The Media Research Center’s Heathering tendencies popped up again in a June 27 post by Mark Finkelstein, raging at conservative Jonah Goldberg for his not-inaccurate observation that a second Trump term would mostly be about “four more years of him tweeting like an escaped monkey from a cocaine study”:
In the run-up to the debate, Republicans–some seriously, others more in jest–have been suggesting that Biden might be “jacked up” on any number of different substances, including cocaine.
On CNN This Morning, you might say that Never Trumper and CNN commentator Jonah Goldberg metaphorically tried to turn the cocaine tables on Republicans.
After stating he usually believes debates aren’t that important, he thinks this one is. He said this is about reassuring voters.
[…]Notice that this is CNN, where you can dehumanize Trump into an animal on drugs, and Kasie Hunt laughs. No one’s going to cut that microphone. CNN and the rest wildly caricature Trump comparing MS-13 killers to “animals” as being about all immigrants.
It’s quite rich to hear Finkelstein whine about Goldberg “dehumanizing” Trump when his fellow MRC writers dehumanize migrants all the time by calling them “illegals.” He also served up Heathering on another panelist:
Host Kasie Hunt interjected — “That’s why Shermichael is here”—the notion being that panelist Shermichael Singleton is a loyal, Trump-supporting Republican who would counter Goldberg’s argument.
In fact, Singleton was fired from his position at HUD for having written an article prior to the 2016 election critical of Trump. And contrary to Hunt’s claim that Goldberg and Singleton are Republicans, as our Alex Christy has noted, and per this article, Singleton quit the GOP in 2020.
Finkelstein seems not to be bothered that Singleton was fired from his government job solely for criticizing Trump — which would seem to be an attempt at “censorship” of the kind the MRC usually frowns upon. He also didn’t explain why nobody is permitted to criticize Trump, even though that censorship of views is apparently a condition of employment at the MRC.
A few days, later, Goldberg was back in the MRC’s good graces — a July 9 post by Tim Graham cheered that Goldberg “grew visibly angry with ex-Biden White House communications director Kate Bedingfield as she trotted out the Biden-he-can-do-it spin.” Graham made no mention of Goldberg’s stay in the MRC’s doghouse.