.
This corporate media smear machine was only one of the numerous unfair advantages Democrats exploited in the 2020 elections. My colleague, Mollie Hemingway, just put out a new, bestselling book that also documents things like big tech hiding election-shifting news from voters and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg embedding Democrat get-out-the-vote operations inside local election offices — which are supposed to be nonpartisan! What’s more, all these cheats affixed into our nation’s election machinery haven’t been scrubbed away, not by a long shot.
While I work with Mollie and am highly aware of media corruption since it’s our bread and butter here at The Federalist, she still had many surprises for me inside “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.” Here I’ll share a few things she reports in the book that made me gasp out loud.
1. The DNC Controlled All Poll Watchers for 40 Years
I had to read this section of the book two or three times to absorb what it was saying. I couldn’t believe it could possibly be true. Yet it is: “Shockingly, the 2020 contest was the first presidential election since Reagan’s first successful run in 1980 in which the Republican National Committee could play any role whatsoever in Election Day operations.”
What? Next sentence: “For nearly 40 years, the Democratic National Committee had a massive systemic advantage over its Republican counterpart: the Republican National Committee had been prohibited by law from helping out with poll watcher efforts or nearly any litigation related to how voting is being conducted.”
This section in chapter 1 goes on to explain how such an insane thing could be real. Essentially, after Democrats accused Republicans of cheating in a New Jersey race in 1981, a judge banned the RNC from poll-watching and voting litigation everywhere in the country, then kept re-upping the order until 2018, when it finally expired three years after he died.
This handicapped Republicans for almost 40 years while Democrats were free to do things Republicans couldn’t, like give boosts to their voters all along the voting process and track them extensively, challenge ballots, document irregularities, and sue over election disputes. By 2020, then, Mollie writes:
That’s a pretty big handicap walking into the election chaos of 2020, in which Americans filled out an unprecedented 65 million mail-in ballots, which are known not only for their margin of error, but also for being structurally biased towards Democrats.
2. Lazy Voting Biases Elections Towards Democrats
Also made clear throughout “Rigged” is that lazier and sloppier elections strongly advantage Democrats. This means long election seasons, mail-in balloting, and loose ballot behavior such as mailing millions and opening dropboxes all tilt elections towards Democrats.
As Mollie writes, “the vote-by-mail system was becoming a major part of the Democratic Party’s get-out-the-vote operation. Regardless of fraud and other concerns, the press saw the success of the mail-in ballot effort in Wisconsin for what it was: an effort to turn out more Democratic voters.” Republican voters, she shows, prefer to vote in person because they want to make sure their votes are reliably counted.
Why Republicans would ever allow voting procedures that structurally advantage their opponents is, to put it bluntly, only understandable as self-hatred. Democrats would never, ever do that, because they actually want to win.
3. Facebook Bought Joe Biden the Election
In 2020, Facebook’s interference in the election was a one-two punch. Mollie notes: “[Mark] Zuckerberg didn’t just help Democrats by censoring their political opponents. He directly funded liberal groups running partisan get-out-the-vote operations. In fact, he helped those groups infiltrate election offices in key swing states by doling out large grants to crucial districts. That funding was the means by which [Democrat] activists achieved their ‘revolution’ and changed the course of the 2020 election.”
Elsewhere in the book, Hemingway notes that Facebook executives have boasted that they can shut off 80 percent of the traffic to any link they want. Facebook and Google blacklisting of conservative news sites such as The Federalist, The Daily Caller, and Breitbart has been documented since 2017.
Atop this were what’s been termed “Zuck Bucks,” the nearly half a billion dollars Zuckerberg gave to essentially fund a shadow elections system that again structurally advantaged Democrats. To list just a few things the book shows Zuck Bucks facilitated: literally designing mail-in ballots and their envelopes; sending partisan activists to “help” local elections offices in conveniently located swing districts; “fix” unclear or illegal mail-in ballots; designing absentee balloting instructions; and collecting absentee ballots.
