The Media Research Center has had it in for Liz Cheney after she grew a conscience and broke from Donald Trump after he incited an insurrection due to his inability to emotionally accept that he lost the 2020 election, then became a member of the congressional committee that investigated the riot. When she reappeared to join her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, in endorsing Kamala Harris, the MRC was back in meltdown mode, insisting that wasn’t news. Alex Christy grumbled in a Sept. 7 post:
PBS News Hour host Geoff Bennett and New York Times columnist David Brooks desperately tried to spin the news that former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Rep. Liz Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris as some profound, potentially game-changing moment in the campaign.
Bennett hyped the elder Cheney’s credentials, “So, Dick Cheney, stalwart conservative, no one can accuse him of being a RINO, Republican in name only. He served, I think, four Republican presidents, if memory serves me correctly. What do you see as the significance of their dual support for Kamala Harris?”
After joking that perhaps Cheney will become a hippy, Brooks declared, “For a lot of Republicans, character comes before policy and I think the Cheneys are among those Republicans and there were a lot of Bush Republicans for whom that was just an article of faith.”
[…]Every election cycle, some Republicans support the Democrat and vice versa. A Kennedy and a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate have endorsed Trump, and the Teamsters’ boss spoke at the RNC, but PBS only focuses on Republicans for Harris because she is their preferred candidate.
Is Christy hyping the Teamsters boss’ endorsement of Trump because Trump is his preferred candidate?
Christy huffed further in a Sept. 19 post:
CBS’s Stephen Colbert might as well rename The Late Show to The Kamala Harris Fan Club because on Wednesday he and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow marveled about how supposedly everyone from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Dick Cheney and from the military to Scientific American loves her.
Christy’s response to this was incredibly lame: “Two can play this game because Trump has a coalition ranging from Tulsi Gabbard to Nikki Haley.” So a Republican and a woman who became a Republican a month later is a “coalition”?
Mark Finkelstein spent an Oct. 4 post cheering that a CNN talking head reinforced the MRC’s not-news narrative:
Q. How do you know that Liz Cheney’s endorsement of Kamala Harris is entirely unlikely to shift the election in any detectable way?
A. When a CNN liberal admits that its impact will likely be limited to “one lady in Wisconsin.”
Those were the surprising words of legal analyst Elliot Williams, who served for eight years in the Obama administration, on today’s CNN This Morning. His remark earned a round of laughter on the panel, though former Biden aide Meghan Hays suggested that “One lady might decide this entire election!”
GOP strategist Matt Gorman was in rare form. Responding to Trump calling Cheney a “stupid war hawk,” Gorman said, “I think that was the name of my college mascot.” He added “I’m not going to pretend that Liz Cheney’s endorsement going to have an effect in this race, except make extremely online liberals feel good about a Republican for once” and granting a “media moment” — because “Republicans attacking other Republicans is going to be catnip for the mainstream media. “
Putting aside the wan hope that the one lady in Wisconsin could end up swinging the whole election to Harris, there was no serious suggestion on the panel that Cheney’s endorsement would have any measurable impact on the election. But it does give media Democrats a reason for good cheer, joy and vibes and all that.
The same day, Jorge Bonilla portrayed the Cheney endorsement as part of a sinister liberal-media plot to show that reasonable people endorse Harris, angry that CBS covered her first appearance with Harris at a rally in Ripon, Wis.:
The Regime Media have developed a Strange New Respect for conservative Republicans of a certain inclination, now that they can be used as rungs on a ladder that leads to Republicans voting for Vice President Kamala Harris. The most prominent of these, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, was prominently featured on the network evening newscasts.
Watch as Norah O’Donnell of the CBS Evening News makes sure to create that permission structure:
[…]The highlighting of Ripon seems to me to intend to convey conquest, not unlike American troops operating out of Saddam Hussein’s palaces during the Iraq War. Except that in this case, there is no conquest! This whole exercise is merely the Democrats’ unsavory attempt to woo one wing of the Party. This is the same media that, having nicknamed Vice President Dick Cheney “Darth Vader”, now want to turn his daughter Liz into a political Princess Leia. Or, at least, pretend to do so for purposes of political expediency.
