The Media Research Center showed an utter lack of respect for decorated military man Alexander Vindman — despite its usual demand of respect for decorated military men — all because he committed the conservatively incorrect crime of adhering to his principles and testified before an impeachment about what he saw and heard regarding President Trump. MRC bigwig Tim Graham took that even further by forwarding a conspiracy theory over Vindman’s purported contacts with the whistleblower who exposed President Trump’s shady quid pro quo attempt with the president of Ukraine in order to get dirt on Joe Biden.
In a Jan. 24 post, Graham ran to the defense of Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn after she was called out for her smears of Vindman, claiming he was not an “American patriot” because he “badmouth[ed] and ridicule[d] our great nation in front of Russia, America’s greatest enemy.” Graham declared that Blackburn was “honestly criticizing” Vindman while anyone who criticized Blackburn was “dishonestly” doing so, going on to huff:
Democrats — inside and outside CNN — find it easy to equate patriotism with removing Trump from office. Earlier this month, we pointed out that reporters have come running to say Vindman is “falsely brutalized” when he’s accused of helping the whistleblower set the impeachment train in motion. When Republicans attempted to ask Vindman in the impeachment inquiry if he leaked to the whistleblower, Rep. Adam Schiff shut down the line of questioning.
Just as we saw in the Clinton years, reporters love to say claims are “unsubstantiated” when they either (a) shut down or shame attempts to substantiate it or (b) refuse to substantiate it instead of investigate it.
Graham then complained that “CNN and others have ignored Paul Sperry’s reporting for Real Clear Investigations, which reported about Vindman’s liberal biases.” Graham didn’t mention that Sperry used to work for right-wing birther factory WorldNetDaily, which tells you about how seriously his reporting should be treated.
Finally, Graham served up a bit of whataboutism:
CNN ignored all of that reporting as it hotly trashed Sen. Blackburn as the screen read “GOP QUESTIONS PATRIOTISM OF PURPLE HEART RECIPIENT.” Forgive us if this has a taste of the media’s fulsome defense of Sen. John Kerry in 2004, who also disparaged America, after his military service in Vietnam.
This is NOT the approach CNN and other liberal media outlets showed to Lt. Col. Oliver North during the Iran-Contra scandal after he served on the National Security Council. Insulting North was never “beyond the pale.”
Graham refused to concede that CNN’s screen text was accurate. And it’s funny how people in the military suddenly become deserving targets of Graham and the MRC when they stop serving the conservative movement by showing that other viewpoints exist in the military.