The Media Research Center couldn’t stop being mad about Jimmy Kimmel’s remarks about Melania Trump — or taking it out of context. Craig Bannister served up an April 28 CNSNews propaganda piece:
Liberal journalist Geraldo Rivera sprung to support the First Lady’s condemnation of Jimmy Kimmel’s ominous, hateful comments regarding her and her family on his late-night television show prior to the assassination attempt on her husband’s life Saturday at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
Bannister didn’t explain why, exactly, he was insisting that Rivera is a “liberal,” given that he worked for right-wing Fox News for a couple of decades.
The next day, Nicholas Spinnato groused:
In the opening segment of Tuesday’s CNN This Morning, host Audie Cornish and her panel defended Jimmy Kimmel’s “expectant widow” comments and also discussed the aftermath of the third Trump assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The panel blamed Trump as the reason for the political violence, which Cornish called the debate over violence and rhetoric “nonsensical” after she played a clip of Charlamagne tha God.
One panelist, The Wall Street Journal’s Sabrina Rodriguez, even echoed the words of Jimmy Kimmel from Monday night, where the late-night host told Melania Trump to tell her husband to tone down his rhetoric amid the violence against him.
[…]After she framed the Republican views, she played a clip from Charlamagne tha God where Charlamagne said, “Whenever there is some type of political violence that happens that, you know, one of these events, people always say, so are we going to tone down the violent rhetoric towards Trump? Stop it. Like, I’m sick of that narrative.”
The radio host then said the question about rhetoric needed to be directed to Trump as he said, “‘Hey, Trump, it’s clear that you’re the drama.”
Pure victim blaming.
Spinnato didn’t explain why it’s “victim blaming” to point out that Trump has a history of using violent rhetoric. He also failed to explain why he took Kimmel’s comment out of context and not explaining that it came before the dinner and, thus, could not have been a death threat.
Spinnato followed up by promoting an MRC board member:
During Monday’s CNN This Morning, host Audie Cornish and panelist Antjuan Seawright teamed up on Terry Schilling, director of the American Principles Project and member of the Media Research Center’s board of directors, in an attempt to call Schilling and other conservatives anti-free speech for opposing rhetoric that could incite violence.
Schilling mentioned the Biden-era DOJ’s investigations of parents at school board meetings and noted how the TV networks were pro-Biden. Seawright and Cornish denied it and falsely said TV networks did not treat Biden with “loving care.”
Cornish questions were framed in a way that painted conservatives against free speech amid the Jimmy Kimmel “expectant widow” controversy. Schilling said Kimmel was “playing a game” to get “as close to that line as possible to cause controversy, to get more eyeballs.”
Spinnato failed to explain just how conservatives are not opposed to free speech or how networks gave the kid-glove treatment to Biden aside from noting that “Schilling pointed out the obvious of the media cover-up of Biden’s senility and faltering mental capacities: ‘Oh, please. We were told that Joe Biden was at the height of his game. While he’s clearly suffering from Dementia.'”
Spinnato went on to whine: “As the media’s defense of Kimmel’s ‘expectant widow’ comment has grown, Democrats have seemingly grown to have a different tone on free speech if they need to defend a liberal late-night host.”
The MRC’s nepo-baby leader then appeared on the radio show of the MRC’s favorite CNN right-winger, Scott Jennings, where he ranted about “Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night attacks” and added: “Bozell concluded by warning that as long as networks like ABC continue to mainstream narratives that label political opponents as ‘pedophiles, rapists, and traitors,’ the cycle of violence will only escalate. The takeaway is clear: the elitist media aren’t just reporting on the political violence; they are the ones feeding it.” Bozelll did not call out similarly violent rhetoric by his fellow right-wingers.