In keeping with the January 6th theme, Cordes sprinkled some of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s filing into her report, as did NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez, who at least showed that not all Republicans are impressed by Cheney, and noted her primary blowout loss:
[…]None of these reports featured anyone questioning how Cheney voting for individuals seeking to impose censorship of “disinformation” defends the Constitution. Those inconsistencies don’t matter. The Regime gets to display the Cheneys in a manner reminiscent of a hunter hanging a 12-pointer’s head above the fireplace.
There was also no one on to warn Cheney that the influence and desirability of this breed of conservative has a limited shelf life, as Adam Kinzinger discovered. Nothing matters but the conquest.
Bonilla didn’t explain why he put “disinformation” in scare quotes. Is he claiming that there is no objective definition of facts and truth? Also, we remember when the MRC had Strange New Respect for Robert Kennedy Jr. when he was running as a Democrat, only for it to quickly dissipate when he switched to running as an independent (and, thus, might take votes away from Trump).
Curtis Houck similarly raged about this joint appearance:
On the heels of ABC, CBS, and NBC singing the praises Thursday night of longtime Northern Virginia resident Liz Cheney (who pretends to reside in Wyoming), the same networks also devoted time on their Friday morning news shows to cheering “staunch conservative” Cheney campaigning with Vice President Kamala Harris, calling it “an astonishing sight” and “a major moment” in the election and emblematic of “the difficult choice” Republican voters face.
Unsurprisingly, ABC’s Good Morning America was the most ebullient. Mary Bruce – Disney’s resident North Korean news lady for Democrats – was pathetic:
[…]Bruce then called Cheney “the most prominent conservative to cross party lines in this race” and “[stood] shoulder to shoulder with Kamala Harris on a mission to convince her fellow Republicans to put country over party.”
Eagerly sharing that Cheney “argu[ed] Trump is a danger to democracy”, Bruce pivoted to Trump’s campaign rally in Michigan, huffing that he “repeat[ed] false assertions about the 2020 election and a series of other subjects.”
The walking Biden-Harris regime tool closed with more approved talking points, gushing “Harris receiv[ed] another notable endorsement” with “Bruce Springsteen offering his support with a similar warning, saying ‘Trump doesn’t understand what it means to be deeply American’” and Barack Obama plans to stump for Harris next week.
Of course, the MRC’s walking Trump-Vance regime tool would say such hateful things. He ended with a stupid rhetorical question: “Exit question for Cheney: If Trump is ‘unprecedented’ in the ‘threat he poses to America, does that mean he’s more dangerous than the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor or, say, the 9/11 hijackers who killed thousands?” Can Houck name another presidential candidate who incited an insurrection because of his anger about losing an election? Didn’t think so.
Of course, Tim Graham spent his Oct. 4 podcast in similar rage:
The network newscasts could hardly restrain themselves from gleefully reporting on special counsel Jack Smith’s latest anti-Trump dump of a document. They dearly loved Liz Cheney, the “hardcore Republican,” campaigning with Harris. But they wouldn’t touch claims that Kamala’s husband Doug Emhoff slapped a girlfriend silly.
Leftist journalists love to define Cheney as a staunch conservative, when no staunch conservative would endorse a candidate who landed to the left of Bernie Sanders during her Senate career.
We’re clearly in October of an election year, because the shamelessness quotient of the double standards is rising. It’s time for dramatic bias by commission against the Republicans, and bias by omission for the Democrats.
Fox News regularly engages in bias by commission against Democrats and bias by omission for Republicans. Why doesn’t Graham ever complain about that?
Cheney also got a mention in an Oct. 5 roundup post by Geoffrey Dickens ranting that “leftist journalists and celebrities ended their summer of hate for the Trump-Vance ticket.”