MRC Tried To Defend Jim Jordan From His Many Haters During Failed Run For House Speaker

Posted on December 19, 2023

The Media Research Center has long been a fan of Republican Rep. Jim Jordan — even championing his bid to become House Republican leader in 2018 — because he’s a reliable peddler of right-wing red meat, and it’s certainly not going to let credible allegations that he ignored claims of sexual abuse perpetrated by a team doctor on Ohio State wrestling athletes while he was a coach there get in the way of that. The MRC tried to defend Jordan by attacking the credibility of his accusers, a familiar MRC tactic. As Jordan continued to supply the red meat, the MRC eagerly chowed down with defense and stenography, as these items from earlier this year demonstrate:

In the turmoil that erupted after Republicans ousted Kevin McCarthy as House speaker — which the MRC tried to blame on anyone other than Republicans — Jordan tried one more time to obtain the seat, and the MRC returned to Jordan defense mode. Nicholas Fondcaaro complained in an Oct. 5 post that Jordan’s unsavory past was brought up:

With Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) out as House speaker, two Republican names had swiftly risen to the top for consideration: Representatives Steve Scalise (LA) and Jim Jordan (OH). It was the latter who drew a harsh rebuke from racist Sunny Hostin on Thursday’s edition of ABC’s The View. Hostin insisted that Jordan was a “terrorist” who “terrorized” her at a congressional hearing. She also tried to suggest he was involved in the Ohio State University wrestling sexual abuse scandal despite no evidence.

The day after she backed up moderator Whoopi Goldberg’s argument that criticism of the people prosecuting former President Trump was somehow a threat to their lives, Hostin laid her disdain for Jordan on heavy. “I would just say about Jim Jordan, he has been called by his own party, by John Boehner, a ‘political terrorist.’ He’s also been linked to the Ohio State sexual abuse scandal,” she chided.

Yes, Fondacaro still thinks Hostin is “racist” because he doesn’t understand how metaphors work. As expected, Fondacaro then attacked the victims:

Toward the end of the segment, Hostin was forced to read a legal note (which the show claims are not “corrections”) by ABC’s Standards and Practices, stating: “Representative Jim Jordan has denied that he knew about sexual abuse of wrestlers during his years working at Ohio State University.”

What went unmentioned was the fact that Jordan’s two accusers had shady histories. One of his accusers was convicted of harassing the gold star widow of a Marine over a memorial fund for her husband. And the other went to prison for a $1.8 million fraud scheme.

In fact, several other wrestlers have made similar claims against Jordan, not just the two Fondacaro is trying to discredit.

The MRC then went after Hostin herself in an Oct. 9 post by Tim Graham claiming that Jordan’s behavior in a congressional hearing in which Hostin took part “does NOT match Hostin’s wild tale of a disheveled terrorizing monster.”

Graham then whined in his Oct. 18 podcast that people were reminded that one of Jordan’s fellow Republicans called him a “terrorist” (while, of course, playing whataboutism):

While some media outlets — especially “public broadcasters” — eschew using the word “terrorist” to describe Hamas and Islamic Jihad, PBS and NBC and MSNBC were enjoying describing Jim Jordan as a “terrorist,” because bitter former Speaker John Boehner smeared him in 2021.

Tuesday’s NBC Nightly News included a clip of Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) on the House floor: “Even members of his own party have called him a legislative terrorist.”

PBS NewsHour reporter Lisa Desjardins offered quotes from Democrats that Jim Jordan is both a “terrorist” and an “insurrectionist.” On the same show, anchor Amna Nawaz called Islamic Jihad a “militant group.” Their reporter said Israel killed the “most high-profile militant” in Hamas.

MSNBC kept coming back to it on Tuesday night. As part of a softball question to Nancy Pelosi, Joy Reid pulled out the 2021 CBS clip of John Boehner singling out Jim Jordan as a “political terrorist,” and then repeats the T-word,

Chris Hayes said Jordan has “no resume” to be Speaker and told Brendan Buck “your former boss, John Boehner, called him a legislative terrorist.” Lawrence O’Donnell ran a longer clip of Aguilar than NBC saying Jordan is a terrorist. At least O’Donnell referred to Hamas terrorists, too.

Nowhere in this writeup did Graham explain why Boehner was wrong in his assessment of Jordan or why this makes him “bitter.”

Mark Finkelstein similarly complained in an Oct. 20 post:

On the Thursday edition of her MSNBC show, Nicolle Wallace shed any pretense of compassionate or even dispassionate political analysis, and embraced her inner hatred. 

Speaking about the 22 Republicans who wouldn’t vote for Jordan with ex-GOP congressman and Never Trumper David Jolly, Wallace said:

“I know why I have a visceral rejection of Jim Jordan and it precedes his role in overturning the result of the 2020 election, but tell me why they hate him, the 22?”

“Visceral rejection:” euphemism for hating someone deep in your guts. As proved by her question to Jolly, asking why those 22 Republicans, in line with her feelings, “hate him.”

Finkelstein didn’t dispute the accurace of Wallace’s assessment, instead trying to portray Jordan as a hater of government in the tradition of Ronald Reagan.

When Jordan inevitably lost a vote for speaker on account of being hated by his fellow Republicans, Alex Christy complained in an Oct. 20 post that this was pointed out:

Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart and New York Times columnist David Brooks gathered for their regularly scheduled weekly news recap on PBS NewsHour on Friday by welcoming the failure of Rep. Jim Jordan to become Speaker of the House.

Host Geoff Bennett led Capehart with a statement rather than a question, “And, Jonathan, it speaks volumes that Jim Jordan was dismissed by secret ballot. He lost 25 Republican votes on the floor in public, but, behind closed doors, in the secret ballot, he lost 112 Republicans.”

Capehart naturally agreed, arguing that proves “the public intimidation worked, when they had to go to the floor and before their colleagues and before the nation declared their fealty to Jordan or their fealty to someone else. But behind closed doors, they were actually able to say what they really felt.”

As for Jordan himself, Capehart added, “And I’m going to jump on — jump on in support of what David was just talking about. You know, yes, Steve Scalise was an institutionalist. Jim Jordan, Congressman Jordan, is not an institutionalist. He has never been about governing. He’s been about burning the place down.”

Christy did not dispute the accuracy of Capehart’s assessment.

Finkelstein tried to do one last bit of cleanup for Jordan in an Oct. 21 post:

[MSNBC’s Katie] Phang then raised the issue of  “the normalization of violence and violent rhetoric by the GOP.” Whereas Phang suggested an investigation to determine who had been threatening violence, Jacobs explicitly accused Jim Jordan of using threats of violence against other House members in an attempt to intimidate them into voting for him as Speaker.

“It should be no surprise that Jim Jordan is willing to use violence to overturn the will of the people and change an election outcome. We have seen him do that before.”

This, despite Jordan having posted at X:

“No American should accost another for their belief. We condemn all threats against our colleagues and it is imperative that we come together. Stop. It’s abhorrent.”

Finkelstein left out the part where Republican members of Congress were, in fact, threatened with violence if they didn’t vote for Jordan as speaker, an extreme-hardball tactic that backfired. Jordan distancing himself from the pressure campaign after the fact does not change the fact that people were threatened on his behalf.