The details are breathtaking. Mollie gives so many facts about the partisan tilt and effectiveness of Zuckerberg’s grants to local elections offices that it truly leads one to conclude Zuckerberg flat-out bought the election for Joe Biden.
4. The United States Has Republican No-Go Zones
I’d also never heard about this shocking story that illustrates the extent to which political repression is tolerated within the Democrat Party. In her chapter about the 2020 Summer of Riots, Mollie writes:
Mollie later quotes former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr describing how Antifa — a violent group implicated in actual domestic terrorism — “use[s] legitimate demonstrations as a host body.” “Further,” Mollie writes, “they operated in liberal cities in blue states where local authorities were both reluctant to stop them and unwilling to help federal law enforcement go after them.”
In other words, Democrats are willing to concede the safety of Americans’ lives, limbs, and property to ideological allies, even when those allies openly commit violent crimes and threaten more.
5. The FBI Is Systemically Biased Towards the Left
In discussing why Antifa is allowed to threaten peaceful American citizens with violence, Mollie uncovers one of the political problems with addressing this: The FBI is systemically biased on behalf of the left. “[T]he agency had long focused its attention on right-wing extremists and was ill-equipped to deal with threats from the left,” she notes.
Yes, this is the nation’s top law-enforcement agency that helped hatch the Spygate plot to frame a Republican president. Politically biased — you think? Mollie writes further:
6. It’s No Longer Media Bias, It’s Media Lies
As my opening to this essay explains, I’m aware media bias has been transcended by outright propaganda. In her book, however, Mollie makes an excellent point about this after detailing other cases proving this shift.
She makes it in relation to what I’d call a relatively minor offense — The New York Times publishing a Trump-smearing piece from an anonymous author it described as a “senior administration official,” meaning “someone in the upper echelon of an administration.” Of course, it turned out this person wasn’t any such thing. He was just a mid-level bureaucrat.
After giving the truly asinine details of that story, Mollie makes this comment:
If you don’t believe it already, after you read Mollie’s book, you will come away with the inescapable conclusion that Trump was right when he called corporate media “the enemy of the people.”
7. Mail-In Balloting Is More Outrageous Than Anyone Can Imagine
“Up to a quarter of a million votes were cast in Wisconsin’s presidential election without any identification check at all,” Mollie writes on page 66. I already knew a lot about how error-riddled mail-in voting is — I wrote about that when few would. But just encountering this new fact and realizing this represented just one swing state was another mind-blowing moment for me about just how corruption-enabling and confidence-destroying are vote-by-mail-tainted elections.
There are many more shocking things in Mollie’s book, and I’m not even done. I just started the Hunter Biden chapter, and holy mackerel. Until I read further, a few thoughts.
Republicans expect to win a wave election in 2022. How many points will they have to beat Democrats by to prove it? How many dubious ballots will be produced or negotiated away by partisan election workers or judges? How many urban areas run by Democrats will produce suspicious numbers of ballots that outweigh the votes in the rest of their states? How many Republican voters will stay home because they can’t trust elections run by some of the loosest rules in the developed world?
We shouldn’t even have to be asking these questions right now. If Republicans genuinely want to win elections — and that is sadly in doubt — they have no choice but to use whatever power they have to make those elections trustworthy again. That means in-person voting, with ID, for everyone except the truly disabled, and returning to an election day, not an election season.
The left and their media are going to lie about Republicans no matter what they do, so they might as well get secure elections out of the never-ending smear cycle. Republican voters don’t believe the media anyway, so why do any of their elected officials? Remember, admitting you have a problem is the first step towards recovery.
Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Check out her recommended classic Christmas picture books, “The Read-Aloud Advent Calendar,” and her bestselling ebook, “Classic Books for Young Children.” Sign up here to get early access to her next full-length book, “How To Control The Internet So It Doesn’t Control You.” A Hillsdale College honors graduate, @JoyPullmann is also the author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books.