The Media Research Center has spent years attacking Hillary Clinton for saying that a “vast right-wing conspiracy” was out to destroy her husband’s presidency in the 1990s. As recently as July, the MRC’s Brent Bozell and Tim Graham mocked Clinton’s claim as “ridiculous” (even though Bozell declared in 2001 that “Yes, Virginia, the vast right-wing conspiracy did exist all along!”)
But Bozell and Graham have their own conspiracy to peddle now.
In their Sept. 25 column, unironically titled “The Vast Anti-Kavanaugh Conspiracy,” the two rant at anyone who doesn’t see the conspiracy they do against Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination:
Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi wrote a Sept. 25 article on liberal-media bias headlined “Kavanaugh Supporters See a Conspiracy Afoot.” The Post painted this as a little crazy, like a UFO is involved. Can anyone imagine the idea of the Democrats and liberal reporters working hand in glove to torpedo a Republican nomination?
Maybe we can remember Supreme Court nominees Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg in 1987, John Tower in 1989 or Clarence Thomas in 1991. Maybe we can recall John Ashcroft being tarred as a racist in 2001. In these cases and many others, “objective” reporters lined up and repeated the Democrat talking points as “news” and often succeeded in wrecking nominations.
Farhi lined up the deniers. “We aren’t colluding with anyone about anything, including the Kavanaugh nomination,” said Martin Baron, executive editor of the Post. “The conspiracy theories are pure nonsense and completely false.”
“Pure nonsense”? The Post quotes anonymous sources multiple times a day, so how would anyone be able to piece together and figure out the entire collusion experience? The Post claims on the front page every day that “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” and it disdains “dark money” in political campaigns. But it loves “dark sources” spicing up its incessant attacks on the Trump administration.
[…]No one should believe any of these collusion deniers. No media outlet perpetuating this Kavanaugh-crushing conspiracy is nonpartisan, or disinterested. They are on a witch hunt.
Funny how conspiracies become real for Bozell when they can be politically exploited.
Having thus received its marching orders from the top, the rest of Bozell’s MRC started going conspiracy-crazy.
Kristine Marsh alluded to one in a Sept. 26 post complaining about an ABC segment asking teens about the Kavanaugh controversy. She added in a update that one of the teens interviews was “accused of planting a question to Hillary Clinton during a 2016 townhall.” Marsh relayed the conspiracy theory wrong; actually, the teen was accused by right-wing media of being a “child actor” plant at the townhall because she once had a small role in a short film. In fact, she was the daughter of a local politician who got to take part, and Clinton had no knowledge of her question beforehand.
In a Sept. 27 post, Nicholas Fondacaro went full Bozell in sneering at a “thick-headed” columnist, Kirsten Powers, who “couldn’t understand how Kavanaugh could think there was a conspiracy against him. “Fondacaro howled:
Hmm, maybe he knew the radical Democrats were out to destroy him because nearly all of them announced they were opposing his nomination before ever meeting with them. Some, in fact, were opposing anyone President Trump nominated. That’s not to mention that there were New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono who declared him guilty days before the hearing.
Or perhaps it was New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who called Kavanaugh and his supporters evil. It could even have been the Democrats who pontificated that he was going to put the lives of millions at risk. Kavanaugh actually addressed this in his opening remarks, so for Powers to claim ignorance was just slimy.
Even as WorldNetDaily is becoming less WND-like due to its continued fight for survival, the MRC has decided to be even more WND-like by embracing political conspiracies it used to despise.